A/N: HELLO EVERYONE,

HERE'S A NEW STORY THAT I PROBABLY WON'T END UP FINISHING, BUT I'VE WANTED TO WRITE A STEGGY FIC FOR SO LONG THAT I WOULD LOSE MY SHIT, IF I WAITED ANY LONGER. Anyway, this takes place between Black Panther and Infinity War. So, there might be spoilers for BP, at some point, but I don't know.

ALSO, please bare in mind, I did not watch all of Agent Carter so I will be relying mostly on my comic knowledge of Pegs and what we're told in S1 and CA: TFA. If you notice anything, please let me know so I can correct it. :) With that in mind, you should also realize, in my AU, Agent Carter DID NOT happen. With that in mind, I'll be addressing how her lack of impact within the MCU came to pass, but mostly, I'll leave that up to you to imagine the devestation that could have happened, had Peggy not been a Billy Badass.

With that, I leave you to your reading. Thanks so much, guys! - Fel :)

I think there's a lot of things we don't know, and, as a result, we often fear what we don't know. Fear backs us into corners, makes us bare our teeth, causes us to run away with our tail between our legs—to put it shortly, it makes us into people we aren't. And I suppose, that's to be expected, isn't it? Fear, like love and hate and anger, pushes us into the shells, onto the edges of barriers defined within ourselves, that we don't entirely understand. They are the unexplored crevices of ourselves—all we can do, then, is to attempt to understand who we are, to not fear the unexpected and the unexplored, and to not fear the consequence of what it means to be oneself. – Journal of Margaret "Peggy" Carter, May 1945

Steve flipped to the last page of the short book, only to find that the editor had put together a list of acknowledgments to museums, libraries, and the Carter family, for allowing her to put this little biographical book together. He sighed heavily and closed the cover on itself, flipping it to the front to see Peggy's breathtaking face looking back at him. Bright and powerful blue letters spelled out the title: A Woman Ahead of Her Time: the Short, But Remarkable Life of Peggy Carter, beneath it there was a beautiful black-and-white photo of Peggy, her dark lips curled back in a ferociously victorious smile. She coulda knocked em' out with just a grin. And yes, her smile was show-stopping, but her features—all sharp, elegant, glaring, full, thick, and those melodramatic brown eyes that could break everything inside of you—those were what really made you stop and look twice.

He traced the outline of her face with slow, purposeful moments. "Aw, Peg…" He whispered. You know, that if I could reach back into time, reach through space, tear open the spectrum of reality…and bring you back here with me, I would.

"It's nice, right?" A silky voice spoke above him, a hand coming to rest on his shoulder.

Steve looked up to see Natasha stood there, without a hint of expression on her face. Those expressionless eyes and facial features of cold and merciless beauty had, at first, thrown Steve off—how could you trust someone, if they didn't even blink half the time? But in the past years, Natasha had become Steve's closest friend, his confidant, an almost therapeutic companion through everything that had happened recently.

Steve cleared his throat, not trusting his voice to speak after the read, "Yeah, it was… I feel like I got to talk to her, one last time… Nat, thank you."

"Don't mention it, Rogers—the publisher about had a heart attack when I said Captain America wanted the first edition." She gave him a hint of a smile—the sympathy, the soft and warm gooey stuff between her expressionless ice, showed, then. It wasn't much, but that's as close as Natasha Romanoff came to showing any sort of affection. "Now, come on up to the front, Sam, apparently, still doesn't know how to fly a plane."

"Hey, Natasha—" Sam, in response, called from the front of the quinjet, "you try flying into a fucking rainforest, with some wackass coordinates that Cap gave you on a whim, before he disappeared for 5 hours to do some 'light reading.' You know what I say? Light reading my ass, probably found the gay section of Pornhub…" He grumbled.

Natasha and Steve's eyes met and they exchanged smirks, before the super soldier followed Nat out into the front of the jet, where Sam was scrutinizing the approaching brush below. "So, this is Wakanda?"

