Title: Deleted Scene

Rating: Feels+

Summary: An even further expanded look into the Steve Rogers Extended Scene of the Avengers. (One-Shot)

Word Count: 1,687

Author's Note: I just really wanted some Peggy closure, okay?

He sat alone in the cold apartment, staring at a streak of sunlight that pounded its heat into a small rectangle it defined for itself on the floor; its reflected light illuminating the whole of the room and making it glow like tarnished gold. Dust danced about the air in front of him and his gaze wandered to its movement. The flow of the air was both random and consistent, and whether he held his breath or let it go with a heavy sigh, the specs moved in time with sharp currents that were invisible to him; completely oblivious to his presence. Just like the rest of the city.

There once was a time that he could go unseen for hours, or even days, on these streets but it would never last long. What felt like only a few short years for him had actually been decades before. Lost were the times when eventually something would snap within him and he would puff up his chest and straighten his spine in order to take a blow on behalf of someone, usually a stranger, who never had the gumption he did.

Now when he puffed up his chest, the people passing on the street just mistook him for another building.

Even when he had a fleeting moment of connection to another person, he had immediately noticed how thin, fragile, and fleeting that connection would always be. He would always be different: a perfect scientific fusion of two different worlds, which left him belonging to neither. Too bad there was no physical way to overcome loneliness.

His fingers twitched in a sort of anxious flicker across the desktop he leaned his elbow upon. He felt the crisp sheet of paper and knew without looking what it held: the page of the dossier that he hadn't shoved back into the file yet. He had looked at all the brief profiles over and over and this was the one his mind couldn't let alone. He thought of calling her. He must have thought of calling her a hundred –no, a thousand- times, but he still hadn't run out of excuses. At one point, he had himself half-convinced he wasn't calling because he wouldn't know how to operate the new-fangled buttons on the dial of the telephone. But, by the fourth time he had used that excuse, his eyes had accidentally lingered on the phone too long and he was able to see it was actually simpler than the rotary dial he had been used to growing up.

He was on his last excuse, and it was probably the most convincing of all: what if she couldn't forgive him? Worse, what if she didn't remember him?

To him, it felt as though the two of them hadn't spoken in mere days. He knew that to her, it was an entire lifetime. And, probably a good one that. She had found someone to dance with, had married him, and probably made herself a family. Her youth would be faded, though (he imagined), she would still have that sparkle in her eye. This was all fresh and new to him, but what was his memory to her?

So he just watched the dust as it danced.

Perhaps he could try moving on again by revisiting the other files. The one of Stark's son had a way of holding his gaze longer than the others. Something in the man's eyes that were so different from Howard's, despite their physical similarities, he felt himself drawn in by the man. The man of iron. Strange.

He turned and pulled the file in front of himself again, opening the folder and laying down profiles as he went through them, this time mixing Peggy's back in with the bunch. He found Stark's again began searching it for more detail. Why he did this, he didn't know. He practically had the darn page memorized by now, but still his eyes searched. He wrapped his head around every word on the page before he found himself drawn back to those eyes. A vacuum grew where the dust had danced and for a moment the rest of the world disappeared as he looked for reason in those eyes. The silence grew in a deafening ring around his head before it was shattered by a pitchy alarm sounding from the phone.

Wait, was that supposed to be its ring? That wailing was a far cry from the bell-ringing phones used to make. Still, he raised himself from his desk chair and crossed to the phone.

A second wail and he saw a small screen on the front of the dial. The number looked strange to him, but he figured that must just be another change in the times. He pressed the phone to his ear and was about to speak when the phone wailed a third time, this time its proximity to his ear drum left a faint echo of itself in his skull, even though he had promptly pulled the device down. He looked to the dial front for answers again and noticed a large button with a phone shape drawn on it in green. Did green still mean "go"?

He pressed the button and raised the phone to his ear again. Now he heard faint breathing on the other end, amidst a soft static that sounded like the auditory equivalent of the dust he had watched dance. He spoke.

"Good afternoon, this is Steve Rogers's residence. Steve Rogers speaking; may I ask who is calling?"

In the split second that followed it occurred to him the voice that he wanted to hear on the other end. It was a voice he did not yet know, so he didn't even know what to listen for. The voice of the Iron Man.

"I can't tell you how good it feels to know that you're still polite." There was warmth in this voice, a soft velvet that he felt himself sinking into.

"Peggy?" He felt his vocal chords crack with fear. Fear that he had never known, not like this, not until now.

Although the chuckle that followed was deeper than it had been, and a little raspier, he could still hear its key notes. The ones he had grown to know so well.

"What I can't figure out," she said, "is if you still remember me, and if you're still so polite, why did I have to be the one to call?"

"Peggy, I-" he cut himself off, completely uncertain of what to say.

"It's okay." Her voice was soothing and it relaxed him. "I saw your face all over the news. You haven't aged a day." There was a kind of sadness to her voice. No, not sadness. More melancholy. "So how are you doing?"

"Oh, great. Real great." He didn't know why he felt the need to lie, he just did.

"Steve. How are you doing?"

"I don't…I don't know, exactly."

"What's got you so confused?"

The snort escaped him before he had time to think. "Everything," he replied.

He could hear her chuckle again before she conceded "Yes, I imagine so."

"I don't belong here." He could feel any humor of the situation drain out instantly at his unexpected confession. "Not like this, anyway." He could hear her breathe, though she made no noise to speak, so he continued. "I'm a relic trying to function like I'm still the new technology. I mean, I've never exactly fit in before, but now, I don't know how to just accept it."

"I wish I had an answer for you."

"It's okay." He smirked though she couldn't see it.

"Well," she started, "you're in the greatest city in the world, aren't you?"

"Oh course!" He felt his smile tighten to something genuine.

"I'm willing to bet, a city like that has relics like you hidden all over it." She paused, and he let that sink in. It confused him, but he didn't interrupt and waited for her to go on. "Perhaps there's a diner or bookshop, or even a gym or some such thing you could go to. Something that hasn't changed since we walked those streets together."

"A gym, huh?" it did make sense to him.

"Oh, yes. You could go wrestle or…what's it called? Boxing? Maybe you could try that. I bet you'd be good at it."

He could hear the smile in her voice as he considered it. And then he knew exactly what he wanted. "Hey, how about that dance I owe you, Peggy?"

Her breath stilled for a moment before her voice came back, softer than before, "I don't think that's such a good idea, Steve."

"Why not?" He found that his voice had softened to match hers.

"I'm old now. I've changed. I don't look how you remember."

"I don't care about that, Peg."

"You think you don't, but Steve, how will it feel to see how I've changed?"

He couldn't even properly wrap his head around the answer to that question. Scraping its surface was like hitting an iceberg with his heart. He swallowed hard, "Like I'm more of a relic than I originally realized."

"It will be okay, Steve." Her voice so warm, it brought a sting of a tear to his eye. "It will, believe me. You'll find your place yet, okay?"

"Okay."

"It was nice chatting with you, Steve."

"You too, Peggy."

The silence he had known before grew loud in his ear again as he mentally searched for any other word she could give him. This time, it grew impossibly loud before culminating into a soft click, and the static he had heard cut off from the phone. She had hung up.

The words pressed heavily into his chest as he considered them. She had become so wise. Wiser, he was sure, than he would ever be. And, though he had the crushing knowledge that he would never see her again, he now also held the great burden of the knowledge that seeing her would, in fact, be worse. And he ached.

And boxing began to sound like a really great idea.

Author's Note: Up to this point, all Avenger fic I've written has been pure crack, so any constructive criticism you could offer would be very much appreciated, and thank you so much for reading!