Even in the 1940's, Steve Rogers had never liked swanky parties very much. In the back of his mind he always ended up comparing them to the parties his friends and neighbours had thrown when he was a child in Brooklyn – raucous affairs where everybody had a home-cooked meal, followed by music, games, and laughter. The political and military galas he'd attended as Captain America were a very different animal. Rather than being basic but filling, the food was elegant but minuscule, more for looking at than for eating. The music was delicate, the 'games' consisted of polite maneuvering, and the laughter was high-pitched, false, and inoffensive. Once the novelty of hob-nobbing with senators and generals had worn off, Steve had taken to sneaking out in favour of a few beers with Peggy and the Commandos.

It seemed like not much had changed in the forty years he'd missed. It was Friday, the first of November 1986, and Steve and Nick Fury were climbing the stairs to a fancy house in Oslo. They were to be the guests of honour at a Hallowe'en party given by the American Ambassador to Norway.

"We don't even know this man," Steve muttered to his companion, as they handed in their invitations at the door.

"I think that's kind of the point," Fury replied. "We're here because we're American heroes and he wants to meet us, and Madame Director probably owes him some kind of favour."

The doorman looked up from the invitations, interested. "You two are..." he licked his lips, unsure of the word. "Astronauter?"

"That's right," Fury said, with a pleased nod. "We're the astronauts."

"We're not actually astronauts," Steve objected – astronaut was a career. It had qualifications. Indira Bhavana was an astronaut. He and Fury, and Tony Stark, had been more or less passengers on their trip into space.

"I'm Agent Fury, this is Captain Rogers," Fury said.

The doorman waved them into the marble-lined foyer. "Ambassadør Barnum!" he called out. "Astronauter!"

"There's our boys!" a voice said in a twanging Texas accent, and the ambassador came hurrying out of the crowd to meet them. He was in his 60's, short and stocky with graying hair that did not quite match his toupee, a beer belly and an alcoholic's oversized nose. He was dressed as Captain Kirk, although he must have weighed twice what William Shatner had in the role, and he seemed to have begun his evening drunk and be determined to stay that way. "Captain Rogers!" he shook Steve's hand enthusiastically. "And Agent Fury. Great to meet both of you! Where's the Stark kid? I invited him, too."

"Tony preferred to go to a party with some of his friends from school," said Steve, who wished he'd joined him. Playing drinking games with a bunch of teenage prodigies from Boston would have been fun. "And Major Bhavana is very busy with her new post at NASA."

Barnum blinked a couple of times in apparent confusion – maybe he couldn't remember who Major Bhavana was – then apparently shrugged it off. "Well, come in, come in," he said. "Everybody's looking forward to meeting you." He put one arm around Steve's shoulders and the other around Fury's, both men having to hunch to allow it, and led them into the ballroom. "Everybody! Everybody!" he shouted. "Look who's here – it's Captain America and Agent Fury!"

The low murmur of conversation in the room died away as the guests turned to look, and Steve stood up straight and did his best to look impressive. It was hard, he thought, to look impressive in a room like this – the ballroom of the ambassador's residence was a vast two-storey space, with columns and a mezzanine all the way around, a glossy hardwood floor and a gold and green paneled ceiling. Dozens of glittering chandeliers provided light, and a band who looked like they thought the material rather beneath them was playing the theme from The Addams Family.

"These boys here," the Ambassador said, patting them both on the back, "these are the ones who went to space to save those stranded astronauts! Let's give them a hand, huh?"

There was polite applause, and then the sound of people talking in a half-dozen languages rose again as people came forward to meet them. Within a few minutes, Steve and Fury had been introduced to an exiled Italian prince, a Russian Admiral, an American actor, the Vice-President of the European office of Roxxon Petroleum, the Norwegian Minister of Arts and Culture... and that was about where Steve lost track. This was another thing he'd always hated about official parties. There were always so many people who wanted to shake hands with Captain America that he almost never got any time to enjoy himself, and he soon ran out of anything remotely creative to say to them. All he could do was parrot the words hi and honoured to meet you until the sounds ceased to have any meaning.

Even so, it wouldn't have been nearly so awkward without the costumes. In addition to Ambassador Barnum as Captain Kirk, the prince was in a baggy Superman outfit, Rear Admiral Aleksandr Bocharov was a Viking, and the Roxxon Vice-President was dressed in pink and black lace as Madonna, despite being thirty years older than the pop star. Steve himself was dressed as a cowboy, mostly because he hadn't had any better ideas, and Fury was a pirate. They must all look like fools, he thought.

