Music is "Call Your Name x Call of Silence" by Samuel Kim, originally composed by Hiroyuki Sawano.

Picture is Tatiana Maslany as Emma Barnes.

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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Idea of Us

{April 7, 1970 -- Fifty-Three Years Ago}

Tony snickers at the sign at the front of the gate. Camp Lehigh looks the same as it did all those years ago, but I have to admit my reaction was very similar when I first saw the gaudy plaque reading, "Birthplace of Captain America and Lady Liberty."

"Clearly, neither of you were actually born here, right?" he inquires.

Steve keeps his head low as he treks forward, blending in perfectly with the turn-of-the-decade military installation soldiers and staff. His cover is the greens of a soldier named Roscoe; luckily, it's been long enough that the mythos of Steve Rogers has grown far beyond a humble man behind those sunglasses. If anyone were to suspect Steve as the Captain America, well, those people are few and far between.

Thanks to the good ole Stark technology, my cover is even more inconspicuous. Thanks to Peggy, women at the Camp Lehigh facility had much more varied roles than other branches of military at the time. SHIELD always strove to be inclusive, and that included allowing women in all sorts of non-administrative roles. My chosen cover is that of an MP, donning the khaki jacket and pants. Paired with a black cap and thick, '70s glasses, no one is going to catch on.

"In New Jersey?" I sputter, rolling my eyes. "Please, hardly the truth, but that didn't stop every military installation between here and Brooklyn from claiming it. We weren't born here, but the idea of us was."

Tony wears a navy blue SHIELD jacket and tie; his attire is otherwise unremarkable, sans the golden eagle insignia on his left chest pocket and the badge clipped to his tie that reads "Visitor." "Right, well. Imagine you're SHIELD, running a quasi-fascistic intelligence organization, where do you hide it?"

"That's easy," I retort, nodding my head casually towards the building marked E47. Two men disappear through the door as we survey the area. "In plain sight."

Tony taps the side of his glasses, and I do the same. The Stark tech shows us an infrared scan of E47, showing two warm bodies entering a lift that takes them several levels below the surface. The eldest of the trio nods and moves for the entrance, Steve and I following close behind.

"Everyone know what they're supposed to do?"

Steve nods once. "Crystal clear. You're on Tesseract, we're on the Pym Particles."

Tony straightens the collar on his jacket, an obvious nervous tick. "If I don't get the Tesseract, we're stuck in 2023 with no help. If you don't get the particles, we're stuck in 1970 with no way out but the long-way-round. If we get caught, both are gonna happen."

"No pressure," I scoff.

Just as the doors are about to close, an African-American woman in a beehive hairstyle and SHIELD badge around her neck boards with us. Tony takes the spot closest to her, between her and Steve. I keep my back towards her in hopes that her not seeing either Steve's nor my faces will make her none the wiser.

The lift dings, Tony turns to Steve and says, "Good luck on your mission, Captain."

Steve replies in an unconvincing tone, "Good luck on...your project, Doctor."

Internally, I sigh and give a look to Tony as the doors close once more, one that says, "Oh god, I hope this works."

The woman riding with us to a different floor asks, "You new here?"

"Not exactly."

When the lift gets to sub-level six, Steve and I exit without saying a word. He breathes a sigh of relief as we put more space between us and the closing doors. "That felt odd."

"I agree, but keep looking forward," I reassure. "Nothing we can do about it now."

"I'll call Pym and get him out of his office." He gestures to the office at the end of the corridor, then to the landline phone in the alley slightly to the right of the restroom doors. "You watch and let me know when he's out."

"What are you going to say?"

"I'll think of something."

Steve steps to the shadowy corner, and I keep moving towards Pym's laboratory. The door has has the doctor's name written on foggy glass, below it the office identifier 2-1 A 5.2-5. Taking a look at the antique watch on my wrist, I silently listen for Pym's exit. After a few moments, the door blasts open, and a very anxious and worried Hank Pym races down the hall towards the staircase. After he is out of view, I catch the door before it closes and slip inside. Steve follows closely behind.

Pym's laboratory, though I've never seen it in person until now, is standard of the scientific age of this time. Beakers and microscopes and testing equipment cover every spare inch of the space. Different meters and measuring devices, those I don't even know how to begin using, are collected on surfaces that probably need to be cleared off. It's chaos, but there is somewhat an order to it, which is probably just as the doctor likes it.

Steve hurries around, frantically searching, knowing our time is limited. As he rounds one of the tables, my eyes flit to the back of the room, to the large glass crate with upturned vials of red material inside. "Steve," I murmur, and my best friend follows my line of sight.

