cassandraoftroy | One Single Yesterday

Chapter: 1 of 5
Characters: Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, the Eleventh Doctor
Chapter Warnings: none
Word Count: ~5100
Summary: Peggy goes to meet a man who she knows can never arrive - and discovers something she could never have expected.

Master Post
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A week next Saturday. It was on the long flight back from the Alps to headquarters that she first asked herself why she had picked a date so far away. She came back to that question again and again over the course of the intervening ten days. Not because she expected anything to happen that evening – she had known even as she'd said the words that they were nothing more than a fantasy meant to comfort both Steve and herself, the only aid that was within her power to offer him as he plunged the aircraft into its final dive – but because it created a loose end, like a dangling yarn tail on a poorly-knit jumper. The more she toyed with it, as she inevitably did when trying to fill out mission reports, or pushing rations aimlessly around on her plate, or staring up at the tent ceiling in the middle of the night, the worse the damage grew. Her rational mind knew that she had lost Steve Rogers the moment his radio cut out, but her gut wouldn't accept the loss until that Saturday, at eight o'clock on the dot, when he failed to meet her.

She knew she was being foolish. Not just for clinging to the illusion that Steve wasn't gone yet, that existed in some sort of impossible 'quantum state' or whatever it was Howard used to natter on about in his workshop, though that certainly was foolish of her. The truly absurd thing was her fixation itself. She had lost friends to the war prior to this; good men and women, good soldiers. She mourned them, missed them, regretted their loss. Steve shouldn't have been any different. She'd known him for only a year, and six months of that time hardly counted; after Project Rebirth was completed, they hadn't seen each other until his USO show had come to Italy. Enough time to care for a friend, she told herself as she took the rollers carefully out of her hair, arranging the dark curls just so. Enough time to respect a comrade-in-arms, she thought as she applied her lipstick with a hand that miraculously didn't tremble. Not nearly enough time to fall in love.

A year from now, Captain Rogers would be a bittersweet memory. She would smile and call him the best man she'd ever known – when she spoke of him, which would happen rarely. Thinking of him wouldn't cause any terrible, hollow ache behind her breastbone.

But for now, the only thing to do was to slip on her heels and go downstairs to the cab that would carry her to the Stork Club, to meet a man who could never arrive. It was the only way to force herself to believe that he was gone.

As she had expected, the club was noisy, full of movement and music and laughter, the sounds of people living lives that were, for just a few hours, perfect. The clock above the bar told her it was five minutes to eight. She stared down into her glass of red wine before taking a small sip. She was permitting herself only two drinks tonight, fully aware that she wasn't in a good frame of mind for liquor, and she'd wanted something that would last a little while, if only so the waitress wouldn't bother her to order something else. She needed time alone with her memories.

Normally, she never sat with her back to a door; her training with British Intelligence had instilled in her a reflex to keep an eye on all entrances to a room. It was a reflex she deliberately ignored tonight, knowing that her gaze would continually be drawn to the doorway with the pitiful expectation of the impossible. There was a doorman, and any sounds of trouble would disrupt the rhythm of the room enough to draw her attention. She slumped a little in her seat, listening as the band began to play something slow, and ignored the way her wine glass was fading into a watery blur.

She sensed, more than saw, a figure approaching on her right. She glanced at the interloper without raising her eyes, and saw the swimming colors of an Army dress uniform. Just what I need, she thought bleakly, some G.I. on a weekend pass in the big city, looking to make time with a girl. It had probably been a mistake to wear the red dress – black was more appropriate for mourning, anyway – but some twist of sentiment had impelled her to choose the dress that Steve had seen her in. She drew in a breath, preparing to tell the young soldier that she wasn't interested in company tonight.

"Eight o'clock, on the dot." The impossibly familiar voice made her heart clench. Her head shot up, and a face she never dreamed of seeing again came into focus as she blinked away tears. "I hope I'm not late?"

She didn't remember standing, but her arms were flung around his neck and her face buried in his shoulder. She was probably smudging lipstick all over his lapel. "You're right on time," she sighed against his throat. A torrent of relief rushed through her, like a river at spring flood – until she hit a rock. This can't be happening. She pulled back from him far enough to look up into his face, though her hands still rested on his nape. "How...? You went down in the Arctic. How can you be here?"

He felt so warm, so solid, so real. The smile he aimed at her made something inside her melt. "I'll tell you, but it's gonna sound crazy."

She actually laughed. "As long as it means I'm not crazy – and that you're really here – I'll believe anything you ask me to."

"I'm really here," Steve promised, raising one hand to cup the side of her face and studying her features as though he meant to memorize them. "I've missed you, Peggy."

