Chapter Text
“ I love you.”
“And I loved you, Steve, so very, very much.”
That, Steve thought, said it all.
*
Love is for children, Natasha had once said. She had spoken those words to a man, a mousy monster of a man who was willing and capable of burning a planet in search of a love he had known all his life and rejected with every breath he took. He’d managed to burn a good part of her planet, and a great many children on it, before she had stopped him, and she couldn’t help thinking that love for a father, a brother, a son… was not worth that.
But Natasha had been more than a child when she’d fallen in love with James. She couldn’t remember ever being in love before that; if she had loved her parents, that love had been torn out of her before her earliest memories. And she knew she had never loved after. She owed Clint everything, she needed him, and she trusted him and to a lesser degree Coulson in a way that meant far more to her than love, but she had never loved again.
By the time she’d met James, she had grown out of childhood. She may have looked like a child but she’d already lost every virginity she could have ever have lain claim to at birth. She’d known the touch of men and women, and she had killed old women and children younger than her. She had burned and she had pillaged and her ledger was already running over with blood when she had been chosen for training with the one-armed Winter Soldier who would reach a place in her she had not known existed, and he had ruined her for anyone else she would meet.
James, and what a mouthful that had been to cry in bed for a girl who still had trouble using English articles, had not started out as a lover. He had never meant to play that role, and in a world where everyone had to have at least three reasons to do anything, it had been refreshing to do something there was every reason not to do. They had both resisted for a long time, but a late night sparring session when he’d shown her a move, tackled her to the floor, and pressed against her, lean and long, had changed everything. He’d breathed against her lips, stared in her eyes, and then slowly, almost painfully, rocked his hips.
They had rarely spoken and never slept together during their stolen moments. There was nothing soft or romantic about their fucking; a stranger, viewing them, might well have thought that there was nothing there but a particularly ugly passion, indulged in because their bodies were young and their coupling was forbidden.
But the imaginary, judgmental viewer would have been wrong about most of what they thought. In the few minutes they would take together after, and increasingly during, James would spell his love for her in the movement of his fingers over her arm. She would reply with what were, for her, declarations of always and forever in her eyes and nails, and the way she would kiss the stump he never talked about.
The illusionary viewer would have been right about one thing. It was ugly. Whatever they felt did not stop them from killing the sinners or the innocent. There was no room for beauty in what they felt, and if something in her ached when she had woken one day to be told she no longer needed training and that James had returned to stasis, no trace of it showed in her voice, expression or actions.
Sometimes, when Natasha heard Steve and Tony talk about SHIELD as if it were evil or Fury was the devil, she wondered if either of them knew what evil was. SHIELD agents could be cold, hard strategists, but they laughed, cried and loved.
And it said something, she thought, that after five years of being with SHIELD she was finally ready to risk life and limb for her heart.
*
Bruce settled beside Natasha as the red-haired SHIELD agent narrowed her eyes at the target. She didn’t look at him or indicate she was aware of him at all, but he wasn’t surprised when she addressed him coolly. “Are you sure you should be here, Dr. Banner?”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “I think I can handle it, Agent Romanoff. If it’s done anything, this place has made me more immune to loud noises.”
“Yes, but has it made you immune to guns and secret agents?” Natasha asked, a slight smile playing around her mouth.
“Well,” Bruce drawled, “if I ever get immune to those two things, I’d like you to shoot me in a painful but not lethal place so I stop being so immune to them. But I hope that the two of us are becoming more comfortable with each other.”
“Dr. Banner, are you asking for sex?”
He spluttered, thought about asking her whether she was asking to disconcert him or because it really didn’t matter to her either way, and then decided not to ask. Drawing on the dignity he liked to believe he still had, difficult as that was when he had a habit of showing up naked or green on national TV, he ignored her and stayed on course. “Natasha, I’m just here to ask if you’re”-
“Dr. Banner,” she cut him off, “if you’re asking me if I can handle this mission, yes I can. Believe it or not, I’ve handled harder.”