"There we go." He reaches through the arm-hole and grabs four of the eleven vials, easily retracting them from their magnetic stations. He slides them into the pocket of his greens and turns back towards me. "Let's move."

I open the laboratory door for him, and we take off back towards the location of the lift. As we near it, the woman we rode with comes around the corner with several military police in tow. They're dressed identical to me, except these are real MPs. The coil in my stomach tightens, and I feel the urge to take cover; it seems my soldier spy instincts from this very time period haven't faded at all.

"And you've never seen these three before?" one of them asks her.

She shakes her head, and I pull Steve off to the side and into one of the adjacent rooms, not bothering to look at whose it might belong to. "No, I've got an eye for this. The three of them looked fishy."

"Can you describe them?"

"Well, one of them had a hippie beard."

I shut the door almost completely behind me and let them pass. "I need every available MP to sub-level six. We have a potential breach."

"Not good," Steve murmurs under his breath.

I nod my agreement, only then noticing the letters on the foggy glass of the office. They read "Margaret Carter - Director." This particular office I've been in only a handful of times; in the early 1970s, I was living in Los Angeles, getting my journalism degree and trying to start over for what seemed like the tenth time. On occasion, I would visit Peggy, and even rarer than that, I would visit her at SHIELD. Though I pride myself on having an excellent memory, this facility is one I only visited once or twice.

Steve spots the name at nearly the same time, and he turns to gaze into the dark room. He reaches for the photograph of pre-serum Steve that has rested on Peggy's desk her entire life.

Before a word can be said, three figures enter the adjacent room to her office, a bit farther in and only viewable by blind-covered windows. None of them pay even the slightest attention to Steve or I on the other side of the glass, but I recognize two of them without a second thought. One of them is Peggy, stunning as ever as she approaches her sixth decade. And the other is me, the version of me that was frozen in time for twenty-eight years at this point. They're joined by a soldier I don't know. The muffled conversation seems to be that of this year's Emma's visit with Peggy being cut short due to some sort of emergency with weather impacting Braddock's unit.

As Peggy discusses the event in a speedy voice with the soldier, and Emma gives the file in her hand a once-over, Steve simply gazes at the woman who was his first love. Silent, not a word spoken, not a move made. I know how much he must miss her, even though he has Natasha now. I know because I miss her more than anyone at times. Peggy and Rose are my sisters, in this life and beyond, the women I should have known for longer and should have grown old with.

As the two flit back out of the room, followed by the soldier, Steve continues to give the glass the thousand-yard stare that any soldier would recognize. Not breaking the air with words, I reach for his hand and give it a squeeze. Steve breaks off the yearning look, blinking away and giving me a small smile that says, "Thank you."

"Are you all right, Stevie?"

"Yeah," he sighs. "Just thinking."

"About?"

"How glad I am that I found her when I did. How thankful I am for being able to know her again at the end," he breathes, shoulders relaxing. "And how relieved I am to have Natasha now."

Ever-so-gently, I tug him towards the exit, not having heard the woman or the MPs for at least a minute. If we don't make a break for it now, we might miss our window, and I know that's something neither of us are willing to risk. Steve follows my lead, and we're careful and inconspicuous as we head for the staircase.

Once on ground-level, both of us scan the area for our missing Avenger. After a moment, I spot Tony standing in the middle of the facility lot, talking with none other than Howard Stark. Behind the two, Edwin Jarvis stands next to the Stark family car. I practically dive behind an armored car to avoid being in either's line of sight, and Steve stands with his back to the side of the vehicle, adjusting his sunglasses so that he appears like all the other soldiers in the area.

"Does he have the Tesseract?" I ask.

Steve does a once-over of Tony from the side of his eye, giving the man a thumbs-up as he must glance over. "He tapped the briefcase with him. I assume that's a yes."

A minute later, Tony approaches us and the elder Stark drives away. There are tears in his eyes that he blinks away, and he holds up the aforementioned briefcase. "Got mine. You guys?"

Steve pulls the vials from his pocket, revealing the scarlet liquid to Tony's sparkling eyes. "Set a course for 2023?"

Tony nods, gives both of us the coordinates, and loads each of us with enough Pym Particles for a one-way trip back to the present. I give a wandering glance around the area, ensuring we're out of sight, then load my own device.

"Ready to head home?" I ask the elder of my companions.

Tony flashes a watery smile. "Yeah, home we go."

I give his shoulder a squeeze as we shift into our red and white suits. Pressing the travel button at the same time, we shift back to microscopic size. Lights shift around us as the Quantum Realm delivers us through the years and back to the launchpad in Avengers HQ.

