Fic: Right Here, Right Now (Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter/Captain America, PG)

[st_aurafina]

Title: Right Here, Right Now
Fandom: Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter/Captain America
Rating: PG
Words: 16300
Characters/Pairings: Bobbi Morse/Jemma Simmons, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Angie Martinelli, Dottie Underwood, Skye|Daisy Johnson, Alphonso (Mack) Mackenzie, Lance Hunter, Leo Fitz, Melinda May, Natasha Romanoff
Warnings/Content: No warnings
Notes: Set immediately after the events of the S2 finale and going AU from there. (This was entirely written before the new season of Agents of SHIELD premiered, so please forgive discrepancies, like Daisy still being Skye.) Thank you to lilacsigil, a very patient beta.


Summary: Trapped in 1946 after being swallowed by the monolith, Jemma Simmons knows she must protect the timeline and get a message back to her team (and Bobbi.) The enemies of the SSR have other plans, and home seems a long way distant. In the present day, though, Peggy Carter is discovering that it's never too late to go to the rescue.

Read at the Archive: Right Here, Right Now




---


The door was open, thought Jemma, as she fell. Fitz had awkwardly asked her to have dinner, and then the door holding the stone monolith was open. Had she tripped?

It was dark, and she had been falling for a very long time, even allowing for the effects of adrenaline on one's internal chronometer. In her mind, she sorted the events into some kind of order, shifting them about until she was sure she had them lined up. Fitz had flipped the catch on the door. The door had swung open, then the floor came up to meet her face. She must have tripped, except that she remembered the floor slipping under her palms as she moved backwards.

Something had pulled her, had washed over her all black and oily, and now she was falling. It occurred to her that she had been falling forever. An uncomfortable, squirming sort of fear crept across her and she desperately wanted to reach out, to feel anything.

Stop. Panic is not going to help you, she told herself sternly. This can be puzzled out. Hypotheses, Jemma Simmons, you need hypotheses. The terror receded as she visualised how she would explain the current situation to Fitz and the team.

First of all, there was definitely a sensation of disembodiment as she fell. She wanted to reach out, but she had no awareness of arms, or indeed, of her body at all. She tried to speak, which was foolish, because that triggered a reflexive need to breathe, and not being able to breathe broke down the rather fragile hold she had on panic. She saw before her eyes a paper on the hallucinatory effects of sensory deprivation. Suddenly she could smell the printer's ink, taste shampoo in her throat, hear the sound of water on pavement, and all over her, the tiny brush of feathers on her skin. She was lost in the sensory onslaught, and she did not rally rationality for an age.

Start again, Jemma. First of all: disembodiment. Pursuant to that, Jemma felt no pain, no hunger, no discomfort at all. Maybe this was entirely sensory? Perhaps she had suffered traumatic brain injury. If that was the case, though, there really was nothing she could do about it until there was more data, except hope that the medical staff were competent. How peculiar, though. Is this how it was for Fitz? He hadn't mentioned experiencing sensory disturbance, but then, they hadn't talked about his injuries, not really, not in the way they used to talk about things.

She knew the door to the artifact had opened, and if she tried not to focus on it directly, she remembered an oily rush envelope her body. She pushed that memory down quickly; she could deal with that later. Another hypothesis: the artifact was intelligent in some way that was indiscernible to all the studies she had made of its movements. They had seemed random, until the moment that black wave washed over her.

So, hypothesis: she was in the grip of the stone artifact. The artifact was intelligent. It had taken her with purpose, so it had awareness of its surroundings and possibly the people close to it. Perhaps she could establish communication of a sort, engage in negotiation?

She tentatively pushed forward with her consciousness, in a way that she and Fitz had theorised was a way that telepathic communication could function.

The falling sensation ceased abruptly. There were suddenly lights and colours that Jemma was certain were not on any spectra visible to the human eye, flying and buzzing about her head, tickling and humming with electrical charge. After that came a sensation of being watched and judged, a feeling that made one want to squirm. It was alien and it was wrong. She felt she was walking in the middle of a silent crowd, who brushed her shoulders as they passed her. There was a loud noise, very loud, echoing through her body. It was familiar, but she had no words to describe it.

"Stay off the damn road, you yokel!" The truck driver leaned on the horn again, and the sound made Jemma flinch and cover her ears. She was standing in the middle of a crossing. People watched from each corner of the road with fascination.

Someone took her elbow gently. "Come on!" said a woman's voice. She led Jemma to the curb, and onto the sidewalk while Jemma stared around her. The woman put her hands on Jemma's shoulder. "You okay, honey? You look kinda dazed."

"I…" said Jemma. The woman wore a tiny peaked cap and there was something very odd about her waitress' uniform. There was something very odd about everything, now that her eyes could focus properly. Jemma swallowed; her mouth was dry and her head spinning.

"Okay then," said the waitress, and tucked Jemma in close to her side. "You're coming with me, and you're getting a square meal."

The waitress was called Angie, and she kept up a running patter all the way to the place where she worked, and all the while as she piled a plate with sandwiches. Jemma took in the sliding windows of the automat, the transistor radio on the counter, and the handwritten sign advertising the lunch special for ten cents.

"You sit down there, okay? Things can seem bleak when you first arrive here, but I promise you'll feel a lot better with solid food in your stomach." Angie pushed her towards a booth and put the sandwiches down on the table.

Jemma hunched herself into the corner with her knees pulled up. With her back pressed against solid, cold vinyl seating, she could focus her attention forward, and try to make sense of the situation. There was an abandoned newspaper on the seat beside her, and she pulled it close to look at the date. The Daily News, it said. 1946.

"Oh, no, no," she said to herself. Time travel? The energy equivalences alone were massive. Then she felt a little outraged. The monolith was apparently able to manipulate space and time, quietly, sitting alone in its box and they'd never detected anything more than the smallest energy fluctuation. "It's not possible," she said, decidedly.

Angie slipped a cup of coffee next to the plate of sandwiches. "Oh, don't worry about it. There's a lot of standing orders never get picked up, which is wasteful if you ask me. People got the money to burn paying for five lunches a week and only eating two? I'd like to give them a piece of my mind, but at least it keeps me in honest employment. Hey, are you going to eat it, or stare at it?"

Jemma blinked, and picked up a sandwich obediently. It was ham, cut thick and layered with sliced pickle. She took a bite, and another, and soon the sandwiches were vanishing quickly.

"Atta girl," said Angie, and went to take an order from a customer.

Food in her stomach did make things easier to process. She was prepared for this, she told herself: a lifetime of watching Doctor Who and working in a lab with other Whovians meant that she'd spent many a pleasant afternoon theorising what she'd do if she were somehow transported to a different age. First priority was fitting in, second priority was getting home. There, she had a plan, of sorts. Comforted by that, at least, she watched people moving up and down the street outside. Her mind, irrationally expecting the odd muted palette of Technicolor, was surprised at the brightness of the colours.

"You looking for work?" Angie paused by her table and tapped the paper with her pencil. There's not much these days with the GIs coming home, but if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, we can always use dishwashers."

Jemma started carefully, "It's not that I mind mucking in…"

"Oh, you're English!" Angie said, delighted. "My best friend is English – hey, do people do that thing where they expect you to know their English friends because England is the size of a postage stamp?"

"Um, not as often as you would expect," said Jemma. "I really, really doubt that I've met your friend. I, I've not come straight from England, if you understand." Fit in, she told herself, fit in and then find a way home. "Angie, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure, honey," said Angie. "I'll do my best."

Jemma scooted out from the booth. "Do I look all right? What I'm wearing, I mean."

Angie put her pencil to her lips and watched as Jemma turned a circle.

"Well, you're kind of pitching it a little young, maybe. You're not going to have any problems landing a cushy job in cigarette pants, but it won't be the kind of job you want to take, if you get my meaning." Angie shrugged. "But hey, assuming you're just off a boat into town, you look pretty good. Maybe you should try some of the bookstores? I bet you read a lot."

Jemma smiled her thanks. "No, actually, I do have a job waiting for me, as soon as I can find my way there. Thank you so much for the sandwiches – I promise, if I can, I'll come and pay for them."

Angie gave her a quick hug. "You're welcome, honey. And if you strike it lucky, you pass the favour along to someone who needs it, okay?"

The foot traffic in 1946 New York was little different to the modern day, Jemma found. She was surprised: she'd expect that without the modern distractions of phones and earbuds, people would be less isolated, but actually, most of the crowd were as immersed in their own worlds as they would be in 2015. She put her head down, too, and walked briskly.

The most logical way to return to her own time was to use the artifact that had delivered her here in the first place, she reasoned. The monolith had been in SSR custody since it was uncovered in an archaeological dig. The SSR had offices in New York. Once she got there, she was sure she'd be able to explain the situation. They had to have protocols for this kind of thing, surely? Although, to be honest, she'd never come across any protocols for time travel while working for SHIELD. They really ought to have some, she thought as she walked. As soon as she was home, she'd bloody well write some herself.

She'd never visited SHIELD headquarters in New York, but she'd done several units on SHIELD history at the Academy, and she knew that SHIELD's precursor, the SSR had a base in Midtown. Theoretical information let her down when she came to the building in question, and found that the floors occupied by a telephone exchange. She stood in the door confused for a moment, watching people bustle to and fro, then realisation came. Of course, the base was hidden. What had she been expecting? The kind of slick, corporate anonymity of the twenty first century she was used to with SHIELD? No, this was camouflage for the 1940's, conveniently embedded in a centre monitoring conversations all over the world.

A deliveryman bumped her with his shoulder. "You in or out, lady?" he said.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," she said, and hopped backwards into the hallway.
"English, eh?" the delivery man paused with his parcel balanced on one arm. "You a long way from home, too." His own accent was solidly Russian.

"Yes, I am," she said, politely. "Have you been in New York long?" She looked over his shoulder as he spoke, watching the phone exchange for signs of SSR activity.

"Few days only," said the man. He shifted his parcel so that it shielded the pistol he was suddenly holding with his spare hand.

