Fix You
“I’ve seen her.”
The words sink into Steve’s skin. Everything is hot, too hot; his throat feels tight and dry. “How?”
“The Eye.”
“So what does that mean?” Steve is barely able to remember how to breathe.
“Would you like to see her?”
Steve’s jaw tightens. Would he like to see her?
“Yes.”
The answer escapes his lips before he even has time to think. Strange nods once, pulling the amulet from under his t-shirt. Steve hears him mummer something unknown to the Eye before a jet of orange light is expelled. The light shifts to form something of a window beyond which the two men can see the fabric of time and space, every universe, every possible future laid out into infinity.
Steve opens his mouth to speak but the words become lodged in his throat when an image of Camp Lehigh immerges just beyond the window. He sees himself, small and straight, standing in formation with the other men, his helmet almost too big for his head. He thinks he looks absurd and he suddenly realizes why everyone wrote him off. Everyone except her.
And there she is, tall, strong, poised, absolutely stunning. Her hair and lipstick are perfect, her uniform hugging her in just the right places. She is a vision and she still takes his breath away, just as she did then.
Steve can do nothing but stare. He has heard of Strange’s abilities—Bruce and Tony spoke of nothing else for weeks after they found him. In fact, Strange’s power was the only reason Steve had agreed to come back to the Avengers facility in the first place. And while Steve had been able to suspend a vast majority of his skepticism since he was pulled out of the ice, there was a small part of him that remained leery of the good doctor and his “magic”. He had been told of Strange’s capacity to manipulate space and time itself, and if Steve was honest with himself, that shadow of doubt sitting within him was fueled by the tiny hope that Strange would be able to bring her back to him; give them a second chance. That hope was much too dangerous for him to allow to cultivate, so he suppressed it as much as he could with skepticism of Strange.
That apprehension dies as he continues to watch her, fixated on her face as Strange moves them through time. Her time.
It is a perspective that Steve has never had before.
He watches her biting her lip and fighting a smile while he sits in the back of the Jeep on their way back to camp; he watches her move towards him and the dummy grenade; the look of pain on her face when he begins to scream in the pod that turned him into Captain America; her watching his USO show from the wings, perched on crates and hidden in the shadows; her nervously smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles of her red dress before a deep breath, entering the pub where Steve and the Commandos are residing with a steely determination; her fighting back tears as she speaks to him over the radio, trying desperately for him to give her his coordinates.
“Peg,” he whispers. His voice is shaky, tears welling up behind his eyes and the back of his throat. He wishes he could reach out to her, hold her, whisper to her that he still loves her, that she is his world.
“Could she hear us?” Steve asks, “If I were to call out?” He sounds small, broken.
Strange shakes his head. “I cannot change this timeline. It is composed of everything that has already been. Have you ever seen Back to the Future?”
“It’s on The List,” he sniffs, stepping closer to the window—to her. Strange continues on.
She is curled into a ball on her bunk, her hand clutching the set of dog tags he had given her the week before he went into the ice, her body wracked with grief; she is drinking—a lot, and Steve watches her wandering into dive bars and picking fights with men twice her size; Dugan visits her, Steve’s trunk in tow, depositing it at the foot of her bed as he helps her (quite hungover) dress her cracked knuckles and split lip; she argues with Phillips when he hands her her discharge from the RAF; her jaw is tight and her eyes are glassy as she opens his trunk, pulling out shirts, his Bible, his sketchbooks—she throws his pencil set at the wall in a fit of emotion, kicking his trunk before sinking to the floor against the bed and crying.
By now, tears are flowing freely down Steve’s cheeks. He can taste the salt water on his lips. He needs to stop this. She would never want Steve to see her like this. He gets the ugly feeling that he is invading her privacy. But he also finds that he cannot stop, his body suddenly too heavy for him to move, his mouth unable to form the words to end this. His chest is tightening with guilt and anguish. He did this.
