All I Want For Christmas

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/37602796.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Agent Carter (TV), Agent Carter (Marvel
Short Film)
Relationship: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Character: Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, Edwin Jarvis, Ana Jarvis, Howard Stark,
Chester Phillips, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, James Montgomery
Falsworth, Jim Morita, Jacques Dernier, Gabe Jones, Howling
Commandos
Additional Tags: Steggy Secret Santa, Christmas, Howling Commandos - Freeform,
Pregnancy, Marriage, Snow, Squirrels, Time Travel, Post-Avengers:
Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2022-03-08 Chapters: 9/9 Words: 22649

All I Want For Christmas

by doctorhelena

Summary

Perhaps this was what settling down looked like, to them.

Notes

This is a belated Steggy Secret Santa gift for the wonderful (and very patient)
TriplePirouette (3Pirouette on Tumblr), who prefers to read long stories all in one go. I
hope you enjoy it, and I'm so sorry it's so late!
 Chapter 1

December 25, 1949

“Well,” said Peggy, surveying the damage, “I can’t say this is quite how I’d imagined our first
Christmas together after the war, but it is rather fitting, I suppose.” And suddenly, she and Steve
were both laughing so hard that they had to lean against each other, tears rolling down their cheeks.

“I love you,” he managed.

“That's rather a good thing,” Peggy said wryly.

---

It had all started so promisingly.

Steve had appeared unexpectedly on Peggy’s doorstep the previous August with a wild tale of time
travel, adventure, and the somewhat disquieting news that another version of himself was currently
hibernating in the arctic, not destined to be rescued for another sixty two years.

“Even if we could find him, we don’t have the technology to defrost him safely,” he’d told her
soberly, her third cup of tea growing cold on the table between them. “And - the Ancient One says
he’s needed in the future.” He looked down at his cup, then back up at her. “She also says that
when the time is right he’ll be free to make the same decision I did. He can go back, start another
branch timeline. Stay with another version of you, if she’ll have him.”

“If she’ll have him!” Peggy had said, indignantly, and stood up to show him exactly how
ridiculous it was to even suppose that she might not.

That had been perhaps, in retrospect, her first mistake.

---

Their first priority, they both agreed, was to rescue Bucky, followed by tackling the relatively
more complex problem of Hydra’s infiltration of SHIELD - the fledgling agency Peggy, Howard,
and Phillips had already put so much work into, and which Peggy was not about to let go without a
fight.

And then, there was the matter of Steve himself. Did they want to reveal his return to the world at
large? To a few selected people? Or to nobody at all? Despite all the knowledge Steve had brought
back from the 21st century, they were creating a brand new timeline. The world was their oyster.
Anything was possible.

The first confirmation of this arrived unexpectedly in late September, when Peggy abruptly began
to sleep through her alarm every morning, entirely lost interest in breakfast, and was very nearly
reduced to tears at work twice in a single week.

“You said that the older version of me you met in the future had - that she’d had children,” she
ventured tentatively one evening, after nearly two weeks of feeling constantly on the verge of a
monthly that, aside from a little spotting, had never actually arrived. “When - when was that?”

“Yeah, she had two kids in the mid-50s,” Steve said, only half-concentrating on the conversation,
the rest of his attention on the map of Russia he was marking. “A boy and a girl. But that doesn’t
mean you and I will - ” he trailed off, staring at her. “Oh.” His eyes widened. “Oh, crap.”

“Oh crap, indeed” Peggy agreed dryly, and he flushed.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

She sighed. “Twelve years in the future, Rogers, and you still haven’t learned how to talk to a
woman.”

---

October 6, 1949

“You awake?”

Peggy felt the bed dip as Steve sat down on the mattress beside her. “I am now,” she said
peevishly, covering her eyes with the back of her forearm. “What time is it?”

“8:00. In the evening,” said Steve, and she blinked up at him, startled into a slightly less groggy
state. Right. She’d come up to bed to read for a bit, to give him a chance to process the strong
probability that they’d torpedoed their plan rather badly, and apparently she’d fallen rather deeply
asleep instead.

Steve traced a finger along her cheek. “You normally wake up a lot faster than this.” It was true.
Peggy was famous for her ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but she’d always been able to
wake up just as abruptly and completely. Now she felt like she was swimming painstakingly
upward through molasses.

“Yes, well, it seems that now I don’t,” she said wryly.

Steve nodded. “How are you - how are you feeling, otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, closing her eyes again. “It’s - I’m tired and nauseated. And - part of
me is unexpectedly rather thrilled, but if it's - if it's true, we’ve thrown a rather large spanner into
the works, you know. Our plans to rescue Barnes, my career, SHIELD, Hydra. I don’t - ”

She felt the bed move again, and swallowed hard against the resulting wave of nausea. “Sorry,”
Steve said, much closer to her ear, and she cautiously opened her eyes to find him propped up on
one elbow beside her, his body stretched out next to hers. “You look a bit - I didn’t mean to make
you seasick.”

Peggy sighed. “It’s all right. Everything seems to make me seasick these days.”

Steve carefully leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Sorry.”

Peggy’s lips twitched a little, despite herself. “As well you should be. What on earth were you
thinking, coming back in time without a rubber at hand? You’re meant to be the Star-Spangled
Man with a Plan!”

“I didn’t - ” he began helplessly, his ears reddening a little, and she laughed. He was so different
now when it came to the physical part of their relationship, so much more confident and - suave,
almost, that it was rather nice to see the echo of the man who’d once assumed fondue was a
euphemism for some sort of sophisticated sex act.

“I do very much want to have children with you,” she told him, with a sudden ferocity that
surprised even herself, a little. “I just - I suppose I’d expected it to be somewhat later on. Once
SHIELD was better established, once we’d routed out Hydra for once and for all. Rescued Barnes.”
Once they’d sorted out Steve’s identity so they could get married, she thought ruefully, because if
she didn’t already have enough trouble with some of the men in the office, a pregnancy - especially
one with no husband in sight - was not going to particularly help matters.

Steve nodded. “Yeah, me too.” He met her eyes. “Look, I know I managed to jam my foot pretty
far back into my mouth earlier, but - ” he beamed at her, reaching over to carefully rest his large,
warm palm on her still-flat stomach. “Peggy, we’re having a baby! And - I don’t know if there’s
really ever a perfect time to do that, but you and I have always been a really, really great team.
We’ll make it work. We’ll still get Bucky and Hydra. We just need to change our plan a bit. We’ll
figure it out together.” The utter confidence in his voice was not that of Captain America
motivating his troops, but the quiet conviction of Steve Rogers - the same unshakeable conviction
she’d seen in that skinny, stubborn private she’d first put her faith in at Camp Lehigh.

Their eyes met and held and suddenly, rather incongruously, all she could think about was how
close his hand was to her waistband. Her breath caught all at once, and Steve’s pupils were
suddenly enormous. “If we - if you’re - ” he cleared his throat. “ Peggy .”

“Sorry,” she said, although she didn’t stop the deliberate drift of her fingertips. “I - yes. If we are
expecting a baby, and it seems rather clear that we are, then I think we’ll need to - ” She was
suddenly rather breathless. “We’ll need to - ”

“You know, I think I see how we got ourselves into this situation,” Steve said dryly, and leaned in
to kiss her, effectively tabling the discussion for the evening.

-----

October 7, 1949

“I think the first thing to do is see a doctor, just to be absolutely sure,” said Steve, taking a bite of
toast. “But then - if you are, I don’t think there’s any good way around telling Phillips, the sooner
the better. Probably Howard too. Sorry.”

“Lovely,” sighed Peggy. Howard, in particular, was never going to let her live this down. “And
then, if I can convince Phillips not to fire me on the spot - ”

“He won’t,” said Steve, utterly confident. “The other Peggy had kids and she was Director of
SHIELD for decades.”

Peggy sighed. “You don’t know for certain that he won’t. We’ve clearly already changed the
timeline.”

“Not that much, yet,” Steve assured her with a rather annoying level of surety, considering that the
Peggy from the timeline he knew had very definitely not had a baby this early in her career. He
took another bite of toast. “Of course, if you do want to step back from your career a bit, we’ll
figure it out. But - it doesn’t feel like you want to.”

Peggy shook her head, and Steve set down his toast, leaning forward to take her hand in his. “Peg,”
he said, earnestly. “You don’t have to want to.”

Her throat was tight with sudden, unshed tears. “I might not have a choice.”

Steve gathered her into his arms and let her sob into his shoulder for a moment. “So, yeah, I - think
the odds are pretty high that you’re pregnant,” he said carefully into her hair.
Peggy snorted into his somewhat damp shirt. “You don’t say. What gave it away?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Peggy - look, Phillips knows how valuable you are. I promise he’s
not going to fire you, especially when you reassure him that you have somebody at home to take
care of the baby. I - I’d actually really love to be a stay at home dad while our kids are young.”

“A ‘stay at home dad’,” Peggy repeated, pulling back to look at him. The phrase had rolled off his
tongue like a common saying, although she didn’t think she’d ever heard those words in that
particular order before. She dabbed at her face with the corner of her napkin, examining her
reflection critically in the butter knife. “Husbands staying home with the children may be common
in 2023, I suppose, but you do realize that people would talk a great deal in 1949. Well, 1950.”

Steve shrugged elaborately, a very familiar grin creeping over his face. “Doesn’t bother me if it
doesn’t bother you.”

Peggy smiled back. “All right. Then I would - I would be delighted if you would be my house
husband, and care for our baby.” She took a sip of tea, and hastily set her cup back down. “Oh
lovely, we can add tea to the list. Good God, I'll never make it through the morning briefing.”

Steve picked up her teacup and leaned back to set it on the counter behind him. “Is there anything
you think you could eat? I can make - ”

Peggy shook her head. “No, I’ll be all right. I have to leave in a moment, and I assure you I'm not
actually going to fall asleep on the job.” She bit her lip, regarding him thoughtfully. “I’m not
entirely sure you’ll be able to retire completely, you know. We should still be able to retrieve
Bucky before the baby’s born, but depending on how far Hydra’s infiltration of SHIELD has gone,
I might need - ”

“I know,” Steve said. “But I don’t think you’ll need me enough for it to be a full time job. We can
find someone we trust to watch the baby when absolutely necessary. We’ll make it work.”

“I suppose,” she said, uncertainly, and stood up, leaning over to kiss him on the lips. “All right, I’ll
make an appointment with the doctor.”

---

October 16, 1949

Their unexpected development, as she and Steve took to calling the baby once her pregnancy had
been confirmed by the doctor, was not entirely unwelcome. Peggy found herself eyeing women
with prams, pausing at the windows of toy shops, and spending nearly as much time hiding
unexpected waves of joy as she did sudden waves of nausea - not to mention the newfound urge to
burst into tears of frustration when dealing with some of the more egregious men under her
command.

“Maybe they’ll turn out to be Hydra,” said Steve, almost hopefully, and Peggy smiled.

“Perhaps.”

The development had also, however, thrown a rather large spanner into their carefully laid plans to
quietly rescue Bucky, just the two of them.

“You’ll need backup,” Peggy said in a voice that brooked no argument, as the two of them sat at
the kitchen table one Sunday afternoon, a map of Leningrad laid out between them.
Steve nodded. “I know,” he said, reaching over to tuck a curl behind her ear. “I’ve been thinking
about it. I think we’re going to have to tell Phillips and Howard about - about me.”

“All of it?” asked Peggy, frowning, and he shrugged.

“Enough to get them to take it seriously. And then for the rescue, in Leningrad, I think we’re going
to need at least a few of the Howling Commandos. They’re the only ones besides you I trust to
have my back in a situation like that.”

Peggy twisted her lips to the side, thoughtfully. “It won’t be easy to unobtrusively contact them.
But I’ll come up with something.” They’d decided it would be safest to proceed under the
assumption that Hydra was keeping a close eye on Peggy, whose reputation and position in
SHIELD made her an obvious threat to their operation - despite the fact that they clearly believed,
at this point, that they could contain her.

Assuming that her telephone was being tapped, her mail was being monitored, and her movements
catalogued might, she and Steve had decided, be a little more cautious than strictly necessary, but
this was Hydra, and it was certainly better than being caught unawares in the other direction. And
as for Steve himself, Peggy hoped that the fact that it was clearly patently ridiculous to assume that
he was actually Steve Rogers would lead Hydra to apply Occam's razor and conclude that she'd
simply managed to find a look-alike - one who wore glasses, in a mild precaution that amused
Steve but which Peggy, to her own chagrin, found quite distractingly attractive.

Even Hydra wouldn’t believe that the actual Captain America had been quietly rescued from the
ice and simply been allowed to anonymously retire without fanfare - particularly without any of the
embedded Hydra agents in SHIELD of the American government being any the wiser. And the
actual story was so unbelievable that they felt quite safe in assuming that nobody would even
conceive of it, let alone seriously consider it.

“Most of the setup for the rescue will still work the way we'd originally planned,” said Steve, deep
in thought, tapping his finger absently on the map. Peggy nodded. In order to make Bucky's rescue
appear to be purely fortuitous, she’d planned to manufacture a tip from the still-at-large Dottie
Underwood regarding an American soldier being held by Leviathan, who was set to be moved
through Leningrad in mid-March. Dottie was in the habit of presenting Peggy with little gifts of the
sort from time to time, and while Peggy had no real evidence one way or the other, she was fairly
certain Dottie wasn’t working for Hydra - not anymore, at least.

Bucky, who was set to make his debut as the Winter Soldier in early 1951 during a war in the
Korean peninsula that Peggy hadn’t been at all surprised to hear was coming, might possibly be
able to tell them about the Leviathan-Hydra connection, but was unlikely to be aware just yet of
Hydra’s similar infiltration of American intelligence. At any rate, they intended to move on Hydra
as quickly as possible once Bucky was secured - a task that they quickly realized would be
considerably easier once they’d recruited more trustworthy allies in the form of the Howling
Commandos.

Peggy abruptly sat bolt upright. “Do you think Hydra knows about the baby?” She and Steve
hadn't shared the news with a soul yet, and her heart squeezed painfully at the idea that -

Steve took a deep breath. “Depending on how closely they’re actually monitoring us, they might,”
he admitted. “But - if they do, it’ll probably just make them drop their guard a bit, right?”

Peggy closed her eyes, willing her heartbeat to slow down. “I need a stiff drink.”

“You can’t,” Steve told her regretfully.

She opened her eyes again. “What? Why?”

