Work Text:
Part 1
Steve grinds his teeth together and grips the wheel tighter. Goddammit, Peggy. He wishes like hell that she would just stay the fuck out of it. This isn’t her fight. Not anymore. While he and Peggy slept in the ice, Hydra infiltrated what remained of the SSR so deeply that it couldn’t possibly be burned out. Now, there is no SSR. There is no SHIELD.
But Peggy and her band of Fury’s castoffs keep fighting. Fucking up Steve’s plans with irritating regularity.
Steve finally had enough and decided to remove Phil Coulson from the equation. Fury’s protege had managed to scrape together enough allies to become really fucking annoying. So Steve tracked him down and gutted him.
That should have been the end of it.
He knew Peggy would be pissed. That was a given. But Steve hadn’t been prepared for just how pissed she was. He’d thought they had their ... whatever the hell it was they had between them ... sorted out. He thought she knew her place.
But when he saw her, after he killed Coulson, she shot him three times at close range. This time he hadn’t had his shield to protect him. It put him out of commission for weeks. While he was recovering, she was out in the field, making herself as big of a nuisance as possible. While he generally enjoys that about her, she generally isn’t trying to undermine his projects. Now she is. She’s going after Hydra, and Steve personally.
The most annoying part of it is that she’s really fucking good. He was forced to admit just how much she’d apparently let slide over the years because of their relationship. Because right now it doesn’t seem like he can get a single fucking thing done. Every time he turns around, she’s impounding his assets, or incarcerating his contacts. He’s had two different vibranium deals go south in the last month.
His phone rings and he answers it. “What?”
“I’m sending you a picture. I think you’ll like it, Boss.”
Steve rolls his eyes and ends the call. He seriously doubts that anything Anatoly sends him is going to be worth looking at. But curiosity gets the better of him and he looks at the text.
He has to pull the car to an abrupt halt. He’s breathing hard, staring at the picture. He calls Anatoly back. “Send me the address. Don’t do anything until I get there.”
***
Peggy coughs and rolls her head to the side. Her left eye is swollen shut. There is a gag in her mouth. She’s handcuffed to a workbench in some warehouse. The cuffs aren’t meant for ankles and are biting painfully into her flesh. It’s excruciating. She shifts, testing the cuffs again.
The smack snaps her head to the side. “Be still. The boss is on the way.” He laughs.
Peggy has a sinking suspicion who the boss is. Fuck. She truly has no idea what to expect when he shows up. She knows he is really fucking pissed off at her. With good reason. She shot him. Not that he didn’t deserve it.
Peggy wonders if she deserves her fate as well. Part of her wishes he would just kill her, put her out of her misery. What the fuck did she do with her life? Jesus. She used to fight the Nazis. And now she’s fucking one.
Not that Steve is a Nazi. He’s just a psychopath with superhuman strength.
A psychopath who murdered Phil.
Fuck.
Why did that shock her? She knows who he is. She knows what he’s capable of. But somehow she allowed herself to think that .... That what? That he fucking cared about her enough to not be an evil shit? Steve is out for Steve. Steve likes fucking her. So he plays along to get what he wants. But he doesn’t care.
He isn’t a good man.
Peggy blinks quickly, clearing her throat. She’s pregnant. She found out hours before they discovered Phil’s body. She and Steve had been trying for a while, and of all the goddamn times to succeed. She went to Phil’s funeral and mourned him while pregnant with the child of the man who killed him. It is beyond pathetic.
So she vowed to redeem herself as much as she can. She picked up the leads that Phil was working, managed to track a few of them back to the source. When she realized they led to Steve, she didn’t turn away. She didn’t look the other direction. She sucked it up and did her fucking job. And when Steve showed up, she shot his ass.
He isn't dead. She knows that. But it probably hurt like hell and if there is any justice in the universe, he’ll have a permanent limp.
She hears a door scrape open, and then footstops.
“Hey, Boss!” Anatoly calls, obviously pleased with himself.
Peggy stays still, staring blindly at the corrugated metal roof, fifty feet above her head. Steve eventually walks into her line of sight, though she doesn’t look directly at him. He stands next to the table. She can hear him breathing. He’s angry.
