Author's note: It's not necessary, but if you care about continuity, this is set sometime after Sarcophagus.
On Whose Shoulders We Stand
- O -
It was one of those rare New England spring days, when the sun shone warm across the bright green of the rolling hills. Dark clouds threatened along the skyline, but the weather forecast promised good weather for at least a few more hours, and that would be enough.
Beside him, Peggy hoisted the sheaf of flowers in her arms, eyes steady as she looked up into his face.
"You all right?" she asked, and Steve swallowed, nodding.
"Yeah," he answered. She freed one hand, reaching out to slip her fingers through his, and the touch made something in his chest settle.
He had only been here a couple times since the 1940's; once not long after he had been thawed out, and then a few other sporadic visits on anniversaries or holidays. He'd been alone then - terribly, desperately alone - but he wasn't anymore, and somehow that made a world of difference.
Hand in hand, they trekked up the hill and across the side of the velvety green slope, walking between rows of headstones memorializing the lives of the people whose names they bore. It was strange, seeing dates that began after he'd gone into the ice and ended before he had woken up. Whole lifetimes had passed while he lay unconscious at the top of the world.
Memorial Day had changed a lot in the years he'd been gone. The cemetery looked like it was decked out for a party, with flowers dotting the grass everywhere he looked. Some places were more heavily decorated than others, with pinwheels and streamers and memorabilia covering them. Others had a few home-grown flowers, carefully arranged in a mason jar or a can covered with tin foil. Many graves had nothing at all. Perhaps their descendents lived too far away to come pay their respects in person.
Steve's feet remembered the route, and together they stepped between two tall pines to find the place they'd been seeking.
Sarah Rogers, one stone said, flanked neatly by two flat metal veterans plaques. Steve held Peggy's hand a little tighter, and she stepped into his side, looking down.
"Mom, Dad," he cleared his throat. "This is Peggy."
Peggy let him have his moment of silence, running her thumb across his knuckles. The loss of a parent never quite went away, no matter how many years rolled between.
"She's got her two soldiers to look out for her," she pointed out at last, gesturing to the veteran memorial plaques on the left and right of Sarah's humble little stone. In keeping with the day, the cemetery had placed metal crosses and American flags at each veteran's grave, and the stars and stripes fluttered merrily in the breeze over the names of Joseph and Steven Rogers.
Steve regarded the stone on the right with just a trace of a wry grin on his lips. Yes, it was thoughtful for the Barneses to have filled out the paperwork for his memorial stone so that he could be remembered beside his mother, but it was the strangest thing in the world to look at his own name, embossed in the bronze metal.
STEVEN GRANT ROGERS
CAPT US ARMY
WORLD WAR II
1918 - 1945
Still, he liked it better than the large cenotaph in Washington DC. That one was for Captain America; this one was in his memory, installed out of the genuine kindness of his friends' hearts.
"Who sent this?" Peggy asked, brushing a petal with her fingers. The other two headstones were bare, but Steve's vacant grave had a large arrangement of red, white and blue gladiolus set on it.
"You have to ask?" Steve asked, and they both laughed a little. Only Tony Stark would send a florist all the way out to Brooklyn to put flowers on the grave of his very-much-alive teammate.
Grass had grown up over the edges of the stones, but Steve had come prepared. Together they knelt in the damp greenness, using trowels and a squirt bottle to clear them off, making them look presentable and cared for. He didn't bother with his own headstone, but Peggy brushed the grass clippings away from it with her fingers, her hair twisted back to keep out of her face as she worked.
He'd brought roses for his mother; long-stemmed, fragrant, richly colored - the kind of thing he would have liked to have given her, the kind of thing they could never have afforded. Laying them gently across the base of her headstone, he traced the letters of her name with reverence. Joseph Rogers got flowers too, pulled from the mixed bunch that Peggy had been carrying. She arranged them carefully, before sitting back and letting Steve slip his arms around her, tucking her into him, holding her close.
Together they sat in the grass, looking at their work. Everyone remembered Captain America. Nobody remembered his parents, although they were the people who had shaped his life through example and guidance, making him the man he was today.
"Did I tell you I came here once?" Peggy inquired eventually, tipping her head up on Steve's shoulder. At his curious look, she elaborated a little. "It was the first Remembrance Day after the war, and I couldn't stand all those idiots at the SSR one more minute, so I - thought I would spend the day with you." She shrugged. "Well, as close as I could get, anyway."
He turned to lay his face against her hair, touched that she would think of him, take time out of her schedule to sit by his memorial stone. His mother would have liked her, he was sure.
"Right," Steve said at last, fumbling out the paper printout he'd been carrying in his pocket. He had never quite been able to make himself go to Bucky's grave before, but things had changed, and it seemed appropriate. "Um, we go - south from here?"
Before they left, he took the extravagant arrangement from its place behind his own headstone, moving it over so it stood between those of his parents. One of the flowers he pulled out altogether, taking three or four steps to lay it across another little stone. At Peggy's curious glance, he flushed defensively.
"Girl who lived a couple doors down," he explained. "Fell off the roof when she was six. I doubt anybody still remembers her. I only barely remember her myself."
- O -
The Barnes family wasn't buried too far away, as it turned out, but their graves were still hard to find. Steve and Peggy split up, zigzagging up and down the rows, scanning them perfunctorily as they hunted for a familiar name. Other people crossed their paths on similar errands - parents with young children, older men and women in couples or alone.
