Chapter Text
There were sounds, lights. Things moved around her, people spoke, but everything seemed very far away. Time was an illusion, and she drifted in a bubble just outside the world, with no name and no memories. She wondered if she was alive. Was this what came after death - this formless, weightless limbo?
Then, like someone had turned on a light, Stephanie Rogers came back to herself.
She was lying on something soft, cool fabric under her fingertips. Her body ached with vague, generalized soreness. She tried to swallow, but her throat was as dry as if she'd been drinking sand.
Well, that rules out heaven, Stevie thought, blurrily. She doubted the afterlife would include a mouth that tasted like old leather. But that begged the question... Where was she?
Something beeped politely from somewhere to her left. There was a rustle of cloth, a faint cough. Someone else was with her. Stevie felt a stab of fear, her lurching into action. Who had found her? The Commandos?
Or Hydra?
She slitted her eyes open, keeping as still as she could, her breathing as smooth and even as though she still slept.
It was night. In the mellow lamplight, the room was all sleek curves. The wall to her right was glass, one huge window looking out on the pinprick lights and blocky silhouettes of an unidentifiable city. On her left sat a young woman - the source of the cough, Stevie realized.
She was strange, and got stranger the more Stevie looked at her. Her clothes were loose and colorful as a set of pajamas, and her hair stuck up in tufts like the crest of an exotic bird. Was she some kind of guard? Not for Hydra, surely, with their black uniforms and masks. Not for the Allies, either. She'd be in tailored olive drab.
Something in the woman's hands shone onto her face, images reflecting off her black-framed glasses. It was rectangular, and small - thinner than a deck of playing cards - and a bright, bubblegum pink. Wires from the...whatever it was...seemed to plug directly into the woman's ears.
Some kind of...miniature television?
Stevie had seen a television at the World's Fair, six years ago. It was a wood-paneled cabinet that came up to her shoulder, back when she'd been five feet tall in heels. Some kind of radar screen would be more likely, a portable security monitoring device. Had Howard whipped it up in secret since she'd last seen him? If so, pink was an unusual choice. As the woman shifted, she revealed a card clipped to her shirt. The card a picture of her face, and a name - Lily Lucero.
She's not a guard. No one in a military installation would have their name pinned to their chest. Wait… There was something strange about the photo on the card. The picture was in color.
Lily looked up. Her eyes met Stevie's.
"Where am I?" Stevie croaked.
Lily leapt to her feet like she'd been electrocuted, her little screen clattering to the floor between her feet, wires dangling from her ears, unnoticed.
Stevie tried to sit up. Her body felt slow, removed from her, as if her brain's instructions had to cover a larger than usual distance to reach her hands and feet. Something tugged at her, and she noticed that a tube was sticking out of her arm, tying her to a bag of some yellowish liquid.
What the…?
She yanked it out - a bead of blood welled up immediately where it had been. Stevie patted herself down frantically. They had taken her uniform and given her some kind of loose gown. With a feeling of crawling horror, she noticed things were stuck to her everywhere - there were patches on her chest and temples, even a tube between her legs. She tore them all away.
What were they doing to me? Visions of the lab at Kreichsberg flashed in Stevie's mind, the chair she'd found Bucky in, syringes and vials filled with God knows what.
"Oh! No!" At last, the other woman spoke, snatching the wires from her ears and tossing them aside. "No...you really shouldn't do that!"
Stevie got to her feet, floor cold and slick-feeling on her bare soles. Silver stars flickered across her eyes for a second. The soft beeping had changed to shrill alarms.
"Jarvis!" Lily called out. "I need Medical on Level Six immediately!"
She held out her hands placatingly toward Stevie. "Please, Captain Rogers. I can explain everything."
Have to get out of here, Stevie thought.
The window was the best option. Smash it with a chair, then jump to the street. If she'd survived a plane crash, she'd probably survive that. Stevie hesitated. Something wasn't right. If these people were hostile, why hadn't she been restrained? They'd left her with a girl wearing pajamas and no weapons in sight.
The door burst open, and a man skidded into the room, breathing as though he'd run all the way there. He was wearing loose pants and a t-shirt with the letters "ACDC" and a lightning bolt. Stevie took a moment to run through all the organizational acronyms she knew of, but she couldn't place it. Then, she finally saw his face.
"Sorry," he said. "I would have been here sooner, but you weren't supposed to wake up for another two weeks."
"Howard?" Stevie asked. Something flashed in the man's eyes for just a moment. Something like sorrow.
The girl ran to him. "Mr. Stark, I only looked away for a second, I swear…"
"Don't worry about it," he glanced at the name tag, "Lily?"
The girl nodded. He scooped up her...whatever it was...from the floor and gave it back to her, adding a conciliatory pat on the shoulder that he used to steer her toward the door.
"Everything's under control. Why don't you give us a few minutes. Go grab a coffee or something. Oh, and," he spoke to the air above her head, "belay that order for medical support."
"At once, sir," the air responded in a cool, accented voice. This seemed to surprise no one except Stevie herself.
The man turned back to face her. He was barefoot, his black hair spiked by sleep, carefully-trimmed beard smudged by stubble. Stevie noticed a circular light shining under his shirt, another strange detail in a rapidly-growing list.
