This one was a little chapter, and it continued in the nice, fluffy theme we had going, so I thought I'd tack it on and give you two chapters for the weekend. Enjoy!


Like during the summer, Bucky got to see Vicki about once a week—although while Becky was still having a rough time of things, he didn't go out to meet her anywhere. She still came over, though, and had dinner with him and his family, which got less weird as time went on. Becky mostly behaved when she was there, saving her teasing for after Vicki went home.

It was kind of weird—he wasn't seeing her every day (or nearly every day) like he had when they were at school, but it felt like they were connecting more now. It was a different level of connection, and it was…comfortable. Sure, it would have been great to see her every day, but this was…this was nice.

Even though Vicki was out of school now and Bucky was getting closer to it, they weren't really looking toward the future beyond seeing where this new level of relationship was going. Steve, though…Steve was doing some serious thinking about the future.

"Whatcha looking at, Steve?" Bucky asked, coming into their room after his shower. It was Christmas Eve and everyone was heading to bed, getting ready for the festivities tomorrow.

"Huh?" Steve said, looking up. He was in his pajamas sitting cross-legged on his bed, deeply absorbed in the contents of the shoebox on his lap.

"What's in the box?" Bucky asked, nodding at it.

"Oh." Steve looked back down at it. "This is Ma's stuff," he said.

Bucky nodded. Even though Steve was fine now, missing his ma never really went away. Bucky guessed it stung a little more sharply around the holidays. "Sorry," he apologized. "I'll just…" He pointed towards his book on the nightstand, not wanting to disturb Steve's introspection.

"Hmm? Oh, no, don't worry about it," Steve said, pulling the rest of the way back into the moment. "I, uh, I actually kind of wanted to talk to you about something."

"Okay." Bucky sat down on his own bed and pulled his feet up off the floor. "Shoot."

"Um," Steve started, clearly unsure of where to begin. He looked back down at the box. "Ma didn't have a lot of jewelry," he said at last. "What she did have, your ma, she saved it for me when we were…packing up my house and stuff."

Bucky nodded. Things like Mrs. Rogers' clothes had been given away, but his ma had saved smaller, more important things like jewelry and photographs for Steve.

"I look at it sometimes and remember the stuff she used to wear," Steve went on. "She wore this one a lot," he said, lifting out a thin silver chain with a delicately carved pendant shaped like a tree on the end. "Anytime she would talk about my dad, she would tell me about this one. It used to be his ma's. It's supposed to be Crann Bethadh—like the tree of life in old Celtic stories. Ma said the design was supposed to be protection from things like fairies and spirits that came into our realm through an oak tree like this one. She said Pop never knew if it worked or if it was just a story, but that he used to joke that his ma never got kidnapped by fairies, so it was probably good for something," Steve said with a soft smile.

"Or her ring," Steve went on, picking up a delicate gold circlet. "She never took it off, even with as long as Pop had been gone."

Bucky remembered that one, seeing it on Mrs. Rogers' hand all the time. He wondered where Steve was going, talking about his ma's jewelry, but he was obviously headed somewhere, so Bucky would listen until he got there.

"She only ever wore this one for something special," Steve continued, holding up a silver ring with two small diamonds and three tiny blue stones sparkling on top. "This was the ring Pop asked her to marry him with, and she didn't like to wear it when she was working and stuff because she didn't want anything to happen to it."

Steve bit his lip, studying the ring contemplatively. "I was thinking…" he said softly. "Not yet, but maybe…maybe after we get finished with school, I was thinking…I was thinking I might give it to Peggy," he finished in a rush, as if he'd wanted to get the words out before he stopped himself.

Bucky didn't say anything for a minute, making sure he'd heard Steve correctly. "You're going to ask Peggy to marry you?"

Steve shrugged, aiming for casual and failing. "I mean, not right now, or anything, but…" He shrugged again. "Do you think, I mean, am I just…Is this a dumb idea? It's a dumb idea, isn't it?"

"I think it's a great idea," Bucky replied.

"You do?"

Bucky smiled warmly. "I really do."

"You don't think it's too, too soon, or we're too young or anything?"

