Chapter Text
The Truth About Captain America
Chapter 1
Steve’s first indication that something might be wrong came when he heard the faint sound of the front door opening. He lifted his head with a faint frown before he stood and went to see who it was. Whoever it was obviously had a key to have been able to just let themselves in so it had to be either Peggy or Jamie but it was far too early for Peggy to be home and while Jamie would be done with school by now, Jamie had said he would be going to his friend Paul’s house after school and only expected to be home in time for dinner. So something had to have happened for either of them to be home so early.
The sound of hurried footsteps came to him–footsteps he recognized with a little rush of joy although he didn’t understand what could have brought Sarah home from college in the middle of the week with no advance notice. But surely, if it had been some sort of emergency, she would have called rather than taken the time to come in person. Either way, his daughter was home and that was happiness enough.
Sarah flung the door of the room that served as his studio open, bursting in without ceremony.
He smiled, feeling his heart lift in that way it always did at the sight of his daughter, who he missed intensely now that she was living in the City in her sophomore year at NYU. He couldn’t have been prouder of her but he did miss her and worried over her too. And as usual when he saw her for the first time in a while these days, he inwardly blinked, still a little thrown by her new sense of style since starting college. Today, her wavy blonde hair was loose, but she had arranged a few locks into a very thin braid on one side, with the braid intertwined with a narrow ribbon.
“Sarah! Sweetheart, this is a–” He belatedly registered the look on her face, the tight look of her expression that indicated she was angry or upset, the tears glittering in her eyes, and broke off. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t bother greeting him, only gave him a look that told him with a stab of apprehension that whatever was wrong had to do with him somehow, although he couldn’t think what… “I’m here because of this!” She thrust a book out at him, her fingers holding it open to show a picture on one of the pages. He took one glance and his stomach seemed to plummet to his knees. Shit.
It was a picture of him–well, Captain America, taken during the war and he wasn’t wearing the helmet so his face was fully visible. He recognized the picture, the scene. It had been taken by some news outlet and showed him returning from a mission where he and the Commandos had rescued a troop that had been captured and held behind enemy lines by Hydra. Some straggling Hydra forces had been in pursuit and out of necessity, to hasten their retreat, he had hefted the wounded commander of the captured troop onto his back and moved to lead the rest of the troop into the Allied camp, safely behind their own lines. He had only deposited the wounded commander at the feet of the medical team before he had rushed back to join the rest of the Commandos in fighting off the straggling pursuers. He’d taken off the helmet because it had been such a hot day and the combination of the exertion and the sun beating down on him had made him sweat and the sweat had started to run down his face uncomfortably. The picture had been taken just after he had lowered the commander to the ground, as he’d been turning to rush back.
It had finally happened. He had wondered, been nervous about it, but slowly had started to relax because he had realized in checking Sarah’s U.S. history textbook when she’d been in high school that the war was considered too recent to be taught in class. So the course had ended with the Great Depression and only a mention of the start of the war. He had also been relieved because he had remembered that most of the readily available publicity images of Captain America showed him in full uniform, helmet and all, so his face was half hidden. So he had allowed himself to become complacent, to believe that he and Peggy could tell Sarah and Jamie the truth about himself in their own time, when they chose to do so and were prepared for it.
So much for that hope. Shit.
He looked up and met Sarah’s furious eyes, inwardly flinching at the way she was looking at him so accusingly, as if she’d never seen him before.
“Are you Captain America?” she demanded.
He let out his breath, slipping off the glasses he usually wore as part of his disguise of sorts, and told her the truth. “Yes.”
She sucked in a breath, her hand falling. “You–you lied to me, to us!” Her eyes narrowed. “Does Mom know?”
“Of course she does. I don’t keep secrets from your mother.”
Her lips twisted at that. “No, because that would be wrong. As opposed to lying to your children their whole lives, which you’re obviously fine with,” she retorted with caustic sarcasm. “You–who are you?! I don’t even know who you are!”
