The Value of Strength
by Sammie

DISCLAIMER: Doesn't belong to me. Lukasz and the Ukrainian baker are based on old friends of mine. :-) The title is from what Erskine tells Steve in "First Avenger": "a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows...compassion."

RATING: K+

SUMMARY: Steve Rogers muses on his long association with Jemma Simmons and Grant Ward. Rogers POV. (No Hydra AU)

A/N:
- Thank you to everybody who has been reading and reviewing. Again, I'm sorry I can't respond to anonymous reviews, but thank you all the same.
- this came from two places: a short blurb in "Filius" (told from the perspective of the titular character) and then from iLurked/khay's request that I write the team-meets-Captain America prompt. She has a hilarious FF on them meeting on Archive of Our Own.
- this was done back in December: post-"First Avenger" (obviously) BUT pre-"Winter Soldier." I sat on it because I wasn't happy with certain parts. After the reveal, and then in light of recent events, I wasn't going to post it at all, then I thought about fixing it, then didn't. Here it is, as is: no-Hydra AU.

He actually meets her first. And 'meet' wouldn't be completely correct for their first interaction. It's her voice he first encounters.

It's brief - now that Steve thinks of it, no more than a minute or so. He's been asleep, and his mind is still hazy, and his eyes are still closed, but he's a little more aware of voices. He hears a radio, distantly, and then - that feminine English accent. For a brief moment, hope flares inside of him: he's not dead, he's been found, Peggy's found him, and he's alive, and she's alive, and -

Then it occurs to him that the pitch is wrong, the cadence is wrong, the number of words is wrong, the knowledge of the speaker is wrong, the relative softness of the tone is wrong, and it's all wrong, wrong, wrong. Only the accent and the gender of the owner is right; everything else is so horribly wrong.

"The human body cannot sustain freezing in those circumstances for that long, but the fact that his vitals are still excellent and the serum appears to have slowed the aging process - it's amazing!"

"He lost seventy years. Try not to be so happy about it," grumbles a male voice nearby, the thick Scottish accent bleeding through.

They disappear, and as his eyes flutter open, he hears the radio going.

He doesn't actually meet her until days later - after meeting a myriad of doctors, nurses, scientists, robots (ugh), and an oddly giddy man in a suit named Phil Coulson. (Tony Stark calls this a 'man crush'.) When Steve finally meets her in person, it's kind of disappointing. She is smaller physically in almost every respect, and her features are lighter in almost every respect, and she is younger in almost every respect. She is not Peggy in ANY way, and the tiny hope that had first flared in him finally goes out.

He can't hate her, though, because she's such a sweet kid (and yes, given he's old enough to be her grandfather, he can call her a kid). The first time he actually sees her, he's lying on a steel slab as doctors and scientists fuss over him, and he notices a funny-looking intern leaning curiously over the table with a big clipboard. She wears a big pair of blue goggles and around her forehead is a strap with a light that bends, and he struggles not to laugh at the image. It's not until she opens her mouth that Steve realizes this is the owner of the English female voice he heard days ago.

And that is Captain Steve Rogers' formal introduction to Dr. Jemma Simmons.

She "natters" (is that a British term or a modern term or a modern British term?) on and on about lots of science-y things, and for him it's like having Erskine and Stark and Peggy rolled up in one and then aged down, because he can tell from her facial physicality that she is very young. Not that he equates humans with dogs, but her cheerful enthusiasm reminds him of a cute puppy - not unlike the tiny baby stray she attempts to hide in her room while trying to nurse it back to health. (Her clumsily inept attempt to lie her way out of a room inspection has Steve nearly rolling on the floor in laughter.)

He soon learns that Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons are interns - or, rather, Jemma is officially the intern, involved in his defrosting process, and Fitz is the best friend she sneaked in because he wanted to see Captain America. (Another man crush?) While he's got doctors and nurses and a million beeping machines to monitor him, it's really Jemma who will ease him into the modern world with her patience and kindness. Even if she sometimes seems as baffled by the modern world as he is and might not be the best source on pop culture, he feels comfortable asking her things and she is the kindest informant.

He also trusts her. She's kind and sweet and selfless, and all of it is genuine. Perhaps what is most jarring and upsetting to Steve is the lack of trust today than before. He's never seen the media treat presidents of either party like this, though after reading about some chap named Richard Nixon, this unfamiliar media suspicion makes sense. (He's never seen presidents act like Nixon, either.) People lock their computers and their clothes when they go to the gym, whereas his parents didn't always lock their house. People are flying through the air - sitting on a chair in the SKY - and they complain about an hour-long delay, and despite how fast cars go to day, there's a rather liberal use of the car horn, especially in New York City. People lie about who they are online, even though they're looking for life partners (that puzzles him most). He finds that he misses this most, the genuine honesty and calmness; and in a world of short tempers and faked personalities, Jemma Simmons becomes an island of sanity for him until he adjusts.