Bucky shook his head. "Stevie, you guys have been head over heels for each other for years. At the risk of sounding completely sappy, I don't know that I could think of two people more perfect for each other."

"That does sound kind of sappy," Steve said, but he was grinning broadly, his cheeks going red.

Bucky crossed over to Steve's bed and sat down beside him. "I always figured you guys would end up there one day," he said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"It's such a…such a huge thing, though," Steve said.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed. "So, alright, walk me through it. What's holding you back?"

Steve shrugged again. "It's just so…so big. Like…that's the whole rest of my life."

"And does that scare you?" Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head. "No."

"And what makes you think it's a good idea?"

Steve looked down at the ring again. "I still don't really know what I want to do after school. There are so many different things, and…But any time I think about the future, wherever I see myself going, she…well, she's always there too."

Bucky smiled warmly. "Sounds like there's your answer."

"You really think it's a good idea?"

"I really do."

"Do you, do you think I'm ready for it?" Steve asked nervously.

"I do," Bucky said again. He bumped Steve with his shoulder. "My little Stevie's all grown up."

"Shut up," Steve complained, blushing deeper than he already was.

Bucky laughed. "I mean it, though. You've come a long way from the skinny little punk who couldn't even put three words together when she was around. You guys have been through a lot together, and you come out of everything stronger. I've seen how happy she makes you, and I've seen how happy you make her. You just…" He wasn't sure exactly what the words were he wanted. "You're like a puzzle that's only got two pieces. You fit."

Steve was still blushing, but he was smiling happily. "Thanks," he said softly. He held the ring up again, catching the soft light of the lamp in the stones. "Do you think…" he started quietly. "Do you think Ma would mind?"

"No. If she was here, I think she would tell you to give it to Peggy herself."

Steve huffed a slightly watery laugh. "I wish she could have met Peggy."

Bucky slid an arm over his shoulders. "Yeah. She would have liked her."

Steve leaned into the hug. "Thanks," he said after a few minutes. "I've been thinking about this for a while, you know? And I didn't want to be doing all this thinking for something crazy."

"That's what I'm here for, Stevie," Bucky told him. "I'm a regular fountain of wisdom."

Steve snorted and shoved him with his shoulder.

"Seriously, though," Bucky told him. Their upcoming graduation was a big fork in the road, but this would be a whole new kind of chapter in Steve's life too. And in Bucky's. It would change things for both of them. But that was okay. "I'm glad I could help. I may not always have the answers, but I'm always gonna be here for you to ask." No matter how their lives changed, that was always going to be true.

Steve smiled softly. "I know."

He slung his arm over Steve's shoulders again. "Merry Christmas, Stevie."

"Merry Christmas, Buck."


Peggy leaned back against her headboard, playing with her necklace and watching the light dance across the little silver tree-shaped charm. Steve had given it to her for Christmas when they'd come back to school. It was lovely, but as soon as he'd told her it used to be his mother's, she'd tried to give it back.

"I can't take something like that from you," she'd protested. "Your mum, I mean, what you have…" He had so few tangible things left of his mother's—it seemed wrong to take one of them away from him.

"I want you to have it," he'd said. "It doesn't do any good, just sitting around in a box, and Ma, well…" He shrugged. "She would have liked you. She'd like for you to have it."

Peggy had been touched, but still felt she couldn't just take it. "But it was hers. And your grandmother's before that. It's got to be really special to you."

He'd smiled softly and put one hand to her cheek. "It is," he'd said. "And so are you."

A warm thrill of emotion had surged up in her chest, and she'd smiled widely and sort of felt like she'd wanted to cry, and allowed him to slide the thin silver chain around her neck. She hadn't been able to find any words then, so she'd gone up on her toes and kissed him, warm and long and deep.

She looked up from the charm as movement on the other side of the room caught her attention, and she saw Martha smirking at her.

"It's got to be serious if he's giving you jewelry," Martha said with a grin, looking up from the parchment she was rolling up and putting in her bag.

"And a family heirloom as well. You're practically engaged," Louise declared.