"Straight through those trees." Steve said softly, a small smile touching his face. Peggy may be gone, but he still had one thing to look forward through all of this. Home. A flash of memories filled his mind—especially, in the summers when the "roughin' of the Depression" (as they used to call it) got a little easier: Bucky and him at Coney Island, the summer they worked at Mr. Farlan's barbershop as 'sweepin' boys,' or the summer they stayed with Bucky's grandparents in upstate New York, working in the field, feeling the sun on their backs, getting drunk on cheap liquor Bucky's Pops stored in the trap floor of the chicken coup… They had had so much before the War. When Steve had nothing to prove, and Bucky didn't constantly have to worry about him.

"Through the trees? Steve—"

"Hey, he's the Captain, I wouldn't argue, Sammy." Natasha smirked wickedly at Sam's resulting disgruntled expression, before he dove right through the holographic barrier trees and into the open, sun-touched fields of Wakanda.

"Well, shit." Sam remarked in amazement as he swung the jet past the thatch-roofed houses, the farmers, beneath them, waved at the sight of one of the royal aircrafts—while they sped towards the glittery skyline of Wakanda's capital city, Birnin Zana.

"Don't forget, Sam, you owe me five dollars for thinking Rogers was quote-on-quote 'full of shit.'"

"You'll get your damn blood money, woman." He snapped, eliciting a chuckle from Nat as her hand came to rest on Steve's arm. "You ready for this?" She asked softly as Sam radioed the Wakandan base below to make sure the landing coordinates were right.

Anyone looking at them would have assumed they were in love. Nat's luminous, intensive green eyes bore into the side of Steve's face with the piercing abstraction of a protective lioness. The fingers on his arm showed the classic signs of sexual tension, but that was just it: the sexual tension was there because it always had been. They were used to it, they functioned within it, and it was within reason to even suggest—if one dared to—that's perhaps what their relationship was founded on.

Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable. Yes, they do. It was the kiss, Steve thought, where it all started. He knew they could have had sex, maybe hung around for awhile in-and-out of each other's bedrooms—but in the end, they both knew they had one goal: prove to one another that they were both better than they used to be. Usually, that didn't involve the bedroom. And more importantly, it didn't involve trying to force the relationship anywhere beyond what it was—a deep, loyal, and remarkably simple friendship.

In fact, that had been why Nat had come looking for him and Sam, when it was all said and done between him and Tony: You got room for one more on that ship of yours, Rogers? She had explained to Steve, when they finally did meet up after the 'Civil War'—as the press had been calling it—that she had realized Tony hadn't done it for the 'prodigal people of earth,' he had done it for himself. She had doneit for herself. They were selfish like that—her and Stark. Perhaps that's why she was swayed, for a second, that this could have worked out—this whole "Registration Act." But it didn't. You can't be a hero for yourself, you have to do it for other people. That's why she went looking for Steve and Sam—they were her people, her boys.

She also had had a point with the 'are you ready?' business. Steve took an unsteady sigh: was he ready? Bucky—no! His beloved friend's scream that followed as he fell from the ravine that day would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would hear it over the course of the rest of the war, he would see it in his sleep, he would dream it over and over and over and over again in the ice, he would open his eyes 70 years later and remember the scream. The terror in Bucky's eyes as he slipped through his grasp and, unbeknownst to Steve, fell right into HYDRA's jaws.

If the time came again—to protect Bucky, to save him, could he? The answer scared him because, truth be told, he wasn't sure.

"As I'll ever be." He answered her with a trying, yet reassuring smile. Natasha gave him a dubious raise of her pale eyebrow, before offering a single nod. She didn't believe him, but then again, Steve never intended for her to believe him in the first place.

Birnin Zana—"Zana," to the locals—was beautiful—beautiful in a radically different way than anywhere else Cap had ever seen. He had been to London, Tokyo, Seattle, New York, and Bangkok—all of them were different, yes, but different from Zana because these were places that had been seen for hundreds of years. Because while you could recognize the towering high-tech sky-scrapers of Tokyo, be reminded of London's Underground with the vibranium trains and tunnel system, or reminisce of Seattle's Space Needle from the top of the highest peak in Shuri's lab; you also were aware of a sharp, crisp, and refreshing sense of something private, yet communitive in Zana.

