Chapter Eleven

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

"What are you doing?" Peggy demanded suspiciously, jumping a little as Steve's arms came around her sides, reaching for the sink, effectively trapping her between the edge of the counter and the wall of his body.

He laid his chin on her shoulder. "I'm doing the dishes," he answered very innocently, vigorously attacking a mixing bowl in the sink with a scrub brush. He had broken three brushes in the past week alone. Peggy claimed he was careless. Steve argued that the plastic was poor quality.

"And am I absolutely necessary to this process?" Peggy inquired loftily. She felt her husband nod decisively.

"Always," he assured her, lips warm against her cheek. She could hear the smile in his voice.

Peggy swatted him in the face with a dishtowel, and he laughed aloud, sweeping her closer, dishes forgotten. Their dinner almost burned before either one remembered it.

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

Over dinner, they discussed the endless search for Bucky. The potential lead in Canada had fizzled out completely, leaving them at sea once more.

No luck, Sam had sent a message that morning. Guy is a veteran, but he isn't our man. I got in touch with his daughter - he'll live with her until he can get his feet under him again. Where do you want me to go after this?

Steve stabbed thoughtfully at the casserole on his plate. "Russia?" he suggested for the thousandth time. "He could have gone back, tried to track down the ones who..." he trailed off, frowning at the makeshift map they'd cobbled together in the middle of the table using Peggy's napkin, the ketchup bottle, a handful of toothpicks, and Steve's water glass and spoon. Even now, he still had a hard time talking about Bucky's torturers. Things tended to get broken when he thought about it too long.

Peggy shook her head. "If he's tracking down his former handlers, then he's doing it awfully quietly and ignoring the obvious targets that are still here in the States, awaiting trial. Pass the salt, will you?"

"He can do things quietly," Steve argued, scanning the table for the salt shaker. "You know how good he was at being quiet. Saved both our lives I don't know how many times."

It was true. Bucky had indeed been good at being silent. For a young man with a love of laughter and dancing, he had been one of the most stealthy, accurate snipers Peggy had ever known. The thought of their loyal, thoughtful friend being twisted into a deadly, mindless assassin made her sick to her stomach, and Peggy picked listlessly at her food.

"So you don't think he's in Russia." Steve reiterated, glancing up at his wife before going back to his hunt for the salt.

Peggy set down her fork, watching his fruitless search with interest. "I think the two of you are more alike than you realize," she answered obliquely. "The first thing you did when you woke up was to get away from the people holding you. The second was look for someplace familiar while you learned this new world."

Long nights filled with the rhythmic thump of his fists hitting sand-filled bags in the old gym flooded back through Steve's memory, and he nodded. He'd spent his days walking the streets and his nights in the gym - the one familiar place he'd been able to find, despite the extensive remodeling and new equipment.

"You think he's still running then?" he asked his wife, lifting the napkin holder from its current role as Africa on their makeshift map to look behind it. The salt wasn't there either; he sat up a little taller in his seat to look the whole table over.

Peggy shook her head decidedly. "I think he's done running," she said, deliberately reaching across the table to pick up the missing salt shaker from beside Steve's plate where it had been sitting the entire time. "I think that he's lying low, looking for familiarity." She tapped the shaker pointedly, raising her eyebrows. "And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was right under our noses."

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

After dinner, Peggy situated herself comfortably on the couch and reached for a novel while Steve puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up. They had a deal - the person who made the meal didn't have to clean up after it. Tonight Peggy had cooked, so Steve cleaned as she read to him, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of water in the sink.

"Why don't you use the dishwasher?" Stark always managed to gripe, on the handful of occasions he had witnessed their evening routine. "Sheesh, fix up your place and you still think you're living in the Dark Ages."

The truth was, that half the time they completely forgot about the appliance's existence - and the rest of the time they washed the dishes purely by habit. Besides, it wasn't as if they dirtied a great deal of dishes between the two of them, and this gave them both a chance to unwind from the pressures of the day.

Quiet evenings like this were rare, squeezed in between the search for the scepter, their private investigation into Bucky, and the day-to-day demands of being an Avenger - and therefore they were all the more treasured when an opportunity came.

Kitchen cleaned at last, Steve came to join Peggy in the living room, sitting on the other end of the couch and grinning as she promptly deposited her feet in his lap to be rubbed. The lamplight was warm on her hair, her soft accent graced and lilted over the words of the story, and her eyes sparkled as she looked up over the top of the book at him.