She teaches him how to use a computer and how to use a smartphone. (He can't believe this is the technology today - it's mind boggling). She shows him the dizzying number of channels on cable television (seriously, a television channel for people about the age of 12? But he can get on board with a channel which shows baseball constantly) and shows him a modern department store (one thing that hasn't altered beyond recognition). She shows him everything from American fast food (what is a name like 'Arby's'? 'McDonald's'?) to Powerpoint. She gets Fitz to rig his watch with video technology so they can video chat; in exchange, Fitz gets some real one-on-one time with Steve's shield - which, apparently, SHIELD forbids lower level agents to see.

(Actually, Fitz disappears one night during a visit and Jemma is so worried about him that she and Steve make a careful search of the compound for him. They find the engineer fast asleep on a couch in the attic, "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" softly blaring - finally, somebody who speaks English with the "right" accent, Fitz had said - and Steve's shield cuddled under the engineer's head like a beloved pillow.)

Steve vaguely remembers seeing Baskin-31-Robbins on a flashing sign when he ran out of his faked hospital room, and Jemma takes him there and he's overwhelmed by the fact that there are so many ice cream flavors. The two of them end up trying nearly every flavor there (free samples IS an excellent modern idea), and the only reason the teenager working the counter isn't upset at how long they take sampling ice cream is because he's making cow eyes at Jemma, who is completely oblivious to his interest. They settle on triple-scoop cones with three different types of ice cream for each scoop and dig in with enthusiasm. They both feel a little ill afterwards.

He's curious as to what happened to the Stork Club, so Jemma looks it up and takes him. It's a tiny park now, with a little waterfall, and he thinks the quiet, somewhat wistful place is appropriate for how he feels, if a little incongruous for what was a former dance hall. He asks her what modern dance clubs look like, so Jemma takes him to one. He's horrified. How do they even hear each other speak over that racket? And the jerking about looks more like somebody getting shot than dancing. The modern world has clearly done NOTHING for dance.

(Jemma teaches him how to dance properly. He ends up finding Peggy, and Jemma encourages him to go see her. He sheepishly tells her about the dance date, and the little scientist brightens and offers to teach him to dance. He can't believe she actually knows how, but apparently Mama Simmons wanted her daughter to be a proper lady and had her learn all kinds of dances as a child. And so while Jemma is not the most coordinated or smooth of dancers, she is a good enough one and an excellent teacher, and Steve doesn't embarrass himself when he finally goes to see Peggy and brings closure to that point in his life.)

Jemma takes him to visit the ethnic neighborhoods in New York City, and he finds it all overwhelming. As he listens to them talk, he marvels at the radical changes in the Middle East since he was last in touch with the world seventy years ago. He finds Little Italy the least changed, and he listens with delight to the chatter of the Italian Americans about their postwar history. He is simply glad the nation has managed to get rid of Mussolini, though he saw that one coming even when he first disappeared part way through the war. The last he remembers of Poland was Nazi tanks rolling through it and starting the war in Europe, and now he's told it's free of both German and Russian control for the first time in ages. He finds infectious the enthusiasm of the Polish Americans; he remembers his teammate Lukasz and how proudly vocal he was to be Polish. In Little Ukraine, he gets an earful from a strongly opinionated baker about Russia, but he only half-hears the conversation. Steve only remembers the horror stories he heard of the winters and the stalwart soldiers in the Eastern Front during the war and the horrific numbers of dead; he's still marveling now that Bolshevik Russia has now embraced democracy. (Well, rants the Ukrainian baker, not until they get rid of Putin!)

Chinatown, though, astonishes him. The only China he remembers seeing and reading about was democratic, a new democracy before he was born and a democracy when he crashed in the Arctic. It was a traditionally Confucian society with republican government and modernized industry and struggling - struggling with the growing pains of a new democracy, and then struggling valiantly, alone, against the assaults of the imperial Japanese army. What he reads and hears about now is nothing like the China he'd left behind. It might as well be another country entirely.

Once, when Fitz is visiting his friend, they decide to watch a movie. FitzSimmons strongly suggest they skip the modern movie theater for now, so they instead watch on a small television "Toy Story" and all the sequels, and he marvels at not only the more vivid colors but the three-dimensional look of the characters; Disney had only started doing color film when he first entered the war. As ridiculous as the premise of talking toys is, he finds the Andy plotline still as human and as personally relevant in the twenty-first century as it would have been to him seventy years ago.

As for films, it turns out the pair of kiddies will be right about not going to the movie theater, because several months later he makes the mistake of going to see "War Horse" as his first film in a theater and the experience does not go well. He had thought he could handle it. He'd seen color films in theaters before, like "Gone with the Wind," and besides, the film was about history and not the future, so everything should have been relatively familiar to him. What happens is that everything is a little too familiar and too vivid: the colors and the sounds of battle are far too real, too much for him to handle. He runs out of the theater, dry heaving.