Steve sighed. “Alcohol’s - not great for the baby. They’ll figure it out sometime in the 70s.”

Peggy sighed too. “Lovely,” she said. “Well, on the plus side, odds are I wouldn't be able to keep it
down anyway.”

It was, she thought ruefully, a rather feeble silver lining, all told.
 Chapter 2
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

October 22, 1949

As it turned out, the honour of being the first to learn about both the baby and about Steve's return
went unexpectedly to Edwin and Ana Jarvis, with whom Peggy had tea regularly on Saturday
afternoons whenever their respective schedules permitted. She'd certainly intended to tell them
eventually, but the actual announcement was unplanned, triggered by a rather unpleasant incident
in which the cinnamon in Mr. Jarvis’ otherwise excellent scones caused Peggy to become
suddenly, violently ill - after which she felt obligated to explain to her distressed hosts that her
abrupt dash to the powder room had not been, in any way, their fault.

“I assure you, you haven’t inadvertently poisoned me,” she told them, accepting the glass of water
Ana had offered her and making her way back to the table under the concerned eyes of both
Jarvises. “And I’m quite all right. It’s just that - that I - ” She took a deep, suddenly shaky breath.
“This is rather more difficult to talk about than I’d expected.”

“Are you ill?” asked Jarvis, concerned.

Ana gave Peggy a sudden, perceptive glance. “No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think that is it.
Forgive me for asking, Peggy, but - ” she leaned forward, meeting Peggy's eye with the concerned
sympathy of someone who understood the implications of what she was asking. “Are you -
expecting ?”

“Ana!” Poor Jarvis looked aghast.

Peggy set down her water glass. “No, she’s absolutely right. I am - I am expecting.” She turned to
Ana. “Ana, I’m so sorry.”

Ana blinked. “Why? Because of what Whitney Frost did to me?” She reached across the table and
smacked Peggy, gently but reprovingly, on the arm. “I have told you many times that it was not
your fault. And Mr. Jarvis and I have long since made our peace with the situation.” She smiled.
“We have been thinking very seriously of adopting in the near future, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh!” said Peggy, temporarily delighted out of her own discomfort. “Ana, that’s wonderful!”

Jarvis, having recovered from his initial surprise, was regarding Peggy with concern. “Thank you,
Miss Carter, it is rather exciting. But as to your own situation, I - ah, I wasn’t aware that there was
a man in your life just now. Romantically speaking, that is.”

Peggy raised an eyebrow. “I am happy to confirm, Mr. Jarvis, that my baby does, in fact, have a
father.”

“Well, yes, I had assumed,” said Jarvis. Although clearly concerned for Peggy herself, he was
remarkably unblushing about the subject matter. It occurred to her that he probably had three far
more embarrassing conversations with Howard every morning before breakfast. “But - is he, ah, in
the picture at present?”

It was Ana’s turn to remonstrate. “Edwin! ”

Peggy smiled. “No, it’s all right. He is, in fact, very much in the picture, and I’m sorry I haven’t
introduced him to you already. It’s just - it’s a little complicated.” She bit her lip. “Actually,
perhaps I could impose upon you, Mr. Jarvis, for a little light forgery.”

The Jarvises both blinked at her.

---

"So just to summarize, Miss Carter, you are telling us that Captain Rogers managed to survive the
crash of the Valkyrie, spent decades frozen alive in the arctic, lived for twelve years in the 21st
century, and has recently travelled back through time from the year 2023 with the hope of spending
his life with you?" asked Jarvis, giving Peggy a look that could only be described as a polite
mixture of incredulity and deep concern.

“I did,” confirmed Steve, taking another bite of scone. “I know it sounds pretty far-fetched.” He
looked a little uncertain of how to proceed. After all, he and the Jarvises hadn't known each other
before the crash, and furthermore Peggy was quite certain that he hadn’t expected to be breaking
the news to anyone just yet.

He was also, when he thought nobody was looking, studying Jarvis in a way that Peggy would
have wondered at, if she hadn’t recalled his namesake - the ‘artificial intelligence’, as Steve had
called it - that Howard’s son had built in the future. It must, she thought, be rather surreal to finally
meet the original man.

“I realize you both probably think I’ve gone completely off my rocker,” she told the Jarvises.
“That, perhaps, I’m pregnant and alone and in rather a lot of trouble, and in my maidenly distress I
am willing to believe the most far-fetched of stories. But I assure you that - ”

“I have never,” said Jarvis, wounded, “thought anything of the sort about you, Miss Carter, and I’ll
thank you not to put words in my mouth. I'm simply concerned that - well, it is quite a far-fetched
story.”

Ana looked thoughtfully from Peggy to Steve. “In any case, it seems highly likely that Peggy’s
acceptance of it preceded the pregnancy rather than the other way around, don’t you think?” She
turned back to Peggy. “He is the father, yes?”

Steve’s ears had gone a little red. “I am, yeah.” Peggy smiled at him, and somehow they managed
to get lost in each other’s gaze for a long moment before she remembered where they were and
cleared her throat, her own cheeks a little flushed.

“Well, Mr. Jarvis,” Ana told her husband, her eyes twinkling a little, “we all know from first-hand
experience that the world is a great deal stranger than it seems, and Peggy knows Captain Rogers
better than anybody. If she believes his story, I don’t see what grounds we have to argue. And she
is clearly very fond of him.”

Peggy smiled at Ana, and Jarvis pursed his lips. “I suppose you’re right. I just - I worry.”

Peggy reached across the table and patted his hand with genuine affection. “I know. But, as always,
Mr. Jarvis, it is entirely unnecessary.”

Jarvis sighed. “On the contrary, I’m afraid worry is always necessary where you are concerned,
Miss Carter.”

Steve smiled at that. “She did put me through the third degree when I first got here” he told Jarvis.
“She might have been even more suspicious than you were. At least you didn’t pull a gun on me.”
Jarvis looked slightly mollified at that.

“We could poke him a bit with a knife right now,” offered Peggy. “He heals very quickly.”

Jarvis looked seriously tempted for a moment, then shook his head firmly. “No. Ana is right, as
usual.” He held out his hand for Steve to shake. “I am enormously glad you’ve found your way
back, Captain Rogers,” he told him. “Miss Carter is a very dear friend, and I am delighted on her
behalf.”

“So,” said Ana, to Peggy, significantly.

Peggy grinned. “You’re about to ask when the wedding is.”

Ana shrugged unrepentantly, her dimples showing. “I am very good, but I am not a miracle worker.
I will need a little time to sew your dress.”

---

October 25, 1949

To Ana's disappointment, Peggy and Steve were married quietly at City Hall in everyday clothing,
nearly as soon as the ink was dry on the false identification documents Jarvis had expertly crafted
for one Steven Grant Josephson - inspired, Steve had confided to a rather perplexed-looking Mr.
Jarvis, by the naming traditions of the Norse god Thor.

Peggy, secretly amused by how much Steve was secretly amusing himself, supposed it was a
perfectly serviceable name. After all, Steve had been able to wield Thor's hammer, which surely
gave him some right to Asgardian naming traditions - and if not, with his Irish ancestry there was a
decent chance that he had Viking blood running through his veins regardless.

Peggy intended to keep her own name for professional purposes, although she supposed she’d have
to get used to answering to “Mrs. Josephson” at neighbourhood functions, PTA meetings, and the
like. She had, after all, a great deal of experience answering to names that were not her own, and
both she and Steve liked the idea of this further layer of protection of their family life. Peggy Carter
was already occasionally quoted in the press in her role as Assistant Director of SHIELD,
something that would only increase in frequency if she became Director. Peggy Josephson, on the
other hand, was clearly an ordinary British war bride who had married her American soldier and
worked quietly for the phone company, perhaps to pay the bills while her husband went to school
on the G.I. Bill.

City Hall was, of course, closed on Sundays, and the State of New York required a 24 hour waiting
period before the marriage could be solemnized, so Peggy left the office at lunchtime on Tuesday
and returned an hour later a married woman - having had time not only to wed the love of her life,
but also to be wretchedly sick in the ladies’ room and eat most of a corned beef sandwich. Never
let it be said, she thought wryly, that she wasn’t efficient.

Fortunately, Peggy's pregnancy had automatically exempted them from being required to undergo
blood tests in order to procure the marriage license. Peggy had, after all, gone to quite enormous
lengths to prevent anyone from having access to a vial of Steve’s blood not so long ago, and her
views on the matter hadn’t changed simply because the man himself was now available. Steve’s
blood was quite extraordinary, and it would be a very dull lab technician who wouldn’t have
noticed something rather odd about his sample.

“At any rate,” she’d told Steve, sprawled across his chest in bed the night before, “I’m quite certain
 neither of us are afflicted with syphilis. I don’t think you can be infected, and the doctor tested me
earlier in the month when I went in to confirm the pregnancy, in case you were concerned.”

“I wasn’t,” Steve had informed her, kissing the top of her head and running his hand quite
distractingly along her bare spine. The next time they did this, she’d thought, a little hazily, they
would be married. And now, they were.

Ana’s disappointment at not being able to make Peggy a wedding dress had been somewhat
mollified by serving as a witness, along with her beaming husband - who had quite warmed to
Steve once he’d recovered from his initial suspicions. The entire thing had taken less than half an
hour, and just like that, Peggy and Steve were husband and wife, with a baby on the way.

They had somehow, Peggy thought ruefully, become domesticated terribly quickly.

She quietly began wearing her wedding ring to work, carefully laying ground for her plan to
maintain, once her pregnancy became obvious, that she had been married for months and months,
and had been wearing her ring quite openly if anyone had cared to notice. Nobody had noticed yet,
which was precisely what she’d been hoping for. “Plausible deniability”, Steve had called it - in
what she presumed, from the easy way it rolled off his tongue, must be another phrase he'd picked
up in the 21st century.

Peggy was confident that, if Hydra was truly keeping tabs on her, her hasty marriage would be
easily explained by her pregnancy, and her pregnancy - well, it was entirely conceivable that she
simply had a weakness for men who resembled Steve Rogers. And she did, particularly when they
insisted upon wearing adorably debonair spectacles and occasionally forgetting what decade a
word was invented in.

Regardless of what they eventually decided regarding Steve’s identity, they’d agreed, it would be
prudent to keep it very quiet until they’d dealt with their first two objectives - Bucky’s rescue,
followed by burning out the remnants of Hydra for once and for all. All of the heads this time,
Peggy had said fiercely. Followed by the bodies and tails, just to be safe, in a bonfire to rival the
Fifth of November.

Steve had given her a wide-eyed look that made her very much regret that she was already running
late for work.

Chapter End Notes

Couples getting married in New York in 1949 really did each need to take a blood test
and provide a signed result from a physician certifying that they were not infected with
syphilis. However, "This section shall not apply to either the man or woman, when the
woman is pregnant at the time of the application for the marriage license." Loophole!
 Chapter 3

October 29, 1949

“Hang on, Peg, I didn't quite get that. You want me to meet your what ?”

“You heard me, Howard,” Peggy said into the receiver, her tone carefully matter-of-fact despite
the grin that was threatening to break through. “I’d like you to meet my husband.”

Howard Stark was not ordinarily at a loss for words. “Your - husband,” he repeated, cautiously.

“Yes, my husband. Do try to keep up.” Peggy was fully aware that she was enjoying this far too
much. “Is it too early in the morning for you? Shall I call you back a little later, when you’re
feeling more yourself?”

“No,” Howard said, slowly, “I’m always myself. I’m just not sure you’re you. How the hell did
you manage to acquire a husband in the month I’ve been in Italy?”

Steve, across the room, snorted at that, and Peggy waved her hand at him in a don't-you-dare-
make-me-laugh gesture. “Oh, in the usual way,” she said, airily. “I realize marriage isn’t for you,
Howard, but I’m quite certain you’ve at least heard of a wedding.”

Howard started to speak and then checked himself, something Peggy had only heard him do a
handful of times in all the years she'd known him. “Okay, fine, I probably deserved that.” He
hesitated for a split second too long to pull off the offhanded tone he was clearly attempting.
“Yeah, I guess you’d better introduce me to the lucky fellow. You two free for dinner tonight?”

Peggy smiled, a little maliciously. If Howard was going to spend the day worrying about her, it
would really do him some good. “Mr. Jarvis has already invited us. We’ll be there at 7.”

---

“Mr. Stark is possibly even more concerned for your sanity than I was, Miss Carter,” reported
Jarvis with a little grin as he opened the door for them that evening. “Oh, ah, Mrs. Josephson now,
I suppose. Well, that will certainly take some getting used to.”

Peggy gave him a look as she handed him her jacket and purse. “Peggy is fine, or Miss Carter
depending on the circumstances, but you know perfectly well that Mrs. Josephson is an alias.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Jarvis, looking oddly determined. Peggy wondered if he was about to
try “Mrs. Rogers”, but instead he paused, turning his head at the sound of footsteps from further
inside the house.

“Is that Peggy and whats-his-name?” Howard came striding out of the sitting room to meet them,
which showed Peggy that he was, in fact, uncharacteristically concerned about her. “Peg, what the
hell is going on? It’s not like you to - ” he caught sight of Steve and stopped dead, his mouth
hanging open slightly. “Rogers?” he managed, setting down his drink abruptly on the table next to
the front door.

Peggy, who was closest, reached for his elbow to keep him upright as Steve cleared his throat. “Hi
Howard.”

Howard turned to Peggy. “It’s actually him?”

“I tested him very thoroughly,” she assured him, and Mr. Jarvis suppressed a very unbutler-like
snort.

Howard nodded matter-of-factly and Peggy felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of fondness for the
man - Howard certainly had his faults, but underestimating Peggy’s intelligence and abilities had
rarely been one of them. As she blinked away tears, Steve - used to this sort of thing by now -
quietly handed her his handkerchief. Howard looked even more startled than he had when he’d
spotted Steve. “Are you - all right, Peg?”

“I’m fine,” she said briskly, blowing her nose. “Now, I imagine you have questions.”

Howard did, indeed, have a great number of questions. “And you’re sure,” he asked Steve for the
tenth time, several hours later, still at the dinner table, “that’s everything you know about how the
time travel worked.”

“It is,” confirmed Steve.

It wasn’t, in the slightest, Peggy knew. He hadn’t mentioned the name of the man, Hank Pym,
who’d invented the necessary particles, nor had he mentioned that the man who’d worked out the
practicalities of the time travel itself had been rather closely related to Howard. They might be
creating their own timeline, they’d agreed, but there was no sense in enabling Howard Stark to
invent his own time machine.

