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Peggy smiles calmly at Steve when he walks in, which is the first sign that it’s a good day.
“Hello, Steve,” she greets, not in the least surprised that he’s here, alive and young. Some of the tension in Steve’s jaw releases. He always does his best to be calm for her, explaining the ice and the time and the rescue over and over and over again because it isn’t her fault that she’s forgetting, but it takes a toll on him. It’s always easier when she remembers.
“Hey, Peggy,” he says, replacing the flowers he had brought the week before, still sitting in their vase by her bed, with the ones in his hand. Violets. Peggy had told him offhandedly, a few weeks prior, that they’re her favorite flower. He tries to mix it up, bring her different kinds each week. He had no idea there were so many varieties of violets. “How are you today?”
“Quite well, thank you,” she responds, her tone nearly identical to what it would’ve been seventy years ago in response to such a question: businesslike, polite but brief. “The nurse brought me my photos back.” She gestures at the bedside table, where a row of black-and-white photos in supermarket picture frames sits, angled towards the bed. Steve hasn’t seen them before. “I’m told they upset me sometimes,” Peggy explains. “It took quite a bit of arguing for her to return them.” Steve sits down in his usual chair, looking at the photos curiously. They’re nothing out of the ordinary; yellowed, faded photographs of Peggy with various people: Howard Stark, a woman Steve assumes is Maria Stark, a tall, stiff-looking man and a redhead about Peggy’s height, and…
“Hey,” Steve says softly, pointing at the photo closest to Peggy’s bed. He recognizes the woman with Peggy in the photo from his history classes, as well as several movies from the fifties and sixties that various people had recommended to him. “Isn’t that Angela Martin?” Peggy sighs happily, looking at the photo with a smile.
“It is,” she agrees, gazing at the picture fondly.
“I didn’t know you two were friends,” Steve says, which makes Peggy laugh for reasons unknown. The laughter turns to coughing halfway through, but she waves away the water he offers her, taking a few deep, rattling breaths before her breathing goes back to normal. The coughing fits are expected now, and the doctors tell Steve that it’s nothing to be concerned about, simply an unpleasant consequence of age, but the awful sound still makes his throat tighten with anxiety.
“You could call it that,” Peggy says. “Most people certainly insisted on doing so.” Steve frowns at her. Peggy glances up from the photo and sees his expression. Her eyes spark with a devious sort of humor. “We were lovers, you see,” she explains, and Steve is fairly sure his jaw drops. Peggy laughs at whatever his face is doing, the sound full of amusement and fond exasperation. “Surprised?” she asks.
“You could say that,” Steve mutters. He looks at the photo again with new eyes, this time noting the casual way Angela’s arm is wrapped around Peggy’s waist, the way Peggy is looking at her instead of the camera, the way they’re both leaning into each other a bit. None of it is overt, or even particularly noticeable, but it’s there when he looks for it.
They look in love, he realizes, and the thought doesn’t hurt a bit. Then he remembers why Angela Martin is so ingrained in the culture of the future, why she was famous enough for him to seek out a few of her movies. Part of it is due to her acting ability; she truly was exceptional, but another part of it…
“It must have been painful,” Steve says quietly. “When she…”
“When she died,” Peggy completes. Steve nods, wincing. “It was over thirty years ago, Steve, I can talk about it.” She shifts in the bed, adjusting so she can look at the photo as she speaks. “It was all very sudden,” she begins. “The diagnosis, and then the treatment, and then…” She lifts one shoulder. “All in the span of four months or so. I didn’t know how to deal with it. After so many years, to suddenly be alone. Howard was…not the man he once was, by then, and we weren’t nearly as close as we were during the war, or in the early years of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’d been with Angie since ’47, you see. We lived together, first in New York, then in LA. Thirty-five years without a moment truly alone, without wanting a moment alone. And then every moment I had was alone. It was terrifying.” Steve reaches out, setting a hand over Peggy’s. Peggy smiles at him, gripping it with a strength belied by her appearance. “It’s a strange thing, for the whole world to mourn someone you love, when you are the only one who knows what you have truly lost.” She pauses for a moment, gazing up at Steve. “Even stranger for such a thing to happen twice in one’s lifetime.” She returns her gaze to the photograph. “The people who mattered knew, of course,” she says. “Howard, Maria, Jarvis and Ana. Angie’s various boyfriends, most of whom dated her because they had their own more controversial relationships to hide, usually knew something of it, although most had no idea who I was.” She shakes her head. “Still, it disturbed me at first, that the world would remember Angie as a serial monogamist, unable to commit, when we were far more committed than many legal marriages I’ve seen.”
“You were married?” Steve asks, frowning in confusion.
“We certainly thought of ourselves as such,” Peggy answers. “There was never a ceremony of any sort, of course, or even a formal discussion, but, rings and legalities aside, I considered her my wife, and vice versa.”
“I’m glad you had her,” Steve says quietly, honestly. “I’m glad you got to be happy.” Peggy smiles.
“Not upset I didn’t spend my life pining over you?” she asks wryly.
“Of course not,” Steve says immediately. “I was dead, Peg. You moved on, you found someone amazing. I could never be upset about that.”
“I was only teasing, dear,” Peggy says gently. Steve flushes slightly, embarrassed at his unnecessarily emphatic reaction. They sit in a comfortable silence for a moment before Steve speaks again.
“Tell me about her?” he asks. “If you want?”
“I would love to,” Peggy says. She glances at the photograph again, and Steve picks it up off the bedside table, handing it to her. Peggy takes it with a murmur of thanks. She stares at it for a long moment, running her thumb along the edge of the frame. “Her first love was the stage, did you know?” she says suddenly. Steve shakes his head. “Yes, she wanted to be on Broadway,” Peggy explains. “She should’ve made it, too. Her voice was…well. I haven’t heard anything like it since.” Peggy smiles, then, wide and happy. Her eyes go a bit distant as she remembers, and her voice gets soft. She still sounds like she’s in love, all these years later.
“She worked as a waitress in a diner I would eat at,” Peggy recalls. “The food wasn’t even that good, to be honest, but I kept going back, almost daily. I wasn’t admitting it to myself back then, but I think, even then, I was taken with her. She was just so relentlessly optimistic, at a time when I couldn’t see much of a future at all. She would go to audition after audition and get rejected from each and every one, and she didn’t let it stop her for a minute. It was inspiring. Still is, really.”
“How’d you end up moving in together?” Steve asks. Peggy smiles again, that same soft, almost reverent smile, and Steve realizes that she doesn’t just sound like it.
She is still in love. Thirty-two years since Angela Martin, or Angie Martinelli, as Peggy knew her, died of brain cancer, and Peggy Carter is still in love.
The thought brings a smile to Steve’s face.