By this time, Simmons is no longer there with him. She was a temporary intern in the defrosting process, and after two months, she got sent back to the Hub. She and Fitz had told him together and given him a good-bye gift. He misses her talk; he misses their chatter.

She was his anchor, for that time. He is grateful.

Steve doesn't see Jemma again for a few years, although he stays in email contact (thumbs up, modernity) and occasional phone contact with her and with Fitz. When he meets her again at Stark Tower, she's working with Phil Coulson and her buddy Fitz, and also with a consultant and two specialists.

He'd worry about her, except he's heard she's under Phil Coulson's care, and Coulson is one of the hardiest agents of SHIELD, even if he doesn't look it. Seriously - Phil Coulson was the only one of them besides Bruce Banner who got to smash Loki a good one, and the agent managed to do it while dying. (Even the Hulk can't claim that.) To be honest, Steve's far more concerned about Coulson than he is about Simmons: Phil Coulson alive after how he died? From Thor's description, there was no coming back from that death. That must have been some torture. Perhaps, Steve thinks, having Simmons there is a good thing. He knows that from personal experience.

So it's with delight that he hears that Phil Coulson's team is coming to New York, to Stark Tower, for a three-day session with the Avengers to discuss brewing rumors about an attack in Rio. Tony is being rude and not being there to greet his guests, so Steve takes it upon himself to make sure he's there. The elevator doors ding open, and Coulson appears first, stepping onto the polished floor of the private level in the tower. His team trail off the elevator after him and look around, and Steve takes a moment to study them. The youngest stranger, a young woman, is gushing in delight as she looks around, and Fitz - Steve smiles to himself at the engineer's enthusiasm - is talking to an older Asian woman dressed like Natasha Romanoff.

Jemma is chattering away to the teammate standing next to her, a dark-haired, tall man dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt with a simple, beaten leather jacket tossed over it. Her eyes are glowing as she looks around, motioning to the things around them; this doesn't surprise Steve. Still, it's her companion that interests the blond - he's got a trace smile on his lips, and he's not completely paying attention to all the things Jemma's pointing at, but rather, is watching her. Steve isn't even sure he knows he's doing it.

The super-soldier stands up from where he's leaning against the bar and clears his throat. At that, all eyes turn to him. Then little Jemma gives a delighted cry and, to the surprise of all but Fitz, she fairly flies into his arms. He laughs as he picks her up and swings her round and round. He's come to miss her, his British "baby sister". She gives him a big kiss on his cheek, and he kisses her on the forehead, even as he wrestles Fitz (who's run over as well) into a big hug and ruffles his hair. It's been three years since he saw either of them in person.

"We weren't expecting to see you until tonight!" Jemma clearly loves her surprise.

"I arrived yesterday, so I decided to be here to greet you. I haven't seen you in so long," he replies, grinning at both of them. "I'm glad to see you with Agent Coulson."

Coulson, of course, is happy to see him, and Steve is glad to see the agent well. He seriously questions how the agent is alive, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it, so he just gives his biggest fan a warm welcome. Agent Coulson introduces Skye (really, he thinks, her parents should have named her better), who is clearly enjoying not only being inside Stark Tower ("I've only seen it from the outside!") but is excited to meet him. The minute she sees him, clad just in his tee-shirt and jeans, she turns to the Asian woman with them and announces, "I think his arms are more proportional than Thor's," which makes Steve blush but just gets a bemused smile from the older woman, a smile which Steve thinks really softens the image the black-clad specialist projects. Although he's never seen her in person or even seen pictures of her, Melinda May needs no introduction. Natasha has mentioned her on occasion, and knowing Natasha and then hearing what she has said, Steve knows what to expect.

It's this last stranger who gives Steve the chilliest reception. Steve notices, even if Jemma doesn't, that the one male teammate of hers he doesn't know is watching everything with a pinched look on his face. Philip introduces him as the resident specialist on board and Skye's supervising officer. The Avenger makes an effort for Jemma and Fitz's sake: gives the agent a bright smile and stretches out a hand. The dark-haired man gives a polite, albeit rather distant, greeting. Steve thinks he must have accidentally offended him until he hears Skye snort derisively from the side and sees the younger woman roll her eyes.

And that's how Steve meets Grant Douglas Ward.

Jemma is excited (but then, when isn't she?) and wants to tell him all about their latest adventures, and Fitz keeps interrupting her with correcting details. Eventually Skye drifts over, and while FitzSimmons were too oblivious to notice her obvious interest and INVITE her over, once she's there, they welcome her heartily, often arguing with each other and turning to her as their arbiter.

