Peggy is not going to panic. Panicking won't help her and it won't help Howard's future wife. Panicking will only help HYDRA and she is damned if she's going to help HYDRA.

But the fact of the matter is…they're trapped.

Things are all turned around now. Angie is safe. Finally, Angie is safe. But Peggy and the future Mrs. Stark are stuck behind a few inches of steel that aren't going to open merely because she wishes it.

It's not an ideal situation.

Maria uses that savvy engineer brain to sort out a possible escape route, which is how the two women find themselves wading through hip-height water that's far too cold for comfort.

She still can't quite wrap her head around the stupidity of the design of this place, and she says as much out loud.

Which leads to Maria hurriedly explaining how it was likely related to the emergency cooldown of the enormous engines they'd found they were trapped with.

"I hate to say it, but they designed this place pretty well," Maria says in a very matter of fact sort of way that immediately makes it clear why Howard will fall for her one day.

She recants her claim as soon as they make it to the planned escape route. It's a "moon pool." Maria goes on about something related to pressure and easy access and she assures Peggy it will get them out safe and sound.

Until they actually see the place.

Specifically they see the single oxygen tank and breather.

Just one.

One tank and one very long swim.

She sags against the door frame and watches Maria rush around the room searching for another tank. She's muttering to herself in that way that all the geniuses do and she's flinging bits of scrap around as she hunts.

Peggy looks around for a map of the facility as she feels there ought to be at least one. She finds it on the far wall. Stares. Sighs.

Then she wades over to the oxygen tank and checks the levels.

Of course.

Nearly empty.

That's Peggy's luck.

Been her luck ever since she barreled into Steve at the hotel and stole his shield. One event after another has left Peggy feeling awful and miserable and now she's facing death because there's only one oxygen tank and two of them and Maria's got to live.

The life of a future hero depends on it.

She breathes slow and deep. Now isn't the time to wallow or panic. She's survived Nazis, super soldiers and one very enamored Atlantean and she is not going to be done in by a vessel that's sprung a leak.

"Can you swim," she asks the girl, and she has to shout over the din of rising water.

The girl can and Peggy forces the oxygen tank onto her. Strapping it to her back and slipping the mask over her face.

"You'll have to swim for the other side. Do you understand?"

The girl does, and she nods. "What about you," she asks and her voice is muffled by the mask.

"I'll find my way after you—"

"It's too far without oxygen."

Peggy knows that. The girl knows it too. She's just young and kind and concerned.

"I'm going to go look for another tank." She didn't spy a single one as they made their way to the moon pool. "I'll find one." She very likely won't. "You need to make your way to the other side. Tell them where I am."

The girl's wide eyes rove over Peggy—"But you've got to be a better swimmer than me right?" She tugs at the mask. "You take it. You can get to the other side and get help!"

The water laps at their waists. It's cold—leaching all the heat out of them and rising so terribly fast. She tightens the mask against the girl's face and takes her long hand in her own. Their skin is clammy and starting to prune.

"This isn't up for discussion. You swim for help and breathe shallow. I'll make my own way—"

"Angie'll kill me."

Angie will kill Peggy too. Level that one particular glare of hers at her. When she sees her again—if—she pushes the girl towards the water.

"Remember. Breathe shallow. You've got to make that air last."

The girl wades out into the pool. Turns and, while treading water, stares at Peggy with bright eyes. Then she dips down below the surface and disappears.

####

They three of them—with the HYDRA lady slung over Steve's shoulder—make their way to a "moon pool." Angie's got no idea what the heck a moon pool is supposed to be, and she's too cold and tired and aching to care.

The whole last day—or two—or three are all just this damn—damn sand in her head and it's like she's trying to grab big handfuls and watching it all sluice right out between her fingers. She's been fighting and clawing at the world in ways she didn't even know she could and between that and the water up to her waist she's done.

And maybe Peggy's done too—which is too terrifying for her brain to really focus on.

She's locked up somewhere on the other side of a door and may be drowning or dead. Angie just wants her there. Wants her to mother her and tell her she's being dramatic and maybe hold her. She's got nice warm lips that would press to Angie's temple and even though the last time she saw her she was soaked through she knows Peggy'd still smell like powder and a little perfume when she'd take her in her arms.

