one day i wrote her name upon the sand

by SheHatesWriting

A mix of the poem "One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Sand" by Edmund Spencer & my own Steggy one-shot. Steve reflects on his love for Peggy.

"One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Sand" – Edmund Spenser

There came a time, long into the old man's life, where he found himself standing on a frozen beach in the middle of winter. He looked down beneath his boots and saw a squiggled outline in the frosty sand of something that had once been. He found himself bending, snapping, drooping to trace the elements of this sandy hieroglyph. He knew this place, he had been here once before. No, he had been here many times before.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, Steve – the mess of the man – brought his fingers down to the wet, moldable clay of the Earth and dared to write her name. Margaret. The eloquent swoop of the 'M,' the squareness of the 'arg,' and the gentle folding of 'aret' into its position within the side of the shore.

But came the waves and washed it away: The old man tried to remember why it couldn't stay. His wrinkled, greying fingers shook as he gently touched the frigid ground. His ancient, squelched eyes desperately traced over the faint outline of…what? What had it been? This gift. This gracious gift of grace that had once been here. It had meant something…this nonsense written into the sand by a young man, with an old soul, who didn't listen as he looked at the distant tide.

Again I wrote it with a second hand, Steve with tears in his eyes, biting down into his lip, rigidly wrote the name once more into the sand. His nails were scraping painfully against the flecks and grains of strand. The sand caught up under his fingernails, wedging itself deep underneath. But yet, he wanted to see her name written within the sand, he knew he needed to see her name written there—upon this endless entity of time and earth. Because if he wrote it, she would be as timeless as the Earth, timeless as Time.

MARGARET. He wrote. But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. MARGARET. But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. M. A. R. G. A. R. E. T. But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. Steve fell to his knees, feeling the presence of all those behind him—Bucky, Tony, Vision, Wanda, Sam, Natasha—all of them, staring at him, expecting of him, but not expecting of him. How could he possibly give to all of them? The ancient man came to stand beside Steve, looking as lost as the nomadic kings of Babylon—those lost soulless men who held the audacity to weep over their prophetic nightmares. But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. A cold, frigid wind sliced across Steve's face as he looked up and realized his tears had frozen solid on his face. How was he stuck in a world, frozen through-and-through, that still had the capacity to wash her name away?

His fingers shook, his nails chipped and bled, and his breath came out in shivering frozen gasps. That is, until, she came to stand beside him. "Vain man," said the woman, "that dost in vain assay, a mortal thing so to immortalize; for I myself shall like to this decay, and eke my name be wiped out likewise." She reached down and took the old man's face in between her warm, living hands. Her shimmering, glimmering, dancing eyes spoke of 'always so dramatics' and worlds yet unforetold. "After all, that's not my name." She said to the old man, who now was a young man, with an old soul, and caught with bleeding hands. She leaned down to kiss him, once on the forehead, once on the cheek, and once on the lips. Her bright red smile blazed forth across her face as she watched him. "Build something better without me."

And Steve, afraid and lonely without her in this era—in this new age of magic, deception, and soulless demise, reached out to her. He grabbed her hands, forcing himself to stand to see her eyes meet his. "Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise / To die in dust, but you shall live by fame," he spoke softly with gentle tears flowing down his face. His shaking hands came to hold her face in his hands as she had done earlier. He thawed out with her touch, a smile coming across his face, as the ancientness that hung around his shoulders left him in stride. Perhaps he would die 'in dust,' dissolve into thousands of fragments of a childhood in Brooklyn with a boy named Bucky, a life he could have had with her, a bicentennial existence of disappointing people, but she—but this woman—The Woman—would live by fame. She would soar, become laced among the stars, a constellation to shine above the shore and sea. She was right, no mortal plane could hold her. No sandy shore would keep her for long.

The woman, Margaret, smirked at him with a little sly smile. "Ah, you wish to be a poet, hm? Make me the stuff of your Iliad. Fine. I shall be your Achilles and you shall be my Patroclus." Steve smiled at her words. "Patroclus was Achilles' friend—not his lover." Margaret offered a small dazzling buzz of laughter, pulling her shawl from her shoulders and wrapping it around the now-skinny, frail shoulders of Steve Rogers, pulling him closer to her. "You would be a fool to believe they were less than lovers." Steve reached up to her, now shorter than her, now vulnerable to her charms and whispering words, now sick and shallow of breath: "My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, / And in the heavens write your glorious name."

All of Earth, All of Heaven, All of Eternity would know her glorious name. And they will write it on a shore far greater than any earthly plane. Margaret laughed with the lights in her eyes taking flight and dancing like fire. "Well, of course they would, but the Lord wouldn't dare write Margaret. He'd write—"

"Peggy." Steve finished for her. A small, shy smile appearing on his pale sallow face. But with the spoken use of her name, with the gentle whisper of her, he began to grow, his form leaving the ground, his body reforming itself in gentle glow, as he was taken from the frozen shores of Time to the balmy, soft shore of Paradise. And when he opened his eyes, a great stone house on a hill lay in the distance, where a stone chimney sat on top with spicy, sweet smoke curling from it. Summer fields smelling of lavender, goldenrod, and honeysuckle burst around him, as the sound of children's laughter emanated from down the shore. He looked down at his body to see if he had changed.

Steve was himself, but not himself. He was the solider, but not the solider. What did this mean? What was this feeling? And he realized, with a sudden breath of air, he was free. No battles, no wars, no heartbreak lay in the distance. Only Time, endless and glorious Time with Peggy.

But Peggy had disappeared.

Tears came to his eyes, her sudden disappearance left him bereft. "Peggy!" He cried. "Peg." He whispered into the sweet air. A hand on his shoulder forced him to turn, only to feel his breath knock from his lungs as he saw her there. "What, darling?" She quirked a brow. "I'll naught be leaving you ever more." She reached up to kiss him, bringing him tightly to her, holding him so close he could feel her sweet breath against his cheek. She whispered to him, as he felt her smile kneading itself across his skin: "Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, / Our love shall live, and later life renew."

Little hands came to grab at his leg as he looked down and saw the sweet faces of two little girls grinning up at him. He felt tears come to his eyes once more. "Papa?" The littlest one asked, reaching up to him. He bent down to gather them both up into his arms. "Our love shall live, won't it, Peg?" He turned to look at his love, his life, his Peggy, with that Steve Rogers glow. She came to join him, leaning her forehead against his back, wrapping her arms around their children. "Oh, it will, my love, and live gloriously onwards."

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.