Back to Hogwarts now to finally recover from the time on the island. Steve is still trying to get into the groove of being small again, and Peggy needs to wrap her head around this turn of events.
Peggy was pacing up and down the path between the beds in the infirmary, unable to sit still long enough to make use of the chair Nurse Rains had gotten for her. Steve was in the private room in the corner of the infirmary with Nurse Rains, Professor Phillips, Howard and Samantha. The rest of the team had been given beds and told to wait—broken bones and open wounds and bruises and sprains and cuts were all easy to fix, and Rains had them all sorted in a matter of minutes, but they still needed rest, and there was still the issue of the lack of magic to work out.
"Anything?" Bucky asked, walking over towards her cradling his arm. The infection had been cleared up and the wound healed, but it was still sore, and if the way he kept scratching at it was any indication, it itched where the skin was knitting back together.
"Not yet," she sighed. They'd been in there for almost an hour. "Bucky, what…" She didn't even know how to ask the question.
Bucky shook his head.
"And it's all back?" she confirmed. "His asthma and his heart condition and his allergies and everything?"
"Yeah." Bucky sank down onto the chair Peggy wasn't using, clearly exhausted. He should have been sleeping, like the rest of the group was doing, but she knew he wouldn't until he knew how Steve was.
While they waited, he filled her in on everything that had happened in the past five days. There had only been time for the barest of debriefs earlier, but he spared no detail now.
"I've never heard of anything like that before," she said. "Not in real life, anyway. There's always stories and things, but…" She looked at Bucky curiously, then handed him her wand. "You said Gabe still managed to do magic with that other man's wand. Have you tried anything yet?"
Bucky took the wand, and after thinking for a few seconds, Vanished the jug and pitcher sitting on the table by the nearest bed. He didn't seem to have any trouble doing so.
"So, you all still have magic then," she mused, taking the wand back. "It's just everything that was on the island at that time got switched off."
Bucky nodded. "Looks that way, yeah. Worst comes to it, our wands are dead and we buy new ones. But…" He looked over at the door Steve was behind. Steve could get a new wand too, but would he struggle to do magic the way he had before? If the serum in his blood was well and truly dead…Peggy shook her head.
"How's he taking it?" she asked.
Bucky shrugged. "Better than I would if I was him. Not great, though."
The door opened then, and they both turned their heads. Nurse Rains was standing there, a half-smile on her face. "I thought you two would be out here. You can come in now, if you'd like." She nodded for them to follow her, and Bucky pushed himself up with a groan and fell into step beside Peggy.
Peggy couldn't stop a small jolt of surprise when she saw Steve sitting on the bed. She knew he was small again, but it hadn't sunk all the way in yet, and knowing and seeing—again—were two different things. She saw Steve catch her reaction and look away, looking somewhat crestfallen, and a guilty knot twisted in her stomach. Bucky didn't react—he'd had five days to get used to it, she supposed—and he crossed the room and sat down on the foot of Steve's bed.
"You okay?" he asked.
Steve lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "Not any worse than I was before."
"I'm afraid we don't have any definitive answers yet," Rains said. "We've taken some blood and have a good deal of tests to run." Howard and Samantha were leaving, no doubt to their lab with samples of the aforementioned blood. Peggy saw Rains shoot Phillips a quick look and he left too. "In the meantime," Rains said gently, resting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "Willow's mixing up some medication to match your old prescriptions. In case this takes some time to sort out."
"Thanks," Steve said softly, and Peggy could tell he was trying to sound grateful, but it came out rather hollow.
"There's no reason yet to think it won't get sorted," Rains went on. "But the tests will take some time. Do you need anything to help you rest?"
"No, Ma'am," he said, and that seemed true enough. He looked exhausted.
"I'll leave this here anyway, just in case," she said, setting down two cups of sleeping potion on the table. "You need your rest too, Mr. Barnes," she continued, looking at Bucky. "Over there." She pointed to the other bed, and Bucky nodded, patted Steve's arm, and walked over to the other bed.
"Can I stay?" Peggy asked.
"Of course, dear," Nurse Rains said. Despite her attempts to encourage Steve, she still seemed at a loss for anything else to say. "I'll be back later."
Peggy moved to sit on the side of Steve's bed, then hesitated. "Do you want me to stay?" she asked.
"It's fine," Steve replied, and he looked…was he nervous?
Peggy nodded, then sat down in the chair next to the bed. There was a long, awkward moment where no one said anything—Steve seemed to have no desire to talk, and Peggy had no idea what to say. Bucky looked like he felt as though he were in the way. "Well," he said as the silence stretched on. "Sore as I still am, I think I'll need some of this to help me sleep." He picked up one of the cups of sleeping potion, downing it in one, then nodded at the two of them before rolling over. It wasn't even a minute before the potion kicked in and his breathing changed, low and slow and asleep. Peggy appreciated his thoughtfulness in giving her and Steve some space to talk, while at the same time envying his escape from this supremely uncomfortable moment.
She'd been trying to avoid looking at Steve too much—when she did, she felt like she was staring, trying to wrap her head around his new (old?) body, and she didn't want him to think she was gawking. She remembered the way he'd deflated when she startled after coming into the room, though, and thought perhaps not looking at him was giving the wrong impression too.
"Are you feeling better?" she asked finally, chastising herself internally for asking such a stupid question. He did look somewhat better than when she'd first seen him on the island—the bruising around his neck was gone, and the cuts and scrapes that had been hiding under the mud he'd been coated in were healed and the mud cleaned off. He wasn't sniffling or coughing anymore—after all that time out in the rain and the cold, he'd started coming down with something, but Nurse Rains was able to clear it right up.
"I guess," he said. "Nothing hurts that isn't supposed to anymore, so…" He shrugged and trailed off, rubbing absently at his left wrist as he did so, and Peggy remembered him doing that the last time he'd been small. His joints often ached, more so in the winter, and while it had been chilly on that rainy little island, it had been a good deal warmer than Scotland in January. She imagined those aches had increased somewhat since coming home.
"Can I… Do you need anything?" she asked.
Steve shrugged again. "I don't think so." He wasn't quite looking at her either, and Peggy suspected they were both looking away, then back up at the other one, but not at the same time, missing catching one another's eyes. "Look, Peggy, I'm actually really tired, so I think I'll just…" He trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence, then reached over for the cup of sleeping potion Nurse Rains had left him. "Thanks for coming," he said, then he drank down the potion. "You don't…You don't have to stay if you don't want to. I'm alright." He smiled sadly and fell asleep before Peggy could think of anything to say to that.