She'd cry if she wasn't so tired.

God she's such a sad sack.

Here she is with a living legend and a child spy and all she can do is shiver and sniffle and trail after them like the kids would toddle after Natalie.

As if she knows her face is gracing a couple of Angie's thoughts the girl stops walking and turns. "Are you all right," she asks. She looks concerned enough that Angie knows she must be a sight.

And she sounds it enough that Steve stops too. He's got that trussed up HYDRA-lady slung over his shoulder all casual like she's a sack of flour he's getting to a bakery. And he's not the least bit winded—or even phased—by what's happening.

He's also come to this rescue dressed like Captain America. All bright red and white and blue. The Great American Hero the whole country's still in love with a decade later.

She can't possibly compete—Steve is staring real hard at her. "Steely" would be the right word. He hands the unconscious woman over to Natalie and nods in the direction they were headed. Then he wades back to Angie.

"We got to keep moving," he says, and his voice is somehow soft and somehow iron.

She knows they got to keep moving. That's why she's walking towards the "moon pool."

He breathes out through his nose and one side of his mouth quirks up as he looks at her. Then he walks right up to her, spins around, and offers his back.

"I can walk," Angie mumbles.

And it's a bit of a lie because she doesn't really feel like it.

"You sound like me as a kid." He looks over his shoulder at her. "Hop on—it'll be faster."

She tries to push him back and says something about being fine again but Steve shakes his head. "You're not, and it's okay—"

It isn't okay.

'Bout the only thing from the last few days Angie can remember—only thing sticking in her head like it's glued there—is the look on Peggy's face as that door slammed shut.

Nothing is okay.

Steve stoops again in front of her and Angie sighs and climbs up onto his back. She's immediately grateful. Even with all the water he's hot like a furnace and puts the heat right back into her bones.

He moves fast too—wordlessly catching up to Natalie without even a gasp and then leading them all to the much discussed "moon pool."

Which is surrounded by lots more guys with guns. Steve leaps back away from the door as bullets spit out of it—pinging the wall opposite like gravel hitting the undercarriage of a car.

He sets Angie down and hefts that big fancy shield of his. From her vantage point—slumped against the bulkhead—the fella has never looked more heroic.

There's a lot of noisy fighting that Angie doesn't dare to watch. Because every time she sees something incredible it's like some other little vital piece of her slips away. She worries that if she looks into that room she'd forget why she was even stuck down under the ocean in the first place.

Instead she focuses on breathing. In and out. It's a good kind of noisy that distracts her from the grunts and cries and bullets and the ring ring ring of phones—

Why the heck is she hearing a phone ring?

She pushes away from the bulkhead and looks around. Listens real good.

Yup. A phone is definitely ringing.

It's on the other side of that open door to the pool thing. A big red phone bolted to a wall.

There's a lot of reasons for a phone like that to ring. Could be HYDRA asking how it's going. Could be important underwater base fellas asking for help with all the flooding.

Could be Peggy and Maria calling out for help.

Angie's gut—which hasn't had a speck a food in it in over twenty-four hours—is like to thinking it's that lattermost one. Mainly on account of needing some bit of hope.

She takes in one of those big fortifying breaths. The kind she does right before going out on stage. It rattles and wheezes in her chest. Gives her as much courage as a shot of whiskey ever could.

Then she lurches past the open door and through the churning water—that's looking a little pinker than she's comfortable with.

And she answers the phone.

####

"Hello?"

Angie's scared. Peggy can hear that in her voice. She's scared, uncertain,

and alive.

Which could soon be more than Peggy can say for herself. The search for more oxygen has been fruitless and now she's stuck just outside the moon pool on a bright red phone she's found bolted to the wall. The water is up past her chest, forcing her to tread water.

She sighs Angie's name.

"Peggy? Peggy where are you?"

There's the unmistakable sound of gunfire and Peggy winces and pulls the phone from her ear. "I'm more concerned about you. Are you all right?"

"Nothing a Great American Hero and a kid spy can't handle. They're taking back something called a moon pool."

Good. Angie's safe…at least safer than Peggy. That's—that's very good.

"When I saw that door shut I thought you and I—"

Peggy has to press her back to the bulkhead to keep from floating away. "I know." She's not sure how to tell her that that could still be the case. The water is rising so quickly and there's no guarantee they can get to her in time.

