WASHINGTON D.C. 2014

Charlie Rogers sat in the waiting room, her leg anxiously bouncing up and down. She reached for the chain around her neck but the cool feeling of the worn metal didn't calm her nerves, if anything, it made her anxiety worse. She let the chain go and impatiently rubbed her sweaty palms together as she watched the corner she knew he would eventually round. How long could it possibly take? Her mother's Alzheimer's had gotten significantly worse over the past year so if she recognized him, it wouldn't be long before her mind reset and the conversation started over again.

Selma, the on call nurse, cleared her throat. "Charlie baby, relax."

Charlie offered her a half smile. "Sorry." She forced her leg to stop bouncing and stretched her palms out flat on her thighs to keep them from fidgeting. The nursing staff was aware of Charlie's unique situation pertaining to her parents, especially that of her absent father who had not been so by choice. Her mother always assured her that if he had been alive, he would have loved her. To keep her hands busy, she grabbed a pamphlet from the table next to her chair, not actually paying attention what it was about. She opened it and tried to read but the words seemed jumbled or maybe her mind was just preoccupied with the impending meeting. Charlie might be almost seventy years old but she did not look a day older than eighteen and that was one of the hardest things about her life. To watch everyone she loved grow older while she stayed in the same young body that never changed – to watch her mother wither before her eyes and knowing there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Selma cleared her throat again. "He's coming." Charlie put the pamphlet down, wiped her hands on her jeans one last time, and stood right as he rounded the corner. All her air got stuck in her throat and she almost lost her nerve but she tentatively said his name after he'd said goodbye to Selma.

"Captain Rogers?" He stopped, his sharp blue eyes almost pierced through her. "My name is Charlie. Peggy Carter's my mother." The shock was evident on his face, and Charlie could only imagine how strange it was that a young woman claimed to be the daughter of a lady in her nineties.

"I didn't know Peggy had a daughter." If he was confused, and she didn't doubt he was, he didn't show it. His demeanor was calm but his size was intimidating. He had broad shoulders and incredibly muscular arms, his hair was sandy blonde and his eyes strikingly blue, and he had a strong jawline that was clean-shaven.

"I was born not long after World War II ended."

His brows drew together. "You don't look older than eighteen."

Charlie chuckled. "By appearance no. I haven't aged since around then, it's the only thing I got from my father." His confusion had become more obvious as he tried to process the information he had been given, and he slumped into a chair. Charlie took the seat next to him but twisted her body a bit so she could see his face properly.

"My name is Charlotte Rogers." She was sure she heard his breath catch. "I was born on December 11th 1945, my parents are Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers." Charlie reached into her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She held the fragile, yellowy paper out to him and he accepted it. He didn't say a word as he carefully straightened out the fold and came face to face with Charlie's birth certificate, which indicated him as the father.

He finally looked at her. "Peggy was pregnant?"

Charlie nodded. "She found out two weeks after you went into the ice." He handed the birth certificate back to her, and leaned back in his chair.

He ran his palms over his face. "And you're absolutely sure?"

"Tony got paranoid and ran a paternity test. Your blood was in storage." His entire demeanor had changed in a matter of minutes – he went from being self-assured to looking completely defeated and Charlie's sympathy surged.

"I know it's a lot." He chuckled and raised his eyes to meet hers. "Do you want to maybe, uh, go get some coffee or something? You must have a lot of questions."

He smiled for the first time since she'd spoken to him. "I'd like that."

Charlie more or less leaped out of her seat. "Okay! Uh, there's a great coffee stand not far from here if you want to go. Well you just agreed so let's go." He laughed for a moment before he stood and followed her to the elevator.

/

After they'd gotten their coffee, they decided to walk around Memorial Park. It was quiet between them for longer than Charlie would have liked but she didn't want to scare him so she waited for him say something first.

"You look exactly like my mother."

Charlie nearly choked on her coffee. "What?" He pulled a picture out of his wallet, and handed it to Charlie. The edges of the photograph frayed and like her birth certificate, it seemed like it could fall apart at any given moment, so she was careful with it. She studied the black and white photograph of a young woman who did indeed look almost identical to Charlie herself - they had similar pursed lips and narrow nose. She handed it back to him.

"You said Tony knows?"

Charlie nodded. "Most of the Avengers do. I'm not sure about Dr. Banner but Thor definitely doesn't – I don't think anyone wants to confuse that guy more." He chuckled but was quiet for a moment, and for a split second Charlie wondered if he was waiting for her to say something.

Then he nodded, mostly to himself, it seemed. "No one told me."

Charlie tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I asked them not to." He looked at her with a puzzled expression and that was one of the more endearing things about him: He was an open book that anyone could read. "You had just come out of the ice and I didn't want to overwhelm you any more than you already were."

As they entered the World War II Memorial, her father's shoulders tensed and Charlie's vocal cords tied knots around itself – walking along the pillars and the Freedom Wall in particular reminded her of the broken world she had been born into. Even though she'd never fought a war, she had spoken to more veterans than most, and the stories they told of trials and triumphs were some of her favorites.

They stopped in front of the Freedom Wall, and Charlie heard Steve read the inscription in front of the water aloud but only in a whisper. "Here we mark the price of freedom." He glanced down at Charlie who stood several inches shorter than him.

"They talked about you a lot, the Commandos."

He smiled. "They did?"

Charlie returned his smile. "They were my favorite stories growing up. They sounded like magical adventures and I suppose that's why I loved them so much – because I didn't understand they were real and that war wasn't a beautiful thing but ugly and haunting and heartbreaking all wrapped in one."

"It was easier to spot the bad guys then."