"When I go," one elderly man informed Steve solemnly as they passed each other, "I'm gonna be buried with my smartphone so I can find my own grave."
Peggy found them first, whistling through her teeth to catch her sweetheart's attention. It was perhaps a little irreverent for a cemetery, but Bucky wouldn't have minded in the least. He had a veteran memorial stone as well, right beside his father, matching flags posted next to each.
Steve stood a long time by his friend's empty grave, lips tight, head bared. The fact that Bucky wasn't dead, was in fact knocking around the world at that very moment didn't make his personal guilt much easier to bear. Peggy's hand filled his again, and at last he gave her a grateful nod, not quite smiling.
Together they set out flowers for the people who had become Steve's second family - Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, their children, and even one grandchild that Steve had never known about. By mutual consent, they left Bucky's for last.
He had wanted to leave poppies for his friend. Poppies were a flower of remembrance, a pledge to keep faith. The woman at the florist shop didn't have any, though. Apparently they were too fragile a flower for mass commercial sales, and buying a bunch of plastic ones didn't seem quite right.
"If he could stop by, what would you want him to find?" Peggy had finally asked. That had decided the question, and Steve had stayed up all night, amassing an impressive pile of crumpled paper before finally sealing the finished letter tightly. Now he propped the envelope against the edge of the headstone, laying a few flowers and a rock across it so the wind would be less likely to blow it away.
Chances were very slim that Bucky would ever see it. The letter would in all likelihood be swept up by cemetery staff at the end of the week with the rest of the flowers and decorations. Still, if there was even the barest chance of getting word to his lost friend, Steve would take it in a heartbeat.
"I will find your son," Steve promised the silent graves of his friend's parents. "I swear I will bring him back."
"We will find him," Peggy supplemented, and her eyes were full of determination. Really, Steve had no idea how he'd ever managed to get a girl like her.
- O -
The last grave they visited was a very small one, tucked away almost out of sight beneath an enthusiastic rosebush. Steve pulled out his heavy leather gloves to bend the branches away. Neither of them had any clippers, so he broke off some of the twigs between his fingers until the little headstone stood clear.
Abraham Erskine, it read, with a simple birth and death date. That was all. It was very likely that nobody had ever visited this quiet grave. His immediate family had not survived the Nazi regime, and any extended family members probably still lived in Europe.
Nobody else had ever really known the quiet inventor with the big dreams and the strength to stand against a dictator and a madman.
Peggy laid the last of their flowers at the base of the stone, fingers lingering on the wet, smooth stems. She had known the doctor, known him well, even. Certainly she knew him better than anyone still living.
"Thank you," she told him softly. Steve's hand was on her shoulder, reminding her of the great gift the doctor had given the world - and unwittingly given to her as well. Without Erskine's talents, Steve would be long since dead. Actually, without a man capable of stopping Schmidt, they all would be dead.
The little inventor's shadow had stretched further than he ever would have expected.
- O -
The sun was beginning to dip low as they headed for the gate at last, side by side. Up ahead, an older woman helped her father out of a truck. The elderly man wore a WWII Veteran cap and both Steve and Peggy nodded to him, aware of their shared kinship as he passed them, intent on his own mission.
"I need to get you one of those," Peggy decided after he had passed.
Steve couldn't help chuckling. "People will think I'm wearing my grandpa's hat," he protested mildly. He knew she would get him one anyway though, and the thought didn't bother him a bit.
The opening bars of the National Anthem split the air as the flag near the cemetery entrance began to go down, wind whipping it until it stood out in the light of the lowering sun, bright against the darkened clouds. Steve stopped short, straightening his back as he came to attention, saluting.
That flag meant many things to him. It was a symbol of the nation he belonged to, a representation of the freedom he had fought for, the dream his mother trusted in and his father had died for. Beside him, Peggy came to attention as well. She wasn't an American by birth, but that didn't stop her from rendering respect to the country they had both served so long and so well.
"Thanks for coming with me," Steve told her after the last note rang through the trees, and they had resumed their walk. His arm was warm around her waist, and she leaned into him as they made their way through the cemetery.
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Peggy told him honestly. This day had been a good one, all about paying respect to those who had gone before, who had fought to establish and maintain the land Steve loved - the people who had helped to make him the man he was today.
Thunder rumbled then, and the first drops fell, big as quarters. Peggy yelped involuntarily at the trickle of rainwater running down the back of her neck.
"Here," Steve slung his jacket over her shoulders, digging out the keys from his pocket. "Race you to the car?"
Hand in hand, they ran through the heavy rain for the exit, laughing like children.
- O -
Memorial Day is an American holiday. Technically it's a day to remember those who died while serving in the Armed Forces, but for many of us, it's also a day to remember our loved ones and ancestors who have passed on. Whether they fought for freedom of speech, of religion, or of government, they are worthy of remembrance. As a descendent of countless veterans and pioneers, Memorial Day is very special to me.
Nobody in this story is entirely mine. If it's not a Marvel character, then it's based on somebody I have either known or personally met - from the six-year-old girl to the old man with a smartphone in the cemetery. I understand that observances of this day may differ widely across the country, but this is a picture of what Memorial Day looks like in my community.
As of 2008, United States veterans who are out of uniform can salute the flag if they so desire. I'm pretty sure Steve Rogers would be the kind of man who would.