Her arms are stronger than he’d imagined, her face tucked against his chest the most perfect spot of soft pressure he’s ever felt. She’s pretending to dance slow and nonchalant, but her hand grips his in a way that breaks his heart.
I had a date.
She puts on a convincing front, but Steve knows as well as she that neither of them can believe it. That Steve is here.
As maybe the world’s leading authority on waiting too long, don’t.
And he won’t. He can’t. He can’t wait any longer. He can’t pretend that it’s only been a few days, that he just magically reappeared out of the ice and lived to tell the tale because the serum was just that good.
He swallows.
“Peg?”
She hums, her tone lifting just slightly at the end in question. He feels her hand tense as she does it, though. She heard the trepidation in his voice.
“I… I’ve lived a life.”
She nods against his chest. “I’d say so.”
“No, Peg. I… it’s really hard to…” She lifts her head and looks at him, her expression carefully neutral.
“Steve.” She releases his hand, reaches up to hold his cheek and smooth her thumb along the planes of his face. “You can tell me.”
Steve lets out a breath. She reaches out and runs the pad of her thumb over the frown lines that have started to appear between his brows. He leans into the touch just slightly, enough to thank her without saying a word.
He stays silent for a moment. She blinks up at him and purses her cherry-red lips now, glancing away and then back at Steve.
“You look older.”
Steve closes his eyes, lets out a breath. He didn’t think she’d notice, but he’s not exactly surprised.
Peggy drops her hand from his face, only to return his grip once more. “You didn’t come back to me from the ice, Steve. You came back to me from another life.”
Steve’s forehead drops to meet hers, fighting back tears that have been welling up since—
“Save it for later, darling,” she murmurs, lifting her lips to meet his in a soft, sweet brush of relief. “It can wait.”
It’s been a long, long time.
—
Steve tracks down the Commandos, one by one. None of them have the same reaction, and all of them are shocked in their own ways. Dugan claps Steve on the shoulder, eyes screwed up with joy and something else, something that wrenches Steve’s gut in a way he had only felt when he realized that the hospital room wasn’t right, when Zola but not Zola laughed in his face, when he gained so much only to lose it again…
“I wish he were here to see this,” Dugan mutters, just loud enough for Steve to hear over the din of the pub.
They’ll never know.
Steve swallows. “Yeah.” He gives Dugan a tight smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, me too.”
He means it.
—
They quickly fall into a routine, Peggy and Steve. Steve puts on a record, Peggy puts on a kettle. The two sip their tea, Steve with two sugars and Peggy with nothing at all, and she just listens. Steve recounts everything he can remember—which is a lot, given the serum’s boost to his memory—and then some. He skips some parts. Her dementia, the funeral. He tells her about Sharon, and she gives him a knowing look. Steve ducks his head and busies himself with another sip of now-tepid tea when she asks him what she was like.
“Like you,” he says, staring into his beverage.
“Exactly like me?” Peggy asks. Amusement tinges her words.
“No,” Steve murmurs. It comes out as almost a whisper.
Peggy nods, reaches out a hand across the kitchen table and places it gently on Steve’s.
“Steve.”
He glances up.
Her expression is earnest, her next words careful.
“Did they—did you—ever find out what happened to Barnes?”
Steve smiles, then.
“Oh, Peg. You won’t believe it when I tell you.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Try me.”
—
The wedding is small, and Steve prefers it that way. A handful of SHIELD agents, a few friends of Peggy, the Howling Commandos, Howard Stark and his latest girl (who makes Steve think of Tony every time she speaks, and certainly makes him wonder) attend as guests.
Howard insisted on paying for the flowers. Steve was glad he no longer had to worry about allergies. Vases upon vases upon vases lined every nook and cranny of the quaint chapel.
In all his years of battle, of constant warfare and uncertainty, he had never felt like this. Every sleepless night pre-serum, coughing up a storm and curling his skin-and-bones frame around itself to try and keep death at bay, had never felt like this.
Steve had never been more nervous in his life.
But the organ had started, all eyes turned to him. Steve let out a massive breath and walked up the aisle. Earnest faces of friends and colleagues lined his vision, blurring together in his current state. He turned, and waited.