For a moment there's just the sound of gunfire.

But Angie, Angie's always had a singular gift for reading Peggy. For interpreting all her moods and sullen silences. And she does it so neatly now. "Peggy where are you?"

She closes her eyes. Her mouth purses. Tears threaten to burn in her throat. Then she opens her eyes again. Tries to school a voice that's turning shaky because of nothing more than concern. Angie has that gift too. Can break Peggy's heart with a kind question. "I'm at the other moon pool. On the opposite side of the base."

There's still gunfire and the dull roar of the rising water.

"How come I don't hear Maria?"

She turns away from the phone and takes a breath. Smiles even though Angie can't see it. "I sent her to you with the last of the oxygen."

"Peggy—"

"It was my choice." She says it quickly. Thinking that it will be like pulling off bandages or giving more traditional bad news. Just be done with it.

How was Steve able to sound so heroic when he said those exact same words? He was a hero out of the pictures and here Peggy sits sounding, to her own ears, like a coward.

"If one of us is going to take the wretched odds of waiting for help it ought to be one the one who isn't going to birth a superhero in the near future."

Angie doesn't say a word. The higher the water the quieter it gets. Until Peggy's breath is bouncing off the water and the walls.

There's a loud boom over the phone. One so large it causes the whole base to rattle. "What was—"

"Tony," Angie sighs. "Just showed up to help take the pool. Why you think it's called that? I can't really see the thing too well from back here, but what I did see didn't look like any moon. Just some hole—"

"Angie—"

"In the ground. Or deck. It's a deck right? Even under water."

"Darling—"

"Will you shut up?"

Peggy does. Angie's told her to shut up plenty of times. But never that way. Never sounding exhausted like that. "You keep talking Peggy, and I get it, you're trying to be noble and brave because sitting over there by that other moon pool all alone has got to be terrifying, but do you have any idea how furious I am with you right now? We were—you and I—" She can hear the enormous breath Angie takes in—even over the phone. The rattle in her chest. The tears Angie will not shed.

Angie can cry at the drop of a hat. But never when it matters. Then she's all still steel.

"I know," she says softly.

"You keep leaving me Peggy."

Her voice doesn't crack but part of Peggy does.

She knows that too.

Peggy remembers what it was like to be on the other end of a call like this. Ten years later and the memory is still clear as the sky in the mountains on a cold night. She remembers everything she and Steve left unsaid that day. Remembers all the opportunities she watched slip through her fingers in the blink of an eye. Remembers—"I love you."

"Really?" Angie sounds so tired.

"Really." To her own ear Peggy sounds tired too.

There's a little spat of silence and rustling and voices she can't quite make out—then, "Steve and Tony just went for a swim. Think they're looking for you."

"You told them?"

"All those years at the automat? Gotta be a great multitasked."

"You were there for two…"

Peggy's having to tread water to keep her head above it now, and it seems to be coming faster. Roaring through some hole in the bulkhead she can't see.

She looks for the bright side, "Steve was always a fast swimmer—"

"And that kid of Maria's got jets strapped to his feet."

"Bit ostentatious if you ask me."

"It's that color that does me in. Red and gold is just a little too flashy you know?"

"This from the woman who owns at least a dozen rhinestone-festooned gowns."

"But I'm not fightin' crime in them."

Angie's so insistent Peggy smiles. "No. You aren't."

The silence on the line cracks and pops. "How high's the water now?"

She has to spit out some of it lapping at her mouth. "Higher than I'm comfortable with."

More silence. But it feels easy. Like the long phone calls Angie would waste all her money on when she was stuck in Hollywood and Peggy was back in DC.

Angie breaks it—as she often does. Peggy has always been more content with silence then she has. "Natalie's tying up our new pal Hydra so it's just you and me English. Tell me you love me again."

Peggy does. It's easy.

That's the thing. The acute difference between Steve and Angie. With Steve it was never right. Ships passing and all that muck. The words she'd wanted to say never seemed to fall out of her mouth as she needed them to. They'd stop just short and the two of them were always left on this—this precipice.

