Steve was sure that he was ready to follow through with this. Well, half-sure, at least. Clutching the assorted bouquet of flowers in his right hand, he mounted the concrete porch steps of a small cottage located here in Winchester. It was beautiful. It looked like something out of a painting, complete with mesmerizing scenery of a vivid flower garden, and a bright blue sky splattered with the whitest clouds he had ever seen. Having had flown out to England this morning, the change in atmosphere just about knocked Steve off his feet. The English environment was drastically different than that of New York City. He was born and raised in the city - and then born and raised there a second time as well – so noise, clutter and excitement was everything he was familiar with. New York was never this quiet, and he relished the peacefulness of the area while he could before he reached to probe the doorbell…
At the sound of the muffled ring from inside, he suddenly wished he wasn't here.
The nerves were making his throat tighten. They were making his stomach tie up into the tightest knot he'd ever felt. They were making his forehead and palms soak in cold sweat. Why the hell was he here; curiosity? Desperation? He could feel the blood running to his cheeks and he quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead while he waited. And waited. And waited. After what felt like an eternity, he contemplated just setting the flowers on the doorstep and leaving. Obviously, she was either not home, or she didn't want to be bothered, so he decided against being persistent. However, he found his feet glued to the porch and he signaled another ring to the bell. Finally, as if by magic, he heard a woman's voice calling from behind the door.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" She projected, in the most ginger of voices. Steve blinked, now even more apprehensive, and he attempted to ease his shaky breathing to no avail. The door swung open slowly. Behind it stood a woman he knew to be Peggy Carter, and she looked exactly the same way as she did when he last laid eyes on her. Her brown curls bounced on her shoulders as she recoiled at the sight of him. Her gleaming eyes widened and they shimmered slightly, even though she was half caught in the shade, and her smooth pink lips revealed straight, pearly whites as she barely gasped his name. Both barely able to breathe let alone speak, they held each other's gazes for what seemed like hours.
Peggy slowly and carefully stepped from her doorway, keeping her eyes fixed upon the soldier who commandeered her heart years ago. He too remained unchanged, but she proceeded to study him; perfect blue eyes, light hair molded in his usual cowlick style, with the artificial strength still embedded in his chest and arms. She blinked quickly and brushed a finger over the crook of his neck just to assure herself that she wasn't dreaming. She was in fact awake, but sincerely confused. How was he alive, and how was he standing before her right now? How did he get here? How was he alive? Blinking again, hard this time, she opened her mouth to spit her thoughts out.
"I- We- we… I thought you were dead." She breathed to him, and it wasn't exactly the greeting that Steve was hoping for.
He gave her a half smile, despite his apprehension. "No, I'm alive and well… have been for quite a while, actually."
When Peggy couldn't muster up a response, they resumed staring each other down for a few minutes. Steve immediately thought that this wasn't going as well as he planned, even though he assumed before coming here that his wasn't going to be the best idea.
Both of their gazes snapped up at the door when they heard footsteps clinking down the wooden stairs and towards the door. A little girl, maybe about four or five years of age, skipped towards the doorway to investigate the scene. Locks of long blonde hair that curled at the ends fell over her small shoulders. Her blue eyes met with theirs and Steve noted how tiny she was. She was a beautiful little girl.
The girl tugged at the hem of her mother's blouse. "Mommy, our cupcakes are about finished!" Peggy brushed the little one's hands off of her and smiled. "Thank you, Livia. Mommy's busy right now, however, so run back into the house and keep patient for me, yes?"
With content agreement, Livia offered Steve a cute little wave and made her way back into the house, being cautious not to trip on the leveled doorway.
Peggy had turned around to watch her, and Steve could see the way she admired the little girl. It was almost the same admiration he had for Peggy when they first met, although that admiration still lingered and never went away. It was still there, and he was sure of it. Not only was that still there, but the love he had for her was strong and undying. When she turned around to face him again, he held the flowers out to her, and she hesitantly took them from him with a smile.
"They're lovely," She finally said, and he nodded.
She heaved a heavy sigh before looking back at the door again. She wasn't sure whether or not Steve would be ready to hear about everything – or the one thing, rather – he missed out on while presumably being "dead". She sighed again, lifting a hand to her forehead, cupping it inside her palm.
Steve leaned forward to look at her. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh, yes. I just- I can't believe you're alive... and here. How did you know I lived here?"