"Now, don't crowd them!" said Barnum, as Steve and Fury shook hand after hand. "These boys need their space! Get it?" he asked the nearest person, a small brunette dressed as Snow White. "They're astronauts! Their space?"

Snow White rolled her eyes.

"Let's get you boys a drink," Barnum added – but then, just as Steve was starting to think this man would be dragging them around by the ears all evening, there was a welcome distraction. A servant in a Dracula costume, took the ambassador's arm and whispered in his ear.

"Ambassadør," he said. "Frøken Natter har kommet."

Steve didn't speak Norwegian, but the language was similar enough to German for him to work out that the statement meant Miss Natter has come. And whoever Miss Natter was, her arrival got Barnum's attention in a way even Steve's had not. He perked up like a dog hearing a whistle, and turned towards the door.

And it was no wonder – the woman who'd just been shown inside was gorgeous. She was five or ten years older than Steve and nearly six feet tall, and dressed as Cleopatra in a draping white gown that suggested a great deal while revealing surprisingly little. Her curly dark hair was weighed down by a net of gold and turquoise beads. A very realistic rubber cobra was hanging around her neck, and her face had full red lips, dark green eyes, and prominent cheekbones. The only thing most people would have counted as a flaw was a small mole above her right eyebrow, but that was almost entirely covered by her makeup.

"Eva!" Barnum explained.

The woman gave him a rather pained smile. "Good evening, Bob," she said.

Barnum hurried up and kissed her hand, then grabbed her by the arms and stood on his toes to kiss her lips. This seemed to startle her, but she rose to the occasion as best she could.

"Goodness, Bob," she said. Her voice had a trace of a German accent, but only a trace. "You're in rare form tonight."

"I want you to meet Captain America," said Barnum, and dragged her towards where he'd left Steve and Fury. "Boys, this is Eva Natter, from Mainz," he said, with an arm around the woman's waist. "When people talk about a supermodel, they mean her. You might not have heard of her in the States, but here in Europe she's huge. Bigger than me, certainly." He grinned, standing up a little straighter to try to close the four-inch gap in their heights.

"He flatters me," Natter said, trying to wiggle away from him and failing. Steve immediately felt sorry for her. Despite her poise and beauty, this woman looked as if she wasn't sure what she was doing here, either. "You're pretty big, yourself, Captain Rogers," she added. "I used to watch your movies when I was a little girl."

"Thanks," Steve replied, hoping it didn't sound too awkward. He had a pretty good idea by now how corny those films looked in retrospect. "I've been offered a couple of roles since I got back, actually, but I'm really not much of an actor."

"I keep telling Eva she ought to be in movies," said Barnum. "With a butt like hers, who cares if she can act worth a damn?" He patted her rear end while she bit her lip, mortified but clinging to politeness.

There was only one thing Steve could think of to get both her and himself out of this situation, so he did it – he extended a hand to the woman and asked her, "may I have this dance, Miss Natter?"

Her face lit up. "I would be delighted, Captain Rogers!" she said. She seized the excuse to step away from Barnum and linked arms with Steve. "I'll talk to you later, Bob!" she called to Barnum, then lowered her voice and murmured, "thank you."

"You're welcome," said Steve, escorting her out onto the dance floor. "I have to warn you, though, I'm not much of a dancer."

"I'll work with it," Natter promised. She let him arrange his hands on her shoulder and hip, and then established the rhythm of a waltz as they began to move around the room. "Just try to look like you're leading, and you'll do fine."

"That's what Peggy used to say to me," said Steve.

Natter's eyebrows rose. "Peggy?"

"My boss," Steve explained. "We used to work together during the war. She sometimes didn't think much of my leadership skills." As he spoke, however, he mentally reviewed what he'd said and realized there was more than one way to take it – the battlefield hadn't been the only place where Peggy liked to take charge. "Oh," he said, smiling in embarrassment as his cheeks warmed. "Did you think that was a double entendre?"

"I did, actually," said Natter with a wry smile. "I never would have thought I'd get to make Captain America blush!"

Steve laughed awkwardly – the comment only made him blush harder. "No, Peggy's just my boss," he said. "After the time I skipped, she's forty years older than me now." And in the absence of a time machine, there was nothing to be done about that.

"So she wasn't always just your boss," Natter observed.

"Um." Steve groped for a subject change. "Is Ambassador Barnum always like that?" he asked. "This is the first time I've met the guy." Politicians were another thing that didn't seem to have changed much since the forties. They still thought they could get away with anything.