He tugs impatiently at the gag in her mouth until it is free. She flexes her jaw, but doesn’t thank him. She doesn’t say anything. Fuck him, that’s why.
He rubs her cheek with his thumb. The pain is dull, achy. The anticoagulant she takes makes her bruising so much worse than it would normally be. She turns her head away.
“You hit her.”
Anatoly laughs nervously. “She fought like hell, Boss.”
“And after you subdued her,” Steve asks, his voice deceptively even. “Did anyone touch her?”
The room is silent.
“No,” Peggy finally says. She looks up and Steve is staring at her, his expression as intent as she’s ever seen it. “Though if you’re going to kill me, please get on with it. Spare me the effort of making an appointment to have an abortion.”
She can hear his teeth grind together. He turns away and five shots ring out in quick succession, deafening in the cavernous space. She hears Anatoly and his men fall to the floor. She knows they were dead before they hit the concrete.
She hears the sound of Steve rifling through pockets and then he’s back, unlocking the cuffs. He helps her sit up. He runs his thumb gently over the abrasions on her wrist and she grimaces.
“Are you really pregnant?”
She doesn’t look at him. “Unfortunately.”
Without a word, he helps her to his car, and heads toward the city. When he announces his plan to take her to the hospital, she vigorously protests. Unhappily, he takes her back to her shitty little apartment, but he doesn’t leave. She isn’t sure what to make of that.
She shoots a message to the team, letting them know she’s okay, but she needs a couple days R&R. Then she takes a long shower. When she gets out, Steve is waiting. He’s ordered food. But first, he patches her up as best he can. Her eye is already much improved. Apparently she did get some benefit from the serum beyond the ability to survive stasis.
She eats quickly and falls into bed. Steve is still pacing around, but she ignores him. She tries to ignore all of it. Especially the thought of how close she came to dying today. The fact that Anatoly contacted Steve was random chance. Anatoly was hoping to earn brownie points. He could have just as easily tortured her to death and told Steve about it after the fact.
She definitely doesn’t think about the fact that Steve was scared. She didn’t expect it. She knows he sure as hell didn’t expect it either. Neither of them are happy about this new turn of events. He’s not one to back down. She sure as hell isn’t either. But it’s clear that this game of chicken can’t last. Not with these stakes. One of them is going to have to blink. Today it was Steve.
Something fundamental has changed between them. She doesn’t know if it’s for better, or worse. But she knows things will be different going forward. She wonders how awful that picture that Anatoly sent Steve was.
She’s nearly asleep when he tucks himself behind her in bed. She doesn’t have the energy to fight with him anymore tonight.
***
Peggy’s in the bathroom in the morning, dressed only in a bra and panties. She pinches the flesh of her abdomen, but as she moves to give herself the injection, Steve is suddenly there, her wrist caught securely in his grip.
She twists around and stares at him. “What the fuck are you doing?”
His expression is tight. “What the fuck are you doing?”
She groans and rolls her eyes. “Giving myself an injection of anticoagulant,” she says flatly. “To prevent what happened last time from happening again.”
He frowns, but releases her. “Oh.”
She shakes her head in disgust and jabs the syringe into her abdomen. He watches her silently. When she’s done, she pushes past him, grabbing her bathrobe as she leaves the bathroom. Wrapped in her robe, she makes a pot of coffee.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit, thanks for asking.” She doesn’t look at him.
“Are you planning on staying angry at me forever?” his tone is dispassionate, but she knows that he’s worried.
She finally turns around to face him, cup of coffee in hand. “You murdered Phil.”
He watches her for a long moment and then shrugs. “I murdered lots of people. You and Phil both knew the risk of getting in my way.”
“Fuck you.”
His face pinches together in irritation. “You’re going to stop fighting me, Peggy.”
“The fuck I am.”
He sucks in a sharp breath and forces himself to calm down. “We are not going to carry on like this.”
“Great,” she says flatly. “Stop being a murderous prick and I’ll stay out of your business.”
***
In the end, they find a compromise. Nothing that makes either of them happy. But enough that they can both sleep at night.
Next to one another.
