Epilogue: Legacy

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"Good morning, Gil - somebody to see you. You up for visitors?"

Hodge dragged open heavy eyelids, blinking dully at the nurse in the open doorway. Cute little thing - if only he'd been a few decades younger, he would've liked to show her a good time.

"Mmm," he grunted, and she smiled brightly - must have taken that for a 'yes.' Then she backed away from the doorway and somebody else stepped into view. The guy was tall and blond and vaguely familiar. Must be his granddaughter's boyfriend. Was Joan old enough to have a boyfriend already?

"Hey, Hodge." The man came into the room slowly, as if unsure of his welcome. "Thought I'd stop by, say hello. You remember me?"

That voice was familiar. He hadn't heard it for years.

For a moment he couldn't place it - and then it was as if the entire world jolted into perspective. The annoying beep of his heart monitor suddenly skipped a beat.

"Son of a -" he wheezed, only just remembering to cut the oath off short. His granddaughter was around here somewhere, and he'd been trying to quit swearing in front of the kids for years now. Besides, his breath was too short to get complete sentences out anyway.

Steve Rogers smiled a little apologetically, shooting a nervous look at the heart monitor. "Guess I should've called ahead."

The kid hadn't aged a day. Hodge glared suspiciously at the cup of half-eaten Jello his granddaughter had been trying to feed him. What did they stick in that stuff these days?

Then again, he knew his time was getting short.

Maybe this was it.

It was a curious thought, but less frightening than he'd expected. Death didn't hold the same terror that it had on muddy battlefields when he'd been younger. Still, he'd always kind of figured that his Abbie would be the one to come get him when his time came. That woman had been the making of him. So why would the ghost of Captain America show up in the room of the fellow who'd made training camp so miserable for him?

For a long minute, the room was silent except for the various beeps and clicks of the machines surrounding Hodge's bed, the hiss of the oxygen tube, and the whistling sound Hodge's own breath made as it struggled in and out of his lungs.

"Rogers," he finally rasped, the word only barely understandable even to his own ears. He tried to clear his throat. "What…?"

The captain shrugged a little, hooking an ankle around the nurse's rolling stool and pulling it closer so he could sit down. "Turns out I'm more durable than we thought. They found me in the ice, thawed me out a couple weeks ago. Been looking up all the fellows, found out you were here."

Hodge grunted. Not a ghost, then. Come to think of it, there had been something on the TV a week or two ago - aliens and New York City and a guy running around in a costume Hodge hadn't thought of in years. He'd been confused though, struggling through the haze of anesthesia and pain drugs that came after his most recent fall, and the whole thing had seemed like some mad hallucination.

"Why?" he asked at last. Doggone it - he hated the thin, thready way his voice sounded these days. There sat Captain America, healthy as ever, and here he lay, a sick, dying, old man.

Something somber fluttered through the younger man's eyes. It wasn't pity; Hodge would've found the strength to chuck the Jello at him if it had been. No, it was sadder than pity - and then it finally clicked.

Rogers had been looking up all the fellows. Hodge wouldn't kid himself - he figured he was the last man Steve Rogers would want to come sit with. The fact that Rogers was here at all meant that he was probably just that - the last man left, or one of them at least.

"I never got a chance to ask about your arm," Rogers answered, putting on a game smile that didn't match the look in his eyes at all. "How's it doing?"

He remembered. Of course he would remember.

"Still attached." Hodge twitched the fingers of his game arm in a clumsy gesture. It had never been quite the same since that long-ago day when they had last seen each other. An awkward silence fell then - the kind of strangeness that comes between two distant acquaintances who have nothing to say to each other. Then his weakened lungs took that moment to rebel, seizing up in a rattling cough that shook the entire bed.

Joan hurried in at the sound. His granddaughter had been coming around more recently ever since she'd started studying to become a registered nurse.

"You okay, Grandpa?" she asked, reaching for a glass of water that stood beside the sink. Then she saw the visitor and her eyes grew huge. "Oh, my gosh," she gasped, and dropped the glass with a crash.

Rogers was on his feet at once, stepping around the end of the bed and offering a hand. The glass hadn't broken - hospital dishes were too tough to even be chipped by a little tumble like that - but Hodge watched as the two of them mopped up the spilled water with most of the bedside box of tissues.

"Quite a tumble," Rogers pointed out, standing to drop his sodden handful of paper in the garbage can. He seemed a little uneasy at the openly shocked and delighted look on the girl's face.

"You're - are you - you're…"

"Steve Rogers, ma'am," Rogers answered, shaking her hand before retreating back to the other side of the bed. "Just stopped by to see your granddad."

Joan's jaw dropped. "Grandpa - you never told me you knew Captain America!"

Rogers hid a grin that looked far more real than his earlier smile, and rubbed the back of his neck, looking sideways at the man in the bed. Hodge raised his eyebrows in a 'so?' expression and grunted noncommitally. He was still trying to breathe.

