Chapter Text
Happiness Regained
Chapter 1
All Peggy could see was ice and snow. Just white stretching out until the horizon. She fought her way on through the wind whipping around her. She had to find him.
She moved forward, squinting against the swirling snow blowing around her, and then her breath caught in her throat as she saw something, a large dark shape rising up out of the white landscape, silhouetted against the sky. That shape–she knew that shape, even at an angle as it was. She remembered sitting in the car as Colonel Phillips gunned the engine and chased after the Valkyrie. Remembered the one impulsive, precious kiss she had given Steve, the warmth and softness of his lips against hers, the leap of her pulse, the rushing of her blood that almost drowned out the sound of the car and the Valkyrie’s engines. Remembered watching as Steve jumped and caught the landing gear and following the retreating dark mass of the jet with her eyes as it flew on. The plane. They had found the plane.
She knew she should shout, yell, for the others that she had eyes on the plane but she found her voice strangling in her throat as she hurried forward. The plane was Steve’s grave and she could not shout, felt absurdly as if it would be like yelling in a cemetery. And then too, she wasn’t sure she wanted anyone else to be there when she saw him–found his body. She flinched at the word, a sob rising in her throat, hot tears stinging her eyes. No, she needed this for herself, at least for now. She needed to be alone when she saw Steve again.
She struggled on and then she was there, standing beside the wreck of the Valkyrie, plunged nose-first into the snow and ice, one wing jutting out against the sky. Steve had been piloting it so she hurried around the plane to the cockpit, to where it was half-buried in the snow, frantically brushing away the snow from around the windows to see inside, her heart in her throat. A large mass of frozen snow slid off the glass and she could see inside the cockpit. She pressed her face against the glass, a sob catching in her throat as she saw the shield, the familiar red and blue of it, on the floor inside. But there was nothing else, no body, no Steve. The pilot’s chair was empty. He wasn’t here. Where–why–how could he not be inside the wreck?
“Oh, Steve,” she sobbed. “Steve!” she screamed his name into the howling winds. “Steve, where are you?”
She was afraid to hope, didn’t know what to think, but he wasn’t there in the wrecked plane. And they were miles from any civilization so no one could have removed his body.
“Steve!” she screamed again, stumbling a few steps away from the plane.
And then–her breath caught in her throat–she thought she heard something even through the howling winds.
“Steve, it’s me!” she tried again and waited, holding her breath, straining her ears.
And this time, she heard it again, faint but a little clearer. “Peggy!”
Her heart leaped into her throat. Oh God, was it possible? How was it possible? Then again, she didn’t care how, she only cared that it was. It was his voice she had heard. She would know his voice anywhere. “Steve, where are you?” she screamed again.
“Peggy, I’m here! I’ll find you!”
She turned and started to run, stumbling a little in the snow, towards where his voice had come from. “Steve, I’m coming!”
“Peggy!”
His voice was louder and she sobbed again, tears, this time of hope and so much joy she was half-afraid her chest might burst, streaming down her face as she struggled to run through the drifts of snow. And then she saw a figure appear, silhouetted against the horizon. She stopped. Oh God. It was him. And then she was running again on a burst of energy, felt galvanized so even the drifts of snow no longer hampered her running much. Her vision seemed to tunnel until all she saw was him, the single figure on the horizon. Nothing else mattered except that she could see him. He was right there. It was too far for her to see the figure’s face but she didn’t need to see his face. She knew that form, the shape of his head, the breadth of his shoulders, his tall figure. “Steve.”
And then he saw her and he was running too, moving towards her. “Peggy.”
Closer and closer–she could see his face now, his so dear, so handsome face, the face she had missed so much, the face she had seen in her dreams every night for months. Saw the smile curving his lips and she felt another sob catch in her throat even through her own watery smile. Oh, Steve.
The wind was still howling, whipping up little swirls of snow around her, but she didn’t even feel it anymore, didn’t notice. All she saw was him coming towards her. Tall and strong and handsome and alive.
Almost there. His arms opened for her and she took a last leap–and then he vanished in a swirl of blinding snow.
And Peggy jerked awake on a cry of despair.
Oh, oh God. It had only been a dream. Just another dream.
Peggy choked on a sob, lifting a not-quite-steady hand to her face and realized without any real surprise that she had shed actual tears. Her chest still felt tight with the weight of sadness, her eyes stinging with tears.
She turned her head to look at her nightstand, reached out for the frame on it, his picture. It was too dark in her room for her to see the image of Steve’s face in the picture, his old, real self before the serum had changed him, but she didn’t need to be able to see the image. She knew what it looked like, Steve’s face, both before and after Project Rebirth, had been seared onto her mind so it seemed that she still saw his face whenever she closed her eyes.
She hugged the picture against her chest, as if doing so might somehow ease the pressure of renewed grief. “Oh, Steve,” she murmured on a choked sob.
She shut her eyes on a little shuddering breath, hot tears trickling slowly down her cheeks, as she thought about her dream.
It had been a while, a couple months perhaps, since she had last had such a dream about Steve, about searching for his body and finding him alive.
She had stopped having such dreams about Steve returning to her on a regular basis. At first, for at least a year after he had crashed, she had dreamed about Steve’s return almost every night, dreamed about Howard succeeding in finding the wreck and discovering that Steve had survived the crash after all, or dreamed about Steve simply knocking on the door of her room in her boarding house in New York (her dreams blithely ignoring the reality that a man would not have been permitted to venture so far into the boarding house) or dreamed about him simply appearing in front of her one day, finding her out on the street.
But slowly, as time passed, she had stopped dreaming about Steve quite so often. Or when she did dream, they were more prosaic dreams. Sometimes she relived some of their interactions during the war, only in her dreams, she was bolder and less cautious than she had been in reality and she kissed him the way she had always wanted to, told him that she loved him. In other dreams, he was simply there with her, as if he had never left, and they were simply living, engaging in any of the normal activities of a regular courting couple, walking in a park, going to the cinema or a concert, sharing a meal at a restaurant, dancing together, and yes, kissing and sometimes more than that.
But gradually, even those dreams became less frequent.
She missed the dreams too, absurdly, felt as if no longer dreaming about him was like losing him a second time or was betraying him somehow.
But she told herself it was necessary and in her waking, more rational moments, she knew it was true. Steve was gone. She had to find a way to move on somehow. She had to go on with her life, the way he had wanted her to.