These people had lived in secret, unaware of most of the world's tribulations, trials, and as a result, were allowed to grow in an independent, isolated sense. Unchecked by the international weeds of other countries, Wakanda had flourished on all fronts: in technology, agriculture, combat, education, government, ideologies, religion, and most of all, peace. There had never been foreign blood of war spilled on Wakanda's soil, and Steve fully intended to keep it that way. He knew the risk they took in letting him here—not simply an American, but perhaps, the most notable American of all time. Especially, one who was aggressively wanted by the law.

With that in mind, when he saw T'Challa awaiting him in the royal palace's foyer, Steve shook the King's hand. "Your highness," he said with a warm smile. "You remember Agent Romanoff and my friend, Sam."

"Ah, yes, the bird and the spider." T'Challa quipped with a mild, yet mischievous smirk.

"Says the guy who's into cats—which, by the way—does anyone still not think that's weird?" Sam crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at the King.

T'Challa smiled at Sam in a "boy, just you wait" kind of way. "The Black Panther, Sergeant Wilson, is a representative sign of our goddess, Bast—she was capable of taking the form of a 'human woman,' if she so desired… But preferred to remain in the form of a panther—a symbol of strength, grace, and the movement of greatness. And, it would be my guess, that she doesn't entirely like to be compared to a mere 'cat.'" He winked and turned on his heel, leaving Sam struggling to come up with something to say, Natasha smirking, and Steve—having blocked most of this conversation out because of his thoughts were revolving around one person—to follow after the King.

As they walked through the palace, Sam and Natasha stopping every so often to admire the view, Steve was glued to T'Challa's side, feeling like the walking was taking forever. "When did it happen?

"Last night, Shuri called me as soon as it did."

"And how is he?" Steve stopped him, somehow sidestepping T'Challa, so he could get in front and look him in the eye.

"Captain Rogers?" A young girl's voice sounded behind him. He turned sharply to see a gangly, but lovely teenage girl standing there. Dark and relentlessly probing eyes, a smile to melt under, smart and decisive features, and dark-chocolate skin that was immaculately clear of blemish. Shuri. The girl who broke HYDRA's code on Bucky's broken mind.

And he knew exactly why, as he shook the girl's hand. She was one of those people who could have looked at a broken knick-knack, a sick person, or the complex wiring of a fried jet engine and known—in an instant—what was wrong with them. Better yet, how to fix them. Steve knew when he shook her hand, feeling those graceful little fingers in between his larger pale ones, that he was holding the hands of the girl who could save the universe.

He remembered he had yet to reply to her, despite the fact that he had been shaking her hand for approximately a minute and a half, now. "Steve, ma'am, please call me Steve." He said softly, trying to remember his manners. She had shocked him—this tiny, intense, and lanky thing of a girl.

Shuri raised a dark brow, a sharp little smile folded across her lips like some kind of mechanism unlocking. "Steve?" She turned to T'Challa, who was watching the interaction with an amused smile. "Does this mean I'm on a first-name basis with Captain America?"

T'Challa smirked at her quirky remark, unable to stop himself from grinning with a hint of pride, annoyance, and amazement. "Little sister, Captain Rogers has come to see the White Wolf, not for your absurdity."

"'Not for your absurdity.'" Shuri mocked her older brother with a roll of her eyes and a good-natured grin. "Cool it, black Shakespeare." She winked at her older brother, before she gestured for Captain Rogers to follow her. "Sergeant Barnes is in my lab, Captain—right this way. Your friends will have to wait out here—too many white people all at once can overload the system."

Natasha raised an eyebrow in response, but must have decided not to say anything, and Sam looked like he was about to protest. Before Shuri started laughing, "Just kidding! It's only a liability issue," she opened the door with the biometric wave of her hand and they entered the lab.

