Chapter One

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Steve Roger's heart banged against his ribs until it hurt.

If somebody had asked him, he'd have sworn his pre-serum asthma had returned, making it impossible to draw a full breath. His hands were shaking, and suddenly he was glad he hadn't brought flowers after all. The stems would have been squashed into limp green strings by this point.

And yet the thing he was facing didn't appear to be frightening at all. It was a plain, ordinary brownstone building, long since subdivided into apartments to allow a variety of families to live within the once-aristocratic walls. It wasn't in a bad part of town, or a good part, for that matter - just a mediocre area where nobody would look twice at their neighbor.

It was the perfect place for a secret agent to make her home.

People dodged around him where he stood stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, shooting him half-hearted looks of annoyance. The low sun lanced between the buildings behind him, heating up the back of his neck.

And still he could not make himself move.

...

"Does it hurt anybody in the other timeline?" he had asked, back in the future. "If there was a split. Would it hurt anybody?"

Banner thought he was talking about the timeline where Loki took off with the Tesseract. "No," he reassured the captain. "I don't think so; not as long as the stones are still in the timeline. Look at what happened with Nebula. Time is malleable; it wants to work out right, even when one thing changes. "

Bucky must have heard the conversation. Hours later, he sat down beside the captain, watching the sun set over the lake where they'd laid Stark to rest.

"Say hi to Carter for me," he said without preamble.

Steve jolted, startled. "What?"

"You heard me." Bucky aimed a knowing eye at his best friend. "Haven't known you this long not to notice when you're thinkin' about doing something stupid."

Steve shook his head resolutely against the temptation, folding his threadbare dreams back into his heart. He'd carried those dreams for nearly eighty years now, but since the first mention of the time machine they'd began rising up in his thoughts with increasing persistence. "I can't. World's just getting going again. They'll need all the help they can get."

Bucky squinted at the light of the sun slanting through the trees, gleaming off the water. "Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"Go home." The metal hand clapped him on the shoulder. Bucky looked absolutely serious. "Go home, buddy. War's over. There's a dame waiting for you. We can take care of ourselves just fine."

Something swelled up in Steve's throat - an aching longing for that life so intense that it was physically painful. "But what about you?"

Bucky looked him in the eye, and Steve could see hard-won peace in his friend's face. "I got a life here. Worked real hard to figure myself out, and I'm happy with that." He shrugged, a faint twist to his lips that might have been a smile. "Besides, I spent seventy years messing the world up; figure now's my chance to pay some of that back."

There were no words. The lump of tentative hope and crippling guilt in his throat was so big that Steve couldn't speak. So instead he reached across and tugged his best friend - his brother - into a fierce, desperate hug.

It seemed so unfair that only one of them should get to go home.

...

Bucky would have laughed at him.

Actually, it was more likely that Bucky would have grabbed him by the arm, towed him up the three flights to the apartment where Peggy lived and shoved him bodily through the door.

Steve wiped both hands on his trouser legs, squared his jaw, and eyed the stairs as if they were the front steps to Hitler's own private bunker.

He could do this. He'd spent more than a decade just wishing for a moment like this, and now that it was real he owed it to himself to at least try.

Besides, if Peggy shot him, at least he'd die having seen her one more time.

Taking a deep breath, he set a foot on the first step and started to climb.

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It was the end of a very long day. Peggy Carter braced one hand against her aching back as she straightened from the paperwork she'd brought home and squinted against the sunlight slanting in through her windows to look at the clock. Time had slipped away from her; it was long past time to start getting dinner.

The months since Peggy's return to the New York SSR office had been marked with little fanfare. Daniel Sousa remained in the California office. For one heady week they'd thought they might have a chance at a future together, but then Thompson had been shot - and somewhere in the middle of all the resulting flurry, Peggy had woken one morning to discover that she was not in love with Daniel.

Certainly she'd liked him - admired him - even had a bit of a case on him - but she wasn't in love with him.

"Is he the love of your life?" Michael had asked her so long ago, and then, as now, she hadn't known what to say. Fred hadn't been, and sadly, neither was Daniel.