Heaving a breath, all of our suits shift away, revealing our undercover clothes underneath. I let the oxygen fill my lungs, revel in the firm metal under my feet, as Bruce asks, "Did we get 'em all?"

Rhodey grins from across the platform. "Are you telling me this actually worked?"

Beside him, Clint falls to his knees, eyes vacant and the space beside him equally so. Confused, my brows pull together, and I turn to Steve.

"Clint, where's Nat?" Bruce asks.

The platform falls quiet as Clint struggles to voice an answer. His throat visibly constricts as tears pour down his face. Wordlessly, we're all informed of the loss. I stumble to my knees, feeling my heart breaking as my palms his the metal mesh below me. As the first tear hits the surface, I close my eyes and clench my fists. Just when I thought we were done losing people, just when I thought we  finally had made ground and moved forward, just when I thought we had a chance to set everything straight...

Of course, it had to be her. The only other person I truly care about, the only other person I would risk my endless life for. The one woman still alive, other than Rose, who I would trade myself for, for any reason at all so long as she lived.

It just had to be her.

The platform vibrates loudly, metal scraping against metal, as Bruce's fist makes contact with it. It pulls me from my focus on my quivering lip and burning eyes. Gazing upward, I see Steve standing solemnly, shield in one hand and vials in the other. The blues of his eyes glisten, and I can see the strong facade starting to crack. Given time, I know he will shatter.

Rose rushes onto the launchpad, slowly lowering herself so that her front is pressed to my back. At the tender touch, I crash all over again. Whimpers turn to sobs, tears flow like a river, and body shakes with the emotions overwhelming me. The group disperses -- some stay, while others depart to deal with it in other areas of the warehouse -- but none leaves right away. Though he didn't know her well, Eggsy sits in front of me, legs crossed, and pulls both Rose and I to him. The three of us sit on the floor for what feels like forever, lost in the waves of another loss.

You would think it gets easier, especially after half of life vanished five years ago.

I can tell you first-hand that it doesn't.

After the initial grief settles and my sobs shift back to sniffles, Tony turns towards the back door and exits without a word. After a moment, Clint, Thor, Bruce, and Steve follow him. Eggsy pulls away, and Rose follows suit, as I look on after them.

"You should go with 'em," he says softly, helping me to my feet.

After a second of hesitation, I nod my agreement. Turning towards the rest of the group, I keep walking. Through the doorway, down the sidewalk, and onto the unpaved path towards the lake. Tony and the others have found themselves on the small dock over the water. Steve sits beside him on the bench, and Bruce stands at the water's edge, eyes cast outwards. Clint leans against one of the support beams as Thor paces anxiously.

"Do we know if she had family?" Tony asks Steve in a whisper as I approach.

"Yeah," he replies, equally as soft, giving me a silent glance to acknowledge my seat beside him. "Us."

"What?" Thor paces over to the three of us, eyebrows raised and an expression of shock on his bearded face. "What are you doing?"

"Just asking him a question--" Tony retorts.

"--Yeah, no," the demi-god cuts him off. "You're acting like she's dead. Why are we acting like she's dead? We have the stones, right? As long as we have the stones, Cap, we can bring her back. Isn't that right? So stop this shit. We're the Avengers! Get it together."

"Can't get her back."

Thor turns towards Clint, clearly confused, and Steve lowers his head. "What's he... What?"

"It can't be undone," the archer repeats. "It can't."

Thor breathes an uneven, raspy laugh, and his tone turns condescending. "Look, I'm sorry. No offense, but you're a very Earthly being, okay? And we're talking about space magic. And 'can't' seems very definitive. Don't you think?"

"Yeah, look, I know that I'm way outside my paygrade here. But she still isn't here, is she?"

"No, that's my point."

"It can't be undone." Clint's voice turns desperate as he repeats his words, and slowly his volume raises one octave at a time. "Or at least that's what the red, floating guy had to say. Maybe you wanna go talk to him, okay? Go grab your hammer and you go fly and you talk to him!" Clint pauses, and his volume decreases. "It was supposed to be me. She sacrificed her life for that goddamn stone. She bet her life on it."

"A soul for a soul," I add, speaking for the first time since we returned.

Bruce picks up the bench in front of him and chucks it as far as he can, into the lake, before turning to the rest of us and saying, "She's not coming back."

"Then we have to make it worth it."  I look to Steve as he stands. "We have to."

The Captain's eyes are stern, and he sets his jaw as determination takes over. "We will."

END CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Idea of Us.