He inwardly winced. “I’m your dad. That will never change. I’m still the same person you’ve always kno–”
“No, you’re not!” she cut him off sharply. “The Dad I knew wouldn’t have lied to me about who he was!”
“Sarah…” He took an automatic step towards her, reaching out.
She jerked back sharply. “Just don’t! Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me! I don’t even want to look at you right now!” With that, she whirled and a moment later, he heard her bedroom door slam.
For a moment, he simply stood there frozen, his chest feeling hollowed out, scraped raw, the look on his daughter’s face seeming seared onto his mind.
He needed Peggy. It was, unsurprisingly, his first coherent thought and he managed to uproot his feet from the floor and went downstairs to the kitchen where the phone was.
He felt the first slight easing of the vise that had clamped around his chest when he heard her familiar crisp tones as she answered, “This is Director Carter.”
“Peggy,” he managed.
Just the one word and even across the phone line, he sensed her coming alert as his tone registered, her voice sharpening, “What’s wrong?”
“Sarah’s home. She–she knows.”
“Knows…”
“Knows about me, who I am,” he clarified belatedly.
“Oh,” her voice changed, softened. “Oh, darling, we always planned to tell them one day.”
“Not like this,” he managed. “She’s so angry, feels betrayed. She–she said we’d lied to her her entire life. Said that she doesn’t even know who I am anymore.”
“She’s angry, that’s all. We’ll explain it and she’ll understand.”
For once, her reassurance did not bring about immediate belief. “But how much damage will be done in the meantime? She–she’s not wrong that I have been lying by omission to her, to both of them, their entire lives.” And he knew how hard it was to regain trust once it had been lost.
For the first time in a long while, he found himself remembering the look in Tony’s eyes when Tony had confronted Steve about whether Steve had known that Bucky had been the one who killed Tony’s parents. And how many years it had taken before that rift, that wound, had been healed.
“It’ll be all right, love,” she assured him again. “We had reasons for not telling them, good reasons, you know that, and we’ll explain it all to them. I’ll leave now to come home and we’ll talk to her–to her and Jamie–together and explain everything. It’ll be all right,” she repeated.
He released a breath, the vise around his chest loosening a little further at her confidence. “All right. I’ll see you soon.”
“Don’t worry too much, Steve. We’ll handle it together and it will all be fine. The kids will understand.”
God, he hoped so but with Sarah’s expression, her words, still so fresh in his mind, for once he found it hard to entirely accept Peggy’s reassurance. “Just come home,” was all he said and bit back the words, I need you, because they were unnecessary. She already knew, as she always had.
“I’m on my way.”
At least, his conversation with Peggy and knowing that she was on her way home, that they would deal with this together as they did everything, calmed him enough that he remembered he should make dinner, although he thought even as he did so that it was entirely possible neither of the kids would want to eat dinner with him. He decided to make a simple casserole as he doubted he would be able to focus enough to make anything more complicated, pausing now and then to listen for any sounds from Sarah’s room and sighing at the total silence.
He was not accustomed to being at odds with Sarah. She did not just take after him in appearance but she was also more like him in personality, so he had always found it easier to relate to her than he did to Jamie in some ways. Sarah was quieter and more thoughtful than Jamie tended to be, had fewer friends but the friendships she had were deep and true. But interestingly, it was Jamie who had inherited some of his artist’s eye and interest, while Sarah was stronger in math and science, had inherited Peggy’s talent for numbers and patterns that had made her such an effective code-breaker for the SOE and the SSR.
It was a source of never-ending fascination to him, the ways in which he could see aspects of both himself and Peggy in each of their children, even with all the ways in which they were their own unique individuals, so different from either him or Peggy.