He listens with half an ear, in amusement (it's not like he understands all they're saying, anyhow), as he studies them. Jemma is older now, having lost a little of the roundness in her face, but none of her enthusiasm. Fitz has become a bit more cynical, and he wonders if it has to do with the fact that the engineer clearly dislikes being in the field and only went because his best friend did. Jemma can be oblivious sometimes; Steve had figured out from Fitz's few visits that he's not really curious about the outside world and is quite content with his lab. Skye is clearly more street-saavy than either scientist, but their genuine enthusiasm is infectious, and clearly FitzSimmons are as good for her as she is for them.

May and Ward are at the bar, each already with a drink, but clearly Ward's company is too dour even for Melinda May. She eventually wanders away to join Coulson, who welcomes her with a smile and scoots over on the window bench to make room for her. The familiarity of their interactions interests Steve. He's only ever known Coulson as just 'the suit' Agent Coulson, but apparently Maria Hill and Nick Fury and Tasha and Clint all get quiet when talking about his past, and all Tasha will say was that there was a woman a long time ago (which means it can't be the cellist), and Steve wonders if it was Melinda.

The little hacker bounces away for a couple minutes and heads over to her supervising officer, who's now alone at the bar. She says something to him, and his face gets even MORE pinched, if possible; Skye just laughs before returning with a bowl of bar mix.

He and Fitz tell Skye about the tiny puppy Jemma had for three weeks, a shivering little baby she'd found in an alley and had hidden in her room in a Fitz-made soundproof box with circulating air vents. Jemma had managed to keep it a secret until Steve had accidentally noted to one of her supervisors that she seemed a little jittery, and then they had discovered the puppy, whose sad little eyes (plus Jemma's pleading ones) had ended with macho Nick Fury taking the puppy into his own home temporarily. Fury was, well, furious.

They chat about all their cases, and it's not until they ask about Phil Coulson dying does he tell him what he knows - which is very little, because only Thor (and, well, that punk Loki) really saw what happened. They then talk about the Battle of New York, then specifically what he remembers of the Chitauri, and he sees Fitz furiously typing notes into his phone. He senses that Jemma is getting uncomfortably quiet, and it's confirmed when Skye openly suggests that Jemma should go refill their drinks. Fitz looks up for a second, and his face changes to one of concern, and Skye just tells him to keep going, that she's taken care of it.

"What's wrong?" Steve asks, and he's almost sorry he did as he gets an earful from Fitz and Skye about Jemma's infection with some virus brought by the Chitauri. He listens in barely concealed horror as they tell him soberly about the progress of her illness. (She certainly did not mention all this in her email - all she said was that she had gotten a little ill but was all better now.) He can tell how affected Fitz is by what happened to his friend, and he can tell close Skye and Jemma are by the tone and the descriptions the hacker uses. Fitz tells how Jemma knocked him out with a fire extinguisher and attempted to jump from the plane to prevent her death pulse from knocking the plane out of the sky, something which totally aligns with what Steve knows about the little scientist's sense of self-sacrifice. Then Fitz says Agent Ward jumped out of the plane after her.

At that, Steve turns to look at the pair at the bar. Jemma is a little more quiet than normal, and her smiles are a little forced and nervous. It's now Steve sees a different side of the specialist. He is protective and concerned, and Steve thinks that he sees the specialist smile for the first time since the team got there. He does something with his hands on his hips and a very pinched-face look, apparently some inside joke between them; Jemma laughs, and that only seems to make the other man smile more. (Steve wonders if his face cracked when he did that.)

The soldier has seen how SHIELD trains its specialists, and he knows that they all have this kind of parachuting training, and so he could chalk up the skydiving incident to Ward doing what Ward should have been doing, but what he's watching right now is different. They don't train specialists to be comforting.

When Tony Stark and Pepper Potts finally come in (Stark is always late for everything, unlike his father), Fitz and Skye immediately sit up, and Coulson obligingly, like a bemused father, takes them over to introduce all four younger agents. May just looks on indulgently before taking her time to go over to greet them. Soon Pepper brings the two older SHIELD agents over to talk.

May and Coulson talk to Pepper, Steve only listening with half a ear. He watches Jemma talk to Ward, because he is beginning to suspect there's something more than both of them even realize.

Over the next three days, Rogers watches Ward closely. There's no change in the specialist's behavior towards Jemma. The man even seems amused by May and Skye's surreptitious glances at Thor, but Jemma, surprisingly, is not that impressed. "I don't like a man's hair to be longer than mine," she huffs, and Steve laughs. He sees Grant Ward raise an eyebrow. No doubt he is filing away that information for later.

When the long three-day session ends late on Thursday night, Stark calls for light sandwiches and late-night drinks, and Steve finds himself alone. He avoids the impromptu game that's brewing in the middle of the flat - a vigorous game in which it seems it's FitzSimmons against the world, if their indignant protests are anything to go by. Whether the argument is about science (Bruce Banner is laughing) or the English language (Thor sounds confused) Steve can't tell.