Steve wanted to look around, he really did. But you have to understand, when he saw Bucky—Bucky Barnes—not the Winter Solder, not the half-broken and dead-inside man from Bucharest a year ago—but his beloved Bucky, he couldn't help himself. He ran to him. He ran as that 16-year-old kid, in Brooklyn, who ran down the early morning streets on his paper route, he ran as he had through HYDRA's fortresses stealing through the limey-green darkness to save Bucky, he ran as he had run for 97 years—all towards this boy, this man, his Bucky.

"Bucky…? Buck." He gasped out. Bucky had been sitting on the edge of some kind of medical bed, his eyes downcast, his metal arm missing. He didn't look bereft without it, in fact, he looked more whole than he had looked in the past three years. And as soon as he heard Steve's voice, his friend's gaze slowly moved up to meet his. Disbelief spread across Bucky's handsome face and a smile, one that looked like sunshine bursting through the clouds, sprang to his lips.

"Stevie, Jesus Christ." His voice cracked audibly and he was up and running to Cap, before they collided in the middle of the room.

Shuri held back in disbelief as she watched powerful muscles entangling, strangled, deprived emotional sounds elicited after a 100 years of estranged and oppressive silence, and whispered words that no one, but the two of them would ever know. She had guessed all along—one only had to know Bucky Barnes for a short time, before they knew the boy wasn't entirely riding that 'straight' track… But she hadn't been sure of Steve, she had never been sure of the infamous 'Captain America.' He had gotten her brother in trouble, dragged Wakanda into a mess, and now, he stood there in the middle of her lab—sobbing in deep, empathetic, and earnest grief into the hair of his dear friend. Both of them were sobbing, she realized. She saw the long and heavy tracks of tears on Barnes' face. Bucky's were just deathly silent. Figures.

She would let them have their moment, before she dared interrupting.

"So, you gonna you tell me whatever ended up happening between you and Stark?" Bucky asked Steve later that day, as they walked the length of Lake Victoria. The sun was setting behind the tree line, while magnificent colors of peach, orange, pink, purple, blue, and gold all blended together in a majestic sunset.

The village children were laughing and chasing each other, making sculptures out of the muddy clay of the lake's embankment, and darting to-and-fro their thatch houses in some kind of game. Steve could only guess a form of hide-and-seek? But as for Bucky's question, Steve definitely didn't know how to respond to him.

"To say in the least, we're not really on talking terms." Steve replied with a dry kind of half-smile coming to his face.

"Ooo bad breakup." Bucky teased, with that good-natured smile appearing on his face, again.

Jesus, Steve thought. Where had that smile been? Buried, cracked, ruined, and broken beyond repair. And yet, here he was: the same kid who, at one time, had been way too fuckin' small to fit the full length of his name. "You're actually more right than you think." He squeezed his interlocked fingers around Bucky's, with a loving, but melancholy smile touching his features. "The Avengers… Well, I don't think we're all going to come back anytime soon and sing kumbaya."

Bucky broke into a bitter laugh. "Because of me."

"No, because of the Accords, Buck, not because of you."

"Bullshit, Steve." He said sharply, that free and relaxed smile that had been on his face for the majority of the day dissipated within a moment. "If it was just about the Accords, you would have signed—you knew, as well as Stark, we need to be put in check." He sighed heavily and tore his hand from Steve's, looking disgusted. Steve tried to hide the pain that he felt in his chest, at the mere idea of Bucky walking away from him right now. "You blew up another opportunity in your life for me, and I hate that." Bucky growled, pinching the bridge of his nose with a worn-out sigh.

Bucky was right. Steve had conceded, there was a pattern between being enhanced and bringing 'the hurt' with you. But that's what happened when you planned to try to live your life, while at the same time, fight off intergalactic threats of the universe. Those intergalactic threats didn't give two shits if you had Accords put in place or not, they were coming with one mission: to destroy Earth and everything you loved. But, then again, what did he know? He never went to college in political science—maybe there was a class on how to 'diplomatize intergalactic threats.'