And sometimes, much of the time even, she thought she’d succeeded. She had poured the last vial of his blood into the river from the Brooklyn Bridge, had dropped the precious vial into the river too–the only thing she could do to protect him and his legacy now. No matter how much it had hurt her, no matter how tempted she had been to keep the last small part of him, she knew she could not allow the last vial of his blood to remain accessible, not where anyone might still steal it and use it for their own ends. And in doing so, she had said goodbye to Steve. And told herself that she was moving on as she needed to do.
She kept herself busy with her work at the SSR. She had gone steady with Daniel Sousa for a few months after everything that had happened with Whitney Frost this past spring and she had tried to love him. She had even believed for a little while that she could love him, had certainly told herself she should love him because he was a good man and he loved her, at least he loved the woman he believed she was, and he was there, while Steve was not. She had tried, had honestly cared about him. And for a little while, they had been happy, she had been happy enough.
But it just hadn’t worked, hadn’t lasted. She wasn’t even sure when or why things had started to shift, change exactly, but eventually, she had realized that Daniel was avoiding assigning potentially dangerous missions to her. He still gave her missions and allowed her to go out into the field–she wouldn’t have stood for being relegated solely to paperwork, not again–but from gossip and conversations around the office, she had learned that a couple times when it had even been suggested that she might be assigned to a mission, Daniel had quietly and subtly arranged it so some other agent would be assigned instead. And things had come to a head because after one such mission, the agent that had gone in her stead had ended up getting shot, just in the shoulder thankfully, and the agent had recovered but as a result, there had been a good amount of gossip and Peggy had learned that one of the agents had suggested that she go instead because the incident in question had taken place at a laboratory which she had already investigated on a previous mission. She had asked Daniel about it and he had hedged, telling her she had already been working on something else at the time, but Daniel was not very good at lying and Peggy was, moreover, rather good at spotting prevarication and she had challenged him and he had finally admitted that he hadn’t wanted to send her on a dangerous assignment. They had argued about it and reached an uneasy truce of sorts with him promising to try not to protect her in such a way.
But that had probably been the first crack in their relationship. The next, and what had ultimately proven to be worse, was that she had, during one of their dinners together, grumbled to him about a comment she had overheard made by one of the other agents, nothing outright offensive or untoward, just one of those irritating assumptions of male superiority that always irked her and she had shared that with Daniel as they had talked over their respective days. And then the next afternoon that she had learned that Daniel had reprimanded the agent for the off-hand comment, and it had caused some grumbling among the other male agents, redounding badly on her because the other agents had decided that she was being overly sensitive, a stereotypical hysterical female, and one who was, moreover, taking advantage of her personal relationship with the Chief. She had asked Daniel why he had done what he had and he had argued that he had been trying to help her. She could understand his motive but he hadn’t been able to understand that she hadn’t told him what she had with the expectation that he would do anything about it and worse, in doing what he had, trying to step in and “fix” a problem for her, he had made her look bad to the other agents while she had long ago accepted that she would need to turn a blind eye and ignore much of the minor offenses. The problem, as she had realized, was that what she had thought of as just a casual sharing of her day with the man she was going steady with was not–could not be–that simple because it was also a conversation with her official superior officer since Daniel was the Chief of the LA office.
It hadn’t been entirely conscious on her part but after that, she had been more cautious, more reticent, in what she said to Daniel and shared with him but that caution had grown into a distance between them she hadn’t been able to help, a distance that he had sensed too because Daniel was no idiot. In the end, they had both acknowledged that the conflict of interest inherent in their respective positions and their personal relationship was causing problems and had mutually agreed that they were better off merely as friends and colleagues.
Peggy was rather regretful over it but she had not been hurt by it and she had, somewhat shamingly, realized that as much as she had tried, as much as she had cared about him, she had not loved Daniel.
Peggy sometimes wondered what, if anything, it said about her and her life that she had gone steady with two men in her life and had not loved either of them and the one man she had loved–still did love–would always love–was the one man she had never had the chance to actually go steady with.
She was not able to go back to sleep that night, spent the remainder of the night curled up in her bed, holding Steve’s picture.
During the day, when she was more firmly in control of herself, she tried to tell herself that she had moved on with her life, that she had come to terms with Steve’s death–although she inwardly flinched at the word–was at peace with his loss. She could even believe it sometimes since she no longer dreamed about him quite as often as she’d used to. But then her subconscious would produce another dream like the one she had just had and prove that comforting sentiment to be a lie.
She told herself that dwelling on what might have been, on the love she and Steve might have shared, was no way to live, that she needed to move on. Very good, wise advice, no doubt, but one she was still struggling to actually apply in her own life.
She almost had to drag herself to work the next morning, aware that she was heavy-eyed and listless. Looking at herself in the mirror, she had grimaced and put on a little more cosmetics than usual, although it occurred to her that for once, her trademark red lipstick might only make her look paler and more wan because of the contrast but she was unable to help that. She caught Daniel’s concerned glance–confirming her suspicion that she looked pale and not entirely well–and tried to manufacture a reassuring smile.
It didn’t work judging from the look on his face and he hesitated by her desk. “Agent Carter, is everything all right?” Something inside her chest seemed to twinge a little, not of pain, but of regret, at how hard he was trying to keep their interactions in the office strictly professional, to try to allay any of the fallout from their short-lived relationship.
“I’m fine,” she managed. “I’ll have the report on the incident at Frontier Chemicals on your desk later this morning.”
He nodded. “Very good, thank you, Agent Carter.” He turned as if to leave, then paused, hesitated, glanced around, apparently satisfied that they were, for the moment, reasonably private with no other agents nearby, and then went on, his voice much lower so that no one else could hear, “Peggy, are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything troubling you?”
Oh, Daniel. Peggy felt a tug of weary affection because she knew he cared about her still but of course, there was nothing she could tell him. She could hardly admit that her throat hurt and her eyes pricked with the tears she could not shed because she had dreamed about her lost love and now her broken heart was aching all over again.
“I’m fine, just a little headache,” she assured him. It wasn’t untrue. Staying up half the night and all her tears, the suppressed emotion, had triggered a headache.
He didn’t look entirely reassured but had to accept her response and retreated to go into his office.
Peggy redoubled her efforts to focus and push aside the lingering emotions and managed to complete her report on her latest mission and get it in to Daniel before she left for lunch.