With Angie…with Angie it's simple. The words flow as fast as the water that's sure to drown her. They're two women in careers that can't afford their "proclivities" and yet Peggy can muster the strength to tell Angie she loves her a hundred times a day.

A thousand.

She and Steve are forever trapped on the precipice, but she and Angie seem to have no problem diving right over.

"I don't tell you that enough."

"Sure you do."

"Not lately."

"No. Not lately." A watery laugh. "You've been a real pill lately English."

"Angie—"

"And now… You don't get to die okay? Because then you don't get to spend the next fifty years making it all up to me. And you've got a lot to make up for."

"Angie could you just—" The water's pushing higher and the phone's cord has gone taunt. Soon the mouth piece will be covered and—

"I love you too Peggy. Like sun on the grass and wind in the leaves and tomorrows—"

"That never die."

That silly silly film of hers.

The water slips over the bottom of the mouthpiece and just before the phone shorts out she hears sputtering and cries that Steve is back with Maria.

Angie's begging her to just stay alive and hold out for rescue.

But Peggy's rather certain it's just a touch too late.

####

Peggy dies.

When Tony makes it back with her bedraggled body in her arms she is dead. Angie's hands, cold and wet, fly to her mouth and she turns into one of those awful…girls. She helped hold her brother down when a man cut off his leg and she watched her cousin die but this—this is what turns her into something silly and simpering.

The only thing keeping her from going into full on dramatics is that she's got an audience.

Tony sets Peggy down gently in the water and the mask on his helmet lifts up and he looks as beat as Angie feels. "I tried…"

The excuse dies. Goes as dead as the woman floating in the water. Her lips are blue and her skin's like wax. She looks like the folks they lay out at the funeral parlor.

Angie starts towards her, but Steve is there first. He shakes Peggy. The meat of his hand slams into her chest. He starts mumbling—ranting—about how they just need to get some air into her. Get her circulation going.

Tony reaches out to tell him to stop and Steve shrugs his hand away. Bends. Breathes air into Peggy's lungs.

As regret goes this is the one that will linger for Angie. Because she just goes and lets this other fellow save Peggy's life. Sure she holds her chilled hand and watches. She's there when they all climb into the tube ("Submarine," Maria insists.) and Tony uses his fancy rocket boots to get them back up to the surface. And her hand strokes Peggy's sopping hair while Steve pumps air into her with those big super soldier lungs.

But when they hit the sunlight and Peggy coughs up a gallon of seawater and clutches at Angie like she's a life preserver it's still Steve who did the saving.

Angie was just…for once in her life…Angie was just the observer.

It rankles her for the rest of the day—which is spent on a stolen HYDRA boat.

Angie's pouting—and there's no other word for it—is impressive according to Peggy. "I was the one that nearly died," she notes from the cot she's resting on. Steve's swaddled her in half the blankets on the ship and left her looking like a poorly made stuffed pasta shell.

"But I should have helped," Angie admits. She hates saying it out loud—even if she knows it's got to be said.

Peggy shivers and then sniffles, "You're an actress Angie, not some superhero. You can't be expected to—"

Angie hops up and turns away and hates that she's so steaming' mad about it. Hates that she's turning into an infant over it. Just in general hates herself.

"You know," Peggy's voice is a little softer, "being a superhero isn't a metric I really judge my lovers by."

She wants to point out that Steve is a superhero and Peggy does love him, and an Oscar-winning actress who can karate chop a fella doesn't really compare to America's greatest hero.

"And it isn't why I loved him. Steve did—does—the right thing."

Angie sags. And Peggy's lousy use of tense isn't lost on her. She can, on occasion, notice things.

Peggy calls her name and she, finally, has to reluctantly turn and peek at her with downcast eyes, "And you do too, Angie. Or do you forget the time you took on the mob to save me from my pimp."

She rolls her eyes. Peggy's never gonna let her live that down. "But I'm still no Steve Rogers."

"Something well established the first time we slept together." It's supposed to be a joke, and because Angie remembers that one long night fondly she does have to smile. Which just turns Peggy's own gentle smile into one of her full wattage ones. Only then the woman—the idiot—has to keep talking. Because clearly Peggy is seeing herself as some kind of noble sort of warrior woman in this whole scenario and hasn't actually considered the really stupid words that fall out of that perfect mouth. "You're easy Angie Martinelli. And that something Steve can never be."