He looked at her for a second and then dropped his eyes. Yes, she had. They both had, because there was worse than taking a mission where the life of someone you loved, the life you would share with them, was at risk. They both knew how things could always be worse.
She smiled. “But thank you, Bruce, for asking.”
Bruce smiled back and then went to talk to the person he was more worried about, the boy who did not have Natasha’s barriers. Who was as strong as she was in many ways, but with far fewer walls between the outside world and his heart.
Steve was not far away and indulging in similar preparation for the mission. He stood in Tony’s boxing ring, sparring with their landlord in a way that emphasized tactics over brute strength. Which was a good thing, Bruce mused, as Tony was not wearing his Iron Man gear.
“Hold on,” Tony said when he caught sight of Bruce, and of course Steve stopped immediately. “Hey Bruce, what’s up?”
“Nothing,” Bruce responded, but then made a lie of his own words when he asked Steve if he could talk.
Tony, with the instincts of someone who was allergic to feelings, made a hasty retreat, but Steve immediately made himself available. “Are you all right, Dr. Banner?”
“Bruce, please. And no, except…”
Steve smiled, looking a little touched in a way that validated Bruce’s concern instead of mocking it. “Dr. Banner, sorry, Bruce, if you’re worried about me on this mission, you don’t need to be. It’s not the first time I’ve gone behind enemy lines for a friend, not even the first time I’ve gone after Bucky. Heck, I had to go on a mission to stop Hydra just days after I thought he’d… died.”
“Yes, Captain, but you died on that mission,” Bruce pointed out, wincing.
Steve looked down, heartache for his past still evident in the darkening around his eyes, the lines of grief of his face. Then, firming his shoulders, he met Bruce’s eyes resolutely. “Not on purpose, Bruce. Not even a little, I promise. I would never take men into battle if I didn’t have every intention of fighting with them every step of the way. I’d never abandon them. Never.”
He’d have to be satisfied with that, but Bruce still worried. He’d been alone and without purpose for too long to let go of what they’d built without a fight.
He rubbed his face as he trudged back towards the lab Tony had given him. His head was already busy running over the details of the experiment he’d been working on, but his mind went shockingly blank when he saw that his lab was already full of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.
Pepper wore a bright white suit with a bronze shirt that set off her red hair to perfection. She smiled at Bruce when she saw him, but it was Tony’s nervous expression that caught his attention. Tony was rarely nervous; he embraced the confident, try-it-before-you-think-about-it attitude that was, according to Steve, a Stark attribute, though they all knew better than to say as much to Tony. So when Tony was nervous, everyone else knew to be uneasy too.
“What is it?” he asked warily. Thoughts of General Ross, of the insurance rates on Stark Tower now that they were hosting the Hulk, of Pepper’s incredible generosity and adaptability falling short of him, running through his head.
A slight frown marred Pepper’s perfect forehead, and God he was in over his head if he thought about her in those terms. She belongs with Tony, he reminded himself, and that was enough, because hurting Tony hurt him in ways he wasn’t quite up to exploring yet either. She glanced at Tony and seemed to understand what set Bruce’s radar off, judging by the glare she sent her boyfriend. “Nothing,” she assured, turning back to Bruce. “Tony has some ideas for something that might help you with controlling your… transformations, and I came with him for the walk.”
Bruce felt his skin had shrunk a size too small to cover his body. He wasn’t comfortable talking about his transformation despite Tony’s best attempts at immersion therapy. Pepper seemed to catch his discomfort but misunderstand it, because she immediately offered to leave. “You know, this is your space, and just because it used to have Stark on the building doesn’t mean you can’t limit entrance to yourself. We shouldn’t just walk in…”
“No, no,” he rushed to reassure her. “It’s not that. Sorry, it’s just, you mention my transformations so easily.”
Pepper’s lips quirked. “Bruce, I watched Tony build killer robots-“
“The suits are not killer robots!”
“While he had PTSD and displayed all the symptoms that should not go with weapons of mass destruction.” Pepper didn’t miss a beat. “And I’ve lived with him in spite of his tendency to invite mass murders to our home. I think I can handle the Hulk. And I have no problems handling Bruce Banner.” She added a little seductive purr to her last words. Tony wasn’t the only one who had a problem with patience sometimes.
