Chapter Text
Steve stood in the sparse room, his hands in his pockets as he waited. The room held only a small bed and an aged chair. The walls were painted a soulless gray. The floors smelled so strongly of disinfectant that his nose burned. He forced himself not to think about what might have happened here in the past.
He wouldn’t be able to visit her many more times. Humans aged too quickly and Peggy’s hair had turned white, her skin sallow and paper-thin. She was in her early nineties now, if his math was right. Old, for a human. She wouldn’t last much longer. They’d talked about it on some of his past visits, but the inevitability was becoming harder to deny.
He straightened as the door opened and Peggy stepped inside. The guards never manhandled her, he thought absently. Something in the way she carried herself made them treat her with a respect that they showed to too few of her kind. He shoved aside his thoughts about her longevity and showed her the smile he’d practiced far too many times on his way over.
Peggy’s eyes lit up as soon as she saw him, and his forced smile became more natural in response. It was hard not to smile when she was happy. She walked toward him as the door closed heavily behind her, her bare feet light on the ground and the white dress brushing her knees. She pressed her hand to his chest; the heat of her touch through his shirt wasn’t as warm as it had been a year ago, he thought dimly. It wasn’t even as warm as it had been a month ago. “Steve. Is it that time again? Or has something happened?”
He covered her hand with his. “Everything’s fine, Peg. I just wanted to see you.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you did. I have rather a large favor to ask of you.” He lifted his free hand and lightly stroked her hair, wondering when it had gotten so thin. He was afraid if he stroked her hair too hard, he might pull it out. She was still so beautiful, but she was fading. She was fading, and there was nothing he could do. She was quiet for a second, and her eyes were sharp as she watched him. “I’d like you to adopt my niece, Sharon.”
His hand froze. “Peg...”
Peggy kept talking; she’d never had patience for being interrupted, he remembered wryly. “She’s all I have, Steve. Her parents were taken to another camp ages ago. We never heard anything about them after that. They’re most likely dead by now.” Her lips pressed into a line. “If it’s money you’re worried about,” she said, lowering her voice, “I tucked away some money on the outside before I was captured. It’s hidden behind some bricks in that alley where you used to get beaten up. The first one you mentioned to me, at any rate.”
She paused. Steve hadn’t moved. Chances were that building had been destroyed years ago; the Skull had systematically razed nearly all signs of the old world before he came to power. He wouldn’t tell her that, though. She deserved to believe that some aspects of the world she had fought so hard to save still existed.
She pressed her hand into his chest. “Please, Steve. If you ever cared for me... We both know I don’t have much time. Don’t tell me not to think about this. I can think of little else, and something must be done while I still have the power to do so.”
Steve drew a deep breath. To adopt - buy - a human was expensive. It was one of the reasons the camps were so popular; renting humans to feed from was pricey, but still cheaper than owning one.
But when the War had first started, when he had still been human, Peggy was the first woman he had loved. She was the first woman he’d been able to have whole conversations with, and the first woman he’d ever seen whose eyes had lit up when she’d seen him. He’d been willing to do anything for her. He still was. “Is she anything like you?”
Peggy let out a small breath and smiled in relief. “Much worse,” she said with pride. “Or at least she was when I last saw her. But I love her dearly.” Her smile faded, her eyes boring into Steve’s.
He swallowed. It wasn’t difficult to tell what she was thinking; they were both thinking it.
Peggy lifted a hand and pulled her hair away from her neck. He could see the pink marks from past bites, the red scabs from his previous visit that still hadn’t healed. “You may as well feed as much as you like, darling. I doubt I’ll still be here next time you come.”
He traced the scabs with his finger. They should have healed by now... She had less time that he’d thought.
“She’s just called Sharon,” Peggy said quickly. “No last name. Her parents- The Skull and his people mustn’t know she’s related to me, Steve. She shouldn’t be kept as some dusty prize as I have been, or punished or tortured because of me. I’m so terribly sorry to ask this of you, my darling. She’s stubborn. Possibly moreso than I was at her age. I haven’t seen her in years, maybe a decade now, but I doubt that’s changed. All the Carters are stubborn. Tell her I asked you to do this, and she’ll- She’s all I have left.” She swallowed thickly, steeled herself, and pushed her hair farther back.
“I’ll take care of her, Peg,” he promised. “I’ll keep her safe.”
She smiled; it was the kind of smile that would have made him sad if he weren’t suddenly so thirsty. His thirst made him feel guilty, but he couldn’t deny it. “Thank you, my darling.”
He touched his lips to her neck and closed his eyes. Her skin was thin, so thin he doubted he needed his teeth. But using the teeth made the bite hurt less, and he pressed them into her neck as fast and as carefully as he could.
He drank too much. He knew it even as her blood poured down his throat and she grew weak and heavy in his arms. But every time he thought about how this might be the last time he held her, he couldn’t stop. He hadn’t been there when the world had fallen apart. He hadn’t protected her. He had thought he’d lost her when he’d first woken up, and to find her again only to lose her once more, this time for good... he couldn’t let go.
He drank his fill and then kept drinking, and when he couldn’t drink anymore, he held her in his arms and listened to her shallow breath and erratic heartbeat.
