How Steve Rogers Got To Live His Life After All

Copperfox

Well-known member
(an alternate-universe Marvel Universe fanfic)

"Just BE there," Peggy Carter half-sobbed over the radio.

Captain America, born Steve Rogers, had put the Red Skull's futuristic bomber into a death dive toward the ice-dotted North Atlantic. But suddenly he cried out, "Wait a minute!"-- and pulled back on the control yoke, ending the dive. "I just realized something! It's over a _thousand_ miles from Red Skull's base in the German Alps to New York City....and it hasn't even been _one_ hour yet since I jumped on board this plane as it was taking off."

This was no time to say so, but the too-long-awaited kiss Peggy had given him before he boarded Red Skull's bomber had him _really_ wanting to live, if he could just survive _without_ failing to save the United States.

"Nobody, Red Skull included, has figured out yet how to design a manned aircraft that flies faster than the speed of sound," Steve went on. "So this map-thingy I've been looking at must not be telling my actual position; it's showing where the plane _will_ go!"

Peggy's radio-borne voice brightened with sudden hope. "Then I _was_ right that there was time! Which means we _can_ still get Howard Stark on the channel, and ask him to help!" This was no time to say so, but suddenly Peggy was letting herself imagine a long lifetime _together,_ in which she would never stop teasing Steve about herself being right on this or that subject.

Once Howard was in communications with Steve through the Hydra comms center that the S.S.R. had captured, he told Steve to describe every detail of the pilot's controls. With time to spare, he enabled Steve to establish full control of the super-bomber. Instead of ditching in the edge of the Arctic Ocean and going into frozen hibernation, Captain America was able to put down the landing gear and land smoothly enough in Greenland, where American forces got to him as fast as they could.

Four months later, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter were married by a U.S. Army chaplain who looked remarkably like Stan Lee. The Howling Commandoes were among the wedding guests -- and the Frenchman gained the attention of the blonde Army clerk who had once flirted with Steve.

 
The passionate love Steve and Peggy shared from that time on was beyond human description. Peggy Carter Rogers managed to "have it all" before that phrase became common. She got to be the mother of Steve's children, yet still could be a co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D., because they were able to hire a governess: a woman called Mary something, who was rumored to be able to fly if she had an umbrella. And because Peggy and Steve could work together instead of either having to go it alone, they uncovered Doctor Zola's plot to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. for Hydra and stopped it before it could make progress. This, in turn, led to Bucky Barnes being found alive and brought home _before_ he had sunk too far into the artificial Winter Soldier personality.

Peggy, furthermore, caught the Soviet spies who were trying to steal America's nuclear-weapon secrets. This meant that the Soviet Union, lacking a strategic deterrent, could not force all of Eastern Europe to obey it. Meanwhile, Steve and the Howling Commandoes, now rejoined by Bucky, helped the restored state of Israel to win its war for survival in 1948; then they won the Korean War in three weeks. And because Peggy and the whole S.S.R. had earned great respect among the French, she was able to persuade the French government to give up stubbornly trying to hold on to Indochina; this diplomatic success prevented the Vietnam War from ever happening.

When Howard Stark became a father late in life, his son Tony had Steve Rogers in his life as an inspiring uncle-figure who helped build his character, instead of a legend that made him feel inferior. Steve's good influence made a stable, responsible and honest man of Tony, _without_ ruining his inventive genius.

in addition, because the Soviet Union was weakened and had to tone down its aggression, a certain assassin-training program was abolished. As a result, Natasha Romanov (which, by the way, is properly Romano-VA when saying a Russian woman's surname) was never robbed of her ability to have children. So she eventually married Bruce Banner (who _didn't_ become the Hulk), and _was_ able to bear him children once she was ready to settle down from her less-murderous adventures.

Although neither Steve nor Peggy were scientists themselves, their success in making S.H.I.E.L.D what it was meant to be was so complete that Nick Fury, whose career was never tainted by Alexander Pierce because Hydra was completely destroyed even before John Kennedy's time, got elected President of the United States in 1992. By the time Thor came to Earth and met Jane Foster, Steve and Peggy had retired; but Thor and all good Asgardians were so impressed by the good work of S.H.I.E.L.D. that they arranged a technology-sharing program with the by then former President Fury.

Thus it happened that, by the time Thanos began making trouble, the forces of good were so strong and so unified that Thanos got wiped out. Steve and Peggy, though too old now to have been in on the destruction of Thanos, were guests at the interplanetary victory party. There they were introduced to the Guardians of the Galaxy, including Rocket Raccoon, who had swiped Thanos' helmet for a souvenir.

Peggy, when meeting Gamora, silently reflected on the irony that some people _still_ were more at ease with a white man like Peter Quill falling for a _green_ woman, than with a white man falling for a _black_ woman.

At the party, the blue-faced thief Yondu got drunk and began making trouble. But he underestimated the aged Captain America. When Yondu began sending his grossly unfair mind-controlled arrow all around to stab people, Steve knocked it out of the air with his shield and broke it apart. Then he knocked Yondu into the middle of next week, to the great delight of Drax.

And so Steve Rogers got to live his life after all, and helped the universe at large to overcome evil -- all because he had remembered just in time to do what movie makers hardly ever do: think about the mathematical realities of speed versus distance.



The End
 
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