Angie could go real emotional at that line. Could be, or even just act, heartbroken. But she's known Peggy Carter for nearly a decade so she purses her lips and stares at her until Peggy's as red as her favorite shade of lipstick.

"That came out—I mean—"

"You know it isn't nice to leave a girl frettin' about her place in your life and then go and call her easy English. Pretty tacky in fact."

"I didn't mean—I mean technically it's true but that's—what on earth are you doing."

Angie's miming shoveling dirt, "Just helping you dig that hole you're so intent on climbing into."

"I mean it's easy to have a relationship with you!" She pauses. "When you're not being an utter tit and mocking me or forcing me into the arms of my ex."

"You went!"

"And you didn't even fight! Not once. Steve Rogers showed up and you rolled over faster than the White Sox!"

"What'd you expect me to do. You keep his damn portraits on every wall in the house and were about losing your mind just thinking you saw him. You had to talk to him."

"Right. Talk. Which I wanted to do. But then you were just—" She looks like a real ass sitting there pretending to shove someone. "Right into his arms! Even Howard didn't root as hard for us." Damning words judging by the short story Howard got published in a Captain America fan magazine.

Angie wants to rub at her eye like she used to as a child. She's still exhausted and if she wasn't fighting with Peg she'd probably be curled up in a corner asleep. But she doesn't rub her eye.

Peggy's swung her legs over the side of her cot while Angie was thinking about her own exhaustion and is now coming towards her slowly on bare feet and reminding her too much of a trainer at the circus dealing with the lions.

"The thing is," Peggy starts, "Steve is the love of my life in a way no one can compare to." Ouch. "And I'm always going to love him, but…anything more than that is hard, and love isn't meant to be hard Angie. It's meant to be good and easy and not leave a woman feeling like her heart's been ripped out."

"There we're in agreement," she says quietly, and she's real good about holding back the tears burning behind her eyes and in her throat.

Peggy reaches out with a cool hand and her thumb presses to Angie's cheek. Forces her to look hard at her and only her. "Loving you is one of the easiest things I've ever done." She steps in close and she's all smelling like sweat and old salt water and it's maybe the best smell to ever grace Angie's nostrils. The kind of smell she'd bottle up and spritz on her pillow before bed. Because after she steps close she lays a gentle kiss on Angie's lips and her thumb keeps on stroking her cheek and it is that.

It is easy.

Just like breathing.

Her hand holds Peggy's in place and she keeps on kissing her with the kind of ease usually reserved for just getting out of bed in the morning or squeezing the kids in her arms.

"When I'm with you," Peggy whispers against her lips, "it doesn't hurt."

####

Watching the woman you love with someone else. Watching them choose someone else. Even after you've travelled back in time. It leaves Steve feeling gutted in the kind of way he hasn't felt since he woke up seventy years in the future.

Peggy would never tell him no to his face. She's too kind—too good. He even heard her say she loved him.

But she's chosen someone else and Steve has to respect it. He won't ruin what they have just because he wants it too.

So he leaves the other blankets he'd found outside the room Peggy and Angie are standing in and he goes out on the deck and leans against the railing and tries to catch his breath.

Breathing hasn't been a problem since Erskine changed him. But now there's the all too familiar thump of his heart against his ribcage and the burn of not enough oxygen in his lungs.

Steve's hands find the railing and he squeezes. Hard enough that the metal dents between his fingers.

He's happy for Peggy. Profoundly happy.

All he's ever wanted is for her to be okay.

But the jealousy bubbling up in him is ugly and terrible—

Stark sidles up next to him. Offers the bottle of vodka he's "rescued" from the mess. Steve declines with a tilt of his head. So Stark takes a swing and stares out at the water.

They're racing back to shore now with a teenage assassin at the helm of the boat. The future Mrs. Stark is sitting close to the bow of the ship watching the water quietly and hugging close the blanket wrapped around her.

"I always thought that one of the best ways to move on from an old girlfriend is to see how they've moved on."

Steve thinks with everything he's heard about Tony Stark the guy's never had cause to need to move on from a woman. But he can also recognize what Stark is trying to say—and what he's implied. "You wanted me to see them together."