It wasn’t until the call went out that dawn was two hours away that he picked her up and placed her gently on the bed. The sheets were thin, but he tucked her in as well as he could nonetheless. Her eyelids fluttered faintly, and he kissed her cheek, then hesitated. “I love you” didn’t seem like the right thing to say. It was true, but it wasn’t enough to encompass what he wanted to tell her.
“I’ll take care of her, Peg.”
He wasn’t sure she heard at first, but then he noticed the way her lips curled upwards in the corners. The movement was slight, but it was enough to show she’d heard.
He squeezed her hand and steeled himself. It wouldn’t do to show weakness here, and caring too much about humans was seen as a weakness.
At last feeling as if he wouldn’t betray himself, he went to the door and gave a solid knock. The door was opened in short order, and Steve held his hands behind his back. “This woman is done, but she recommended another. Sharon. I want to see her.”
The door clanged shut behind him, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. At least Peggy knew he was following through.
“You’ve already fed,” the guard said firmly.
Steve glared at him with all the superiority he could muster. “To buy. But I want to sample her blood first and see if she’s worth it.”
The guard hesitated, then waved Steve forward, directing him to the office. The guard moved past him and spoke to another on duty. “We got a request for a human named Sharon. She in the feeding pens?”
The guard at the desk flipped through a notebook and shook his head. “Let me check the others.” Two more notebooks, and the man nodded. “She’s in the farming barracks.” He turned to look at Steve. “You sure you want her? She’s a dirt mite. Daycrawler.”
Steve nodded, a knot twisting in his gut. He’d heard stories of daycrawlers. All vampires had. The daycrawlers were the humans too ugly and sickly for feeding or breeding. But he’d promised Peggy. “I’m sure.”
“How’d you even hear about her?”
Steve frowned at him. Act the part, he told himself. Act superior, like he was too good for this place. That’s what he’d have to be if he wanted to adopt a human, after all. “I asked around about daycrawlers,” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm.
The guards looked at one another, and then the one who had brought Steve in sighed. “I’ll go get her.”
Steve was waved to a chair to wait, and he sat silently as Es geht Alles Vorüber wafted over the speakers.
It was barely five minutes later that the door opened again, and a woman with short blonde hair was shoved in. She spun to face the guard, who blocked the door with his body, and Steve’s heart sank.
He could see why the guards had doubted he’d want her; if not for Peggy, he wouldn’t have looked at her twice. She wasn’t as ugly as he’d expected a daycrawler to be, but she wasn’t attractive, either. She was tall but lanky, seventeen years old at most. Her hair was dirty and unkempt, perhaps blonde, though it was difficult to determine. Her skin was tanned and coarse. Her feet were mottled with mud. Dirt was caked under her short nails, in the creases of her hands, and in her clothes. She looked like a wild creature that should be shot before the rabies progressed.
He got to his feet with a sigh and looked at the guard on desk duty. “Do you have something I can use...” He pointed at the woman’s neck.
Understanding, the guard pulled out a napkin and handed it over.
Steve looked at the woman, waiting, and she glowered back. He frowned. Peggy knew how this was supposed to work, but either the woman didn’t know or was pointedly not doing as she ought. “Get your hair out of the way and tilt your head,” he said at last, impatient. If he could tell her that he was doing this because of Peggy, maybe she would respond differently, but he could hardly tell her that in front of the guards. Vampires were not supposed to be kind to humans.
She moved slowly, too slowly for it to be anything but deliberate, and Steve bit his lip as he waited her out. She might be stubborn, but she was mortal. She wasn’t the one who had all the time in the world.
When she had tilted her head the slightest bit and stopped, he roughly pushed it farther and scrubbed at her neck with the napkin until her skin was red. She hissed at him like an animal; he kept scrubbing. He didn’t want to get dirt in his mouth.
“That’s the proper angle.” His voice was firm as he held her head in place. She might have struggled, but he had an ample supply of blood giving him strength. He still wasn’t hungry for more, but he knew he couldn’t buy a human at random. Tasting her because she was a relative of his favorite human made sense, but they couldn’t know that the girl was related to Peggy. And buying her without tasting beforehand would raise too many questions. As full as he was, he’d have to drink more.
He bit down and forced himself to take a drink. He stifled a moan and drank some more, then took yet another sip before running his tongue over the wounds. Her blood was... good. It was similar to how Peggy’s had tasted decades ago, thick with vitality and vigor, but it was still unique. Peggy’s blood had always reminded him of summer walks in the country; this girl’s blood made him think of sunflowers.
He licked his lips, his heart hammering as the woman stared up at him, her eyes wide. She shivered, and he focused on the guards so he wouldn’t feel bad enough to offer her his coat.
“She’ll do. I’ll make the necessary arrangements and be back for her within the week.”
Without further ado, he left the office and made his way to the gate. He had to talk to Sam about this, and he had to talk about it tonight. He could only hope Sam would agree to this; it wasn’t as if Sam had ever known Peggy. Steve was the one who had made the promise. And had just told the guards to begin the process on their end.
What if Sam said no?