She did not eat much, was not hungry, so she took a walk instead, hoping that the fresh air and the sunshine would brighten her mood or at least, clear her head a little. Even after living in LA for more than nine months, she could not quite get used to the almost perennial sunshine and warmth. She thought she could count on her two hands the number of actual rainy days she had experienced since moving here and the contrast to the weather in New York, let alone that of England, was so marked it was almost hard to believe that these places existed on the same planet. And then had to huff a laugh to herself at the ludicrousness of the thought. As if she had any conception or belief in life on other planets, let alone that learning such a thing was even possible.
She turned to head back towards the office and then froze, her breath strangling in her throat, her heart abruptly seizing and then leaping as she saw… on the other side of the street, there was a tall man, the sunlight striking gold on his blonde hair. It couldn’t be, she struggled with her rational self, but even so, her lips shaped the word, the name, Steve, although she didn’t speak it aloud.
And then the man turned and she saw his profile and–of course–it wasn’t him. Now that she looked again, the man wasn’t quite as tall, his shoulders weren’t as broad, and his face was, well, ordinary, not breath-stealing. (Although Peggy did wonder, sometimes, if her memory of Steve’s face was entirely accurate, if his face had truly been as perfectly handsome as she remembered it.) It wasn’t him, wasn’t even very like him. It was just that after her dream, he was so ever-present in her mind that she had almost manufactured a similarity.
Peggy sighed and turned away, her heart aching all over again, as she returned to work.
She made it through the rest of the day and stopped off to pick up some food for dinner and ate it at home and, although she told herself she was being foolish, she couldn’t resist going up to her bedroom and bringing down Steve’s picture and setting it on her dining table as a sort of company while she ate in solitude. She had tried, once, while she was going steady with Daniel to put Steve’s picture away, out of sight–it had felt disloyal to Daniel, even if Daniel had never entered her bedroom to see the picture himself–but she had put Steve’s picture back after just a couple days, had not been able to help it. She had missed the sight of Steve’s face, his old, real self. As much as she loved and dreamed about Steve as she had last seen him–how tall and strong and handsome he had been–somehow, she still loved the picture of the old Steve best. The sight of the old Steve reminded her so much more strongly of his courage, his perseverance, his kindness, his cleverness–all the things about Steve she had seen and already liked from those first weeks at Camp Lehigh, all that she loved about Steve.
She didn’t often think about it, tried not to think about it, but she was aware that she was lonely. Angie, one of her few friends outside of work, was back in New York and while she and Angie corresponded and had spoken on the phone a few times, it was not the same as it had been, could not be with the distance of so many miles between them. Mr. Jarvis had probably, somehow, been her most constant companion in this last year and more since Howard had first asked for her help in clearing his name with everything leading to the Leviathan plot and Mr. Jarvis was currently in New York too, assisting Howard, although both Howard and Mr. Jarvis were expected back in LA before long. Mrs. Jarvis was still in LA, looking after Howard’s house in LA and Peggy made a mental note to call Ana Jarvis and arrange to have dinner with her some evening, both to keep Ana Jarvis company until Mr. Jarvis’s return and to alleviate Peggy’s own solitude.
Peggy had never exactly been the sort to have many friends but she was no hermit either and at times, in the evenings especially, she missed having company, someone to talk to. That was one aspect of her relationship with Daniel she rather missed, not for Daniel himself per se (rather to her own shame) but simply having a companion for dinner more often than not, someone to talk over the events of her day with.
But of course that had turned out to be the issue even with Daniel. Because, as she had learned, she could not freely talk over her days, at least as far as her work, with him because of his position as the Chief of the office and her superior.
It did make Peggy wonder, depressingly, if she would truly be able to have a relationship with any man, even aside from her lingering love for Steve. Another relationship with anyone who worked at the SSR would not be possible, she knew that, because the same issues that had arisen with Daniel would come up again and even if that weren’t the case, Daniel was really the only one among her colleagues who actually accepted her as an agent and respected her abilities and she could not be in a relationship with a man who didn’t respect her.
But then, the secret nature of what she did at the SSR meant that she needed to be exceedingly careful in anything she told anyone outside of the SSR so it wasn’t likely she would be able to share her life in any real sense with any other man either, especially considering how important her work was to her. And even if that weren’t the case, as she knew all too well, so few men had any tolerance for a woman who worked, let alone respected a woman’s intelligence or independence.
She looked at Steve’s picture and sighed and though she knew quite well she was being absurdly fanciful, she found herself speaking aloud, addressing the picture, “Oh, Steve, I do miss you.”
Peggy dreamed about Steve again that night, not another dream about finding him but one of those strangely normal dreams, where Steve was simply there with her as if he had never left and in her dreams, it never felt at all strange that he should be there either. In the dream, she and Steve were walking together through a park arm in arm and she was simply talking to him about her day, her work, and he was listening to her with that quiet focused attention she remembered about him.
She looked up at him and gave him a rueful little smile. “Sorry. I like my job, you know that. It just gets frustrating at times.”
“Don’t apologize. Of course it does. But you’ll figure it out and get through it.” Something inside her warmed at the certainty of his tone, as if he were predicting that the sun would rise in the east.
She cast him a teasing look from under her lashes. “When did you become able to predict the future?”
He smiled. She loved his smile. “I can’t but I do know you and you’re that type of person. I don’t imagine there’s anything you can’t do.”
She thought not for the first time that no one, with the possible exception of Michael, had ever believed in her as completely as Steve did. She returned his smile, aware that all she felt must be clearly visible on her face, and he had seen it–of course he had–his expression softening in a way that telegraphed his love for her as clearly as if the words were emblazoned on his chest as brightly as the star on his shield, and then he bent and kissed her and she slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back, her heart thrilling. Her Steve.
And then she awoke, alone, as always. And she remembered that Steve was gone.
In the days after that, Peggy found that she seemed to have returned to the initial early stages of grief in a way, as she had been in those first months after the crash. The days when Steve was constantly on her mind, where she felt a dull relentless ache of bereavement like a knot in her chest all the time even as she went through her daily life otherwise normally. Grief was like that, she had learned. It ebbed and flowed, wasn’t some continuous progression in a straight line. There were better days, better weeks even, and then the grief would sneak up like a tidal wave and drag her under again.
She had dinner with Ana Jarvis and Ana observed that Peggy looked tired and Peggy admitted that she’d had some dreams about Steve, well, Captain Rogers as she usually referred to him with Ana Jarvis who had never met Steve after all and only heard about him from news reports and third-hand as it were from Mr. Jarvis, who’d heard about Steve from Howard. But Ana Jarvis had a quiet sympathy in her manner that made it easier for Peggy to talk to her even about something as personal as her grief for Steve, although not in any detail.