Every now and then, the incredible fact of their wedded domesticity hit Steve like a tank, and this was one of those times. He felt very married, and very, very much in love.

At length, Peggy reached the end of the chapter, marked her place with a bookmark, and then snapped the book shut, reaching to lay it on the coffee table. Steve squeezed her feet gently, and Peggy relaxed a little more deeply into the couch with a heartfelt groan of appreciation.

"You'd think," she pointed out idly, "that people from the future would make comfortable shoes a priority."

"They do." Steve massaged her instep. "You've seen those shoes Pepper wears when she isn't on the clock."

Peggy wiggled her toes in dreamy pleasure. "Boats," she said severely. "They look like boats on her feet. Must comfortable shoes always be ugly?"

"Not always," Steve said, remembering. "There was that red pair you had during the war."

Peggy dimpled, biting her lip. "Oh, they weren't terribly comfortable," she admitted slyly. "But they did make a certain captain look at me rather more often than otherwise."

Steve blinked and then stared at her, processing the new information. "You mean you carted that pair of heels all up and down the Western Theater just to make me look at you? Believe me, I was looking at you anyway, shoes or not."

She sat up, schooling her expression into mock-solemnity. "Women have to do fearful and wonderful things to get their men to see them, Captain - and I couldn't exactly take the red dress out on the front lines, now could I?"

Steve didn't answer directly. Instead, he propped his head on his fist, planted his elbow on the back of the couch, and shamelessly proceeded to admire her with his eyes until Peggy couldn't keep a straight face anymore.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded half laughingly, and her husband waggled his eyebrows with a grin.

"Looking at you," he answered. "Have I told you recently how amazing you are?"

Peggy pursed her lips primly. "Now that you mention it, no." She swung her feet out of his lap and stood briskly, picking up her empty water glass and stepping around the couch toward the kitchen. "You're welcome to tell me again though, whenever - whenev- oh…"

Her face went white as a sheet, and Steve's world was shaken to its core as she collapsed in the middle of the floor, glass shattering around her.

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

"Mom!"

The dull thud of his mother's body hitting the floor was quite possibly the worst sound he had ever heard. Steve's heart lurched high in his throat, and their tiny home seemed entirely too large as he skidded across the room to her side. "Mom?"

His voice cracked ridiculously, at once straddling the line between childishly shrill and the lower register it had finally settled into recently. Holding his breath to steady himself, Steve stared at the row of buttons up the front of her dress until they rose and fell, and he knew she was breathing.

"Hey, Mama, can you hear me?"

Her eyes shifted under her eyelids, but she didn't wake up. Swallowing his terror, Steve knelt over her helplessly, trying to think. His mother was a slight woman, but despite his recent, pitifully small growth spurt, he knew he couldn't carry her.

He went into his own room instead, hands trembling as he tried to hurry, unwilling to leave her alone for long. Dragging the thin pillow and blanket off of his bed, he scrambled back to his mother, knocking his elbow painfully against the doorframe. He pulled off her shoes, covering her with the blanket as well as he could, and then tucked the pillow carefully beneath her head.

There was nothing else to do after that but wait.

When Sarah Rogers came to, a heartbreakingly long time later, it was to find her teenage son kneeling beside her. Relief and worry struggled in his eyes, and his hand was clenched white-knuckled around the glass of water he offered.

"You're gonna be okay," he told her firmly, echoing the words she had said to him so many times before. At the time he didn't understand the sadness in her face.

A few days later, she began coughing up blood. There was nothing anybody could do.

She didn't want to infect him - her precious boy with such incredibly poor health, but they couldn't even pretend to afford a sanitarium and Steve stubbornly refused to move in with the Barnes family and let her die alone. They argued over it, the strong-willed woman and her equally determined son.

"It's my turn, Mama," he finally panted, breath rasping in his chest, blue eyes desperately earnest, jaw set in a way he'd inherited from his dead father. "You've taken care of me my whole life. Now let me look after you."

He nursed his mother until her death. Near the end, she was light enough that even he could lift her.

Steve wouldn't have traded that time with his mother for anything else in the world.

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

Steve completely overturned both the coffee table and the couch in his mad scramble to reach his wife before she hit the ground. "Peggy! Peggy? Peggy, talk to me."