Part 2
Michael is sullen, defiant, his little face scrunched into a frown. But the tears in his eyes speak volumes. Peggy sighs, sitting down at the table, looking at him. She rubs her forehead.
“Please tell me again what happened. Miss Jenny said you pushed Abby. I thought you liked Abby.”
Michael looks exasperated. Or as exasperated as a four year old can look. “I like Abby!” he says, stomping his foot. He doesn’t actually say ‘like’. He says ‘wike’. Grudgingly, Steve finally admitted he had a similar speech issue when he was a child.
Peggy takes a breath. “Michael, if you like her, why did you push her?”
He just stares at her, obviously frustrated. “That’s what people do when they like each other!”
Peggy frowns at him. “They push each other?”
“You and Daddy do!”
Peggy is too stunned to say anything. She’s not sure what her expression looks like, but clearly it’s enough to give Michael pause. His own expression softens and he steps closer to her. “Mama?”
Peggy opens her mouth to say something, but she doesn’t have any words. She closes her mouth again. Michael wraps himself around her and she hugs him tight.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he says. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
She doesn’t know what to say so she just holds her son.
***
Steve arches an eyebrow at her, his expression sour. “Smoking again?”
She takes the final drag off the cigarette and then stubs it out, pushing past him back into the apartment. He’s in a foul mood, she can tell, and she knows he’s spoiling for a fight. She looks at him, shaking her head. “Michael got in trouble at school for pushing a little girl he likes.”
Steve shrugs. “And?”
She’s not surprised. But she is disgusted. Mostly with herself. “You don’t care. Don’t pretend you do.”
He frowns at her, but turns away. She watches him walk across the apartment and flop down on the couch, making himself at home. And why shouldn’t he? He bought this place. With his bloodmoney. A veritable castle for his family, like he can separate her and Michael from what he does. From what he is .
He turns on the TV. “Order some food.”
***
Michael cries harder, shoving at her. “I don’t like it here. I want to go home. I want Daddy.”
Peggy holds him, looking around the bare little apartment. It’s tiny. They can barely afford it. Housing costs are insane and people are stacked on top of one another, in some cases literally. “I know you’re unhappy, Michael. But this is home now.”
Michael wails louder and she can do nothing but hold him. He’s scared. He’s still so little. And everything is so different.
But if Peggy sticks to the plan, she knows Steve will never find them. She knows it with a leaden certainty that both thrills and terrifies her.
She’s really done it. She’s really left him.
***
Michael adjusts, eventually. But he’s never the same. He’s marked by a loss that Peggy can read on his features.
Peggy tells herself that even though it’s hard, it’s for the best. She knows he misses his father. But she also knows that Steve was a terrible influence on Michael. And regardless of the fact that Steve and Michael love each other, Peggy knows it was only going to get worse as Michael aged. Steve has no idea how to be a father. He had no example in his own life. And his instincts are absolute shite. He was completely indulgent and absolutely authoritarian in unpredictable turns.
Steve is not a good man.
But there is still hope for Michael.
Peggy misses Steve at the most inopportune times. She understands she’s stronger without him, that she’s truer to herself without his influence. But there are times when she aches for the feel of him against her, when she wants someone who really knows her, warts and all. There are times when she wants someone to punish her to betraying everything she once held true.
But she doesn’t contact him. She doesn’t contact anyone. No one knows where she’s gone and she keeps it that way. She doesn’t check in to see how things are going. She stays away. She understands she deserted the team when they needed her. But she was forced to choose between her loyalty to them and her son’s future. And Michael will always win.
Part 3
“Are you married?”
She looks at the ring on her finger and crosses her arms over her chest, tucking her hands against her sides. It’s not even the right finger. And she never wore a ring. He’s fishing. And subtle as a tank, as usual. She wonders what Michael told him about her life. “Divorced, actually.”
Playing catch up with Steve after twenty years apart is not something she has looked forward to. As if the situation isn’t horrible enough, they’re both sitting in the hospital waiting room, making small talk, hoping their son is going to be okay.
He’s silent a long moment. “Do you have other kids?”
She shakes her head. “Sudha and I talked about it, but we never pursued it.” She sighs. “Michael was more than enough. Just as well, considering how things turned out.”