This realization had been somewhat depressing to both Peggy and Sousa. Perhaps, under other circumstances, they might have overcome this hurdle, might have grown together until they were the love of each others' lives - but the more urgent fact of Thompson's grave injury and the associated logistical complications brought things to a head too quickly.

...

"It's Phillips," Sousa had said quietly one morning, a hand over the telephone receiver. "He wants you to temporarily lead the New York office in Thompson's place."

Peggy met his eyes across the crowded office. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears and the click of her teacup as she set it down was nearly deafening. This was the chance of a lifetime for her - the opportunity that she fully deserved, and they both knew it. They exchanged a long look - and then Peggy made her decision.

"Tell him I'm on my way," she said, and stood. "I - I'm so sorry, Daniel. I want this."

Sousa hadn't answered, not in words anyway. He merely held her gaze a second longer and then nodded quietly, regret and respect mingling in his face. She knew then that he would support her to the end.

She'd walked out of the California office feeling saddened, and yet free in a way she hadn't been in a long time.

...

Thus it was that Peggy Carter returned to New York alone, with the blessing of Sousa and his promise to back her as the temporary chief of the New York office. Thompson stayed in California, fighting for his life in the hospital. One of his nurses happened to be Daniel's old fiancée, and from what news had managed to filter back to her since, Peggy gathered that she and Sousa were considering picking up where they'd left off.

Peggy rather hoped that they would. Daniel deserved to be happy.

She resolutely ignored the thought that she herself deserved to be happy too. The one man that she'd thought for certain was the love of her life lay dead in the icy North, laid to rest in her heart. Perhaps, she thought a little wearily, the love of one's life was only a once-in-a-lifetime thing - something to be cherished when found, and never forgotten afterward, no matter what other loves might come.

The rest of the agents in the New York office had been greatly surprised and a not a little offended at Peggy Carter taking the position of director pro tempore. It wasn't easy; being out west for so long had cost her most of the respect she'd laboriously gained, and the fact that she was still favoring her side even months after being impaled meant that Peggy couldn't do as much fieldwork as she would have liked. So - it was back to the desk and the paperwork, waiting for the Powers That Be to assign a permanent chief in Thompson's place, and wrangling for that position herself.

At least she didn't have to do the lunch orders to do anymore. That was something.

Setting the kettle on the hot plate in her room, Peggy eyed the store of food in her tiny icebox and finally gave up on the idea of anything fancy. Eggs - she'd have some eggs. They still felt like a luxury, though it had been five years since the war and rationing ended.

A knock at the door interrupted her preparations, and she accidentally stuck her thumb through the eggshell, sending yolk and white dripping down her hands and into the bowl along with crumbled bits of shell. Growling under her breath at how jumpy she was, she swiped the dish towel and wiped her hands as she stepped cautiously through the tiny flat.

Who on earth could be calling?

She paused to slip her gun from the side drawer into her palm, and chucked the dish towel into her sink from her place by the front door. It really was a very tiny flat, but at least it was dry and had pleasant, if disinterested, neighbors.

Then she opened the door - and froze.

The man on her doorstep was impossible.

"Peggy," he said - and then simply looked at her as though she were the impossible one, fumbling for words that didn't come.

The world spun around her, and she clutched for the doorknob, struggling to stay upright. He took a half step forward, arm outstretched as if to help, but she brought up her gun and leveled it at him between the eyes.

"Who are you?" The words came out in a hoarse whisper, squeezing around her heart, which seemed to be lodged in her throat. The sights on her pistol were wobbling dreadfully; she couldn't keep it steady. Only a sheer effort of will kept her knees from buckling.

He looked at her - looked at her, as though he could do nothing else, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

"Hi," he managed at last, and visibly swallowed hard. His voice was uneven, choked with emotion. "I - I'm late."

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Hello, all!

I started writing fanfiction solely as a way to give Steve and Peggy their happy ending. After Endgame, I walked out of the theater thinking that I could stop at last. The happy ending I wanted for them was finally canon. I was content. I was going to stop writing fanfics.

A few weeks later, and after messaging with several of you (you know who you are), I was encouraged to start a post-Endgame story. Personally, I'm a fan of the same-timeline theory, but the idea of meddling in an alternate timeline became too much to resist.

And so I give you this. Thanks to those of you who encouraged me to keep writing.