And he adored both of his children with an intensity he’d never known was possible before becoming a father. He treasured his relationships with his children–even as rocky as his relationship with Jamie had become in recent years once Jamie had become a teenager–and he couldn’t bear the thought that the truth about his past as Captain America, or rather the fact that he had not yet told them about it, might do some lasting damage to his relationship with his children. Because for all their occasional disagreements, he knew his children loved him and trusted him and even now, tended to come to him first with any issues, partly out of habit as he was the one who had cared for them the most during their lives but also, he was aware, because between him and Peggy, he was the softer touch, was more inclined to be indulgent.
He clung to Peggy’s reassurance that the children would understand their reasons for keeping his identity a secret as he put the casserole in the oven to bake. He considered and rejected the idea of returning to his studio and the unfinished commission he’d been working on when Sarah arrived, knowing he wouldn’t be able to focus on his art, and instead settled on the couch in the family room in the front of the house with a book. He gave up the attempt to read after 15 minutes passed without his comprehending a single word he read and settled instead to brood, as Peggy would teasingly call it.
He remembered all the years he had spent as Captain America in the future, remembered all the loneliness and the hardships of those years, dwelled on the memories in a way he had not done in years. For all the occasional good times, the more lighthearted moments he had shared with the Avengers, as much as he and the Avengers had become real, true friends, when he thought about those years in the future, he always thought of the pain first. He remembered how out of place he’d felt, even after more than a decade in the future, remembered how alone he had always felt, in spite of the friendships he’d formed with the Avengers, with Sam. Being a man out of time, a living legend, always set apart because everyone had known he was Captain America, always feeling the burden of expectations, needing to be the hero, the fighter, and the leader everyone had expected him–relied on him–to be.
He had been at war for almost 15 years, long, hard years in which he’d never known what it was to have a real home or peace or a sense of safety. And the worst of those years had been the last seven years, the two years he had spent on the run after Peggy’s–no, he cut off the thought, shying away from thinking about losing Peggy because even now, the memory was too painful–after the debacle that had been the Sokovia Accords and then the five years after Thanos’s Snap, those years when the Avengers had been lost or scattered or defeated, years in which he’d needed to try to move on after losing Bucky again and Sam. Years in which he’d spent most of his time serving as a cross between a one-man army and a one-man police force, traveling here and there to help deal with the chaos that had ensued in the aftermath of the Snap. With all countries’ governments left in disarray due to the losses in the Snap, anyone with criminal or bad intentions had emerged to take advantage of the chaos in the way that criminals always did and he had stepped up to do what he could to protect the vulnerable, restore what passed for peace and order in the years after the Snap. And when he hadn’t been fighting, he’d been trying to act as a counselor, helping those who remained and had lost loved ones in the Snap, pushing past his own instinctive reticence to share his hardships to actually mention a little of what it had been like for him to be a man out of time, having lost everyone he had ever known. He had tried to do what he could, remembering what Sam had done to help veterans returning from war.
He gave a little inward shudder at the memories, all those years of loneliness and grief and devastation. Years of missing Peggy, mourning her.
He pushed the memories aside. Those years were over now. He had left that life behind long ago. He’d returned to Peggy, found a haven, a home, with Peggy. Experienced a peace and a safety he had never really had, at least not since he’d been 18, the sense of absolute security that came with knowing that he was unconditionally loved, that he was going through life with an equal partner. He had a family now, would never be alone again.
He turned his head and reached out for the framed picture on the side table, one of their family pictures, taken years ago on one of their visits to Howard’s country estate. He felt his lips curve, warmth coiling around his heart, at the image, the memories. In it, he was standing with a young Jamie, around 5 at the time, perched on his shoulders, while Sarah stood beside him with Peggy’s arm around her. And for a moment, he could hear in his mind the remembered sound of Jamie’s giggle and Sarah’s laugh, mingling with that of Peggy’s, his favorite sound in the world. He had been so happy. They had been so happy.