Damn it, I am not going to cry – oh, hell. The tears left wet streaks down her face, chilling the suddenly too-warm flesh of her cheeks. "I missed you, too." She broke their embrace and took his arm, tugging him toward a seat at her table. "Now come and tell me what happened."

He took hold of both her hands, gently preventing her from sitting. "It's a little loud in here, and it's kind of a long story. Would you come with me?" he asked, glancing toward the door.

"Of course. Just a moment," she said, fumbling to open her purse. She left an American bill on the table, enough to cover her wine and tip, and then took Steve's proffered arm. "Where are we headed?"

"Not far," he told her as they stepped out onto 53rd Street. They walked most of a block in comfortable silence, Peggy leaning slightly into his side, before Steve stopped and gestured to the entrance of an alley. She glanced down it, and blinked at the unexpected sight.

"Rather an odd place to put a police box," she observed, "and when did you start using them here in the States?"

He grinned, and Peggy couldn't remember a time she'd seen him look quite so pleased with himself. "It isn't exactly a police box," he told her, "and remember, you promised to believe me, no matter how impossible the story sounds."

"I did," she agreed, "so go on and tell it to me."

They began walking down the alleyway together, picking a path carefully around rubbish bins, crumpled newspapers, and other bits of detritus. "You're right: I did crash in the Arctic. The plane broke through the ice and started to go under, and I might've hit my head, so I don't remember much, besides the cold." His voice turned a little distant. "I understand that there were searches sent out to find the wreckage, but they never turned anything up. Not for a long time. I woke up, and..." He shook his head and started again. "When I woke up, it was the twenty-first century. They told me seventy years had passed."

The expression on her face must have been – well really, she couldn't have guessed, since she wasn't quite able to say what precisely she was feeling. Mostly she felt like she wanted to ask about fifty questions at once, and couldn't decide the order they should go in. He stopped, facing her, and raised a finger to her lips. "I told you it would sound crazy," he reminded her wryly. "But give me a chance to explain the rest."

She nodded, which he seemed to take as permission to continue. "You remember the Tesseract? The power source Schmidt was using for all those weapons?"

"Of course," she replied. "Howard called in two days ago and said he found it in the sea. He's still up there now, looking for you."

Peggy thought she saw a flash of regret cross Steve's face. He nodded. "Anyway, it was stolen from where the government had been keeping it, by–" he cut himself off. "This is a weird question, but which do you find easier to believe in: magic, or aliens?"

She blinked up at him. "Are those my only options?"

The wry grin was back. "'Fraid so. You didn't think that thing could have been natural, did you?"

"I suppose not," she conceded. "Well, if I have to pick between the two, I suppose I'd choose aliens."

"Yeah, me too," Steve agreed. "So it was stolen by an alien from a race called the Asgardians; apparently they came to Earth a long time ago, and Norse mythology was based on them. This alien, Loki, used the Tesseract to open a dimensional portal to bring through a whole army of other aliens, and we had to fight them off and get the thing back."

"We?"

She never got tired of seeing Steve smile. "I've sort of assembled a new team. I had some help finding them," he admitted. "Howard's son is part of it. He built himself this flying suit of armor; it's pretty impressive – but don't tell him I said so."

Peggy smirked. "The Howling Commandos, Part Two?"

He ducked his head and grinned. "We call ourselves 'The Avengers.' I didn't come up with the name. You'd like them, though; they're a great bunch of people."

"I'm sure I would," she agreed. "Though none of that explains how you got here from seventy years in the future."

"Well you have to let me finish the story," he told her. "All that happened yesterday. I didn't meet the guy with the time machine until today." They were standing beside the police box, and Steve slipped a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He pushed it open, and Peggy simply stared for a moment, her mind refusing to process what she was seeing.

"That is not a police box," she finally managed.

"Nope," Steve agreed, grinning. "It's a time machine. And it belongs to the Doctor." He pointed to a man in a brown jacket and a bow tie. The stranger was leaning over the railing of a catwalk that lined the walls of a very large room that should, on no account, have been able to fit inside a police box.

"Hello!" the man shouted to them. "Come on in, you two crazy lovebirds! Don't just hang about in the doorway – come inside and make yourselves at home!"

Well. This certainly isn't how I expected this evening to go, Peggy thought. But when she felt the comforting warmth of Steve's hand on the small of her back, she smiled. It's much better. She glanced over her shoulder at Steve. "Allow me to make it clear, Captain, that you still have quite a bit of explaining to do."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and she couldn't help finding his smile infectious as she let him lead her into the bizarre blue box.