"I wanted to capture crazy HYDRA lady before she rewrote time. You seeing my fave godmothers was just a bonus."

Knowing that Stark is supposed to be a "friend" just makes it worse. "Why," he asks through gritted teeth.

"Because you spend more time visiting her than her own relatives do."

When he whips around to glare at Stark he's met with an even gaze that almost has him taking a step back. Tony nods, "Yeah. He who pays the bills gets to see the visitation records Rogers. They should call you Casper for the way you haunt that place."

He really doesn't want to get a lecture on becoming a ghost. Peggy's already given him a couple to that effect in the present. As has Nat.

And Sam.

"Have you ever actually had to move on?"

Stark shrugs. "Not yet. But I've seen people do it." His eyes fall on the hold. "And I've seen people who don't." Then they drift over to where his once and future mother is watching the water. "Imagine it's pretty rough."

It's worse than all the radiation and drugs and needles combined.

"It's not pleasant," he agrees.

That's enough for Stark. He slaps Steve on the back like they're old buddies and then jogs over to squat next to his mother and talk. He's a different man then. Being with his mother, resurrected even for a little while, takes years off Tony's face.

Maria just looks confused and peers at her son as if he were an engine to be dismantled. Then her hand reaches out to cup his cheek and her whole face softens and Steve doesn't want to feel sorry for himself any more than he already does, but he has to.

The jealousy—the hurt—just wells up inside of him.

He goes back inside and finds a bunk to lay down in and sleeps fitfully.

There it doesn't hurt quite as much.

####

When Steve comes to later it's because someone's watching him. It's a unique kind of sensation that always had the Commandos teasing him about getting super senses along with all that strength. Steve just figures he's more attuned to his surroundings then he used to be.

He debates whether to keep pretending to sleep and figure out who is doing the watching, but then they come closer and sit on the cot beside him and their hand runs though his hair and their lips brush his ear and Peggy says "You're a terrible actor Steve Rogers."

He cracks an eyelid and is rewarded with Peggy being up close and personal. She's even got that crooked grin that has him turning into a kid.

He smiles too—it's the self deprecating one Sam says is "charming." "Never had complaints with the USO."

Her fingers fiddle with the zipper on his suit. "USO never had to watch you fake sleep. I half expected a snore."

"I'm too good for that."

"Perhaps."

A silence that isn't the least bit easy swells between them. Peggy's fingers have moved onto running across seams of Steve's suit and his hand lightly brushes the bit of her he can reach. They don't talk.

Until Peggy opens her mouth to say Steve's name and it's the tone doctors use when relaying bad news.

So Steve reaches up to stay her hand against his chest and says, "I know."

"I don't—"

"I saw you and Angie together."

"Oh."

"She makes you happy."

That. That's a relief for Peggy to hear. He sees all the tension he hadn't realized she was carrying just evaporate. "She does."

"And she's not a popsicle waiting to thaw—"

"You don't have to be either." It's a gesture. Kind and too serious. Urgent.

Steve shakes his head, "Yeah, I do. In 2011 they're gonna need a Captain America who hasn't had a couple of hip replacements."

"And what about us. Nothing awful happens between now and 2011?"

He's not going to argue the point. Peggy already knows he can't stay. Told him herself. Time's a delicate thing and the two of them can't just unravel it because of what might have been.

She pulls her hand away. Curls it up in her lap. "It's knowing you're out there that's the worst part. Knowing that if I just look—" She takes a deep breath even while Steve holds his, "If I just looked…harder."

"You didn't know in '45—"

"But I know now. I know that you're out there and I can't do anything but let nature take it's course. You and I are meant to change the world Steve, and here I am permitting—enduring—a status quo."

"You change the world."

She laughs. "I was going to say you can't know that, but—"

"But I do." They share a smile like they used to. "Things in 2015 aren't perfect Peggy, but they're better."

"Women president then?"

"No. But there's been a black man as president. And a Catholic."

"Angie will be thrilled."

They laugh and the laughter turns to a chuckle and the chuckle drifts into silence and then they're left with nothing but the loud drone of the ship.

Steve cocks his head. "Engines sound a little loud."

"Because they're not engines. At least as you and I think of them. Tony and Maria, with Hydra's reluctant help, have crafted some sort of device—"

"To take us back."

