Wow. I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted something. I promise, I didn't mean to abandon all you wonderful people! Life has a habit of getting out of control. I'll keep my a/n short up here so you can get to the depressing story beneath but I will include a longer apology/explanation at the end of the fic.
His boots smack off the wooden planks of the hallway's flooring. Portraits of sparse flower arrangements, rendered on rough canvases by amateur artists, cling to the crooked nails stuck carelessly into the walls. The air is heavy with the stench of antiseptic, disinfectant and old age. It tugs on his shoulders and settles like porridge in his nostrils. Yellowed light bulbs squint through the caking of dust and insect wings that coat their outsides. It angers him, the state of disarray the house is in. She deserves so much more than this.
He sighs and the carbon dioxide that leaves his teeth is the only current of air that moves in the silent corridor. It takes conscious effort for him to release his fingers from the fists they're curled into. The tendons on his hands shift and soon the antagonistic fists are gone, and only stiff fingers dangle at the end of his forearms. Rolling his head, working out the kinks in his neck which he'd obtained from his brief nap on the quinjet, he shoves all thoughts of his most recent mission to the back of his mind. They land with a clatter on the pile of his other unwanted memories, ideas, notions and plans that he's crammed in a dark corner of his brain. He'll sort through them later, when it's just him in a musty apartment with Bing Crosby crooning out a melody.
The warped edges of the bronze doorknob bump against the joints in his fingers as he rotates it. Complaining for the entire duration of the journey, the hinges grudgingly open the door for him. The smell inside is worse than in the hallway he's leaving. Gone is the sugar-sweet scent of a London bookstore, the minty snap of a Germanic dawn and the breathtaking rose perfume that always lingered on her hair. In the tiny room, shadows fill whatever space isn't crammed with throwaway mementos and second hand photographs. He slips between the gap of the beaten doorway and the scarred doorjamb and, stepping over the raised threshold, crosses the room. Avoiding the floorboards that he knows will creak under his weight, he makes his way to the small window. The cord is already in his hand before he pauses, unwilling to pull the blinds and disturb her if she is sleeping.
A sound comes from the bed, its pitch low and volume near inaudible. Coming from vocal chords long since used beyond their limits, the timid murmur that ends in a wet cough alerts him to the fact that she is not slumbering. He opens the drapes, allowing the meager sunlight to crawl through the glass. The faint beams loll on the faded bedsheets and throw the creases of her face into sharp relief. Carefully, he drags the wobbly chair from its perch in the corner and, wondering how long they will have before her mind resets itself, settles himself in. It takes a moment for her cataract eyes to find his face. As the nearly colorless irises float around the room, searching for clarity, he mentally steels himself for the same heartbreaking message he's listened to every day for the past two years. It never gets any easier to hear. Minutes pass by and the wrinkles in her pallid cheeks wiggle as her aged brain struggles to process the vague information her feeble senses are whispering. Craning a skinny neck, she peers at him through the gloom of her faulty eyesight. He grasps her bony hand, petting the age spots with a gentle touch, encouraging her to remember, remember-please remember-a time when she was as young as he looks.
The off-white pillows, smothered beneath her limp hair, rustle as she raises herself with pointed elbows and strains into the gloom around her. Ticking the seconds off incessantly, an arrogant clock stares at him from the dwarfish bedside table. The hands march across the face, poking at each number, counting out the minutes, hours, days. Laughing, mocking and accusing him with all the time he's missed. All the years he should have/could have had with her. He wants to reach out and smash it. Shaking his head, he realizes he's still transitioning from SHIELD agent to post-mission civilian. As if to reassure himself that he won't commit any more violent acts than he already has in the past twenty-four hours, he calmly runs a thumb over her scrawny wrist. When her flimsy eyelids flicker over the dull orbs, he intervenes.
"Peggy?" he calls softly.
She stills her frantic movements. "Steve?" she croaks.
He nods, though he knows she doesn't see the gesture. "Yes."
The shapeless lips peel away, disappearing into the crinkles in her face in order to form a gummy smile. "Steve," she warbles.
"Peggy," he repeats needlessly.
But it feels good just to say her name. Regardless of the color the years have sucked from her eyes and lips, the strength they have stolen from her limbs and mind, she is still his best girl. Beneath the sagging skin and frail muscles, she is the same as she was in the past. The same beautiful and intelligent woman he fell in love with.
