Chapter 13
In many ways, Steve’s life had been defined by the past - his immigrant grandparents, his soldier father’s death, his mother’s sacrifice, his youth as a sickly kid just trying to survive, a war that was born out of the mistakes of the previous generation. It had been hard to think about a future when the fight was always in the here and now. And yet, here he was in a future he shouldn't have ever seen, contemplating what in the world he was supposed to do next with the life he now had. Already, from his view, it was looking more promising than he had ever imagined.
He stood in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, on the walking path that connected his hometown to Manhattan, watching the fading lights of the golden sunset over the East River. It was a mild evening capping off the warmth of a Saturday in May, the sort of balmy evening that he remembered as a kid, just before the full muggy heat of June hit, when the neighborhood kids would play stickball until nearly full dark and their parents dragged them out of the streets and into their dinners, and Steve would sit with Bucky out on the fire escape, discussing baseball, or movies, or whatever else filled their young brains at the moment. Those days were long ago and far away now. Everything in that world was gone, including Bucky.
At least he wasn’t alone. Nestled in front of him was Peggy, leaning against him lazily, lovely and elegant in a floral print, cotton sundress, bare at the shoulders save for the thin straps that held it all up. She’d taken her sunhat off once the worst of the heat was gone, her dark hair a tangle now, one he was sure to gripe about later when she got a look at herself in a mirror. Steve wasn’t about to tell her, not when she looked as beautiful as she did.
“Hard to believe,” she mused, quietly, watching the lights of Manhattan begin to wink into existence one by one, “that just a month ago we were facing almost certain destruction at Loki’s hands.”
Considering the skyline as it now stood, it was a little hard to believe. That said, the scars of Loki’s attack remained. He saw them every day, particularly in and around Union Station and Stark Tower, whose singular A on the one side stood as a silent testament to what had happened there. The damage was extensive - entire tops of buildings taken off, some collapsed, and so many glass windows broken all over the city it would be months to replace all of them. It was devastation the likes of which Steve had never seen in his hometown. The whole area had been declared a disaster, and there was talk, according to Peggy, of the federal government forming a whole new department under the executive branch just to deal with the fallout from these sorts of threats. Stark was helping to spearhead this, offering the expertise of his company in the clean-up efforts. Even as that process worked itself out, the city was beginning its efforts to move on and rebuild. As he’d heard over and over again on the various news programs that blared continuously in this modern world, New York had been through this once before, they could survive and carry on again.
Today, at least, there was peace, and for once Steve was taking what little he could of it.
“Romanoff reached out to me today,” he murmured, really as a change of subject.
“Oh?” She tilted her head back just enough to look up at him. “Is Barton taking that leave of absence Fury is forcing him on?”
“So far, yes.” There had been talk of charges, but given the accounts of the other survivors of Loki’s brain-washing scheme, including Erik Selvig, it was decided to instead allow all parties to go under strict supervision from mental health officials. Barton hadn’t needed to be asked twice, which left his partner, Romanoff, without her backup. “She officially asked if I would be interested in taking his place until he decides to come back.”
“If he does,” Peggy replied, looking troubled, turning her gaze back out towards the gilded spray on the golden waves near the mouth of the East River. “What did you say?”
“I said I would talk to you about it. That is what couples do, right?”
“Someone’s been reading those online advice articles!”
“Well, JARVIS thought they would be helpful.” He chuckled despite himself. The internet had grown on him, slowly, if nothing else because the sheer availability of information at his fingertips was so convenient. And he had grown rather fond of Stark’s artificial intelligence as well, which was strange when he thought about it too hard, which he didn’t. If the human Edwin Jarvis was anything like his computer facsimile, he could see why Peggy had been so very fond of him.
Peggy was quiet for long moments, watching the waves below, the gray waters gilded in rose and orange, save for the spray of white foam trailing behind the ships sailing in and out of the city. He should sketch it later, he mused idly, waiting for Peggy to process his news.
“Do you want to take up her offer,” she finally asked, something cautious in her voice.
Steve mulled that for a moment. He’d given a great deal of thought to what he wanted to do with his life. Before, during the war, when he and Buck had sat around and contemplated it, everything had been amorphous and unclear - maybe he could do art, maybe he could do something else, he wasn’t sure. Since waking up in this strange new world, however, he no longer had the comfort of understanding how the game was played.
“I know how to be a fighter,” he returned. “It’s what I’ve done all my life. And I know how to stand up for people, to fight to protect them. Everything else in this world is upside down to me, and I will learn it, but for now, that is familiar. That world I know.”