Jemma stared at the muzzle of the gun. "Is that…? Are you mugging me?"

The man gestured with the gun towards the door. "We go quietly, or we go with a bang, yes?" He tilted his head towards the stream of people going in and out of the exchange. "What is the word? For where the bullets go?"

"Collateral damage," Jemma muttered, and turned to leave. "It's called collateral damage." The man walked behind her, close enough that the nose of the gun brushed her shoulder through her blouse.

She walked slowly through the wide glass doors and out onto the street. Make a plan, she told herself. Lose him in the crowd, or, or, shout for help, or do something. There was no chance, though, because a truck pulled up against the curb and the rear door swung open. Inside, keeping carefully out of view from the SSR building, a tall, blonde woman looked down on them.

She rattled a sentence off in Russian that Jemma parsed with effort; her own Russian was rusty at best. She was angry, this woman, and she called the man an idiot, told him he'd made a mistake.

The man objected, described Jemma in outraged terms. "Brown hair, English, works at the phone exchange!"

"This is not Agent Carter," the woman said, crisply. What she said next was incomprehensible to Jemma, so she focused on what she did understand.

"You thought I was Agent Carter?!" Jemma could not stop herself from blurting it out, though she regretted it instantly, because the woman's gaze sharpened. The woman tipped her head back towards the van, and the man shoved Jemma forwards. Strong arms pulled her up and in, and the door closed behind her.

Jemma landed awkwardly, and spent several seconds organising her arms and legs, until she was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the truck. The blonde woman towered above her. She didn't have a gun to train on Jemma, but Jemma readily believed she didn't need one. There was a lethal ease with which she stayed perfectly balanced in the moving truck, while her henchmen kept a tight hold on the leather straps and railings on the walls. She seemed the sort of person that Bobbi ended up with as a nemesis. Jemma's stomach flipped over.

"Now, how do you know Agent Carter?" The woman's English was broadly Midwestern, which surprised Jemma, who was expecting a Bond-esque super-villain accent.

Jemma stuttered out an answer. "Only by reputation! I've never met her!" She flailed, waving her hands. "I'm English – we all know each other, it's such a small place. A village, really."

The woman crossed her arms, swaying effortlessly as the van lurched. "Oh, I don't think so, dear." She nodded towards another of the men, and he pulled a rough hessian bag over Jemma's head, while another tied her hands and feet. The rest of the journey passed in dark and dusty confusion. Jemma tried to keep track of the truck's progress, but concentrating on the movements in darkness made her nauseous and disoriented. She shut her eyes, tried to follow the muttered conversations with her limited Russian instead, but eventually everything became a half-lit, half-heard blur of sensory input.

Light fell across her face, cross-hatched through the rough weave of the bag over her head, and she realised she had somehow fallen asleep while they travelled. Her arms and legs cramped as they unbent beneath her. Someone grabbed her shoulders and dragged her along the metal floor of the truck.

"Please, I don't know anything," she said, to anyone who might be listening. Strong arms gathered her body up unceremoniously, and she smelled unwashed bodies as they carried her out of the truck. Somewhere, a long way distant, she heard an aircraft, noisy as it climbed into the sky. The air, through the musty bag, was redolent with rust and oil.

She heard huge doors slide open, and they carried her into darkness again. The bag did not come off until they had thrown her into a chair. The ropes were removed, only to be replaced with wide leather restraints. The chair was padded and inclined. Jemma leaned back her head, and was unsurprised to find a headrest; of course, they'd repurposed a dentist's chair. When the woman pulled the bag off her head, Jemma was blinded by a brilliant yellow circle of light, a lamp, turned in her direction.

"Gosh, that's a bit cliché, isn't it?" she said, blinking. Her voice was hoarse and dry. "I suppose you'll pour a long glass of water and drink it at me next."

"Well, there's an idea," The woman did pour a glass of water, from a jug on a table behind the light source. She carried it, with two long steps, to Jemma's side, and then raised the glass and took two swallows. "Like this?" Then she laughed, and put the glass to Jemma's lips. "Oh, silly billy. I wanted to show you it's not poisoned."

Jemma saw the woman's lipstick on the glass, but she was so thirsty that she drank anyway. The lipstick was perfumed, oily on her lips, but the water was cool and so very pleasant on her dry throat.

"Are you planning on interrogating me?" Jemma should be more frightened, but the whole situation was ludicrous. Lights in her eyes and leather restraints, for heaven's sake.

The woman leaned a hip against the arm of the chair, and smoothed Jemma's hair out of her eyes. "Not if I don't have to," she said. "Tell me everything about Agent Carter. Or the SSR, or anything that will make it worth my while to keep you alive."

Jemma imagined all the things she could tell this woman, and what could theoretically do to the fabric of time, and she laughed. She couldn't help it, laughter bubbled out of her. "I'm sorry," she said. "I really am, I don't mean to laugh at you. I think, I think I'm in shock actually. It's been a very odd day."

The woman held the glass up for Jemma again and she took another mouthful, despite the taste of lipstick. "Tell me all about it, sweetie," she said, stroking Jemma's head.

"Well, the funny thing is that even if you were to interrogate me, nothing I tell you will make any sense at all." Jemma closed her eyes for a moment. Her head was spinning, which could be the shock, but there was something odd about the sensation. She knew very well the symptoms of shock, and a floating, euphoric drunkenness was relatively atypical.

"Oh, I'd still like to hear it, even if you're sure I wouldn't understand." The woman twisted a lock of Jemma's hair with her finger, and Jemma watched, hypnotised by the light falling on the strands of hair as they curled round and around. "Do you want some more water?"

"You're drugging me!" Jemma realised and thrashed in the chair. "Why aren't you affected? How was it delivered? What are you using? Chloral hydrate? Pentothal? What dosage? Tell me!"

"Oh, stop," said the woman, irritation in her voice. "You're hysterical." She brought her lips down onto Jemma's and pressed hard against Jemma's mouth. It was without a doubt the worst kiss Jemma had ever experienced. Worse than with Graeme Boxley in the second form. Worse than that SHIELD intern with the bad perm. The bright light, so painful before, winked a firefly pattern as her head swam. Jemma thought, as she blacked out, that this kiss was even worse than that night she and Fitz drunkenly snogged in the SHIELD comms room.

---

It was ages before anyone even told Bobbi that Jemma had gone missing. It was like a memo had gone out to all agents that Bobbi Morse was to be protected from the truth at all costs. In the end, she got the news from Skye, and even then she had to trick it out of her.

The problem was being in a hospital bed inside the base. She saw people hurrying along the corridors, and she knew damn well something was up, but nobody would tell her anything. And in between working with doctors and physios, whole days slipped past without her noticing.

"What's going on?" she asked Hunter, one afternoon, or at least, she assumed it was afternoon.

"What?" he said, lost in the pages of Esquire that Mack had left for her this morning. "I dunno, SHIELD stuff. I try not to pay too much attention."

Bobbi believed that, actually. Hunter had incredible focus in the field, but at home, much to her chagrin, he had a tendency to be self-involved to the point of cluelessness. And Hunter wouldn't lie to her. If he said he didn't know, he really meant it.

Mack, on the other hand, Mack was sneaky. That poker face had been part of what kept their cover for so long. Now? Now it made for frustration.

"Nope," he said, when he visited the next day, a copy of Vogue Italia tucked under his arm. "I mean, we're all worried about Coulson. Me especially. I'm still worried about my job." He gave a worried, guilty smile that Bobbi would have fallen for in a second, if she weren't already suspicious. He was putting up a false lead; she'd have done the same in his position.

"Come on, Mack," she said. "You're keeping facts from me, and I'm not stoned enough anymore for that to fly. Fitz has been walking up and down the hall with some kind of freaky gadget, and from his face, he hasn't slept in a week."

Mack looked at the IV stand in the corner as if he'd rather it was pumping her full of painkillers again, but he shook his head. "You gotta get better, Bobbi. We've got people to deal with anything that comes up." And that was all he had to say on the matter. Bobbi scowled and chafed, and then, frustratingly, slept for hours, until Mack was there again the next day with Architectural Digest México and a bag of dates.

Skye was green, though, and Bobbi watched her sitting curled up in the chair by the hospital bed with her laptop balanced on her knees. Skye's brow was furrowed as her fingers moved over the keyboard.

"Whatcha working on?" Bobbi said, idly. She broke a date open and pulled out the stone. She ate the date and threw the stone into the trash with a satisfying clang.

"Reviewing internal security footage," Skye said. She reached across to the bed to plug Bobbi's tablet into the laptop. "And loading this baby up with three seasons of The Walking Dead. I can't believe you haven't seen it. Don't you ever watch TV?"

"Don't really have the leisure unless I'm out with an injury," said Bobbi. She shifted her leg slightly, so that the tablet slithered off the hospital blanket and towards the ground. Skye launched herself forward to catch it before it hit the ground. Bobbi timed the moment, gave an anguished cry as Skye's shoulder made contact with the bed.

"Oh my God, are you okay? I'm so sorry!" Appalled that she might have aggravated Bobbi's injuries, Skye stood up, holding her laptop in one hand.

"Water…" Bobbi gasped weakly, and when Skye anxiously leaned for the glass, Bobbi neatly hooked the laptop from Skye's grip and onto the bed.

"Hey!" Skye said, outraged. She reached for her computer and Bobbi gave her hand a good slap.

"Don't make me hurt you," she said, focused on the screen. "I want to see what's got everyone worked up." Skye had been reviewing security footage, footage a week old.

"I don't think you can hurt me," Skye said, but Bobbi could hear the uncertainty in her voice. Skye kept out of reach of the bed, which suited Bobbi fine.

"Smart girl," Bobbi said. The footage concentrated on Jemma's movements through the base, in a specific and very narrow period. "Okay. What happened to Simmons?"

Sky tried to explain, but her security clearance didn't provide enough satisfying detail beyond the fact that Simmons was missing. Skye fetched Fitz, who only complicated things with incomprehensible terms, then they brought Mack in, and finally Bobbi got some facts.