Howard looked frustrated. “You don’t remember anything else?”

“Sorry,” Steve told him. “Making it work wasn’t my job. I don’t even have one PhD.”

“Neither do I,” said Howard, cheerfully. He tapped his pencil on the pad of paper he’d been
scribbling in. “So, how do you feel about hypnosis?”

Steve blinked. “You mean to figure out if I know more than I think I do? I don’t think hypnosis
actually works that way.”

Peggy cleared her throat. “Regardless of how it works, it’s a terrible idea. Howard, have you
entirely forgotten how we nearly had to shoot down your aeroplane before you blanketed Times
Square with Midnight Oil?”

Howard waved his hand. “I didn’t mean we’d call in Dr. Focus. What’s-his-name. Fenton?
Fennhoff? I could do it myself.”

“No,” said Peggy firmly. “Besides, we have more important things to worry about at the moment.
We can discuss time travel once we’ve rescued Sergeant Barnes and eliminated Hydra - which may
well include, I suspect, Dr. Fennhoff.”

“Fair enough,” said Howard, taking a sip of his drink. He stretched out his legs. “By the way, it's
good to see you Rogers.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, you too, Howard.”

Howard raised his glass to both of them. “And congratulations on finally tying the knot, you crazy
kids.” He shook his head. “Not gonna lie, Peg, when you told me you’d gotten married so
suddenly, I thought for sure you’d gotten yourself knocked up. It was the only thing that made any
sense, except for - ” he gestured, encompassing the whole unlikely situation, “well, this.” He
laughed. “You scared me, pal.”
Peggy sighed. “Howard, don’t be an idiot. Of course I didn’t ‘get myself knocked up’.” She gave
him a stern look. “I would certainly hope that a man who gives out as many diamond bracelets as
you do in a year would be well aware that Steve is equally responsible for our current state of
affairs.”

Howard blinked at her for several, long seconds and then spewed his mouthful of whiskey halfway
across the table.

---

Peggy took advantage of Howard’s lingering speechlessness to give him a rough outline of the
revised plan she and Steve had worked out regarding Bucky’s rescue and then their assault on
Hydra’s agents within SHIELD. Howard nodded thoughtfully at all the right moments, but his eyes
kept darting in fascination to her abdomen.

“For God’s sake, Howard, I’m not far enough along for you to be able to see anything. Stop
staring.”

Howard set down his drink. “I can’t help it, Peg, this is probably the girliest thing I’ve ever seen
you do.”

Peggy sighed. “I’m a girl, Howard. I do plenty of girly things. I just happen to be a girl who enjoys
espionage, and punching people, and being treated as if I were a person with a brain. As all women
are, you know. People, with brains.”

“Point taken,” said Howard, picking up his drink again with his usual easy grin, giving Peggy the
exasperatingly familiar urge to smack him. He shrugged. “Maybe I just can’t get over the fact that
you managed to get knocked up by a man who honest to God thought fondue was some kind of sex
act.” His smirk included both Peggy and Steve. “Guess he figured out what he was doing at some
point, huh?”

Steve shot Howard a long-suffering look. “In my defense, you made it sound dirty.”

Peggy snorted. “And he meant it that way, too,” she informed Steve. “He only stopped trying to
seduce me after I - ah, after the unauthorized ballistics testing I performed on your shield.” Despite
her pragmatic tone, she felt her cheeks grow a little warm.

Howard laughed. “That was when I knew she had it bad for you, my friend,” he told Steve.

“If I'd known it would deter you,” Peggy told him, “I would have shot at somebody sooner.”

Howard grinned, then set down his drink again, leaned forward, and nodded once, briskly. “All
right. So. Sergeant Barnes.” He gave Peggy a sidelong glance. “Peg, are you sure you’re
completely against hypnosis? Because if not, I have some ideas.”

---

November 3, 1949

“I'm home! And I’ve got the mail.” Peggy nudged the front door shut with her foot and hung up
her coat and purse, setting the pile of letters down on the entryway table so she could take her
shoes off.

Steve poked his head out of the kitchen. “Chicken still okay for dinner?”
Peggy nodded. “Yes, or - I think so. I’m feeling all right at the moment, at any rate.” She picked up
the mail again, flipping through it as she followed Steve into the kitchen. “The electricity bill, the
water bill, a letter from Angie, and - oooh, something from Timothy Dugan.”

“Timothy ?” asked Steve, and Peggy laughed, opening the envelope and pulling out the short letter
from Dugan. One of the Howling Commandos contacting her, unprompted, was an unexpected
stroke of luck that she would surely be able to use to her advantage.

“Oh!” she said. “Steve, look!”

He leaned to read over her shoulder. “Huh. I didn’t even know his family owned a cabin.”

Peggy nodded. “Neither did I, but clearly they do.” She turned her head to smile at him, slightly
mischievously. “We could use a holiday, don’t you think? Pregnancy, as it turns out, is utterly
exhausting thus far - and the mountains will be lovely at Christmastime.”

Steve blinked, then grinned at her. “Yeah, you’re right, we do need a vacation. And it will be great
to finally meet your friends from the war,” he added with great solemnity. “I’ve heard so much
about them.”

“This is a weight off my shoulders,” Peggy admitted, dropping the facade and leaning back against
him. “I wasn’t entirely sure how to manufacture an excuse to see them all in person, and I'm not
being entirely untruthful when I complain about how tired I am.”

Steve took the letter from her hand, setting it down with the other mail on the counter. “It's a great
opportunity, but I - don’t know how relaxing a Christmas with the Howling Commandos will
actually be.”

Peggy laughed. “I know. But I should be over the worst of it by then. And apart from this being the
perfect opportunity to recruit their assistance, I will greatly enjoy presenting them all with what
will most certainly be the most startling Christmas gift of their lives.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Steve said into her hair. “That exploding lipstick Howard gave you in
‘44 was pretty startling.”

“It was,” Peggy allowed, craning her neck and turning her face up to his. He leaned down to kiss
her. “But - mmm,” she added, when they came up for air, “Howard Stark inventing something that
explodes when it shouldn’t isn’t nearly so surprising as a man coming back from the future after
having been presumed dead for years, I’m afraid.”

“Hmm,” Steve agreed as Peggy tugged his lower lip between hers, turning fully around to loop her
arms around his neck. “Still feeling all right?” he added, elaborately casually, and she laughed
against his mouth.

“Are you angling for a very late dinner, Captain Rogers?”

“I’m not angling for anything!” he protested, his lips betraying him as they curved against hers,
into a smile that filled his voice and surged through her own body as a jolt of happiness. “I’m just
kissing my wife.”

She pressed closer into him. “That’s a pity, darling, because you certainly had me convinced.”

Steve’s hand slid downwards, and she made an involuntary, breathless noise. “Well, maybe I was
angling a little,” he admitted, and reached behind himself with his other hand to turn off the stove.
 Chapter 4

November 14, 1949

Peggy was having the sort of day she’d rather hoped to be over by this point in her pregnancy, the
sort of day where all she could think about was going home and crawling back into bed, ideally
managing not to see or smell anything even faintly resembling food along the way. Setting down
the file she was working on, she let her eyes close, resting her forehead in her hands just for a
moment. And then another moment.

“She free?” she heard a familiar, gruff voice asking Carol in the outer office, and she hastily raised
her head again, squaring her shoulders as Colonel Phillips appeared in her doorway.

A nearly imperceptible flicker of surprise quickly settled into a more familiar, exasperated look as
he regarded her. “Have you been here all night again, Carter? You need to learn to take breaks. I
haven’t seen you look this wiped out since right after - since the war ended.”

“It’s wonderful to see you too, sir,” said Peggy dryly. “You're looking well.”

Phillips' lips twitched slightly. “I’ve never been known for being polite. You know that better than
most.” He peered at her more closely, frowning. “You look like hell. Are you sick?”

She sighed. “Not exactly. Sir, would you mind shutting the door?”

Peggy knew, because she had quietly located the listening devices, that her office was bugged -
almost certainly by Hydra. She’d been strategically open about her habit of regularly sweeping her
home for listening devices, citing Dottie Underwood’s continued obsession with her life and
documented history of breaking into her living quarters. However, she’d been equally careful to
reassure whoever had wired her office that she hadn’t the slightest suspicion of the security of her
conversations there being compromised.

Achieving that whilst also trying to limit the amount of helpful information Hydra received from
her was a delicate balancing act that was certainly not doing anything to ease the constantly
unsettled state of her stomach. Still, it would all be worth it in the end - and she’d just been handed
an unexpected chance to let Phillips in on the situation considerably earlier than she’d thought
possible.

“I’ve not been feeling very well,” she admitted, once Phillips had closed the door and sat down in
the chair across from her desk. He peered at her in sudden, sharp concern, and she took a deep
breath. “But I'm not sick. I'm - it's just that I’m - I'm expecting a baby.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Really.”

“I am married,” she assured him, holding up her ring finger to show him, at the same time subtly
drawing his attention to the listening device hidden under a decorative fold of fabric in the pretty
shade of her desk lamp. “I'd been keeping it quiet, but I suppose I won't be able to, for much
longer.”

Phillips frowned at her, his eyes flicking to the pad of paper on her desk. She shook her head subtly
- pencil scratching could be picked up on a listening device of high enough quality. “I suppose it
really has been quite some time since I’ve seen you,” she continued brightly, instead. “Quite a lot
has happened, as you can see.” That much was true - Phillips was spending nearly all of his time in
New Jersey, opening the new, larger SHIELD base there that was meant to replace the old SSR
office in DC they were currently working out of. “What brings you here? How long are you
staying?”

Phillips was still giving her a very odd look, and she couldn’t help but be pleased that he not only
knew her well enough to be suspicious of everything she'd told him thus far, but also trusted her
enough to play along for now. “Meeting with senators,” he told her, with a sigh. “I couldn’t
delegate this one to you or Stark - it’s Robbins.” Peggy rolled her eyes. Senator Harry Robbins was
about 100 years old, refused to accept that a woman had any authority to negotiate on SHIELD’s
behalf, and unfortunately had control of a large block of votes in a very crucial subcommittee -
which was why, Peggy was fairly certain, Phillips hadn’t wanted to risk delegating this one to
Howard either.

“Well,” she said, “if you can give him the slip for long enough to join us for dinner, I’d love for
you to meet my husband while you're here.”

“Mmm,” said Phillips. He grunted. “Guess I should meet the man who’s taken my second in
command out of commission. He’s probably not good enough for you.”

Peggy suppressed a grin at the same time that she raised an eyebrow. “I’m not out of commission,
I’m perfectly able to do every part of my job that doesn’t involve risky fieldwork. And you’ve been
telling me for some time that I need to learn to delegate.”

Phillips nodded, his eyes narrowing, clearly on the fence about whether any part of what she had
just told him was real. “And after the baby comes?”

Peggy shrugged. “I’ll have to take a leave of absence for the actual birth, of course, but I certainly
won’t be the only working mother in the world. My husband is planning to stay home and care for
our children.”

Phillips’ eyebrows rose even farther. “Really. Huh.”

“Are you free for dinner tonight?” Peggy asked him. “Around seven?” He nodded, and she reached
for the phone. “Excellent, I’ll just telephone home and warn him to expect a guest.”

Steve answered on the third ring, and she smiled as always to hear his voice. “Hello darling. I'm
sorry for the rather short notice, but I'll be bringing someone home for dinner tonight.” It was, she
reflected, already quite useful to have a house husband, even without the baby to look after just yet.

“Oh,” said Steve, sounding a little surprised, although not surprised enough to say anything
incriminating over an unsecured line. “Ah, who is it?”

Peggy wound the coiled phone cord around her finger, then tugged it out. “My boss, Chester
Phillips. He’s unexpectedly come into town, and I’d like to introduce the two of you.”

“Oh, right, Chester,” said Steve, and Peggy fought a smile, imagining either she or Steve calling
Phillips “Chester” to his face. “You worked with him during the war, didn’t you? Sure. Do you
think he likes roast beef?”

Peggy swallowed against a sudden surge of nausea. “He almost certainly does, but it appears that
the baby decidedly does not.”

“Sorry,” said Steve, ruefully. “Okay, you go throw up, I’ll figure something out. Love you.”

“I love you too,” she told him, with a surge of affection. “And I might be able to avoid it this time,
I think. I’ll see you tonight, I’ve invited him for seven.”
She set the receiver down on its cradle, taking a slow breath and holding herself very still, and
Phillips regarded her for a long moment. “I came in here to talk to you about Zola,” he said finally,
once she'd relaxed very slightly. “We’re getting a lot of pressure to bring him into SHIELD,
especially from Senator Robbins and his subcommittee. It might come down to us losing a hell of a
lot of funding if we refuse.”

“He was the second in command of HYDRA,” Peggy said, immediately. “He needs to stay in
prison. If I had my way, he'd be buried in the Rat, or worse. You know perfectly well that Sergeant
Barnes can't possibly be the only prisoner he experimented on.”

Phillips nodded. “I know. I don’t like it either. But - the man’s a genius, and with things going like
they are with the Russians, we might need all the weapons we can get. They want me to build a lab
for him at Lehigh. Under guard at all times.”

“That is not acceptable. For God's sake, how can anyone- ” Peggy broke off, taking several deep
breaths, before realizing that it was futile - she was unquestionably going to be sick. “I’m sorry,”
she told Phillips, hastily. “I’ll be right back.”

In the bathroom, she rinsed out her mouth out and stared at her pale reflection in the mirror.
Appeasing Hydra for the time being or not, Zola wasn’t going to get away with anything this time,
not while she had anything to say about it. Especially not now, when the opportunity to bring
Phillips in on the endeavour had just jumped unexpectedly into their laps.

All she had to do, she thought ruefully, was survive the part of dinner involving food.

---

Peggy got home just before 6:00, Phillips having opted to make his own way over once he was
done with his business for the day. Steve kissed her at the door, then gently tugged her in and
closed it behind her. “What brings Phillips to town?” he asked immediately, taking her purse and
hat and hanging them on their hooks as she shrugged out of her coat, the top few buttons of which
were already noticeably too tight despite the fact that she was fairly certain she’d lost weight rather
than gaining it over the past three months.