The corners of Natter's lips twitched, but she accepted the new topic gracefully. "He's worst when he's drunk," she said. "I wasn't actually going to come tonight, but... uh..." she ducked her head, and Steve suspected that under her makeup, she was now taking a turn to blush. "I heard you'd been invited, and I was hoping I'd get to meet you. Or at least catch a glimpse of you."

"Well, I hope I live up to your expectations," said Steve.

"And then some," Natter assured him. "Now I can tell my friends that I got to dance with Captain America – and he wasn't actually half-bad, despite his worries."

"Better than I am at flirting," Steve said. That had to be where she'd thought he was going with that's what Peggy used to say to me. Good thing Fury hadn't heard him say that, or he'd never be allowed to forget it.

"You just need practice," Eva said.

Then they heard the explosion.

Steve had been through far worse by way of explosions. This one didn't shake the ground, and nobody saw it, but a tremendous thundering bag rolled through the room, rattling the wine glasses on the side tables and echoing off the streets and buildings outside. On pure instinct, Steve grabbed Eva and threw her to the ground with himself on top to shield the civilian with his body. People stopped talking, stopped dancing, and looked around in confusion, trying to figure out where the noise and vibration were coming from – and what on earth Captain America and his dance partner were doing on the floor.

"Sorry," Steve mumbled. He quickly got up again, and helped Eva to do the same.

"Quite all right," she replied, though visibly worried. "What was that?"

"Her! I sør!" somebody shouted, pointing out a window.

The crowd moved towards the south-facing side of the room to look. Steve spotted the feathered brim of Fury's pirate hat and went to join him – Eva looped her arm through his and went along. The two of them were tall enough to see over most of the heads, but there was very little to see.

It was evening. The sky outside was still partially lit pink and orange by the last glow of sunset, and on the horizon a thin column of smoke could be seen silhouetted against that afterglow before fading into the darkness overhead. Whatever had happened had been a very long way off, Steve observed, which meant that in order to be heard and felt in Oslo, it must have been extremely violent.

"I gotta go," said Steve.

"Yes. I see," Eva nodded.

"Fury!" Steve waved his friend to join him. "We gotta go!"

Their driver, a SHIELD employee himself, brought their car back to the door, and the two men were already getting out of the more unwieldy parts of their costumes as they climbed into it. Steve had shrugged out of his vest and pulled his bolo over his head, and Fury had removed his hat and was squirming out of his frock coat, which was a little too small.

"Did you get her number?" Fury asked, as he shut the car door after himself.

"Who? Eva? I only just met her," said Steve. He nodded to the driver, who put the car in gear and set off. The man didn't need to be told where Steve Rogers wanted to go.

"That's why you get her number," Fury replied, "so you can meet her again and get to know her better. I got Snow White's!" He held up a napkin. "And one from the girl in the banana costume!"

Steve shook his head and opened the secret compartment in the seat of the car to pull out his black SHIELD fatigues. Not for for the first time, or probably even the hundredth, he wished Peggy would hurry up and sort things out with the comic book company that had apparently copyrighted his uniform. He missed it. "Here," he said, handing the first pile of clothing to Fury, and then removed his vibranium shield from the bottom of the compartment. "Do we have any information on the explosion?" he asked the driver.

"On the local radio they're saying it happened in Tønsberg," the man replied. "They don't know yet what caused it – possibly a ship explosion. There may have been dangerous goods in the harbour there."

"Tønsberg... isn't that way down at the mouth of the fjord" asked Fury.

"About sixty miles from Oslo, yes," the driver agreed.

Fury frowned, probably trying to work out in his head just how powerful the blast must have been. Steve's immediate thought, however, was of something else entirely.

"Tønsberg?" he asked. "You're sure?"

"That's what the radio keeps saying," said the driver. "It's accurate as far as the reporters know."

"What's in Tønsberg?" asked Fury, but then he remembered. "That's where HYDRA found it." He didn't need to specify what it was – not to Steve, anyway. They both knew exactly what HYDRA had found in Tønsberg in 1942.

"Yeah." Steve nodded, pulling on his black jacket over his cowboy shirt. There was a white stripe-and-star logo on the pocket, but that was as close as SHIELD wanted to come to his logo.

"But there's nothing there now," Fury said. "We've got the thing in storage."

"You asked what's in Tønsberg," said Steve. "That's what's in Tønsberg." He didn't like coincidences, but he would reserve judgment until he saw exactly what had happened. The tesseract had caused a war once. Steve wasn't going to let it cause another one.

"You're still wearing your eyepatch," he told Fury.

"Am I?" Fury pulled the last piece of his pirate costume off. "Huh, didn't notice."