"Shut up," Peggy told her, feeling heat rising in her cheeks.

"Who would have thought Peggy Carter would be the first of us to get married?" Rose said, spinning around from her seat in front of the mirror where she was brushing her hair.

"I'm not getting married," Peggy protested. "It's a necklace."

Martha snorted. "How many of us do you see getting things like that from our boyfriends? Even Kelly's never gotten anything like that, and she and Gabe have been together longer than you and Steve have."

"Yeah, alright, we're serious, and he wanted to give me something nice. What's wrong with that?" Peggy asked.

"Nothing," Louise replied. "It is the sort of thing you give to your wife."

Peggy crumpled up a piece of parchment and threw it at Louise's head.

"Come on, be nice," Rose scolded Louise. She smiled. "Otherwise she won't invite you to the wedding."

They all laughed and gathered up their textbooks, sending her cheeky smiles as they headed for the library. Peggy looked back down at her Herbology book, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks and looking for the spot she'd lost.

"You really never should have told them it used to be his mum's," Kelly said, coming out of the bathroom.

Peggy sighed. "In retrospect, that was an error in judgement on my part."

Kelly smiled a bit at that and dropped down onto the foot of Peggy's bed. "Now that they're gone," she said, nodding towards the door. "What's really going on? I mean, it is quite a serious gift."

"Yeah," Peggy agreed. She looked down at the little tree, then back up at Kelly, unable to stop herself smiling.

Kelly smiled back. Peggy didn't mind talking about this sort of thing with her—she and Gabe were quite serious as well, so she understood things like this, and she never teased or acted silly about it. "And it's a good kind of serious?" Kelly finished for her.

Peggy's smile widened, the same little thrill she'd felt when Steve had slid the necklace around her neck fluttering in her chest. "It is. I…I mean, I know he loves me, but something like this just…It makes it feel more…more…I'm not sure how to say what it's more of, but you—"

"I know what you mean," Kelly told her. "It's sort of a deeper level." She studied Peggy curiously. "Is it just the start of this sort of level for you two, or have you talked about the future and stuff?"

"Well, not directly," Peggy said. "Not like that, I mean. We'll talk about, you know, what sort of jobs we might want to do, or things like that, but we…" She blushed a little bit. "We sort of talk like we're going to be in the same place, you know?" She hadn't consciously realized that until Kelly asked just now, but, yeah, they did do that. They used the word 'we' a lot when they talked about after school.

"So, you've thought about it?" Kelly wondered.

"Yeah." Peggy felt her blush growing deeper. "I actually…I sort of know what I want to do with my life, you know? I'd like to go on with the S.S.R. and this work and everything, but, well, when I think about it, Steve's always there somewhere too. Sometimes he's working with me, and sometimes he's doing something of his own, but he's always there." However her future unfolded exactly, she very much wanted Steve to be in it.

"So, and I'm not saying the necklace means that or anything, but if he did ask you to marry him…" Kelly prompted.

Peggy bit her lip and smiled. "I would say yes." She'd say it in a heartbeat.

Kelly grinned. "I knew it." She cocked her head curiously. "What happens, though, if you get on in this S.S.R. stuff, and then you get married and Steve wants you to stay at home and do the housewife thing? I know you love him, but I know how much you love your work too. Would you give that up for him?"

Peggy didn't hesitate with her answer. "He wouldn't ask me to."

Kelly nodded. "No, I don't suppose he would."

"Do you think…" Peggy wondered. "I mean, it is still a hypothetical question, but, well, a gift like this…" She indicated the necklace. "It does suggest a more serious direction. It feels right to me, but, I mean, we are seventeen."

"A lot of people get married at seventeen," Kelly pointed out. "Even non-wizards, who technically have another year to go before being adults. Besides, I highly doubt he's going to ask you to marry him during school, and you'll both be eighteen by the time we're out. It's not weird. And, it's you two," she added. "If it was Martha and Dave, I would have my doubts, but…" She shrugged and smiled, and Peggy smiled back.