Should he and Peggy have told their children sooner? They had always understood that they would tell the children one day, when the children were old enough, but they hadn’t yet discussed the issue of exactly when the right time would be. Perhaps it had been procrastination but even now, he wasn’t sure there had been a right time, at least not yet. Sarah might be in college and at 19, a few months shy of 20, was arguably old enough but Jamie was a couple weeks shy of turning 17, was still in high school, and he still tended to speak and act rashly, so Steve was not at all certain that Jamie was old enough. And he had never considered telling his children separately; somehow, it had always been their plan and understanding that the kids would be told together. It didn’t seem fair otherwise.
That decision had been taken out of their hands now. The truth about his past, his identity, needed to be told.
But how could he even begin to make his children understand what it had been like for him? How could he even begin to make them accept that all of it, the alien invasions, the time travel, all the bizarre twists and turns of his life, had really happened? Even to him, who had lived through it, the story sounded far-fetched, straight out of science fiction. All the more so now that he was settled in this time where things like cell phones and the Internet had not yet been invented, when the moon landing had not even happened yet so the idea of something like alien invasions was purely in the realm of science fiction.
Steve wasn’t sure he had ever been so glad to hear the sound of Peggy’s car pull into the driveway followed a minute later by the sound of her opening the front door. “Darling?”
He was on his feet and joining her in the front hallway before the word had even left her lips, pulling her into his arms, where she readily went, nestling her head against his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around his waist. He felt some of the knot of worry inside him ease a little as he relaxed into her embrace as he always did, let the reassuring warmth of her, her steadfast strength, comfort him as it always had and always would.
“Are you all right?”
He grimaced ruefully. “I’ve been better.”
“Has Sarah said anything more?”
He shook his head as he loosened his hold on her a little. “Not a word. I haven’t heard so much as a peep since she slammed her bedroom door.” He made a face, tried without success to sound dry, “I think she’s decided never to talk to me again.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Peggy said decisively. “I’m going up to get her.”
“Even though Jamie’s not home yet?”
“It won’t do anyone any good for her to sit upstairs alone stewing over things, any more than it does you any good to sit and brood,” she returned with just a hint of her usual tartness.
Amazingly, he felt his lips twitch a little. But then, Peggy had always been able to make him smile. And he had always loved how tart she could be, her sardonic humor.
She saw it and gave him a faint smile of her own. “That’s better.” She gave him a quick peck on his chin and then hurried up the stairs.
He loitered in the hall, not even bothering to pretend that he wasn’t eavesdropping, as he heard Peggy knock on Sarah’s door. “Sarah? I’m home. Why don’t you come out and say hello.” Peggy sounded entirely natural, as if nothing at all were wrong.
He couldn’t hear any response but he also did not hear the sound of the door opening, which spoke for itself. And then Peggy said, her voice now becoming more commanding, her Director Carter voice, as he termed it, “Sarah Elizabeth Carter, you will open your door right this minute.” Peggy’s tone and her use of Sarah’s full name would have its effect, he knew, but then he was at least half-convinced that particular tone of Peggy’s would have commanded instant obedience from a god, let alone from their children.
There was a moment and then the door opened and now he heard Sarah’s ungracious response. “What?”
“Hello to you too,” Peggy returned, just a touch dryly. “Come downstairs. We need to talk.”
“You want to tell me some more lies?”
“That’s enough of that. You will come downstairs, you will sit and listen, and you will keep an open mind and a civil tongue in your head. Whatever else, we’re still your parents. Understood?”
“Fine,” Sarah agreed huffily but she did agree and he knew his daughter well enough–or thought he did–to know that she would keep her word.
Steve hurriedly retreated into the kitchen so as not to appear to have been eavesdropping, checking on the casserole for dinner unnecessarily, and emerged from the kitchen only when Peggy had already returned downstairs with Sarah following reluctantly several paces behind her. Sarah’s steps faltered for just a moment, her expression hardening as she saw him, turning her face away, pointedly not acknowledging him, and he inwardly flinched, again. Peggy caught this exchange and reached out to briefly grasp his hand and then he and Peggy followed their daughter into the family room where Sarah dropped into one of the armchairs and he and Peggy took the couch opposite.