Peggy nods.

"You were waking me up to send me home."

"I wanted to say goodbye. Properly and—" She's lost and apologetic and if this is the last time they're gonna be alone Steve needs it to count.

He pushes himself up and kisses he. It's the last time after all. Right? She must agree because her her hands fall on his face and hold him there and they don't move until one of his hand's finds her shoulder and the other finds her waist.

He has to wonder what it's like for Peggy to kiss Angie, because she's made it very clear that love is meant to be easy and there's nothing easier than this kiss. Nothing more right.

"Is it too late to say I want to stay." He's breathing against her lips like he's got asthma again.

Peggy's fingers drag through his hair and her nails scratch his scalp and she trails kisses up his cheek, to that space beneath his eye, and finally to his brow. "Yes."

Her forehead replaces her lips and they're both quiet. "Promise me," she says, and there's hitch in her voice she has to swallow away. "Promise me you'll find someone."

"I can't—"

Her hands fall from his hair and come to rest on his shoulders. "Consider it an order captain."

"Thought I outranked you?"

She ignores the joke. "A good woman or man. Someone that makes—"

"No one else will—"

"Someone will Steve, and I can't wait for you to visit and tell me all about them."

####

Peggy holds his hand all the way down to the lower decks of the ship. It never gets sweaty or uncomfortable and he stares at the way their hands intertwine and hopes that his eidetic memory (another gift of Erskine's) doesn't fail him. Not when it comes to this.

He's so busy marveling at how their hands fit together that he doesn't pay attention to what Peggy says. Doesn't listen to her story about the precious stone—gem—that Hydra had on her and that will allow the time travel.

At least until they get to the engine room and he's struck by the familiar, ethereal, light growing at the center of the room.

Peggy grumbles a "bloody hell" and darts into the room barking orders at Stark and his mother—who both look pleased with the ball of light they've formed at the center of the ship.

Steve marvels at the light—at how perfectly identical it was to the light that brought them here. It even feels the same

He marvels and doesn't spy Angie until she's stepping out of the shadows beside him. Somehow in the course of a few days she's become as quiet as Peggy or Nat. "And I thought stage lights were bright," she says. The light reflects in her eyes. Makes them seem empty.

"Nothing compared to the light of interdimensional…time…whatever."

Her hands fall on her hips and she strikes a pose out of the funny pages. Stares at the light. But he can see her eyes flicker to him. "Steve," she starts, and he braces himself for some line about Peggy, "much as I gather I'm not there in the future."

It's not what he expected to hear. He can't find the right words to respond.

"And I figure there's a couple of reasons that could be."

"Angie I really can't—"

She forges on, "All I gotta know is if I'm dead and buried or if I'm…something else."

He thinks of the way she attacked him down in the base. How efficient and methodical and brutal and fast she was.

And when he looks at her—looks beyond that face that's so familiar from clocks and plates in the mall next to Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball—he sees she's terrified.

So he tells her the truth as best he knows it. None of the details. She doesn't need to know she dies driving too fast on a road she should have known. Doesn't need to know about all the people who mourned her. The people who insist she never died. Those that lionize and those who demonize Hollywood's last hellion. He just tells her she passed and that she's remembered.

####

Angie watches them all leap through the portal. Tony Stark with that green haired bitch in his arms, and Steve Rogers. Who gives Peggy a searing look before he leaps up into the air and does a fancy flip into the light.

Maria shuts it off after that and with that whole dimensional-whats-it gone the ship is dead quiet.

Until Maria sighs. "The only thing I don't get is how I'm supposed to love Howard Stark enough to want to have a baby with him."

"I believe this is one of those moments where you're preaching to the choir," Peggy says dryly.

They're headed upstairs afterwards, Maria holding the fancy magic gem thing carefully in her hands, which are covered in giant gloves like a welder uses, when Peggy light touches Angie's arm.

"Are you all right," she asks, and her brow's furrowed as she watches Angie closely.

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know what Steve told you before he left, but at the time you looked…disturbed."

Angie frowns. And she wants to ask "When did Steve tell me what," but she gets the feeling that's not something she should say. Peggy would get worried and then there'd be long bouts sitting in a hospital and all Angie really wants to do is get back to dry land and work and the life time traveling ex-boyfriends nearly wrecked.