"She disappears in a ten minute burst of static on the cameras immediately after Fitz leaves the room," said Mack. "There's electrical interference, strongest in that room but across the base as well. We're not sure if something happened or if she simply walked off base."

"She didn't!" Fitz protested." We had a, a… We were talking. We were going to have dinner. She wouldn't leave without telling me, not when we had an arrangement." Fitz, usually at least a little unkempt, looked like he'd been sleeping in a storage bin for the last week.

Bobbi enhanced the magnification on the screen to better examine the footage of Jemma and Fitz talking in the room. The artifact stood quiescent in its case, Fitz made what must be his dinner proposal, and then left. Jemma picked up a piece of equipment, and then static burst across the screen.

"Who's in charge while Coulson's in New York? May? Who'd she put on the case?" Bobbi flicked through more footage, but there was no sign of Jemma anywhere.

Mack rubbed his forehead. "We're pretty much it," he said. "There's a lot happening out there after the attack."

"She said Simmons could have left!" Fitz's frustration seemed to boil out of him. "She said it wasn't in her brief to chase up missing techs!"

"You got her on a bad day. May needs more evidence that she didn't leave," Mack said. "On paper, it's feasible. Simmons could have gone anywhere in that static burst – to the hangar, to the vehicles, out the front door." Fitz turned on him with an outraged expression, and Mack spread his hands out in appeasement. "I don't think she took off, okay? Look, May's letting us investigate this, isn't she?"

"Simmons didn't say yes," said Bobbi, thoughtfully. "When you asked her out, she didn't say anything."

Fitz sputtered. "No, no, she said she'd meet me later. It was… it was… implied. Anyway, that doesn't explain where she went."

"Are there still extra cameras on the case with the artifact?" asked Bobbi.

"The what now?" asked Skye. "I have access to all the cameras, Coulson told me." Realisation broke across her face. "Oh, man, am I always going to fall for that line?"

"I hope so," said Bobbi. "Hard to keep up with you otherwise." She logged into the SHIELD database with her own ID, and opened a file. "When we knew the artifact was being targeted by the Inhumans, Coulson had me put extra cameras in there."

Mack and Skye both protested this subterfuge loudly, and Bobbi waved them quiet. "Come on, you know why he couldn't tell either of you. Mack was compromised by Kree technology, and you, Skye, well, we didn't know where your loyalties would to fall. Anyway, the outcome is that we have another source of footage, which is coming up… here." She turned the screen so they could see Jemma and Fitz talking. Fitz left, closed the door behind him. Jemma turned towards the case with her equipment, and frowned.

"Static should kick in now," said Skye, watching the timestamps. The static did come, but slowly, tiny pixelated ants crawling across the screen. They all watched as Jemma reached for help, and then was propelled through the air as the door holding the artifact flew open. The image was slowly eaten up as the field of static grew, but before it was completely obscured, they all saw a flood of liquid blackness sweep from the case, envelop Jemma and retreat.

Bobbi pushed the laptop away, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and with gritted teeth, got to her feet. It wasn't quite as bad as she expected. The pain was knifelike, but the knife wasn't hot. She could bear this.

"The hell are you doing, girl?" Mack reached out for her, as if he expected her to collapse in front of him. Bobbi wasn't sure he was overreacting; this hurt, down deep where things shouldn't hurt at all, but she had to get up and act. Her knee twinged in a bad way, and she folded up with a yelp. Okay, maybe she was over-estimating her abilities. She straightened up tentatively, and took a step towards the small locker that held her clothes.

"Come on, Bobbi," said Skye. She touched Bobbi's elbow. "This isn't helping Simmons."

"She could be inside it!" Bobbi said, calmly pulling the hospital robe off and reaching for her bra. Mack made a noise of protest and turned to face the wall. Fitz still had his nose buried in Skye's laptop, and didn't notice.

Skye's expression was horrified, and she immediately let go of Bobbi's arm. "Oh my god, has she been in there since she vanished?"

Bobbi pulled on her jeans, hissing as her knee pulled and twinged. Jemma was not a field agent, she wasn't equipped to handle this kind of thing, and she was stupidly brave enough to convince herself she could. If she'd been trapped inside the artifact all alone, terrified and trying to deal with it herself? Or worse, if that thing had killed her, Bobbi would… She'd… All right, she wasn't sure what she'd do, but she knew she had to go down there and see for herself.

"Here," said Mack. He put his hands around her waist and gently set her on the bed. Bobbi opened her mouth to protest, but then he passed her socks and shoes, and when she was dressed, offered her an arm. The four of them left the infirmary room as Hunter wandered in with a bag of take-out and two large sodas.

"I miss something?" he said, watching them go past.

"Just need to check on stuff!" Bobbi said, brightly, as they left.

Hunter settled himself down in the chair. "Well, get back here before I land in trouble with the nurse again. Or I'll eat your fries…" He had to shout the last, because the elevator door was closing.

---

Jemma woke in a cell, or a room adapted to be a cell, anyway. Her mouth tasted worse than a very bad party, and her head throbbed. She rolled over, and the springs of the little camp bed twanged and bounced. She did not remember coming to a place with iron bars on the window. She very much wanted to be sick, but there was no toilet. There did not even seem to be a bucket.

"Make a plan, make a plan," she chanted determinedly, and stood up. Standing up was a very bad idea, and suddenly it didn't matter that there wasn't a bucket, because she was being violently sick on the floor. She staggered forward, impacted with a door, and slid to the floor again, legs akimbo, a discarded doll. It was ages before it occurred to her to try the door, but when she snaked an arm upwards from the floor, she found it was locked.

"Very well, I will accept that making a plan was perhaps a little ambitious," she told herself, in a voice that cracked and rasped. She settled for running through the events of the day as best she could remember them. The artifact. The nineteen forties. Drugged lipstick. Missing time. Jemma sighed, and leaned her head against the door. Whatever she had told them during her interrogation, it hadn't yet destroyed the space-time continuum in anyway she could detect.

She sighed, and rested her head against the door, wishing that it would stop thumping. "My poor brain, it's sloshing around in there," she said, and closed her eyes.

When Jemma next opened her eyes, it was difficult to tell what was headache and what was actual pounding at the door. She listened carefully, heard a Russian expletive. A woman's fist came through the wooden panels of the door. Jemma scrambled quickly away from the door and pulled herself upright.

"Hello?" she said, tentatively. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing, she thought, as her headache receded and common sense came in its wake.

"Be with you in a moment!" a crisply English voice said. Her next words were interspersed with punches. "Just. Bloody. Go. Down." A body hit the door, and it shook with the impact, then there was quiet. The door swung open, and framed by the rising dust of the fight was a woman in a neatly belted pantsuit and leather coat.

Jemma blinked, and looked again: this woman's face was familiar and reassuring and simultaneously overwhelming. She opened her mouth to say her name, then clamped it closed again. Remember the space-time continuum. There was no reason for Jemma Simmons in 1946 to be familiar with Agent Peggy Carter.

"Agent Janeway, I believe?" Agent Carter held out a hand in introduction.

"I'm sorry?" said Jemma. "I… I…" Oh, for heaven's sake, this was worse than when she she was twelve, and found she was standing next to Tom Baker on the tube.

"Used a pseudonym, did you? Good girl," Agent Carter said, briskly. "How's the head? Dottie's lipstick can pack quite the punch, I know from experience."

"Come down here and say that," said the Russian agent from where she lay on the floor. Her words were muffled by a split and swollen lip, and her hands were cuffed above her head. Agent Carter had a foot planted on the chain between the cuffs to hold her still.

Jemma pictured the two of them lip-locked, and was struck dumb again. Agent Carter gave her a wicked grin and beckoned her out of the room. Jemma took a deep breath and took wobbly steps towards the door. The room still had a peculiar tilt, and Agent Carter reached for Jemma's shoulders to steady her. The moment that they made contact, Jemma felt a sharp, wrenching shock, as if electricity had passed between them.

"Oh!" she said, reeling away, protecting her eyes. Between her fingers she saw static, buzzing and floating, big white pixels drifting through the air before her. Hallucination, she told herself, some remnant of the psychotropic agent she'd ingested.

"My word," said Agent Carter, in surprise, as the static crawled up her arm.

Jemma stared through the static that was clearly not a hallucination at all, since Agent Carter was swatting at the dancing white lights in front of her.

---

Steve liked the hospice where Peggy lived; the nursing staff always had a smile, and they were happy to bend the rules when it was clear that no harm would come to their patient. Today, they'd let him wheel Peggy out into the gardens to a place where they could sit with a little privacy. He draped a blanket around Peggy's shoulders and gently scooped her out of the wheelchair. Admittedly, there was nowhere here that wasn't within view of the building, and there was an orderly who was obviously keeping an eye on the two of them, but Steve chose to view that as part of their concern for their patient's wellbeing.

"No hanky-panky for you, young man," said Peggy, with her eyes closed. She leaned her head against Steve's shoulder as he settled her across his legs on the park bench.

He laughed. "No pulling the wool over your eyes, is there?"

"What a beautiful day. It reminds me of Italy, that day we tried to have a picnic," she said. She smirked, a sly expression that Steve was certain should never appear on the face of an older lady.

"Uh, this was where? Azzano?" Steve did remember: he had nervously packed a basket with a blanket and the pick of scavenged rations, including a dusty bottle of wine. Bucky had pressed a tin into Steve's hand before he went to find Peggy. He'd caught sight of the words "Hercules Latex Sheath" before he blushed and shoved it in his pocket.

Peggy snickered. "Whenever we thought we were alone, someone would come running up that hill with a message. It was almost as if it were choreographed."

"It was a little tragic." To be honest, Steve had been secretly a bit relieved. In the end, after some truly astonishing kisses, they'd given up and returned to the barracks to share the bottle with everyone else.