* * *

I suppose, if I'm to be entirely objective about the situation, Peggy thought as she listened to Steve conclude his story about time-traveling aliens and electricity-stealing dinosaurs and Howard's son and the organization that the SSR had transformed into, I must consider the possibility that I have gone mad. She didn't like thinking of herself as the sort of person who might let grief consume her sanity; she had endured hardship before, and tragedy, and survived numerous incidents of mortal peril, and each time she had come through on her own two feet, shaken but whole. She felt her gaze wandering around the strange chamber. How can this be the time I go mad?

The odd man in the bow tie who Steve had introduced as the Doctor approached them, grinning. "I'll bet I can guess what you're thinking," he offered, and then continued without pausing for her response. "You're wondering whether you can really be standing here, inside a machine that travels through time and space and looks like a little blue box, with one man from another planet and another man who's currently frozen in the Arctic – or whether you've just gone 'round the bend."

She arched a single sculpted eyebrow. "I'll admit, the thought had crossed my mind."

The Doctor dashed back over to the round console that, at a guess, was meant to control the time machine. "All right, I'll prove it to you. What's the most impressive, most breathtaking sight you can imagine?"

Apparently there was still a small part of her that had never grown out of her starry-eyed schoolgirl stage, because she found herself glancing at Steve's warm blue eyes. She resolutely turned her attention back to the Doctor. "Why do you ask?"

"It's quite simple," he replied, leaning against the console. "If you tell me the most beautiful place you can imagine, and I can bring you somewhere even more majestic and awe-inspiring than that, then you clearly can't be imagining it. Ergo, all of this is real."

She considered this reasoning for a moment. "I'm not quite sure how much sense that makes," she began, "but all right. The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland: I went there on a school trip when I was a girl, and it remains the grandest and most breathtaking natural sight I've ever seen."

The Doctor grinned so widely it must have hurt. "Excellent. Miss Carter, prepare to be amazed!"

"That's Agent Carter, thank you," she corrected him sharply.

He had the good grace to look sheepish. "Right, of course – Agent Carter, my apologies." He began manipulating controls on the console, apparently at random. A sort of groaning, whirring sound filled the room, but neither the Doctor nor Steve seemed concerned by it, so Peggy assumed the sound was – for want of a more apt term – normal.

In a few moments, the noise faded away, and the Doctor stopped turning dials and pulling levers. He gestured to the door, which remained closed. "There you are, Agent Carter; whenever you're ready."

She glanced at Steve, who offered her his hand. She took it gladly. "Let's have a look," he offered.

"All right." They crossed to the entrance together. Peggy wondered what she would see on the other side of the door: some strange alien landscape, perhaps? A vision of the future, with flying cars and buildings disappearing into the sky? A little hesitantly, she reached out to touch the doorknob. It turned easily under her fingers, and the door swung open with a slight creak.

Breathtaking was, in her experience, a purely metaphorical term; it described a sight that engendered feelings of awe and humble appreciation, even reverence. What she saw through the doorway literally made the breath catch in her throat, and she was unable to remember how to get her lungs working again for several seconds.

It was the Earth. They were standing out in space, looking down at a glowing blue-and-white sphere of glimmering oceans and swirling clouds. She could pick out the familiar shapes of continents beneath the bright streaks of weather. The planet hung against the majestic backdrop of a night sky that was so much larger and more vivid than she had ever seen from England.

She felt Steve's arms slip around her waist, and leaned back into the solid warmth of his chest. "In the future, they have all sorts of orbital satellites and space telescopes to take pictures of this," he breathed into her hair, "and the government has even landed manned missions on the Moon. I thought those pictures were so amazing; we never had anything like that. But they don't prepare you for really being here."

"It's beautiful," she replied simply. "I could never have dreamed of something like this." And as absurd as the idea had sounded when the Doctor first suggested it, that was what made her believe. She really was here, staring down at her home from outer space, in the embrace of a man she'd thought lost forever. She turned around in his arms until she could reach up and pull him down to her for a kiss.

The taste of his kiss was exactly as she remembered; the adrenaline surge of the race to catch Schmidt's plane had imprinted the sensation indelibly on her memory. The softness of his lips, the short brush of hair on the back of his head, it was all the same. The only difference was that he was clean-shaven now; their first kiss had been in the heat of a protracted battle, and a bit of five o'clock shadow had crept onto his jaw, sandpapery against her skin as she pressed her lips roughly to his.

For a while, her mind simply floated, lost in the moment. When it snapped back to the present, her eyes widened and she gasped against his mouth. "Steve!" She pulled away just far enough to meet his eyes. "You're still out there, back in the present! If we know where to look, Howard can find you – you don't have to be lost for seventy years!"