That weekend, Peggy went to the Museum of Art in Los Angeles. She had never been an art person but in the last two years, she had made a conscious effort to learn more about it, gone to museums more and learned to appreciate art more, in Steve’s memory, as it were, and as a way to feel closer to him. She would walk through galleries and try to imagine what Steve might say or think about certain pieces.
She saw an art student who had set up an easel to copy one of the masterpieces and thought of Steve, pictured the old Steve in the days when he’d been an art student himself, going to the Metropolitan Museum in New York to study the masterpieces there. She thought about the old Steve, the undersized boy she had met, dreaming of being an artist, never even imagining he would ever go off to fight in a war and her heart clenched and she found herself wishing irrationally that Steve had been a little less brave, had not had such a strong sense of duty, so he would not have tried to enlist so many times, so he would not have come to Dr. Erskine’s attention. She would never have met him and God only knew what would have happened in the war without Captain America but sometimes, she could almost find herself wishing that Steve had never become Captain America. Even if it meant never meeting him herself because then Steve Rogers would still have been alive, living his life as an artist, she assumed, and even now, more than two years later, the thought of a world without Steve Rogers alive in it struck her as indescribably bleak, like a world without springtime.
And then she had to laugh a little at herself because the thought, the simile, was such a dramatic one, as if Steve’s tendency to be dramatic had somehow affected her too. Not that being like Steve, sounding like him, was any sort of bad thing. She had already resolved to try to emulate Steve as much as she could, try to be as brave and determined and honorable. She had already vowed that she would do what she could to protect the world he had died to save.
She went on with her days, even as she thought of Steve. She was, by now, quite accustomed to doing so. She thought of him when she saw the bear on the California state flag, reminded of the bear he had drawn for her, the picture she had framed and that was now hanging on the wall in the hallway just outside her bedroom. She thought of him whenever she saw the stars. Thought of him at any mention of New York in the news, thought of him whenever she saw a man with blonde hair.
But she managed, did her work as she always had. She remembered that it was time she prepared another care package to send to Alice, her sister-in-law, and Tommy, her nephew, in England. She bought small packages of flour and sugar, both of which were still rationed and hard to get in England, wrapped both as securely as she could, and also bought some fabric so Alice could have a dress or two made for herself from the material and use her clothing coupons to buy more clothes for Tommy who, as a growing boy, went through clothes rather more quickly than the clothing allowance permitted. And as always, she tucked into the package a couple chocolate bars for Tommy and a toy for good measure.
And thought of Michael as she always did in preparing these packages. Peggy would have sent these packages for Michael’s memory alone, because of her promise to Michael to look out for Alice, but she and Alice had also become close. She had not known Alice well in spite of Alice’s relationship with Michael because Alice was a quieter, more conventional sort so she and Peggy had not had much in common aside from Michael and then, of course, Michael and Alice had generally wanted to be alone, not have Michael’s younger sister tagging along when they went out. What Peggy had known about Alice had mostly come second-hand through Michael and Peggy, as much as she loved Michael, had also known perfectly well that Michael was absolutely besotted with Alice and had taken his paeans about Alice with a grain of salt. But then when Peggy had returned home after the war and stayed with Alice and Tommy, her only remaining family, that had changed. Peggy and Alice had talked about Michael, of course, had finally shared their grief over his loss as they had not had a chance to do earlier because Peggy had left so quickly to join the SOE. But more than that, they had bonded because now, they shared one crucial experience, that of having lost the men they loved. Alice was the one person who Peggy knew understood exactly how she felt because Alice had experienced a similar loss. Alice had held Peggy as she cried over Steve, listened to Peggy’s stories about Steve and her laments over his loss, and had known the right words to say and more, known when not to speak and what not to say.
The difference, as Peggy was painfully aware, was that Alice and Michael had had their chance to be together. Alice had lived with Michael as his wife for even a short time, had Michael’s ring on her finger and Michael’s son to raise.
Whereas Peggy had… nothing, really. She had Steve’s last letter to her, the pictures he had drawn for her. The memory of their single, all-too-brief kiss. But she and Steve had never had their chance, never had time to really be together, to simply be two people in love. And that, Peggy was aware, made her loss so much more painful. She had read a line of poetry once, that “of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been” and she had realized just how true that was. It was, she thought, what hurt the most about losing Steve, the thought that their relationship had never had the chance to become anything more. She had lost the love they might have had, the life they might have shared, but had never had the chance to experience for themselves.
Maybe it was that, the regret and grief over all that they might have had, that made it so hard for Peggy to truly move on, to be at peace with his loss.
She thought sometimes that she would give up everything else to have just one day with Steve where she could be with him fully. Just one day to tell him outright that she loved him, one day to dance with him finally, to kiss him, to feel his arms around her. One day in which she could be his and he could be hers, just two lovers.
But of course that was impossible and Peggy was generally not someone who dwelled on things she could not change–or at least, she wasn’t in all other aspects of her life. Only when it came to Steve. Steve was still, absurdly really, the one dream she could not quite stop wishing for, no matter how many times she told herself it was impossible.
She sighed and tried not to sink back into her painful memories and thoughts about Steve. She had to write a letter to Alice to tuck into the care package she would be mailing in the next day or so and she didn’t want the letter to end up sounding overly melancholy because Alice would worry. Instead, she wrote in vague terms about various things she had done at work, recounting some of the bits of news and gossip she had heard from her coworkers, and describing as best she could what Los Angeles was like, enlivening the descriptions as much as she could for Tommy’s sake. Peggy knew she was not a particularly creative raconteur but she did try to make her letters as lively as she could because Tommy was at an age where he enjoyed hearing about far off, distant places. Tommy still had a childlike admiration and enthusiasm for the adventurous life he believed his “Aunt Peggy” lived in the glamorous setting of Los Angeles and Peggy didn’t want to disillusion him and to be fair, she supposed her life was adventurous, at least it was at times.
She broke off her writing as she heard the sound of a knock on the front door and frowned, some wariness kicking in. It was far too late to be a salesman of any kind and also too late to be a neighbor, not that Peggy was close to any of her neighbors, many of whom viewed her somewhat askance as a foreigner and a single woman living alone who had a regular job and frequently had male visitors, even if not overnight. Peggy had also been an agent for too long not to be aware that surprises, and surprises that occurred this late in the evening, were almost never a good thing.