The drive from Oslo to Tønsberg was about an hour – by speeding the whole way, their driver made it as far as Holmestrand in only forty minutes, but there they found themselves up against an unexpected obstacle: thousands of people in the Vestfold area, upon having their homes shaken by a massive explosion, had sensibly decided to leave. The police were controlling this exodus as best they could while also getting emergency vehicles into the area, but the fleeing population had resorted to driving on both sides of the road and the result was chaos. Eventually, Steve and Fury's driver was forced to pull over.

"Now what?" asked Fury, as the driver made a call on his CB radio. "We can't walk to Tønsberg. It's twenty miles."

Steve climbed out of the car and stood there, staring at the river of red and white lights that represented gridlock all the way to the horizon. Darkness had fallen by now, and the rising smoke was now lit from below, fiery red-orange against the night-time sky. Whatever had happened, the emergency wasn't over. Walking would take hours and by the time they arrived, it might be too late to help – but people must be hurt and dying under that cloud of smoke. Steve couldn't possibly just sit here.

He opened the car door again and leaned in to talk to the driver, who had the radio to his ear. "Get me the American embassy," Steve said. "They'll be able to put us in touch with SHIELD."

The driver held out the receiver. "Actually," he said, "they're already on the line. Madame Director wants to talk to you."

Fury snorted. "Boy, does she know you," he said.

Steve grabbed the radio. "Peggy?" he asked.

"Oh, good," her voice replied, crackling with interference. "I was afraid you'd already decided to walk."

"Not quite yet," said Steve. Do you know what's happened?"

"I've been on the line to the European Seismological Commission," Peggy said. "They believe there's been a volcanic eruption. I could tell you," she went on, "that SHIELD is not responsible for Norway, and I could tell you that a volcano is a natural disaster while we specialize in the unnatural kind. But I'm well aware that I'd be talking to a brick wall, so instead I'm sending you a helicopter and some fire proximity suits I borrowed from a vulcanology project in Sicily."

Steve had to smile. "You do know me," he observed.

Peggy wasn't amused. "I know you well enough to remind you to use the damn suits, Steve. You seem to think you're indestructible, but even you can't just walk into a live volcano."

"I'll keep that in mind," Steve said. "Thanks, Peg."

"Don't think of mentioning it," Peggy said, all airy sarcasm. "Just stay safe and rescue as many civilians as you can. As long as you don't get anybody killed, it probably won't become an international incident."

"Copy that," Steve nodded. "Over and out."

"What did she say?" asked Fury, as Steve handed the radio back to the driver.

"She's sending us a helicopter," said Steve.

Fury snorted. "Blatant favouritism! Anybody else would get dragged home by the ear, but she gives you a helicopter!"

"Yeah, I know that's the only reason you hang out with me," said Steve.

"Damn right," Fury agreed. "Best way to stay on the old lady's good side."

The helicopter with the SHIELD logo on the side arrived about twenty minutes later. On board were two aluminized fire suits with breathing apparatus. When Steve checked the labels, he found that they were rated to one thousand degrees Celsius for short durations. That would be more than enough. He and Fury wouldn't be going anywhere nearly that hot, for the simple reason that there wouldn't be anybody alive in such an environment, but volcanoes were unpredictable and it was best to be cautious.

Once in the air, they were able to look down and see the roads below, clearly picked out in the darkness as row upon row of car headlights. It looked like a glowing river, but one that crawled at a snail's pace instead of flowing. As they got closer to the epicenter of the eruption, Steve began to smell the volcanic gases. There was an undertone of smoke and stone, but the nearer they got, the more the odor was overpoweringly of rotten eggs from sulfurous gases. Soon he, Fury, and the pilot all had to turn on their oxygen systems to drown out the choking fumes.

Although Steve expected to see a volcanic cone among the mountains, the landscape instead sloped smoothly down towards the fjord. The city of Tønsberg occupied a blunt little peninsula that almost joined Nøtterøy Island in the sound, and it was on the east side of peninsula that Steve finally spotted the crater – a circle of fire about a hundred yards wide. Its far edge jutted out into the waters of the fjord, and the 'smoke' billowing up was mostly steam, as cold sea water met molten rock.

A dark skin of congealed stone had formed on the surface of the crater, but this was shifting and cracking as the liquid moved underneath it, and the fissures that formed glowed white-hot, leaving streaks in Steve's vision after he closed his eyes. Every so often a blob of magma would bubble over and drop into the sea, and a new cloud of hissing steam would come up. Trees and houses all around had burned and reduced to ash already... the fire was still burning ferociously further out.