"You'd almost think there was a war going on, and you were some kind of hero," she said, closing her eyes again and stretching a little in the warmth of the sun. A few moments later, she was dozing, a pleased little smile on her lips. Steve remembered that smile, from when Peggy was younger and knew she had the upper hand in a conversation. It had not been as long for him since he had seen it.

Steve felt his mouth curl into a smile in response. He settled in against the bench, and shut his eyes too. The sun was warm, and in the overly manicured garden, the roses were beginning to bloom. It had been so long since he'd been able to sit quietly with someone he loved.

They sat together for a while and Peggy slept, until the orderly in the window caught Steve's eye and tapped his wrist. Steve nodded, and held up his hand, five fingers spread, feeling like a kid begging for more playtime before bed. Five more minutes, he pleaded with the orderly. The orderly called over his shoulder, then nodded and held up five fingers too.

"Hey, we gotta go in, Peg," he said.

Peggy blinked and shifted in his arms. "Steve?" she said, and opened her eyes. "Oh, Steve, I feel quite peculiar. Things are changing, in my mind." Her body became tense, the bones pressed hard against his arms. Her fingers fluttered at the edge of the blanket.

"It's okay, Peggy. I'm here, you're safe," he said. He kissed her forehead and tucked the blanket back in. "Let's go inside." Peggy's daughter had explained this to him; Peggy's confusion was the worst when it came to recent memories, and a thing that helped with was familiarity in her surroundings. That was why they'd brought furniture from home and plastered the walls with photographs.

"No, Steve, you don't understand." Peggy took a deep breath and tried to still her hands. "I know what's right, I know the past, and there's a wrongness with how I remember it."

"I get it, Peg, I get it," said Steve. "It's okay. You're here, you're safe, and it's been a beautiful day. Let's go back to your room."

"No." Peggy's voice was suddenly authoritarian, if not exactly steady. "Steve, listen to me. I understand my condition; I know I'm muddled about the now, but I haven't forgotten the past, not yet. Something is wrong, and it's wrong in 1946."

That was oddly specific, Steve thought. "1946? What happened in 1946?"

Peggy shook her head as if trying to clear it. "I was in New York, I was at the SSR headquarters. That's correct. I went to the office, I read the morning briefings – had to bloody play secretary to sneak past the boy's club – then it's all double vision. There's me doing what I remember, and me doing completely different things. It's like watching two movies at once, and it does not make sense." She punctuated the last four words with an angry poke of her finger at his chest.

Steve stood up with her in his arms. Peggy didn't sound lost or distressed, but what she was saying didn't make any sense. "Come on, let's sort this out inside." He'd feel a lot safer with doctors nearby, and then, if this was more in his field of expertise, they could sort it out.

Peggy made a noise of extreme frustration, exactly the same little hiss between clenched teeth that she'd made in wartime. "Steve, listen to me. Something is wrong. Don't you feel it? Look." She gestured ahead of them.

Steve blinked and looked again because all around them rose a cloud of mist. It hovered close to Peggy's body, and he realised it was a kind of physical static, white particles buzzing through the air in a sleepy, random snowfall, as if all the bees had abandoned the roses to surround them instead.

Peggy spoke slowly and carefully. "When I say I don't remember, it's because what I am remembering is impossible." She took a deep breath and buried her hands in the blanket to hide the tremor, but Steve could feel it against his chest. "Steve, darling, I have a little mission for you. I need to deliver a very important message."

---

The artifact room was a long way distant from the infirmary – Bobbi was out of breath when she got there, and she had to take a minute to lean against the doorframe until the muscle spasms eased, but she was there, and she felt that if she had to, she could fight. Mack gave her a suspicious glance, but said nothing.

She took in the room, feeling useless. The monolith was quiescent, which should be a reassuring thing, since it meant that Jemma's situation was most likely stable, but Bobbi couldn't kickstart her mind into strategic mode. All she could pull together were questions. Was Jemma afraid when it happened? Did she suffer? Was it painful? Did she think she had been abandoned? All sorts of horrible, bloody possibilities ran through her mind while she hobbled towards the room.

Mack pulled a chair over for her, but Bobbi ignored it, even though she could feel stitches pulling and hurting.

Mack dragged the chair with him, propped it behind her, then gave her a gentle push in the centre of the chest. Bobbi collapsed into the chair with an exhalation and a foul stare.

"We don't have to fight everything first thing, okay?" he said.

"Yeah, okay," said Bobbi. "That's swell. Thanks."

"You know you can ask for help?" said Mack. "We did our share of feeling useless while you were in surgery. Be nice to offer a helping hand, is all I'm saying."

"Thanks, but I don't need it," said Bobbi. What she meant was that she didn't want anyone to see her struggling, but that was the kind of stubborn thing you didn't say in front of Mack, because he would give you that look.

He gave her that look anyway. "Kind of makes sense to reserve your energy for the battles that matter, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, maybe, when we've got the big picture," said Bobbi. She slumped against the chair. "Till then, I'd rather stay on alert."

Fitz walked in behind them, with Skye's laptop balanced on his forearm and Skye hovering nervously beside him. "This is odd," he said. "This footage, it's… it's…"

"It's mine?" said Skye, reaching for it.

"No, that's not it." Fitz spun around, orienting himself with the position of the camera. "It's not interference," he finished. "The static, I mean. It's not static."

Skye snatched the laptop away finally, and looked at the footage. "Looks like static to me."

"Yeah, but look." Fitz pointed up to the ceiling, where power cabled looped and snaked through the rafters. "That one, there."

Bobbi pushed herself up from the chair with a wince and walked under the cable. It hung a little lower than the others, true, but there wasn't anything remarkable about it.

"On the footage," said Fitz, gesturing towards Skye. "The, the static, it's behind the cable. It's not interference with the, with the… video feed."

"So, it's not static," said Skye. "It's manifesting in the room. Lights or, um, maybe a disturbance in the Force or whatever, but it's physically there in the room with Simmons. Oh, what if it's, like, some kind of dimensional thing? What if she got out of phase with our universe? Maybe she's here, and she's watching us now, trying to get us to recognise her?" Her expression was one of fascination and horror.

Fitz was dubious. "But there's no data to support… whatever you're talking about."

"She's not here," said Bobbi, with definitive authority.

Everyone else turned in her direction.

"How… how can you know that?" asked Fitz.

I'd feel it, Bobbi almost said, but she had better reflexes than to blurt that out loud. "Because if Simmons was stuck in a different dimension, she'd have figured out a way to get a message to us."

Everyone seemed to accept this as a universal truth. Jemma was resourceful, and she didn't lack for courage or innovation. If there was a way for her to make contact from wherever she had been taken, they'd have heard from her.

Bobbi felt the hair on her neck prickle, and she spun much faster than her body would prefer. Before she doubled over in pain, she saw May standing silently in the open doorway. In the secret language of Melinda May's facial expressions, Bobbi read "You've brought trouble to my desk and I am vastly displeased," and "I'd hurt you for that but I see you've already inflicted incredible pain on yourself. How satisfying."

"We have a very important visitor," May said, her voice mild and polite and yet filled with a promise of retribution. Behind her, and looming above her came a tall, chiselled, infinitely recognisable person. Bobbi had about thirty seconds to wonder what Captain America was doing at the base, before May stepped aside to reveal a very old woman, sitting in a wheelchair with a soft pink rug across her legs.

"Oh, it's lovely to visit my old digs," said Director Carter. "It's been so long."

---

"So the name's not Janeway, then?" Agent Carter rifled through the desk drawers of the little office in the hangar. Dottie, the Russian agent, stood outside on the gangway, arms cuffed, watching them with an intent but surly expression.

Jemma browsed in fascination through the calendar hanging from the wall – all risqué pin-up girls, sitting bawdily astride aeroplane engines. "No, I'm sorry, it's Simmons. Jemma Simmons. We had a little training in evading interrogation at the… at university, they said to use song lyrics or pop-culture icons or anything we could immerse ourselves in to avoid giving up..." Jemma trailed off, realising that Agent Carter was following each word with avid interest. "I'm glad it worked," she finished awkwardly.

Oh, do be careful, Jemma, she warned herself. The potential for damaging the future was presumably worse when interacting with notable people. This was Agent Carter, who forged SHIELD out of the SSR. Jemma could wipe SHIELD out of the history books, or significantly change the way it developed so that it was unrecognisable.

"Very well, Agent Simmons." Agent Carter extracted a reel of magnetic tape from a drawer and held it up with a cheerful smile. "Let's find out how much of what you told the Russians was evasion and how much was truth."

Jemma's elation at being rescued suddenly deflated. Nervously, she sat down for her second interrogation of the day.

Some hours later, Jemma's head ached and she wanted to cry. This was Agent Peggy Carter, who built the agency Jemma was proud to be part of, and she thought Jemma was a spy. And Jemma could say nothing in her own defence.

"One one six, zero seven zero, eight eight nine. Fitz said I was lying, but the proof was right there on the screen. He had to eat his words, I can tell you," said Jemma on the tape, her voice dreamy and lilting in a way that Jemma could never imagine herself speaking. The combined effects of a drug-induced headache, hunger and incredible fatigue were making it very difficult to keep things straight, and she was very scared she would let important facts about the future slip out.

"One hundred and sixteen million, seventy thousand, eight hundred and eighty nine." Agent Carter read the number down as she'd transcribed it from the tape of Jemma's voice. "Well, let's assume that's not your bank balance. Those kinds of numbers are much more in Mr Stark's range than people like you and I."

Outside the window, Dottie gave a snort of disgust. "It's a phone number, you idiot." Dottie's nose had been bleeding and she had a spreading bruise forcing an eye closed. Jemma felt sorry for her. It was actually pretty awful being at Agent Carter's mercy.

"Quiet, you," said Agent Carter, with a vicious stab of a finger in her direction. "Now, Jemma, could this be a safe combination?"

"No, no, it's none of those things," insisted Jemma. "For heaven's sake, it's my Candy Crush score. It's a game, that's all." Agent Carter was proving to be remarkably canny about eking details out of her. She'd gently strung this interview out while Jemma's stamina slowly faltered.