He wanders over to the bar, where Grant is sitting, his back to the bar, a drink in hand. Steve tries to chat with the specialist and gets only short answers, but he perseveres. He's doing this for Jemma. He can see the younger man's gaze directed on where Jemma is, a couple feet away. Somebody says something to her, and her eyebrows rise in horrified indignation, and a tiny smile crosses the specialist's face.

When the soldier sees the party break up and realizes they're finally about to depart, Steve finally turns to him. "Look, you don't have much time." Despite the odd look Ward gives him, Rogers presses on. "I loved her, you know. She was a British intelligence agent, and I owed her a dance, and I ended up crashing in the Arctic instead."

Ward ponders this for a moment. His reaction completely takes Steve by surprise, as the soldier didn't mean it this way at all; still, Steve thinks, in hindsight, it's a predictable reaction. "Simmons is not a replacement," he says, harshly. "She's not anybody's replacement."

If Steve had any question about Ward's feelings, it's quickly wiped away by that response. D-mn, Jemma, he thinks; she always picked the tough ones, didn't she? "Didn't say she was," he says mildly. "I'm just saying - if you don't make a move, one day you'll wake up, and she'll be gone. Or one day you just won't come back, and she'll have the rest of her life to live with nothing from you. You really want either to happen?"

Ward looks at him with that narrowed expression before he seems to figure out what the blond is implying, then his face gets a mix of embarrassment and pinched-nerve grouchiness that makes Steve want to chuckle. "We're not - we work together."

"I worked with Peggy, too," Steve shrugged. "Would have kept working with her if I hadn't crashed in the Arctic."

"It's not like that. We're not like that."

"Is that a description of your current state or a description of what you want?" Steve asks sagely, then nods towards Jemma. "Because, from where I've been standing, your 'current state' is not what she wants. And she's not going to take a hint, Agent Ward, because as sweet as Jemma is, she doesn't understand hints. And she's not going to make the first move, Agent Ward, because given how oblivious she is, she doesn't realize her feelings are reciprocated."

The specialist looks at him, eyes narrowed into a pinched stare. Steve really wants to tell the younger man if he keeps doing that his face will stick into that shape, but he checks himself.

She would be good for him, Steve thinks. As good as he is for her.

Six months later, he's at SHIELD, waiting for John Garrett and Phil Coulson's teams to show up to brief him on the Clairvoyant. It's there that, he discovers, that Jemma is dating a specialist.

And it's not Ward.

It's obvious to Steve that Antoine Triplett adores the biochemist, and she shows great affection for him. They have an easy, comfortable relationship.

Steve talks to Jemma, and when he asks about Triplett, she gets a slightly panicked expression before Steve laughs and says quietly that he is not here as a SHIELD higher-up to end her relationship; he's here as her friend. As they talk, it seems evident to Steve that she does care deeply for Trip, and she's a little flattered to be noticed by a specialist, and Trip clearly adores her. They haven't talked about getting hitched or anything to that effect, though to Steve it's evident that Jemma is the one hesitating.

They would be quite content in marriage, Steve thinks. They would have a more stable, lasting marriage than most marriages today. Logically, it would seem to work just fine. It might not be a bad thing.

Still, he's not sure Jemma's flashes of insecurity are just cold feet. But she needs to figure that out on her own. He simply tells her, "Marriage can be a wonderful thing. My parents had a great one. Two become one; the person becomes your other half. It's amazing to have that partnership. But if you choose poorly, you might as well not get married at all."

She nods and gives him a big hug, and thus ends their conversation.

He sees Ward's withdrawn behavior whenever Trip is near Jemma. He becomes quiet, sometimes snappish. But his eyes are always trained on her, always watching her, even if it's masochistic torture for him. Still, he says nothing to her - nothing at all. Steve wonders if Jemma even knows how Ward feels.

Steve does not tell him "I told you so."

He is not surprised when, ten months later, he gets the email from Skye saying that Jemma and Trip have parted amicably. Amicably more so because they're adults, but the end of the relationship clearly scars both Trip and Jemma. Older and wiser, it makes them both. Whatever it was, it just seems they were there for comfort, or at least Jemma was, and the ending is just as stably anticlimatic as the relationship was. They meet up for coffee at headquarters, and they mutually end it, and that's it.

When Rogers runs into the grandson of the Howling Commando, Trip just smiles and shrugs. He seems a little sad about it, but he doesn't elaborate. "I'm just not where her heart is," he offers, and that confirms for Steve everything he already knows.

