The air smelled different in 1970.

Less smoke, less metal, less war. It was cleaner. Quieter. But for Steve Rogers, it was suffocating.

He wasn’t ready for what he saw when they stepped off the elevator at Camp Lehigh. Not fully. Not ever.

Tony had his mission—grab the Tesseract, avoid detection, get out clean. Steve had the Pym Particles. The plan was simple. In and out.

Until he saw her.

There, through the narrow glass window of an office, standing beside a filing cabinet, laughing gently at something a passing colonel had said, was the one ghost he hadn’t expected to face:

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She hadn’t changed. Of course, she hadn’t. It was 1970. She was younger, yet somehow exactly as he remembered. Same bright eyes. Same posture. Same grace, even in a stiff military uniform. She looked like she belonged in that time. Like she’d never left it.

Steve froze in the hallway.

The world around him blurred. The sounds of Camp Lehigh—soldiers walking past, typewriters clacking, phones ringing—all of it faded. It was just her.

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He just… watched.