Peggy slumped down in the chair and leaned back, sighing deeply. Well. This was certainly a mess, wasn't it? To say that Steve was upset was a painfully obvious understatement, but she was trying to break it down more than that to figure out what she could do to help. On the one hand, his distant apathy was not unlike how he'd been after his mum had died—closed off and just sort of going through the motions, and while this may not have been a death, it was certainly a great loss. Completely understandable. On the other hand, she'd grown so accustomed to Steve fighting his way back up from everything that knocked him down that this defeatist attitude surprised her. She snorted softly. Oh, very nice, Peggy. Steve had just suffered a traumatic personal loss, and here she was disappointed that he wasn't reacting the way she wanted him to.
She crossed her arms and shifted uncomfortably. She wasn't…she wasn't actually upset about how he was reacting, was she? Perhaps she was starting to conflate the Steve she knew and loved with the legend. Captain America would never wallow in defeat—he would simply get up swinging. Captain America wasn't a real person, though. But Steve Rogers was—a very real, human person who suffered and fell and sometimes took a little while to figure out which way was up again. But he always did. He always fought his way through the pain and stood back up again, and, even if it sometimes took a little while, that was what made him a hero.
No, his reaction wasn't what she was upset about. It was simply a convenient hook to hang her anger on because she didn't know where to direct it. This wasn't an enemy she could fight or something she could fix if she just put the clues together right. She couldn't do anything about this, and it made her feel helpless and angry, and she needed to be careful to make sure she didn't direct that at Steve.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching over and stroking his forehead, brushing his hair over to the side.
She sat there a while longer, thinking. Though there wasn't much point speculating about the future until they got some answers from the tests and everything, she couldn't help it. How was this going to change things? She remembered how frustrated Steve had been back in Fifth Year, when everyone else had been off fighting and he was stuck waiting for them. The work he'd been doing then was important, but he'd still felt like he was relegated off to the sidelines. They couldn't do that to him again. His value to what they did lay in so much more than just his muscles—that had just been a way to get him in the door—but that was much easier to say than to put into a practice that kept him safe without making him feel as though they were simply humoring him.
It had only been mid-afternoon when she'd gone in and sat down, so she did get up after a bit to go and find something to eat. She found Rebecca and Esther too—the boys were all home, but sometimes when they came crashing in in situations like this, lines of communication to the families broke down. She made sure the girls knew their brothers were alright, and she pulled Rebecca aside and did her best to explain what had happened to Steve. She would have to see him sometime, and it was hardly the sort of thing you just wanted to spring on someone. She hoped she did a better job of preparing Rebecca for it than Gabe had done for her.
She returned to the infirmary after she ate. Steve had told her she didn't need to stay, but of course she was going to. She did wonder about his statement. Was he just feeling so low that he didn't think anything would make him feel better, or was he embarrassed? Peggy rather felt it was the latter. Why, she couldn't say—it wasn't as though Steve had done something foolish and done this to himself, or as though she hadn't seen this smaller version of Steve before. Perhaps he would feel better after having had some sleep, or waking up and seeing her still there, untroubled by whatever he thought might be the problem.
If she was going to stay here overnight, she needed a more comfortable place to sit, so she conjured herself a nice, cozy armchair to replace the hard wooden one beside the bed. She curled up on her side and rested her head on one of the arms, facing Steve, though it was a long time before she fell asleep.
She woke in the morning before either Steve or Bucky did, smiling slightly to herself at the sound of Steve snoring. Bucky had been right—he snored just as loudly no matter what size he was. Steve did seem a little surprised to see her still sitting there when he did wake up, though he seemed somewhat heartened by the fact too. That was something. The awkward uncertainty of what to say remained from last night, however, so their conversation revolved mainly around breakfast. It was something of a relief when Nurse Rains came to collect them.
The rest of the team was well-rested and back in good shape, and they were all going down to Howard's lab to do some more testing. Howard was frustrated that he didn't know more about the object in the ruins that had done this, but he'd been forbidden from going to inspect it. If the effects of the device were permanent, no one had any desire for their chief engineer to be stripped of magic.
He took some blood from each of them for comparison's sake before running some practical tests. Each of them appeared to still have magic within them—they'd thought as much, but it was still reassuring to know for sure. Howard had them all try spells with his wand, as well as with Samantha's and Peggy's, and it seemed to work well—even the more complicated spells. (An uneasiness did settle over the room when Steve had a go—as they'd feared, his magical abilities had returned to their rather more unpredictable pre-serum state. He'd tried to act unbothered by it, saying he'd been expecting as much, but he'd gotten quite red and said very little afterwards, returning to his seat with an uneasy clench to his jaw.)
"Well," Howard said at last, having run out of tests to perform right before lunch. "The good news is, you can all still do magic. We're monitoring and testing your wands, and I don't want to say we're a hundred percent sure, but they're showing just enough signs of life, I think they may get their mojo back too."
"Really?" Jim asked excitedly.
"Yeah, I think so," Howard replied. "At least, we're getting a little more off them than we were last night, so if that continues, I'm anticipating them coming all the way back online. May take a little while, though. On that note, the rest of the stuff should do that too—Jacques's translator is perking up a little, and I'm not sure yet about the expanding charms on the bags, but I'm watching that too."
"What about me?" Steve asked quietly.
"Um, still working on that one," Howard said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Last night and this morning's samples of your blood didn't look like there was any change, but the serum is still in there. This didn't erase it. I'll be taking more blood periodically to monitor for change. And, from what you guys told me, when all the magic went off, the serum was the last thing to go, right?"
Steve nodded.
"The smaller magic looked like it went first, and that's what looks to be coming back first too," Howard said. "What you've got going on in there is pretty complicated magic, so it stands to reason that it will take longer to come back. I can tell you, though, that the serum we can still see in your blood is dormant, and that's a good sign."
"How so?" Steve wondered.
"Because it's not dead," Howard explained. "If it follows the pattern the rest of the stuff seems to be setting, it might very well wake back up on its own in a little while, and even if it doesn't, dormant has a hell of a lot better chance of being fixed than dead. I can't recreate the serum, but I might be able to figure out how to wake it up if I need to."
They broke up for lunch, and the rest of the team seemed encouraged by what Howard had said. Steve was still looking rather downcast, however, and if the way Bucky was draping his arm over Steve's shoulders and leaning in to talk to him was any indication, he hadn't found much hope in Howard's speech.
Peggy still wasn't sure what exactly she could do, but she should stop doing nothing, and there was a bit of clearing of the air to be done, just to remind Steve that even if she didn't know what to do, she was still there with him. Bucky looked up and she caught his eye and he nodded, returning his attention to Steve and making some sort of excuse to go. Steve looked over a little uneasily at Peggy, but nodded as Bucky left and walked over to meet her.
