Farewell, Peggy
Steve can’t believe she’s really gone.
Peggy Carter.
Ever since Steve had been yanked out of the ice, his mind was constantly on the verge of just giving out. He woke up to everyone in his life being dead and the world being unrecognizable. The last memory he had was of a beautiful and brave redhead and the life they would never have together, a promised dance they would never get.
But, she had. Created a life, without him. She had lived a life that had changed the world forever. While he had been sleeping, Peggy had used her mind and her skills to create a world that Steve could actually fit into, one that could handle him and all of his science-created oddities.
Seeing her old, with children and grandchildren, had tilted Steve’s axis. She was alive, but they didn’t know each other anymore. She didn’t even know herself anymore.
And after that brief time they had, she was gone, again.
Steve sat in the pew, watching as Sharon spoke quietly to what he assumed were members of her and Peggy’s family, feeling like he was intruding upon the life of someone he was holding onto too hard. Peggy had lived most of her life without him, maybe he shouldn’t be taking up as much space now that she was gone.
Steve stood up to leave and walked slowly towards the back of the church, his hands tucked into his pockets and head lowered, knowing Sharon would get in touch with him if she wanted to do so.
Glancing up, he stopped short, as his eyes tried to process the presence of an unexpected person, honestly the last person he expected, sitting in the last pew of the church.
“Hey, Grandpa.”
_____________
Tony watched Steve from the back pew. He had planned on joining the family at the front, but when he had seen Steve’s oh so recognizable shoulders sitting near Sharon and her family, he had slipped unseen into a pew in the back of the crowded church. Sharon was going to be mad, but he didn’t feel like sitting that close to the captain right now.
When he had heard about Aunt Peg’s passing, Tony felt her absence like a punch to the gut. He knew that after so many years of her memory and health failing, he should have been ready for it, but Tony wasn’t really that good with loss, somewhat exacerbated by the small number of people in his life it would hurt to lose.
Aunt Peg had been the only bright spot in his memories of his father. Always ready for a quip to Howard’s often cruel sarcasm and a censure to his more abusive tendencies towards Tony, Aunt Peg had been one of the few people who could actually stand up to Howard and survive. Howard had made Tony resent Cap, but Aunt Peg had made Tony respect him. Howard’s behavior stood in stark opposition to the Howard Aunt Peggy had known as a friend. She had been ready with a hug and a story throughout Tony’s childhood, thrilling tales of her, Howard’s, and Jarvis’s exploits, nostalgic remembrances of her Steve Rogers, and his favorites, her struggle to be a powerhouse in a field that would always condescend to her gender.
Tony had loved her so much, so easily. It would have been impossible not to. She hadn’t really approved of his lifestyle later on in life, who would? But, judgement wasn’t really Aunt Peg’s thing. Tony wasn’t the best at keeping in touch, but she had still made time for him up until her memory had started to fail. After that, Tony had done what he always did, thrown money at the problem, trying to keep Peggy in relative comfort from afar, making sure her family didn’t pay a cent for her care.
Snapping out of his reverie, Tony watched Cap as he walked down the aisle looking forlorn and couldn’t help but resent him a bit. What did he know? He had known Aunt Peg for a handful of months before he had gone into the ice. Tony was missing the steady, loving presence of his aunt, not a specter of the past.
Nevertheless, he was going to see Cap in a minute, whether he liked it or not.
Tony sighed and called out, “Hey, Grandpa.”
——————————————-
Steve looked at Tony like he was an alien, which after the last few years, was honestly kind of offensive. After a second of hesitation, he walked over and joined Tony on the wooden pew.
“Why are you here, Tony? Funerals, even for former spies, don’t really seem like your thing.”
Tony laughed shortly. “Well, somehow I think even Aunt Peg would smite me from heaven if I missed her funeral. Besides Sharon would have fucking murdered me and I’m almost as scared of her as I am of Aunt Peg.”