There's more side-stepping than a line dance, Steve grumbles. For the next two years, all he sees is a whole lot of nothing, and he begins to wonder if he was seeing things when he first met Ward at Stark Tower. Then Phil Coulson cheerily offers to fly him somewhere, and Steve can't get off that plane fast enough to satisfy Ward: he doesn't know if it's because Ward sees him as competition or because he is a stark reminder to Ward that he has still not done what Steve advised.

He finally gets a long, shy email from Jemma that ends with the news that she's seeing somebody. That's a gross understatement, just like when she told him she got a "little sick" from the Chitauri virus.

It's Fitz who confirms the relationship - Fitz, who rants that she's lost her mind and is now dating Ward. It's Skye who sends a whole album of photos of Grant and Jemma (seriously, Steve thinks, Phil needs to take better care of Skye leaking information to other people) - and, a year later, a whole bunch of pictures of the engagement ring. Why Skye thinks he needs to see Jemma's ring is beyond him, but it makes sense when Steve gets a long email from Jemma about the ring. Apparently Grant Ward is a closet romantic and got her a ring that makes her little scientist heart burst: it's a small star sapphire in a simple platinum band with two tiny, channel-set diamonds on either side. Steve gets a whole seven-hundred word (word count, Microsoft Word - so much better than a typewriter) paragraph on the star sapphire and its origins.

His baby sis Jemma looks delighted, though, and even in a flat, two-dimensional photograph, her eyes shine up at her fiancé. Steve can only grin.

He gets a wedding invitation in the mail, and there's one word scrawled in black Sharpie on the invitation, in a handwriting he knows isn't Jemma's: "Thanks."

The hacker-turned-SHIELD-communications agent becomes Steve's main source of information on the Ward family. He doesn't expect Ward to say much, and he doesn't expect to get a wholly truthful version from Jemma - no doubt it's downplayed. It's Skye who keeps Steve updated.

Skye also sends pictures and video - often of her babysitting the newest addition to the Ward family. One day she dresses Jemma and Grant's firstborn up like Han Solo and dresses herself in a gigantic Chewbacca coat, complete with bandolier, and takes a shot of them "driving" the Bus with a caption, "Punch it, Chewie!" (Yes, he watched "Star Wars" as part of his acclimation program - did so with Thor. Tasha kept looking starry-eyed at the X-wings and Bruce kept complaining about the physical mechanics of the Death Star.) At other points baby Ward gets some help riding the (very patient, evidently) gigantic golden retriever who lives next door. He gets a baby mobile that, instead of cute animals on it, has six Iron Man suits on it. Baby Ward's first encounter with a rabbit, a kitten, a bird, and so on are all documented with snarky captions.

Steve gets, in the mail, a large photo in a frame - it's baby Ward, dressed by Skye in a Captain America outfit and carrying a plastic Captain America shield. Steve can't help but laugh.

(And no, he tells Tony with an eyeroll, he did NOT give the Ward baby Captain America paraphernalia for his birthday. He sent a stuffed lion.)

Skye, with the aid of Fitz's high-powered gadgetry, introduces toddler Ward to Peep jousting. Steve has no clue what it is - he actually has to look it up. (He hasn't decided yet if Youtube is a good or bad thing for modernity.) Fitz manages to make the Easter candy expand even larger in the microwave before exploding, much to the delight of the toddler, who cheers and claps his chubby hands together.

Apparently the Wards know nothing about her babysitting shenanigans, because it's not until the vacuum incident that he sees their reaction - or rather, Grant's. Skye sends Steve a video of her putting the seventh-month-old baby on a Roomba and driving the Roomba around the living space on the bus as the baby giggles and giggles in delight; it even has a second part, where she mounts the phone on the Roomba and turns the camera on, so it's like a roving camera and it captures all the video of where the Roomba is moving. The tail end of the video is the sudden appearance on camera of two pairs of legs in suit pants, and two male voices - Ward and Coulson having returned to the airplane from their meeting...EARLY.

The tot is snatched away by his father, and there's a great deal of yelling involved from both Ward ("YOU PUT ON MY SON ON A ROOMBA!") and Skye ("He's not hurt! He's having fun!"), and Steve can hear Coulson attempting to mediate.

Throughout the yelling, the baby is playing with Skye's phone. The video's still running, all Steve can see are rapid angle changes as he shakes it, then sticks his mouth on it (it's the closest Steve's ever seen of a baby's tonsils), then waves it about before dropping it on the ground so that it points straight up, where he can see hands waving and still hear Skye and Ward still yelling. ("YOU PUT MY SON ON A ROOMBA!")

~ shield ~

Sometimes he gets video of Jemma and Grant, too.