"I see. Let's discuss the night-night gun. That does sound interesting. I have never heard of dendrotoxin – I'd say that must be something new coming out of our labs, but we don't have anything like it. Then again, Dottie's the expert in toxins – do you recognise the term?" She spoke over Jemma's shoulder at her other prisoner, and Dottie shrugged.

"If I knew, do you really think I would tell you?"

"Ah, but I know your tells," said Agent Carter. "You've no more idea than me about it, do you? So, she's not a Russian agent, and I'm certain she's not SSR or MI6. What's your theory?"

Dottie leaned into the cuffs to get close to the window. "My money's on the Nazis," she said.

"What?!" Jemma and Agent Carter both exclaimed.

"Listen to the tape," said Dottie. "In a minute, she raves on about the might of Thor and the strength of his arm. That's SS propaganda, if I ever heard it."

"You haven't seen his arms," Jemma muttered, slumped low in her chair. She was going to jail, that was clear. Her and the Rosenbergs. At least she didn't seem to have said anything that someone of this era could recognise as definitively from the future.

"What was the weapon you used in the cell?" Agent Carter suddenly snapped into the lull. "An electric device of some sort, surely."

Jemma sat a little straighter in her chair; this had puzzled her, too. "It wasn't a weapon – you searched me, you didn't find any weapons."

"Apart from this item," said Agent Carter, holding Jemma's phone. "About which you continue to prevaricate. It might be a weapon – it's certainly electrical." She pressed the power button again, and showed her the display.

Jemma looked at it longingly. She'd love to be able to call for help. Surrounded as she was by incandescent globes and Bakelite, the cool blue light of the screen was a beacon pointing to home.

"Well, I'm telling you it's not a weapon," she said with sudden forcefulness. "You can believe me or not, but my greater concern is what caused that electrostatic effect, and it wasn't my… that device. I think it might have happened when we came into physical contact."

She stood up suddenly, ideas tumbling in fast. "I think – I really do think it might be some kind of temporal interference. Gosh, I really wish I'd had a, a…" To be honest, she wasn't sure what kind of equipment could measure the effect, short of requisitioning the Large Hadron Collider, and that was seven thousand kilometres and 60 years away from where she stood.

"A thingummy?" offered Agent Carter. "What is temporal interference, when it's at home?"

"Oh, can we please stop this?" said Jemma, in frustration. She needed to concentrate, and it was hard to do that and dance around all these secrets. "I bet you've already decided I'm not the enemy. I've read your… your file, and sometimes you'll chase a mystery down simply to be the one with the answer. But I'm in trouble, and I need help, and your file told you're also the kind of person who won't ignore that." She sat down in the chair again with a sudden thump, breathless and a little shaky.

Agent Carter's expression was conflicted. Behind Jemma, Dottie laughed out loud.

"She has you down to a tee."

Agent Carter gave Dottie an evil glance, then closed the blinds on the office window. She pulled up a chair and sat close to Jemma, their knees almost touching.

"All right, let's say that I'm prepared to hear your story, but that is no guarantee that I will act on what you tell me."

---

Director Carter – well, technically she was former Director Carter, but Bobbi didn't think there was a SHIELD agent anywhere that could say that directly to Peggy Carter's face – packed a lot of authority into a tiny frame, and dispensed commands with a quavering voice that nobody dared question. And she had Captain America standing at her shoulder, which certainly didn't hurt.

Hunter had been despatched to find Jemma's teapot and make tea of an appropriately English nature.

"I drink coffee! English people drink coffee, too," he had protested, but Mack took him by the elbow and dragged him away before he could destroy his career.

Jemma would have loved this, thought Bobbi. Then she felt queasy with worry, or maybe her painkillers had worn off, she wasn't sure which. She sat quietly in her seat and tried to ride it out. The briefing room was so hot, full of people. Her neck was prickling, with sweat, and with the nasty feeling that she was being watched. She looked up and met the eyes of the former Director, who reached her hand up for Captain America. He leaned down and she whispered into his ear, then he stood up straight.

"We don't want to interrupt things here," he said. "I know you're putting things together after a big disruption. Agent Morse, you're not on active duty, have I got that straight?"

Now May was glaring at her, which seemed unfair. As if she'd had anything to do with this. "Yes, sir?" Bobbi said, tentatively.

"Would you mind helping us out? We don't want to be in anyone's way, and what we need is easily sorted."

"Sir, I'm off-duty because I took a beating on the last mission," Bobbi said. "I'm happy to help, but I'm not at my best."

Cap smiled, an easy, sunny smile, and Bobbi understood a little better why people followed him into anything. "Fair warning, thanks. I promise I won't ask for anything that'll make your doctors mad."

The room cleared, until it was only May and Bobbi at the table with the visitors.

"I'm here because I wanted to check my diaries," said Director Carter. She had not touched her tea. She really did know everything, thought Bobbi, who had tasted Hunter's tea before.

"Forgive me for being blunt, Director Carter," May started.

Director Carter waved a hand. "Oh, do be blunt, dear. I have no patience for silliness."

"Your diaries were digitised and transcribed in the nineties. You could have checked them at home." It was interesting to watch May dance between politeness and impatience.

"Not the digitised versions," snapped the Director. "The originals." She folded back into her chair, and Cap leaned over her. Before he could say anything, though, she glared at him, furious and determined and exhausted. "Not yet, Steve. I'm fine. I don't get so many good moments; I want to run this one into the ground."

"What's the difference between the originals and the online version?" asked Bobbi. "Aren't they the same?"

"They were the same, Agent Morse, until your friend went missing. But now, they're changing, and I believe that when we see them, they'll mention you."

---

"So, you understand, I have to be scrupulous about protecting the future," said Jemma. She nursed a tin mug of tea. "But I need to transmit a message to the future somehow, and I'm not sure how to do that. Not with the technology you have here." They'd stayed holed up in the hangar office, though Agent Carter had gone to check on Dottie's underlings, and held a mug of water for Dottie to sip from. Jemma did wonder why she hadn't called the whole thing in to her superiors, but it seemed a bad idea to ask, just when they were beginning to trust each other.

"I'm not saying that I believe you," said Agent Carter. She propped against the edge of the desk and stirred her tea. "And I'm certainly not going to do anything that compromises SSR security or protocols. But it would seem to me that the best way to get a message to the future would be to write it down and leave it somewhere where your friends could discover it."

Jemma considered it while she sipped her tea. "I suppose that's possible. The difficult thing will be getting them to notice it. Except that I suspect it hasn't happened, since I have never heard of a message written for or by me in 1946. Though time travel could explain a lot of other mysteries, now that I'm thinking about it."

Agent Carter rocked her own tea back and forth in her mug. "Maybe you need someone to carry the message with them. Maybe the message has always been there, but nobody knew where to look."

"Someone still alive in the future," Jemma said slowly. "Someone I've met here, who can pass the message along the slow way. Oh, well, of course! That would be you!"

"We're colleagues in the future?" Agent Carter shifted, uncomfortable.

"Oh, I wouldn't say colleagues, as such," said Jemma. "I mean, we've never met. I'm in, I'm – well, I'm in the SSR, I suppose you'd say. I don't think it hurts to tell you that." Did that give away too much? She extemporised quickly. "I, uh, I pay attention to the careers of other female agents, you see."

Agent Carter stood up straight and shook herself. "I'm not sure whether to be horrified or flattered. Right, so I'm your messenger, that's not hard to achieve. But what happens then? Do your friends come zooming to the past in a rocket ship and scoop you up? Is this a common occurrence in the future?"

"No. At least, I hope not," said Jemma. "And it seems to me that the easiest way to go home is the way that I got here in the first place, but that means getting access to the artifact that was responsible for this accident. It's possible that I can activate it myself, but I have no idea what triggers it. It might need someone in my time to make it happen. I'm hoping you have access – it was in SSR custody just after the war. It's a rock monolith – it liquefies itself randomly, and then reforms."

"Oh, yes, that one," said Agent Carter. "The SSR have it, indeed, but it's shipping out again. So edifying that our artifacts are being traded back and forth like baseball cards."

"Traded? To whom and for what?" asked Jemma. "But it's my best chance for getting home! It mustn't go anywhere, not until I've had a chance to examine it."

"It's off to Russia, in exchange for… well, for other things of dubious political value," said Agent Carter. "But I think we can reach it before it leaves."

She tilted her head towards the door, and with a gesture for silence in Jemma's direction, moved quietly in that direction. When she jerked the door open abruptly, Dottie, free from her restraints, fell forward into the room. Agent Carter caught her as she fell, swung her until she was bent backwards against the desk. She wrapped her fingers around Dottie's throat.

"You can smuggle us aboard that ship, can't you, dear?"

---

Director Carter kept her original journals stashed in a small safe cemented into a wall. After her retirement, the room had been refurbished, and the safe had been hidden behind a sheet of drywall.

"I'll call Mack," said Bobbi. "He can cut through that."

May said, "Don't bother," and produced an enormous knife. She stabbed it into the drywall and started sawing. She seemed to be relishing the task.

Once the safe was exposed, they both turned towards the Director for the combination, but Director Carter was dozing in her chair. Captain Rogers hovered beside her, his hand on her shoulder, watching her sleep.

Bobbi and May looked at each other, both uncomfortable with the idea of intruding.

"I'll crack it," said Bobbi, and slipped to the floor to sit cross-legged in front of the safe. She put her forehead against the cool metal and listened for the tumblers.

May watched her work for a while. "I should have channelled more resources into Simmon's disappearance," she said, eventually. "I was angry at her, for leaving us in the lurch."

Bobbi felt a tumbler click into place and slowly turned the dial. "You didn't stop us looking, at least."

May made that dry, huffing noise that passed for a laugh. "Get in the way of you riding to the rescue? I'm not that stupid."

Bobbi looked over her shoulder at that. "What is that supposed to mean?"

May kept her arms folded and her mouth shut, and by then the last tumbler had fallen, and the safe swung open.