“Aunt Peg?” was all Steve managed to get out, surprised at the billionaire’s familiarity with both Peggy and Sharon.
Tony rolled his eyes and crossed his legs, swinging his foot into Cap’s calf with a nudge.
“You forget your own history, Cap. My father and Aunt Peg were friends even before you arrived on the scene, remember? Founding members of S.H.I.E.L.D? Long-time mourners of the great Steven Grant Rogers? They always had each other’s backs, even when my father was auditioning for asshole of the century. Aunt Peg almost made him bearable,” Tony said wistfully.
“I assumed Peggy would have dumped Stark as soon as the war was over,” Steve said, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “From what you’ve told me about him later in life, he wasn’t exactly pleasant.”
“He was terrible. Abusive. An alcoholic. Pressured me at every turn. But Aunt Peggy was amazing,” Tony said. “I don’t know how she made the time to remember my birthdays and celebrate my successes, but I think she felt responsible for me, just like she had felt responsible for my father. After Howard died, she intervened where she could, but I wasn’t the easiest of charges either. She handled my father’s funeral and stepped out of the way when it was clear Obadiah wanted to raise me in his image. I wasn’t exactly welcoming to her, but she tried, even with having her own children.”
Steve didn’t really know what to do with all of this information. He hummed in acknowledgement of Tony’s words, but the revelation that Peggy had been a beloved aunt to Tony was just another reminder of the lifetime he had missed while in ice. She had touched so many people and Steve hadn’t gotten to see any of it.
“Hey, Steve. Thanks for coming.” Steve looked up to see Sharon smiling softly at him from the aisle.
“Of course.” Steve said. “Tony, this is Sharon, Peggy’s niece. Sharon, this is Tony Stark.”
Tony laughed, genuinely this time. “Rogers, you’ve got to start putting things together faster.”Steve looked at him confused as Tony turned to Sharon with his trademark snark and asked, “What, no welcome for me?”
“No welcomes for ungrateful nephews who show up barely on time to funerals and hide in the back of the church. Aunt Peggy would rip you a new one.”
“Oh, please. You know she always gave me a pass for everything,” Tony said, standing up and approaching Sharon with his arms outstretched.
“A fact that did not escape me even as a child, Anthony.” Sharon said, rolling her eyes.
Tony’s body language softened and his eyes almost seemed to fill, but Steve decided his eyes must have been deceiving him for his own sanity.
“I’m so sorry, Sharon. I still can’t believe it,” Tony said softly to Sharon.
“I can’t either. She was a constant for all of us,” Sharon said ruefully gazing back at the portrait of her aunt at the front of the church.
Tony pulled her into a hug, a long one, as Sharon seemed to take comfort from his embrace.
Steve wanted to kick himself as Tony pulled away a little, resting his arm on the back of Sharon’s shoulders. Obviously, Tony would know Sharon if Tony really had grown up knowing Peggy.
Tony, sensing Steve’s train of thought, his hand rubbing up and down Sharon’s upper arm comfortingly, said “Sharon and I used to spend two weeks with Aunt Peggy every year. She was obscenely busy keeping the world safe, but she always made time for us. I spent those two weeks terrorizing Sharon here because she was so much younger than me. And she idolized me.”
Sharon snorted, but leaned her head against Tony’s shoulder, “I don’t remember that at all, but we did spend a lot of time together as children, until Tony became too cool and busy for swimming and s’mores.”
“Swimming and s’mores? Peggy must have wiped your memory, cuz.” Tony said, shaking his head. “We spent most of the time doing martial arts! Aunt Peggy was livid that I kept getting kidnapped and was determined that I learn to defend myself with more than explosions. I learned all my best moves from Peg.”
“I was joking,” Sharon rolled her eyes. “Aunt Peggy knew that I wanted to be a spy, but that my parents were never going to go for such a thing. Those two weeks were basically boot camp, especially after your skinny ass went to MIT. You weren’t there to hold me back anymore.”“And you wonder why I never call,” Tony said, pretending to be affronted.
