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Steve never meant to love the seasons, that was just how life worked out for him. When he met the seasons it was spring, and Peggy, Spring’s human name, was amazing. But then one day he came home and her skin was rich and dark, her hair was shorn close to her scalp in intricate designs, and her eyes were even darker and more challenging than Peggy’s. Steve had been confused and ready to do whatever it took to bring his lover back, but Summer explained what had happened. This season’s name was Okoye- no last name, but her friends called her the General.
Fall is cool and collected, organized and viciously efficient, but Maria always put her all into protecting people. Steve got along with Maria from the start, but by the end of the season he was dreading Winter. Winter went by Natasha and she was unpredictable, kind and enchanting one day and bitter and manipulative the next. More than once Steve had to leave her for a few days until he could come to terms with her motivations, for although Natasha could be cold and utilitarian, she did what she did because it turned out right in the end. She and Steve had shared goals, and they both were willing to lay themselves on the line when the chips came down. Sometimes Steve thinks that Winter could use some of Fall’s integrity because Maria was just as dedicated and passionate but she was principled about it. Then he and Natasha would go for a walk in the cool evening, and Natasha would ‘happen’ upon a neighborhood just as a woman was being dragged into an alley and beat the man viciously, and Steve would forgive her.
Spring
Peggy knew Steve liked her best, it was easy to see. When the other seasons were in control she could see what was happening, but she had no control then. The other seasons knew it too, but Peggy secretly liked that Steve liked her best. She wasn’t entirely sure why given that Steve had the most in common with Summer, as uncompromising and vibrant as Okoye was. Or even Maria, who was witty and shrewd and would argue Steve the way that made him light up. Winter, though; Steve had an uneasy friendship with her. She knew Natasha was difficult to understand, often seen as too violent and cold, but Peggy understood why. Natasha was an enigma, but once she thawed a little Peggy thought they’d have a lot in common. After all people thought Steve was violent and wild for sticking to his principles, too.
When Steve sees her he breaks out into a wide smile. “The first day of Spring isn’t for another week,” he says, clearly not caring as he embraces her and kisses Peggy’s temple.
“As though I’d let that stop me,” she says. “I appear when I deem fit.” Sometimes that was early, sometimes late, but even when snow and freezing rains persisted Peggy was waking up, making plans under the surface. The winds were warming and buds were starting to pop out of branches. Steve’s favorite season, Peggy knew, because he had told her when they met.
“It’s so good to see you,” Steve says softly. “It feels like it’s been years.”
Peggy holds him closer. She’s missed him, too.
They work in the garden together, Peggy digging her hands into the soil with no care for her nails or clothes- they can always be fixed and cleaned later, when the work was done. They relax by the melting stream, skipping rocks and catching frogs and fireflies. They collect buckets of berries and bake pies, filling the house with the scent of crisping pastry and sweet juices.
At Shield, she is thoughtful and efficient, her passion and insight inspiring. Steve knows he isn’t the only one who turns to follow her wherever she goes like a flower always facing the sun. At home or at Shield, Peggy is hard at work all season long, from sun-up to sun-down, even on weekends or holidays when the rest of the world takes a break. Steve never tries to slow her down, and she never justifies it to him. Because he understands: the world can be harsh and unfair, and the more prepared one is, the stronger one grows, the more difficult it will be for one’s efforts to be torn down. Their last night they sit on the veranda in a two-person rocking seat, watching the sunset and enjoying the warm breeze that brings they voices of their neighborhood to their ears, and Peggy wishes she could stay longer.
Summer
Steve wakes up in the early morning to find Okoye already outside on the lawn, wielding her spear in perfectly controlled whirlwinds in the breaking light. The grass is covered in dew, not that Okoye seems to notice as she places her bare feet precisely where she wants them, stamping or lashing out at invisible opponents.