But did he throw away an opportunity for Bucky? Hey there, pal, my mama's got this idea that my full name's James Buchannan—like the president—but I don't think anyone really likes that, so I just go by 'Bucky.' He met Bucky's eyes, the same boy he had loved for a century, and walked over to him, cupping his scruffy cheek in one hand, and kissed him. "The only thing I regret, through all of this, Buck, was losing you." He whispered against his lips, before he kissed him again. Bucky seemed to tense, at first, his entire body tight with tension and fear, but then he eventually twined his fingers up into Steve's hair, and gave into him.

"Son of a bitch." Bucky whispered to Steve, when he finally pulled away.

Steve laughed—a loud, booming, joyful sound. "Come on, I've been waiting 70 years to do that, pal."

"Punk."

"Jerk."

They stopped and smiled at one another—it didn't seem like so long ago that Steve had been that asthmatic kid, who stood before his best friend, a man who was to go to war and expected to die for his country. But here they were, in another country, another world, and another time—still willing to go and die for something greater than themselves, except this time: that 'something greater' was for each other, not the impossibly complicated ideals of a country or an ideology that neither of them really believed in anymore.

They joined hands again, before they continued walking down the path and into the shady, soft forest that surrounded the lake. They were silent, then, Steve needing to organize his thoughts and Bucky just astounded in being able to take comfort in Steve's touch. He didn't think he would ever be able to feel this way, again. Neither of them did.

Somewhere along the way, Steve started to think about Peggy. He usually did when he was with Bucky. Look, Steve might have the audacity to call himself the Captain, but Peg's the real Captain of this trio. Bucky had once said—he wondered if he still remembered their days together—Bucky, Peggy, and Steve. "Buck, what was it Peggy always used to say?"

Bucky gave a sad little smirk at the mention of their old girlfriend—if Steve could dare to define her as simply that. "About what? She had too many for me to keep up with."

"Something about… gravestones and wasting time." Steve remarked with a smirk. "…'There's no time in life to feel sorry for yourself'—"

"'Gravestones will do it for you…" Bucky finished with a half-shocked, half-hushed whisper. His crazy blue eyes were wildly bright, unfiltered with deep, vital realization of something beyond Steve. "Stevie… There's something—GAHHH." He collapsed to his knees, holding his head and crying out in pain.

Steve's eyes widened and his heart dropped into his chest. "Buck? Bucky, what is it?"

"Remember…her…" He croaked, groaning, and looked about ready to keel over into the grass. Steve gave a swift shake of his head. "Nope, not today." He lifted Bucky easily into his arms and carried him—bridal style—and as soon as his feet touched the golden soil of the Wakandan plain, he started sprinting towards Zana.

He couldn't lose him, not this time, not again.

"Where's Shuri?!" Steve burst through the doors of the lab, sweating and breathing heavily. He had just sprinted 10 miles in under 25 minutes.

The teenage genius looked up from her work on some kind of mechanical gadget. "Captain Rogers, what is it?"

Steve swung Bucky off of his shoulder and cradled his body in his arms. "He's…" Bucky's eyes were still wide, still overwhelmingly blue—an unnatural, unstable blue. He was whispering something into the air, something so soft that it couldn't be heard unless you placed your ear right up to his lips. His forehead was creased in sharp, unregistering pain, while his hands were shaking with terror, with turmoil, with agony.

Shuri rushed over to the broken man already madly typing into her high-tech watch, as a stretcher unlatched itself from the wall and swung itself over to them, which Bucky fell right onto with an almost magnetic force. "Out of the way, Steve." She said firmly, pushing Cap to the right so she would have room to work. The side arm of the stretcher, reached out and pulled Bucky's shirt open with threateningly accuracy. Another machine extended from the ceiling of the lab and began to hook Bucky's head up to a massive computer, one that Shuri was already working at.

She typed madly into the controls, speaking beautiful, tribal Wakandan into the microphone to make the machines work faster. Steve could only watch with horror as Shuri's lab assistants rushed to help her, moved Bucky forward, and aided the robotic arms in stripping him. And then, if that wasn't traumatic enough, the computer screen turned on and an image started to appear—staticky and grainy, but Steve knew who it was immediately. He felt his heart freeze in his chest. Everything froze—the whole world froze.