"Oh, you've got to tell me stories," Joan was begging, raking her hair out of her face. "Please - Grandpa doesn't talk much about the war years. How did you two meet?"

Ah. Hodge shifted as much as he was able and avoided looking at the captain. There was good reason why he'd never talked much about the war. He wasn't particularly proud of the man he'd been or some of the things he'd done then - not least of which was the way he'd treated the skinny shrimp he'd met in training.

Now it was Rogers' turn to take revenge.

Suddenly weary, Hodge looked up, meeting the captain's gaze resolutely. For an uneasy moment they both stared at each other, and then Rogers smiled and sat down on his rolling stool again.

"Right," he said, nodding to Hodge as though they shared some kind of secret. Hodge shut his eyes, resigned to his fate as the captain continued. "We were in training together. Did you know that your granddad was the strongest, fastest guy in the whole unit?"

Hodge's eyes popped open in surprise. Joan's face was glowing brightly, hanging on the captain's every word. She had her phone out, surreptitiously trying to record the story. "Really? He never told me."

Rogers leaned back and nodded very seriously. "Yup. Every guy in the unit looked up to him, wanted to be like him, followed his lead."

Hodge tried to snort, but it just set him coughing again. Sure, every guy in the unit had followed his lead - followed his lead in tormenting the skinny little kid who thought he could be a soldier. Joan leaned in with another cup of water and completely missed the way Rogers caught Hodge's eye behind her back and winked, long and deliberately.

What in the Sam Hill?

Bewildered, Hodge lay back against his pillow and listened to the story of his time in the army, as told by Steve Rogers. Not a word was completely untrue, but somehow Rogers managed to leave out everything but the good things. A few of the yarns Hodge barely recognized as his own experiences, so carefully were they worded.

"He was the last man left," Rogers finally finished. "With only one good arm and no ammunition - and he held the Nazis off until the Allies could rally and join him."

Joan's voice wobbled, her eyes shining with pride. "Grandpa - why didn't you tell me you were such a hero?"

Something tight had been growing in Hodge's throat throughout the narrative, and at her words it welled up in his eyes. Humiliated, he blinked hard and growled unintelligibly. Rogers took one look at his face and stood. "I should go."

Joan shook his hand goodbye, and then the man turned to face Hodge, extending his hand hopefully. "Hodge?"

Hodge looked at the hand, and then up at the soldier to whom it belonged. The kid was so painfully young. With the last of his strength, he lifted his own wrinkled hand and met the captain halfway.

"Thanks," he wheezed, struggling for air, trying to get the words out that he hadn't been able to say seventy years before. Thanks for so much - for not telling Joan what kind of guy he'd been back then, for saving his life, for saving the world. "Never got to tell you - thanks for dragging me - outta there."

Rogers' hand tightened around his, and he wore the most genuine smile the young man had ever offered him. "You'd have done the same for me, Hodge" he replied, so confidently that Hodge couldn't help but believe him. "You'd have done the same for me."

The warmth of the captain's grip lingered around his hand for hours afterward.

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Gilmore Hodge would live another ten months before slipping away peacefully in his sleep, his granddaughter by his side. Steve Rogers had come a few more times to see him in the time before then, and they'd struck up an odd sort of understanding. Never quite friendship, but far more companionable than anything they'd ever had before.

At the funeral, nobody noticed the young man with blond hair who sat unassumingly on the back row; who stood and quietly saluted as the casket was rolled out of the building. Afterwards, the family found one small arrangement of flowers standing among the others. Rogers, the florist's card read simply.

"Rogers?" Walter Daly Hodge frowned, furrowing a brow that was strikingly like his father's. "Do we know anybody named Rogers?"

"Must be someone from the hospital," his wife responded, too distracted to pay much attention.

Joan heard, though and later she pulled out the card from where her uncle had stuffed it back between the flowers. Turning it over in her hand, she saw a small sketch on the back. Gilmore Hodge grinned out at her, carefully done in pencil - not the elderly man she had known her whole life, but a younger, stronger version in an army uniform. And beneath it, hastily scrawled, two lines.

"Gilmore Hodge,

Brother-in-arms"

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He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

...

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

...

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition.

Excerpts from Henry V, Act IV scene iii

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After many, many requests from kind readers (you know who you are), I decided to add one final chapter, which has been drafted for ages but never finished. This is dedicated to my grandfather who passed away just before Christmas - my last grandparent, and the last WWII veteran in my extended family. He served as my inspiration for Bucky, Dugan, and oddly enough, Hodge.

I know the Hodge in this chapter is different from the Hodge in the previous chapters, and in the movie. But a lifetime is a long time, and people can change. People do change. The possibility is always there. Even in the handful of times we saw Gilmore Hodge in the movie, he went from arrogance to reluctant respect. You cannot convince me his development did not continue even beyond that point. Because that's one of the beauties of our time here. We can change - and we can change for the better.