At least, that's what he tells himself.
But deep inside, in the part of his heart he wishes didn't exist, the part that can look past the emotion to see reality, he knows it's all a lie. She isn't who he wants her to be. Having lived her own life while he lay frozen, she was changed, little by little, into someone completely new. A stranger. That's what she is to him. There are so many parts of her life that he desperately longed to be involved in-she was a wife, was a mother, grandmother, even great-grandmother.
His gaze shoots to the blurry photos in the cheap frames and a sickening pang of jealousy, guilt and remorse stabs through his ribcage. Those should be his children, the people he and Peggy would have brought into the world together. Dwelling on the missed chances does nothing but add to the crushing weight in his skull so he turns away and fixes a dazzling smile onto his facial features and tacks it into place with will power and all the genuine feeling he can muster.
"Oh, Steve," she wheezes. "Is it really you?"
"Yes, Peggy. I came for that dance," he recites, still meaning every word.
Her drooping mouth works up and down, jaw spasming, as she attempts to take in the shock.
"Hey, shhh," he soothes. "It's all right."
Water swamps her ailing eyes. "I've dreamed for this-I never thought-but how-?"
"I couldn't leave you, right?" He places his palm on the bed and he can feel the ridges of her fragile tibia even through the polyester blanket that lies over her desiccated legs.
"If only I'd known!" she moans, shifting pitifully, tossing her slim body with as much sorrow-induced vehemence as her ancient appendages allow.
"Whoa, easy, hey, shh," he pacifies futilely.
"I didn't wait! I didn't know!" she wails with the voice of an abandoned kitten. "I thought-"
The tears that streak down her withered face choke her and she's hacking and Steve can do little but raise her slight frame, elevating her torso to ease the burden on her weak lungs. An eternity passes, during which the sun hides a little deeper behind the horizon, the clock ticks away meaningless time and her lungs turn themselves inside out. She coughs and coughs, and the sound is like tearing paper, grinding gears, grating rocks and a thousand other harsh noises. It's sand and rust and decaying photo albums in a forgotten attic. Her thin body slides up and down, up and down in his grip, rocking with the motion of her convulsion. His hands are too large and her shoulders too small. Much, much too small. Gradually, the fit passes, the coughs slowing until they finally stop. He carefully lowers her to the mattress, returning her to her earlier position. It still bothers him, her lying down. So still. So helpless. She used to be filled with such life and vivacious energy.
But that was years ago, in another time, another century. When she was a different woman and he was a different man. Now they've changed, one succumbing to the effects of old age, the other submitting to the bitterness that comes from being left behind. He should be just as deteriorated as she. He hates mirrors. Avoiding them at all costs, he tries not to see just how Young his body is and how Old his eyes are.
His hands hover uncertainly mere inches above her forearm, where the bulging veins stretch what little skin she has left to an unnatural thinness. The light in the room dims as the sun leaves, taking its warmth and joy with it. As it goes, it trails shiny fingers over the multitude of medicine bottles that contain the drugs which keep her alive. So many bottles. He tries to count them but loses his place at twenty. Rolling her eyes into her skull until only the beached whites show, she sinks into the pillows, disappearing in their lumpy wads of stuffing. He sits back, the bottom of his boots scuffing the floor beneath the bed frame. He should probably leave. Like a flat tire on a bicycle, her eyeballs rotate in a flip-flop way, until the decrepit irises face outward.
"Is someone there?" she inquires cautiously.
He grits his teeth, slams down on the baseless anger that covers the hurt, and leans toward her chalky features. "Yes ma'am, there is."
"That voice..." With the hand of a hag, she disturbs the floating dust mites by waving in a nonsensical way. "That voice..." The hand drops and scratches at the blanket.
"Peggy, it's Steve." He ducks his head to catch her eye. "I came back. I'm here."
"Steve?" The hand stops. "But...Steve?"
"Yes, Peggy. It's me." The words catch in his throat but he forces them out.
"Oh, oh, oh," she groans and struggles to sit up.
Even that simple motion drains her slim reserves of strength.
"Come, come closer." A cough. "Let me look at you."
He obeys. The furrows in her cheeks meld and twitch before emerging as terrible as ever from the hollows of her sunken-in face.
