There was only one reason Steve hadn't called Peggy yet, and it was as real as it was ridiculous: he was afraid.
Even thinking it made it seem ridiculous.
But he was. He couldn't deny it. It had been six months since he had woken up and a little less since he'd found out Peggy was still alive. He had read all the files Fury had given him; in fact, he he had now read them so many times that he had memorized all of them without even meaning to. He had told himself a thousand times that he would call her or visit her or something, but somehow he never had and now he had just helped save the world and she had called him and he was officially panicking.
Okay, so maybe 'panicking' was the wrong word. But he was certainly...uncertain about how to proceed, and the reason for that was that he was scared out of his mind.
Partly it was because of how different they would be now-physically, of course, but also in terms of where their lives had gone. Steve's had really gone nowhere, but Peggy's certainly hadn't. He had read in her file that she'd gotten married and had kids and by now actually had a few great-grandchildren. She had seen the past seventy years go by and had lived them. And he had not. He never would. In that way, he wasn't quite a part of the workd she lived in, and it scared him, that disconnect. The realization that they may not be able to bond over shared experiences was strange and surreal and sad.
But there was also a deeper fear, a fear that he'd had since he had seen Peggy's name on that file, and it was an insidious, painful, uncontrollable fear. Because there was something that Steve knew he should be saying to Peggy when he saw her, and he also knew that he couldn't say it, because it wasn't true. He was supposed to tell her that he would take it all back, reject the operation, if it meant that he could live with her the way a man should live with a woman, and, God, he really wanted to be able to say it. The thing was, though, when he thought back on all the things he had done, all the lives he had been able to save because of what had been done to him, he couldn't bring himself to want to take it back. Not even for Peggy.
And that was what scared Steve the most about seeing her again-that she would expect him to say that, and he wouldn't be able to, and she would resent him for it.
Possibly the worst part about it was that it was a completely rational fear.