“It’s still a bit chilly out there,” he calls from the veranda. Okoye flashes him a smile, bright with white teeth bared like more blades. Steve sighs, but he kicks off his own shoes and meets her lightning-fast strikes with firm blocks and counters as the sun rises over them. They stop hours later, skin shimmering and chests heaving, but they leave their shoes off because that’s the way Summer likes it.
Okoye suggests a road trip and Steve agrees cautiously, and when their first stop is in a small town with poisoned water his suspicions are proven correct. Okoye gets arrested at three different protests and Steve is right beside her every time. Okoye is unstoppable when she is defending people, and as the season most deeply anchored in the Earth she chooses to defend it, and those who would otherwise be buried beneath it. She spits rage when they come across a company that wants to mine oil from the Earth with no regard for the waters nearby or the people who drink from them, and Steve calls out of work preemptively, knowing they’ll be there for a long time.
He goes along with Okoye’s whims because it’s so good to have someone just as passionate and righteously angry as he is around again, and Okoye tells the President of the United States to fuck off right to his face because she disagrees with his policies. Steve’s superiors at SHIELD think she’s a liability, and some like to call her a social justice warrior instead of an activist, but Okoye loves the title, and she just grins that reckless smile and gets Steve to take photos of her with her spear for Instagram and Twitter, challenging anyone who denies global warming to come fight her.
They go out on hikes, to nature preserves and protected habitats especially, because Summer is the season for plants and animals alike to flourish, and Okoye takes pride in every towering tree and toddling rhino they come across. Steve isn’t very surprised. Sometimes Summer exhausts even him, but Okoye’s brightness and unapologetic embrace of life reinvigorate him, and she always inspires Steve to go along with her no matter how run down and cynical he becomes.
When they get to the end of the season Steve is content, because although he’s ready for Maria’s level-headedness and careful planning, he knows he and Okoye have done good work even if she wears him out.
Fall
Maria wakes up beside Steve and smiles. She’s amused because Steve normally is an early riser, but Okoye had him running flat out all season long with her boundless energy. Maria rises quietly and goes to the kitchen to make breakfast. She leans against the counter in her robe, clutching a mug of tea as it cooks, already thinking about how to capitalize upon the work of the previous season and consolidate energy for the season ahead. By the time Steve comes downstairs breakfast is cooling on the table and Maria has papers laid out in proper piles, plans awhirl in her mind. She sets it all aside when he rubs her shoulders and leans down for a good-morning kiss, a welcome-back kiss. They eat together and have a conversation about what’s to come next, broken up by amiable silences.
Steve’s been gone from SHIELD for a while, touring the country and the world with Okoye, so he has to check in. Maria doesn’t mind; she has enough to do by herself. She pulls long hours, organizing and directing SHIELD, preparing it to defend the planet against any threats. Steve pulls her out of the office early enough to get home and build a campfire, where they grill hot dogs and s’mores and huddle up close against the encroaching chill. The crackle and thick scent of dry wood fill the air, drowning out the clicks and whirrs of the insect population and the encroaching damp coolness of the season. Maria and Steve tell each other scary stories and memories, and head back inside when the fire dies down.
Halloween comes, and Steve convinces Maria to take the day off work and spend it with him, baking pumpkin-shaped cookies, carving Jack O’Lanterns, and creating their own costumes from old clothes and junk from around the house. Autumn appreciates the need to take time off once in a while, and she loves the way Steve makes her laugh with his goofy creations. When he surprises her with a sweet potato pie, her favorite, it warms her insides. She thanks him with a whole roasted chicken, slow-cooked with a recipe passed down for generations, and they cuddle up in front of the TV watching old scary movies.
On the weekends, Maria takes over the vegetable garden that Peggy tended over long hours and Okoye fed with cool water and burning sun. The garden is overrun from Summer’s distracted attention and unfettered growth, and Maria takes on the hard work of preparing for the harvest without complaint. She knows Steve is tired from a long, hot summer and she doesn’t mind shouldering this load for the both of them. She knows, with the experience and intuition of generations, that his capability to keep up with and match all of them will grow over time. As the season of patience, dedication and timing, Maria knows not to rush him.