“I… um,” Bruce stammered, his jaw falling a bit.
Pepper took pity on him. “Well, we’ll get out of your way. And anytime you want to start locking the door, talk to me about it, not Tony, or you’ll end up with rocket launching cyborg bouncers. Here, give me your phone.” She took it from him and hit a few keys, smiling and holding it up as she took a picture of herself, before handing it back. “There, I’ve programmed my number in it. If you need anything, even just to talk, you now know where to find me.”
Bruce took it from her and thanked her, before turning to Tony and asking him about his ideas. And if he took the phone out a few times throughout the day to call Pepper’s name up, look at her picture, who the hell cared? He didn’t call her, though he had a feeling it was just a matter of time.
And for once, the inevitable wasn’t a bad thing.
*
Ignorance, especially when you had the best possible reason for it, didn’t mean you were stupid.
Steve had to remind himself of that several times a day. He was trying to catch up, but catching up on seventy years or so of events around the world was not easily done, even if one didn’t have periodic missions to save the world. Besides, some of the things Steve wanted most to learn about were not easily found on the internet; his generation had not documented their lives on social media as their grandchildren did.
And on top of that, it turned out that a lot of journalists told the story they thought their audience wanted to hear it. Okay, that had been true when he’d been in his time too, but now there were a lot more journalists telling a lot more stories about how people reacted to events rather than the events themselves, and finding out what really happened, the truth closest to the real truth, was even more time-consuming.
So yes, he was still ignorant of a lot of things that people took for granted. Most of the time that didn’t really matter on the field, because the first thing he’d done was get up to speed on weapons and fighting styles. He knew his place in this new time, and it was on the battlefield. The problem was that he didn’t think he had a place anywhere else.
He still had his SHIELD-approved apartment, but no one visited him. It was always just him there, so he didn’t spend much time in it. Instead, he stayed at least a couple of nights a week at Stark Tower in the apartment that Tony had made for him. It was basically a nondescript bedroom that he guessed he was supposed to personalize, if he had anything left that was personal, and a gym. And yeah, that was him, right? An empty bedroom and a gym. He didn’t want to spend much time there either, but it was difficult to be in the common areas. Everyone else had someone. Even Bruce, the one person he’d thought would understand loneliness, was building something with Tony and Pepper that Steve didn’t quite understand. He didn’t understand a lot about relationships, but that was nothing new. Whatever made them happy, so long as it didn’t hurt anyone, was fine. It just wasn’t much fun to watch when no one ever seemed to want to be happy with him.
The others still made fun of him, though it wasn’t as mean as it had been at first. Tony still seemed to see Howard when he looked at Steve, which wasn’t completely fair as Steve had made himself stop seeing his old friend when he looked at Howard’s son, but Steve could live with that as long as Tony gave him a chance. But everyone seemed to expect the worst of him when they went out and saw things that were commonplace now but not so much when he was… relevant. They were the ones who judged him, and found him wanting, and never seemed to get how much he was trying. It was just so hard to see people walking over indigents in the streets, children talking back to their parents, and malnutrition and obesity going hand in hand, but it wasn’t his country anymore and somehow he’d lost the right to comment on it. Not that it was all bad of course; there was diversity he’d never seen before and for all the people who needed help, there seemed to be almost as many trying to figure out how to give it, and how amazing was that?
But it was nice, he thought, that they were concerned about him. Even though they were way off-base, and a little insulting, in their obvious fear that he didn’t understand how Bucky must have changed in becoming the Winter Soldier. Steve wasn’t an idiot. He got that Bucky had to have had a major personality change to go from being one of the best and most loyal American soldiers, someone with a strong and well-developed sense of honor, to working for the enemy. He got that Bucky must have suffered unimaginably in that personality change, in losing his arm, and in being frozen and woken up to a new world every so often. And in that suffering and change, Bucky may have lost his relationship with Steve.