“How did you find out?” Peggy asked, her tone as conversational as if she were making a completely mundane inquiry as to Sarah’s plans for any random day.
Sarah blinked but then tossed the book with the page and the fateful picture bookmarked onto the coffee table between them. “I saw this in the library and picked it up to browse through it.”
The book, he now saw, billed itself as a short history of the European campaign of World War II and, when Peggy reached out to quickly skim through it, before turning to the bookmarked page, he realized the book included a chapter on Hydra and its eventual defeat. Except Hydra had not really been defeated–but he pushed the thought aside. It didn’t matter right now.
Peggy had turned to the marked picture, her gaze taking it in in a single glance, before she turned to him, tapping one painted fingernail against his black and white image. “This was taken in Germany, wasn’t it, from your mission to rescue that British troop that was being held behind the Siegfried line?” He was momentarily taken aback at how casual she sounded, as if she were inquiring about the weather. Even after so many years, Peggy could still surprise him.
“Yeah,” he answered briefly but then relented, added, “We had to get through a few skirmishes just to reach enemy lines and then fight our way past a few more Hydra forces to make our escape.” He was reasonably sure that Peggy remembered all this but Sarah obviously knew nothing about it and he guessed that was why Peggy had asked.
Across from them, Sarah shifted, giving a loud little huff. Peggy glanced at her sharply and Sarah subsided.
Peggy turned back to him, continuing, still sounding remarkably conversational, “I forget, what happened to that commander you carried on your back all those miles back to our camp?”
After all these years, it took him a couple minutes to go through his recollections before he was able to remember. “Major Colin Downing from Lancashire. He lived but lost his left leg below the knee.” He’d never learned the names of most of the men he and the Commandos had rescued during the war–there were too many–but he had learned Downing’s name and remembered him, not only because he had carried the man for miles but because of Downing’s courage, his sense of integrity. Downing had been a good commander, one Steve had immediately respected. The main reason Downing had been wounded was because he’d insisted on being among the last to leave, waited until all his men had gotten out, and then been wounded by the pursuing forces. And then in a return of that loyalty, his men, when they had realized that Downing had been hurt, had refused to go on without Downing so Steve had hoisted Downing onto his back and led the escape to get out from behind enemy lines because Steve was the only one who could do such a thing without being noticeably slowed down and speed had been crucial considering the pursuit.
“Of course, Major Downing, I remember now. He was married, with a young child, if I remember correctly, and he was able to return to them. To say nothing of the 200-some men you rescued along with him that day.”
Peggy closed the book and put it back on the table. “Actually, come to think of it,” she went on, “I remember the photographer who took this picture. He made quite a pest of himself that day before you returned from that mission because he wanted to take photographs of the maps with our next few missions marked out on them until Colonel Phillips sent him off with a flea in his ear for wanting to do something that could jeopardize your safety and that of the troops. I remember that Colonel Phillips asked sarcastically if the photographer planned to send a telegram to the Nazi high command to tell them just where you would be heading next because he was sure it was information the Nazi high command would pay a high price to know and the photographer just about tripped over his own tongue to apologize and swear that hadn’t been his intent at all and he would never do anything to put you in any additional danger.”
He belatedly realized what Peggy was doing with this little bout of reminiscences, reminding their listening daughter just what Captain America had done and meant for the war effort. He wasn’t entirely comfortable hearing it, even now, but he sensed Sarah’s attention and managed not to react by so much as a glance in her direction.
“I can almost feel sorry for the photographer,” he gamely followed Peggy’s lead. “Colonel Phillips’s blistering sarcasm could make even the most hardened soldier quake in his Army boots. Everyone except you, that is.”
“You never seemed intimidated by him.”
He slanted a look at her. “Oh, I was. I just hid it better than most. I had a reputation to uphold, remember.” and wondered if she remembered the brief exchange they’d had well over 20 years ago now, during the war, when he had, half-jokingly but entirely sincerely, called her intimidating.