Perhaps it was presumptuous of her to assume Steve was thinking of asking her to marry him at all, but they were both quite good at reading each other, and it felt to Peggy as though they were on the same page. Now that she was watching out for it, she realized she'd been right—they did both talk about what happened after school using a lot of the words 'we' and 'us', and that was rather exciting.

It was a few weeks of things suspiciously quiet on the Hydra front, which gave them time to settle back into the routine of school. It was enough time for Dugan to get quite bored, but the rest of them were enjoying the quiet, especially after the end of last term. Peggy was pleased to see that Rebecca seemed to be much more like her usual self—Steve had told her how worried he and Bucky had been about her over the Break, and the different things they tried to help her. For the first few days of school, Peggy did notice Rebecca clinging to Steve and Bucky rather a lot, which worried Steve. She'd seemed much better by the time they left home, but Peggy pointed out that Hogwarts was where Rebecca had gotten kidnapped, so coming back could easily be a bit unnerving. She settled in quickly, though, and Esther seemed to be doing better as well, although Peggy didn't know her as well as she knew Rebecca, but Jim seemed content with how she was doing. It still made Peggy angry, thinking about what Hydra had done to them, but she was glad they'd only been bait. What Zwart could have done to them if they'd actually been his targets didn't bear thinking about.

The new term also brought a new assistant to Howard's lab. He went through them rather quickly—Peggy gathered he wasn't the easiest man to work for—but she liked this one better than his last one. Richard had been sullen and he stared an awful lot—at her, in particular. The new assistant, Samantha, was much cheerier, and she enjoyed poking fun at Howard and let his jibes roll right off of her. She also had taken quite an interest in coming up with little devices and gadgets for Peggy to use. She'd already worked up a few more versions of the hairclip with concealed blades, and had added to Peggy's cache a pair of stud earrings that functioned as a radio, a set of flexible lockpicks that could be slid in and hidden along the underwire in her bra, and a little holster that stayed fixed in her magically expanded pockets so that she didn't have to go digging for her gun.

"Oh, good, you're here!" Samantha said when Peggy walked into the lab. "I've got something new for you!"

"Again?" Peggy asked, smiling. "Do you ever actually get anything done for Howard?"

Samantha waved off this concern. "Here," she said, proudly brandishing what appeared to be tube of lipstick.

Peggy took it and opened it. It was, in fact, a tube of lipstick.

Samantha smiled at her questioning eyebrow. "Yes, it's lipstick. I thought, you know, we've got your knives and a place to hide your gun, but what happens when you're in really close quarters and don't have the chance to get at them?"

"I throw the lipstick at someone?" Peggy guessed.

Samantha laughed. "No. It's more for self-defense than offense. Sweet Dreams Lipstick, I call it. One kiss, knocks 'em out cold."

"Really?" Peggy wasn't particularly keen on the idea of kissing anyone that she would want unconscious, but it could certainly be useful.

"Mm-hmm," Samantha confirmed. "If you want to try it on to see how it works, Howard has volunteered to get knocked out."

"Oh, of course, he would," Peggy grumbled, but she was intrigued. She pulled out a compact mirror and carefully applied the new lipstick. It wasn't really her color—too pink—but that wasn't really the point.

Howard approached, grinning broadly, and Peggy rolled her eyes. "Just a light peck on the lips is all it needs," Samantha said.

"Although, you can do more than that if you want," Howard added, smirking.

"Do you want me to knock you out with the lipstick or with this spanner here on the table?" Peggy asked.

Howard laughed and raised his hands in surrender. Peggy leaned forward, barely brushing his lips with her own. The effect was immediate. She had barely pulled away from him before he dropped into a heap on the floor.

"Wow," Peggy said.

"It's great, isn't it?" Samantha asked.

"It's brilliant," she agreed. "Hang on, if it just had to touch his lips to knock him out, how can it be on my lips without getting me?"

"It's part of the magic I worked in," Samantha explained. "It has no effect on the person applying it. So, you can leave it on all day, eat with, lick your lips, you'll be fine. But if, say, Howard put it on himself and kissed you, then it would knock you out."

"Got it. How long does it last?" Peggy wondered, nodding down at Howard.