If the fact that she married a woman shocks him, he plays it close to the chest. Knowing him, he’ll take it as some statement of his own prowess that she hasn’t had a male lover since she left him. As if. The truth is more that she was so disgusted with men after him that she stopped bothering.
Steve watches her for a long moment. “Did you abandon her too?”
She turns and looks at him, eyes narrowed. “Oh spare me your outrage on my ex-wife’s behalf. I left you for a good reason. I wasn’t going to let Michael grow up to be like you. It was over, Steve. If you would have just fucked off like a typical deadbeat, I wouldn’t have had to disappear. I suppose you’d like to think I spent the last twenty years chastely pining for you.”
He just looks at her.
She realizes that is exactly what he wants. And it’s probably exactly what he did. He still wants her. Fuck. She shakes her head, looking away. “Jesus. You are so fucking weird.”
Their argument is cut short when the doctor steps into the waiting room.
“ Mom ,” Michael chides.
“I haven’t even said anything,” Peggy protests, but she’s crying. She leans over him and presses a kiss to his forehead, which he allows. God, he looks like a wet cat in the hospital bed, which, incidentally, is not long enough for his frame. She suspects he’d rather be anywhere but here. But between the compound fracture of his left leg, and the concussion, the doctor says he’s here for the next two weeks at least.
Peggy suspects he’ll heal much more quickly than expected. In some respects he is very much his father’s son.
She knows Steve is behind her, just inside the doorway. She doesn’t miss when Michael glances over at him. The two of them have some kind of understanding, which she doubts she will ever fully understand. She has no idea how long ago they got in touch with one another. She has no idea who found who.
Given how tight lipped Michael can be, she suspects they reconnected years ago. Though it’s fairly obvious he didn’t expect her and Steve to be here at the same time. Sometimes he has as little insight into her as his father.
She and Michael talk for several minutes. It’s been a while since she last saw him. Christmas, in fact. She had been less than pleased, several years ago, when he announced his plans to join the military. But he made it clear it wasn’t negotiable. So now it’s just another subject they rarely broach.
She knows he’s good at his job. On some level it’s what he was built for. But she knows it’s a lonely life, and not nearly as straightforward as one would like to believe. It’s dangerous, obviously.
She knows that Steve had something to do with the clean up after Michael was injured. Though she doesn’t know what, exactly, happened. She suspects she doesn’t want to know. She has a hard enough time sleeping as it is.
She has no idea what Michael’s superiors think of Steve. They have to know. Her and Michael’s secret lives were effectively over when Michael joined the military.
Peggy puts her hand on the railing of the bed and Michael covers it with his own. His vision keeps darting from her to Steve. He’s nervous, which she understands, given that it’s been two decades since the three of them were all in the same room. But Michael is just going to have to get over it. He should have thought of that before he went and got himself nearly killed.
He looks at Steve. “Give me a minute with Mom.”
Peggy doesn’t bother turning, but she hears Steve leave, hears the door close.
Michael looks up at her. “Are you okay?”
She arches an eyebrow as she looks down at him. “Worried that the sight of your father is going to send me into hysterics?”
He frowns. “ Mom .”
She rolls her eyes. “I wanted him out of your life, Michael,” she says. “At least until you were old enough to make decisions for yourself. I’m not excited to see him, but I’m perfectly capable of managing Steve Rogers.”
She pauses, takes a deep breath. “What happened to you?”
He shakes his head, lips pursed together. She expected as much.
She reaches out, smooths the hair back from his forehead. “I love you. Get some rest.”
He nods.
Steve is standing in the hallway. Their eyes meet. “Wait for me,” he says, heading back into Michael’s room.
She just looks at him.
“Please?”
They get coffee, in a trendy little place across the street from the hospital. She stares at Steve, amazed, on some level, at how much he and Michael look alike. She knew, of course, that Michael resembled his father. But having recently seen them together, it’s a bit unnerving.
Michael is taller, leaner, and darker than Steve. Michael wears his hair a little too long, and always has a beard. But she wonders, now, if that isn’t because of how much he looks like Steve. Much like her, Steve hasn’t aged appreciably in the last two decades.
