"Despite my time on the front, Doctor, I'm not yet an expert in your field." She gestures to the shades of x-rayed gray. "You'll have to tell me what it means."
The doctor compresses his lips into an uneasy line and says, "I'm sorry to tell you, Ms. Carter…"
In the pause, she almost says, Agent, because that has always protected her. She knows, though, that it doesn't matter now.
The doctor rallies. "It's the beginning of dementia, I'm afraid. You can see the deterioration here, and here."
I won't have enough time. The thought comes from nowhere, and serves no purpose. Daniel is dead. She is eight-nine years old.
Time for what?
.
Sharon is a faithful niece. Peggy has no grandchildren—Elizabeth married late, and Peter didn't marry at all, but Michael's young war-bride had a daughter before he died. A daughter he never met, who raised another daughter, who joined the forces her tenacious family line had formed.
Carters are built to last.
"You have to remember," Peggy says, when Sharon tells her that she should rest, that she shouldn't wear her voice out telling stories that Sharon has heard before. "Someone has to remember."
Sharon grips her hand. Sharon's accent is flawlessly American; she was raised in Rhode Island. "I will, Aunt Peg," she murmurs. "I will."
.
"I accept it, you know," Daniel told her once. His knuckles were white around his crutch, but his eyes were steady as light above land or water, as steady as any light at all. "Not being your first love."
"You shouldn't have to." Peggy's handkerchief is crumpled in her hand; her voice crumples too, bitter with tears. It is ten years to the day that Steve's radio cut out. Ten years to the day that Peggy Carter died too, in one way, and lived, in another. "Damn you, you're too good for me."
She remembers, though she does not tell this story to Sharon, how Daniel sat with her, the crutch thrown aside. How he took her face in his hands but did not kiss her. Did not ask that of her, then. He merely rested his forehead against hers, and stayed like that until her breathing evened out into something less like sobbing static.
.
"Do I forget you sometimes?" she asks—though she wishes she didn't have to.
Steve's smile is practiced, like a smile that used to hurt and still does, but is readily summoned all the same. "Peggy," he says. "Don't you worry about that. Years have been hard on us all."
He looks the same. He looks exactly the same. Peggy has birthed two children, taken a bullet to the left shoulder, broken one hip and had an iron rod spike through the other, loved and lost and watched her hair grow gray. She knows the answer to her own question, even though the world feels small and she doesn't really know what else she'll be forgetting soon.
"God, Steve." She brushes his smooth cheek with a papery hand, hating those veins and age spots like they don't rightfully belong to her. "I'm so sorry."
.
The next time he visits, she doesn't recognize him.
.
"Aunt Peg? You awake?"
Peggy opens her mouth, draws together every shred of effort, and says, "I would like one more moment of lucidity before I die."
Sharon laughs, a little chokily. "There you are."
Peggy can see her, even in the dark. Sharon has golden hair and darker eyes, a warm smile and a firm handshake.
Peggy, her chart tells her, is ninety-five years old. There are pictures on her nightstand. One is Daniel. She doesn't remember who Daniel is supposed to be, but she knows his name and his smile.
"Steve," Peggy says. The moment of lucid—luc—whatever she wanted, is slipping. "Do you know him?"
Sharon blushes. Even in the dark, Peggy can see.
"Yes," Sharon says. "I know Steve."
Relief is a sigh. Relief might be memory, but Peggy settles for the sigh. "Take care of him," she says. "Take care of Steve."
Sharon says, "I will," and that is kind of Sharon, though Peggy is no longer certain who Sharon is supposed to be.
Steve, she repeats, when Sharon is gone, when the last lights are turned out, when she can't see the pictures on the nightstand anymore. Steve. The name is not a sigh, the name is a memory.
Peggy follows it out.