She pushed herself to her feet, hurriedly retrieved a gun and placed it on the side table in the front hall where it would be easily accessible, just in case, and then went to open the door.
A sharp gasp escaped her at the sight of the man’s face. His face. The face she saw so often in her dreams. Steve. But it was impossible.
“Peggy,” the man said, his voice low and husky but still so familiar. She knew that voice too.
For the first time in her life, she literally felt all the blood drain from her face, so fast she felt dizzy, as if she might faint but she was saved from collapse by a sudden surge of anger that stiffened her spine and her knees. She didn’t know who was behind this or what kind of trick this was but she was abruptly furious, decided she would cheerfully kill whoever had orchestrated this with her bare hands. Because, all cruelty to her aside, it was sacrilege to have someone stealing Steve’s face, his form, his voice, for their own ends.
She let her fury propel her, threw her emotion into the punch she leveled at the imposter, tried not to inwardly flinch at the mere act of striking that beautiful, beloved face because it wasn’t, could not be, him.
“Who are you? What do you want?” she managed as she leaped for her gun and trained it at the man, had to forcibly still her hands from trembling as she stared, her breath and her heart stuttering. Because oh God, he–whoever he was–looked so like Steve and it hurt, it physically hurt, to see that face again, to realize that no, her memories had not lied and he truly had been as perfectly handsome as she had remembered.
The man had lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender–which seemed odd in a villain but could be meant as a Trojan-horse-like trick–and seemed nonplussed. And then he spoke in a sudden rush of words, his voice not entirely even. “Peggy, it’s me! I’m sorry I’m so late but I–I was wondering if you’d want to go dancing, even if we don’t have the Stork Club here.”
His mention of dancing and the Stork Club struck her like a blow to the chest, another strangled gasp escaping her.
No, no, it wasn’t possible, part of her mind insisted, even as a tiny kernel of tentative, terrifying hope sprouted. “Th–the Stork Club?” she choked, her own voice sounding strange to her ears. “How do you–no one knows about that,” she managed. She had never told anyone–not any of the Commandos, not even Alice–exactly what Steve had said to her when the Valkyrie was going down. Not even Colonel Phillips knew–Steve’s voice over the radio had been too faint, too distant, for the Colonel to clearly make out and she had spoken quietly so the Colonel had gruffly told her he’d only caught enough to recognize Steve’s name. Several of the Commandos had asked–Dugan, Dernier, Jones–but she had not answered, had choked up too much to answer even if she had been inclined to tell, which she hadn’t. So there wasn’t a single living soul who knew what Steve had said, the date she and Steve had “planned,” those few words that even now tore at her heart to remember. Only herself–and Steve.
In the year she had lived in New York, she had deliberately avoided the block where she knew the Stork Club was located, had not been able to bear the reminder.
“It’s me, Peggy,” the man repeated quietly.
Oh God, his voice. It was his voice. The kernel of hope seemed to grow even as she was suddenly more afraid than she had ever been in her life, painful tears springing to her eyes. She was abruptly aware that if this turned out to be some sort of hoax, a mistake, she would never recover from it. To have this, her most precious, secret, impossible dream seem to come true only to be dashed again–no, she would never recover. She had survived the loss of Steve once but she honestly didn’t think she could do so again. Her hands were shaking visibly, she realized, lowered them because she could not trust her aim or her hold on the gun while in such a state.
Her eyes filled but she blinked the tears back, her throat clogged with emotion, as she stared and stared. Her eyes traced every centimeter of the familiar face, now, belatedly, noting that he didn’t look quite the same as she remembered. He looked… changed, older. Looked tired in a way she didn’t remember ever seeing before, not even at the height of the war, a deep weariness evident in even the set of his shoulders. His hair was styled differently and looked a couple shades darker than she remembered. There was something oddly reassuring about the very changes because surely if this were some plot, an imposter would have tried harder to get the details exactly right.
But it was his eyes that had her breath stalling, her hope taking tentative root and growing. Because his eyes were the same as they held hers. He looked at her the same way he’d always used to, the blue of them so soft, looked at her as if he never wanted to look away. He looked at her as if he… loved her.
A sob caught in her throat at the thought. “S-Steve?” she choked, her voice unsteady, and just saying his name again made her heart swell. For a moment, the world seemed to go fuzzy around her–all except for his face that she didn’t dare take her eyes off of. Her mind reeled as her crazy, terrifying hope started to build. Oh God, if this were a mistake… “Is it really you? You–you’re alive?”
His lips curved slightly, one of his small, faint smiles she remembered. “Yeah, Peggy,” he whispered, his voice not quite steady.
Something about the emotion in his voice, the thread of uncertainty in it and in his expression, reminded her of the old Steve. And finally, slowly, amazingly, she started to believe…
Because how would anyone manage to capture that subtle, little glimpse of the old Steve if this were an imposter? No one really knew of the old Steve.
She choked. “Oh!” Her tears welled and spilled over as she reached out blindly with her trembling hands and set the gun down on the table, never taking her eyes off him for a second–and only later did she marvel at the fact that she even had the presence of mind to do such a thing and had not simply dropped the gun on the floor. “Steve…”
Moving very slowly, her legs feeling weak and decidedly wobbly beneath her, she took a couple cautious steps forward, closer to him. And then, not even daring to breathe, she lifted her hands to touch him, afraid that he would vanish into nothing before she could–rather like he had in her dream just days ago. But no, her fingers landed on his chest, felt solid, warm flesh beneath the cloth, and then when she flattened one hand against his chest, felt the thud of his heartbeat under her hand. He was real. He was alive. Her hands lifted again, skimmed up to his shoulders, and then–finally–her fingertips touched his face. Felt his breath against her fingers before it stalled, saw the way his lashes momentarily fluttered. Just as it had that night in Austria when they had talked about the stars and she had dared to brush his hair back from his face.
“Steve…” she breathed. Oh God, Steve. It was him. She believed.
“Yeah,” his voice was a choked whisper.
Steve. He was there. She didn’t know how or why–and at the moment, didn’t care–all she knew was that somehow, miraculously, he was there, solid, real, alive.
She choked and then finally, she was able to move and she threw herself at him, flung her arms around him and clutched him as if she were drowning and he was a life raft and then, as his arms closed around her, warm and strong, she dissolved into helpless tears. Her shoulders, her entire frame, shook with her sobs as she held him, her face buried in his shoulder, and cried out all her grief, all her loneliness, all her longing. All her love.