"There's... a bit of a problem with that, I'm afraid," the Doctor said. He was wandering slowly toward them, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers. "You see, the discovery of that airplane in the Arctic and the resurrection of Captain America is a fixed point in time."

"What does that mean, precisely?" If her response was a bit more snappish than the Doctor deserved, Peggy hoped he would make allowances for the situation.

"For the most part, time is fluid; past events can be altered, and the course of history changed. "You might, for instance, go back to the early nineteenth century and explain to Napoleon what a horrifically bad idea it is to engage Russia in a land war during the winter, thereby altering the entire course of European history. You could travel to a planet in its infancy and muck about with the chemicals and amino acids present, influencing the development of the global ecology in any number of ways. But," he emphasized the word, "there are certain events throughout the history of the universe that are immutable; no matter how a time-traveler tries to interfere, no matter what choices are made, those events must and will play out as they have happened. Attempting to alter a fixed point..." he hesitated. "Is a bad idea."

"What happens?" Steve asked, the dullness of his tone suggesting that he already knew he wouldn't like the answer.

"Time itself begins to unravel, with all of history straining to happen at once, until the universe flies apart at the seams," he said. "It isn't as fun as it sounds; I don't recommend it."

"And Steve being pulled out of the ice in the twenty-first century is one of these 'fixed points'?" Peggy asked, trying to keep the cutting edge out of her tone, with limited success.

"I'm afraid so," the Doctor confirmed. "I checked the TARDIS's memory banks before you and Steve came back from the club, since I thought this might come up." He sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Damn." She stepped in closer to Steve, leaning her forehead against his shoulder and taking in the heat of his body. They were so close; he was right here...

"Wait!" she exclaimed, pulling back again. "You're here now. Can you..." she broke off, and started again. "Do you want to stay?"

She watched the emotions flicker across his clear blue eyes; hope blazed strongly for a moment, then faded into the embers of resignation. "I want to, Peggy, so much. More than anything, from the moment I woke up in the future, I've wanted to be back here – in my own time. With you, and the Commandos, and everybody."

He leaned back against the frame of the open doorway, his arms still lightly encircling her. "But things are so different in the future. I thought it was bad during the war, but..." he looked down into her eyes. "We've had two alien invasions in the past week. I don't know if this is normal or what, but when that sort of thing happens again, they'll need me." He slipped an arm from around her waist and took one of her hands, lightly stroking the back of it with his thumb. "And no matter how much we want it, 1944 doesn't need me. I've seen the history books. We win. Without Captain America." She could hear his voice wavering a little. "I have to go where I'm needed, Peggy – no matter what I want for myself."

Her throat constricted painfully, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the tears burning behind her eyes. He's right, she thought bitterly, Damn it all, he's right. Duty was fundamental to Steve Rogers, as inseparable a part of him as his stubbornness, or his inability to talk to women – and much more so than the super-soldier serum or the outfit with the star on the chest. She could never ask him to turn his back on that duty, and if he did, he wouldn't be the man she–

"Hey, hold on," he interrupted her train of thought, clutching her hand against his chest. "I don't know if you'd consider it – I know it's an awful lot to ask, but," he caught her gaze in his, "what do you think about coming with me? To the future?"

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out; there were too many impressions jostling one another inside her mind for her to form a single cogent thought. The future. Technology, and history, and culture – and Steve – and manned missions to the Moon, of all things! It's not as though she'd be leaving much behind; she had no family left that she cared to keep in touch with. There were a few friends, from school and from the service, but they'd mostly drifted apart thanks to the war. In fact, the war had consumed most of her life for the past several years; the only thing she really had was her work. "My work," she finally blurted out. "They've been talking about pulling me back in for another assignment with British Intelligence, now that SSR no longer has a project or a mission. I would need to know that my absence wasn't going to change anything important." She turned to look at the Doctor. "Can you do that – are you able to find that out?"

For the first time in the conversation, the Doctor grinned. "Of course I can! The TARDIS knows everything!" He darted back to the console and pulled out a panel with buttons that looked very much like a typewriter's keys. He tapped at them, peering into a screen of some sort. "Agent Margaret Carter of MI5, liaison to the United States Strategic Scientific Reserve." He muttered to himself as he read what she assumed was her service file, and a lance of ice shot through her as she saw his cheerful demeanor suddenly chill. He raised his eyes from the screen and faced them again.

"In a few months from now, you'll have been reassigned, and will be working to track down Nazi agents on British soil. You will be instrumental in preventing the assassination of Prime Minister Winston Churchill." There were shadows in his eyes that hinted at something more than he said, but she didn't press him. If it was bad news, she didn't want Steve to hear until she knew what it was. "It's your decision, though," the Doctor continued gently. "If you want to go, I'll take you."

