A/N: This is my first attempt at a Captain America fic, so I hope you enjoy it.
Dreams
It isn't often that Steve sleeps.
But when he sleeps, he dreams.
The dreams are not always the same, yet they are not always different. Sometimes, he watches Bucky plunge into that endless chasm, and he wakes feeling just as useless and disgraced as he did seventy-five years ago. Other times, he dreams that he is in that crumbling Nazi bunker locking eyes with his nemesis, seething hatred clashing with rippling righteousness. He wakes with a gasp, and for the rest of the day he is plagued by the afterimage of those stark eyes judging him, searing his mind and soul.
Still other nights Steve dreams that the war has ended, he has returned home victoriously, and he and Peggy finally have that dance. There are other couples on the darkened dance floor, but he and Peggy outshine them all. She is smiling up at him; it is a smile that is small on her lips but large on her soul. They share a long, sweet kiss as the music crescendos and Steve squeezes her against him because this is real, they are real. He wants this moment to play for eternity.
But even eternity would be too brief.
Steve wakes, cold, crushing his pillow to his chest, wondering just how much he would give to have her in his arms once more. The pain is a tidal wave that crashes down upon him and drags him under unforgivingly.
Sometimes he dreams that he and Peggy are in his home in Manhattan. Sunshine streams in through the windows as they relax on their bed. She is sitting and he is laid down with his head in her lap. The room is filled with their content silence.
She takes his hands in hers and holds them up into the beams of sunlight, gazing at them with unbridled curiosity. Her hands are so small, frail, compared to his own. He wants to tug his hands away from hers so that he can hide them from her—these hands have done great things, but they have also done terrible things. They are immaculately clean at all times, partly because he is a tidy military man and partly because he can still feel heavy, slick blood coating every inch of them.
He moves to take his hands away from hers, yet Peggy holds on to them tight. Steve looks up at her quizzically, guiltily, and she looks right back at him with love.
"Steve," she whispers, "it's okay."
She says it like she knows. Knows that he can't sleep at night because he can't stop seeing the piles of corpses whenever he closes his eyes. Knows that he is scared that his sins will sully her simply because she loves him.
She says it like she knows all of these things and is fine with them.
Fine with him.
He runs one of his large, strong hands across her cheek, his blue eyes aglow with a feeling so profound he can't put a name to it. He pulls her down towards him, and she follows without question.
They kiss and Steve feels as if everything is right in the world.
This is the hardest dream for him to wake up from. When he wakes, he is gripped with sorrow so great he just wants to go back to being asleep in the ice, where there were no dreams and no reality; just calm, tranquil blackness. He wants to go back in time and tell Dr. Erskine to destroy the serum, to forget it because it will come to ruin so many people's lives. He wants Peggy to teach him how to dance. He wants to find a way to make it off that plane and back into her arms.
But those realities are long gone. He can do nothing but take a deep, shuddering breath, cobble together his soul once more, and start the new day.
A/N: Did you like it? Hate it? Let me know with a review! Thanks for reading. :)