The diaries were densely written, in a neat and economical script that gave Bobbi a pinching headache in the very middle of her forehead. There were dozens of the small leather clad books, all grouped by year, but with no more organisation than that.

Bobbi spread them across the floor. "What year did she say?"

"'She' is the cat's mother," came a quavering voice from the other end of the room. "And it was 1946. Spring, I think. Spring?" she asked, looking at Captain Rogers.

"Sorry, Peggy," he said. "I missed a couple of years, remember?"

"Oh, yes." Director Carter sighed, and pulled the blanket a little closer. "Goodness, it's cold in here." Cap tucked the blanket in at her sides.

Bobbi rifled through the journals until she found one for the spring of 1946. She flicked through the pages. "I don't understand why these would be different to the digitised version. Do you?" she whispered to May

May shook her head, then looked towards a camera. "Skye, I know you're monitoring the room. Get your team back in here."

The room filled suspiciously quickly. Bobbi realised they'd all been hovering nearby.

"Okay, so I have the digitised version here," said Skye, and held up her laptop. "And Fitz has smooshed Doctor Who and high physics together to formulate some possible explanations, but we need data." She pointed to the diary that Bobbi held. "That's the data. You need to read."

Bobbi squinted at the pages. "The digitised version cuts out a lot of lunch descriptions," she said, skimming the pages. "And discussions about filing… wait." The handwriting had become decidedly lopsided, sliding down the page in a drunken tilt, but it clearly said "Today I received a message for Agent Bobby Morse."

The room leaned in, and Bobbi started reading. "It's been a remarkably tiresome day, to be honest. I can't be entirely sure that I'm recording the message in full, thanks to the concussion for which I must thank Jemma Simmons, when I see her next." Bobbi stopped for a moment, because she was grinning so hard that it was difficult to speak. Jemma was alive, or at least she had been, somehow, in 1946. And she'd managed, in a very Jemma way, to send a message to her friends in the future.

"There's nothing about that here," said Skye. She clicked through the entries on her laptop in excitement. "Why have the entries changed, and not the digitised versions?"

Fitz rocked on his heels for a moment. "Okay, it's, it's, we're probably talking about an enclosed locus of change. Simmons meets the Director, the Director writes the entry. Like, you drop a stone in the water? This is the first ring. The change will probably spread? Maybe it will fizzle out but this is a glitch, see?" He gestured, sketching out equations or diagrams that probably would make sense to Tony Stark or Bruce Banner but to Bobbi, it was jazz hands. Physics had never been her thing.

"The closer the connection, the more glitching," said Mack. "I'm betting that's what the static is, a kind of discharge of energy as the changes happen. I bet if we bring the diaries in contact with the Director, the same phenomenon would manifest."

Captain Rogers shifted his position, so that he was standing in front of Director Carter's chair, in case they suddenly launched the diaries at her.

"Theoretically speaking," Mack added.

Fitz nodded. "Eventually, the changes will catch up with the digital versions. Maybe even our memories." He rubbed his forehead, worried. "Which means we've got to bring her home soon."

"Okay then, where's Simmons now?" asked Skye. "I mean, where in 1946?"

Bobbi turned the page. "It's talking about the docks, oh, okay, here's some more about Jemma: 'Jemma has not yet been located, so I can only assume that her passage was successful. The rescue boats are still out, though I hope they find nothing. I hope that she's home and safe as I write this. It's a very cold night for a duck in the river.' That doesn't sound good."

"Is there an actual message?" asked May. "Or only rambling about the weather?"

"Don't you be pert, Melinda. I remember when you were in pigtails," said the Director. "How is your mother, by the way?"

Bobbi filed the image of May's face away in her memory. She never wanted to forget that expression.

"Ma'am, she's doing just fine." May's teeth were not gritted, not even a tiny bit.

"Well, that's lovely." The Director waved in Bobbi's direction. "Keep going, dear. I promise that I get to the point eventually, even if it's not fast enough for Miss Melinda May."

"'We're still trying to re-secure the artifact,'" read Bobbi. "'The divers are having problems, and the Russians are not making things easy. Agent Morse, Jemma asked me to tell you, in the event that the artifact is a one-way conduit, that…' Oh." She stopped reading, and blushed.

"What?" said Fitz. He leaned over her shoulder to read what was written on the page and Bobbi turned the page hastily.

"No, it's private," said Bobbi. "The Director wouldn't want me reading that out loud." She dropped her voice and whispered. "Lady business," she said.

A rude snort came from the wheelchair.

Fitz scowled, not embarrassed in the slightest. "Well, that's no use to us, is it?"

Bobbi scanned ahead. "We've got confirmation she's in New York, in 1946. She says she's going to try to use the artifact to come home – maybe we can wait?" She didn't want to wait, but she didn't want to put Jemma at more risk.

"Chronologically, wouldn't she have done that already?" said Mack. "If it's been the same amount of time for her as it has for us, she's had weeks."

Fitz shook his head."Pffft, that's such a linear way of thinking. What she experiences in minutes could take weeks or years for us. Or the reverse," he finished with a worried expression. "I hope it's not the reverse."

"Can't we just ask the Director what happened?" said Bobbi. "I mean, she was there with her, wasn't she?"

The crowd parted, and everyone looked to the woman in the wheelchair. Her head was tilted to the side, and her eyes closed. May reached out a hand to wake her, but Captain Rogers caught her eye and shook his head, expression fierce.

"Let her sleep," he said. "You've got plenty to work on. Go and make her proud, I know you can do that."

Bobbi didn't want to desecrate what was probably a national treasure, but while people milled in the room, she quickly tore a page from the diary and tucked it inside her sleeve. She left the room and didn't look back, in case Director Carter was looking at her with that gaze that could see right into her.

---

Agent Carter and Dottie made a pretty good team for enemies. Jemma watched them, sitting with her knees tucked up nearly to her chin in the back seat of a car that they'd capably boosted. Now they argued, half in Russian, half in English about the fastest and least conspicuous route to the city.

The two of them had hashed out an agreement: Dottie would help them board the ship, and Agent Carter would turn a blind eye to her team's activities in the city for a forty-eight hour period. Hence the stolen car, Jemma presumed. Agent Carter seemed a little cagey about reporting to base.

"You're a maverick!" Jemma said in sudden surprise. "This is an unauthorised mission." The idea was mind-boggling, that the woman who built SHIELD up from nearly nothing after the war had to sneak around her own superiors.

"Darling, my authorised missions largely involve filing cabinets and a percolator," Agent Carter said. She had ceded the driver's seat to Dottie, but watched her keenly as the Russian agent negotiated traffic as if she had been born driving a New York taxi.

Now Dottie flicked a glance in Jemma's direction via the mirror. "How about you, honey? What do your authorised missions largely involve?"

Beside her, Agent Carter rolled her eyes. "Will you please stop? You had hours with Miss Simmons and the finest truth serums the USSR can concoct; don't pout because you failed to extract useful information."

"I heard all about her beau," said Dottie, with a mean smile. "All sorts of dashing, this Bobby is, good looking and tall, rescues our little scientist from an undercover mission, fights like a demon, big strong arms and long hair. Apparently they'd kissed once or twice, too, but Jemma was too shy to say anything more after that."

"Oh, stop it!" Jemma felt blood rush to her cheeks, and a pulse roar in her ears. "Nasty bullying doesn't frighten me and it won't work because I'm not ashamed, I'm confused. I can't explain what went on with me and Bobbi, and then there was her ex-husband back on the team, and this weird thing with Fitz that's sort of half guilt and half the team expecting us to be a couple, and I don't know." Jemma realised the two of them were staring at her over the seats, and she finished with rather less vigour than she started. "Because I just don't know." She slumped in her seat, and tried to hide behind her own hair.

"Bobby is a woman?" Dottie said, in fascination.

"Bobby is a woman, and you missed it?" Agent Carter said, pointedly. "Watch the road, or let me drive."

"I'm surprised that an agent from the future would make herself so vulnerable," said Dottie, pulling across two lanes and in front of a truck to make Agent Carter gasp. "We have whole units trained to entrap and blackmail homosexual agents. And don't let Agent Sanctimonious here fool you – the USA is as likely to drag you under."

"Some parts of the future are not that bleak," said Jemma. "I'm still surprised at some changes, so I imagine you'd be blown away. Anyway, Bobbi being a woman – that's not the point. The point is that I wish we'd all talk about what we're feeling, and not go along with what people expect us to do."

Agent Carter laughed, but not cruelly. "It sounds to me that some things really are very much the same in the future. People are still tongue-tied over love."

"Pah," said Dottie. "It's easy: if you were dying, who would you want to be there? If you had one breath left, to whom do you give it? Whoever that is, that's the person you love."

Jemma hunched her shoulders. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. Can we make a plan for when we arrive at the docks? I want to be ready, to have the best chance at getting home."

---

"So this is, what? A lifeline? Some kind of cable to tie around my waist before you throw me into that thing? Cool." Skye struggled into her flight suit, the best thing the team could come up with as appropriate wear for time travel. Beside, Bobbi lingered on every detail of the climbing harness that would be strapped on next. Mack and Fitz were adapting it, fitting it with control panels and circuitry.

At the other end of the room, the monolith twitched and liquidised, as if it knew they were planning something.

"Yeah, lifeline is a good word," said Fitz, from ground level. He crouched beside a generator encased in steel, balancing a soldering iron as he merged components into the circuitry. "It's a big electronic rope, basically. A big, electronically shielded rope that we can haul you back with once you've found Simmons."

"It's not literally a rope, though," said Mack. He reached for the harness, and Bobbi passed it over. He threaded a long cable through the straps, bringing it all together into a panel on the front waistband.

"Yeah, it's more like a rubber band, right? Press that button and you snap home into the present." Fitz lay on his side, elbow deep in the generator. Mack shoved the harness into Bobbi's hands and dropped down to kneel beside him, head tilted to watch what he was doing.