“Meetings with Senator Robbins and his blasted subcommittee,” Peggy said, relieved not to smell
anything even faintly resembling roast beef wafting from the kitchen. “He popped by my office
this morning to discuss Zola - a discussion we'll certainly need to continue this evening - and I
seized the opportunity to get him here where we can talk freely. I'm not entirely certain he believed
anything I told him, but he was willing to play along once I showed him the bonus feature in my
desk lamp.” She grinned, hanging her coat on the hook. “Are you planning to call him Chester
when you’re introduced?”

Steve huffed out a laugh. “No. I’m still waiting for him to kill me for that kiss on Schmidt’s car, I
don’t need to get any further on his bad side.”

Peggy smiled. “Surprisingly, he actually had very little to say about that. Probably because of what
happened next,” she added quietly, reaching out to lace her fingers through his and squeeze them
tightly, her voice all at once rather choked.

Steve pulled her into his arms, anchoring her to the present, and himself too, a little, she thought.
“I’m here, Peg.”

“I know,” she said, taking a deep breath against his chest, taking in his smell, feeling the warm
solidity of his arms around her. She pushed at him gently. “Thank you. Now, let me go, I rather
desperately need the loo and then I’m going to take a quick nap. Wake me if I’m not up and about
with ten minutes to spare.”

---

Peggy, still a little groggy from her nap, answered the door when Phillips knocked promptly at
7:00, taking his hat and indicating where he could hang his coat and leave his shoes. “I need to tell
you something important,” she told him as soon as the door had been firmly shut behind him.

“You don't say," Phillips shot back, glancing around as she showed him into the sitting room -
Steve, by prior arrangement, still out of sight in the kitchen. “I trust your instincts, Carter, but I
would like to know what the hell is going on that you couldn’t tell me in your office. Not the least
of which is who the hell is listening in on you, and why the hell are you letting them?”

Peggy took a deep breath. “There's - a great deal, actually. You may want a drink.”

He frowned. “Spit it out, Carter.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose I’ll start with the good news. I believe you’ve already met my
husband.”

On cue, Steve stepped through the door from the kitchen. “Nice to see you, sir,” he said solemnly,
before the cheeky grin Peggy had first fallen for at Camp Lehigh fought its way out and rather
ruined the effect.

Phillips blinked at him, and then turned to Peggy. “I’ll take that drink,” he said. “Better make it a
double.”

---

In the end, Phillips took surprisingly little convincing. “If I learned anything in the war,” he told
them, “it was that there is no end to the shenanigans you two idiots are capable of getting up to.
Why not time travel?” He snorted. “And frankly, the only thing that surprises me about your
shotgun wedding is that it didn’t happen a lot sooner.”

Peggy glared at him. “It was not a shotgun wedding. We simply couldn’t get married until we had
Steve’s identity in order.”

“By which time he'd already gotten you in trouble,” countered Phillips.

Peggy felt her cheeks go a little warm, which was ridiculous, she told herself. She cleared her
throat. “Be that as it may, the situation is not particularly relevant to either rescuing Sergeant
Barnes or rooting out Hydra - aside from the unfortunate fact that it means I’ll be forced to sit out
most of the action.”

Phillips regarded her inscrutably for a moment. “Fair enough.” He set down his drink, a tiny twitch
to his lips. “I somehow get the feeling you two already have a plan.”

By the end of the evening they’d worked out most of the details. Phillips would grudgingly agree
to Senator Robbins’ demand that Zola be brought into SHIELD, on the condition that he stay in
prison until the secure lab was prepared - and then mire the construction of said lab in slightly
more red tape than was necessary, just enough so that it wouldn’t quite be ready by March when
the mission to rescue Bucky would take place.

Once Barnes was secure, the rest of them would move on Hydra’s embedded SHIELD personnel in
one fell swoop, without giving them time to recover from the loss of the Winter Soldier - nor to
suspect that anyone could possibly have had time to form any plans based on information they’d
received from him.

Based both on their experiences during the war and on Steve’s description of the day Hydra had
revealed themselves in the 21st century, nobody expected anyone associated with Hydra to quietly
allow themselves to be arrested, and so Peggy, much to her chagrin, would be spending the
operation safely locked away in one of Howard’s highly secure underground fallout shelters in the
company of the Jarvises. Once the initial arrests had been made, however, she would lead a very
thorough investigation into every remaining SHIELD agent - with a pause in late May to attend to
another, rather unavoidably important matter. Hydra, they all vowed, would not be allowed to take
root again, not in this timeline.

All that remained was to recruit the Howling Commandos.

 Chapter 5
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

December 23, 1949

By the Friday before Christmas Peggy was, to her great relief, feeling quite a lot better - which was
something she'd begun to privately worry would never actually happen, particularly after Angie
had helpfully informed her about a cousin who'd been violently ill at least twice a day until her
baby had actually been born.

She was still nauseated by an odd handful of things: the scent of her (formerly) signature perfume,
the taste of cinnamon - and most ridiculously of all, any serious contemplation of the Agatha
Christie novel she’d first attempted during the worst of the morning sickness. These were all fairly
easy to avoid, however, and the novelty of waking up most mornings feeling hungry and rested had
cheered her up immensely.

Although some clever tailoring by Ana Jarvis was enough to hide the situation at present, she was
also beginning to develop a rather telltale silhouette. Steve, the other morning, had absently
referred to it as her "baby bump", and then turned so adorably red when Peggy teased him about
his abysmal spy skills, as evidenced by his accidental use of slang from the future again, that she'd
been rather inexcusably late for work - a circumstance she could not bring herself to regret in the
slightest.

Now, nearing Dugan's family cabin with Steve beside her in the passenger seat, she reflected on
the fact that the Howling Commandos were considerably more observant than some of her co-
workers. Although she and Steve certainly intended to announce their news, it wasn't necessarily
the first piece of news Peggy was planning to share - but she supposed she'd simply have to adapt
as necessary.

This would be the first time since late 1945 that the full complement of Howling Commandos
Steve had originally recruited after Krausberg would be gathered together - barring Barnes, of
course, but Steve had had high hopes that he’d be able to join them for the next reunion. The
difficulty of that, of course, would depend greatly both on how far Hydra’s mental conditioning
had come and how well they would be able to counteract it, but they would simply have to cross
that bridge when they came to it.

Peggy wasn’t entirely certain what it said about them all, that nearly half a decade after VE Day
not a single one of them had yet settled so deeply into civilian life as to have responsibilities they
couldn’t abandon at Christmas. Then again she supposed, as they hit another dead spot in the
mountains and the car radio fizzled out again, she and Steve were to all intents and purposes rather
settled down now, weren’t they? By next Christmas they would have a seven month old baby.

It was an easy thing to forget somehow, despite having spent much of the past three months unable
to keep a thing down, despite now being able to reach down any time and run her hand over the
small but growing evidence of how close it all was to becoming a reality. Her pregnancy itself, she
supposed, had somehow become such an all-consuming hurdle, such an inconvenience to be
overcome, that it had begun to feel like an end in itself, rather than the beginning that it truly was.

She wasn’t, to be honest, at all certain that either she or Steve really knew how to settle down. And
yet they would be parents soon, utterly responsible for a tiny life that had nothing at all to do with
international espionage and a great deal to do with the quiet life she'd once wholeheartedly
rejected. Of course, it would be very different with Steve than it would have been with Fred, but it
was nonetheless a change for which she felt entirely unprepared.

There was a brief, crackling blast from the radio - a fragment of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” - and
then Steve, who’d been fiddling with the dial, lost the station again. Peggy, shaking herself out of
her reverie, smiled at him and hummed a line or two of the song. Steve huffed out a laugh.

“You know, a lot of people really hate that song in the future. It's - easy for them to misinterpret
what's going on.”

She blinked. “Really? Well, I wouldn't expect - ”

“Hold on, I think this is our turn,” Steve interrupted, peering at the map. “No, wait. Can you see a
sign anywhere?”

Peggy slowed the car to a stop. “Maybe? Behind that branch?” She pointed.

“One sec. I’ll get out and check,” said Steve, his hand making an aborted motion towards his left
hip before reaching for the door handle instead. A safety belt, he’d explained, when she’d asked
about his occasional attempts to reach for something that wasn’t there while getting in and out of
the car.

Peggy, blissfully unencumbered by such a contraption, leaned over to rummage through the glove
box. She’d never been been one to miss the opportunity for a snack, and now that her appetite had
finally returned she was constantly eating, having discovered the hard way that she also risked
sudden, catastrophic queasiness if she let herself get too hungry.

“You’re like a squirrel,” Howard had told her yesterday. “Walnuts cached away here, crackers
there, and then there was that chocolate chip cookie you wouldn’t share with me. How many
hidden pockets does that dress have ?”

She’d shrugged. “I’m sorry, Howard, I’m afraid that’s classified.”

Peggy’s sudden, intense passion for walnuts had both amused and nonplussed Steve. “But you hate
walnuts, don’t you?” he’d asked one evening last week, his eyebrows furrowing into the
ridiculously endearing wrinkle that always came out on his forehead when he was puzzling
something out. Peggy had shrugged, popping another handful into her mouth.

“Yes, well, I expect you’re the one to blame for our child’s questionable taste in snacks, Rogers.”
She’d raised an eyebrow at him, he’d raised one back and deliberately stolen a walnut, and
somehow one thing had led to another until they were both half dressed and utterly sated - and also
still in the kitchen, which was something Peggy supposed they might as well enjoy while they
were still the only two people living in the house.

Munching on a handful of walnuts now, she idly enjoyed the view as Steve peered behind the
offending branch and then reached up to brush off the enormous mound of snow that was weighing
it down, the branch immediately springing back up to reveal the road sign that had indeed been
hidden behind it. It was so very like him, Peggy thought, to take the extra time to remove the
obstacle for the next person, and it was also very like him to immediately see that there was a
simple way to fix the problem. The corners of her lips tugged upwards at the memory of watching
him pull the pins out of the flagpole at Camp Lehigh.

Good God, she was so ridiculously in love with him. And, despite her anxieties about settling
down to the domestic life so much sooner than either of them had expected, she loved their baby
too, with a fierceness that she couldn’t possibly explain. Last Christmas she never in a thousand
years would have expected any of this, and it all still felt so miraculous that she sometimes had to
reach over and touch Steve in the middle of the night to reassure herself that she hadn’t dreamed
the entire thing.

“You okay?” Steve asked cautiously when he slid back into the passenger seat to find her brushing
away tears.

“Perfectly all right,” she told him briskly, handing him the walnuts to return to the glove box. “Just
- pregnant.” Steve obediently put away the bag and then brought both hands up to cup her cheeks,
leaning over to kiss her, then stopping with a grin when she let out an uncharacteristic yelp.
“Crikey O’Reilly, Rogers! Your hands are like ice!”

“Sorry,” Steve said, not sounding sorry at all. He did, however, thoroughly make it up to her with
his warm lips, and they somehow managed to lose enough time that Peggy, straightening out her
coat and fixing her lipstick, made plans to claim, if challenged, that they’d missed their turn after
all and had to take quite a long detour to get back on the right route.

She didn’t expect anyone would believe them any more than they would have during the war.

---

Peggy had done the bulk of the driving on this trip, reading a map in a moving vehicle being
another thing she'd learned it was unwise for her to attempt these days, so it was an easy matter to
drop Steve off by the side of the road about a mile out from their destination. “Don’t get lost,” she
told him sternly, and he grinned at her.

“You know me, I always have my compass.”

Damn it, Rogers, she thought as she fumbled one-handed for the handkerchief in her pocket,
watching him slip into the forest. He was well aware that she cried at the drop of a hat these days.

Pregnancy was truly not, she reflected, for the faint at heart. And yet so many women did it, quietly
and pragmatically, taken entirely for granted as they were in so many of the things they were
expected to tacitly endure while maintaining the illusion that they were the weaker sex. She would,
she mused, very much like to see a man like Jack Thompson knock out an automat full of SSR
agents during a routine five days of constant secret bleeding, let alone keep working, essentially
undercover in his own organization, through what felt like a months-long clandestine stomach bug.

On the other hand, she was quite certain that Steve would do it without a second thought - the
small man who’d stubbornly fought his way into the army with a list of serious medical conditions
longer than his own arm and had never once forgotten who he was. And really, Peggy thought
fairly, so would the rest of the men she was here to see. Which was exactly why they were going to
win - against Hydra, against Bucky’s captors, against anything fate decided to throw their way.

And here she was at the final turn already, the sloped roof of Dugan’s family cabin visible just
through the trees. She took a final, steadying breath and squared her shoulders.

There was no chance, she was certain, in any timeline, that the Howling Commandos wouldn’t be
willing to help.

---

Dugan had, it seemed, recently inherited the cabin from a well-off uncle - or, partially inherited at
least, sharing ownership with several cousins. The setting was lovely, all snowy trees against a
clear blue sky, and the outside of the cabin was decked out in evergreen and holly boughs with a
few large red bows added for good measure. Peggy smiled to herself as she imagined Dugan,
bowler hat on head, up on the roof carefully placing each decoration, although perhaps it had been
one of his cousins who’d done it.

She’d clearly dropped Steve off none too soon, because she hadn’t even taken her bag out of the
boot of the car before Falsworth and Dernier pulled up behind her in the drive, hugging her with
such enthusiasm that she crossed her fingers the bulk of her coat would be sufficient to obscure the
evidence of the announcement she wasn’t quite ready to make.

Thankfully, it seemed that it was, and they gathered their bags and made their way to the front
porch together to be greeted at the door by the even more exuberant trio of Dugan, Morita, and
Jones, all holding drinks and looking suitably merry. Peggy was careful to get this second round of
hugging out of the way before she took her outer things off, unobtrusively adjusting her blouse and
the open cardigan she wore over it as she moved further inside. She was suddenly having a great
deal of trouble keeping a straight face in anticipation.

“Drinks are in the kitchen,” Dugan told the newcomers, gesturing them in. Peggy stepped aside to
let the others go by, holding a finger to her lips as she reached out with her other hand to grasp
Dugan’s elbow, keeping him where he was. He watched, instantly alert, as she reached quietly into
her purse for the detector Howard had designed. Steve did love to make dramatic entrances, but
this was the real reason she hadn’t brought him in with her from the start.

“Speaking of the kitchen,” she asked Dugan cheerfully, “may I have the tour?”

Dugan nodded, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side as he took in the device in her hand. “Sure.
Not much to the place, won’t take long.” He dutifully showed her the kitchen, the sitting room
(where she got several interested looks, and quietly gestured for everyone to keep talking as usual),
and the sole bedroom. “Figured it was about time for you to get some benefit from being the only
girl,” he told her with a grin. “The rest of us'll bed down in the living room, which is still a hell of a
lot more comfortable than most of the places we’ve slept in together.”