"It is you!" she whispers.
Taking her wrist in his hand, he rests his fingers on an artery and counts her pulse. A frown mars his mouth as he feels it speed up dangerously.
"Peggy." He wants her to calm down, to not become upset, to not have a stroke.
"Now we can finally show old Hitler what he's got coming to him, hmm?" She chuckles, a scraping of naked tree branches against locked shutters.
"Peggy," he tries calling her back from the confusion in her mind.
"Won't Stark be jealous when he sees you and me? We'll have Sinatra sing for us. Won't that be grand? I'll wear my red dress. And we can drive Barnes insane with envy when we go out on that dance floor," she rambles in a weedy voice.
Steve twitches, and tightens his jaw. She's unwittingly picking at his scabs, poking at wounds that have not yet, and might not ever, heal. This isn't the first time she's wandered through the paths of time. He knows it does no good to try and bring her back. So he clasps her hand and follows her footprints in the crumpled Autumn leaves of memory. The clock smugly marks off the minutes while the polluted city air obscures the stars, which struggle to emerge. On and on she tumbles through catacombs of half-forgotten memories, him trailing behind, with a tragic smile on his face as he agrees with her babbling dreams. Some of the names he recognizes, others are strange and the rest are slurred by her fading voice.
Her wicked cough pounces suddenly, dragging her away from her golden fantasy land. He can almost hear her bones rattling as the fit shakes her body. Globs of phlegm fly out of the gaps left by her missing teeth. Slowly, he dabs at her cheeks, wiping the spittle away. The contact startles her and she leans back out of his reach.
"Who's there?" she questions sharply.
Swallowing down his irrational frustration, he answers her again. "It's Steve."
"Steve?" she repeats, but her eyes are narrowed.
"Yes, ma'am." He tries to take her crinkled hand but she moves it away from his fingers.
"I don't know who you are," she declares, affronted.
"Steve Rogers," he tells her, wondering what is wrong.
"Who?"
"Captain Steve Rogers," he supplies, cautiously. "Captain America."
"I'm from Great Britain and I don't care who you are but I would like like for you to leave," she forcefully insists.
His surprise is muted with confusion. "Peggy, what do you mean?"
"That's Mrs. Longstein to you, young man," she sniffs indignantly.
If it were seventy years ago, and if they were in a bunker across the ocean, he might be tempted to believe that she is playing a joke on him, pretending not to know him. But he's sitting in her room in the twenty-first century and her face holds no trace of amusement. Unsure of what to do, he freezes. She stares back at him, accusatory, then her gaze shifts behind him.
"Where's my husband?" she inquires with hints of panic edging her voice.
"Peggy..." he starts.
"Where's George?" She cranes into the gloom around them. "Where is he?"
"Peggy," he calls quietly.
"George!" she shouts, though her vocal chords can not raise her volume to more than a mild exclamation. "Where are you? Where are the children?"
Steve manages to catch one of her hands, his fingers sliding across the papery palm.
"Release me at once!" she demands, though she is interrupted by a cough. Fighting through the fit, she maintains her inquiry, "Nora! Elizabeth! George!"
"Please, calm down." Steve sees the way her pupils dilate, feels the aged blood rushing through her skinny veins.
Her mouth hangs open, sucking in air and expelling it in ferocious hacking. She spots him, focuses on his worried features, and cowers into her pillows.
"Oh no!" she cries. "Don't hurt me!"
On the brink of panic himself, he registers the pain that comes from hearing her frantic petition. He would never harm her. Abruptly, he stands and lunges for the forest of medicine bottles. His hands flutter between the various containers which bear unpronounceable names and he wonders which, if any, can help her now.
The blanket rustles as she kicks fitfully beneath it. Her wide gaze spins across the room. He lays a hand, buried beneath calluses, on her bony shoulder in an attempt to relax her frenzied fever. The action has the opposite effect. She lets out a last gasp and her eyes roll up to stare at the ceiling. He waits for her next inhale and knows his heart skips a beat when it doesn't come.
"Peggy." He softly shakes her shoulder. "Peggy."
An impossible thought enters his mind. She might actually be-He cuts off the idea before he can finish it. It can't be true. With trembling fingers, he checks for the pulse in her scrawny neck. Limp skin collapses beneath his probing fingers. All is still. Unwilling to accept the evidence, he turns moist eyes up to her colorless face.