So she gives Peggy a careful smile, and says "It was nothing important. Just posturing."

She doesn't know if that's true. Everything from the last few minutes is a little fuzzy. Everything but that flip Steve did.

That's burned into her brain a lot sharper than it ought to be.

"Come on," she says, "we gotta get back. I missed a couple of shows already and don't need more tacked onto my contract."

Peggy's alarmed, "You were just abducted. Surely these are extenuating circumstances?"

"For you and me maybe, but not for most entertainment types. They can be real taskmasters."

They both honest to god chuckle. Which isn't so odd for Angie, but is a helluva thing for Peggy. Then they go upstairs and sit out on the bow of the ship and canoodle like teenagers and when they get back to the land of the living they part ways with Natalie, who promises she'll stop by sometime soon before she gives Angie a hug and a very serious look.

Peers at Angie like she's made of science.

They get Maria home too. Send her back to LA with Peggy teasing her the whole way to the airport about her future husband.

"Please don't tell him," Maria begs, and Peggy agrees and Angie crosses her heart.

Then it's just the two of them. As it ought to be. Naked and a little damp in bed that night.

"He was really just posturing," Peggy asks. Her hands are running through Angie's hair and untangling knots that just aren't there.

"Sure," Angie says. Even if it's a lie. "Why?"

Peggy's all quiet. "I don't know…half of me thought…he couldn't tell me where he was, but I thought he might tell you."

The worst bit is

He might have.

"He didn't." That lie's as easy as the last one.

"Course not. Steve Rogers is too noble for his own good."

"What about you? Now that you know I mean."

Peggy's hand stills. "Part of me doesn't want to rest until we find him."

"Big part?"

"Enormous," she says with a smile. "But there's another part of me that knows…that knows that isn't my life." She slips away and straddles Angie. Kisses her again and again. "This is my life. And I won't have it any other way."

THE END

####

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This particular Cartinelli saga will continue next in Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Until then you can check out the rad comic I'm doing with romanimp, Cold War Crush. Or you can follow my Swan Queen trash, Dangerous is the Vexed God.

Be sure to follow me here or on Tumblr for Cartinelli one-shots in the same universe.

Oh yeah. AND HERE IS A VERY IMPORTANT STINGER JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES.

####

Things are chaotic back in 2015. Steve and Tony stumble into a warzone. One where Sam is nursing a dislocated shoulder and a broken wing and Nat's going toe to toe with the soldier Hydra had employed.

"Call them off," Steve growls, and Hydra huffs before she says something in sing song German. The soldier pauses. Stutters like choppy video on a bad connection. They take in all the people in the room and then they dash out.

"That's one way to end a fight," Tony remarks.

And Steve would be inclined to agree, but he's busy watching Nat, who's looking after the mercenary like she's seen a ghost.

She refuses to talk about it. Which isn't new. And if she remembers that time she was a teenager and fought side by side with him against HYDRA she doesn't mention that either.

Though she does glower when Tony makes a crack about her age.

After they make it home, apocalypse successfully averted and Viper nee Madame Hydra firmly in custody, Steve does what he always does when he needs to quiet his mind.

He hops on his bike and heads over to Peggy's.

She's asleep when he gets there and her breathing is a haunting wheeze.

Carefully, mindful of how delicate she is, he laces his fingers with hers. It's a gross mimicry of what's seared into his memory. Where once she was smooth and strong and warm now she's thin as tissue and frail and cool. So cool.

His thumb grazes over her hand and he glances up at the photos she keeps near. They make more sense now.

There's Angie again and again and again. Only it's Angie: the woman Peggy chose, not Angela: the actress Steve knows. He sees Maria now too. A little older and maybe a little sadder. The gum cracking kid he'd met all smoothed away.

Then he sees the photo of the three of them and Howard with a baby.

To be honest he'd never considered it before. He's always assumed it was Peggy's child. Or Angie's.

But now. Now he knows he's looking at a photo of Tony Stark as an infant. And while that is amusing it's also deeply deeply disturbing.

Because that means the photo was taken in the 70s. And it's there in Howard and Maria's faces.

But Peggy and Angie.

The two of them haven't aged a day since 1955.