Howard’s device showed nothing in the way of listening devices, not even when Peggy stepped out
onto both the front and back porches to be absolutely certain. “What’s up?” Dugan asked her
finally, as she slipped the detector back into her bag.

Peggy shrugged. “Perils of my job. I can explain later, but we’ve got the whole weekend, we
should certainly get caught up on everything else first.” She poked him. “Speaking of, what’s this I
hear from Mr. Jarvis about you going on a double date with Howard last spring? What on earth
were you thinking, you idiot?”

“Look, he introduced me to the bikini,” Dugan said. “And then he wondered if I wanted to go out
with one of the girls who was wearing one in his pool. What the hell was I supposed to do?” He
made a gesture that indicated it had clearly been out of his hands. “So, whiskey still your drink?”

At times Peggy fervently wished Steve hadn’t brought back that particular bit of inconvenient
medical knowledge from the future, but if wishes were horses she'd have a rather large stable at
this point. “Just water for now, thanks.” Dugan gave her a very odd look but poured the water with
a shrug.

Glasses in hand, they joined the others in the sitting room, where they all sat for a moment,
grinning at each other like fools. Even without Steve, it truly had been far, far too long.
Morita and Dugan were both working for SHIELD now, Dugan in New York and Morita at the
brand new base in Nevada - having managed, with Peggy’s collusion, to swing a paid trip to the
East Coast just in time for the reunion. Jones was a student again, back to school on the GI bill for
the past several years. He'd driven up yesterday after his last exam, collecting Morita from his
hotel along the way. Falsworth and Dernier, now living in England and France respectively, had
met up in London and flown together to New York, a journey that was now, astonishingly, only 19
hours long on a Pan Am Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. “It was a hell of a lot more comfortable than
one of Stark’s experimental numbers, too,” Monty told them. “And only three refueling stops, for a
machine that size.” Morita whistled, and Peggy thought of Steve’s stories of routinely flying
around the world in a SHIELD Quinjet at twice the speed of sound - not to mention the time he’d
flown to an entirely different planet, which had likely been rather faster.

“Good thing Monty’s almost as rich as Stark, or you would have had to come by sea,” said Dugan,
and Falsworth laughed, reaching for one of the assorted biscuits Dugan had laid out on the side
table.

“I’m willing to admit that I was born with a bit of a silver spoon in my mouth, but I’m certainly not
anywhere near as rich as Stark.”

Dernier raised his glass. “Well, you use your advantages well, my friend.” He smiled at the room
in general. “To generous companions.”

They all toasted to that. Peggy checked her watch to confirm that Steve had been afforded plenty of
time to make his way to the cabin, then set down her water and cleared her throat. “It’s so lovely to
see you all,” she began.

“Aww, do you really think so, Peg?” asked Dugan, preening. “Got my hair cut, guess it paid off.”
Everyone laughed at that, Dugan still seldom being seen without his signature bowler hat.

Jones shook his head. “Yeah, if he’s starting to look good, you might need to put that drink down,”
he told Peggy gravely. Only Dugan, she supposed, knew that she hadn't simply switched her
favourite drink to straight gin. She sighed elaborately, to more laughter.

“Setting aside your radiant good looks, or lack thereof,” she told them all, once it was quiet again,
“I actually do have some rather important news.”

Nobody looked at all surprised. “I imagine it has something to do with you scanning the place top
to bottom when you first arrived?” asked Falsworth, voicing what Peggy was fairly certain they
were all thinking.

“It does,” she confirmed, taking a breath. “I have - I have a great deal of news, actually, and it’s
certainly not all good. But - ” she found herself entirely unable to stop herself from smiling, “the
first bit is wonderful. I’ve brought one more guest. I realize he wasn’t invited, but I think I’ll be
forgiven for bringing him along anyway.”

There was a moment of confused silence, during which several sets of eyes turned interestedly
toward her luggage.

“A grown man couldn’t possibly fit into my bag,” she told them, rolling her eyes. She grinned
suddenly. “Well, I suppose this one might have been able to, at one point. But certainly not now. At
any rate, he’s outside. Or, I hope he is.” She got up and went to open the front door. “Darling?”

Steve appeared immediately among the trees at the edge of the garden, making her laugh. “Always
so dramatic,” she teased as he reached the doorstep. He grinned, gave a little half-shrug, and pulled
 her unexpectedly out onto the porch to kiss her, just out of view of the men in the sitting room.

“You’re enjoying springing this on them just as much as I am, and you know it,” he told her.

“Touché,” she admitted, then stepped aside so that the others could see who was at the door.

There was, as she’d expected, instant pandemonium.

“ Cap? ”

“Shit, did Stark actually manage to - ”

“ How long have you been back? ”

“Carter, you're such an ass! I can’t believe you say anything!”

“By the way,” added Dugan casually, “don’t think we didn’t notice you two smooching out on the
porch just now.” He cleared his throat and smirked at them each in turn. “Darling.”

Peggy studiously ignored him, and raised her voice to be heard above the din. “First of all,” she
told them all, “the fact he’s here at all is highly classified. So classified, in fact, that you gentlemen
are the only ones in the world who know, aside from Howard Stark, Howard’s butler Edwin Jarvis
and his wife Ana, and Colonel Phillips. And Steve and myself, of course.”

There was a puzzled silence. “That’s a bit too classified,” Morita said, slowly. “Cap, if you were
rescued from the ice, there must have been a team. Stark couldn’t possibly have - ”

Steve nodded. “You’re right, he couldn’t. But - the team that rescued me is - well, they haven’t
been born yet. Some of their parents probably haven’t been born yet.”

Everyone blinked at him.

“Yeah, I think we might need more bourbon,” said Dugan, heading for the kitchen.

Chapter End Notes

Peggy feeling queasy just thinking about reading a particular (otherwise innocuous)
book that she read at the height of morning sickness may sound a little over the top,
but it comes directly from personal experience.

In other news, the sometimes-controversial song "Baby It's Cold Outside" makes a
brief appearance in this chapter. I absolutely agree with my Secret Santa recipient
3Pirouette that some key cultural cues have shifted considerably since it was written
nearly 80 years ago, and what it sounds like is going on to the modern ear is not, in
fact, at all what the song was originally intended to imply. Here's an interesting tumblr
post about it. (By the way, 3Pirouette is writing an excellent White Christmas AU
where it also features! You should check it out!)
 Chapter 6
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

The Howling Commandos took the news of Steve’s time travel remarkably well. “I guess spending
half the war dodging blasts of blue light that could obliterate a whole tank, alongside a man who
can - well, who can do everything Cap can do, might make a fellow a bit more likely to believe that
some of the science fiction Barnes was always talking about wasn’t necessarily so far-fetched,”
said Jones, and the others nodded.

Steve let out a breath. “So you believe me.”

“Well, you’ve sounded crazier in the past, and we followed you then,” said Dugan. “And we all
know Carter’s got a soft spot for you a mile wide, but she’s no fool - if she believes you, I believe
she’s exercised her due diligence.” The others nodded at that, too, and Peggy felt a pleased flush of
warmth in her chest.

“I don't think anyone would complain if you proved it to us by telling us who to bet on at next
year’s World Series, though,” said Morita.

Steve looked pained. “I could, but I’m really not comfortable telling anyone to bet on the
Yankees.”

There was laughter at that. “Yep, that’s Cap all right,” said Jones. “Well, I don’t hate the Yankees
enough not to take a shot on that.” He turned to Steve. “They're really going to win two in a row?”

Steve sighed. “More than two in a row. Unless we’ve changed the timeline enough to stop them by
then.” He looked slightly cheered by the prospect, although Peggy privately doubted quashing
Hydra would have much effect on major league baseball.

The room was enveloped, for a time, by a comfortable, thoughtful silence. “So, what’s the bad
news?” Falsworth asked, finally.

Steve glanced at Peggy. She nodded back at him. “Well, there’s a lot,” he said. “But it’s not all
bad. So what I’d like to start with is that Bucky - ” he took a deep breath. “Sergeant Barnes is still
alive. And we’re going to rescue him.”

---

The Howling Commandos had always been a practical lot, and they moved quickly through their
initial shock, relief, and anger at the news, directing their distress into the nuts and bolts of
planning for action just as they always had during the war. Although most of them were no longer
actively working for SHIELD, every one of them embraced the basic plan Peggy and Steve had
worked out with Phillips - although of course, they all had suggestions for improvement. “Pinky
and Happy Sam’ll be in for sure,” said Dugan, and Peggy rather thought they would, despite the
fact that neither had officially been seconded to the team until after the crash of the Valkyrie.

The more immediate bad news, as far as Peggy was concerned, was the lack of indoor plumbing in
the cabin. There were, thankfully, both a water pump and a well-maintained privy out back, and
she’d certainly endured far worse during the war. Still, she hadn’t been pregnant then, and she
didn’t particularly relish the thought of trudging back and forth through the snow several times a
night. It was ridiculous, really - the baby couldn’t possibly be big enough yet to put any sort of
significant pressure on her bladder, and yet, somehow, here she was.

At least, she thought as she washed her hands in freezing cold water from the pump halfway
between the privy and the house, she was largely past the morning sickness stage. That would have
been considerably more awkward to navigate.

Everything felt very cozy and festive inside the cabin, particularly after having come in from the
cold outside. The blue skies of earlier in the day had disappeared some time ago, making way for a
pink-hued whiteness decorated with large flakes of early evening snow, a lovely backdrop to the
warmth in the kitchen. Dugan, sporting a ridiculous apron embroidered with a large gingerbread
man grinning out from under the caption “Call Me Cookie”, was humming Christmas carols as he
grilled up an enormous pan of pork chops on the wood stove, simultaneously producing a side of
potatoes and another of carrots with an ease that made Peggy blink.

It wasn’t really fair, she supposed as they dug in to the meal, crowded cheerfully elbow-to-elbow
around the large wooden table in the kitchen, to judge a man’s cooking by what he could produce
with military rations over a fire. “This is delicious,” she told Dugan, her mouth full, and he
grinned.

“Old family recipe. There’s pie for dessert too. It’s apple, but I guess you non-Americans can have
a piece.”

Dernier looked interested. “You baked it?”

“Yep,” said Dugan cheerily. Although several people made a show of suspicion before they tried it,
their expressions as they bit into it indicated that it was, in fact, fantastic, and Peggy shook her
head with great reluctance when Dugan asked again if she was sure she didn’t want any.

“I’m afraid I’ve stuffed myself with the main course,” she said ruefully. “Perhaps if there’s a piece
left later on I’ll have a midnight snack.” Steve, perfectly aware both of how much she loved pie
and of why she wasn’t taking a piece, squeezed her knee sympathetically under the table.

Well at least, she thought, Dugan hadn’t seasoned the pork chops with cinnamon too. What a
ridiculous thing for her baby to hate.

---

They all retired to the sitting room again after dinner, most of them with warm mugs of tea or
coffee, several - although not Peggy's, sadly - fortified with bourbon. Peggy settled into the sofa,
her feet curled beneath her, the warm bulk of Steve beside her on the next cushion, and felt, for the
moment, utterly content. “So,” said Dugan, indicating the two of them with his chin. “You two still
pretending you're not a thing? If so, you might want to stop kissing where you think we can't see
you.”

Peggy smiled. “Ah, yes.” She reached into one of the hidden pockets in her cardigan and came out
with their wedding rings, handing Steve his, slipping hers on, and then holding out her hand to
show them. “Well, we are still pretending I'm not married to Steve Rogers.”

There was an immediate, indignant outcry at that - aimed, it seemed, at the outrageous fact that,
after all the longing looks and ridiculously flimsy excuses to spend time together that the Howling
Commandos had been forced to endure during the war, the offenders had then had the nerve to go
off and make it official without them. “At the very least,” said Morita, clearly speaking for
everyone, “after all that, we deserved a piece of wedding cake and a stiff drink.”
“You did,” Peggy agreed immediately. “It’s just that - we’re trying very hard to keep Steve’s return
well under Hydra’s radar, and none of you are actually meant to have met my husband before
today. We didn’t want to - ”

Dugan looked genuinely hurt. “We would have come to your wedding for you, Peg, no matter who
the hell you were marrying. Anyone who thought that was suspicious would have been an idiot.
You’re one of us. Always have been, and always will be.” The others nodded.

“Yes, I know,” said Peggy, a glow of warm affection for them all suddenly threatening to blossom
into tears, “I didn’t mean - ” She took a steadying breath. “I’m afraid there simply wasn’t a great
deal of time. We eloped, you know, the moment we had Steve’s false identity sorted out.”

Dernier gave her a sudden, comprehending look.

She felt herself flush. “I won’t be coming along to Russia in March.”

“Right,” said Falsworth. “You’d said. Someone needs to mind the wheel back at SHIELD. But
what - ”

Peggy was certain she was nearly as red as Steve was. “That’s one of the reasons, yes. But - the
other is that, ah - ” she set down her tea and stood up, pushing aside her cardigan and then pulling
her looser-than-it-looked blouse tightly against her lower abdomen. It was a rather indecorous way
to announce a pregnancy, she supposed, but then the Howling Commandos had all already seen a
great deal more of her than this, at one time or another during the war.

In 1944, when she'd taken two shots to her shoulder just outside Voronava in Belarus, Morita had
been forced to cut off the top half of her uniform entirely, modesty taking a backseat to the urgent
need for first aid. The others had, refreshingly, all been perfectly matter-of-fact about it. But
despite the fact that none of them had openly given her body the once-over then, they were all
frankly staring at her now, mouths hanging open like a particularly astounded group of codfish -
aside from Dernier, who was grinning widely.

“Surely,” Peggy told them, her matter-of-fact tone belying her increasingly warm cheeks, “you’ve
all seen a pregnant woman before.”

Dugan was the first to recover. “Sure we have. But not you, Carter.” He got up to envelop her in a
sudden hug, somewhat more carefully but no less warmly than he had when she’d first arrived.
“Okay, fine, I guess you’re both forgiven for not inviting us to your shotgun wedding.” He moved
over to pull Steve into a congratulatory bear hug as well, thumping his back in that way that large
men often did when embracing one another.

“It was not a shotgun wedding! Why do you Americans all insist upon using that ridiculous term?”

Morita shrugged eloquently. “Why do you English insist upon calling a sweater a jumper?”

