Everyone who knew about the American Dream knew about the picture of Bucky in her compass. Granted, that amounted to about twenty people, but all the same, it wasn't a secret.
It was from his personnel file. He looked clean and serious, like a man born to be a soldier. It was probably the funniest thing Eve had ever seen. Bucky never made it through a meal without food on his face. He once got mashed potato behind his ear. He would spend the first hour out of bed in his boxers. She practically had to bribe him into getting his hair cut most of the time. During their last debrief, he kept using names from The Lord of the Rings for Hydra weapons and convinced Colonel Phillips that a 'Galadriel' was a type of grenade. Looking at the photo, no one would guess he was anything but a square.
Now, it made her a bit sick. It wasn't him. It was the only picture she had of him.
What almost no one knew about was that there was another picture behind it. It was a clipping of Peggy from a newspaper. The article was speculating her relationship with Howard. Eve remembered when it first came out, almost two years ago. It was a few weeks before the experiment and Eve had just been a nurse. One day Peggy had just stormed into her room, waving the paper and yelling about the invasion of privacy.
"And the worst part," Peggy had said, "Is that they didn't even use my title! 'Miss' Carter! I'm not a miss, I'm an agent!"
Now, though, both photos were laid out on the dash board of the plane. Peggy's voice was on the com, trying to talk her out of her plan, but Eve couldn't respond. She was worried if she opened her mouth, she'd ask Peggy if she loved her back. If they'd been talking about the same kind of dancing, if those late nights meant the same thing to her that they did to Eve?
She couldn't. She didn't want to know. Eve would be forgotten, Project Rebirth lost in the archives. The American Dream would be dead. It wouldn't be a fair question.
The Plane was going down fast. Eve looked at Bucky. She looked at Peggy.
"I am so sorry."
"Eve? Eve, please, just hol-"