She laughed at that though her eyes were soft and he knew, with a little leap of his heart, that she did remember, was thinking of that conversation too. “Says the man who disobeyed one of his direct orders in going off to rescue the 107th after Azzano.”
“I seem to remember that particular mission was due to you. You practically told me I should go and then almost dropped me on the doorstep of the base.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You were the one who decided to go. I was barely involved,” Peggy returned with an air of primness that was entirely unlike her usual self.
His voice lost even a trace of sounding casual. “You did more than that. If it weren’t for you believing in me, I don’t think I could have gone.” Even now, even after so many years, he could not quite make light of how much Peggy had believed in him from the beginning.
“Are you kidding me with this?” Sarah burst out. “You two are just going to sit there flirting and not even address the fact that you lied to us! How could you never tell us who our own father is?!”
He managed not to squirm, realizing with a belated stab of self-consciousness that yes, perhaps, the last rather teasing exchange between him and Peggy had bordered on the flirtatious but it had always been too easy, only natural, for him to fall in with Peggy’s dry humor and when it came to their shared memories, it was even more so. It was the way he and Peggy had been interacting almost since the day they’d met and it still held, was something he never tired of.
“We were always going to tell you when you were ready,” Peggy countered. “And as for us, we are merely waiting until your brother gets home so we can tell you both the whole story together.”
Steve faced his daughter directly, marshaling his wits. “We were waiting until you were both old enough to know and understand. There are reasons, good reasons, why we’ve kept who I am a secret and will continue to do so and you two need to understand that.”
“Good reasons for lying to us and to the rest of the world?” Sarah muttered in a sarcastic aside.
“Sarah. A civil tongue,” Peggy warned although her tone was mild enough.
At that moment, he heard the sound of the oven timer going off and excused himself to the kitchen, checking on the casserole to see that it was done, but after a moment, he set it back in the oven to keep it warm since he doubted anything would be eaten until after this necessary conversation they faced whenever Jamie returned.
He had only just returned to the family room when he heard the sound of the front door opening and then Jamie’s footsteps and he got up and met Jamie in the hall, registering Jamie’s relaxed expression with some relief. Jamie was, it appeared, in one of his more equable moods. Although with the coming revelation, who knew how long that would last.
“Is dinner ready? I’m famished,” was all Jamie said, foregoing any more traditional greeting as was usual for him these days, at least at home. But Steve knew, and was quietly pleased by the fact, that Jamie still utilized the general courtesy he’d been instilled with when it came to everyone outside the family. Jamie simply didn’t bother with the social niceties such as actual greetings at least half the time where their own family was concerned.
“Hey, bud. Come into the family room. Sarah’s home and we need to talk,” he responded, briefly clapping Jamie on the shoulder in greeting. And thought, for about the thousandth time in the last five years or so, that he missed the days when his son had still permitted his hugs.
Jamie blinked but did so, his steps faltering as he took in not just Sarah but also Peggy sitting on the couch opposite. “What are you doing here?” he inquired of Sarah.
Steve resumed his seat beside Peggy.
“Sit down, Jamie. We need to talk,” Peggy began, giving Jamie a faint smile of greeting before sobering.
“You keep saying that. I haven’t done anything,” Jamie began, defiance creeping into his voice. “What is going on? Why are you ganging up on me?”
“It’s not about you,” Sarah interjected. “It’s about Dad.”
“Dad?” Jamie blinked and swiveled to stare at Steve.
“Sit down,” Steve directed mildly. “This might take a while.”
Jamie sat in the armchair that was the twin of the one Sarah currently occupied, open curiosity and some burgeoning suspicion on his face.
Well, this would appear to be the moment. Steve hesitated, any tentative plans, words, for this conversation abruptly vanishing. He had no idea how to do this, where to begin. Oh, help.
~To be continued...~