She smiled and he sort of smiled back. "I'm sorry if last night was a bit…" Peggy started, not sure of how to finish the sentence. "I'm afraid I don't really know what to say."
"It's okay," Steve told her. "You don't have to say anything. I've heard pretty much all of it by this point."
"I suppose you have," she agreed. "But that doesn't mean that I don't want to help. And maybe I'm not the one who needs to talk anyway." She reached over and grabbed his hand, twining her fingers through his, and even though his hand was a lot smaller now, it still fit against hers like that was where it was supposed to be. "How are you?"
"Exhausted," he sighed. "All over the place. Peggy, I…I've been trying to get a handle on this since it happened, I really have, but I…I don't know what I'm going to do," he said, his voice cracking just a bit.
"All things considered, I don't think anyone's expecting you to have a handle on anything just yet," she said. That got a very small smile out of him. She tugged on his hand, leading him over to a bench in a small alcove to sit down. "Go on."
He sighed again, and then he started talking, telling her everything that had happened on the island, everything that had been going through his head. How scared he was that he would be stuck this way. How useless he'd felt, as though he were dragging the team down. How the rest of them had shown him, with words and without, that he was still important to them, and how he struggled to hold on and really believe that. How he knew in his brain that he was more than just what the serum made him, but how his heart was still afraid that might not be true.
Every time he stumbled or got stuck, Peggy would squeeze his hand encouragingly, and that seemed to give him the strength to go on.
"I know everyone's hoping it'll come back with everyone else's magic," he sighed. "But I can't…I want to believe that so much. But I can't let myself believe it and then have it not happen. I need to be prepared for the fact that this might be me now."
Peggy nodded. It was pessimistic, but practical. She probably would have done the same if it had been her.
"And I kind of…" he went on. "I'm trying, but I kind of just want to curl up in a little ball and cry."
Peggy smiled sadly. "You can, if you want. I won't tell anyone."
He smiled at that. "Thanks. But I'm not going to. There's so much that I've lost, and not giving up is the one thing I've got left. So I'm gonna do this. Somehow. I'm gonna make it through this."
She couldn't help smiling at that, because that was such a Steve thing to say. "It's not the only thing you've got left," she said, leaning in and kissing his cheek.
He looked up at her, gratitude shining behind the sadness in his bright blue eyes.
"What can I do to help?"
"Unless you've got some of Erskine's serum tucked away in those magic pockets of yours…" he said with a smile. "Just being here is helping a lot."
"Alright," she said. She squeezed his hand again. She wished there was something physical, something tangible she could do to help, but there wasn't. What could she do but make sure he wasn't alone? "But if there's anything else I can do, let me know. I love you, and however this turns out, I'm not letting you go through it alone."
He smiled then, but it didn't quite reach his eyes, and color rose in his cheeks.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He looked down at his lap and sighed heavily. "You're way too good for me, you know that?"
"I don't understand."
He pulled his hand free of hers and scrubbed his hands down his face. "I…You have no idea how much I hate myself for this, but I…Every time this thought came up, I kept shoving it down, because it's stupid and it's wrong, but I couldn't make it stay away…"
"Steve, what are you talking about?"
He sighed and shook his head. "I was afraid this was going to bother you," he said, gesturing at his chest, and it took Peggy a second to realize that he meant his pre-serum physique. So that's what had been troubling him last night, although she never would have thought…Something of her surprise must have shown in her face, because he sat up a little straighter and took her hand in both of his. "I didn't really think that," he hurried on. "Peggy, I know how much you love me, and hearing myself say that out loud, it sounds like I was doubting that, but that's not what it was, I just…" He sighed helplessly. "Peggy, for five days now, I have been so scared. And that stupid fear kept gnawing its way into the front of my mind, and I know it's not true, but I couldn't…" He sighed and let go of her, lowering his head into his hand and hiding his face. "I'm sorry," he said in a small voice.
Peggy took a moment to try to put together what she wanted to say, then reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Steve," she said. Yes, the statement had originally hurt, but it was coming from an incredibly deep well of fear, and you couldn't take anything like that at face value. "Really," she said when he looked up at her. "I know what it's like to be scared and the mad sorts of holes our thoughts can fall into. It's really okay," she assured him. She smiled warmly. "And to answer the question you didn't ask, it doesn't bother me."
The smile he gave her was part hopeful, part uncertain. "I just…It sounds like I don't think very much of you—like all I think you care about is what I look like, and I know that's not true, I—"
She leaned in and kissed him, cutting him off before he could ramble himself into another hole. He was blinking at her in amazement when she pulled away. "Shut up," she told him.
He huffed a surprised laugh.
"Given the circumstances, it's a fair question," she told him. "Don't hate yourself for not being able to stop your mind going there. I'm not angry at you, and I'm, well, I'm glad you know me well enough to keep telling that fear it was wrong." She smiled at him, feeling heat rising in her cheeks. "To be honest, I struggled a bit with that when we first started going out." His eyebrows furrowed together in puzzlement and she smiled. "You, ah, well, I'm sure you remember Lorraine?"
Steve flushed. "Yeah."
"And, you know, right after that was when you and I got together, but there were a few hours there where I was terribly angry with you."
"It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life."
Peggy chuckled. "Well, truth is, that quite surprised me. I remember thinking that if you were going to be kissing anybody, you should have been kissing me, and I'd never actually thought that way about you before. It got me worrying that I was only thinking that because of the fact that you were tall and fit and handsome and everything, and I had to sit down and have a good think about it. That's what I was doing when you came and found me."
She sighed and shifted in her seat. "Really, I should have told you all this ages ago." If she had, perhaps that would have kept him from being afraid of this now. "But I was…Once I got it all figured out, I was a bit embarrassed about it."
"Embarrassed?" Steve asked.
She nodded. She'd felt a bit thick, realizing she'd taken so long to cotton on to something so obvious. "Thing is, I, well, I always knew you'd fancied me." His cheeks reddened and she smiled a little bit. "That much was fairly obvious from nearly the day we met. And this is going to sound terribly conceited, but I was…not unaccustomed to that." She was well aware that over the years, Steve had not been the only boy whose attention she'd caught, though it felt frightfully full of herself to say so. This time, it was her turn to blush and Steve's to smile.
"Thing about you, though," she went on. "Was that, as time went on, we became friends. Back in the beginning, we were sort of always the odd ones out, you and me. So we spent a lot of time together, and we became friends and I got to know you, and you were sweet and clever and kind, but I didn't like you the same way you liked me, and you seemed alright with that. You never got angry or acted like because you were my friend, you'd earned some sort of reciprocation of affection."