If that were true, Steve would deal. But what he couldn’t deal with was a reality where Bucky was in trouble, and Steve didn’t do all that he could to rescue him. From when they were kids it had been the two of them against the world, and time could erase everything, but it couldn’t erase that.
He said as much to the therapist SHIELD had given him. He liked therapy, and thought it was a good thing. He’d seen way too many soldiers struggle for someone to talk to about what they’d gone through to sneer at the power of having someone try to help you by listening to you.
The therapist, Dr. Keyworth, smiled at him. “Captain Rogers, you and your friend go back a long way.”
“We do,” Steve confirmed. “By all measurements. Yours, and mine.”
Dr. Keyworth pursed his lips. “You mean chronologically and in terms of your conscious life.”
“That’s a little more of a mouthful, isn’t it? But yes, that’s essentially what I mean.”
“Is that still how you measure time?” Dr. Keyworth asked curiously. “Your time, and everyone else’s?”
Steve shrugged. “Well, yes. But it’s not just my time anymore, is it? Bucky’s been frozen too, hasn’t he?”
“Yes he has, Captain. But not for as long, or as continuously, as you have. His time will probably be all of his own, too. And if you’re trying to allay your friends’ concerns, Captain, it would help if you stopped seeing Sergeant Barnes as someone who will share your experiences.”
Steve looked confused. “But he is. Whether he remembers them or not, he did share them.”
“The person who shared them, Captain, may not be…”
“That’s ridiculous. We are not our own memories. If that was true, we would cease to exist the second we contracted Alzheimer’s disease or we died, and we don’t.” Steve leaned forward and pinned Dr. Keyworth to his seat with his blue-eyed gaze. For a moment, Stanley Keyworth was reminded of how Steve inspired countless people to follow him into battle despite his youth. “I know that they, Fury and Stark and all the rest, wanted me to see you before this mission because they think this will break me. They think that I can’t handle seeing the Winter Soldier have Bucky’s face and voice, but nothing else. And yeah, I’ll be first in line to say that if at the end of all of this, he doesn’t remember me, it’s going to hurt. I can’t say how much it’s going to hurt because well… I thought he was dead and it can’t hurt more than that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not happy and excited about the chance to get him back, to save him as he’s saved me a million times over.”
He stood up and walked to the door. The conversation was over. Still, an ingrained politeness and genuine respect made him stop short of leaving when Dr. Keyworth spoke. “There are worse things, Captain, than people being worried about you.”
“Yes there are,” Steve agreed. “There’s living in a reality where there’s no one around you who will call you by your first name.”
*
“We found him!” Steve stopped in his tracks and spun around to stare at Clint’s grinning face. “Cap, our Red Room plant got into the installation we had pinned as a likely location. We found him, and if we wait three or four days, the installation will be barely guarded.”
“’Barely’ guarded?” Steve asked, suspicion warring with impatience. “That sounds like a trap.”
Clint shook his head. “According to the plant, an Agent who has been in for a while and has kept her head down too low to be blown, they have gotten complacent. I don’t know, the world has changed and maybe they’re not quite sure how they’re going to use Winter Soldier anymore. Or maybe it’s just been so long since anyone’s looked for him; he’s never been high priority because no one’s ever thought he’s been running the shots, and he disappears long enough to fall off radars. Whatever the reason, it shouldn’t be too hard to get in and out.”
“The agent’s cover will be blown,” Steve hypothesized. “I’m not getting anyone killed; she comes out.”
“I thought you’d say that,” Clint laughed. It was comforting to work with a leader who didn’t see any assets as disposable. “Yeah, I guess your friend never fell off Fury’s radar so much; he’s willing to blow a cover if we can get the agent out safely and capture the Winter Soldier.” He threw a hand out when Steve’s expression changed. “Hey, Cap, I know you’re calling it a rescue mission and I’m not saying it’s not, but from all you’ve said about him he wouldn’t be working for the Russians, especially not the Red Room gang, unless they’d done a number on his mind. For the safety of the man he used to be, and ours, it’s going to be a capture as well as a rescue. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a free man when we do a bit of cognitive recalibration.”