When he saw her, everything stopped.
When he saw her, every ounce of tension melted away.
He brushed the shape of the compass in his pocket as he went to fold his hands loosely in sheer awe.
She was everything. She always had been.
She was his.
Peggy beamed as she carefully stepped up to meet him. Her hair framed her face in perfect curls, her simple veil delicately adorning the crown of her head. And when her eyes met his, Steve could have sworn his heart stopped beating. Time stopped ticking.
Nothing in the world could possibly matter but her.
—
Steve hears her softly singing from somewhere in the house as he pushes the door open and shrugs off his coat.
Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again, it’s been a long, long time…
Steve smiles, hanging his coat on the rack by the door and gently closing the door behind him with a soft creak and a click.
She continues to hum the soft, smooth melody, and Steve recognizes the soft clinking of dishes and swooshing of water and rags from the kitchen.
He closes his eyes, relishing in the sound of her voice for a moment, before picking up the brown paper grocery bag he had brought home and stepping through the hallway and around the doorframe.
Peggy looks over her shoulder and sets down a plate, freshly washed, on a towel beside the sink. She smiles and brushes away a strand that strayed out of the bun she had carefully pulled her hair into that morning.
Steve sets down the bag on their small, weathered table and opens his arms wide. She dries her hands on the apron that bulges out over her rounding belly and wordlessly draws her arms around his waist. Steve encircles her in a cautious embrace.
“Steve?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m not going to break, darling. You don’t have to be so incredibly careful.”
“I know,” Steve murmurs, and he can’t help but smile at her slightly defensive tone. He places his hands lightly on her shoulders and draws her back so he can see her face. He leans down and pressed his lips to hers, deepening the kiss slightly before gently pulling away. She gazes at him with something he could only describe as love, and he returns it. Oh, how he returns it.
Never felt like this, my dear…
—
When their first little one came into the world, Steve didn’t even know what to say. He just kept looking from his precious face to Peggy’s radiant, exhausted one. He was in absolute awe.
They hadn’t really disagreed over the name at all since knowing James was a he. When the nurse turned to Steve, and Steve turned to Peggy, she had simply stated, soft and resolute, “James Steven Rogers.”
Steve would do anything for her. Anything at all.
He’s absolutely sure that Peggy knows this. More than anything, he is comforted by the thought.
—
Steve is grateful for the serum. Infants need about as much constant, round-the-clock attention and protection as he was expected to give the war effort back in the day, and then some.
Before those early days with James, Steve could have sworn that Peggy had some sort of serum, too. Prior to their first child, Steve had never seen her tired, never saw anything wear on her the way it would wear on any average person.
As extraordinary as Peggy Carter continued to prove to be, Steve began to see that she had limits, too.
Steve takes the night watch, Peggy takes days. Steve grumbles to himself about this, at times; the day watch is far more difficult, he thinks. Granted, nights have their challenges. You can never tell for sure whether the little person is breathing, and if you go to check, he gets upset. When he’s upset, Steve never knows what to do. Half the time, Peggy wanders into the nursery, takes James without a word, and sits with him in the wooden rocking chair in the corner.
She’s amazing, he thinks. Steve is always somewhat guilty when Peggy has to step in, but he’s grateful nonetheless.
—
When James is old enough to start understanding words, Steve spends as much time as possible holding James so that he’s sitting upright on Steve’s lap, facing him, and Steve tells him stories.
When James is old enough to toddle, Steve carefully wraps a rag around every possible sharp corner in the house at James’s level, and he keeps a close eye on him but, at Peggy’s insistence, doesn’t hover too much.
When James is old enough to speak, his first word is the name of his favorite teddy. Steve is not upset by this. Peggy just rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too.
When James is old enough to start walking with a bit more confidence, carefully stringing words together to form a few short sentences with much thought and careful contemplation, it oftentimes sounds something like this:
“Come on, Bucky. We gotta go this way now.”
—
James is quite the lanky headstrong kid. Steve has no idea where he gets that from.