"Tony," the man said. "I'm Tony Stark. Howard was my father."
"Your father?"
"This room's a bit small for an echo."
The resemblance to Howard was uncanny, not just the way he looked, but the way he carried himself. That automatic swagger, the playful bravado. But this man's face was lined, hair speckled with gray. Howard had been younger than this man when she saw him last.
How could Howard have a son who was older than he was? Dread grew inside her like a strangling vine.
"You're back in the Big Apple," Tony continued. "Did they call NYC that, in your day?"
He talked rapidly and constantly, like he was afraid of silence.
"In Stark Tower. My building. It's just been completed, actually. Revolutionary technology, self-powering…"
Tony must have seen the utter lack of comprehension on her face, because he stopped. The aggressively garrulous front dropped for an instant, and he sighed, ran a hand through his rumpled hair. The look was back. Sorrow, or pity. Stevie was at once desperate to hear what he would say, and terrified of it.
"There's no easy way to say this...You've been asleep for a long time."
Her mouth was even drier than before, which she wouldn't have thought possible.
"How long?"
In answer, Stark walked to the window, waved a hand in front of it. Like a magic trick, the window slid to the side, opening up on a balcony that jutted over the street. He stepped out, and after a moment, Stevie followed, the wind lifting her unbound air, blowing her thin gown against her.
It was Manhattan, but not the Manhattan she knew. Around the familiar spire of the Chrysler Building, impossible towers loomed, tall and glittering. Down at street level bright signs flashed and changed, primary colors shifting, moving.
"It's April 3rd, 2012," Tony said. "So you've been on ice for," he paused momentarily, lips moving. "Sixty-seven years and one month, give or take."
Blood hissed dizzily in her ears. For a moment, she felt like she was floating above her body - as if she'd come unglued from gravity, and would hang there, suspended, while the earth spun away beneath her. Like she'd floated outside herself as she dreamed.
Maybe I never woke up at all, Stevie thought. Maybe I'm still dreaming.
Stevie closed her eyes. The balcony rail was cool under her hands. Gritty. She could hear traffic on the street below, honks and rumbles. When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed.
Sixty-seven years.
God, how old would Peggy be now? Was she even alive? Was Dugan? Or Jones? Their faces flashed through Stevie's mind. Colonel Phillips. Falsworth. Morita. Dernier. Farther back. Sal, Doris, the chorus girls. Ma Barnes.
All dead, or aged beyond recognition.
And then the thought crashed into her mind - she was standing next to Howard Stark's son. Had Peggy married? Did she have children? Was Private Jones a hunched octogenarian, showing his old war photos to the grandkids? How many of the Commandos had children older than she was - grandchildren older than she was?
"We were going to get an apartment together," she whispered. Or maybe she just thought it. "We were going to be telephone operators."
Sixty-seven years.
"Where are my manners? Pepper would be so disappointed in me."
Tony's voice pulled Stevie out of her reverie. He smiled at her conspiratorially. It was his father's smile.
"I should probably consult with the doctors before giving you solid food," he said, "but seeing as you're awake thirteen days ahead of schedule...How does breakfast sound?"
Sal's voice came to her, what he used to say before shows, when they were all exhausted from the road.
Whatever happens, put a good face on it. The show must go on!
Stevie tried a smile. It felt like she'd stuck it to her face with masking tape and tacks.
"Breakfast sounds great," she said, suddenly ravenous. "And coffee, if you have it. Some pants would be nice, too"
"Pants, coffee and breakfast, coming right up." Tony led her back into the room, closed the window they'd come through with another wave of his hand. "You like waffles? Gluten-free alright?"
"Sure," Stevie said. She had no idea what that meant, but imagined she'd find out soon enough.
Tony rifled through a drawer that opened out of the wall and tossed Stevie a loose shirt and pants, almost identical to the ones she'd worn as part of Project Rebirth two - no, sixty-seven - years ago.
"You know," Tony said, "if it's an apartment you need, there's plenty of space here. You could have a whole floor to yourself. Stark Tower is a fully-integrated smart house, and the only carbon-neutral building of its size in the country. When you know what that means you'll be very impressed, I promise. And you would not believe how much rent has gone up in New York City in the past few years."
Tony opened the door to the hallway, using a reassuringly normal doorknob this time.
"I'll be out here when you're done," he said. "Also, sorry to break it to you, but telephone operators don't exist anymore. You'll have to find another line of work."
"Well," Stevie said. "That's disappointing. What do you do for a living?"
He smiled rakishly as he slipped out of the room. "I save the world."
She was left in the room, alone. The silence echoed around her.
This is real, and you can't go back, she told herself firmly. It was like Ma Barnes used to say when she would curl Stevie's hair, or when they'd have tea late at night while Bucky worked late.
Sometimes, in life, you get a bad hand. But you can only play the hand you're dealt.
And things weren't that bad - she'd been awake for ten minutes and she already had an apartment, a pair of pants, and a breakfast date with Howard Stark's son. She remembered what he'd said as he left the room. I save the world.
She was alive. Many were not. She wouldn't waste it. She would play the hand she'd been dealt. She would save the world.