Because there she was—in a tight-fitting leather jacket, a semi-automatic rifle swung upwards into the sky, her face, gaunter than he remembered, looked with that same superior, ferocious energy gazing back at Steve. Her curls—where were her curls?—were gone, seemingly stripped away, as if they had never been there in the first place. But it was her, it was Peggy.

"Captain Rogers, you need to leave—the princess will come to you, when your friend is stable." He heard someone say something beside him, but he could only be led away from the image of 'his best girl' staring back at him with that shockingly beautiful face.

Steve had tried to stay awake, wanting to know how Bucky was doing. He figured, if anything had gone drastically wrong, someone would have told him something. So, he started reading Peggy's book again, feeling desperately lost without her quiet and steady words there to ground him. But it wasn't long before he found himself nodding off, the book slipping from his hand and onto the floor with a soft boom. For once, Steve didn't wake up.

That night, he dreamed of Peggy.

They were laying on a beach in Southern France. Bucky's side resting against Steve's arm, while Peggy was squeezed in between the two of them. A fire crackled softly behind them, illuminating the darkness of the world around them, making the November air not so cold.

"So, when all this is done—the war and the SSR business—what do you think you'll do?" Steve had asked her, when Commander Phillips had given them the night off, for once. "Anything to go back to?"

Peggy had smirked. "Because you don't think I'm American?" She raised a sharp brow at him, narrowing her chocolate brown eyes into his.

"I mean…you're accent uh… It doesn't really seem like it's…" Steve had nervously tried to cover up his mistake. Maybe, there was a part of America where they spoke like Peggy—was there? He couldn't be sure, but he had probably just offended her.

"Steven, don't be a bloody idiot." She smiled warmly, then, her sharp eyebrow sinking down off of her forehead. She covered his hand with hers, as they drew closer to the fire. "I'm from London, but considering, everything I loved about London is gone… I have nothing to go back to."

Steve felt his heart sting for her, he squeezed her hand. "No family?"

"A sister, but that's about it, darling. And you, Captain, since you're feeling so interrogative: anything to go back to?"

"Well, I guess Brooklyn, but… I mean, if I don't go back with Bucky, there's not really a point in going back."

"Mmm… Home's not really home without the people, is it?"

"No, it's not."

They were silent for a long time, Peggy came to rest her head on Steve's chest as they stared up at the empty sky. There were no stars, no moon, just dark, foreboding clouds. She closed her eyes, her head tilted sideways, at some point, as she went limp with sleep. Steve ran his fingers through her hair, watching the sky. Why couldn't there have been any stars? The one night he had off from the War, and there weren't even stars to get lost in.

Sometimes, he wished he could be back home. You could always see the stars in Brooklyn, especially, when you were standing out on the docks over the Bay. But home's a ways away, innit? He looked over at Bucky's sleeping form across from him. He had fallen asleep before the sky had even gone dark. Peggy had wanted to pour booze over his boot and set it on fire, but Steve wouldn't let her. He needed sleep, they both did.

And Steve? He just wanted to see the stars.

And then, Steve's dream jumped, and they were, suddenly, in Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London. Peggy had dragged Steve through the crowds on that Christmas night 1945, where people—for once, were dancing and laughing, enjoying the taste of watered down coffee grounds and hot cocoa. The Square was beautiful, Steve remembered, despite being in ruins. With the great columns of the National Gallery, knocked down and the buildings surrounding the square filled with bullet holes and gaping notches left from canons. The locals had lit the old gas lanterns stored in basements, cellars, and attics, allowing light to fill the square with warmth and soft light they all thought was long-gone once Hitler had decided to douse all the lights of Europe.

A group of carolers from Westminster Abbey had come and started to sing O Holy Night, while people grew closer and mourned the empty spaces left by their loved ones, the gaps in their hearts left by the 'missings in actions,' and cried in joy for the night they had left with that one special person. The melody carried through the crowds joined there, heartbreaking melancholic, but so incredibly hopeful for the days ahead.

"You wanna dance?" Steve had asked Peg with a small, yet shy smile on his face.