Steve smiled at the last bit. “Well, I hear Agent Romanov is good at cognitive recalibration.” He threw in an appreciative nod at Clint’s assumption that they would get Bucky to normal. Because they would. “So let’s go plan a mission.”
The meeting ran long, but at the end of it, they had a solid plan hammered out for how they would get Bucky back. Steve chose to remain on the helicarrier that night as he went over the details for the upcoming mission. He had plenty of days to review the material, and was not at his best after the long, emotional day, but his mind was racing and would not let him sleep.
Finally, he lay down and stared at the metallic-looking ceiling. He wished, not for the first time, that the helicarrier had been built for comfort as well as functionality. Sometimes he felt that the landmine fields and trenches of battlefields had been more homey than 21st century quarters on a ship that a lot of people lived on for months at a time.
His phone, the one that Tony had taken, made some changes to, and then returned looking nothing like the original, beeped. Steve picked the phone up and pressed something he hoped would let him answer the call. “Um, this is Captain Rogers speaking.”
“Hello Steve.”
His heart stopped. It had been a long time, not so long for him but still, six months, and her voice had aged considerably. But her British accent, the crisp tones and warm affection that had been the last thing he’d heard before he’d all but died, those were unmistakable. “Peggy.”
She laughed. “Oh, Steve, no one’s called me that in a long time. Nowadays, it’s mostly Agent, or ma’am, or Great-Aunt, or… well, Grandmum.”
“Grandmum?” He picked up on that immediately, and made himself swallow the jealousy and resentment. He knew it had been seventy years, and he was going to be happy that she’d moved on even if it killed him to know she hadn’t waited for him. “You have grandchildren?”
“Yes, Steve, I do. Five of them, to be exact, and every one of them a greater joy than the one before.”
“Congratulations,” he said, and this time he did mean it. Because the only thing worse than knowing she’d moved on was the possibility that she had waited in vain, that she’d lost out on that joy because of his being frozen for her entire life. “I… are you…?” he stumbled, not knowing where to begin.
She didn’t let him flounder. Instead, she broke in and gently asked him why he hadn’t contacted her.
“I, I didn’t know if I could. I couldn’t even open your file, Peggy,” he admitted. He’d always been brave for someone too shy and insecure to tell her how he felt. They’d wasted too much time. “Why didn’t you contact me?”
It was her turn to stutter. “I… I…” Then she laughed. “Oh, I suppose I was afraid. And maybe even a little vain. Maybe I wanted to remain that beautiful young girl you saw last.” Then, sobering up, she admitted, “but mostly, Steve, I was afraid that I’d be too sudden and large a reminder of how much time had passed.”
“How much I’ve lost,” he added. “But now?”
She chose her words carefully. “Steve, when you… I stayed in this business a long time. Howard and I continued to collaborate, and SHIELD has some of its roots in what Howard and I did. And with my work, I gained some favors. One of those was to stay informed about anything to do with Project Rebirth and the Howling Commandoes. Another was to watch over the family members who followed in my footsteps. Both of those were triggered by your latest mission. Steve, I know you’ve found Bucky, and I know my great-niece Sharon helped you do it.”
“The agent in the installation is your great-niece? We’ve been using code names so as to limit the chance of her identity getting out, so I had no idea.”
“Yes, she is, and I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I’m asking for you to make sure she gets home safe.”
Steve protested the idea that she didn’t have the right to ask him for anything. “Peggy, even if I didn’t owe you as much as I do, you have to know there isn’t much you could ask that I wouldn’t do. And when it comes to protecting your family, you don’t even need to ask.”
“Thank you.” She paused, and then continued gently. “Steve, I know you have a few days before you’re heading out on the mission. I’d like you to spend those days with me. You can come to London and then rendezvous with your team later.”
He squared his shoulders. It was just a phone call, but he was never completely certain video wasn’t involved too, so Steve tried to hide all trepidation from his expression as well as his voice. “I’d love that.”
*
Between telling everyone and making flight arrangements, because quinjets aren’t commercial airliners Captain Rogers, it was early evening of the second day when Steve arrived at a nondescript door in the center of the ground floor of an average little house outside of London.
