Eye of heaven, pray gently smile,
And though the cold wind blow,
Soft, may you warm and mind my love
That I do love her so.

Westron Wynde

Peggy's not usually clumsy.

She doesn't realize her hands are shaking until she tries to open the vial. It cracks and she gasps, her hands stinging, brilliant scarlet coating her skin.

Steve.

Blood coats her fingers and she stares through blurry eyes, watching the last traces of Steve Rogers spill into the river, with part of her joining him.

"Goodbye, my darling."

The cuts on her hand are deeper than she realized; by the time she gets back to the house, they've stopped bleeding but she can see the lacerations are fairly deep.

Angie obligingly plucks out the bits of glass with tweezers and wraps it up for her. "What'd you do, slap a window?"

Peggy smiles faintly. "Just an accident."

She has trouble sleeping. When she does sleep, it's fitful, restless. It's May but she keeps waking up cold in the night, digging through her closet for her warm robe, then rooting through her dresser for a pair of socks, and finally going to the linen closet for an extra blanket.

She wakes up sweating under her covers. She's unsettled. But she can't quite place it.

Peggy assumes she's just going through a troubled spell. Stress is finally taking a toll on her sleep. It's probably nothing.

Except it doesn't stop. She spends a month exhausted, her body aching with fatigue, collapsing into her bed only to wake gasping, her heart racing. One night she wakes up shaking so hard she's thrown off her covers. Another night, she's suffocating, clawing at her pillow, every muscle tense in a futile attempt to take a breath.

There's one night, though, that she's already chilly when she goes to bed, and she wakes up at three, crying so hard she feels nauseated.

At work, no one says anything, though she catches Sousa trying to sneak glances when he thinks she's not looking. She knows she looks tired.

Angie, of course, has no problem offering her opinion. "Jeez, Peg. Something wrong? You look like a ragdoll."

"Just tired."

"You've been 'just tired' for weeks. Is something wrong?"

"I don't know." Peggy shakes her head. "Maybe I need a break."

"You work every day. It couldn't hurt." Angie grins. "But, you know, if you don't want to run off to Paris just yet, I did find some really good wine in the kitchen. Call it a tiny Italian getaway."

A few hours later, Angie's three sheets to the wind, but Peggy feels clear-headed. She laughs as Angie staggers off to her own room, slurring out G'night, Pegsss, and stands at the sink, rinsing out an empty bottle.

She doesn't think too much of it - Peggy has always held her liquor better than most women her size, and Angie's had a lot more to drink than she has - until something strikes her.

She freezes. The bottle clatters in the sink.

She remembers a cold, rainy day. The ruins of a bar. Steve, sitting at a table, crying quietly over his best friend.

I can't get drunk.

Peggy wipes her hands with a towel, turning them over slowly. The cuts have long since faded, leaving her skin smooth. She hadn't expected scarring, but now, looking at the unmarked skin, she feels a shiver run through her.

She has Steve Rogers in her veins.

She almost picks up the phone to call Howard, but freezes. Jarvis. Howard doesn't know she had the vial. She can't betray her most faithful ally. Especially not for an unsupported whim, a fleeting, shapeless worry born from a month of stress and lack of sleep.

It's probably nothing.

Peggy's nothing if not a thorough investigator.

A few days later, she tries purposely getting drunk again, drinking enough to make herself sick, quickly and on an empty stomach.

When she gets nothing but a mild spell of dizziness, and wakes up with only the faintest trace of a hangover, she finally realizes she has to do something.

Rather than going straight to Howard, she calls Jarvis first.

When she tells him exactly what's happened, he lets out a breath. "Agent Carter. You need to call Mr. Stark at once. This could be serious."

"But - the vial. He doesn't know -"

"Miss Carter." His voice is very gentle. "I'll not sacrifice your safety for my own convenience. Tell him the truth."

After Angie leaves for her evening shift, Peggy calls Howard. He hurries into the apartment an hour later, slamming the door shut behind him. "What is it?"

"I think - something happened."

She repeats her story for him, wincing internally as she tells him about the vial Jarvis gave her. To his credit, though, he says nothing, just lets her continue.

"It cut my hand." Her throat gets tight as she remembers it, but she keeps going. "It bled quite a bit."

"And - what's the problem?"

"I can't sleep." She knots her hands. "When I do, I keep waking up, panicked. Or freezing. Or suffocating. And I don't seem to - to be able to get drunk."

"Can't get drunk?"

"No." Peggy took a breath. "Neither could Steve."

Howard's face falls, his eyes going wide. Peggy feels her stomach drop. For the first time it feels real; till now, it was just a worry in the back of her mind. But Howard Stark is a scientist, and from the look on his face, there's reason to be worried.

"Have you noticed any other physical changes?"

"No." She looks at her hands. "I guess - there were no scars, but I'm not sure I would have expected them."

Howard nods. "I'd like to do some tests on you, if that's okay."

"Of course." Peggy relaxes a fraction of a percent. It's still a mystery, but if it's just dreams and sobriety, maybe it's not as terrifying as she's been imagining. She doesn't seem to be developing a red skull or excessive muscle mass, at least. "Do you have any theories?"