The puzzled look returned to his face. "Why would I?" he asked, nothing but sincerity in his tone.
Peggy leaned forward and kissed him again. "You have no idea how much I love you for asking that question." He still looked confused, so she explained. "There are a lot of men out there who only befriend a girl in the hopes of getting something more out of it. And you never did that, and you never thought of doing it, and that only increased my opinion of you more."
"So, yeah, we were friends," she carried on. "And we became really good friends. And what I only realized in retrospect is that we had such a good relationship that I sort of…slid over from thinking of you as a friend to thinking of you as more than that without really realizing it. Even now, I can't actually pinpoint it, it was so gradual, except to say maybe sometime in Fourth Year? Everything was so comfortable, I never saw any need to rush anything. I just sort of assumed someday we'd be something."
Peggy could feel her cheeks coloring again, having reached the part of the story that made her feel rather foolish. "And then there was Lorraine. At first, I was angry because I thought you'd moved on, but by the time you had explained what had happened, I'd realized how I felt, and, while I may have never felt a need to rush before, now there was, well…there was competition."
"Competition?" Steve asked, arching an amused eyebrow.
"Shut up," she told him. "I told you it was embarrassing."
"Anyway," she sighed. "The point is, that big, tall, muscular, Post-Serum Steve was never the guy I fell in love with. He is gorgeous, I'm not going to lie, but if that was all I was after, there are plenty of other options for a girl around here. I fell in love with Steve Rogers because he is kind, and brave, and good, and he cares about other people, he fights for what's right, and he is thoughtful and sweet and wonderful." Steve's mouth was hanging slightly agape and she leaned forward and kissed it.
"Big or small, you're still all of those things," she said softly, then kissed him again.
"Big or small, I still love you," she whispered before kissing him again, deeper this time.
"Big or small, you're still mine," she breathed, and she kissed him long and good, and his hands came up to wrap around her and thread his fingers into her hair, and he was kissing her back, and it didn't matter that he was so much smaller now and this should have felt different, because it didn't feel different at all. This was where they belonged.
Steve was looking a bit dangerously breathless when they pulled apart, and Peggy realized belatedly that they were going to have to readjust the way they went about this to accommodate his decreased lung capacity, but he was smiling. "Thank you," he said, and he was sitting up a bit straighter now. "I'm sorry I was being so stupid about this, I…" He trailed off and shook his head, then he looked back up at her with that smile that made her stomach do a little flip. "I love you too, you know," he told her.
"I know," she said, smiling warmly. She never got tired of hearing it.
"And you were right," he went on, still smiling. "I did have a crush on you since pretty much the first time I saw you. You were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Still are," he said, and she felt herself blushing. "But it was…We couldn't have been here more than a week or two," he went on, smiling wider. "And you were nice to me and you wanted to be my friend, and that hadn't happened to me a lot before, so I thought you were pretty great; but, yeah, in, like, our second week here, we were walking down to the Herbology greenhouse, and Gilmore Hodge had been teasing you while we were walking, and I was moving up to say something to him when he reached over and patted you on the bottom and you swung around and just clocked him. I was, like, fifteen feet away and I could hear his nose breaking. And I remember very distinctly you telling him, 'Touch me again and I'll break more than your nose, you window-licking, knuckle-dragging wingnut.' I was staring at you with my mouth open thinking that you were my kind of girl."
Peggy laughed, though she felt herself blushing somewhat. She hadn't thought about that in years. Although, Hodge certainly had kept his distance.
"So, I liked you, and I liked you a lot," Steve went on. "But it's funny you should mention Fourth Year," he said, reaching over and taking her hand. "I don't know if you remember, but there was a day we all went and sat by the lake and played poker, and when people drifted off after the game, you asked to look through my sketchbook. There were all these sketches of my ma, and you said if I ever wanted to talk about her, you would listen. I was getting a lot better, but it still hurt, not having her around, and a few days after that one, I was feeling really low about it, and you noticed and came and sat by me down on one end of the dinner table. And you asked me what was wrong and didn't let me get away with just saying 'nothing', and we ended up sitting there until Study Hall, me talking about Ma and you listening. And you really listened. You weren't just asking to be nice, but you really cared and you really listened. And I'd always known you were brave and kind and smart and just amazing and I liked you—but that night was when I realized I was falling in love with you."
Peggy was very aware of her heart beating, and Steve smiled warmly and stretched up a bit to kiss her gently. "I should have told you that a long time ago too," he said softly.
"We always have been slow about that sort of thing, you and me," she said with a soft laugh.
Steve smiled at that. "Better late than never," he said, stretching up a bit more and kissing her again. "But, Peggy Carter, you were worth the wait."
After his talk with Peggy, Steve felt things settling in his soul a little more, but even so, it took more courage than he cared to admit to anyone to walk with her into the Dining Hall for lunch. It was one thing for the team and Peggy to know what had happened to him, but the whole school? Everyone probably wasn't actually staring at him the whole time, but it sure felt like it.
He spent most of the rest of the day in Howard's lab. He didn't feel like going back to the dorm and having to explain what happened and have everyone feel sorry for him, and it was too cold to go outside. He'd forgotten how much he hated the cold. His joints ached and even though he didn't take his coat off all day, he felt like he was still shivering.
Peggy sat with him and Bucky in the lab, catching them up on the homework they'd missed while they were stuck on the island. And the lab was a somewhat distracting, but encouraging place to be—Steve could see Howard working and hear the results of his endeavors without having to wait.
"Hey, have you talked to Becky?" Bucky asked him, looking up from the Herbology notes he was copying from Peggy. Steve shook his head. "She's worried about you," Bucky added.
"I know," Steve sighed. He felt kind of bad—he knew she knew what had happened and was probably wanting to see him—but he didn't know if he was ready for one more person feeling sorry for him. He frowned. That wasn't really fair to her, though. "I'll find her at dinner."
They worked until dinner, occasionally interrupted by Howard wanting to run a little test or take some more of Steve's blood. They headed for the Dining Hall again, and Steve told Bucky to save him a seat, squared his shoulders back, and drifted over to the Ravenclaw table to look for Becky.
She spotted him before he got there, hurrying over to meet him and saving him the trouble of announcing himself to the whole table. She didn't say anything, just flung her arms around him, and this drove home how different he was almost more than anything else because she was taller than him again. But there was a sense of desperation and relief in the way she held onto him, and Steve chose to focus on that instead and hugged her back. "Hey, Becky," he whispered.
"Hey," she said softly. She pulled back and looked him up and down. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Steve shrugged. "I'm not hurt."