The tears were gone now; in their place was a hollowness, as though she was in pain but her body was too numb to feel the ache. Steve's other arm tightened around her waist, and she leaned gratefully against him. She shook her head. "I can't," she said simply. "I can't risk changing history. I have a responsibility." She raised her eyes to Steve's face, hoping to see his forgiveness there.

What she found was understanding; in Steve's mind, there was nothing to forgive. There was simply the awful reality, the burden that they both bore. "I know," was all he said, before pulling her tight against his chest.

"Still," the Doctor began, the brightness in his voice sounding only a little forced, "you're in the TARDIS. You can stay as long as you like, and afterward I'll drop you back five minutes after you left! No sense in having a time machine if you don't use it to cheat a bit, now and then."

More time... Peggy felt something in her chest warm a little at that thought. She lifted her face to Steve's and smiled, and if her smile was a watery one, she didn't think it would matter to him. "We get to have our dance."

The smile on Steve's face was a little shaky as well, but it reached his eyes. "You're still gonna have to teach me," he said.

"I'll do that," she promised. She turned her head, looking at the Doctor while she pressed her cheek against Steve's shoulder. "Thank you, Doctor. We'll gladly accept your hospitality for as long as you care to extend it."

"Excellent!" the Doctor declared, shaking off the last vestiges of his somber mood. "The entire universe is yours for the asking, kids – the whole of time and space! We can go to Rome in the first century, or the Boeshane Peninsula in the fifty-first century." He paused, and shook his head. "Maybe not that last; might startle your sensibilities a bit. But the rings of Saturn, or the Horsehead Nebula, or the Opius Expanse – all of it, waiting to be explored!"

Peggy turned her head to look out the open doorway of the TARDIS again. "I don't know about Steve, but I still haven't quite gotten over the view from here," she said. "Maybe in a little while, you can recommend a place?"

"Certainly! You just come find me when you're ready; I'll be down here checking the connectors on the device that Steve's friend gave us."

Silence reigned for a long moment as she and Steve stood in the doorway, holding each other and looking down at the Earth. She watched Great Britain set over the curve of the horizon before breaking the stillness. "Steve," she began.

"Yeah?" he replied softly. She savored the rumble of his voice, her head pressed against his chest.

"I'd like to ask a favor of you, if you wouldn't mind."

He gently caught her chin and directed her face up to look at him. "Anything, Peggy."

She felt the corner of her mouth curve up into a slight smile. "I'd like you to draw a picture for me. I fully intend on taking every advantage of the Doctor's invitation, but I'd like to have something to hold onto afterward. Something from you."

He leaned down and kissed her gently. "I can do that," he agreed. "The Doctor said he has all sorts of supplies in the other rooms of this place. I'll bet I can find some drawing paper and pencils or charcoals or something." He broke away and headed for a door she hadn't noticed on the other side of the room, but paused after a single step, catching up her hand again. "Please still be here when I get back."

She squeezed his hand, fighting back the renewed stinging behind her eyes. "I promise."

Her gaze followed Steve as he crossed the room and disappeared through the doorway. When he was out of sight, she left the threshold and went to find the Doctor. He was crouched in a sub-level beneath the floor of the TARDIS, surrounded by wiring and ducts and tubes and all manner of things that she assumed kept a time machine running. Smoothing the skirt of her dress beneath her, she sat down on the top step and looked at him squarely. "There was something else you didn't mention before, wasn't there? In my file."

The Doctor set down the device he was fiddling with – a small metal cylinder with a glowing blue ring embedded in the top – and leaned his arms on the railing at the bottom of the steps. "There was," he confirmed.

"I want to know."

He nodded. "I meant what I said before; if you don't want to go back after hearing this, it's your choice. I'll take you wherever you want to go." Taking her steady gaze as a reply, he continued. "You were closing in on the spy, and spotted him just as he made the attempt on Churchill's life. You were shot with a bullet meant for the Prime Minister. Your file records you dying in service to your country a little more than four months from the day you met Steve at the club."

Peggy drew a long, slow breath. "Thank you, Doctor. Unfortunately, that doesn't change my decision. I have a duty, and I knew when I first swore my oath of service that this duty might lead to my death. At least it will be a meaningful death; I've known too many good men and women in this war who lost their lives senselessly, to no purpose."

"All deaths in war are senseless," the Doctor replied grimly.

She inclined her head, acknowledging the statement. "Still, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity. It's a little easier to accept what's to come, knowing I've had this time with Steve that should never have been possible. I don't plan to waste it."

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