Charlie chuckled. "Yeah, the lines have blurred quite a bit since the forties."

They left the Memorial in silence and began to make their way along the reflecting pool towards the Washington Monument. Charlie sipped her coffee. The sudden revelation that he had a daughter could be nothing short of daunting and not knowing what he was thinking was slowly killing her.

"Are those dog tags around your neck?" Charlie was taken aback – of all the questions she'd expected him to ask, that was not even in the top twenty.

She instinctively looked down at them. "They're yours." She slipped the cool chain over her head and offered them to him. He accepted with his free hand and studied them. "Mum took them out of storage the day she found out she was pregnant. She gave them to me when I turned eighteen and I've worn them ever since."

"So you've always known I was your…?" He couldn't finish the sentence so he handed the dog tags back to her. She slipped them back over her head.

"Father? Yes." Charlie hesitated. "I don't expect anything, okay? I don't want you to think that I told you because I want you to take on a role you're not comfortable with or anything like that. I told you because you deserve to know." He took a sip of his coffee and when he removed the cup from his face, he was smiling. He seemed relieved.

"Thank you."

BERLIN 2016

"What time zone is this?" Scott Lang stumbled out of the van in the parking garage, understandably disoriented. Charlie stepped out after him chuckling at Scott's stunned look, as he spotted none other than Captain America. Charlie gave her father a hug and stood beside him. She couldn't keep the smile off her face while Scott tried to get his bearings but made a complete fool of himself – it was kind of sweet.

"… So if you come with us you're a wanted man."

Scott scoffed. "Yeah, well, what else is new?"

Charlie held up a finger to get their attention. "He's not kidding. He's been arrested about a half dozen times and spent a couple years in prison." Scott's expression was confused for a moment but shrugged without saying anything.

Cap smiled. "You got your gear?"

"If by gear, you mean my computers and the comm links, then yes." Charlie looked over her shoulder at Bucky – she had never met him but knew that he'd been the one to pull her father out of the water after S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed. He'd saved his life and for that, she was grateful.

He averted her gaze. "We should get moving."

Clint nodded. "I got a chopper lined up." A somewhat distorted voice sounded on the overhead speaker system, saying something in German that Charlie couldn't decipher but apparently Bucky could.

"They're evacuating the airport."

Sam tensed up. "Stark."

"Stark?"

Cap was equally as tense. "Suit up." As everyone got dressed in their tactical gear, Charlie set up her computers in the back of the van and prepared the comm links. She hated being in the middle of her friends when it would undoubtedly end in a fight.

Cap was the last to get his comm. "You stay here, okay?"

Charlie nodded with a small smile. "They're all here. Tony, Rhodey, Nat, T'Challa, probably Vision. He wasn't exactly thrilled when Wanda and I left."

"You hacked…"

"Security footage, flight manifestos, etc." Cap chuckled.

Sam cleared his throat. "Time to go, Steve."

Charlie smiled. "Come back to me, okay?" He kissed the top of her head then picked up his shield and disappeared out of the parking garage along with the rest of the team leaving Charlie alone in the back of a van with her computers. A small part of her felt like a hermit and a lunatic at the same time.

To calm her nerves, if only a little, she played with the chain of the dog tags around her neck while she watched the security cameras on the three monitors.

"Underoos!" Tony's voice came through like background noise on the comm. On her monitors, Charlie saw flash of blue and red rip the shield out of Cap's grip and tie his hands together with something she could not discern from the awkward angle and low quality of the footage. The blur landed on a nearby truck. The figure was unfamiliar.

"Who's the new guy?" Sam's voice said. Charlie didn't have time to respond before the person in what looked like skintight spandex started speaking at a million miles per hour.

"Thanks! Well, I could've stuck the landing a little better, it's just the new suit…" Charlie stopped listening the moment he said something about a new suit, knowing that Tony was the one who designed it. She immediately got to work, hacking into first Tony's extremely secure network where he stored all the information on the armors and everything else he had ever built or was working on. It was hard to get in and while she was typing away, trying to get into the spider-kid's suit (the technology was codenamed Spider-Man), the fighting had begun.

After what felt like hours, Charlie managed to get in. "Team Cap, come in." Charlie snickered to herself even though there was nothing funny about the situation. Over the comm link, she could hear the sounds of fighting – metal against metal, friends against friends. The security feeds didn't provide much now that the fighting was scattered all over the hangars.

Sam's voice came through the link, out of breath. "We're a little busy."

"No kidding," Charlie muttered sarcastically. "I hacked into the spider-kid's suit, want me to disable it? Bye-bye spider-webs, I'm just saying."

Her father's voice came through promptly. "Don't."

Charlie groaned. "Way to take the fun out of it. I could try to get into Tony's suit but it'll be difficult, he guards that thing like a hawk."

"No." It was her father's voice again. He and Bucky were running like hell towards the hangar where the jet was located while the rest of the team occupied their friends. They disappeared on the security feed as a tower collapsed on top of them, and for and Charlie held her breath until his voice came through on the comm.

"Charlie?" He sounded somber. Worried.

"Go. I'll catch a ride back with Tony." She held the dog tags and ran her finger over his name.

"He'll lock you up."

Charlie smiled to herself. "He won't. He knew I would choose your side, no matter what, and he feels responsible for me." It was silent for a moment.

Bucky's voice came through. "We have to go."

"Dad, go. Just come back to me."

A/N: So here's the prologue. I hope I haven't overhyped this with all my countdown posts but I hope you like it! Please leave a review and let me know what you think. If you have any questions or want to know more about Charlie, please feel free to ask me on tumblr - you can find me at stydiaokaybye. Thanks for reading!