I think I broke my feels writing this. I was thinking earlier today and suddenly had an onslaught of Steve/Peggy feels and thus this oneshot was born.
I don't own Marvel, as much as we wish we all did. And I hope you guys find enjoyment or other feelings of the sort while reading this.
I had a date.
A date he'd never been on. Going down in that plane, plummeting towards the ice, Steve knew that their plans for a date were simply words helping to coax him out of the fear bubbling in his gut, and words to help her cope with his imminent fate.
Every night he heard the static of her voice coming through the plane speakers swirling in his head, every word of hers planted in his memory like they'd been branded with an iron. They would have danced. Eaten fondue. They would have laughed, lived, loved, had the time of their lives, then they would have both gone home, envying the night for taking the other.
Steve knew she was probably gone now. He'd gone down in 1942 and woken up seventy years later – if she wasn't gone, she was very, very old, and probably couldn't remember him even if she tried.
That didn't stop him from looking up S.H.I.E.L.D's files on Peggy Carter, staring at the faded photos, rereading the word retired and convincing himself that it wasn't synonymous with dead.
The others didn't know that the time he spent alone was mostly spent trying to track her down – he knew that they'd either try to convince him that it wasn't worth it, or someone (probably Tony) would tell him that it was all silly and that he'd never get a hit on the results. What they also didn't know, however, was that he did.
Having traced back family trees to the early 1940s, he found that Peggy had ended up marrying another man and having three children, and now was living with her granddaughter, Abigail Fournier, in a small town in Pennsylvania. Steve was well aware that it wouldn't be right for him to just leave without giving notice, but he'd spent a good amount of time weighing his options and decided to take a few days and go down. After all, he was staying in New York for the time being, and it wouldn't hurt to investigate, would it?
Deep down he knew it probably would hurt and he'd end up disappointed, just like he'd spent the time since he'd awoken from his seventy-year coma. But there was something pulling him towards her, or what he hoped was her, and he ended up leaving that night.
During the time spent traveling to the address he'd found in the files, Steve found himself back in the forties, and though he was grateful for the memories, almost wished they would stop. No, he needed to focus on the present. What's gone is gone, and as much as he tried to have faith that what he needed was still around, the scenes from their encounters constantly sunk into his brain like a dull knife.
"You don't like music?" Steve asked, his voice muffled by the men's voices harmonizing with the melody of a classic.
"I do, actually," Peggy responded matter-of-factly. "I might, even when this is all over, go dancing."
"Then what are we waiting for?"
She turned to look at him then, her hazel eyes trained on his. They were silent for a moment, trapped in the noises surrounding them, before she finally said, "The right partner."
Steve felt a knot in his throat and shook his head, focusing on the road in front of him. The headlights blared over the slick, black pavement, the sun just beginning to rise over the horizon. To his right stood a lone, rickety sign that read 'Welcome to Hawley, PA', and Steve knew he'd thankfully arrived in the right place.
It didn't take him long to find the house where Peggy's granddaughter resided; the town was small and fairly easy to navigate, especially for somebody like Steve who had little experience in the matter. Eventually he found himself in the driveway of a reasonably small ranch house, surrounded and shaded by looming pine trees, their needles littering the grass. He felt his gut tighten as he stepped up to the door and a million thoughts swam through his brain, things like 'what if the granddaughter is a loon' and 'I could be in the completely wrong place, the files could have been off', and the one he least liked and feared was the most likely to be true, 'what if she's dead?'
Steve inhaled a deep lungful of the morning air as he pressed the doorbell button, and nervously rocked back and forth on his heels. For a moment, nobody answered and he feared that he had actually gone to the right house, but then the door opened a crack and a woman's face appeared.
"Can I help you?" The woman looked to be about mid-thirties, with auburn hair cut only slightly past her shoulders. She bore a striking resemblance to the younger Peggy that Steve remembered, and he was speechless for a second, but then regained himself and answered.
"Yes. You're Abigail Fournier, correct?" He waited for confirmation, which the woman gave in the form of a nod. "Okay, good. My name is Steve Rogers, and I'm looking for your grandmother, actually, Peggy. Is she here?"
"Steve Rogers." Abigail said his name with a sort of quizzical look about her, but Steve saw a spark of remembrance in her eyes. "You're not Captain America, are you? She talks about him an awful lot."
Steve smiled to himself and felt the knot in his stomach disintegrate. She remembers. "That's me."
"Well, then." She opened the door and stood back, gesturing for him to enter. "She's here. Don't worry, you didn't wake us up or anything. She doesn't normally sleep late anyway. Odd for someone her age, but… she's always been a strange one, I guess."
Sure has, Steve thought, looking around the quaint home. In the countless dreams he'd had, this was the type of home they would have owned together – small, cozy, just the right amount of light filtering through the windows to keep it comfortable and private. It was perfect, actually, and he felt that familiar pang of longing again.
He was so lost in the things he wished could have been that it took a minute for him to notice Abigail approaching the kitchen table, at which sat a wheelchair with an elderly woman seated in the middle.
Peggy.
She was alive.
And she was sitting right there in front of him.
"Grandma?" the younger woman said, putting her hand on the shoulder of the older. "There's someone here to see you."