The question made Steve feel even more awkward than he already felt and he thought about his answer. "After S.H.I.E.L.D. had me settled in a place to live… I grabbed a few of their files… yours specifically. It had your telephone line listed, but no current address, so I looked further into it. It didn't list anything else either. No marital status, no… e-mail or whatever. At first I was reluctant to even search for you; I spent a lot of nights thinking about it. You could have been married and had a family and coming here to see you would just cause problems. But I put those thoughts aside and decided to anyway. Because for whatever reason, I thought it would be right to just… see you at least one more time, whatever the outcome might be."
He tripped and stammered over his words and Peggy absorbed everything piece by piece, not saying anything. Not because she didn't want to, but because she couldn't find the right words to say. Her mouth felt as if it was sewn shut and even if she wanted to, she couldn't murmur a damned thing to him in response.
Steve took her silence as a cue to continue. "And obviously, my predictions were right because you have a family now. It's not my place to intrude any further."
He started to take a few steps back, as if making to leave without a goodbye, and Peggy finally tore her sewn mouth open to call out to him.
"Wait! Steve, wait!" He stopped almost abruptly. "Yes, I do have somewhat of a family. But my family is your family too."
Steve paused his fidgeting, and looked at her, bewildered. He didn't know what she meant. No, that was a lie. He had an idea about what she meant. And if she was going to say what he thought she was about to say, he wouldn't know how to take it.
Peggy exhaled and shifted her eyes to meet his. She pointed back to the house, and the little girl inside, sitting patiently at the kitchen table in her little baking apron while she waited for her mother to come back and assist her with the icing for their cupcakes.
"That's your daughter too. Her name is Olivia Jane. She's five years old… and God; she's a spitting image of you. She has been since the day she was born."
Steve blinked. He was shocked, to say the least, and for a moment, he wasn't sure if he had heard her correctly. That was his daughter sitting inside, with her tiny hands folded neatly on the kitchen table, her miniscule feet dangling from her legs unable to reach the floor, and her blonde curls falling against her back accompanied with a tiny white bow to keep the locks from her face. At that moment, it began to make sense to him. From afar, he could see himself in her. His eyes softened, and he repeated her name in his head: Olivia Jane Rogers.
Without mumbling a word, Peggy took Steve by the hand and led him inside the house to meet Olivia. He followed along, thoughts in his head becoming jumbled and coiled. When they reached the kitchen, Olivia propped herself up on her feet and looked up at Steve with a bright smile. She reached her arms out for him as if knowing she was his little girl.
"Daddy!" The little voice chimed. Perhaps she saw herself in him as well.
When he scooped her up into his arms, the whole scene began to slowly blur and fade. The last thing Steve could see was his daughter pecking his cheek and Peggy smiling warmly before everything turned black.
And then he woke up.
Everything was still black. After a few moments of analyzing where he was, Steve realized he was just in bed, and he was just having another dream. This dream was different from the others though; there was a state of peace and happiness until it ended; nothing he had experienced in previous dreams. He rolled over and felt a damp spot on his pillow, concluding that it was nothing more than his own tears.
Finally, he sat up and wiped the remnants of the tear trails from his face. As well as he knew that it was a dream, he couldn't work past the fact that it felt too real. Everything felt real. The way Peggy grazed his shoulder with her finger. The way he held his "daughter" in his arms, and the feeling of her kissing his cheek. The way Peggy accepted the flowers from him. All of these little details felt entirely too real, but here he was, in his apartment, in his bed, in this sleepless city. As real as everything felt, there was no way that those things were possible. Seventy years passed since the day he last heard her voice. Unlike him, she had aged. They hadn't made love during the time they had been together, therefore Olivia, or any child for that matter, wasn't possible.
He flicked the lamp on the nightstand on and pushed himself to his feet, eventually making his way to the dining table in the other room. On the table sat a laptop which S.H.I.E.L.D. provided for him, and the files he took sprawled everywhere along the surface. He reached for Peggy's file, examining it thoroughly. Like he had recalled in the dream, no other information aside from the basics and her telephone number. And the fact that she was still alive.
Somehow, a reminder of a meeting for the Avengers Initiative that would be taking place in the morning interjected his thoughts, and he dropped the file back on the table and slowly dragged himself back to bed. The dream had woken up replayed in his mind, until he eventually fell back into deep slumber, hoping that it would pick up where it left off, even though it was too good to be true.