"Peggy!" he barks.
The fragile form against the faded pillowcase does not answer.
"No," he begs in a whisper, stroking the wiry hair off her lined forehead. "Please, no."
His own movements are the only ones that disturb the wintery dusk of the shadowed bedroom.
"God, please don't take her," he prays, bringing both hands around to cup her ancient face.
Unfailingly, the clock mockingly salutes him with black numbers.
"Peggy, don't leave me," he pleads. "Don't go."
Her hand is slack against the thigh with which he is leaning on the mattress. Frantically, he raises his head, searching for...he doesn't know what. A miracle, he supposes. Perhaps a doctor with some kind of magic cure. Or a scientist, whose discoveries can bring her back. Back from where? She's not-but...if she...it can't be. With fear burning a crater in his stomach, he glances back at her. Nothing has changed. Her milky eyes haven't blinked. Her worn lungs haven't expanded.
Realization bursts through the walls of denial and he gasps out a sob. Crashing to the scratched floor, he knocks over the bedside table. The glass bottles shatter, spraying him with crystal shrapnel and useless drugs. Lying in a heap, the clock wishes it had a voice to laugh with. Yanking them through his knotted hair, Steve drags his fingers over his scalp. His chest heaves, up and down, up and down, taking in the breaths she can't. He lost her once and got her back, only to lose her again. It's not fair.
Rage boils his blood and he regains his feet. Through the blur his vision has become, he pulls back a fist and slams it into the wall. The plaster breaks and his hand goes straight through into the next room. Retracting it, he swings again and forces another hole into the drywall. Not sated, he lifts the rickety chair in the air before throwing it down. It splinters into pieces. The dresser is next, clothes thumping, nails shrieking, wood bursting. The picture frames thump against the floor, spiderweb fractures cracking through the glass. He kicks through the wreckage, sending rubble into the ceiling.
Once he's reduced the bedroom's sparse furniture to dust, the anger leaves his limbs as suddenly as it came and he's left drained. A sticky drop of sweat trickles from his hairline down his jaw. The liquid restores some clarity to his brain and he refocuses his mind. Of their own volition, his eyes move to the bed, the only part of the room he hasn't destroyed. Dazed, he moves closer until he stands over it and its single occupant.
He bends and kisses the shriveled lips because he never did it enough and he doesn't want to believe it's too late. But the milky eyes don't blink and the flat chest doesn't rise and it just can't be true but it is. He jams a clenched fist to his mouth, imprisoning the sobs in the larynx they originate from. They choke him and he can't breathe but he can't see either so he guesses that maybe he just might die too and oh gosh, she's dead.
She was the last remnant of his old life, which was the only one he actually wanted to live. A beacon of light in this murky, filthy new world, she was something he could rely on, lean on, trust. But she's dead. Notbreathingnotblinkingnottalkingnotlaughing. She'll never do any of that again. The thought is sobering and as bittersweet as rotting fruit in a back alley dumpster. She's free of her weakened, broken-down body, while he chokes on tears with his improved unable-to-age lungs.
Sorrow shoves at his back and grief at his chest until he's rocking back and forth on the lumpy mattress, hearing but not hearing the rusty springs creak. Water builds behind his eyes, threatening to pop his eyeballs out of his skull. Any sick air he manages to swallow is quickly converted into sobs to which he can't quite allow himself to give voice. So they sit in his chest cavity, squeezing between the fragments of his broken heart. Rocking and shaking, he sits, stares, sits and stares at her decrepit corpse because that's all she is now. A cadaver. Carcass. It's horrible to think of her like that but there's no her left to think about any other way. And that's more horrible still.
The sun recoils and shrinks completely behind the line where earth meets sky. Taking advantage of its absence, blackness seeps through the yellowed glass of the window, wiping slimy fingers over the living and the dead. With the last vestiges of strength conserved in its beetle-like body, the clock counts out one last minute before falling silent with a sneer.