"No, no, it won't work unless you can get the stabiliser to carry more current," he said. He and Fitz were soon in an argument about capacitor load. While they were distracted, Bobbi put down the harness and reached for a flight suit of her own.

"This is freaking amazing!" Skye zipped up her flight suit, and patted her pockets. She grinned and pulled out some plastic packets. "I packed snacks!" she said. "Peanuts, for protein and salt and crinkly goodness. I can't believe I'm going to travel in time." She stopped at the sight of Bobbi wriggling into the flight suit. Bobbi ignored her and reached for the adapted climbing harness and slipped it over the suit.

Skye deflated. "I'm not going to travel in time, am I?"

"Not this time, sorry." Bobbi appreciated that Skye knew better than to argue. When Mack stood up to connect and calibrate the transmitter on the harness, his face told Bobbi this wouldn't go as easily as it had with Skye.

"Aw, come on, Bobbi. You're walking wounded; the hell you think we're sending you into that thing." Mack reached for the harness, but Bobbi stepped aside, evading him easily. Nothing was hurting much as it was an hour ago. Or maybe she'd feel that later, when Jemma was safe.

"Listen, I'm going," said Bobbi. "We could throw down over it, if you want, but didn't you say I should save my energies for the important battles?"

"Let her go," said Fitz, from the floor.

"What?" Mack and Skye both turned on him, mouths open.

Fitz pulled himself upright. "She took a bullet for a teammate. Look at the way she's fought to investigate Simmons' disappearance. I want Simmons to have the best chance to come home, and maybe this is it." He flicked a switch on the generator, and the cabling on the harness lit up. "And if this device explodes Bobbi into nanoparticles, we can send Skye next."

"Uh, nope, I don't want to time travel after all." Skye thrust the peanuts in Bobbi's direction. "Take these, it's dangerous to go alone."

Bobbi stuffed the peanuts into a pocket, while Mack checked the webbing on the harness was fastened securely. She worked around his hands, strapping a knife to her thigh, making sure her holster was secure and accessible

"I'm not happy about this," he said.

Bobbi wriggled the harness into a comfortable position. "You're not running to May, either," she said.

Mack sighed. "I want her back, too, you know." He gave her shoulder a squeeze.

"Right," said Fitz. "Here's the deal: when you've got her, you hold on really tight, and you hit this button. If everything works, that will reverse the connection between you and the generator here, and we'll be able to haul you home."

"Okay, I've got my gun and I've got my peanuts," said Bobbi. "So, now we do what? Open the door on that thing, and it glomps all over me?"

"Just like it happened in the footage," said Mack. "Except this time, you've got a return ticket."

"For two," Fitz added. He took a deep breath and fixed Bobbi with a determined expression. "Bring her home, okay?"

"Okay," said Bobbi. She turned to face the monolith. It pulled itself into a solid state, all sharp corners and gleaming stone. Bobbi had the creeping feeling it was waiting to pounce.

---

Jemma's arms ached, but she pulled herself up the rope hand over hand. Behind her, she could hear Agent Carter making quick, practiced work of the climb, and ahead, Dottie snaked easily upwards. Dottie disappeared over the railing and Jemma waited expecting a scuffle, but there was nothing but silence. A slim hand waved them upwards, and Jemma got to work. She was nothing like as graceful clambering over the railing.

Dottie did not offer to help. She crouched beside the supine body of a man dressed in a heavy wool pea coat and canvas trousers. The point of a knife protruded from his lips. Jemma covered her mouth to stop her scream.

Dottie watched her, interested. "Have you never seen a dead man, sweetie?" she said. "With your night-night guns, maybe not."

"Why did you have to kill him? Couldn't you have knocked him out?" Jemma knew it wasn't her fault but she was still appalled at the needlessness of it. "You mustn't kill anyone else, not while you're working with me. It could damage the timeline. He could be someone significant's grandfather." She knew by now not to appeal to Dottie's sense of morality, but perhaps the practicality of the situation would give her a reason not to kill.

Dottie shrugged. "He saw my face."

"Then don't let them see your face," said Agent Carter, finally on deck with the two of them. "Can you manage that? Sweetie?"

Dottie rolled her eyes, and set off into the gathering darkness, weaving between the higgledy-piggeldy stacks of shipping containers. Agent Carter gave Jemma's elbow a squeeze of encouragement, and disappeared after her. Jemma took what she hoped was her last look of the 1946 New York skyline, and followed the two of them.

There were few guards, and to give Dottie credit, she did not kill any of them. Eventually, moving through narrow alleyways between the steel boxes, she came to an unremarkable box, sitting as far aft as possible, obviously the last box put aboard. The steel walls seemed so flimsy, thought Jemma, remembering the thick acrylic case that held the artifact in the SHIELD base, and how the thing had splashed against the walls as it formed and reformed.

Dottie and Agent Carter made short work of the lock, and, to Jemma's horror, eased the side of the container down, so that the artifact was exposed to the New York harbour air. They'd wrapped it in chains, and somehow, consciously obliging or not, the stone remained in a solid state. Looking at it made Jemma shudder. She had to let this thing swallow her whole, and she could only hope that it took her home.

Dottie bent to work on the padlock on the chains. Jemma brushed her shoulder to warn her. "Don't touch it, for heaven's sake!"

"I'm not afraid of a slab of rock," said Dottie, but she moved her fingers more slowly, careful not to brush the surface of the stone. The stone glimmered in the reflected light from the river while they worked to quietly remove the chains. Once it was laid completely bare, Dottie and Agent Carter looked to Jemma, expectant.

"Thank you," she said to Agent Carter. "For the rescue, and for trusting me. And for passing on the message."

"As soon as I get home," said Agent Carter. "Maybe we'll meet again?"

Jemma brightened at the idea. "Oh, I do hope so!"

Dottie patted herself down and extracted a cigarette from a slim silver case. "Don't bother thanking me," she said, striking a match. "I did my job, for my country."

Jemma watched her, and remembered the things she'd read online about the Black Widow. "You don't have to. Do what you do, I mean. I'm assuming you're Red Room? There's good people who came from there, they've saved a lot of lives."

Dottie inhaled and crossed her arms. "Don't break the future on my behalf, darling. I'm just fine."

Jemma nodded, and turned to look at the city, surprisingly golden before the advent of fluorescent lighting. "Well, I suppose it's time," she said. "Goodbye." And with that, she walked towards the stone, and put her hand flat against the gleaming black surface.

Nothing happened. Jemma moved her fingertips across the stone. It was surprisingly cool to the touch, considering the mildness of the evening.

Behind her, Dottie laughed, a dry, warm sound. Jemma heard Agent Carter swear, and she looked over her shoulder to see why.

Dottie had a revolver trained at Agent Carter's temple, and flanking her came men similarly armed. Six of them, Jemma counted, and all of them aiming at her.

She turned, slowly, her arms up. "But you killed one of your own men!" she said.

Dottie shrugged. "Necessary casualty," she said. "We could all be called upon to make the same sacrifice, and we would."

Somehow Jemma felt sure that Dottie would be last on the list to throw her life away. "People who believe that must be remarkably stupid," she said.

She watched Agent Carter shifting her weight, ready to take them all on. Jemma let her shoulders fall in defeat. She knew this wasn't a winnable battle, for either of them, and it was more important that Agent Carter survived to form SHIELD.

"Don't, please, Agent Carter. This isn't a battle you were ever meant to fight."

"I do hope the future is not so defeatist a place," said Agent Carter. "After all, we made it through the war without your help." She was getting ready to act, thought Jemma, she would be shot.

Instead, the men's faces turned grey and horrified, looking over Jemma's shoulder. She heard a crackling sound, oddly fluid, then a rush of air pushed against her, redolent with diesel fumes and that particular slightly stale smell of the SHIELD air-conditioners. "Finally," she said, and turned to go home.

She came face to face with Bobbi. "Oh!" she said. It wasn't what she'd planned to say when she next came face to face with Bobbi, but that was the only word her mouth would shape. Bobbi was here, and she was real and alive and vivid, and frankly, much less ill than Jemma had felt after her journey through the artifact.

"Hey," said Bobbi, and kissed her hard and open-mouthed. "You stay put a minute, okay?" She walked past Jemma with that easy, confident stride that meant she planned to hurt someone quite a lot. Trailing behind her was a ribbon of light, white-blue and crackling. Fascinated, Jemma watched it float and arc as Bobbi moved towards the men with the guns. She'd heard of the glowing thread people described connecting astral travellers to their physical selves, and this was similar, except that Bobbi's physical self was most certainly here. Jemma could still feel Bobbi's lips pressed against her mouth.

The kiss had clearly made quite an impression on the Russian men, too, because their guns had dropped low, and Bobbi took them down in swathes. Agent Carter weighed in on the fray, with less elegance but much power behind her punches. Jemma snatched up a life preserver and waded into the fight, swinging it wildly.

Soon the men were all knocked out on the deck, Jemma had sprained her thumb and Agent Carter had taken a good crack on the head, but they were all intact. Dottie was nowhere to be seen.

Bobbi moved less easily now, sparing one leg, and hissing as she kicked weapons away from the Russians.

Jemma remembered too late that Bobbi was recovering from a gunshot wound and a knee injury. "Oh, oh, are you hurt?" she said. "Did you burst a stitch? Your knee!"

Bobbi limped back to her. "I'm good," she said. "Adrenaline is great. I'll deal with that stuff later when you're home and safe."

"What is that on your waist?" asked Agent Carter.

Bobbi stared at her in recognition. "Oh, that's so spooky," she said. She looked down at the light attached to her harness. She poked at it, and the energy stream rippled. "Huh. They said it wouldn't literally be a rope but I guess we've never done this before."

Jemma stepped carefully over the line of energy to examine the device on the harness more closely. "Oh, I see, the energy reverses, and it operates like a bungee cord. Fitz put this together, didn't he? It's lovely work." It was lovely, too: a clever and simple way to keep Bobbi connected to them and to return her safely.

