When We're From
“Okay,” Steve says, in an attempt to move the conversation on. “It sounds like there was nothing on your end that caused your...unexpected time traveling. With the number of alien objects and species we’ve found and fought, it was more likely to be on our end anyway. Stark?”
Both men look up at him. Howard is about to open his mouth over his son-to-be, so Peggy very carefully stomps on his foot with one heel.
He winces unsubtly, but shuts up.
The son - Tony - glances over at her before he speaks, and she could swear his eyes smile, even if his mouth doesn’t.
“Hey, Cap, don’t look at me. Green and Mean and I haven’t started anything new in the last couple days.”
The Hulk. Doctor Banner. That is something else Peggy was going to have to get used to.
“Alright, we’ll keep looking, but we can bench that for the moment,” Steve continues. “So, then, timelines - we’ve covered our end. When did you all come from?”
Steve is looking at Peggy for the information, but before she can speak, one of the SSR agents answers.
It had been the middle of February, and the SSR had just gotten back from a mission overseas, where they’d successfully arrested several Hydra agents, but the major players they’d been after had escaped on a train to Russia.
“Bucky?”
Peggy is startled out of her thoughts by Steve’s prompting of his ex-dead best friend, who was now sitting rigidly in his seat, slightly away from the table and the others, but closer to Steve than anyone else.
“The train,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve looks like someone drowned his kitten.
“Are you having a flashback?” He asked, sounding like he was about to panic, but he was derailed by Bucky shaking his head.
“February sixteenth,” Bucky recites in a tone of voice that sends a chill down Peggy’s spine, “the candidates for the Winter Soldier program are transferred from Austria to Poland and then Russia. Along the way, the candidates escape, but all except for two are recaptured.”
Everyone present pales at the report.
“What...what happened to the other two?” One agent asks, nervously.
The Winter Soldier’s eyes latch onto the agent, and he immediately shrinks down in his seat slightly.
Peggy can’t really blame him.
“Two candidates led the escape attempt. Their lives were deemed unnecessary for Hydra’s mission. Their deaths served as a demonstration for the other candidates.”
The agent straightens slightly, trying to keep meeting the Soldier’s eyes.
“A...demonstration?”
“Their mutilated bodies remained with the candidates until the train’s arrival in Russia.”
After that, no one really wanted to keep talking.
---
Peggy has just decided to leave her quarters and venture into the Avengers’ common floor when she witnesses the second conflict of the Starks for that day.
She enters the room just in time to hear Tony say, “Hey, Capsicle, you seriously let people believe you punched Hitler in the face? I mean, if you got that close, wouldn’t you at least -”
“You don’t talk to him that way.”
Peggy instantly quickens her step.
That’s not a tone of Howard’s voice that ever leads to good things.
When she takes in the scene, Steve sitting on one of the couches, Tony leaning against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, at least one other Avenger making noise in the adjacent kitchen, and Howard angrily approaching his future son, she realizes that while Steve seemed ready to let the nickname go without comment (telling Peggy that he’s long since grown used to Tony’s antics), Howard doesn’t seem to feel the same way.
“This man has been frozen in ice for decades,” he says, and his tone is scathing. “You say you’re my son, but apparently you never learned any sense of respect for your betters.”
The room goes silent, and Peggy could swear she feels a coldness emanating off of Tony.
“No,” Tony replies after a long moment, “I guess you never taught me that. After all, you were always off looking for the fossil over here, until Frosty the Assassin put an end to that.”
Which was more than anyone had previously brought up about the individual futures of the SSR members.
“Tony,” Steve says, censoring, after a moment, but Peggy catches his eye and shakes her head.
She wonders how he doesn’t see the front that the second Stark is putting on.
Tony stalks out of the room before anyone can say another word, and when she asks later, JARVIS tells her that he’s locked everyone else out of the workshop.