She gets coffee for the men she works with at the SSR and Steve feels the tendrils of anger creeping themselves up as he watches her frustration at being undervalued; he watches her going rogue for Howard, slipping undercover to save their friend; she is in a diner, drinking peach schnapps and laughing with the waitress (he adores seeing her smile light up her eyes again); she is at dinner in an obnoxiously extravagant house (he presumes belongs to Howard) and she is laughing and happy and now Steve finds that he is crying because he missed all of this; she is standing in front of an apartment building, her arms around a man who looks vaguely familiar, kissing him goodnight; she is on an assignment with that same man, saving his life, his arm around her shoulder as she helps him limp to safety, the man cracking some witty remark when the whole thing is said and done and she laughs and kisses him (it makes Steve’s stomach turn with jealousy); she kisses the man and calls him darling, stroking his face as he slips a ring on her finger.
In an instant, Steve remembers that the man was her husband. He has seen him before in the family photos perched next to her hospital bed, though he was older. He wracks his brain for the man’s name, but comes up with nothing. Perhaps she never told him?
She and the man are at Christmas parties, charity functions, family get-togethers. They are laughing, fighting, crying, loving, and Steve feels as though his blood is on fire. His skin is too hot, too tight. He clenches and unclenches his fists, trying to regain some sort of control as tears burn their trail freely down to his chin.
Stop this. Stop this. Stop this.
“No,” he manages to croak out. His brain is on overdrive, trying to process the guilt, the shame of leaving his best girl alone; the jealousy of allowing another man to have the life he should have had. It should have been his ring on her finger, his arms around her as they slow dance, his gun at her six.
Steve sinks to his knees as the images continue to flash—birthday parties, reunions, funerals of various Commandos, her retirement from SHEILD, all of it a reminder of how full her life had been without him.
“Stop,” Steve’s voice is thick with emotion as he watches, fixated on her movements as she packs up her desk.
She gently wraps the handful of frames on her desk in newspaper before placing them at the top of the pile in the box. She pauses with the last frame, running her thumb gingerly over the glass and murmuring “darling”, her gaze softening. The moment is broken by a knock at the door. She leaves the frame on the desk where Steve can get a better look at it. He releases the breath he is unware he is holding when he sees that the picture in the frame is one of himself; from his days at Camp Lehigh, all skin and bone, squinting into the sun, those dog tags he had given her hanging from his neck. He thinks it is a terrible picture, having been taken for his medical file, but she had kept it all the same. His best girl had kept him with her all these years.
Steve simply cannot take anymore.
With a groan, he turns away. “That’s enough.”
Finally, Strange closes the portal. “I’m sorry, Steve.” His voice is low and sympathetic. Steve is certain that Strange has done the same thing with the lives of the people from his own past. “I know how it hurts.”
Steve cannot find the courage or the will to even look at Strange, let alone pull himself up off the floor. Suddenly, through the grief, a thought occurs to him.
“Can you bring her back?”
“No.” The response is that of a man who has spent his entire life telling people in the same state that there is nothing he can do for their loved ones. They must say their goodbyes and move on.
“I will not accept that,” Steve hardens, his icy gaze finally meeting Strange’s cold black eyes. “I cannot accept that.”
“You must.”
Something inside Steve breaks then. He has Strange by the throat in an instant. “I could crush your wind pipe in half a second and bring her here myself. Tell me why I shouldn’t?”
“You could,” Strange’s voice is distorted by the hand around his neck, but he is generally unfazed by Steve’s sudden dark rage, “But if I take her out of her time, the entire universe as we know it would be completely gone. There is nothing to prevent you from dying with it, along with all of your other friends. I cannot risk such a catastrophe for the life of a single person, not even yours, let alone Margarete Carter’s. This is the best I can offer you and killing me is not the man you are.”
Steve grimaces at Strange, knowing him to be right. Reluctantly he lets go, Strange coughing as air rushes back into his lungs. “I’m sorry.”
And with that, Steve turns away, leaving Strange kneeling on the floor, the amulet still dangling from his neck.
“You’ve passed the test, Steven Rogers. Congratulations,” he breathes, the corners of his mouth giving into the hint of a smile.