Bobbi rolled her shoulders and smiled at her, with that crooked smile that meant she was pleased with herself and the outcome of the battle and things in general. Jemma couldn't help but smile too; seeing her was spectacularly euphoric. She realised she wanted to wrap her arms around Bobbi. Would that be rude? Should she do that? She hated being so indecisive! Obviously she'd learned nothing from this adventure.

She was about to launch a hug at Bobbi, when a metal claw descended from the sky, clanks and groans emerging through the hubbub of the docks. Bobbi pushed Jemma behind her and drew her weapon.

"Oh, she just does not stop!" said Agent Carter, frustrated, and, Jemma thought, a little impressed.

Dottie sat in the cab of the dockside crane, working the levers expertly as she sent the claw downwards towards the deck towards the artifact.

Bobbi eyed the blue thread of light that spilled out of the artifact. "How far away do you think that thing can go before the energy stream breaks?"

"It would depend on how wide Fitz cast the field," said Jemma. "Short range, I imagine. We can probably re-establish the link, but it will be easier if the artifact is not in the belly of the Kremlin."

"Okay, then." Bobbi raised her gun and fired, and the glass of the cab splintered into cobwebs. Dottie ignored the bullet holes, and positioned the claw above the artifact. It clanked downwards on a chain.

"Hold your fire, Agent!" Agent Carter made a leap straight off the boat for the scaffolding of the crane, landed awkwardly but soundly, and began to climb.

"Wow," said Bobbi. "Kinda glad I was here to see that."

Jemma agreed. "This whole experience has been rather astonishing, and yet, all the stories make sense."

Agent Carter was at the door of the cab, but she wasn't fast enough. The four metal fingers of the claw scraped at the top of the artifact.

Bobbi took aim again, this time for Dottie's head through the shattered glass.

"No," said Jemma. She pointed to the hydraulic lines that controlled the claw. "Hit the line! Break the connection, she'll have no control."

Bobbi grimaced at the size of the target. "You have a lot of faith in my aim," she said.

"Of course I do," said Jemma. "You're amazing."

"Tell me that when we're home safe," said Bobbi. She raised her sidearm and sighted carefully.

Jemma felt a little squirm of nervousness. This would soon be over, and then she and Bobbi would have to talk.

Bobbi fired, and Jemma saw hydraulic fluid splatter against the body of the crane. The metal claw spasmed, as a biological limb would, and seized closed on the artifact. Bobbi turned to look accusingly at Jemma.

"There's two lines, Bobbi, one to open the claw and one to close it. We are going to have a talk when we're home, and it will be about the basics of fluid dynamics."

Bobbi opened her mouth to argue, but the cable of energy at her waist pulled tight and her feet slipped backwards on the steel deck. Behind her, the metal claw swung wildly, toppling the artifact and tugging it towards the railing.

"Bobbi!" Jemma leapt after Bobbi, instinctively scrabbling for the return switch on the harness. The artifact seesawed on the railing, then, as Jemma's fingers brushed the clasp, it fell. In the second before it pulled her over the side, Bobbi caught Jemma by the shoulders, holding her tight. Then they were both flying along the deck, over the railing and into the murky water.

Water roared in Jemma's ears with the speed of their descent, but she scrabbled desperately across the harness, trying to free Bobbi from the belt keeping her anchored to the falling artifact. It didn't matter that releasing her would mean they were both trapped in the past – better alive in the past than dead, surely – but Bobbi's hand closed over hers and stopped her from opening the clasp.

Jemma blinked in the dim light of the energy of the cable; Bobbi's face was calm, of course it was calm, she never panicked, she always knew what to do. A sudden impact fed up the cable of light, and she realised the artifact had hit the seabed. Bobbi guided her to the control panel at her waist, and together they pressed the button that would reverse the energy flow of the device and bring them home.

It was falling all over again, but now Jemma wasn't alone. She couldn't see, so much as sense that Bobbi was near, and that made the journey something that she could bear. All around her was the blue-white of the energy envelope Fitz had created to bring her home, and that too was a beautiful, welcoming sensation.

Thus comforted, Jemma waited to land on the floor in the artifact room at the SHIELD base, but instead, when physical sensation returned, she felt the cold of the water. She opened her mouth to cry out in surprise, an instinctive act which left her with a throat full of brackish dock water.

In the moments before panic set in, her mind threw possibilities together: they had gone nowhere. Had they travelled in time but not in space? Forward or back? Then she understood the reality of the now. She and Bobbi were still at the bottom of the bay, fifty feet down on one dwindling breath.

This must be a karmic retribution for everything that Fitz had suffered at the bottom of the ocean. Jemma would have denied believing such things, but in the rush of the moment, a balance of fate made certain sense. The blackness of the water turned red at the edges, the effects of oxygen deprivation on the retina. Jemma reached out to touch Bobbi's face, then closed her eyes and let herself drift. Even the cold had begun to fade when Bobbi grabbed her and pulled her close, breathing a mouthful of air into her lungs.

It was less romantic than Jemma had imagined, but oxygen was oxygen, and it eased the ache in her chest enough that the panic receded. Her arms tightened until her chin was on Bobbi's shoulder. There would be a solution. She was with Bobbi, and Bobbi had a team behind her. There would be a way.

Something thrust against her chest, something with a long rubber hose connected to it. She recognised it as a breathing regulator and blinked at it in surprise. Then a gloved hand pushed it into her mouth with an exasperated movement. Training took over, and Jemma felt pins and needles as oxygen-rich blood started moving through her body again. Beside her and breathing through her own mask, Bobbi righted herself in the water and moved in front of Jemma's, so that she was between Jemma and the diver.

The diver held her hands up to show she meant no harm, and then pointed upwards. Bobbi nodded, her hair swirling in the water. She turned to Jemma and pulled her close, then the two of them were shooting upwards towards the light.

---

The Coastguard rescue boat rocked gently from side to side. Jemma lay flat on the deck with her limbs splayed out in all directions. There was nothing as beautiful as the smog-filled New York air, except perhaps for the sound of pop music coming in tinny waves from a boat somewhere close by. She was back in the future, and it was grimy and overcast and beautiful.

Somewhere ahead on the boat, Natasha Romanoff flung orders to the Coastguard crew with élan. If Jemma tilted her head, she could watch the Black Widow's wetsuit-clad legs moving along the deck, swaying with the movement of the boat. She watched for a while, then she realised that she both looked ridiculous and was starting to shiver.

"Here," said Bobbi, and passed her a blanket. She sat splay-legged on the deck with an ice-pack pressed to her injured knee.

Jemma hauled herself upright and threw the blanket over her shoulders, then scrambled over the deck to examine Bobbi's leg. "Oh, your poor knee, what were you thinking?"

Bobbi reached out and pulled Jemma close, pressing their foreheads together. Jemma laced her arms around Bobbi's waist and closed her eyes. It didn't matter; they were here in the future together. Everything else was a small obstacle easily overcome.

Now dressed in sweats, Natasha simultaneously towelled her hair and argued on the phone. "Steve, if I had any clue it was one of your things, I'd have told you. I had no idea we were coming at the same case from different directions."

"How did she know?" Jemma asked. "She must have, to be in the water in exactly the right place."

Bobbi rested her chin on Jemma's shoulder. "Maybe it was in Agent Carter's diaries? I kind of lost track of things after I got your message."

"Oh," said Jemma, and blushed, her cheek warm against Bobbi's. "Well. I'm glad the important things got through, at least."

In front of them, Natasha's chin was set and she spoke through gritted teeth. "I didn't tell you because I don't read all my personal mail to you, Steve. Sorry, didn't realise that was a requirement of putting my history up for public examination. But honestly, I wouldn't have told you, because you're less scary than Madame. No, seriously, she's scared the crap out of me since I was knee high, and if she tells me to be at the bottom of the harbour on a certain day at a certain hour, I'm not going to argue."

Jemma turned to face Bobbi, so she could whisper. "Dottie! It must have been Dottie – she was the only other person who knew where we were. Maybe she mellowed with old age?"

Bobbi's expression indicated that this seemed extremely unlikely. "Maybe she did it as a favour for Peggy Carter; they had that frenemies thing happening."

Natasha looked them over, and held the phone away from her mouth. "How are you guys doing down there?" she asked.

"I'm good," said Bobbi.

Jemma picked at her damp blouse, and remembered when she'd taken it out of the wardrobe this morning. Now it was slicked with oil and mysterious substances that floated on the surface of the harbour. "Well, I could do with a change of clothing, but it's wonderful to be back," she said.

From the tiny speaker came the sound of cheers and whoops. Jemma distinctly heard Mack's deep voice, and Fitz, shouting her name.

"Oh," she said, with more a tremor in her voice than she expected. "Thank you, everyone."

"C'mere," said Bobbi, and pushed the hair out of Jemma's eyes. "That was really brave, that stuff you put in the diaries. I don't know if I could have said that to Director Carter's face."

Jemma shuffled closer on the deck, until her legs were tangled around Bobbi's. "I thought that I was never going to see you again." She was feeling very brave again, as she kissed Bobbi, letting the noise and movement of the harbour slip away.

It was so good to be home.

---

A week later, Steve was back in Peggy's doorway, with new flowers and some peaches that Tony had picked up while he was in Rome.

Peggy was still recovering from the exertions of the previous week and there'd lately been more bad days than good, but from the slightly sly smile she gave him as she stroked the soft skin of the peaches, Steve would bet this was a good day. He settled down in the chair beside her bed.

"We never got to hear what that message was, that Jemma had you write in your diary," he said.

"Oh, tch," said Peggy. "It was private. You'll not catch me breaking a confidence."

"Must have been pretty motivating. Agent Morse had quite the list of injuries, and she went into that thing like a dynamo."

Peggy's face was wistful. "I suppose it was the same thing we would all tell our past selves," she said. "That we wish we had been more courageous in the moment."

Steve smiled, and took her hand. "Simmons? She seemed plenty brave to me."

Peggy smiled, and leaned against the pillows more comfortably. "Of course she's brave. She's one of my people."