Her head rolled limply in the crook of his elbow, and for one horrifying, soul-curdling moment he thought she was dead. Then her dark eyes fluttered half open, and she looked up at him, confused. "Steve? What..."

"You fainted," he told her, and his voice was shaking.

Peggy's eyes drifted shut, but she shook her head decidedly. "Rubbish," she mumbled. "I don't faint."

It was true. She had never been one for passing out all over the place. The fact that she had fainted now for no obvious reason left Steve deeply shaken. He couldn't believe he had never considered it - chills, fainting, nausea - they were all earmarks of the disease that had claimed his mother's life. The terrible realization closed around him, and he suddenly felt as if there was not enough air in the room.

He promptly picked her up, despite her protests, and carried her into their room, completely ignoring the mess he'd left the front room in. He would clean it up later.

Their bed was huge - almost as big as Steve's entire childhood bedroom. Tony had furnished the suite as a wedding present, and neither of them had the heart to tell him that the bed was far too large. Settling his wife up against the pillows, Steve laid the back of his hand against her forehead, checking for a temperature before leaning close to examine the whites of her eyes.

"Steve, I'm fine," Peggy pushed his hand away from her face and sat up. It didn't escape his attention that she moved a little carefully, but the color was slowly coming back into her face. "I just got up too fast, that's all."

He promptly moved behind her, holding her shoulders when she tried to turn, jerking the back of her shirt free from her waistband and pulling it up, pressing his ear against her skin. "Breathe deep," he ordered tersely, listening closely. "Again?" he asked after a minute.

"Steve," she protested, exasperated, but obeyed.

Her breathing was clear. There was no sound of crackling or bubbling in either lung. With a shuddering gasp of relief, Steve laid his forehead against her warm back and tried to slow his pounding heart. Of course she didn't have tuberculosis - there had been no fever, no night sweats, no coughing. He of all people should know the major symptoms; he'd just lost his head for a minute there, her collapse touching a little too closely on fears he hadn't even realized he still carried.

At length he let her go, and she turned to him, an indignant question on her lips. Something in his face must have betrayed his fear and helplessness though, because her eyes softened, and she reached out, pulling him close. "I frightened you, didn't I?"

With a long breath, Steve put his arms around her, pressing his cheek into her hair so she couldn't see the terror he knew was still written plainly across his face. He wouldn't tell her how he thought he had lost her, how he still feared he might lose her. The years where he had mourned her as dead had risen up in his face, and he realized just how thoroughly her death would shatter him again.

"Talk to Banner," he begged, before he realized he was speaking. Her fingers curled into the back of his shirt, and he swallowed painfully. "Please, Peggy."

She hesitated and then hummed contentedly into his ear, nodding against his shoulder. "All right. You can bring it up with him if it means that much to you, and I'll see him."

He let his eyes fall closed in relief, holding her a while longer before gathering himself together with a supreme effort.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded as he began to pull away.

"I kind of wrecked the table," he sheepishly told her. "Got to go pick it up."

Peggy caught at his shirt, and her touch stopped him faster than any other force on earth. "Leave it, soldier," she said firmly. "We'll fix it in the morning."

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

That night, Steve lay close beside her as she slept. He kept his hand on her ribs, counting every breath she took, treasuring the steady rise and fall of her lungs.

She still awed him. How did a guy like him end up with a gal like her? Peggy was strong, fearless, daring, a great shot, and so beautiful that his heart stuttered every time she looked at him.

Before they had been married, he never could have dreamed of how wonderful marriage could be. Talking with her, trusting her implicitly, laughing against her lips as he wound his hands through her hair - and Peggy kissing him back until his head spun, stepping into his life and standing strong and straight at his side, the partner he had surrendered his heart to so long ago.

Sweet heavens, how he loved her. Losing her now, after everything they had shared - he knew it would all but kill him.

Steve settled his face into her shoulder. He would talk to Doctor Banner in the morning.

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

Ahem. *waves sheepishly* I'd say life is crazy, but that's more of a constant than an exception - so I'll just give you a little domesticity and a paranoid Steve, and we'll call it good, okay?

Thanks so much for your reviews. Seriously, on days when I was about ready to call off posting fanfiction until spring, it was your reviews that spurred me on to get this up. Y'all are lifesavers. Don't ever let me stop, because I fall out of the habit and then it's terribly hard to get started again.

ChildofGod: Thanks! Things are okay for now. You?