When SHIELD has been managed and trained within an inch of its life, Maria is finally satisfied. Steve has been working hard in his own department, and they are ready to take a week off. Harvest is no joke, the way Maria does it, picking just the right day to reap the profits of Spring’s preparation, Summer’s growth, and Fall’s patience. They cook some of what they harvest, preserve more, and take the rest to a nearby market, where they while away hours drinking spicy cider from a nearby orchard, picking out local jams and honey, and doing some shopping in preparation for the next season.
Maria can feel their time together coming to a close, but she isn’t sad. Her work is done, and it’s been a good season, with a strong harvest. Steve takes her hand on their last night together and they share a warm, satisfied evening on the veranda, enjoying the last warmth of the year and the first chill wind through the nearly-bare trees.
Winter
She knows Steve doesn’t like her, but aside from their differing personalities, Natasha doesn’t know why until halfway through the season. She might have figured it out sooner, but she makes a point not to crowd him; Winter is the season of death and isolation, and most people don’t like it when she gets too close.
She accompanies him to Christmas Mass and watches him light and pray over two candles. Natasha has endless curiosity, needing to burrow into every nook and cranny like a cold breeze sneaking inside a coat, so she succumbs to temptation and presses him, saying just the right thing (the wrong thing) until he lets her have it.
“My mother and my best friend both died during the winter,” he snaps finally. His eyes are hot with anger, blue lasers that melt straight through her. “Pneumonia, and- and-”
“I know,” Natasha says softly. “You don’t have to say.”
“You remember them?” Steve asks. He has a hard time believing that a season which takes so many lives could remember two in particular.
Natasha gives a shallow nod. Her insides are frozen and sharp like ice, but her face is as smooth and inscrutable. “Winter is the season of remembrance,” she tells him. “Mourning,” because she doesn’t like being like this either. She wishes she could be a builder like Peggy, or fight proudly in the light of day like Okoye, or even measure her choices carefully like Maria.
But she isn’t any of those things. She is the cold so deep it freezes hearts and limbs, wind so strong it suffocates, a creeping insidious theft of life. But she also clears the air and the land and the water, kills off excess that would eventually throttle healthy environments, and sometimes, for those who pay attention, she is protection. Natasha holds onto those moments, those places, where her nature can be devastatingly beautiful, where her might serves as a shield no army can penetrate. It helps to remind herself that even she, the season of depression and slowly sapping hope, can be a force for good.
“Do you care about them?” Steve asks, arms crossed over his chest.
“I can’t change what I am,” Natasha side-steps the question. “I can only try to make up for it as best I can.”
“What do you mean?”
Natasha smiles slightly. “It’s no coincidence that so many peoples of the world have holidays in the winter. Everyone needs something to look forward to- even if it’s just me going away.”
Something, Natasha isn’t sure what, changes after that. Slowly Steve starts warming up to her, bringing her figurines made of glass as delicate and thin as tiny icicles. Steve has never gotten her gifts before, thought he dotes on Peggy and takes pride in finding things Maria and Okoye will deign to accept. Steve brings her other things too, a scarf that goes with her favorite coat, a box of patchouoli she spent a long minute breathing in a department store. He even bakes her gingerbread cookies.
When the season comes to a close she and Steve are sitting by the fire for warmth and Steve is telling her some story from his childhood that she doesn’t understand. Peggy would understand the cultural references, but Natasha isn’t Peggy. Okoye and Maria would understand the loyalty and light-heartedness of Steve’s childhood fights, but Natasha never had friends like that. But she’s content to sit like this with Steve because it reminds her of the way he’ll converse with Peggy for hours, or sit in easy silence with Maria. Natasha likes being included in this way.