“You never call because you’re Tony Stark and like to pretend that no one cares about you,” Sharon scoffed. “I let it happen because I have my own problems to deal with. Besides, Pepper checks in with me at least once a month and Rhodey and I have a standing breakfast date every three weeks.”
“Unbelievable. That adulterer is getting kicked out of the house. No more cool tech for ungrateful husbands,” Tony said.
“Y’all really need to just go down to City Hall and make it official already. Invite me, maybe I’ll show up for James,” Sharon says, laughing.
“Well, if it brings you around, it might be on the table,” Tony says thoughtfully, squeezing Sharon into another hug. “I do miss you, you know.”“I know,” she says wistfully. “I feel the same way.”
“Move into the facility. Join the Avengers.”
Steve can’t stop himself from gasping a bit at that abrupt pronouncement and tries to play it off as a cough, when both of them turn to look at him.
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, Steve. I won’t be doing that.”
Turning to Tony, she smiles and says softly, “You know why I can’t do that. We’ve already discussed this.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a CIA agent. Recognizability, the public, your face next to mine, yadda, yadda, you hate me,” Tony rattles off, in his usually rambling manner.
“I love you. But I love my job. We agreed on this years ago, Anthony,” Sharon says sadly. “You have your dream, I have yours.”
“I know,” Tony whispers. “Pipe dreams.”Sharon squeezes Tony’s shoulders and leans in to kiss him on the cheek.
“Pick up your phone or I’ll send a hit team,” she whispers to Tony, walking away from the two of them swiftly.
Steve watches as Tony gazes at Sharon as she rejoins her family. Tony waves at a few of the people surrounding Sharon, but doesn’t make a move to join the small group of people.
“Alright. Let’s go, Cap.”
————————————-
Tony glances out of the corner of his eye, searching Steve’s face for any telling emotion or thought, but the blonde man is blank. He hasn’t asked where Tony is taking him, but he also doesn’t seem to be registering anything around him.
Tony jogs up the ramp of the quinjet waiting for them at the end of a short runway and starts hitting controls at lightning speed, powering up the jet and entering coordinates for their trip.
When Tony turns around, Steve is looking straight at him, his intense baby blues questioning Tony’s actions, but stays quiet as Tony continues moving around the jet.
“Sit down and buckle up, Cap. We’ve got a few hours to kill before we get to our destination.”
Steve starts at that and waves his hand dismissively.
“Actually, Tony, I think I’m just going to stick around England for awhile. Visit some places Peggy used to tell me about. I can handle getting back stateside by myself.”
Tony lets out a short, dismissive laugh at that.
“If we’re going to make this day about Peggy, then there’s no reason to stay here, Capsicle. I’ve got a full Peggy day planned out, don’t worry,” Tony reassured the super soldier with a pat on the shoulder. “But believe me, the best way to reminisce about Peggy is in the good ole’ US of A.”
Steve hesitates, looking out the window at the London fog, and finally capitulates. Sitting in a seat and buckling in as Tony begins the process of getting the quinjet in the air.
“Atta boy, Cap.”
——————————————————-
Steve really doesn’t know what to say. They’ve been on the jet for awhile, Tony typing away on a StarkPad, obviously working, and they have yet to say anything to each other.
He would like to say that he’s good at staying still and keeping his thoughts to himself. But there’s something about Tony.
Tony’s always busy. He can’t just… talk to Steve. Or anyone for that matter. If he’s in the kitchen, he’s typing away on his phone. If he’s in the jet or in a car, he’s working from a pad. If he’s at home, he’s working on something with FRIDAY, always.
And Steve.. just watches him, feeling like a big useless lump.
He’s sure that if he were to ask FRIDAY or JARVIS to come up with footage of all the time he’s spent just watching Tony work, they could collectively come up with hundreds of hours of footage, from the workshop, from the jets, from their communal living spaces. But Tony never notices, so Steve doesn’t bother looking away. He just stares, watching Tony probably solving global warming from his phone, no matter where they are or what they’re doing.