She had imagined this–Steve returning to her–at least a hundred times, more than that even, but oddly, in all her imaginings, she had only felt joy, crazy, indescribable joy. It had never occurred to her in her fantasies that she would be so overwhelmed by all the emotions she’d felt over his loss in the last two years, that the first thing she would really do on seeing him was break down into tears and cry the way she had not cried in front of anyone outside of her family–Michael years ago and more recently, Alice.
She honestly had no idea how long she cried, didn’t care. She felt his arms around her, holding her–finally–felt, too, a soft touch to her hair and then his lips against her temple. “I’m here, Peggy. I came back,” he whispered, his breath warm and real against her skin. “I–I couldn’t leave my best girl.”
She choked on another sob at the words. His best girl. She hadn’t heard that phrase in well over a year. It was the Commandos–Dugan had been the first, she thought–who had called her that, referred to her as “Cap’s girl,” or “Cap’s best girl,” or “the Captain’s girl.” It had rather abashed her at first how quickly word had gone around the 107th that she was “the Captain’s girl,” especially because she and Steve had not actually been together in any real sense. But Steve–her sweet, adorable, innocent Steve–really had not been subtle in his admiration of her. He had flushed up to his ears whenever the Commandos had teased him about her as “his girl” but he hadn’t denied it, which had been taken as admission enough (and then again, she guessed that it hadn’t taken long before the Commandos had noticed her picture in Steve’s compass–and when she had seen that film reel, learning that Steve had such a picture had told her just why the Commandos had so quickly started to view her as “Cap’s best girl”). And then, well, she had to admit that her attraction to him and her feelings for him had probably been obvious to everyone except for Steve.
Part of her might have been inclined to chafe a little at how she’d been labeled so quickly as belonging to Steve, as being “the Captain’s girl” when it hadn’t technically been true (at least, not then, not at first) but then she had realized that being known as “Cap’s girl” had shielded her from the insults, the hassling, and otherwise offensive remarks or actions that she would otherwise have been subjected to, that she had been subjected to, first at Camp Lehigh and then out on the field by the soldiers in the months while Steve had been on his USO tour, before he had officially joined the SSR. She had become accustomed to dealing with such behavior on her own and had, but after Steve had joined the SSR to go after Hydra, once the rumors had started circulating about her and Steve, slowly and then more quickly all those offenses had stopped. (She had found, somewhat to her amusement, that soldiers could be worse gossips than the stereotypical old maid busybodies.) The members of the 107th had never been inclined to be pushy or offensive but some had initially tried their luck by issuing one of those idle advances like Howard’s invitation to go for fondue (invitations she had either ignored or mildly refused) but that had ended the moment it went around that she was “Cap’s girl.” Some others had looked askance at her as a female agent but even those had ceased pretty rapidly, because no one would go against the Captain and since Steve always respected her as an Agent and treated her accordingly, they had all followed his lead on that. When the 107th had occasionally teamed up with other troops or when troops they had rescued had been stationed with them for a while while traveling or recuperating from injuries, there had been some soldiers who had seen her and viewed her as another available target for their advances but the moment any of them had so much as approached her, one member of the 107th or another had almost immediately stepped in and steered the soldier away with a quiet word. (She had sometimes thought that with the way the Commandos started to look after her because she was “Cap’s best girl,” it was like acquiring a fleet of older brothers.)
But even then, even as she had known that she and Steve both knew that she was viewed as “Cap’s best girl,” he hadn’t called her his best girl himself, not in so many words, not to her (and knowing him, she doubted he’d used the phrase himself with anyone else either.) But now, he had called her his best girl.
She lifted her face to his, a smile trembling on her lips, joy welling inside her. He had come back to her and she truly was his best girl now. She would always be Steve’s girl, she thought rather giddily. No matter what happened, she knew that she would always be Steve’s girl.
And then–finally–he kissed her, his lips soft and warm against hers. Tentative and uncertain at first but she tightened her arms around him and kissed him back, deepened the kiss. And oh, she remembered his kiss, remembered the feel of his lips against hers, remembered the taste of him. But this time, there was no uncertainty, no self-consciousness at the inhibiting presence of Colonel Phillips right there. This time, there was only them and nothing stood between them now, no Army rules against fraternization, no concerns about her reputation–she knew now how little all that really mattered.
All that mattered was that Steve was here, with her, somehow, his arms around her and his lips on hers. Slowly his kiss gentled and he started to lift his head but she rose up on her toes, chasing his lips with hers, and he gave in, kissed her again. And it was wonderful. She decided fuzzily that she never wanted to stop kissing him, wanted to kiss him for the rest of her life.
But of course, she couldn’t quite do that. Eventually, with palpable reluctance, he lifted his head and this time, she allowed it. Peggy blinked her eyes open to look at him again, drink in the sight of his so-familiar, so-dear face, just inches from hers.
He blinked and for a second, she was reminded of the way he had stared at her after their first kiss. “Um, wow,” he breathed.
Her heart clenched with that old, rather terrifying rush of love she remembered so well, the rush of love she had only ever felt for him, with him. Oh, Steve. He might look different–and now her brain was slowly starting to function again, she did want to know how–why–what had happened to bring him here, to make him look so changed. But he was still her Steve. “Steve. You’re really here,” the words, inane as they were, slipped from her without thought. “But—but how? What happened to you?”
Something, a fleeting shadow of a grimace, crossed his face. “It’s a long story. A very long story,” he clarified.
Yes, she could only imagine it must be. It had been years, after all, two and a half long years since he had crashed and judging from the way he looked, wherever he had been, whatever had happened to him, he had not had an easy time. “We have time.” She paused and then, with a sudden pang, asked, “We do, don’t we?” She had told herself during the war that she and Steve would have time, once the war was over, to explore what was between them, told herself that the middle of a terrible war was the worst possible time to have fallen in love and to try to start any sort of relationship (which was true), even if her reputation could have withstood it (which was doubtful) but of course, terribly, she had turned out to be wrong and she’d had more than two years to regret all her caution.
“We have time,” he told her.
Her heart lifted at the certainty in his voice. She knew Steve, knew he would not say such a thing unless he were certain.
He paused, belatedly seeming to look around, and uncertainty crept into his expression, reminding her, again, of the old Steve. “I-um-I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
For a moment, silly, stupid tears pricked at the back of her eyes even as she felt another rush of love. This was the Steve she remembered, so endearingly diffident in some ways, in stark contrast to his appearance.