Swallowing his nervousness, Steve tapped on the door. His heart beat quickly in a way that was uncomfortably reminiscent of the days when Bucky would beat up the neighborhood bullies for betting on Steve’s odds for surviving past childhood. Steve’d always thought his best revenge had been living.
All too soon, he heard footsteps approaching the door. If he’d been at his best, he might have realized the steps were too firm and fast to belong to a woman who’d passed ninety some years before. But he was barely standing and his brain wasn’t quite working, so when the door swung open, he was almost certain that Peggy would be standing in front of him, looking exactly the way he remembered her, maybe even wearing that red dress… But that wasn’t possible.
“Hello, you must be Captain Rogers.” A young woman with dark blue braided hair and an accent Steve couldn’t place stood in front of him, smiling. He smiled back at her, but her expression didn’t change. Steve wasn’t an egomaniac and the attention made him more uncomfortable than anything else, but he’d become used to getting a reaction when people used his name. Something about the way she held herself told him that she’d face Thor in all his Asguardian splendor with the same bland lack of reaction. “Agent Carter has been expecting you.”
“Um… I,” Steve stammered, but the woman didn’t make him get the words out. She spun around and walked into a room. Steve followed her, swallowing around a nasty taste in his mouth. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Steve.”
For a painful second, Steve felt all the almost seventy years he’d spent in the ice. He was an artist and a master strategist, so he could see patterns, and the traces of the young woman he’d loved that were obvious in the face of the elderly woman sitting in front of him. Her smile was the same, but it was as if he was meeting Peggy’s grandmother. It would have been different if he’d grown old, certainly different if he’d grown old with her by his side, but it had been six months and he was twenty-six years old and almost seventy years younger than her. He didn’t feel any passion for her, and it was as if his heart was breaking all over again.
She seemed to read something of his grief in his eyes. Smiling tremulously, she reached out and smoothed his forehead. He didn’t remember crossing the room or kneeling by her chair. “Oh Steve, it’s me.”
And suddenly, she wasn’t Peggy’s grandmother, or even her mother. It was Peggy, and she had beautiful hair and a rich smile, and the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. It was Peggy.
*
They spent half an hour talking about the past. Well, Peggy had talked about her past, and Steve had described the chaotic experience of living with the Avengers. Peggy had smiled fondly when he talked about Tony. “I remember Howard’s son. Poor Tony Stark, Howard wasn’t a demonstrative or affectionate father. The war made some of us hold on to our loved ones closer than ever, and it made others hold closer to their demons.”
“That seems to be a family trait that Tony is breaking free of,” Steve admitted. “Afghanistan and good friends, Ms. Potts, seem to have done what a wife and child were unable to for Howard.”
“Don’t judge Howard too harshly,” Peggy warned. “Do you remember how hard it was to leave Bucky, and how strongly you need to rescue him now? You don’t know what it was like for us, for all of us, to come home from the war intact and alive, but missing our captain. We all looked for you. And yes, some of us married and created families, but we have carried the guilt of not finding you for a long time. Howard, especially, who thought his inventions could do anything, found it impossible to accept that they couldn’t find you. But he loved his son, don’t doubt that.”
“I don’t.”
“Poor Tony. It was hard, even for those closest to Howard, to see more than the alcohol and attitude. He never got over the past, and his brain never let him rest or enjoy the present.” Peggy sighed, then changed the subject. “And Agent Coulson? How is it, living with your biggest fan?”
Steve cursed his fair skin, with its propensity for blushing. “Ah, he’s not… I have a lot of respect for him.”
“I’m sure you do,” she smiled.
“No, really,” he rushed to explain. “He’s done a fantastic job and doesn’t let his… fascination with the Howling Commandos interfere with his work. Hey, how do you know him?”
“Oh, as a SHIELD agent he had access to all the records and contacted us. During his vacations, he interviewed all of us and compiled anecdotal records of our experiences in World War II. No one else had done quite as complete a job; some day, I hope that those become public record.”