Howard sits back, his brow furrowed. "You know as well as anyone, Peg, there's a hell of a lot we still don't know about that serum and its effects." He shakes his head. "We know literally nothing about its effects on multiple people. All we really know is what the full dose did to Steve. So I can only speculate."

"That's it, then? So now what?"

He gives her a half-smile.

"We need to figure out what it's done to you."

He swabs her cheek and draws a not-insignificant amount of blood from her arm and asks a thousand questions. She'd expected nothing less.

He leaves with a hug and the promise to return. "I'll figure this out, Peggy. I will."

"I trust you," she tells him, which are three of the hardest words she can imagine saying, second only to the three she never got to say to Steve.

A week later, he shows up at the door again. This time he knocks, slowly, and Peggy opens it to find him more pensive than usual.

"I have some answers. And maybe more questions."

She makes him a cup of tea and they settle in the kitchen.

"So do you know what's happening?"

"Yes and no." Howard sighs, running his hands through his hair. "Your bloodwork shows some cellular changes. Not exactly the same as Steve's, but there are similarities. Your metabolism is quicker, which explains your tolerance for alcohol."

"The nightmares?"

"No. That's what I can't explain." Howard shook his head. "I've pored over his records. He never reported anything like that. And none of Erskine's notes mention neurological effects."

He flips through a file, pointing to a scribble in a chart. Peggy bites back Why do you have this file? It's not really the main point right now. "So something different is happening."

"Think about it. You didn't actually get the serum like he did. You got his blood, which contained the serum." Howard set aside the file. "This is uncharted territory. I can't predict anything."

"Do you have a theory?" Her heart is starting to race. She doesn't like uncertainty.

He looks at her for a long time before speaking. "I might. But I'm not sure how you'll feel about it. And I have no idea how to test it."

"Try me."

"What if it's not coming from you? What if they're not dreams?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have no way of proving this - I don't know how to test brain activity at this level - but what if your mind is connecting to something outside of you? – like some kind of radio receiver?"

She blinks. "You think I'm having visions?"

"Maybe."

"Shall I trot off to Delphi and call myself an oracle?"

"Peg, I think you know, better than anyone, just how much science exists beyond our current understanding."

She grits her teeth, but as much as she hates to admit it, Howard has a point, as he often does. "So if these - nightmares, for lack of a better word - really are coming from outside of my own mind, then where are they coming from?"

He looks at her as if she's a child.

"From someone else."

"You're suggesting I'm telepathic?" He's officially lost his mind.

"Let's say it does work like that. Hypothetically. Wouldn't telepathy take two people, people who are connected on some deep level?"

She blinks. The air rushes out of her lungs.

"You mean Steve."

(She's told herself she's over him, that she's accepted his death and moved on with her life. But it still hurts to say his name. Physically hurts, a sharp, hot cut deep in her chest.)

"Yes."

"Steve wasn't telepathic."

"We don't know that. No one else had had the serum."

They've moved past science and into a silly science-fiction novel that makes no sense, and Peggy's so caught up in trying to say the name Steve without flinching that she's lost her will to fight with any conviction.

"It can't be. He's dead."

Howard holds up his hands. "I know how you felt about him, Peggy. But I have to be a scientist here. We know the plane went down in the ice. We know he was on it. And now you're having visions, or dreams, or whatever you want to call them, about freezing and suffocating."

Her heart, which has been pounding more and more quickly, stumbles in her chest, and she wonders if it's something dangerous, or did his heart turn over like this? "They're just dreams."

"Who are you trying to convince?"

She doesn't know why she's so desperate for Howard to be wrong.

"Howard, I just - I can't -"

"Well, hell. Maybe it's his spirit. His ghost. Soul. Whatever. Maybe it's science, maybe it's an honest-to-God miracle. Maybe he needs something." Howard fixes her with a look so much like boyish, earnest Steve that she catches her breath. "Don't we owe it to him to try?"

After Howard leaves, Peggy curls up on her bed, trying to hold back tears. Her throat aches.

Howard wants to go to Greenland. For Steve.

He can't be alive. The most they're going to find is a bomber, trapped in the ice. A trail of wreckage. A shining shield, emblazoned with a star.

She thinks about the words find his body and her chest feels like it's cracking open.

She wakes shivering in the middle of a hot, muggy July night to find her phone ringing. It's Howard.

"I think we found the wreck."

She doesn't stop shaking all night.

When Peggy explains why she and Stark are going to Greenland, Sousa gets very quiet for a long moment.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of dogtags.

"Here."

Peggy takes them slowly. "What is this?"

"If, um - if you - if you find him." Sousa closes her fingers around them. "He saved my life. Saved my whole unit. I always wished I could have said 'thank you.'"

Peggy clasps his hand in hers. She knows Sousa well enough to know what this means to him. "I'll say it for you."

"I know the two of you were very close."

"Yes." So close. So very nearly -

"I heard that you were on the radio with him. When he went down."

She nods.

"I'm so sorry."

She gives him a watery smile. "So am I."

"But - at least -" Sousa clears his throat - "at least the last thing he heard was your voice."

It's something she's told herself before, but this is the first time it's ever given her the faintest trace of comfort.

That night, she dreams about Steve. He says nothing, just holds her close.

For the first time in months, she wakes up with a sense of peace.