“It was technically a shotgun wedding,” admitted Steve, and Peggy glared at him, a little more
sharply irritated than she wanted to admit. She was trying, with mixed success, to err on the side of
assuming that her wilder mood swings were not entirely her own just now, but it wasn't always
easy. Steve leaned over and kissed her forehead. “But not in spirit.” he told her. “I probably would
have married you at Camp Lehigh, if you’d asked.”

“When, in 1970?” she shot back, although she did, she had to admit, feel somewhat mollified.

---
 Once everyone had finally finished toasting the impending arrival (“Not so very impending,”
Peggy had protested, several times. “Not until May!”), Falsworth yawned widely. “Any more
surprises before I turn in? It's been a rather long day, and I'm very much afraid that I may be
getting old.”

Peggy yawned too. It was contagious, she thought - although the truth was that she was currently
entirely unable to keep the hours she normally could, despite the fact that her constant exhaustion
had lifted quite considerably.

There was a short silence. “Christmas Eve tomorrow,” offered Morita.

“Yeah, I don’t think even Santa Claus crash landing onto the roof could possibly surprise me as
much as Peggy managing to hide that belly all afternoon,” said Dugan. He grinned at her. “And
that huge bag of walnuts. How the hell many pockets does that sweater have?”

Peggy smirked at him - although she had to admit that she owed a great deal more to Ana’s clever
tailoring than to her own ingenuity, in this case. “I realize it's been some time since we last worked
together, but have you entirely forgotten what an accomplished spy I am?”

---

It was still snowing at 2:00 in the morning, which Peggy knew because she had checked her watch
before venturing outside on her trek to the privy. When she slid back into bed she immediately
buried her cold hands inside Steve’s pajama shirt, eliciting a surprised yelp. “Hey, no getting frisky
in there!” called out Dugan drowsily from the sitting room where most of the cabin’s occupants
were sleeping.

“None of your business,” Peggy called back succinctly, and Dugan snorted. There was a short
silence and then his distinctive snoring started up again. Even now, four years after the war, they
were all, she thought, still trained to wake up and sleep again at a moment’s notice, grabbing what
rest they could whenever it was available.

Steve had obligingly wrapped himself around her as she talked. “You’re freezing,” he said now,
into her ear. “You’re usually so warm lately.”

“Yes, I’d noticed,” she said drily, burrowing a little more closely into his chest. “Well, if I have to
brave a blizzard in the middle of the night because of your baby’s unfortunate effect on my
bladder, you are not allowed to complain about icy hands. Or any other icy body parts.”

She could feel him smile against her hair. “I wasn’t complaining. You just startled me.” He slid his
hand inside her pajama top, splaying his warm fingers across her back.

Peggy yawned. “The coldest part is just a little lower.” Steve huffed out a laugh and moved his
hand down inside her pajama bottoms to cover her icy-cold rear end, warmth immediately seeping
into her. She gave a shivering, contented sigh, already half asleep.

“I’m not trying to start anything,” Steve rumbled against her cheek, in a tone that hinted he might
be rather easily convinced to do so.

“Mmmm,” she managed, and then knew nothing until her bladder woke her again at 5:30.

Chapter End Notes

The Yankees did, indeed win the 1950 World Series (and the 1949 World Series as
well, when they beat the Dodgers to win. And also 1951, 1952, and 1953. Welcome
back, Steve! )
 Chapter 7
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

December 24, 1949

“That’s a lot of snow,” said Morita, as Peggy returned from her 9:00 am pilgrimage to find
everyone awake and sitting up in their bedrolls, with the exception of Steve, who was puttering
around in the kitchen, and Morita, who was bundled up in his coat about to venture outside.

“It is,” she agreed. The path she’d worn through the snow had been gone each time she’d
awakened, and the high tide mark was well above her knees now. It had stopped snowing, the
white-covered tree branches lovely and sparkling in the morning sunlight, but it wouldn't be
possible to drive any of the cars even as far as the unplowed road without a considerable amount of
work. But that was a problem for later. Nobody here had anywhere else to be today, and it was
rather lovely to know that she was almost entirely unreachable.

Dugan whistled, coming up to stand beside her and look out the door. “Well, at least we all got to
sleep inside, and we don’t have to be out tramping around in the snow all day looking for Hydra.”
He grinned. “Wouldn’t mind looking for a Christmas tree, though. I’ve got a whole shed full of
snowshoes out back.”

“We do need a tree,” said Steve, making a brief foray the doorway to hand Peggy a piece of toast,
which she took gratefully, her sudden overwhelming hunger at the smell of frying bacon almost at
the point of tipping over into nausea. “But - we should also do some strategizing about Hydra at
some point today, while we have the chance.”

“You know, I hate to be the one to say it, but your mysterious new husband’s a bit of a wet
blanket,” Dugan told Peggy as she took a bite of toast. They shared a grin as Steve, on his way
back to the kitchen, cheerfully made a gesture that was entirely unbefitting of Captain America.

“We really should pick out a tree first, though,” said Morita, and Peggy nodded. After all, they
couldn't rescue Bucky until March, but Father Christmas was set to come tonight.

---

“One would think,” said Peggy, her breath swirling around her in the cold air, “that we’d all have
got enough of this sort of thing during the war.” There was something wonderful, though, about
tramping around in the woods with the Howling Commandos again, something that almost let her
forget the fact that she was off field duty until summer at the soonest and all the secret anxieties
that went along with it. She felt her shoulders loosen a little at the smell of pine and the feel of the
silent blanket of snow over the world, the view nothing but trees and snow.

Dugan half-turned on his snowshoes to grin at her. “Well, this time we have a lot less chance of
being ambushed, and almost no chance of having to listen to Cap snoring six inches from our heads
all night.” He smirked. “Oh, wait.”

Peggy shrugged, unruffled. “There are compensations.” She heard Jones laughing behind her.

“Also, I don’t snore,” said Steve. “Must be thinking of yourself, Dum Dum.”

Peggy and Falsworth both snorted at that. “To be fair,” said Falsworth “Dum Dum is worse. I’m
surprised he didn’t bring Hydra down on our heads more than once.”

“Over here!” Morita interrupted their bickering from a little way ahead, and they hurried to catch
up. “Look at this! It's like - like a painting,” he told them. “or - ” he trailed off, apparently at an
uncharacteristic loss for words.

There was a profound, impressed, silence. “It’s pretty big, though,” said Jones, finally. “I don’t
think it'll even fit through the door.”

“No,” said Dugan, firmly. “It’s exactly what we need.”

Peggy tilted her head. “It's a lovely tree, but it seems rather impractical.”

Dugan grinned. “Impractical is our specialty, you know that, Peg.”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “Never let it be said that it was I who backed down from a challenge.”

---

The tree, as predicted, was far too large for the sitting room. Peggy had suggested setting it up
outside, but the others - who after all, had to sleep with the thing - were adamant that it could be
crammed in somehow. She’d shrugged, left them to it, and retired to the bedroom to take a nap.

“Peggy.” Steve’s hand was on her shoulder. “You want lunch?”

She blinked up at him groggily. “What time is it?”

“Just after one,” he said, sitting down beside her on the bed. “The tree’s up in the living room, and
most of the guys are still speaking to each other. Just - don’t ask Monty why he’s limping.”

“Oh, I'm quite certain someone or other will take it upon himself to fill me in,” she said, and they
shared a grin. She yawned. “Has Dugan hung the mistletoe, as threatened?”

Steve sighed. “Yes.”

Peggy reached up and tugged his shirt to bring his face down to hers. “Maybe we should put some
over the bed.”

“He specifically told me I wasn’t allowed to,” said Steve against her lips, and Peggy laughed.

“Well, if he thinks we need mistletoe to get ourselves into trouble, he’s sadly mistaken.”

Their leisurely kiss was interrupted almost immediately by a loud knock on the door. “Cap, you’ve
been in there too long. I said no mistletoe!”

“Too late,” called Peggy sweetly, and Steve grinned, standing up.

“I’ll go reassure them that at least one of us is fully dressed.”

Peggy regarded him through her eyelashes. "You know, I'm not at all certain that will actually
reassure them."

---

The afternoon was spent lazily stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree while going over their
intel on Bucky and Hydra, carefully refining their plan of attack. Once they’d gone over everything
at least three times from every angle and had lapsed into a comfortable silence, Falsworth started
humming Jingle Bells, Jones joined in, and their strategy session shifted seamlessly into Christmas
carolling. It was snowing again, the cabin cozy with the crackling of the wood stove and the
familiar voices of the Howling Commandos. They'd sung together like this in countless pubs
during the war, and Peggy rested her head on Steve’s shoulder for just a moment, listening to them.
He kissed the top of her head and slid his arm around her, something it still felt a little odd to be
doing without being teased mercilessly by the others.

“What do you guys think of that new one by Gene Autry?” Dugan asked, in a lull between carols.
“The one about the reindeer with the red nose? Must have heard it at least ten times on the way up
here.”

“Aside from the fact that I can hardly turn on the radio without hearing it?” asked Morita. “It’s all
right. My little niece and nephew love it.” He nodded at Peggy and Steve. “Which means I’ve
already got it memorized, so I’ll be all set to sing it for your kid next Christmas.”

“I - don’t really like it,” admitted Steve.

“You don’t like what, Morita’s singing?” asked Dugan. “Yeah, can’t say I blame you.”

Steve shook his head. “No, the song. It was still popular in the future at Christmas, and there was a
movie that everyone felt nostalgic about from when they were kids, and - I don’t know. I guess
maybe I just identify a bit too much with Rudolph.”

“Huh,” said Dugan, clearly running through the song in his mind. “Yeah, I guess I can kind of see
it.” Peggy yawned and let her head droop down onto Steve’s shoulder again, snuggling in a little
more closely under his arm. The Steve Rogers she’d known during the war, she thought rather
drowsily, would never have admitted to feeling that way, not after he'd finally been allowed to join
in the fight - another mark his time in the future had left on him.

At his core though, he was still the small man who’d shared a delighted smirk with her his first
morning at Camp Lehigh after she’d taken down that fatheaded bully Private Hodge with a right
hook to the jaw. She’d liked Private Rogers immediately, then come to love him, then mourned
him deeply and tried very hard to move on with her life. And now, against all odds, they were
married and expecting a child, and she was so utterly comfortable against his shoulder that she
thought, all at once, that maybe a quiet life wouldn’t be so bad, if it was with him. Although,
perhaps it was the very rarity of a day like this that made it so wonderful.

“I quite like that Sleigh Ride song,” said Falsworth, humming a few bars, and Dernier made a
sound of agreement. Peggy allowed herself to drift, utterly relaxed, until she was roused by a
sudden, alarming level of mischief in Dugan's voice.

“Carter asleep? Now’s our chance!” She opened one precautionary eye, but Dugan wasn’t moving
any closer, just sitting up a little straighter. He cleared his throat grandly. “On the first day of
Christmas, my true love gave to me - ”

“No,” said Peggy, firmly, sitting up. “I will punch you. And, as you'll have to be rather careful
fighting back for the baby's sake, I don’t much like your odds of defending yourself.”

Dugan grinned. “Fine. Just checking if you were awake.”

“I am now,” she said tartly, then stood up and headed for the door to put on her coat and boots.

“Wait, where are you going?” he asked. “I'm not really going to sing it.”
She sighed. “Where do you think?”

---

“Do you think we have enough of these yet?” Morita was asking when Peggy returned from her
trip to the privy. As she hung up her coat and took off her boots, she examined the pile of
completed decorations thoughtfully. There were quite a lot of them, but then the tree was rather
enormous.

“This tree has a hell of a lot of branches,” said Jones, and there was certainly no arguing with that -
it took up a good quarter of the sitting room. Peggy wasn’t, in fact, entirely certain where everyone
was going to sleep, although she supposed they’d all crammed into smaller spaces more than once
during the war.

“I’m already up,” she said, “so I'll start in on the decorating while I'm here.” Dernier got up too,
and the two of them began winding the strings of popcorn and cranberries over the branches. It did
look rather cheery, although quite different from the antique family heirlooms that had always been
hung on the tree during her childhood.

She startled as the tree seemed to shift a little to the barest touch of her hand on one of the
branches. “Did you just move the tree?” she asked Dernier. “It isn’t going to fall over, is it?”

Dernier poked his head around from the other side. “I pulled down that branch up there and then I
let it go again.” As Peggy circled around the tree to look, he indicated a branch near the ceiling
which was now festooned with one end of a popcorn chain, the other end still held in his hand.

Peggy nodded. That had probably been it, and it was hard to see how the tree could possibly fall
down when it was jammed so tightly against the ceiling. Still - she was glad she and Steve weren’t
going to be sleeping in the sitting room right next to the thing.

---

Christmas Eve dinner was meat loaf - like Dugan's pork chops the night before, surprisingly
delicious and served with a side of potatoes. “I truly hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this,”
said Peggy, as they all dug in with gusto.

Morita looked affronted. “He’s made you this meat loaf before? What the hell, Dum Dum. Have
you been holding out on us?”

“Not the meat loaf, you ape, the company,” said Peggy, kicking him in the ankle. “Although - the
meat loaf is fantastic.” She tilted her head in Dugan’s direction. “When did you learn to cook?”

He shrugged. “Spent a lot of time in my uncle’s diner when I was a kid.”

“Wait,” said Jones. “You could cook like this during the war? You burnt the coffee once. ”

Dugan shrugged again. “I can cook pork chops, meat loaf, and pancakes. And bake a pie. Guess I
could probably grill a steak in a pinch. Never bothered to learn how to cook anything else.” He
grinned. “Although, I figured tomorrow might be a great time to learn to roast a turkey. Hope
you're all feeling lucky.”

Falsworth threw a napkin at him. “So,” he said, glancing at the window where snow had started to
fall again. “Any bets on the odds we’ll be snowed in by Boxing Day and have to eat canned beans
for a week?”
 “I sure hope not,” said Jones. “I have big plans for New Year’s Eve.” All eyes turned to him, and
he shrugged, a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “What? Maybe Cap and Carter
aren’t the only ones ready to settle down a bit.”

Jones, it turned out, was planning to propose to his girl as the year turned over to 1950, a
marvelous development that diverted everyone’s attention well into dessert. “She’ll say yes,” Steve
told him confidently, and Jones grinned.

“Sure hope so.”

Peggy gave Steve a look, when she thought nobody was looking, and he caught it and shrugged a
bit sheepishly. Well, she supposed his advance knowledge of such things would grow less and less
reliable the more they changed the timeline. Which - was rather reassuring actually, when it came
down to it.