Peggy’s compliment would mean a lot to Coulson; Steve made a mental note to relay it to him. He couldn’t think of anything to say other than he hoped declassification happened after he died, whenever that was, but that probably wouldn’t go over well.
Silence blanketed the room so Steve searched for words to say. There was so much to say but nothing seemed suitable. Finally, he asked her about her life. “Were you happy?”
“At first, I mourned you,” she answered unflinchingly. “And that was difficult. I remember when I was where you are right now, and I know it’s difficult, and I’m so very sorry. But clichés aside, time does help, darling. I mourned you and all the young men and courageous women who didn’t come home after the war for a long time. Eventually, I started having more happy days than sad days, and I found someone who made me very happy. We had only one child but we had more nieces and nephews and then their children running in and out of our home. I had my work, which became SHIELD, and I didn’t forget you, or Bucky, or any of the other friends and family members I lost, but I learned to think of you without letting sadness rule my life.”
“You married?”
She shook her head. “No, but we were together for forty-eight years. He died in his sleep, an old man.”
“That’s… nice.” Steve doubted he’d get that kind of ending.
“I suppose. And I suppose I’m not too far from a similar fate, and I’m more than fine with that.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re going to live forever.” You’re going to live long enough for me to catch up with you.
“Oh, Steve.” She caught the words he didn’t say as clearly as if he’d shouted them. “Steve, we are never going to happen.”
He shook his head. “I can’t… I don’t accept that.” He couldn’t give up on hope that easily. He’d spent three years building something with her, and it’d take at least as long to let it go. “The age difference, the ice—none of it matters, Peggy.”
“Of course it matters,” she scoffed.
“No, it doesn’t. I love you,” he explained in a logical, almost dispassionate tone.
“And I loved you, Steve, so very, very much,” she said gently, hoping she was gentle enough. She’d been afraid of just this. Yes, part of the reason she’d not reached out to him until now had been vanity. She wanted that ridiculously handsome boy to remember her as a gorgeous young girl. But more than that, she’d wanted to not have to break his heart.
For a minute, she thought he’d accepted her words, but then he looked up at her, his features resolved. “No. No, this isn’t over.” He got to his feet and made for the door, but then turned around before leaving. “Once I get Bucky back, I’ll return. We’ll have our dance, Peggy Carter.”
She closed her eyes and heard him leave. She’d been wrong. She hadn’t broken his heart, but he’d broken hers. Again.
*
In the end, it was almost too easy, but no one said that out of fear of jinxing the mission.
There hadn’t been any sightings of the Winter Soldier since the end of the Cold War, so he wasn’t a priority for either side. And since no one was looking for him, he wasn’t very well hidden or guarded. The Avengers went into an installation with a SHIELD team, and, with Agent Sharon Carter’s considerable assistance, extracted the only inhabited cryogenic pod in the facility. In the process, they lost no one, and wounded four enemy soldiers, but did not take a single life. Success, by anyone’s standards.
In one single mission, Steve had won the hearts and souls of the entirety of SHIELD, but he didn’t notice. Once they were back on the quinjet, his attention was consumed by the Tony, Bruce and the team working on the pod. “Well?”
“Well give us a little more time, Capsicle! This isn’t like the pod good ol’ Dad built. Say what you want about Howard, he was a fucking genius and even if he cut corners with any of his experiments, which he didn’t, he definitely spared no expense on making sure his Boy Wonder stayed in mint condition in the packaging. The Soviets, not so much.”
“Is he injured?” To come so close, and then to fail. Steve couldn’t accept that, he wouldn’t.
Tony glanced up at him quickly, forcing a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “No, but it’s tricky work. Obviously they kept defrosting him and then sticking him back in for a rainy day, so it works, but we need to be back on the helicarrier before we even try to get him out. And I want a real doctor, no offense Bruce, to look at some of these scans.”
“Trust me, none taken,” Bruce answered and then gave some reassurance of his own. “Cap, this is tricky, but his vital signs are good. Not Captain America good, but that we’re not aiming for.” At that point, they all began talking techno-gibberish and Steve was left far behind.