Steve shifts sore muscles and the blanket scratches at his knee. Though he doesn't remember it happening, he's sure someone plunged a knife through his throat. It's impossible to breathe and he's pretty certain it's blood he tastes on his tongue. Acid churns in his stomach, stirred into a whirlpool by the avalanche of grief. He yanks his fist away from his mouth and slams it, shaking, into his abdomen to stem the nausea. It doesn't help but it does hurt and, for a moment, that's all he wants, what he deserves because it's so wrong that she, beautiful, wonderful, strong and intelligent, is gone while he stands by her deathbed like a stupid statue.
Frantically, he searches through his mind, through his memories, desperate to find the sin that condemned him to this life of loneliness. Killing, murder, war-blood, dirt, mud, guns, bullets, bombs, black, red bloodbloodblood.
This is an Austrian train and a tiny Brooklyn apartment all over again because he isn't strong enough, fast enough, smart enough, to save the people he cares about, the people who care about him, carelovetrust him. He's let them all down. They're dead and it's his fault. It's always his fault. It will never not be his fault.
Water oozes out his eyes like pus from a wound. A couple of drops cling to his eyelashes, tangling them in a knot. Dark patches block out portions of his vision, while his brain tumbles and tumbles around, free falling inside his skull. Jerking sporadically, his fingers come alive, hands wrapping around each other. Bitten nails cut into his palms, leaving shiny crescents of abused skin. Little splinters of his heart snap at his lungs and chew on his ribs, as needles dance on the surface of his legs, prickling and stabbing in quick succession. Radiating outward from the center of his spine, a poisonous numbness layers his body in swatches of icy apathy. Exhaustion stamps its brand on his consciousness.
He's the last one. The only one left alive. The single living remnant of a group of extraordinary people. Justice is an idea he idolizes, giving his all in its name. But it appears to be lacking. How is it that he-dumb, scrawny Steve Rogers, a mere kid from Brooklyn-lives on while all the brilliant, talented minds of his century whither into dust, buried six feet under? Mounds of sun-baked dirt and rain-streaked headstones mark where his friends lie. Their names are carved two inches deep in marble and three meters in his brain.
Dangling scraped knuckles between his legs, elbows pressing into his thighs, he bows his head, shutting his eyes and trapping the last few tears between eyelid and pupil. His body temperature sinks as his blood pressure drops. A thick sheet of apathetic shock douses his agitation, his distress flickering out like a candle flame battered by a sudden breeze. A lackluster instinct taps away on a typewriter, printed letters in black reminding him of his primal desire to live. And without the distraction of regret and grief, he focuses on what will keep him alive-duty.
Duty will make him survive. Duty yanks him up when he's been knocked down so many times he can't even remember what standing feels like. Duty pumps the blood in his veins when his heart's too beat up to do it properly. Duty screams in his brain, drowning out all other thoughts and emotions. Duty moves his limbs and operates his mouth when his mind leaves its post to go and dwell in the past. Duty throws him into the line of fire, propels him toward a hail of bullets. Duty holds his shield aloft.
Duty is what stands between him and happiness. Duty blocks the way to a peaceful life with a family of his own. Duty is strength and a way to crawl through crippling pain. Duty sets him apart from his fellow humans. Duty is the only thing that doesn't succumb to fever, doesn't fall off a train, doesn't wither away in the face of endlessly marching time. Duty won't ever leave him alone.
Gathering the fortitude to face a world without love, his spine slowly uncurls, bringing his shoulders up and straightening his abdomen. Muscles shift under flesh under cloth and he knows that he will/has to go on. When he opens his eyes, they are a darker shade of blue. But they are dry.
Okay, so for anyone interested...I am so very sorry for not posting in a while. But I do have my reasons-1. The only available internet company dropped service to my area so I have to travel to get wi-fi, which isn't always possible with my schedule, 2. My laptop crashed unexpectedly, causing me to lose everything! (For those of you who wanted the next part of 'Broken Down and Waiting' or are waiting on prompts/requests, I hate to have to tell you it will be a bit longer before any of those things are ready since I have to start from scratch,) 3. I'm going through a lot of drama with situations my family members have put themselves in and I won't include details but suffice it to say the police are involved, 4. We are short staffed at work, which means extra hours for me to help fill in the gaps. (If anyone is still reading this, I appreciate it and have a plate of warm brownies for you. Please, help yourself.) So uploads will probably be sporadic and unpredictable from now on. Just wanted to let you know why I haven't been around. Okay, I'll stop talking now. But I will leave the brownies, so have another. :)