Jemma makes her first big public speech three months after giving birth, a question-and-answer session which also sees her and Fitz honored by the science and technology division. Skye is videotaping the whole thing, scanning the audience before returning back to Jemma up on stage. She makes the video interesting, making comments as she goes. Most in the audience are listening in rapt attention, but there's a row of kids in the front whose attention is entirely elsewhere. Skye's funny commentary picks up into the laugh-out-loud territory as she pans over to see what they're watching: Ward, who's standing off to the side. He's wearing a forest green sweater, a high-twist cotton half-zip mockneck, and khaki pants. (Skye makes a whispered comment about Ward, upon dating Simmons, suddenly actually realizing there is a color spectrum that doesn't include dark blue, gray, and black.)

What appears to have attracted attention is what Ward is doing. He's standing with his feet apart, slightly more than shoulder width, and he's unconsciously rocking side to side, shifting his weight from left foot to right and back; his three-month-old son is nestled against his chest, and he is rocking his son gently, even as he watches his wife speak up on the podium. Ward is oblivious to the female attention on him (or he's just ignoring it), his focus up on the stage. There's a trace half-smile on his face, visible even from the side, as he watches her; he is rhythmically patting his sleepy son's back. It's quietly enchanting.

Fitz and Simmons take questions - about technology, about the DWARVE prototypes, about alien technology. There are silly questions, too: about Steve Rogers (Jemma laughs and declines to answer except to say that he likes rocky road ice cream - true) and about Thor's muscles (no, no Asgardian stereoids), and then a question that has Skye laughing so hard she has to set her camera down: "Do you guys EVER mix with the other academies, like Ops? Or just Communications? Oh, please, please tell me you hang out with Ops."

There's a bit of silence, and a few titters. Fitz turns with a look to Simmons and says in a deadpan but meaningful tone, "Well, Agent Simmons, you're the expert. Do agents from the Sci-Tech Division ever mix with agents from Operations? Ever? How intimately do specialists and scientists work together?"

Jemma gives a non-descript answer, her face beet red.

Skye can barely keep her hand steady enough to zoom the camera in to Jemma's blushing face, and the look on the poor scientist's face is apparently too much as the hacker falls over laughing, as well as titters from some of the older agents watching the session from the back. The young recruits realize something is up, but don't know enough to realize what, and Ward offers no clarification from the side.

There's another question about alien infections. Steve can see the half-smile fall off Ward's face when there's a question about biological Chitauri infections, and Steve squints at the screen on stage. There's an uncomfortable silence, and then Fitz's voice, firm and logical. Steve doubts that most will detect the slight tremor in Fitz's voice as he talks about alien infections, and Jemma offers insights into the problem that are incredibly logical.

Jemma concludes, though, with a lesson that's entirely personal, and even the cadets sense something bigger and fall completely silent as they listen to her speak about dealing with unknown illnesses and their duty as SHIELD SciOps. The specialists and the field agents bear the brunt of physical attacks, she reminds them, but as scientists they are frontline against biological dangers. They must bear their responsibilities as scientists - to protect their teammates, to protect the human race. The cadets fall into a respectful silence, listening to the soft-voiced insight coming from the stage. When she finishes, there's a whole moment of silence, and then the sound of vigorous clapping.

Steve doesn't get to see the Wards in person for a few years, until one day he's sent on board Coulson's bus with Skye and Ward and May and Coulson. They go to Canada (laugh it up - Tony wouldn't shut up about the irony of it), and he can't figure out why the others keep rushing to finish the mission until he realizes that they were all planning to go the Wards' for Christmas.

After the mission, Skye has the briefing room computer set to Skype with Jemma's, and he watches in amusement as Ward is impatient with anticipation, a nervous tic in which his index finger taps his elbow as he waits.

They get a view of Jemma, making sandwiches in the family kitchen, and then Steve gets to see the young Ward. Rather, the tot is seen pointing at the laptop camera, going, "Daddy?" then sticking his face straight at the camera and bumping it (it makes all of them on the bus jerk back, as if he's really about to bump into them), and then the whole screen is hazy with drool and skin prints.

He can hear Fitz muttering under his breath about Wards and their lack of appreciation for technology, then an unidentified female voice hushing him as baby Ward's face backs away from the camera.

(Fitz's girlfriend, Skye stage whispers, a statuesque blonde from California who's completely smitten.)

Baby Ward is adorable, Steve concedes. He has Ward's coloring but Jemma's smile (Grant Ward never smiles) and the shape of Jemma's eyes (although he has his father's color). The baby looks into the camera. "Daddy?"

"Look here." They can see Fitz pointing at the screen. "See, Daddy? Daddy there?"

"Daddy!"

"And there's Captain Steve and Auntie May and Auntie Skye and Pop-pop Phil."

THAT gets Steve going, and he starts laughing as he looks over at Coulson, who has that look of indignant resignation on his face.

"I came up with that name," Skye announces with a big grin.

Baby Ward applauds when he sees all the faces. "Daddy come home?" he says hopefully.