Steve twists his hands together and coughs, looking down at his shoes. The serum won’t let him just zone out and ignore how much time has passed, so he’s embarrassingly aware that it’s been an hour of watching Tony do his thing and he really needs to stop.
“What do you know about Peggy’s life after you went under? After the war?”
Steve starts at that question from the previously absorbed Tony, looking up to finding the man looking at him inquisitively.
“Um, almost nothing,” Steve admits, sadly. “I know the basics, like about her starting SHIELD and whatnot, but with her so out of it these last few months, I didn’t want to distress her with a litany of questions. And I certainly felt odd asking her family members when they were so obviously already in mourning.”
“Hmmm,” Tony hums, “Do you want to know?”
“I would love to,” Steve responds, straightening up and directing his attention to Stark.
“She didn’t tell me a lot,” Tony sighs. “Now, I wish I had pushed her more, but Peggy was very intentional with what she brought home to us kids. She knew I was getting enough adult stress from my father, so I think she wanted to make my time with her as carefree as possible.”
“But she did tell me about her time in New York after the war. She worked at the Strategic Science Reserve, had a lot of adventures with my father, and was very close compadres with our butler, Jarvis.”
“Jarvis, really?” Steve asks. “I mean, I suppose they’re both English, but how much would an agent and a butler have even hung out together?”
Tony laughs, sliding his phone into his back pocket and reclining back in his chair.
“I thought the same thing when Jarvis started telling me about their adventures. Apparently, Peggy’s skills weren’t being used as the only woman agent at the SSR after the war, so my father would have her do side work for him when he was being targeted or having issues with theft of his tech. Jarvis, as frail and proper as he was, was supposedly Aunt Peg’s backup, but unless her backup needed to be really good at polishing silver or tying Windsor knots, I’m still unconvinced that he was particularly effective.”
Steve laughed out loud, thinking about the Jarvis he knew, the faceless, proper English A.I. being fast friends with Peggy, and couldn’t help but think their sarcasm might have been well-matched.
“What else?” Steve asks wistfully.
“I’ve tried digging up files and even pressured Fury for some heavily classified stuff before SHIELD went asunder.”
“Fury let you, the number one pain in his ass, go through classified SHIELD files just because you missed Peggy?” Steve asks disbelievingly.
Tony snorts. “Okay, to be fair, when I say he ‘let me,’ I mean I hacked into their database and recovered some hidden information about Peggy.”
Steve laughs, inexplicably and unexpectedly feeling utterly happy in Tony’s presence, even on a dark, dark day.
“There’s a lot to read. I can get you the files, but basically Peggy was kicking ass. She foiled several possibly world-ending plots, brought down a handful powerful men, and came up with the idea for SHIELD. One of my biggest regrets in life is the fact that something she worked so hard to build turned out to be a cover for a fascist organization, her legacy deserved better,” Tony said listlessly, staring out the window of the quinjet with a furrowed brow.
The look on Tony’s face was one he knew well. It’s the face he saw in the mirror every morning, the one that said the weight of the world was on your shoulders and you failed to shoulder the burden.
“You’ve always done everything you could,” Steve blurted out, not being able to stand the haunted look in Tony’s face. “Hydra has always been my responsibility, Tony. All the things that happened… It’s on me, not you or any of the others.”
Steve looked down at his shoes, wringing his hands at the thought of SHIELD, of all the people they had lost over the years, to threats Steve had been created to respond to. Lives lost at the hands of fate, hands Steve should have been able to crush.
Steve heard a rustle and a sigh, and in the periphery of his vision saw Tony unbuckle his seatbelt and move to sit right next to Steve. Steve stifled a gasp and tried not to pull away as Tony gently covered his linked hands with his own and squeezed lightly.
“Rogers, look at me.”