Peggy shifted before turning in his arms, facing him as she leaned against the iron railing of the bridge, trusting in both it and him to hold her steady. “You know, you could be anything else! You’re an artist! You're a leader! You inspire people!”
“I know, I could. But…” He trailed off, staring at the blaze of crimson and orange bleeding across the pale lavender and cornflower blue sky. “I’ve been thinking a lot of my mom, of late, of what she said to me, once. She said she did what she did because ‘someone has to save those lives, and that’s my job.’ Ma knew what she was getting into when she became a nurse, just as I did becoming a soldier. I wanted to stand up for the little guy, to make a difference for those who couldn’t. And right now, SHIELD is in the business of doing just that.”
Why else was she working there herself if it wasn’t for that very reason? She and Howard created SHIELD to be that protection for the world, to do the job no one else could. It wasn't perfect, and Steve wasn't about to say it was, particularly in how Fury played the game, hedging his bets, but it was a place to at least make a start, and perhaps even change the culture...maybe.
“Besides, the way I see it, Abraham Erksine gave me a gift when he gave me that serum, but he gave it to me for a purpose, too. As long as I am able, I should use it to help, to make a difference. Maybe there I’ll find my place here, actually stand up for people in a way I never could when I was just a scrawny kid with a chip on his shoulder.”
Peggy studied him, quietly, the breeze playing with the tangle of hair and the ribbons on her smooth shoulders. Finally, she nodded, fingers moving up to play with the buttons on the front of his lightweight, cotton button-down, fiddling with them nervously, underscoring her lingering worry. “If you partner with Romanoff, you’ll have to go down to Washington. That will take you away from here.”
What was left unsaid was that it would take him away from her, too. She’d made a home here, working closely with Stark and Banner, setting up the Avengers as an entity based in New York. It pained him to think that no sooner than he and Peggy had finally crossed the line they’d been too afraid to step over, he was leaving her again.”
“It will,” he admitted, softly, reaching up to push an errant curl behind her left ear. “Do you think we could make that work out, somehow?”
“We’ve come this far after seven decades,” she tried to tease, but her smile was a bit wilted at its edges, pitched down with the idea of yet another separation. “But in this modern world, things like this happen all the time. We don’t have to wait days or weeks on letters any longer.”
“I have been learning how to do messages and emails on these phones everyone has now,” he admitted. “JARVIS isn’t just sending me helpful relationship advice articles.”
He succeeded in making her smile for real then. “I’m proud of you! Between that and the ease of travel back and forth, we could make this work. Michael’s family all live in the area, you know, and they always love a reason for me to visit. And Sharon is dying to meet you! She’s grown up on stories about you.”
“Sure,” he returned, perhaps a smidge less than enthusiastic at the idea of fawning. That made him think of Coulson, however, and the twinge of guilt slivered through the happiness of the moment. “I never did get to meet your family before.”
“I know.” The sadness they both felt over those pieces of their lives they lost with the decisions they made flickered, briefly. “I’m glad I have family here and now. I didn’t think I would.”
“I am sure they’re great.”
“I am rather fond of them.”
“Well, the closest I get is this old thing,” He looked up at the current of thick, steel cables leading to the gothic, stonework towers that held up the famous suspension bridge. “My grandfather worked on this when he was a teenager. He was an immigrant kid who needed a job and wasn’t too proud to do the work no one else wanted. It was a wonder he didn’t get killed doing it.”
“So that’s a Rogers family trait, then?”
As it was his mother's father, technically it wasn't a Rogers family trait, but he conceded her point. “I may come by the habit honestly, yes. Anyway, I always loved his stories about it when I was a kid. It made me feel like I was a deep part of all this like I was rooted here in a tangible way that I would never feel about the old country. This was home.”
He’d fought so hard for it, to come back home to it. Against all odds, he had made it, and he didn't really want to let it go. They could make this work. He had to believe that.
“It is home,” Peggy echoed, softly, wrapping her arms around his middle. “And no matter what the future brings, we will always have each other, Rogers. I’m not losing you again.”
“I hate to tell you this, Carter, you are stuck with me and my terrible dancing.”
“I think I can live with that,” she promised, rising on her tip-toes to press her lips to his.
He enfolded her close to him, with arms so much stronger than they used to be, pulling her off the ground as they swayed to music only they could hear. In the distance, the sun faded behind the towers of Manhattan, broken and beaten, but still, standing, despite it all. Even then, there was hope, purpose, and a future. Right now, for Steve, this was enough.