"To see me?" Seventy years later, her voice still held the same twist of esteem. "Who comes to see me anymore?"
"His name is Steve Rogers." There was a moment of silence between the three, and Steve could only imagine the things that were running through the elderly woman's head. He backed up into what he assumed was the living room and stood awkwardly, waiting for Peggy to either ask to see him or tell him to get out of her house.
"Wheel me to the den, darling." Abigail glanced back at Steve for a moment, then did as her grandmother asked and turned the chair around, pushing her gently into the room where he stood.
Steve kept his gaze turned towards the floor for a minute, and he could very much feel Peggy's eyes focused in on his figure standing in the middle of her living room. Abigail said something about giving them some privacy before she exited the room, and Steve finally found the courage somewhere within him to look up at the woman he'd left behind.
When he looked up at her, the first thing he was how little her face had actually changed. Yes, she had aged, and yes, her skin certainly was not flawless, but her hazel eyes still held that same fire, even if the years had tried to pile up and work as an extinguisher against her, they'd failed. Her hair was a light shade of grey but still had the slight wave, and what Steve really noticed, despite her obvious hardships, she still held herself proudly.
He felt a smile slide onto his lips. She was still his Peggy.
"I know it's a bit late," he began, and he could feel his voice shaking as the words fell off of his tongue. "But if that rain check still stands…"
"Seventy years late, more like." She said it seriously, but there was still a hint of humor behind her voice. Steve took another moment to marvel in the fact that her memory was still intact – after all, the woman was over ninety years old, but somehow he doubted she'd ever let herself deteriorate. "I thought they'd never find you in that ice."
"Well, it took longer than expected," Steve chuckled, lowering himself onto the faded sofa.
"Evidently." Peggy paused. "What made you decide to come to this little old place and find me, anyway?"
"A good man always keeps his word," Steve responded, his eyes trained on hers. "We had a date." He was still mystified by the fact that this was actually happening, that she was actually here, alive, and that he'd managed to find the audacity within him to come and confirm his hopes.
It was almost too good to be real.
"Unfortunately, I think the Stork Club is closed," Peggy said, her words dripping with sarcasm. Steve found himself laughing quietly at her remark, and he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
"I've missed you, you know that?"
Peggy's face fell at his words and a short sigh escaped her lungs. "I've missed you as well. When I heard that they'd found you I thought that you'd forgotten."
"You thought that I'd forgotten you?" His question had an air of surprise. "How could I have forgotten you?"
Her frail shoulders rose in a shrug, and the gesture looked almost painful. "You'd been asleep for seventy years, Steve. People tend to forget things in that long of a time."
"Not me." He shook his head. "I don't forget, Peggy." And it was the truth. Since he'd been awake, each night he was haunted by the memories, his nightmares a montage of HYDRA and Schmidt and Bucky's dreadful demise – in fact, that was one of the most reoccurring, along with his last moments in the year 1942.
When he looked back at Peggy, he saw that she'd turned her face away, and he could have sworn he saw a shred of light reflect off a tear on her wrinkled cheek. "Every Saturday," she said faintly, her voice quivering. "Every Saturday I went to that club. And I waited, and waited. I thought that maybe if I kept going back that eventually you'd be there, too. But then I realized that you weren't coming back. I never forgot either, Steve. I could never forget. Eight o'clock Saturday night."
Just when Steve thought the knot in his throat was gone for good, it came back. He could picture it – a younger Peggy, sitting at the bar, waving off any other man who tried to make a move. She wouldn't drink, she wouldn't talk. She would just sit. Waiting. Waiting for the one who'd promised her a date, the one who'd flew his plane into the ice knowing that it meant death, and also knowing that he'd have to let her down.
And if he had to choose between the two, he'd take death any day over disappointing the headstrong woman he loved so dearly.
Steve inhaled deeply and stood from his place on the sofa, holding out his hands towards the woman in the wheelchair. "I know it's not the time we planned, ma'am," he began, "but could I have this dance?"
Surprise flashed across Peggy's face as she looked back at Steve standing before her. "Steve, I… I don't think I can." She looked down at herself in the chair, almost ashamed.
"Nonsense. I'll help you."
She was still a bit skeptical of her own physical abilities, but Peggy gave in and nodded. Placing her hand in his, she let Steve hoist her up and out of the chair, holding her frail body in the warm embrace of his own.
During the free time he had that wasn't spent tracking this woman down, Steve had actually taken the liberty of learning how to dance. Not because he really wanted to, but because it was sort of a memorial, something to remind him of what he thought he'd lost. And it was now that he was glad that he had, holding Peggy's weak body in his arms, slowly swaying side to side in rhythm with the tick of the clock.
He felt her head fall onto his shoulder and, carefully, Steve tightened his grip, holding onto the moment as tightly as he could. He closed his eyes and let the warmth take him back to the forties in the Stork Club, the band playing slow music as he and Peggy stood and swayed in that same position, her head on his shoulder and arms around his waist, and it was almost as if, just for a moment, everything was okay.
And it was at that moment he felt one of Peggy's warm tears stain his shirt, and it took him a moment to realize that there was another one of his own threatening to slip from the corner of his eye.
Finally.
Seventy years later.
He had a date.