"I can't believe you're alive, Bucky. I mean, it's hard enough accepting I'm in the future, but for you to be here too…"
"We got lucky, Stevie. Honestly thought you were dead too. But then… Howard's son is good at performing miracles, isn' t he?" "Yeah, I guess so. I got a chance to speak with the other Peggy. She's not… I don't know. I get the impression she doesn't really know what to think of me."
"Well she's from another universe. One where you didn't get juiced. I wouldn't expect to be able to pick up where you left off with our Peggy is all I'm saying."
"No, of course not! It's just… I don't know."
" Get your head in the game man. You ' ve got enough catching up to do without getting caught up in romance and all that drama. Tony's got you all set up, right?"
"… Yeah, just not sure where to even start. Help me out?"
"Of course, Stevie."
Pepper Stark hums as she runs her fingers through her husband's hair. The two of them are laid out on the bed together, with Tony's head rested on her freckled chest. Neither of them are exactly present though, because both of them are using the Technopathy that they gained from Maya' s newest upgrade to Extremis to spy on their new guests.
In one room, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are still getting used to knowing the other's alive at this point. Tony had talked to Steve for a little bit by himself, but ultimately brought in Bucky before long to ease the transition. Needless to say, neither man had been sure what to make of the fact that their best friend had in fact survived the last seventy years against all odds and all their expectations.
In another room, an alternate version of Peggy Carter learns to use a tablet with frightening ease, tapping away at it as her eyes zip back and forth a mile a minute across whatever she's reading. A quick check with technopathy and Pepper has the answer… Peggy is reading some of the unclassified files from the SSR before it became SHIELD, getting caught up on some of the things her counterpart was doing back in the day. Pepper knows without even having to ask that the three super soldiers have Tony on edge. Not only are they enhanced individuals that Tony himself didn't have a hand in making and thus vetting… but they represent threats that can't just be handwaved away. Not without just killing all three of them and sweeping them under the rug, and Tony wasn't about to do that… yet anyways.
James Barnes was a prisoner of war transformed into a brainwashed super assassin. Even now the people that Tony had infiltrated and was working on taking down from the inside were still hunting for their missing 'Winter Soldier'. If they found out it was Tony who had taken him, things would go bad for a lot of people very fast. Mostly HYDRA of course as Tony activated the numerous contingencies he'd set up, but the amount of other people who would die in HYDRA's thrashing death throes was unacceptable to her husband and Pepper happened to agree with him.
Steve Rogers, meanwhile, was a symbol that SHIELD would have loved to get their hands on. Captain America was still beloved by the vast majority of people in the USA even now seventy years after the fact. Even with the US Military taking several PR hits in recent decades from certain failed wars like Vietnam, Captain America was the golden boy. Unfortunately, he was also a loose cannon who, in Tony's own words, would break before he bent. Put simply, Steve wasn't the type of man to backdown from a challenge. He was amazing to have on your side, but terrible to have as an enemy.
And then there was Peggy Carter. Or rather, Captain Carter. Last but certainly not least, Peggy was the wild card to end all wild cards and Pepper just knew she was probably one of the bigger reasons Tony was worrying right now. After all, Pepper knew Tony's Peggy Carter. She'd been with him to visit her husband's godmother in her care home in New York, and had been pleased to see that the treatment for Alzheimer's that Tony had invented a couple years back had in fact cured the aging woman and left her sharp as a whistle even as she continued into her later years. This was not that Peggy Carter. This was a Peggy Carter from an alternate universe, one who Tony couldn't account for. Or at least, that's what Pepper assumed. Finally breaking the silence, she asks her husband outright.
"… What do you think Captain Carter's presence on the Valkyrie means for the future, Tony? She wasn't in any of your visions, was she?"
Sighing, still seemingly staring off into space but in reality watching their guests through the cameras, Tony shakes his head.
"No, she wasn't. But then… Loki wasn't a Goddess in my visions either. At this point I have to face facts. The knowledge from my visions isn't completely accurate."
Pepper hums, continuing to rake her fingers across Tony's scalp. She knows it relaxes him, knows that he takes great comfort in just cuddling with her. To be fair, she takes great comfort in cuddling with him too.
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