It’s no surprise to Steve or Peggy, then, that when little Natty arrives, James promptly tells Steve to take her back.
Steve ruffles James’s thick dark head of hair. “Not quite yet, kid. Give it a week, you might like her.”
Three days later, James is holding Natty on the sofa while Steve and Peggy brush elbows in the kitchen. Steve hears the thin, gentle notes of a song he hadn’t played in a year at least being hummed from the next room. He turns to Peggy, who has looked up from the pot she had been stirring on the stove. She’s grinning at the wall, and Steve covers her hand with his own.
There’s so much I feel that I should say…
—
“Dad?”
Steve glances up from his newspaper. Natty is gazing up at him with wide, hazel eyes. “Yeah, sweetie?”
“Are you Captainnamer’ca?”
Steve blinks, looks at Peggy for assistance here. She calmly flips a page of her novel and pointedly continues to read.
Steve looks back to Natty, who is still waiting for an answer. James has looked up from inspecting a bruise on his knee with one eyebrow raised.
Finally, he smiles. “I was, Natty. It’s just… it’s been a long time.”
“Ohh.” She nods slowly and turns back to the paper dolls that Steve had drawn for her earlier that evening.
That night, Peggy asks him why he was so slow to answer. Steve shrugs.
“I guess I just hadn’t thought about it in a while,” he lies.
Not a day goes by when Steve isn’t reminded.
—
James isn’t much of a ladies man, but all the punks in Brooklyn seem to want to win Natty’s heart. Steve can relate to James. He isn’t so sure about Natty.
“Peg?”
“Yes, darling.”
Steve pauses in shading his latest drawing, sticks the pencil in his palm-sized sketchbook and closes the cover. “How much hovering is too much hovering?”
Peggy fixes Steve with a knowing look. “I think, if you know you’re hovering, that’s too much hovering.”
—
Steve doesn’t know what Peggy does for SHIELD anymore. He doesn’t ask.
Peggy had asked him about joining it, once. About getting rid of Hydra before they could do any more damage.
They both knew that Steve would say no. Peggy just wanted to make sure Steve knew that he had the option to go back if he wanted to take it.
Steve knows he doesn’t have a choice. He’s done.
So when Peggy had asked him, quieter than Steve had ever seen her, he pressed his lips in a thin line and looked down at his coffee.
“I can’t, Peg.”
She stood, moved to his side, and rubbed circles on his back with the palm of her hand. Steve closed his eyes and felt the sting of tears welling up behind them.
“I know.”
—
It turns out the serum doesn’t actually make one live forever. Steve didn’t know what he had been expecting, but this revelation both relieves and terrifies him.
Peggy, resilient and majestic as she always has been and always will be, ages alongside Steve. She didn’t mention it, but Steve knew she, too, saw the thin lines forming at the corners of Steve’s eyes, saw how the creases she used to smooth between his brows were engraved there forever.
They were signs of a life well lived.
When Natty asks critically why their family had never really celebrated Steve’s birthday one evening at the dinner table, Steve freezes. He glances at Peggy, who is sipping her glass of water and looking at him with amusement dancing in her eyes.
How are you going to handle this one, Rogers?
Steve looks back to his daughter and tries to pretend like the moment hadn’t shaken him. He pastes on what he hopes is a soft, contemplative smile.
“I suppose I’ve just never thought about it, honey.”
He had. Natty and Steve shared a birthday.
He figures that, to any other girl as kind and soft-hearted as Natty turned out to be, this knowledge would make her smile. It would make her take both of Steve’s hands in her own and ask why he’d never told her.
Because then you’d ask how old I am.
You’d be able to tell I’m lying, you’re too good at that.
You’d ask me how old I really am.
And I’d tell you everything.
—
James comes home from school one day and announces that he’s going to get a job down by the docks with some of his buddies. Says it’s so that he can finally buy a ticket to the pictures for his best girl.
Steve knows there’s no girl in the picture, that James is saving up to buy his own place.
He finds Peggy in Natty’s room one day, rubbing her arms and letting their girl cry into Peg’s arms. Steve stands in the doorway for a moment, leans on the frame and mouths She okay?