"I didn't really mean that," she said with a sad smile.
"Yeah," Steve sighed. "I know. And…no, not really. But I'm working on it."
She nodded. "It's okay to not be okay," she said, and Steve smiled at that. "And I don't know how to make you feel better, but you can ask me if you need anything."
Steve's smile widened, something warm purring happily in his chest. "Thanks," he said, and he hugged her again.
"You know, I think you're taller," Becky said as she pulled back out of the hug.
"What?" Steve asked.
"I mean, taller than last time you were little," Becky clarified.
"Oh." She was right, actually—they'd measured him along with all the tests they'd been doing, and apparently, between fifteen and seventeen was when he was supposed to grow anyway, as he now had five inches on his previous pre-serum self. Sure, that made him four-eleven now, but, you know, that was something. "I am a little," he told her.
She nodded thoughtfully. "You know, it was kind of neat when I was ten, but I don't think I like being taller than you now. It's weird."
Steve huffed a laugh. "Yeah, it is. But I won't hold it against you."
Becky smiled. "Do they know if they can make you big again?"
"Maybe. They're still working on it."
She nodded. "Well, I hope they do. I know it's gotta be all weird for you, having everything all mixed up like this." She hugged him tightly again. "But if they don't, we'll figure out how to make it okay. I promise."
Steve swallowed down a lump in his throat and hugged her back. "Yeah, we will," he agreed. His family was still there for him, just like they always were. He kissed her quickly on the cheek. "Thank you."
He went and had dinner, and spent as long as he could sitting with Peggy before he couldn't avoid going back to the dorm anymore. He drew in a deep breath, then opened the door, and, yep, there it was, that awkward silence as everyone looked up and realized who was standing there. Steve had the absurd urge to wave, but he just stepped all the way into the room and shut the door.
His motion seemed to break the spell hanging over the common room, but the following reaction wasn't what he'd been expecting at all. Instead of gawking and whispering, he got several smiles and nods of greeting, a few calls of 'welcome back', and then everyone returned to what they were doing. Puzzled, he started making his way across the room to the hallway leading to the boys' side of the dorm.
"Hi, Steve," little Second-Year Geoff said as he passed, smiling and waving like he always did.
"Oh, sorry," said Anna, one of the Fifth-Year girls who had a tendency to drop things and who had just narrowly missed his toes with her Charms book. "Good to have you back," she said with a friendly smile as she picked up the book.
"There you are, mate," Morris said as Steve passed the chairs by the fireplace. "Listen, I reckon you'll want some time to settle in, but when you want them, I've got notes from Potions for you. You might get an extension, but there's a test on Tuesday."
Steve nodded his thanks, still a little on edge, like he was waiting for the ball to drop.
"Alright, Steve?" Helen Thorpe asked, and for a second, he thought this was it, but she continued. "You're looking a bit lost."
"Oh," he said. He scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. "I guess I…I've been getting a lot of weird looks, since I came back, and…"
"And you were expecting to feel like you were on display?" she guessed. He flushed a little and she smiled. "I'm not going to lie and say none of us are surprised, but magical accidents do happen around here. You're hardly the strangest thing to come through that door." Her smile softened a little bit. "It's just good to have you back safe."
Steve smiled, feeling that warm happy thing purring in his chest again. "Good to be back," he said. "Thanks."
Bucky was the only one in the room when Steve got there, sitting on top of his bed and flipping through some notes he'd borrowed. He looked up at Steve, looked down at his watch, then looked back up with a grin. "Is this Steve Rogers, out late enough with a girl to be pushing curfew?"
"Shut up," Steve grumbled. He nodded over at his trunk. "What's all that?" His trunk was at the foot of his bed where it always was, but several sets of clothes were folded up on top of it.
"Winston brought those by earlier," Bucky explained. "Some spares from Laundry that will fit you. So you don't have to keep borrowing Jacques' stuff." He craned his neck to look over towards Steve's bed. "There's supposed to be some shoes, too."
"Yeah, they're over here," Steve said, spotting them lined up neatly under his bed. "I guess I should have more than one pair of clothes," he sighed.
"Well, Howard did say it would take him a little while to figure things out," Bucky said, in a tone that suggested that the only thing keeping Steve from regaining the serum's powers was time. "You'll probably smell better if you have more than one shirt."
"Shut up," Steve told him again, but he smiled a little bit.
The next day brought a measure of good news. Their wands had started working again, and Steve felt something inside him click back into place when he picked up his maple and eagle feather wand and felt the warm hum of magic against his fingers. True, his command of magic was now back to its earlier, more pathetic state, but that was hardly the wand's fault, and it felt good to have it in his hand again.
He also received another degree of encouragement from a very unexpected source—none other than Colonel Chester Phillips. They'd been called in to his office to debrief what happened on the island, and when Steve had hesitated to take the lead like he usually did, unsure of where he stood now, Phillips had snapped, "Cat got your tongue? Hop to it, Captain; I've got a lot of other stuff to do today." Okay, yeah, it wasn't a lot, but it was Phillips. The fact that he was talking to Steve like he always did meant a lot.
Less encouraging were his Thursday classes—he set his desk on fire in Transfiguration, and Professor Applegate, who had not been here last time Steve had been small and prone to unintentional arson, had been very surprised and very unamused. Charms had been a disaster too, and he hadn't been able to get the spell to work to hold back the Venomous Tentactula's vines in Herbology and it had taken Bucky and Monty to get him out after it grabbed him (and then up to the infirmary, since his legs were starting to go numb where he'd been stung). At least Potions had gone alright.
"Rough day?" Peggy asked him at dinner.
"Yeah," he sighed, rubbing at the bandage covering one of the larger bites he'd gotten from the plant on his hand—it was healing but really itchy. "I'd forgotten how bad I am at all this stuff." The most frustrating part was that these were all things he'd been able to do before. It would have been different if he'd been failing at something new.
"You're not bad at it," Bucky said.
"Bucky, I nearly got eaten by a plant today," Steve huffed. "And the last time I set something on fire without meaning to was 1942."
"I think what he means is," Peggy said, reaching over and taking his injured hand. She rubbed her thumb gently across the top of the bandage, and that made it feel better, somehow. "That you just need to get the hang of it again."
"Yes," Bucky said, pointing at him with his soup spoon. "That. I mean, it works different for you now, but I think it'll get better once you figure out the new mechanics of it."
Steve tilted his head, not entirely convinced. There was some truth to that, he supposed, but… "Even back when I 'had the hang of it', I still wasn't very good."
"You did have to work harder at it," Bucky allowed. "And that sucks, I know. But you did always get better."