He took a deep breath and swiveled his head to make eye contact with the smaller man sitting next to him. To his amazement, Tony was sitting bare inches away from him. Steve swore he might have seen some dampness in the eyes he usually associated with snark and laugh lines.
“One day, one day you’re going to see in yourself what Aunt Peggy sees in you. What my father sees in you,” Tony said softly, clearing his throat and glancing away uncomfortably. “What I see in you.”
Steve stared at the billionaire, never having heard him speak as plainly and emotionally as he was now.
“This Peggy trip I’m taking you on today.. I hope it clears up some of this doubt you have hanging over you. I should have done it a long time ago, probably right after you came out of the ice, but I didn’t know if it would be welcome. Back then, I was way too worried about if you hated me or not,” Tony said laughing shortly.
Now, it was Steve’s turn to squeeze Tony’s hand, this time in pure reflex and disbelief.
“Tony… I never hated you.”
Tony scoffed, “Yeah, right. You totally hated me when all the Loki shit went down. ‘Put on the suit, let’s go a few rounds.’ You must have selective memory.”
Steve looked down at his feet again, once again wondering how the serum had been able to perfect so many other things about him, but had left him a monumental screw up when it came to the people in his life. Sometimes he truly wondered if it was God, or whatever greater being existed, cursing him because they had tried to play with nature one too many times.
“Actually, I have an eidetic memory and I know for a fact that I never hated you, I swear, Tony,” Steve said softly. “I never could. No matter what. I was… so confused when I got out of the ice. I didn’t trust Fury completely, but he was the only one who wasn’t terrified or blown away by me. And then you came along, and you were someone I knew.”
Tony looked at him in confusion, wondering if the captain had finally, truly lost it.
Steve stumbled over his words, trying to explain what he meant.
“I mean, obviously I didn’t know you,” Steve stuttered painfully. “But it felt like I did. Your father and I weren’t very close, so I didn’t feel like I had a place in your life as your father’s friend or anything, but for better or worse, you do remind me of him. Even just by simply sharing his last name, it was something familiar to me for the first time since I thawed out. But then… our relationship was complicated by all this shit.”
Steve waved his hands around, presumably at the quinjet, but Tony knew he meant more than that.
“All of it. The hero gig, the aliens, and the monsters, and the robots. Just like with Howard and Peggy, we couldn’t have a real relationship because my life is always going to be intertwined with the worst things that happen in our world.”
Tony’s breath caught for a second as he tried to process that statement, as he tried to process being put in the same category as Peggy.
Tony interrupted, “You wanted us to have a real relationship?”
Steve went still, realizing what he had just let slip in his haste to explain his feelings.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Tony, I don’t have a lot of people in my life. Regardless of what our relationship looks like day to day, you’re one of the most important people in the world to me. I care what you think and I care about you.”
Tony took a minute to process that, leaning towards the nearest window and trying to find the words to respond. He blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the tears that he couldn’t seem to keep at bay today.
“For the record, I care about you too,” Tony said. “And, I’m glad your life is as chaotic as it is.”
That statement did its job, making Steve look up at him in surprise, almost looking hurt.
Tony moved his hands to Steve’s broad shoulders, squaring up to Steve finally.
“I’m glad your life is chaotic and its intertwined with all of this bad shit, because mine is too,” Tony said, with a soft smile. “I wish you didn’t have to live with all of these burdens, burdens spanning decades, but I’m glad you’re here. Our lives are irreparably connected to world-ending shit, but it also means that we’re forced together again and again. Every time we fuck up, aliens or robots will bring us back to each other, I’d bet everything I have on it.”
At that, Steve couldn’t help the tears that appeared in his eyes and he couldn’t really bring himself to care. For the first time, he didn’t really feel like Tony was judging him or trying to read him, he was just speaking honestly.
Before he knew it, they were hugging, hard. He didn’t know who had reached for who, but they had met in the middle, the moment undeniable and instinctual. And for the first time since he had heard Peggy was gone forever, Steve wept.