Peggy shakes her head. Mouths back to Steve, Idiot boy.
Steve nods, leaves the room and busies himself with getting dinner started.
—
Natty and James are long gone, now. Steve and Peggy are officially empty-nesters.
Steve isn’t sure what to do with himself. He considers going back to SHIELD, asking whether or not they have business for him. He doesn’t, though.
Peg retires not long after Steve has walked his daughter down the aisle to a guy he still doesn’t know for sure if he likes. He swore to take care of her, but Steve… Steve insisted they leave Natty’s bedroom exactly the way it was when she left.
“Just in case some grandkids want to sleep over,” he protests when Peggy starts to re-organize Natty’s things. She looks suspicious, but she puts down the box nonetheless and crosses the room to Steve.
She places her hands gently on his chest, looks him in the eye, and tells him this:
“You need to stop worrying about her, Steven. You’ll give yourself an ulcer.”
With a gentle push to Steve, he promptly finds himself on the other side of a closed door.
—
Steve Rogers writes down absolutely everything. From the moment he found himself back in the past to right now, his present, Steve has never stopped writing down every single thing that he can remember.
He writes about his past, about the past before the present before now. He writes about his first job selling day-old papers on a street corner in Brooklyn, he writes about how his best friend promised to quit smoking at age eighteen and, as far as Steve knew, only stopped after being experimented on by Nazi scientists. He wrote a lot about that friend. He wrote about everything that had happened post-ice, too, and every moment he could remember up to Thanos.
He skipped around five years.
He writes about his present, too. He writes about James, Natty, and the stray cat that he feeds every morning now. He writes about their house, about the projects he’s done around it and how Peg and him had turned it from a real fixer-upper into a proper home in two months’ time.
Peggy. He writes about her every day. He wants to remember her, no matter what happens.
He wants her to remember herself.
In a way, knowing that Peggy would one day forget most things about their life together scares Steve. It makes him not want to continue on, makes him anxious to leave her one day.
For the sake of not having to fight another Steve, he decides that he’ll leave when Peggy enters the hospital. Earlier than that wasn’t an option, either.
Peggy Carter would see him again, even after she didn’t know him anymore. She would see a younger Steve Rogers, and all she’d remember was the ice.
Steve makes his peace as well as he can.
He makes sure to shuffle to the nearest office supply store and make copies of all of his pages upon pages of writings. Even the dusty, yellowing pages with faded ink scrawled quickly across a page are handed to a confused employee.
“All of these, sir?”
“Yeah,” Steve half-smiles. “All of them.”
—
Steve leaves the pages for Peggy to read, and.a note for James and Natty that they should read some to her every day if they can.
He figures they were old enough now, his kids. So he also tells them who he was, where he was going.
I know you’re angry with me, I know. And I know you won’t understand until it all happens. But if you see a guy named Captain America come back from the dead, you’ll see what I mean.
It’s hard to tear himself away from this timeline now that he’s in it. It’s the most difficult thing he’s done.
But he has to admit, he doesn’t belong here. And he owes it to a few people to come back, at least for a little while.
On the day Natty and James come back home to take Peggy away, Steve stays back at the house. Says he has a terrible, pounding headache, and that he’ll catch up. He hugs each of his kids in turn, a little longer than usual, and then he turns to Peggy.
He rubs her shoulders, clasps her hands in his. She’s not looking at him.
“You gotta go away now, ok, Peg?”
She looks at him, startled. “Where?”
“To the hospital, honey. I’ll see you sometime soon.”
“Why aren’t you coming?”
“I need to rest now. I’ll see you soon.”
Her gaze floats away, then back to Steve.
“Steven?” she asks.
“Mhm?”
Tears well up in her eyes, and Steve reaches up to brush one away.
“I don’t want you to go, Steven.”
Steve brings her into a tight embrace.
But words can wait for some other day…
Kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again,
It’s been a long, long time.
Haven’t felt like this, my dear
Since I can’t remember when,
It’s been a long, long time.
You’ll never know how many dreams I’ve dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you.
So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again.
It’s been a long, long time.