"And Applegate really shouldn't've gone off on you like that," Peggy added. "It's not as though you did any irreparable damage." She smiled. "Eyebrows grow back."
Steve smiled back, not entirely encouraged, but appreciating their efforts to cheer him up.
He still wasn't trying to let himself hope too much, but he felt a little flutter of it as they were all getting ready for bed later that night and Jacques started jumping excitedly around the room, declaring that his translator had just started working again. He was chattering gleefully and grabbed Dave and spun him in a circle before bouncing away to the bathroom. Jacques' translator charm had been the second thing to go out, and now it was the second to come back. Maybe Steve still had a shot after all.
Friday was another series of ups and downs. Steve spent a lot of time thinking and trying to remember how he used to get his magic to work, and by lunchtime, he'd managed to re-master the ability to do non-verbal spells. They weren't always very good spells, that was true, but he could still do this—he hadn't lost the skill, he just had to…relearn how to do it. He'd already learned it all once before, so it kind of sucked, but it was better than nothing.
So, he was feeling a little better about things by lunch…At least until the anaphylactic shock kicked in. He knew he was allergic to peanuts again—very severely so—and had been careful about it since getting back. Lunch had been sandwiches, as it often was, and a lot of them had peanut butter on them, as they often did. Winston had made sure to send up some tuna sandwiches for him on their own plate, and he'd made them himself, well away from the part of the kitchen where the peanut butter was. His friends remembered too, and those of them that did eat peanut butter made sure to wash their hands before getting too close to him. He thought he was doing alright.
What hadn't occurred to any of them—and fair enough, because how many people had Steve gone around kissing last time he'd been allergic to peanuts?—was that while Peggy did make sure to wash her hands, she probably should have brushed her teeth too. She'd rinsed the remains of her sandwich out of her mouth with a glass of water, but that evidently had not been enough. That didn't all click together until Steve woke up in the infirmary with an oxygen mask and an IV in his arm and his mouth feeling kind of tingly, but, yeah, it was fairly obvious in hindsight.
On the plus side, his not having a reaction like this in more than two years meant Bucky was worried enough to forget about smacking him in the head for making such a stupid mistake. On the negative side, Peggy felt so guilty about what had happened that Steve could tell she'd been crying, and that hurt even more than running out of air had.
"Peggy, I'm okay," he assured her, taking her hand, although he wasn't sure how much impact the words had coming from beneath an oxygen mask.
"Steve, I almost killed you!" she argued, her voice wavering dangerously.
"It wasn't that bad," he said. Over Peggy's shoulder, Steve could see Bucky fighting down the urge to snap that yes, it had been that bad, not wanting to make Peggy feel even worse.
"We got him up here in plenty of time," Bucky said, and if it sounded a little begrudging, Peggy didn't seem to notice.
"I'm so sorry," she said sadly.
"Peggy, it…" Steve squeezed her hand. "It's an honest mistake. It's on me, really, it's my allergy. I should have realized that the peanut oil would still be in your mouth."
"I should've too," Peggy insisted. "I knew enough to wash it off my hands, I…" She had since brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth out several times with something Nurse Rains had given her to get rid of the peanut oil. "I'm so sorry."
"It's alright," Steve told her. "I'm not mad." He smiled. "I'd kiss you and prove it to you, but, you know." He gestured at the oxygen mask. That got a small smile out of her.
"I'm never going to eat peanut butter again," she said.
"Don't say that," Steve told her. "Peanut butter is delicious."
"So are plenty of other things that aren't going to kill you," she said, leaning in and kissing him softly on the cheek.
"If you guys are going to start making out, I'm going to leave," Bucky declared.
Once Steve had woken up, Rains was able to give him a couple of potions and get rid of the IV, and after a couple of hours, she let him out, sure that the anaphylaxis had run its course. "Twice in two days is a record even for you, love," she told him. "Do be a bit more careful."
By the evening, he was feeling fine and breathing like he should have. When they checked in with Howard, they were encouraged to hear that the expanding charms on the bags had come back to life—well, Bucky's and Jim's had, anyway. Monty's was in too many pieces for a resurrection. Jim spent a while testing the contents of the bag he'd brought back, pleased to find them all working. Howard had also given Steve his compass back—Steve wasn't sure when exactly it had quit, but it was back now too.
"So, this is pretty good news, huh?" Bucky said as they walked back to their dorm. "Everything's coming back online. So maybe—"
"I know, I know," Steve interrupted. "Maybe I'm next."
Bucky looked down at him curiously. "No need to sound so excited about it."
Steve sighed. "I'm just…I'm just trying not to get my hopes up too much. Wands and translator charms and expanding spells, hell, even magic compasses, that's…It's not like we've got the only ones of any of those in the world. What should be in here is…" He trailed off, gesturing at his chest. "Different. What if it doesn't react the same way as everything else?"
"What if it does?" Bucky countered.
"Howard said he still hasn't seen any change in my blood yet," Steve pointed out.
"So?" Bucky said. "It was last to go, and if it keeps to the schedule everything else is, maybe we'll see some signs tomorrow."
"Maybe," Steve allowed. "I just don't want to get my hopes up too high and then just wind up falling farther down."
"Alright," Bucky said, and he looked like he understood. "But don't give all the way up, huh?"
Despite everything he'd been saying, Steve would have been lying if he'd said that something inside him wasn't hoping that Saturday would be his day. Even before Bucky had pointed it out, Steve had been doing the math. Things were coming back on in the order they went out, about a day apart. So, in theory, if it was going to happen for him, it would happen tomorrow. And though he was afraid of falling hard, he couldn't squash that hope all the way down.
Saturday, however, came and went without any change. Steve felt himself being crushed a little more all day as the hours ticked by. When he went to bed, he tried telling himself that was it, though something in him hoped he might be woken up in the night by the pain of growing muscles and bones. It hurt more than he thought it would when he woke up Sunday morning and it hadn't happened.
Nothing continued to happen on Sunday. Howard had been combing through Erskine's notes, running every test and theory he could think of on the blood he'd taken from Steve, casting spells every which way and brewing potions. He seemed to take it as a personal insult that the serum refused to cooperate with him. Steve felt himself slipping back into that depression that had weighed so heavily on him on the island. This was really him now. He'd kind of accepted that earlier, or he'd thought he had anyway, but then he'd started to hope. He wanted to be mad at Bucky and Peggy for giving it to him, but he couldn't—he would've found it anyway.
He went to bed early, curling up in a little ball at the head of his bed under the extra blankets he'd had to ask Winston for. He slept uneasily—he was worried and his joints ached and he was still cold. He should probably ask for another blanket or two. He woke up very abruptly, feeling like someone was staring at him, then sat up in bed with a startled yelp at the sight of Howard Stark standing there about eight inches away from his face.