Peggy, caught in a moment of nostalgia, it seemed, turned to look at him with a heartbreaking look on her face. "My father proposed to my mother, right there." She said softly, pointing to a particularly ruined spot. There were tears in her eyes for a split second, before she turned sharply away from him. "It was a ridiculous idea to come here, Captain, I apologize."

Steve felt his heart clench, at the mention of her parents. Both dead, both gone forever, and this had been where their story first began. The story of Peggy. He frowned at the thought of it. "Peg, hey…" He said softly, reaching for her arm—she was tense and he could see, despite her thick layers of jackets and scarves, she was shivering. But he guessed it wasn't from the cold.

He brought her into him, enfolding her against him as he leaned his head against hers. "Let's… Let's dance, okay?" He asked her as she buried her face into his neck. Her nose was cold against the heat of his neck. She nodded as he began to move them in slow, syncopated movements. He was terrible at this, but Peggy didn't seem to mind.

It started to snow, big and ashy-colored snowflakes from the smoke overhead. They landed in a crown around Peggy's hair as she still hid in the confines of his jacket. He had never seen her so…defeated? No, this wasn't defeat. This was fear. She was afraid to except that this is what her home had truly become. "Tell me, doll, if you could be anyone else in the whole world, who would you be?" He asked, desperate to distract her.

She paused, causing Steve to stop and simply hold her close to him. She was silent for a long time, leaving only the sounds of people laughing and the carolers to move onto the next song, Come All Ye Faithful. "It may be agony and ruins and hellfire, but I don't think I would want to be anyone else, but who I am, right now, in this moment, Steven." She said softly, looking strangely content for a moment. She finally met his eyes, then, and like a raising Phoenix from the ashes, her brown eyes came alive. They burrowed into his, not seeking comfort or validation, but to dare him to respond to her differently, to oppose her.

Steve chuckled, he should have known. "Not even a man?"

"Especially, not a man. I am the master of myself, Captain, why spend time wishing to be anyone else? Why, there's no time in life to waste feeling sorry for yourself," she twisted his arm so he could gracefully spin her back to him, "gravestones can do that for you." She winked at him, before she cupped his face in her hands and reached up to plant a kiss on his lips.

He brought his lips down to her and held her against him, on that cold and wintery night. He almost would have believed that that had been real, that he was back with her, back in the time he belonged... Had it not been for the lack of stars shining in the sky.

Steve awoke with a jolt, breathing heavily and sweating profusely against the sheets of the bed. He got up, immediately knowing sleep wasn't an option, anymore. He threw on an old SHIELD t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts. He didn't really want anyone in the royal family to see him walking around in his briefs. He exited his room and walked down the hall towards Shuri's lab. He needed to see Bucky, even if he wasn't awake.

When he reached the biometric scan, he placed his hand on the panel and found that Shuri had already programed his scan into the system. Well, the girl could get her shit done, there was no doubt about that. He entered the lab, after gaining access, and found Shuri, very much awake, with her hair bundled up in a messy knot on top of her head and her hands still working across the keys of that massive computer. "Good morning, Captain Rogers." She said without even looking behind her.

"Princess, did you even sleep?"

"I tried." She turned to face him with a smirk on her impish, but lovely face. "Your friend keeps me awake at night, I tend to worry about him." She gestured to the sleeping body of Bucky, across the room from them. "He'll be fine, he's still very weak, but he'll be fine." She remarked as she watched Steve go to Bucky, tracing his cheekbone with his thumb.

She went back to typing on the keys, the image of Peggy, Steve saw earlier, flashed back across the screen. Except, this time, Shuri must have edited it or cleaned it because it looked clearer, sharper—he could see her in full, pristine, and piercing beauty. She was Peggy, alright, but there was something dangerously different about her. Sure, it was a different wardrobe, a different hairstyle, but there was something else here…he couldn't tell what it was, and it drove him crazy. He wondered how far, after he went into the ice, this had been.

"What happened to him?" He asked her cautiously, not wanting to jump to any conclusions.