*
Slowly Steve learns to love all the seasons like he loved Peggy from the beginning. Winter is the hardest, but he eventually sees past the potential for sickness or injury and learns to love the beauty of the bare hibernating trees, the gentle touch of snowflakes on a still night, hot drinks and the kiss of icy air against his cheeks. They skate together, play deadly games of hide and seek tag in the snowy landscape, and Natasha makes every holiday celebration seem like the best day of the year, no matter how much Steve hates the people at the parties.
Spring has always been Steve’s favorite and he never tires of supporting Peggy both around the house and at work as she tends to the agency she’s created, devising new initiatives and pruning old ones, cultivating new agents and planting the seeds of nobility and greatness in the organization. When Spring is around, their houseplants and garden bloom the most beautifully, and it soothes something in Steve’s soul to come home to such lushness and know that nothing cruel or barbaric could ever happen in the safe place they’d made together.
Summer is hard to tame but Steve eventually wins himself some breathing room by convincing Okoye of the wonders/horrors of online activism and blogging, earning himself a few precious hours of sleep as she tears down bigots online and composes cutting and concise manifestos that spread online like a virus (“Viral,” she tells him, smiling indulgently, already typing up her next movement). She still wakes him in the middle of the night sometimes, cursing at her laptop in the otherwise dark bedroom, but she can raise more arms to fight and alms to help online than she can by going to places in person, and Steve manages to do some world-saving too, so it’s a decent compromise. They still end up travelling of course, demonstrations and protests and marches as usual, but they’re more targeted, taking advantage of Okoye’s growing online fame. He even manages to surprise her once with a visit to a newly protected national park, where she stands proudly atop a peak and cries out her joy over the valley to the lives and land her work has protected.
When Autumn returns she’s grateful that Steve managed to keep SHIELD running a bit more smoothly this year, and it means they have more time for competitive corn mazes, competitive apple picking, competitive Halloween house decorating, and competitive pumpkin pie baking. Maria wins the last one by a landslide, but Steve insists she cheated because she spontaneously grew her own pumpkin patch in the backyard, right in the middle of one of Peggy’s gardens, and Steve had to get his from the farmer’s market.
Winter comes early that year, but Natasha does her best to stay away from him for the first few weeks. She knows that she is the opposite of Steve, with his need to be loud and proud, so she busies herself with work- of which there is always plenty. For all that Peggy and Maria are the Directors of SHIELD, and Okoye is its General, leading the charge whenever battle is necessary, Natasha is its frontline. Winter is her season, the season of bunking down against the raging cold and hiding, whispering, plotting, talking. Wars of words have the potential to be the worst kind, and it is whispers that Natasha wields better than any other.
When she returns home and Steve surprises her with tickets to Russia, she’s convinced it’s a trick for a moment before she realizes Steve could do no such thing. He takes her to St. Petersburg, to a ballet showing, and he blushes when he tells her that the dancers, with their ethereal grace and bodies carved from years of hard labor, remind him of her. Secretly touched, she takes him to the land outside a city that she remembers by a different name, where she tells him on a clear, bright day about the millions she laid to waste here, in order to protect millions more. Steve listens quietly, and then lets her tour him around the best restaurants in the city. That night she won’t sleep, so he stays awake with her in the dark and cold and drinks, and remembers.
Each season is different and unique in their own way and Steve loves them all in the way each of them deserves. They all love him too, each in different ways, and Steve appreciates that there’s never a dull moment. He has a tendency to get set in his ways, and dating the seasons means he’s never allowed to get complacent. Maria likes going to museums, her sharp eyes taking in every detail, and he takes Natasha to comedy shows where she can let loose and laugh until she cries. Peggy loves dancing and watching films, and Okoye and Steve spot each other at the gym or as they climb steep cliffs.
Steve is lucky to have the seasons, to experience them in a way no one else could. He thinks they might be lucky to have him too.