"It varies a bit, but about fifteen minutes," Samantha said. "What do you think?"

"I think this could be really useful," Peggy said. "Thanks. Although," she added. "Not to sound ungrateful, but it's not really my color. Can it come in other colors?"

"Sure," Samantha said. "This is just a prototype. What sort of color do you usually wear?"

She spent several minutes looking through Samantha's notes and looking at color samples, trying to narrow it down to something that wouldn't look out of place on her. Howard woke up and grumbled about being left on the floor. Samantha told him that was what he got for being cheeky. She asked him how he felt and ran a couple of tests—it wasn't designed to cause any lasting harm, but she'd tried it on him a couple of times and he tended to wake up with a headache.

"I don't know there's much can be done about the headache," she said, handing him a couple of aspirin. "Not without slowing down how fast it works."

"And, let's be honest," Peggy added. "If someone's putting me in a position where I'm being forced to kiss them to knock them out, I'm alright with them waking up with a headache."

"That's fair enough," Howard said. "The rest of your guys coming down for the radio lesson?" He was forever tinkering with his radios and communication gear, periodically giving the team lessons on how to operate the new stuff.

"They should be on their way," she told him.

The rest of the team, minus Steve, showed up before too long, and Howard decided to go ahead and get started. He walked through the new features, pointing out some of the more complicated ones to Gabe and Jim, and showed them how to fit the new earpieces he developed that clipped around the back of the ear like Jacques' translator charm, instead of needing to be fastened to their shoulders.

Steve showed up as the rest of them were leaving, and though they all gave him a hard time, Howard didn't mind. He loved showing off his new inventions, and enjoyed the chance to talk about them as much as he could.

"This is really neat," Steve said when Howard was done, sliding his fingers over the little unit wrapped around his ear. "A lot more convenient. Does it stay on well if you move around?"

"It should," Howard said. "Take it with you, test it, but that's why I had it wrap around like that."

"Awesome," Steve replied. "Thanks. Sorry again I was late."

"No problem. Enjoy."

"Did your meeting with Phillips run long?" Peggy wondered.

Steve nodded. "Yeah. But he said you had something new for us to do?"

"I was going to bring it up at the meeting tomorrow, but, yes," Peggy said. "We got some word on a secret Hydra base in South America. An investigate and destroy sort of thing."

"Sounds like fun," he said with a smile. "You coming too?"

"No," she said. "One of Phillips' other teams caught another spy, and he wants me to sit in on the interrogation." She smiled. "If I play my cards right, he'll let me practice."

"Well, sounds like you'll be having your own fun, then," Steve said. "You want to go to dinner?"

She nodded and grabbed his hand, and he squeezed it and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. She remembered just too late why that was a bad idea and started to say, "No, wait!", but didn't get past the "N—" before his lips landed on hers.

"What?" he asked, pulling away, eyebrows furrowed in concern as he caught her tone, if not her words. "Is something…" He shook his head and blinked rapidly, as though he was trying to clear something from inside his head, then staggered back a step, looking dazed. "Um…"

"Sorry, I'm sorry," she said, reaching out to grab his arm as he started to sway.

"What…" he mumbled, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor.

Peggy fell with him, trying to catch him and failing, but at least stopping him cracking his head on the cement. "Sorry," she said again, positioning his head a little more comfortably on her lap. "It's not funny," she said, shooting a sharp glance up when she heard Samantha snicker.

"It's a little funny," Samantha argued. Peggy continued to glare at her, but she smiled a little bit. It was a bit funny.

"So, it looks like it's strong enough to work on him too," Samantha said, making a note on one of her clipboards. "Though it takes a little longer to kick in. He'll probably wake up faster too," she added, consulting a watch in the pocket of her lab coat. She smirked and stepped over, nodding at Peggy's face and holding out a handkerchief. "Might want to wipe the rest of that off."


Aw. Some more sweetness, as well as a little shout-out to the Agent Carter TV show (which you should totally watch if you haven't) with Peggy's special lipstick. Everything is back to normal, and the boys are ready for another mission. Tune in Monday for a trip to South America!