There wasn't going to be anybody alive within a mile of that, Steve thought. The best chance for survivors was on the other side of the channel. Only one major bridge connected mainland Tønsberg with Teie on the Island. Survivors there would have to go far south to find another way off, and half the island seemed to be on fire.

"There's open ground over by the port warehouses!" the pilot announced, shouting over the rotor noise. "I'll put you down there!"

"Sounds good!" Steve agreed.

They passed to the west of the crater, and as they did Steve realized it formed a nearly-perfect circle. Was that natural, he wondered? Usually any shape that regular would have to be man-made. Then again, liquids did tend to form circles – he remembered the drops of orange juice on the space shuttle that had, in the absence of gravity, molded themselves into spheres. Lava could probably destroy just about anything that tried to contain it, so maybe it would form a circular crater all by itself.

The warehouses, on the other side of the channel from the crater, had all burned to the ground, and the vehicles and equipment that surrounded them were melted, blackened, and twisted. The pilot let Steve and Fury down by rope and together they headed south, into the inferno that had once been a suburb.

In the hours that followed, they climbed over wreckage and ducked under fallen trees and utility poles. Survivors could be found trapped in collapsed buildings, or holed up in water tanks and concrete culverts where they'd taken refuge from the heat. There were two children in a car – their parents had gone back into the house for the dogs, they said, and had never come out again. Employees at a bank had taken shelter in the vault and several had died of heat exhaustion before Steve and Fury found them. Whenever somebody turned up alive, one of the men would call for rescue workers to airlift them to the mainland. Most of those they found were already dead, while others died soon after rescue. The air was laden with hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide.

It took hours, but eventually fire trucks made it through the traffic jam and began pumping water out of the fjords to put out the remaining fires. Finally, with dawn on the horizon, and the crater slowly cooling, Steve had to admit that he was too exhausted to continue. The helicopter arrived to take them back to Oslo for a bath and sleep. Once they were on board, Fury pulled the helmet off his proximity suit, tipped his head back, and was snoring within seconds.

The sight made Steve feel a little guilty. He'd forgotten, as he often had during the war, that he was no longer a 'normal' human being, that he had strength and stamina others didn't. After a childhood of being the one who couldn't keep up, something in Steve still assumed that anything he could do, others could do just as easily. It was surprising how often they wore themselves out trying. Bucky had been like that... of all the Howling Commandos, he was the one who'd tried hardest, and in the end it had killed him.

Steve shook his head. He had to stop thinking about the past. The past couldn't be changed. He had to live in the present.

When they arrived at the hotel, Fury woke up just long enough to stagger into their room and collapse on the nearer of the two queen-sized beds. Steve wanted to sleep, too, but he knew if he went to bed without eating something, he'd wake up ravenously hungry and that wasn't any fun. He called for room service to bring him an early breakfast, and then took a quick shower while he waited for them.

He was out of the shower and toweling his hair – which had grown, in the past few months, into something closer to the styles people wore in the 1980s – when he noticed the envelope lying on the floor. It appeared to have been slipped under the door at some point. Had it been there when he and Fury arrived and they just hadn't noticed it? Or had it appeared while Steve was in the shower? He picked it up and opened it.

Inside was a business card bearing the name Helmut Baumhauer and a short German text describing him as a modeling and acting agent. Below was an address in Mainz and a phone and fax number. Was this another job offer? Steve turned it over to see if there were anything on the back.

There was: in tiny writing with a green pen were the words, in English, my agent. He can get you in touch with me anytime. Eva.

Steve slowly smiled and slipped the card into a pocket on his suitcase. He wasn't sure he would actually call Eva Natter, but the invitation was flattering – he'd gotten similar ones from all sorts of women during the war, but would never have had the time to follow them up even if he hadn't been in love with Peggy. Now he was unattached and much less busy, and if nothing else, he would at least keep the card around.

As he sat down to his breakfast, with Fury snoring in the background, it occurred to Steve to wonder what Peggy would think of him being courted by a European supermodel. He remembered her reaction when she'd caught that blonde kissing him at the SSR, but she wasn't likely to do that again. That had been Peggy Carter in her twenties, young and in love and idealistic. The Peggy carter in her sixties, a married grandmother with a lot more experience of the world, would be more likely to remind Steve that he knew nothing about women. She'd probably even offer him advice how to avoid making a fool of himself this time.

But she would want him to be happy, wouldn't she? After all, Peggy had moved on, and she wanted Steve to do the same. Maybe he would call Eva when he got back to the States. It certainly couldn't hurt to give it a try.