Our story is winding down now, as is the war. Peggy packs up some things in the S.S.R. office and gets an unexpected gift.


Peggy dropped the pile of folders in her arms into the box on the table with a sigh. The war was coming to an end. People were celebrating everywhere, and the S.S.R. was packing up and moving back Stateside. Phillips had offered her a position there, and as soon as she graduated, she was going to take it. She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning for a moment on the box in front of her. She had always planned on going to the States after school. Always planned on joining up with the S.S.R. in New York. She'd never thought she would be doing it without Steve.

She'd cried there in the Hydra base, after she heard Steve speak his last, and she'd cried for a long time. Phillips had been there, escorted Jim out as she and Steve started to say goodbye, and though some may have read it as callous when he'd left her there to cry alone, Peggy knew it was the only comfort he'd been able to offer, the freedom to weep without needing to keep up appearances.

She hadn't cried since then. Not where anyone could see her, anyway. In the lonely hours of the night, or masked under the flowing water of a shower, she would let herself cry, long and deep and sorrowful. She'd lost so much and she let herself feel it, but only where no one else could see. Because there were appearances to keep up. She'd always been tough, but now she'd have to be tougher, because she was in this on her own.

Phillips came over and handed her another file for the box, this one thick, straining the edges of its folder. She lifted the flap to see if maybe it could be split into two, and her breath caught in her throat at the face staring back up at her. This was Steve's file, and that was Steve's face, and they must have never gotten around to updating the picture, because it was Little Steve, the morning of the experiment, it looked like. She remembered taking that photo. Erskine had wanted a 'before' shot to go with his notes, and what with everything that had happened after the experiment, they'd never gotten around to taking the 'after' shot. Steve had stood there, looking a little uncomfortable, but doing his best to smile for the camera, and Peggy smiled down at the black and white image, ghosting a finger along the side of his face.

"We have a couple of copies of that," Phillips said, nodding at the photograph. "Don't need 'em all."

She gave him a grateful smile as she realized what he was giving her permission to do, and she slid the picture out before placing the folder in the box with the others. Almost seven years they'd been at school together, and she'd didn't actually have any pictures of Steve. She wondered if Phillips knew how much it meant, giving her that.

When they'd finished the day's packing, she made her way upstairs, heading for the dining hall. Rebecca was sitting on a bench by the door, something clutched in her hands, looking as though she was waiting. "Hi, Peggy," she said, getting to her feet.

"Hello, Rebecca," Peggy said, sliding an arm around the girl's shoulders. Rebecca had been like her shadow since Steve and Bucky had died, and Peggy remembered her following Steve around the castle this way back when Bucky and the others had been captured and she was frightened and worried. Rather than finding it annoying, Peggy thought it rather sweet, and was doing everything she could to make sure Rebecca didn't feel alone. The two of them had loved Steve and Bucky in different ways, but they both felt their loss like a knife to the chest, and were able to take comfort in one another. "How are you?"

"Alright," Rebecca said. She was still easily brought to tears, but she was starting to find her feet again. "Mama and Daddy left today." The Barneses had come for one funeral and arrived in time for two. They'd stayed on for nearly two weeks, and that had been good for Rebecca, though she'd insisted on staying here to finish out the term instead of going home with them to start the Easter break early. Peggy suspected she wasn't ready to go home to a quiet, empty house.

"They took all of Steve and Jay's stuff with them," Rebecca went on. The house elves had helped them gather all the boys' things, and they'd been packing them up to take home. "But, um, I kept this," she said, gesturing with the book in her hands. "I thought you might want it."

She held it out, and Peggy recognized it as one of Steve's sketchbooks. "Oh," she breathed, putting her hands on it, but not pulling it from Rebecca's grip. "No, I can't take this from you."

"It's okay," Rebecca said, pushing it a little more firmly into her hands and letting go. "He had a lot more at home and stuff, and we're keeping those, but I thought, well, it didn't seem fair for you not to get to keep anything." One of Peggy's hands went to the tree pendant hanging around her neck. She hadn't thought of taking anything away from his family, but it was true, there was very little in the way of physical things she had of Steve's.

"He loved you a lot," Rebecca insisted. "And he'd want you to have something." She nodded at the book. "There's some drawings in there I think you'd like. That's why I picked this one."

Peggy pulled the book against her chest and smiled at Rebecca. "Thank you," she said.

They went in and ate together, and it wasn't until she was alone in her room later that Peggy opened the book. She spent a long time flipping through the pages. A lot of it was portraits—each of the Howling Commandos were there, in different poses and expressions, and each sketch seemed to capture something about the spirit of the person in it. There was the smirk on Jim's face, something in his eyes that made Peggy wonder what the joke was he was about to tell. There was the roguish twinkle in Jacques' eye that meant he'd just pulled off something that was probably against the rules and had a great story to tell. Monty looked as though he'd paused for breath in the middle of one of his long-winded speeches about the differences between something like Kelpies and Water Horses, and Dugan had his hat pulled down over his eyes as though he were attempting to drown him out and go to sleep. Gabe was tinkering with a pile of machine parts, and Peggy felt like she could see the wheels in his head turning. There were several of Bucky, laughing, talking, boots up on the table during a briefing, or even just sleeping, and Peggy couldn't put into words what it was about them that just seemed so very…Bucky, other than to say she, well, she felt rather at home looking at them.

There were several drawings of her as well, down on the pitch coaching Becky's Quidditch team, sitting at her desk working, walking, reading, and a few of just her face, smiling. There was something…again, it was hard to say, but there was a softness, a tenderness to them—not a softness that made her seem weak or delicate, but one that just…she could just see, through the lines and the curves and the shadows, she could just see how much Steve loved her.

There were several other portraits as well. She saw Rebecca and Esther, Colin and Donovan, Dave and Morris, several people from Hufflepuff, Willow the house elf, and even one of Ethan that Steve must have drawn from memory—the date in the corner was after he died. There were several of smaller, unimportant things as well, like piles of shoes or light glinting on a doorknob, and there was one that appeared to be just a picture of Steve's foot—complete with a hole in the sock—that made her smile. They were little and ordinary things, but they were pieces of Steve's life, and that made them very important indeed.

In the back of the book were a couple of pages that made happy tears spring up into her eyes, and Peggy wondered if these pages were why Rebecca had chosen this book for her. These were studies Steve had done looking in a mirror, and his face looked back up at her from the pages, smiling, frowning, thinking, laughing. A lot of them were smudgy, with lines visible from multiple erasures, and Peggy remembered Steve telling her that he had a hard time drawing his own face because he never felt like he was getting it right. They all looked so very like him, though. A dark spot appeared on the page as she looked down at it, and she turned her head away so that she wouldn't drip any more tears onto the book, wiping hastily at her eyes.

She closed the book carefully and sat up a little straighter. Steve was gone, but she had this incredible gift, this little glimpse of the world through his eyes. It was a little piece of him she could carry with her, and, well, the way Steve saw the world wasn't such a bad way to look at things, was it? To look for the value in everyone, to look for the right thing to do…They could all stand to look at things like that. And if she could do that, she could keep his memory alive. He'd never really be gone, then, would he? She could keep him with her, draw on his strength and goodness and live the good life she knew he would want her to until she saw him again.


And with that, we draw the curtains on Peggy. At least for now...