Her lips curved faintly. “I see you’re as much of a smooth talker as ever,” she teased mildly.
Only to pause, stilling, as his expression changed, something almost like a flinch flashing across his expression. Oh. It occurred to her, belatedly, that it had, after all, been years since they had seen each other and now some awkwardness crept in, for almost the first time she could remember where Steve was concerned. Was it too soon– should she not have teased him? It had seemed so… familiar, so… easy to again fall into their usual way of interacting but maybe, she’d been wrong.
“Steve? I was only teasing.”
He blinked, his expression easing. “I know,” he quickly told her. “I was just… remembering.”
Oh. Something in his eyes, his expression, caught at her and she suddenly understood with a sharp pang that as much as she had missed him, he must have missed her too.
But he was back now and they were together again, miraculously. There might be–there certainly would be–some adjustments for them both to make. She was too realistic not to know that. She had changed in these last two-plus years–aside from anything else, years of grief and a broken heart would change anyone–and looking at him, she could see that he had changed too. But she had no doubts, not of him or of her love for him. Even with the few words they had exchanged thus far, she knew that deep down, in essentials, he had not changed, was still the same Steve Rogers in every way that mattered, still the skinny boy from Brooklyn she had first met and, yes, fallen for.
And even now, she knew Steve too well to expect that he would so much as enter further into the house without an invitation so she gave it. She stepped around him to close and lock her front door–the rest of the world could disappear for all she cared at this moment–and then she reached out and took his hand and led him with her into her front room, heading to her couch.
She suddenly realized with another pang that this was the first time she and Steve were together in a regular house, a civilian dwelling, the first time they were sitting together on any normal piece of furniture. During the war, they never had. The few times they had sat together had been on the ground, on fallen logs, on large boulders, in the backs of trucks, whatever was handy. The only furniture around that they could have sat on together had been one of those Army cots and of course, it would not have been at all appropriate for them to sit on a cot together. It wasn’t the first time she had thought it but it occurred to her all over again just how little time she and Steve had really spent together. They had really only ever had moments here and there but those moments had been enough for her to fall in love more deeply than she had ever imagined she could–enough for them to fall in love.
“What happened to you, Steve?” she asked again.
Again, something like a flinch crossed his face and he briefly closed his eyes before he opened them again, met her eyes.
“I crashed,” he began slowly, not entirely fluently, and it was her turn to try not to flinch at the words, the memories they brought back, but she couldn’t dwell on the memories because he was continuing, “Everything went black and the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes in an unfamiliar room, what looked like a hospital room, but it wasn’t quite right somehow, felt… off, and I found out that the reason it all felt wrong was because… I’d been asleep, in hibernation really, for a very long time. Almost 70 years,” he added.
She caught her breath, inwardly reeling. What–how–but–she didn’t understand. He’d been asleep for how long and then awoke but it had only been two and a half years… But that meant… “70 years… You—you were in the future? But—but how?”
His lips twisted a little. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone really does, how I stayed alive, if asleep, for so many years. The serum, somehow, but beyond that…” He gave a small shrug, one of his characteristic little gestures, she remembered with another pang. “So I had to adjust, somehow, to being a man out of time in a future that was so incredibly different from everything I’d known and eventually, I sort of did, made easier because I didn’t have much time to dwell on anything because the world was under threat from… aliens from outer space.”
She knew him well enough to guess that he was drastically simplifying and glossing over how difficult things had been for him, could only try to imagine how hard and frightening and disorienting it would have been for him to wake up 70 years in the future. Just from her own lifetime, she knew how much the world had changed in a little over 20 years and not all of those changes were only due to the war either so she could not really wrap her mind around what 70 years of change would be like. And 70 years–that would mean that he really would have known no one in that time–her heart clenched at how alone Steve must have been, a stranger in a strange time, a strange land. And aliens–he had said aliens, right?
For a split second, she doubted the evidence of her own ears but if she were going to start hearing things, she didn’t imagine that she would start with such a fantastical idea as aliens from space. It was… almost a ludicrous idea… but this was Steve.
She didn’t know what he read in her expression but he added, with a touch of ruefulness in his voice, “I know. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t believe it either. But it did happen.”
He thought she was doubting him? “I know.”
It was his turn to stare. “You do?”
She gave him a faint smile. “If you say it happened, it happened. You don’t lie.”
He threw her a skeptical look, his eyebrows quirking slightly. “I know you’ve seen my file. You know how many times I tried to enlist, with five different hometowns.”
She felt a spurt of renegade amusement at the memory. But even so, she would never doubt him. “That was different,” she told him firmly and then added with gentle teasing, “Besides, even in the rare times that you do lie, you’re terrible at it. And I don’t think your imagination is good enough to come up with such a far-fetched story so it must be true.” More seriously, she knew that Steve was clever enough that even if he were going to lie, he wouldn’t try to do so with such an outlandish tale.
A little huff of a laugh escaped him and she wondered with a little pang why he looked so… surprised, somehow, almost as if he was no longer accustomed to laughing.
“I missed you,” he said abruptly.
Oh Steve. “I missed you too.” For the first time, it occurred to her that the words were utterly inadequate. The words were so… small somehow to express how much she had wished for him, longed for him.
He blinked, his eyes faltering as he looked down and away, and she realized that she had, if not abashed him exactly, more… moved him, as if he were battling back tears. Her own throat felt tight at the thought. She remembered going to find him after Bucky Barnes had died. She knew Steve too well not to be sure that he did not cry easily or often so for him to be struggling with tears now… she had known, believed, that he loved her but it occurred to her with something like awe that she had, perhaps, not really understood just what that meant, how deeply his feelings ran. But perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her at all that Steve would love as whole-heartedly, with everything in him, as he did everything else. For the first time in a long time, she remembered that morning at Camp Lehigh after Project Rebirth, the way he’d looked when he had mentioned Bucky and his family. Remembered thinking that Steve would move heaven and earth for anyone he truly cared about. Steve’s love, she thought, might well be the strongest, the truest, thing in the world.
Peggy was not given to much insecurity, was confident in herself and her abilities–had needed to be because for years, she’d had no one else who believed in her. But in that moment, she abruptly wondered if she truly deserved to be loved by someone like Steve. She didn’t doubt her love for him for a second but Steve was, well, Steve and she had no doubt that any woman–the best woman in the world, the most amazing woman to ever walk the earth since Eve–would be lucky to be with Steve. And she was… just herself.