"Yeah," Ward says, a little bit self-consciously because the others are there, but Steve doesn't miss the soft look in his eyes. "Daddy's coming home. How 'bout I bring some people home to visit?"

"'Kay!" He beams. "Mummy say hi."

When Grant invites him to their home for Christmas, Steve doesn't feel comfortable saying no. He takes the Ward tot sledding in the park across the street. He is sure Fury would yell if the director saw them using his unique metal alloy shield as a sled, but it's large enough for both of them to sit on and smooth enough for the snow. The little boy is buried under so many layers of clothes he looks like a ball, and Steve is only assured of the humanity bundled inside when he hears the delighted giggles as they wind kicks up around them.

In the evening, the small tot falls asleep in his father's arms. As the adults chatter below, the Wards take him upstairs to put him to bed, and Steve's using the upstairs washroom (the one downstairs is occupied) when he hears them come up the stairs. They're working together, talking quietly as they get the baby into his pyjamas and ready him for bed. Down the hall he can see them as Grant lays his son in his small bed. They stand by, their arms around each others' waists as they watch their child sleep. After a couple minutes of silence, they pick up and head downstairs.

Steve knows he's being a creeper, but he goes into the baby's room anyhow, silent, and stares down at the small toddler wistfully. It's not as though he and Peggy were for sure going to get together, anyhow, but the baby - Peggy was dark, like Grant Ward is, and his coloring is lighter, though lighter than Jemma's. It's not hard to look at the small toddler and imagine what his own child with Peggy would look like. But that's what it is, isn't it, when they take jobs as soldiers - the possibility of dying on the battlefield so that those at home can have that normal life.

People like Jemma and Grant's son.

The years speed by. Steve sees Coulson age and retire, and May follows. He sees the wrinkles in Fitz's brow when he frowns, and the laugh lines in Skye's face; he sees the flecks of gray in Grant's hair and the crow's feet in Jemma's eyes. By contrast, he ages far more slowly.

It is almost a curse, he thinks.

He gets the call from Fitz. He's surprised to receive it; it's normally Skye who contacts him. He finds it in his voicemail - a hologram message.

Jemma has pancreatic cancer. Like so many others, she was diagnosed too late. Like so many others, it is unlikely she will make it through the week. She will become a statistic, added to the number of victims taken by the cancer with the highest mortality rate.

Steve rushes to the Ward home, outside of the Hub. Jemma is already in the hospital, surrounded by her family: her children, her first (and, right now, only) grandchild, Fitz and his wife and his family. The others drop in as well - her coworkers at the Hub, her students at SciOps, Skye, and Coulson and May.

Grant Ward is a silent shadow by her bedside.

Steve asks him how he's doing. Grant gives a non-committal answer of "Fine."

At the funeral, Fitz and Skye speak. Weaver, now retired, does, also. One of Jemma's top students speaks. One of her coworkers do. One of her children does. Even Steve does, briefly.

Her husband does not.

It is raining during the burial. Even as everybody files away at the end and they take down the chairs, Grant sits alone by the hole in the ground where the coffin is.

Steve brings him an umbrella. He drives by the cemetery a few hours later to check on the new widower. The tent is gone, the chairs are gone, the hole has been filled. The man just stands there.

For all her scientific advancement, Jemma has not been able to beat this silent killer.

A few years later, Steve gets another call from Fitz. Grant Ward has passed - quietly, in his sleep.

Steve listens silently at the memorial service. It is filled with pictures of Grant - and of Jemma. His last few students speak about his commitment to them, to see them through. Coulson speaks, as do Skye and Fitz. It is obvious to all, however, that while he would not hasten his own death, Grant certainly wasn't avoiding it. Not after his wife had passed.

After the funeral, Fitz comes up to greet Steve, to thank him for coming. The soldier grips the younger man's hand before letting him go to be with his own family - his wife, his children, his grandchildren.

Jemma and Grant's eldest son comes up to Steve. He now looks barely younger than the very slowly aging World War II hero. He introduces his own children to the blond, and they shake hands with him solemnly.

It is hard to think of this grown-up man with children as the little bundle of blue padding Steve had taken sledding so many years ago.

"I wanted to thank you," he says, holding out a large, 9x12 tan envelope with "Captain Steve Rogers" printed on it. "Dad left this for you."

He takes it. Once he is in the privacy of his own car, he opens the envelope.

It's a candid photo of Grant and Jemma. It's faded. Both are young - so young. She is wearing a labcoat and funny, colored lab goggles, beaming as she looks up at him. He is looking down at her with that trace smile on his lips, the one he always wears when he looks at her. In the background, Steve can see Tony's old lab at Stark Tower. He guesses this is from Coulson's team's first trip to Stark Tower, from the first time he met Grant. The date on the back confirms it.

There is a short message on the back, written in Grant's strong hand.

"Thank you. From the both of us."

END