Chapter End Notes

The song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by Johnny Marks, but it was
popularized by Gene Autry whose recording of it hit No. 1 on the Billboard pop
singles chart the week this story takes place.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" also makes its appearance here for 3Pirouette, who
likes it about as much as Peggy does.
 Chapter 8
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

“Want me to come with you?” asked Steve, his voice rough with sleep, as Peggy quietly slipped
out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness.

She gave him an odd look that she herself wouldn't have been able to make out in the dim light, but
she expected he could see perfectly well. “I don’t need an escort to the privy, Rogers.”

“I know,” he said, “but I feel bad about staying in the warm bed while you freeze out there.
Especially on Christmas Eve.”

She leaned over the bed to kiss him. “It wouldn’t do any good for you to get cold too. I need you to
warm me up when I get back.”

Steve grinned as she made her way to the door. “Can do.” He paused for a moment. “So just out of
curiosity, how quiet do you think you can be?” Peggy stuck out her tongue at him and quietly
opened the bedroom door, contentedly aware of his gaze lingering on her bottom as she left.

She picked her way carefully across the sitting room, which was considerably more difficult to do
now that the sleepers were more crammed together to make room for the enormous tree. All at
once, something shot across the floor and scurried right over her foot, and she yelped in surprise.

There was instant pandemonium. The Howling Commandos, instincts still honed by the war,
woke, to a man, alert and ready to fight whatever threat had caused Peggy to sound the alarm.
Steve, who’d already been awake but had - perhaps wisely - taken the time to throw on the pajama
trousers he never actually slept in, appeared shortly thereafter in the doorway to the bedroom,
blinking in the brightness of the torch Dugan had turned on. “Peggy?”

“I - I’m sorry,” she told them all, blinking. “Something just - ran over my foot.” She felt her cheeks
growing warm. Bloody Nora, out of the field for only a few months and she was already rusty
enough to allow herself to be audibly startled by a rodent.

“A mouse?” asked Dugan, practically.

Peggy frowned. “It seemed a little larger than that.”

“A rat?” Dernier shuddered. He had a well-known hatred for rats.

“No,” said Peggy, slowly. “I - I think it was a squirrel.”

They all blinked at her. “You must have let it in just now,” said Dugan, finally, gesturing at the
front door.

Peggy shook her head. “I couldn't have, I haven’t been out yet.” She made her way to the door and
started to tug on her boots. “Speaking of which, I’ll be back in a moment. Excuse me.”

When she returned, the group was looking disheveled but triumphant. “Herr Squirrel has been
evicted,” reported Morita. “Looks like he nibbled on the edges of a few books and marked his
territory on Dum Dum’s spare socks, but that seems to be all. We were lucky.”
Dugan looked less than impressed. “Easy to say when they’re not your socks.”

“It probably got in the first time you went out,” Steve told Peggy, and she glared at him.

“Do you think I wouldn’t notice a squirrel following me inside? It probably came in when
everyone was getting ready for bed.”

“Well,” said Dugan, “to be fair, you didn’t notice it just now until it actually ran over your foot, did
you?”

Peggy narrowed her eyes at him. “It is four o’clock in the morning,” she said, her temper flaring all
at once. “The squirrel is outside now, and I’m not in the mood to fight about where it came from.
I’m sorry for waking you all. Good night.”

“Did you happen to see Santa while you were out there?” asked Jones, a bit ill-advisedly, as she
stalked past him into the bedroom.

“I did not. Because clearly he’s already been, and left us a squirrel,” Peggy shot back, feeling
unfairly deprived of the satisfaction of slamming the door by the fact that Steve was following
closely behind. Knowing perfectly well that the baby’s influence was almost certainly amplifying
her emotions didn’t, as it turned out, actually make her any less annoyed.

Neither she nor Steve said a word as they settled back into bed, the room dimly lit by the faint pink
glow of the snowy sky. “You don’t seem like you need to be warmed up,” he ventured, finally.

“No,” she agreed, glaring at him.

Their eyes met and held. Why, she thought, must he insist upon sleeping bare-chested even in the
dead of winter? It wasn’t at all sportsmanlike. All she wanted to do was surge forward and kiss him
angrily.

“The bed creaks,” she told him, instead. “And you know they’re all still awake out there.”

“I know,” said Steve. “But on the other hand, we’re newlyweds - and,” he added reasonably, “it's
not like they don’t know for sure we’ve already done it at least once.”

Peggy laughed at that, the worst of her anger draining away. “Fair point. But I’d rather not give
them any more ammunition than they already have.” She eyed him, “And I’m afraid that I’m still
far too annoyed to be particularly quiet. It wouldn't just be the bedsprings that gave us away.”

Steve cleared his throat, his voice all at once considerably deeper. “Yeah. Okay, fair enough.”

“We’ll make up for it when we get home,” she promised and, to her own drowsy surprise,
promptly fell asleep.

She woke, though, wondering what the odds were that they might feasibly send the others on some
sort of outdoor errand while the turkey was in the oven.

---

Dugan, clad in red pajamas and his ridiculous gingerbread apron, cooked up enormous masses of
pancakes and bacon for their Christmas morning breakfast while they gathered in the kitchen, the
nighttime squirrel incident a great deal funnier in the light of day. “Maybe he was after that bag of
walnuts you keep snacking on,” suggested Morita, and Peggy raised an eyebrow.
“Even a squirrel ought to know better than to get between a pregnant woman and the food that her
baby is rather insistent that she eat.”

Dugan grinned at her. “It’s always been dangerous to get between you and any food, Carter.”

“Mmm,” said Peggy. It was Christmas, after all, and she supposed he wasn’t entirely wrong.

They all sat companionably around the table, waiting for the pancakes to be ready. “Did any of you
ever really think, back then, that we’d be here one day?” asked Jones after a while. “That every one
of us would somehow make it out alive?”

Morita shook his head. “Nope. Hell, I didn't think we had until two days ago.”

“Even in the future, Steve believed, for a long time, that the fall from the train had killed Barnes,”
said Peggy, setting down her tea and threading her fingers through Steve’s, her throat all at once a
little choked. They'd all lost Steve, but he'd really lost everyone when he'd awakened alone, so
many years after the crash.

Steve gave her a crooked but real smile, his hand squeezing hers, and all at once the need for
visceral comfort sparked into longing, their intertwined fingers going in an instant from comforting
to something very different. Their eyes met, a little breathlessly, and Steve squeezed her hand once
more and ruefully let it go, Peggy regretting very much that she hadn't taken him up on his offer in
the middle of the night.

“Well,” said Dugan, thankfully oblivious from his place at the stove, “I propose a toast. To
unexpected survival.” He grinned dangerously. “Except Hydra’s, and we’re damned well going to
take care of that.”

“Cheers to that,” said Falsworth, holding up his mug of coffee, and the others followed suit. “Next
Christmas, we’ll have to do this again, so Barnes can be here.”

“Next Christmas, Cap and Carter will have a baby,” said Dernier. “And Jones will be married, too,
if his girl is foolish enough to say yes.”

“Junior and Mrs. Jones can come too,” said Dugan, from the stove. “Probably less trouble than
Herr Squirrel.”

Morita raised his eyebrows. “Have you ever met a baby, Dum Dum?”

“Babies love me, it’s the mustache. And, breakfast is served,” said Dugan, setting down the
enormous platters of pancakes and bacon.

In the hubbub as everyone served themselves, Steve squeezed Peggy’s hand again and she leaned
over to kiss him, more chastely than either of them would prefer, but nonetheless far more openly
demonstrative than they'd ever allowed themselves to be in front of an audience - including at their
own wedding, although that, to be fair, had been mostly because Peggy had been so queasy at the
time. “Merry Christmas, darling. Still glad you came back?”

“I am,” he said, smiling at her. “I - Peggy, I honestly don't know when I've ever been so glad about
anything.” She kissed him again for that, and then they sat beaming at each other like fools until
Dugan cleared his throat pointedly.

“Some of us are trying to eat breakfast here,” he told them, and Peggy smiled and turned to her
pancakes.
It was at that moment that their pleasant Christmas morning erupted into utter chaos - which,
everyone later agreed, was really exactly what one ought to expect from a reunion of the Howling
Commandos.

Out of nowhere a squirrel came dashing out of the sitting room, looked terribly startled at the sight
of all the people in the kitchen, and dove for cover under the small stack of firewood next to the
stove. At the same instant Peggy swallowed her first bite of pancake, felt her stomach lurch
ominously, and pushed her chair hastily back from the table. As she hurried through the doorway
to the sitting room she nearly tripped over a second squirrel, which promptly leapt out of the way
and scurried through her legs, prompting a startled, rather indignant outcry from the men around
the table.

On her way to the front door Peggy's eyes widened at the mayhem she was passing through in the
sitting room, although she was, unfortunately, entirely unable to call out any sort of warning to the
others. Steve had followed her, though, and she could hear him stop dead in his tracks, swear, and
call out in the direction of the kitchen. “Guys, get in here! Those two were just the advance scouts!
” He didn’t wait for a response before joining Peggy on the porch, one warm hand rubbing her
back as she leaned miserably over the railing. “You okay?”

“Not particularly, no,” she managed, between heaves. 12 years in the future had not cured Steve of
his occasional propensity to ask ridiculously stupid questions.

“There was cinnamon in the pancakes,” he said. It wasn’t a question, so she didn't bother to
answer.

Once she was sure she’d finished, she rinsed her mouth with a handful of snow and then turned
around and let herself slump a little against Steve's chest, her eyes closed. “I suppose it was my
own fault, really,” she said. “I’ve been feeling so much better that I’ve gotten complacent. I should
have waited for you to try one first, just to be certain, but - I was a little distracted at the time.”

“Yeah, me too” said Steve ruefully, his hand still on her back, warm and solid. He hesitated, as if
trying to come up with the right words. “On your way through the living room,” he asked
tentatively, “did you see what was - happening?” If she hadn’t, she thought dryly, she certainly
would have been wondering by now, given the loud shouts and crashes coming from inside.

“I did,” she said, feeling better by the moment as she continued to take in slow breaths of the cold,
fresh air. She opened her eyes. “I don’t know how on earth we didn’t hear them in there. I suppose
we were being rather loud, and then there was the bacon sizzling on the stove.” She grinned
suddenly. “The bacon apparently hid any number of sins. The smell of cinnamon, the sound of
rampaging squirrels - I'll have to remember to add it to my arsenal of tactical distractions.”

Steve made an amused noise. “Yeah, I guess the squirrels must have gone wild in there as soon as
everyone moved to the kitchen.” She nodded against his chest. “Squirrels gone wild,” he added
quietly, in a voice a little like a radio announcer. From the way it rolled off his tongue, Peggy was
fairly certain he was amusing himself with something from the future, as he did from time to time.

“Yes, well,” she said. “Apparently Herr Squirrel was not working alone last night.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. I hate to say it, Peg, but I - think we're probably lucky you got sick when you
did. They might have caused a hell of a lot more damage before we noticed them, otherwise.”

“Two ran into the kitchen just as I was leaving. I suspect that might have given us a clue,” said
Peggy, dryly. They both paused to listen to the chaos in the sitting room, thundering feet and
crashing furniture. “Are you entirely certain the squirrels are the ones causing the damage?” she
 asked him, somewhat rhetorically, after a particularly loud shout from Falsworth.

Steve winced as there was another enormous crash. “Yeah, I think it’s probably a group effort at
this point.”

“I spotted at least six of them, and I wasn't looking very closely. They couldn’t possibly all have
followed us inside unnoticed,” Peggy said. “I suppose there must be a hole in one of the walls,
although one would think in that case we’d have - ” Her eyes widened. “Good God.”

“They were in the tree,” agreed Steve. They stared at each other for a moment, Steve seemingly as
startled as she was at this being the most likely explanation.

“That has to be it. They must have been there all along,” she said. “Bloody Nora, I even felt one of
them move a branch. It wasn't Dernier after all!” She gave him a rather incredulous look. “How on
earth did you all manage to get the tree inside without dislodging them?”

Steve shrugged. “I guess they were probably hanging on for dear life and sticking close to the
trunk? I'm sure they were pretty confused.” He laughed. “At least we were good hosts and served
popcorn and cranberries, although the guys are being unexpectedly firm on check-out time.”

“Check - good Lord, did we chop down their home?” Peggy asked, suddenly horrified. “In the
middle of winter? Those poor animals!”

Steve pulled her more tightly into his arms as she buried her face in his shoulder, a well-practiced
move on both their parts by this point in her pregnancy. “Shh, it’s okay,” he said. “I watched a
documentary film about squirrels with Natasha once. They usually have a few different nests at
once. One gets compromised, they’ve got a couple more all stocked up, waiting in the wings.”

“Ah, so they’re like Howard,” Peggy said into his shirt.

She could hear the grin in his voice. “Exactly. We just have to get these guys outside and they’ll
move on to Fabulous Squirrel Penthouse Number Two. They can continue the party there.”

Peggy pushed back and took a few more deep breaths, wiping away the traces of tears with her
sleeve. She turned her face up to Steve, who examined her, scrubbed at a few areas with the tip of
his finger, then nodded. “Well,” she said, “I suppose we should probably go in and help. I shudder
to think what’s happening in there right now without us.”

Steve glanced through the open door. “Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but I’m pretty
sure the squirrels are winning.”

Chapter End Notes

Tree squirrels really do generally have several backup nests, so they will be fine! They
usually nest alone, though - but these ones were clearly having a party when their tree
was rudely relocated.
 Chapter 9
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

It wasn't easy to tell, at first glance, how much of the damage to the sitting room could be
attributed to the squirrels themselves and how much to the Howling Commandos' attempts to evict
them, but it was clear that their bushy-tailed guests had been remarkably busy in the short time
they’d been left alone in the room. After a full night in their strange new home, several of them had
obviously been interested in exploring somewhat further afield.

Peggy supposed she couldn’t really blame them. She was quite certain she would have done the
same in their shoes. Or, rather their - feet.

Although Peggy and Steve had left their gifts for each other at home, she and the Howling
Commandos had each been assigned a randomly drawn name for a small gift exchange - Peggy had
brought a neatly-wrapped package for Morita containing a pair of warm woolen socks and the
latest Agatha Christie novel. Now, however, it didn’t appear that there was a single package that
hadn’t been nibbled at - and in some cases ripped open entirely, contents strewn haphazardly
across the room.