But she remembered what he’d written in his letter. You’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met… to me, you are the real hero… She still didn’t quite understand what Steve saw in her to make him say that but oh, she wanted to be the person Steve had always believed she was. As always, his belief in her made her feel as if she might be, could be, better and stronger and smarter than she actually was. And now that he was back, with her, she resolved with everything in her, that she would do anything, give anything, to be the woman Steve believed she was.
“I-uh—” he began, his voice a little hoarse and then he broke off, looking a little abashed, as if he could no longer speak or at least, could no longer trust his voice.
Peggy felt her heart swell and knew she had to help. Well, she had always wanted to help him. He had said the world was under threat from aliens so he would have needed to fight which meant… “You won the battle,” she went on for him.
The set of his lips, his expression, eased a little and he flashed her a look of something like gratitude.
“I didn’t do it alone,” he went on. “I couldn’t have done it alone. I had friends helping me, probably the best friends I’ve ever had.” He paused, grief flickering across his face, and she knew with a surge of compassion that he must have lost some of these good friends of his. “That first big battle wasn’t the end,” he went on. “It led to a war, people and countries and finally even other planets, were divided, which led to another war. We faced threats that made Schmidt look like a playground bully. Once Earth had been exposed to the dangers out there in the galaxy, it couldn’t retreat. It took years, so many years. I lost…” his voice momentarily shook, before he visibly swallowed and went on, “we lost friends, family.”
She almost flinched at the emotion, the pain, in his voice, a pain she hadn’t heard since that cold night in London three years ago now, after Bucky Barnes had died. And just as she had that night, she assured him, “It wasn’t your fault.” She might not know exactly what had happened in these battles in the future but she did know that. Knew him too well to even doubt it for a second. “You would always do whatever was necessary to save anyone, let alone a friend. It could not be your fault.”
She paused, studied him, understanding now that some of the shadows in his eyes, the weariness in his expression, must be from grief. Her heart squeezed as if an iron fist had closed around it. He did look different and all the differences, subtle as they were, told her that whatever he had been through had to have been horrifying, worse than anything that had happened in the war. Looking at him, taking in the new lines around his eyes and mouth, the way his skin stretched tight across his cheekbones, she saw the price he had paid to force himself against his deepest nature to excel at war for years. Oh, her poor darling. “It must have been terrible. You look... different. Older.”
He blinked and managed a faint, rather wry attempt at a smile. “Thank you.”
This flash of his humor caught at her heart but for once, she was not inclined to amusement, could not feel amused at the thought of his suffering God-only-knew-what. “You know that’s not what I meant.” She lifted a hand to his face, his chin, and then lightly traced his cheek with her fingers–his so-precious face. “You look as if you’ve been through hell and back, more than once.” How many years had it been for him? She only knew, from looking at him, that it had been much longer than the mere two-plus years it had been for her, more than twice or even three times that, even around 10 years, perhaps?
“I guess… I have been,” he agreed slowly, tentatively, as if unsure that he could claim to have really suffered.
“But you did it. You saved the world, again.”
His lips tipped up slightly. “Yeah, we did, but how can you be so sure of that?”
Oh, Steve. A little laugh escaped her. “Steve, you’ve never run from a fight in your life. You wouldn’t be here if there was even the smallest remaining threat.” He had never run from a fight even before the serum, when he had just been the skinny boy from Brooklyn. As Captain America, Steve was no more capable of turning away from a fight than he could fly.
He gave her a faint smile. “You know me so well.”
Something seemed to squeeze at her heart. Yes, she did know him, still. She had always felt as if she’d known him, even from their days at Camp Lehigh, and that had never changed. She suddenly remembered what she had told him just before he had left with Senator Brandt the day after Project Rebirth, that he should stay himself, in spite of all the physical changes he had just undergone. Steve had kept his promise, had truly never changed. Not during the war, in spite of spending almost two years being hailed as a hero, and not after however many years in the future. Becoming Captain America, all his years of serving as Captain America, had not changed him in the essentials so he was still Steve Rogers, the boy from Brooklyn.
“As usual, you’re right,” he went on after a moment. “We did win and, well, some of my good friends had come up with a way to time travel.”
In spite of herself, she couldn’t help the little jolt that went through her at the phrase, time travel. It was so… bizarre, such a crazy concept… but if he had been in the future and now was here, with her, then of course that was the only explanation.
“We needed to, in order to win the war, and when we were done, my friends made it so I had a choice, to stay in the new life I’d made or to come back, to actually live my life. The simple life I’ve never had. They gave me a chance. And I took it.”
He stopped, looking away, and in his face, she could see signs of rising nerves, subtle though they were.
Paradoxically, it almost seemed as if seeing his tension calmed her own swell of emotion because she could guess at the enormity of the choice he had made, no matter how straightforward he made it sound. He had left behind an entire life, left behind the friends he had made in the future, and returned here, to her. He had chosen her.
He went on, not quite steadily. “I just… needed to see you again. Because… I still don’t know how to dance and I was wondering if you were still willing to teach me,” he blurted out, the words, his manner, so awkward that she was reminded of the way he had stumbled over his words in the car on the way to the Project Rebirth site when he had called her a “beautiful dame.” When he had told her he was waiting for the right partner.
Her heart squeezed with emotion, a lump forming in her throat, silly tears stinging her eyes. He wasn’t sure of her, she realized, even now–or perhaps, especially now. He knew it had been years, for each of them, and he was, very carefully, only asking for a dance. Even after tacitly admitting that he had come back to her to live his life, he was not outright asking for more than a dance from her. As if she could, or would, ever deny him anything.
She had to swallow, hard, before she was able to speak. “Well, I did promise to show you how. And I’d hate to have it said that I don’t keep my promises.”
His eyes jerked up to meet hers. “Peggy. Really?”
She knew her smile was wobbly but couldn’t help that. “I’ve been waiting for the right partner.”
“Peggy…” he breathed and then he lifted his hand to cup her cheek, the first time he had ever given her such a caress, touched her face, she realized as she tilted her face into his hand. She had touched his face, a few times, but he had never been quite so bold as to touch hers. Until now.
And then he bent and she lifted her face for his kiss and as his lips found hers, making her mind go deliciously blank, her last coherent thought for some time was that now, with Steve alive and with her, knowing he loved her, she could ask for nothing more from this life or from heaven either.
~To be continued...~