Shuri sighed and turned back to him, getting up from her chair, and walking over to Steve, who was standing next to Bucky. "A pain in my ass." She pulled out a holographic keyboard and typed a command in Wakandan, before a colossal wave of pictures and images exploded from the machine in holographic mastery.

"This is your friend's brain, and what you see here, these are his memories." Steve looked closer at the few that were nearest to him. They were a group of unclear, but identifiable brownish, translucent images of a scrawny, asthmatic little kid named Steve. "HYDRA, when they fried Sergeant Barnes' frontal and temporal lobes, did it with systemic planning. They wanted to wipe out your friend's functioning, his executive decision making, his recognition and cognization of the familiar." She paused and brought down a group of sharp and clear memories. They were from earlier, Steve's face startling close to the frame as he laughed at something Bucky must have said.

"These memories—the short-term ones that Bucky is making now—he wouldn't have been able to make under HYDRA's system. They utilized a complex technique of hidden trigger words—words that, from nowhere—are scattered throughout Sergeant Barnes' consciousness and can, at anytime, cause him to go crazy psycho killer, right? I went in and disentangled HYDRA's code and branched it with my own, allowing the 100-year-old broken neuro-tissue to finally function, on its own." She sent the memories she had been holding in her palm back up to their original space, before she brought forth the image of Peggy.

"The only thing about that is, if Bucky did—for whatever reason—still have hidden memories, the ones that HYDRA didn't want him to have, they will be incredibly neurologically damaging. His brain, essentially, has a stroke due to the memory's 'foreignness' to his newly-formed grey matter. In other words, Captain, your friend, if we're not careful here, could be in some real danger."

Steve didn't know what half she said meant, but he knew what 'danger' meant and that was bad news. He sighed heavily and leaned down to Bucky to kiss his forehead, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. "So, we're sitting ducks? We just wait until he has another attack like this?"

"It would seem, at the moment, Steve, that would be correct."

He sat down in the chair beside Bucky's bedside and took his friend's hand, bringing it to his lips and holding it there. He could smell the old, warm scent of Bucky—the faintly spicy taint of his aftershave. "Just answer me this, that memory—the one of the girl—is that an older one?"

"How old, Captain?"

"From the 1940s."

She frowned sharply at that, sensing something was amiss. "Captain, I'm afraid this memory was made in the last 8-10 years, not from the 1940s."

Steve awoke to someone shaking his shoulder. He instantly snapped his eyes open, ignoring the crick in his neck from sleeping sideways in the chair beside Bucky's bedside. He didn't know why he was expecting an attack, but he supposed, what followed, was a sort of attack on all that he would ever know.

"What is it? What?" He demanded to the lab assistants who had awoken him.

"Captain…Sergeant Barnes… He's… He's awake." He realized with a shocking, choking revelation that Bucky was no longer in his bed.

"Where is he?" He snapped, his blue-green eyes going dangerously cold.

"He's this way." He followed after Shuri's assistants through the winding staircase of the lab, until they got to an outdoor garden where Shuri was talking in low-tones to Bucky. Steve feared for the worst—had he lost his friend again? Was he the Winter Soldier? But Shuri didn't seem scared, her face was a plethora of worry and concern. Bucky was facing the opposite direction, his back muscles tense and gripped in anticipation. Steve realized, as he got closer, Bucky was saying something, too.

"She's… I didn't remember, Shuri, but now… Now, I do." He said weakly, his voice seemed exhausted and worn out, just as he was.

"Hey, Shuri, anything I can do?" Steve called from behind them. It was an old war tactic: distract the target by throwing them off course as to 'who' the target was.

"Steve…" Relief flooded into her face. "I need—"

Bucky sharply turned to see Steve there and he pulled out of Shuri's grasp, his eyes were wild, and he was coming straight for him. He opened his arms, meaning to catch Bucky's strike, if he intended to strike him, but Bucky didn't do any of that. Instead, he grabbed hold of Steve's shirt and looked him dead in the eye. "Steve… I'm sorry…" Tears flooded his eyes. "I'm sorry… Margaret's…" His breath hitched in his throat. "Peggy's alive."