The wooden corners on a good portion of the furniture had also been chewed, and worse, the
squirrels had felt the need to mark their territory all around the room with unusual zeal. It seemed,
Peggy reflected, that in the end they’d quite approved of their fancy new boarding house. She
grinned, suddenly, imagining Miriam Fry's reaction to these unwanted guests - no doubt at least
some of them male - particularly if they'd dared to venture above the first floor.

Standing in the doorway, Peggy and Steve exchanged a wry look. “Once more into the breach?”
asked Steve, and Peggy sighed, taking stock of the chaos.

“I think we can trap them in this pillowcase!” Dugan was calling to Morita, who was attempting to
herd several squirrels in his direction. It was hard to tell how many there were, but the sitting room
was in a shambles - furniture knocked over, a glass vase shattered, even a picture knocked off the
wall. The tree was rather askew, and Peggy would have been concerned about its stability if it
hadn’t still been so firmly wedged against the ceiling.

“Hey Carter, you still have any of those walnuts?” called Jones as he jogged past, rather
disheveled.

Peggy sighed. “I suppose I can sacrifice them to the cause,” she said, rather reluctantly. She
reached into her cardigan and handed the bag to Falsworth as he hurried past in the opposite
direction, in hot pursuit of a particularly smug-looking squirrel.

“Perhaps just a small explosion,” Dernier suggested quietly, from half under the sofa, in a tone that
made it very clear that this wasn’t the first time he’d broached the idea.

“You know,” said Steve, into Peggy’s ear, “They look like they’ve got things under control. You
need to eat something.” He tugged her into the kitchen, reaching down to snatch up a squirrel that
was attempting to burrow under the stove. He tucked it under his arm, which seemed a little rash to
Peggy, but she supposed the supersoldier serum would make quick work of any bites. “I’ll just get
this guy outside.” Steve told her. “Be right back.”
Peggy efficiently shooed two more squirrels into the sitting room, and then shut the door and
surveyed the deserted table. Although the kitchen was in far better shape than the sitting room, the
Howling Commandos had clearly abandoned their breakfast in great haste. Chairs were pushed
back, forks had been dropped, pancakes and bacon left half-eaten. To her relief, the door to the
bedroom was still firmly shut.

She poked around the kitchen and found a loaf of bread, cutting herself two slices and spreading
them with butter, then making a sandwich with a few pieces of bacon from the very middle of the
platter. There were apples too, and she took one and sat down at the table. She felt a little guilty not
to be joining the battle, but Steve hadn’t been wrong - she was a little lightheaded, and as
frustrating as it was, she supposed that passing out in the midst of the chaos wouldn’t be
particularly helpful.

She was finished the apple and halfway through her sandwich when the door opened. “How are
you doing?” asked Steve, coming over to snatch a piece of bacon from the platter.

“Better,” she told him. “Although, I must say I’m not overjoyed to know that Falsworth is currently
feeding all my walnuts to a squirrel.”

Steve nodded, although she knew he was still rather baffled by her walnut obsession. “It’s working,
though,” he told her. “They’re almost all outside now.”

“We’ve got most of ‘em rounded up!” reported Dugan, clumping through the room in his boots to
grab the oven mitts from the hook by the stove. “Just need a bit of extra armour for the mean one.
Falsworth’s fending him off with the rest of Peggy’s walnuts. Sorry, Peg.”

There was a loud crash from the next room.

“Did you get him?” called Steve, hopefully.

“Nope,” came Morita’s voice. “Hey, Dum Dum, you got any extra window glass?”

---

Having ushered all the squirrels outside and tacked a thick tablecloth over the broken window, the
victors returned to the kitchen to enjoy their well-earned, if slightly cold breakfast. Happily,
everyone, even Steve, had managed to avoid being bitten - Peggy wasn’t entirely sure whether the
squirrels in the area carried rabies, but she didn’t fancy finding out the hard way.

“Geez, we’re all getting soft,” said Dugan, his mouth full of pancake. “Forget Hydra, a gang of
squirrels almost did us in.” He shook his head. “We all need to pull up our socks a bit before
March.”

Morita nodded, reaching for the bacon. “Thank God it wasn’t raccoons. We might not be alive to
tell the tale.” There were a few snorts at that, followed by a short silence punctuated only by the
sounds of very industrious eating. Everyone had apparently worked up quite an appetite in the
melee.

“You know, I actually knew a talking raccoon in the future,” said Steve, reaching for his coffee
mug. “He was kind of a jerk, but great in a fight. Best pickpocket I ever met, too. Even better than
Peggy.”

Dugan looked wounded. “Cap, if you want us to stop asking about the future, you can just say so.
You don’t have to be an ass about it.”
“I’m serious!” insisted Steve. “His name was Rocket. He was genetically engineered and he was
from another planet.”

“Right,” drawled Jones. “Tell it to Barnes once we get him back.”

Steve's lips twitched and he looked for a moment like he was going to say something further about
the raccoon, or possibly Bucky, but then seemed to think better of it. Peggy made a note to ask him
about it once they were alone. Well, she amended, watching him swallow a bite of toast, maybe it
wasn’t the first thing she was going to do.

“Are you feeling better now?” Dernier asked her.

Peggy flushed. “Yes, I’m fine. It was just - the baby has a rather violent hatred of cinnamon, I'm
afraid.”

Dugan turned to her. “Oh shoot, sorry Peg. I don't normally put it in my pancakes, but I thought I'd
try it out. Make 'em more festive.”

“That’s quite all right,” she told him, the corners of her mouth turning upward. “I didn't warn you.
I’m sorry about what happened to the bush just next to your front porch.”

Dugan reached over to jostle her shoulder affectionately. “You’ve drunk every one of us under the
table at one time or another, it’s about time you were the one who puked for a change.”

“And the pancakes were great,” Morita told him. “Very festive, at least for those of us who, unlike
some people here, can hold our cinnamon.”

“Shut up, you apes,” said Peggy, rather ridiculously pleased that they were teasing her. It certainly
beat treating her like a china doll, as she was worried most of her colleagues were going to do once
they found out.

“They are great. You should really learn to cook more than four things,” Jones said, gesturing with
his fork at Dugan. “Open up your own diner.”

Dugan shrugged. “Maybe one day. Doesn’t exactly seem like the best time to retire from
SHIELD.”

“No,” agreed Peggy. “I’m afraid we’ll all have to postpone our settling down a little.”

Falsworth raised an eyebrow. “I’m - not sure you and Cap really have that option.”

“No,” said Peggy, again, the mood around the table suddenly far more somber. “Which means that
once we rescue Barnes in March, we’ll need to move quickly with Hydra. I’d - ” she set her
shoulders. “I’d greatly prefer to deal with the major players, at least, before it’s time for the the
baby’s arrival and I’m forced into a very vulnerable position.”

There was a sober silence at that. “We have a solid plan,” said Morita.

“We do,” agreed Peggy.

“So on that note,” said Dugan, cheerfully. “Anybody interested in a squirrel-bitten Christmas gift?”

---

After the dishes had been washed and put away, the gifts had been opened, with much laughter at
the state of most of them, and the turkey had been put in the oven - with some trepidation, given
how the day had gone thus far- they all went outside to survey the damage to the window. “I’ll
have to bring in some glass, but we can board it up for now,” said Dugan, cheerfully. “There’s
wood in the shed.”

The broken window was really the least of the work ahead of them this morning. The mess in the
sitting room was substantial, to say the least - not to mention that all of their cars were nearly
buried in snow, the drive between the road and the cabin clearly impassible. On the bright side,
however, the snowplow had clearly already been by on the road, so if it didn't snow again they'd be
home free, as Morita had put it, once they'd cleared the drive.

They stood surveying the situation - all of them, Peggy thought, just as reluctant as she was to get
back to the real world, where things far more malevolent than a group of confused squirrels
awaited them. She really had needed a holiday, she supposed. And, really, although it hadn’t been
quite the honeymoon she and Steve would have chosen, it really been a very long time since she’d
had such an enjoyable Christmas.

“Well,” she said, setting her shoulders and smiling at these men who had somehow, even after
years apart, formed such an unlikely family. “I suppose we ought to get to work.”

---

Misadventures with squirrels notwithstanding, it was clear that the Howling Commandos were still
the same highly effective team they always had been, falling easily into the familiar rhythm of
working together to complete a task. Morita found a brush to clear off the cars, Falsworth and
Dernier began to shovel the driveway, and Dugan and Jones disappeared into the shed in search of
lumber and nails. Peggy and Steve, amid a great deal of innuendo about behaving themselves, had
been assigned to go back inside and get started on the monumental job of cleaning the sitting room.

Although she normally would have protested being assigned to the most traditionally feminine task
available, Peggy knew perfectly well that, in this case, she hadn’t at all been assigned the job
because she was presumably good at housecleaning.

Steve followed her inside, folding her into his arms the moment the door was shut behind them.
“Let me take my boots off first, you idiot,” she protested, and he laughed.

“Peg, given the state of the floor, I think tracking in snow is probably the least of our worries.”

“Well,” said Peggy, surveying the damage, “I can’t say this is quite how I’d imagined our first
Christmas together after the war, but it is rather fitting, I suppose.” And suddenly, she and Steve
were both laughing so hard that they had to lean against each other, tears rolling down their cheeks.

“I love you,” he managed.

“That’s rather a good thing,” Peggy said wryly, and Steve grinned at her as she turned to face him
more fully, taking a little fistful of his shirt in her left hand. “You know, I've been wondering how
on earth you and I are actually going to manage to settle down into a life of ordinary domesticity.”
Steve took in a breath as if to say something, but closed his mouth again as she continued,
gesturing to the chaos with her other hand. “But it’s recently occurred to me that this may, in fact,
be what settling down looks like for us.” The corners of her mouth curved upwards a little further.
“With you and I involved, there are always going to be unexpected squirrels, aren’t there?”

Steve leaned down to kiss her, smiling against her lips. “There are. And not only that - ” he reached
down to ghost his hand over her belly, “Peggy, that kid in there is half you and half me. Do you
really think there’s any way our home life is going to be dull?”
Peggy laughed. “I suppose you’re right.” She returned the kiss, a delicious shiver radiating through
her from where his hand had settled, more firmly, on her waist. “I love you too, you know. Very
much,” she told him, her voice suddenly rather husky.

Steve tightened his free arm around her. “I do know. Want to dance?” His voice, too, was
considerably deeper than it had been. “We can steer ourselves under some of that mistletoe. It
would be pretty rude to waste it after Dum Dum went to so much trouble to hang it up, don’t you
think?”

“Steven Grant Rogers - or Josephson, whoever you are,” Peggy admonished, smiling enormously,
“are you suggesting that we shirk our tidying-up duties in favour of dancing?”

Steve kissed the top of her head. “We’ll get everything tidied up. You know I can move really fast
when I want to.”

“I know,” she said with unabashed salaciousness, and he laughed.

“We could just - skip the dancing part,” he offered, his thumb drawing electrifying circles on her
blouse, a tantalizing hint of exactly what they could get up to instead.

Peggy quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are you trying to stand me up for a dance again, Captain
Rogers?”

“Never,” he said firmly. He led her to a miraculously clear spot under one of the pieces of mistletoe
Dugan had put up, and began to softly hum, a song that she recognized after a moment as Winter
Wonderland. She rested her head on his shoulder and inhaled deeply, that distinctive Steve smell
that she’d thought for so long she’d never get to breathe in again.

They had to stay within a relatively small radius as they danced, given all the overturned furniture
and other detritus best left unmentioned, but considering that they were revolving directly
underneath the mistletoe, neither of them was complaining.

Steve finished humming Winter Wonderland, and Peggy hummed White Christmas, and then
Steve began to hum something she didn’t recognize. “Is that new?” she asked. “Or is it from the
future?”

“Oh,” said Steve, flushing slightly. “Yeah, sorry. It’ll come out in the mid 90s, I think, if we don’t
change things too much.” He was silent for a moment. “I hated this song, actually, when I was
there. In the future. I kept hearing it everywhere I went around Christmastime, and it made me
think about you, and I just - ” he took a deep, slightly shaky breath. “But it somehow always got
stuck in my head anyway.”

“Well,” Peggy said practically, pressing herself even closer to him, “I’m here now. Perhaps we can
rehabilitate it.”

Steve laughed and spun her around gently - her nausea might have abated a great deal but he
clearly wasn’t taking any chances after this morning - and then leaned in close to her ear, singing
quietly as they swayed together.

“I don't want a lot for Christmas.

There is just one thing I need.
I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree…”

Peggy let herself fall into the moment, breathing in his warm scent, relaxing into his solid,
miraculously real embrace, listening to his distinctive voice singing a song that wouldn’t be written
 for nearly fifty years - if at all. There really wasn’t a lot more she could ask for from the universe
than this: Steve Rogers safe in her arms, entirely hers, the small but ever-growing curve of their
baby pressed between them. She smiled into his shirt as they swayed together and he sang on, his
words slightly muffled against the top of her head as he dropped a kiss on her hair.

“Make my wish come true -

All I want for Christmas is you.”

“Mmm,” she said, into his shoulder. “It’s a little possessive, I suppose, but - you do have me for
your own, you know.”

She could feel Steve smile against her hair. “And you have me. Does it help at all that it's sung by
a woman?”

“Maybe,” Peggy admitted, and he laughed and kissed her again, on the lips this time, and very
thoroughly. “What are - ” she managed, gesturing vaguely, and Steve glanced over her shoulder
through the window - the one that hadn't been broken in the morning's skirmish.

“It looks like they're having a snowball fight. They’ll still be out there a while.”

“Good,” she said, and tugged him without ceremony towards the bedroom, her enormous smile
echoed in his.

Hydra was still out there, and Bucky needed rescuing, and there would be any number of other
threats - not all of which Steve would have advanced knowledge of, the further they moved away
from the timeline he knew. But in here, right now, it was just Peggy and Steve, and Christmas
morning, and the outside world could wait just a little longer.

Perhaps, she thought, a little of the quiet life wasn't such a bad thing after all - as long as one had
the right partner.

Chapter End Notes

For anyone who didn't recognize it, the song from the future Steve sings to Peggy is
Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas is You".

Well, it's a little late for Christmas, 3Pirouette, but I hope you liked it anyway! I'm
sorry again for the long delay.

(I may, at some point, write a sequel for this, because I want to know what happens in
March when they go after Bucky and Hydra! But I also wanted to get this story out
because it was so late - and the original idea for the story was actually just the
Howling Commandos reunion. I got a bit carried away on the backstory. )

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