"Howard?" he asked. "What are you doing?" Howard's hair was standing out in more directions than should have been possible in only three dimensions, and his eyes were wild and a little frantic.
"Howard, it's three in the morning," Bucky groaned from the next bed over. "What the hell, man?"
"I think I did it," Howard said.
"Did what?" Steve asked.
"I think I figured it out. It's so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it before—"
"What did you figure out, and why are you in our room at three in the freaking morning?" Bucky snapped. "How did you even get in here?"
"It's been right there in front of me this whole time," Howard said, not answering any of his questions. "Well, not right there. It was under some stuff, but still, it was there, and I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Did you get hit with a spell wrong or something?" Steve wondered.
"What? No," Howard said.
"Then what are you doing?"
"Doing? I'm letting you know I've figured it out," Howard replied, like it should have been obvious.
"Yeah, we got that," Bucky sighed. "What did you figure out and why couldn't it wait until the sun was up?"
"Steve!" Howard said.
"You figured Steve out?" Bucky asked. "He's pretty straightforward, but congratulations, I guess."
"No!" Howard sighed, frustrated. He looked back and forth between them as if he was expecting them to reach the same conclusion he had. Maybe Steve was just tired, but he couldn't even see the tracks Howard was driving on, never mind follow his train of thought.
"I figured out how to jumpstart the serum again," Howard said patiently, as if he was talking to two very small children.
Steve blinked stupidly at him for a second before it clicked. "You figured it out?" he breathed.
"I did," Howard said. He shot Bucky a smug eyebrow. "I mean, I can wait until after the sun comes up to show you, but…"
"No!" Steve said, flinging his covers aside. "Is it ready? Can we do it now?"
"Why do you think I'm up here?" Howard asked.
Steve jumped out of bed, ignoring the cold stone beneath his feet and barely registering the bathrobe Bucky tossed at him, sliding his arms into it as he hurried after Howard. He'd figured it out. He was going to get everything back!
"Told you it would happen, Stevie," Bucky said, falling into step beside him, wide awake now and grinning.
"Yeah, you think you're so smart," Steve said, unable to stop the grin that was spreading across his face too.
"I am," Bucky told him. "Your life would be a lot easier if you just accepted that."
"Shut up," Steve said, still smiling.
Bucky looped an arm over his shoulders and tugged him over closer, ruffling his hair. "C'mon, punk. Let's go see if we can make your uniform fit again."
Down in Howard's dungeon lab, Steve was surprised to see the space in the middle cleared out and a familiar, large green capsule sitting in the middle of everything, surrounded by computer terminals in a precarious-looking heap.
"What's that thing?" Bucky asked.
"The capsule from the experiment," Steve said. "When I got big the first time."
"Exactly!" Howard said, evidently pleased that Steve had remembered.
"You're going to do the experiment on him again?" Bucky asked.
"No," Samantha said, coming in from the other door, levitating some sort of bulky machine the size of a fridge in front of her. Peggy was walking in behind her, wrapped up in a dark red bathrobe and still looking a little sleepy. "Howard, if you were going to drag them out of bed, you could have at least explained."
"I did!" Howard protested.
"Not really," Steve said. He smiled apologetically, not wanting Howard to think he was upset. "You said you had something, but you didn't say what."
"Oh. Okay, well," Howard said. "Like I've been saying all week, the serum's still in your blood, right? It's just dormant." He waited for them all to nod. "The funky island doohickey powered it down, but, like with all the other stuff, it didn't get rid of it. It's just, since the serum is a special case, it didn't come back on by itself like everything else did. But everything I saw in the blood samples, everything I tried, it looked like it would come back if I could wake it up. I just needed to figure out how. No, put it on the left side," he said as Samantha lowered the machine to the ground. She narrowed her eyes at him unhappily, but flicked her wand and moved it over.
"I can't believe it took me this long to think of using the capsule," Howard went on. "It's been literally right here in the lab the whole time. I mean, it was in a couple of pieces and it was under some stuff since it has kind of a niche purpose, but it was here. But basically, we put you back in it, and a combo of the Vita-Rays and some spells Samantha and I specialized, and it should wake the serum right back up."
"How well have you thought this through?" Bucky asked suspiciously. "Because you look like you rolled out of bed ten minutes ago with this idea, and now you're just wanting to stick Steve inside a big electric box, and we're not doing that."
Steve had a better idea of how the capsule worked than Bucky did and was game to try, but he'd been wondering that too.
"His hair always looks like that when he's been thinking," Samantha told them, hooking the machine she'd brought in up to the rest of the set-up. "We've actually been working on this all day and getting it tested and ready. He did fall asleep for about an hour while I was putting the generator back together," she said with a smirk. "If you're wondering about the disheveled, mad-scientist air."
"It's been a long weekend," Howard huffed. "And I—" He sighed. "It's been tested, alright? A lot. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but even if it doesn't, it won't do any harm."
"Do I just go in when you have it ready?" Steve wondered. "Last time there was other stuff I had to do first."
"Hmm? Oh, no, all that 'no fluids' and stuff was for the serum," Howard said. "You've already got that. Once we have this all set up, we're good to go. Have a seat while we get all this tech stuff hooked up."
Steve and Bucky took a seat on the couch along the wall, and Peggy joined them. "Morning," she said, sliding her hand into Steve's. His fingers were freezing, and hers were nice and warm.
"You sure about this, Steve?" Bucky asked.
"Yeah," Steve said, and he was kind of nervous, but not because he was worried. He felt jittery with anticipation—this was something he'd done before, and it had worked then, and he was going to be okay! They were going to fix him!
"It did work before," Peggy said.
"Yeah, with Erskine, and, like, a big lab set up just for this," Bucky argued. "Howard said he pulled that thing out of a pile of junk and had to put it back together."
"Buck, Howard doesn't want to hurt me," Steve said. "If he says it'll be okay, then I trust him. It'll be alright."
Bucky made a kind of hmmph noise and didn't look entirely convinced. Steve smiled.
It didn't take too long for Howard and Samantha to get everything set up. As best as Steve could tell, it looked the same as the set up in London had—the capsule was in the middle, and the computer terminals were in a pile instead of a row, but they were there to control the machine, and it was probably easier for Howard to reach all the controls when they were stacked up like that, since he didn't have a room full of assistants this time. The only additional component was the big machine Samantha had brought in, which turned out to be a generator. Howard had built himself one a little while back, tired of having to go to London every time one of his experiments required electricity. Steve recalled that it had taken a good chunk of the city's power grid last time, but Howard, being Howard, had built himself an amped-up, magically enhanced generator that he assured them would create enough power.