Natasha grabbed his arm. “Let’s let the geniuses work on this, Captain. They know what to do better than we do.”
Clint looked back from the pilot’s seat, where he was unwrapping his hand as the jet steered itself home. “Yeah, and while we’re twiddling our thumbs over here, can I just say? You can lead me into battle anytime, sir. That was one glorious mission there.”
Coulson, who was running cleanup on the ground, chimed in over the radio. “Yes, great job, Captain.” If there was a note of worship in his tone, no one commented on it. They were all still careful with Phil, still too grateful he was there to give him a hard time.
Steve blushed and pushed their comments aside. “We make a great team.” But even if he’d been comfortable with praise, he wouldn’t have been paying attention to them for long.
Natasha and Clint shared a worried glance, but then they too turned to Bucky’s pod.
*
“So, he’s okay?”
“Well, aside from the mechanical arm, which I’m so taking a look at once I’m done here, he seems to be fine physically.”
“That’s a little premature,” Dr. Jameel argued. “I’m concerned about his brain scans.”
Steve looked appalled. “Do you think he’s been brain-damaged? Tony, that’s not fine!”
“No,” Dr. Jameel smiled. “Not that bad, but concerning. Quite frankly, Captain, his scans match those of others we have found, including Agent Barton there. His brain shows all the markings of one who has been brainwashed.”
“Well, we knew that going in,” Steve pointed out.
Fury snorted. “We knew that his brain had been wiped, Captain. But in case you’re forgetting, Captain Barton didn’t forget us.”
“You think he’s been implanted with a suggestion,” Tony surmised. “I think I saw this in a movie.”
“But we don’t know what this suggestion is, or what could trigger it?” Natasha asked.
Tony snapped his fingers. “Denzel Washington!”
“The Manchurian Candidate!” Thor exclaimed, equally gleeful.
“First,” Pepper said, “we need to stick to animated movies for movie night. And second, what does that mean?”
“It means that we should control what happens when we wake him up,” Natasha answered coolly. “I should be the only one there.”
“And me,” Steve broke in. When they all looked at him doubtfully, he argued that there was no way he could be the suggestion. “Everyone thought I was dead. Besides, if he sees me when he wakes up, maybe it’ll jar something loose. Maybe he’ll think it’s back then. I want him to see people he remembers.” I didn’t, he doesn’t say, but it was there, and no one argued.
So Steve and Natasha were there when Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes opened his eyes and looked at the world around him for the first time in more than fifteen years.
His eyes widened at the sight of Natasha, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, ever the vigilant warrior, he continued his scan of the room. It only took a few more seconds and a slight shift of the neck for him to see Steve, and then all hell broke loose.
*
“What the hell was that?” Tony cried as he brushed the spangly uniform down, looking for injuries.
“I’m fine,” Steve said, but he was obviously shaken. His eyes didn’t leave the observation mirror as he watched Natasha put her arms around Bucky and calm him down. “He didn’t touch me; I got out first.”
“You mean Natasha pushed you out first,” Pepper snapped, feeling her heart calm down for the first time since Sergeant Barnes had sprung out of bed with his amputated arm coming up, almost aiming at the Captain. Natasha had been a blur of movement as she’d grabbed Captain Rogers and pushed him out of the room, slamming the door on his startled face. “What the hell was he trying to do with his arm?”
“I don’t know, but I’m checking it out with the suit on,” Tony said grimly.
They watched Natasha settle Barnes back on his bed, where he sat down and buried his face in his palms. She stared at him for a few minutes and then walked out. “Well, I have some good news and some bad news.”
“Good news first, I don’t get delayed gratification,” Tony demanded.
Natasha shot him a withering glare, but it had no effect. “It’s not a compulsion. It’s more like a voice in his head telling him to kill you. It doesn’t go away, but he doesn’t have to do what it says. So when I said we’re on the same side, he said it wouldn’t be a problem not to kill you.”
“So I can see him? I can go in?”
“Here’s the bad news.”
Steve swallowed. “He doesn’t remember me?”
“No.”