“You working for Stark?” he asks.
She takes a sip of her coffee. “None of your business.”
He frowns. He’s angry, she knows. But she doesn’t care. Michael was the one point of leverage he ever had over her and now Michael is old enough to make his own decisions about his relationship with his father.
Their exchange is civil, for the most part. They manage to keep up a stream of conversation without either of them saying anything of import. He offers to walk her back to her hotel. She tells him to go fuck himself.
As she predicted, Michael heals much more quickly than anticipated. He’s released before the week is out and Peggy catches a plane out, to spare herself the irritation of Michael telling her to stop mothering him.
“How did you get this number?” she demands.
“From our son.”
She rolls her eyes, wishing like hell he’d used some more nefarious channel. Then she could be properly pissed. But Michael probably did give it to him. “Don’t fucking call me at work.” She hangs up the phone.
“No, it’s fine,” Peggy says to Mai. “I’m just going to catch a cab.” She looks toward the entrance to the bar and immediately notices Steve. He smiles at her. She sighs and rolls her eyes, turning back to her coworkers. “I’ll see you guys on Monday.”
She ignores him, walks past him and out the door. He falls into step with her before she’s made it to the curb. Sighing, she turns and looks at him. “What?”
“You want to have sex?”
She rolls her eyes and turns away without a word.
She and Steve aren’t talking. Not really. He leaves her insulting and/or raunchy voicemails. She mostly ignores him. Unless he has some news about Michael. Or she’s really bored. There’s a perverse sort of enjoyment in fighting with someone who knows how to fight.
He shows up, occasionally, when she’s out. But he’s not full on stalker. And even if he was, she’s never been scared of him.
As much as she hates it, she also sort of enjoys having him around again. He’s familiar, if nothing else. And the older she gets, the less things are familiar. The fewer touchpoints she has. In a sea of change, Steve Rogers is one of the few constants. The sheer convenience of not having to explain her fucked up life to someone is not to be underestimated.
She never intends to call Steve. Truly. But it turns out that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Harris is a jerk. And Peggy will see he gets his due soon enough. But at the moment, she’s feeling old and slightly irrelevant.
Steve is at her door half an hour after she texts him. When she pulls the door open, he starts to speak.
“Shut up,” she says, grabbing his shirt and pulling him inside.
Steve doesn’t say anything, which scares her more than if he were lewd. She knows, as well as he does, that the last several months of traded insults has been foreplay. But when he reaches for her, it’s not to shock or titillate. His touches are gentle, reverent. He kisses the tears on her cheeks.
He’s still there, in the morning. She hates how much she likes it. But she’s learned, over the years, not to push away the few things that bring her true happiness. And Steve Rogers, for all his problems, is making her happy at the moment. She doesn’t expect it to last. Invariably, he will revert to form.
She tells him, later that morning, that she’s not sleeping with him again. And she doesn’t.
But he keeps coming around.
She understands that familiarity is a large part of his appeal. He gets her jokes, her references. And he truly does love Michael as much as she loves Michael.
It helps that Steve’s taste for causing havoc seems to have waned over the years. Ennui. That’s what Angie would have said. She knows Steve well enough to know that he must have gone to some extremes during the time that she and Michael were in hiding. He had to have been angry, lonely, bored. She doesn’t doubt he did some awful shit.
But by the time they met again, a good measure of that had been burned out of him. He seems old. Tired. Not in looks, of course. He’s still sinfully handsome and vital. But now he’d rather order takeout with her for a platonic dinner date, than try and architect a coup in some rogue nation. And for her part, she’d rather sit on the couch next to him reading a book, than put in forty hours of overtime, trying to outdo Harris.
It’s one of those mundane nights, after having ordered takeout, where she’s reading her book and he’s scrolling through sports scores on his tablet. She looks at him. “Do you want to stay over?”
He nods.
“What do you mean you’re living with someone?” Michael demands. “You haven’t even mentioned dating anyone.”
“We haven’t been dating. Not really.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Michael asks, aghast.
“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything, Michael. I’m simply telling you.”
There’s silence on the other line. “Oh, God,” he finally says. “It’s Dad isn’t it?”
END STORY