"Okay," Howard said, rubbing his hands together as he looked over his handiwork. "I think we're good. Hop on up in there, Steve."
"You might want to change first," Samantha said.
"Oh, yeah," Howard amended. Though he'd forgotten right now, he'd evidently remembered earlier, because he dug through a pile of stuff on his desk and pulled out a pair of pants that Steve recognized as his own.
"Why do you have my pants?" he wondered.
Howard laughed. "Told you we'd been getting ready for this all day. Had one of the house elves bring 'em over from Laundry." He smirked. "Unless you want to go all the way with the Howling Commando name for this and, you know, actually go commando."
Bucky laughed at that, but Steve could feel himself going bright red. He refused to look at Peggy and see what her reaction to that statement was. Howard handed him the pants and he got changed in the little bathroom in the corner. He had to gather a bunch of the waistband in his fist to hold the pants up as he walked back out. Peggy and Bucky, very tactfully, did not laugh when he shuffled back into the lab with the hems of the pants pooling around his ankles.
Bucky came over to help him climb into the capsule without losing his pants. Peggy waited until he was situated, then came over and took his hand. "I hope this works," she told him. "Because I know how much you want it to. But I love you no matter how this turns out," she said warmly, then put her hands to his face and kissed him deep enough to leave him a little breathless. "Good luck," she said.
"I know you don't have a lot of control over this thing, but be careful, huh?" Bucky said, patting him on the arm. "You better get back out of this thing in one piece."
Steve smiled. "I will. It'll be alright, Buck. Don't worry."
Howard waved for Bucky and Peggy to back up, then had Steve lie down while he adjusted the straps. "Okay, so, we're skipping the serum part of the process. No needles this time. This thing was always supposed to activate the serum, so, since the serum's already in there, when we turn it on, it'll go straight to closing up and the light and the heat and everything inside." He frowned apologetically. "If it works, it's going to hurt like it did last time. It's just science—no way around that one."
"It's alright. I'm ready for it," Steve said. And he was. Of course it was going to hurt, bones and muscles tearing and stretching, but Steve had done this before. He knew it wouldn't last long, and the pain was a price he'd gladly pay if it got all of his abilities back.
Howard nodded, patted his shoulder and stepped away, hitting a button that had the outside of the capsule closing and rotating upright again. Even though Steve was ready for it to hurt, he was still a little nervous, but he smiled when heard Bucky's voice over the whir of the machinery demanding, "What do you mean it's going to hurt?"
The capsule snapped shut and Steve slid down like he did the last time. He wondered if that's what the restraining strap was really for—catching him under the armpits and keeping him from dropping into the bottom of the machine. The hiss of air being pumped into the machine whited out what little noise Steve could hear through the walls of the capsule. He took a deep breath, bracing himself. This was it.
A sharp whine started in the walls of the machine, accompanied almost immediately by a blinding white light. Steve slammed his eyes shut, feeling his heart rate speed up. Last time, he'd been able to feel the serum moving into his body, building up from a weird feeling to an uncomfortable one to a painful one. This time, the pain hit without warning and he couldn't hold back a yell. Something was moving in his blood, dancing along in his veins, and even though he knew the pain was part of him growing up and out, for several seconds it felt as though it was crushing him down and in. He couldn't breathe, it hurt so bad, and then it was all happening, and it was hard to be as excited about it as he wanted to, because it hurt like hell.
Even though what had come of taking the serum had been one of the best things that had ever happened to him, those moments inside the capsule still visited him occasionally in his nightmares, and he was reminded again with startling clarity why. His muscles were tearing and knitting back together and tearing and knitting back together, over and over again as they stretched and expanded. His skin felt like it was going to rip right open as everything underneath it strained up against it. His bones were growing too, and he might have been imagining it—it was hard to tell over the sound of his own voice screaming—but Steve thought he could hear them snapping and cracking as they grew so much faster than they ever should have.
Steve felt his feet reaching the floor of the capsule, the cool metal a welcome relief to the burning under his skin, and he felt the strap over his chest getting tighter as he expanded against it, then snapping open just like it had done last time. Did that mean it was almost over? Steve couldn't remember how long it had taken. Afterwards, it seemed to have been done in no time at all, but inside, he remembered it taking an eternity, just like it was doing now. At least his lungs were bigger now, because he needed all the air he could take in to scream in pain, and yes, he wanted this, he did, he did, but he was going to pass out if Howard didn't hurry the hell up!
Over the pounding of his pulse in his ears, it took him a second to realize that the noise of the machine had stopped, and then he felt goosebumps prickle over his body as a rush of cool air hit his skin when the capsule opened. It was over. He did it. He couldn't move just yet, couldn't do anything but breathe for a second, but he did it. He made it.
He staggered forward, hands on his chest helping him stay upright as he stumbled down to the floor, and he forced his eyes open. There was Howard, under his shoulder like he was last time, and Bucky on his other side, and he could look Bucky in the eye now, and it had worked! It worked!
"We did it," he breathed.
"Yeah, we did," Howard said. "Told you." He was trying to sound smug, but he sounded almost as happy as Steve did.
"Stevie, are you okay?" Bucky asked, his face a mixture of joy, relief, and deep concern. Steve wondered how much of his screaming had escaped the walls of the capsule.
"I'm good," Steve said, pushing himself upright as his muscles steadied. He stood up straight, holding out his arms. "Pain's already gone," he assured him. Steve grinned widely, relief coursing through his veins. "Bucky, I'm back." And he was. Everything he'd lost, Steve could feel it inside him again—the power of the muscles and the magic and the strength he used to have, the steady heartbeat and the lack of pain and the deep, even breaths flowing through his healthy lungs. He grabbed Bucky's shoulders and laughed joyfully as he pulled him into a crushing hug, unable to hold it back anymore. "I'm back!"
Bucky still looked a little worried, but he was grinning now, Steve's enthusiasm contagious. Then Peggy was there in front of him, and Steve scooped her up off her feet like he hadn't thought he'd ever be able to do again and spun around in a circle and kissed her, long and deep and desperate and joyful and all the other emotions that were coming too fast for words.
"It worked," he whispered when they stopped to breathe, happy tears pooling in his eyes. He still was holding her close against his chest, unwilling to put her down, as if that would break the spell somehow.
"It worked," she agreed. "Welcome back," she breathed, then she kissed him again.
Ta-dah! Everything's finally back to normal. A nice happy note to end on and get some rest for the weekend before things pick up pace again.
See you Monday!
