Chapter Four

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"What do you mean, you're not sure where Brooklyn begins and ends?" Steve demanded, surprise coloring his voice. "I thought you were based out of New York City."

Agent Carter shrugged, scraping her spoon along the inside edge of her tin plate to get the last bit of food. They'd been marching all day, and her legs felt like they were about to fall off. Even this far from the front lines, the dull boom of exploding bombs punctuated what otherwise would have been a pleasant evening. "I spent some time in the New York sewers in '42," she specified, "but I'm afraid I never had the luxury of exploring much aboveground."

Steve cocked an intrigued eyebrow and shoved his own plate and spoon back into his pack. Even though he was on double rations, she could tell he was still hungry. "Too bad you didn't get the chance to stay a little longer."

"I did get to see some of the sights." Peggy paused, thinking back. "Doctor Erskine and I took in the view from the Empire State Building, and we walked to the shore and saw your Statue of Liberty." She didn't mention the tears that had risen in Doctor Erskine's eyes as he looked across the water and saw the symbol of everything he and his countrymen were being denied.

"That's a good start," Steve said thoughtfully. "But it's just the surface, it's the part everybody sees. The people who build the buildings, who live by what that statue represents—that's what New York is all about. Until you've seen them, you haven't seen nothing yet."

Peggy felt her smile widening at his clearly-growing enthusiasm. She loved it when she could get him talking about his home. Most people never saw this side of Captain America.

"Then you'll have to show me," she heard herself saying, as she tucked her mess kit back into her own pack. "After all of this is over."

His face was softer, his eyes bright with something unspoken that made her heart skip a beat when she looked back up at him. "I will," he promised after a moment. "You come to New York, and I'll show it to you like you've never seen it before."

Peggy's heart felt warm; she bit her lip to keep from smiling back at him. "I'll hold you to it, soldier."

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He'd never thought he would get to do this.

Sure, he'd dreamed of it often enough during the war, planning out what he'd show her, where he'd take her. On nights when he couldn't sleep, he would stare up into the darkness and imagine taking her along the Coney Island boardwalk, showing her the street he grew up on as a kid, treating her to ice cream at the little place on the corner where he and Bucky used to press their noses against the glass and look in.

Then he'd woken up in the future, and everything had changed. The world was new. He'd felt like a tourist in his own land.

And now, against all odds, he was back—and yet somehow, he still felt out of place.

They lingered first in Manhattan, while he tried to point things out to her. It was harder than he'd expected. The tall steel and glass skyscrapers of a distant future stood out more clearly in his memory than the older buildings he'd known in his youth. After the third or fourth time where something wasn't where he'd expected it to be, Peggy finally stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled a pad of paper and a pencil out of her purse.

"Show me," she said simply, and handed them to him.

So he did, his pencil flying across the paper as he sketched buildings that wouldn't be built for decades yet. Peggy's eyebrows lifted as she compared the scribbled skyline to the world around her, but all she said was, "that one's a terrible eyesore" as she tapped Stark Tower with her thumbnail.

"I thought the same when I first saw it," Steve agreed, and only the pain in his heart caused by Tony's recent death kept him from laughing at the fact that neither he nor Peggy cared much for the artistically asymmetrical building.

Things had changed too much, he realized. There was no way that she could see either his future or his past, other than through his pencil and his clumsy words. She could never truly know the world he had lived in.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, and he realized he'd been standing frozen, pencil forgotten between his fingers.

"I don't know how to show you around," he confessed. He felt somehow ashamed, very tired, wholly lost. Was he always to feel out of place, regardless of which time he was in? "It's too big. It's too—different."

She settled her hand on his arm, her palm small and warm, her red nails gleaming against the drab of his jacket. "Then don't try," she urged. "Anyway, you always said it was about the people, not about the places."

And even as she said it, he realized it was true. The spirit of the people—that had remained the same, whether in the past, present, or future.

Her hand tightened comfortingly around his arm in a brief squeeze. "Tell me about the people, Steve."

He closed his hand around the pencil, and looked down into her face. She was his anchor, regardless of which time he stood in—the true north to his heart's compass. Reoriented, he nodded slowly.

"Okay," he said. "I can do that."

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They got lunch at a small hole-in-the-wall diner, and then rode the subway out to Brooklyn. The train was hot and crowded; they had to stand close together. Even though he didn't care for the heat and noise of the subway system, Steve was almost sorry when they reached their destination and had to get off.

The station was busy, filled with bustling people. As they stepped off, a wedge of passengers shoved past, pressing forward to get on the same car he'd just stepped off of. Distracted, Steve stepped out of their way, before turning back to say something to Peggy.

Then he stopped short, the light remark dying unspoken on his lips.

Peggy wasn't there.

Steve's heart lurched inexplicably, a sick feeling swelling up inside him. He turned, urgently scanning the faces near him, searching for the one face that meant more to him than any other.

It was ridiculous—it really was, but terror knows no reason. For an instant this whole wild reality seemed no more than that one vision Wanda had thrust upon him years ago. In that dream, he'd had Peggy back for a few feverish moments before losing her between one heartbeat and the next. One instant she'd been there in his arms, and the next she'd been gone.

This, here and now, in the bustling subway station, felt exactly the same.

And then, just as the cold fingers of sickening despair clutched at his heart, he found her. Peggy was barely more than a yard or two away from him, only momentarily separated by the rush of boarding passengers. Her face was turned away from him as she too searched the crowd around her.

"Peggy," he rasped, voice hoarse with sudden feeling. She visibly caught her breath, whirling, reaching for him, her face washed with relief. Their hands met, Peggy's closing around his with a desperation that matched his own, her nails pressing crescent dents into his skin.

The whole thing hadn't lasted longer than a few seconds. They had only briefly been separated from one another in the mad bustle; most couples would barely have noticed it.

But they weren't most couples.

Wordlessly, they hurried up the stairs, out of the echoing clamor of the subway station and into the brightness of day. Peggy murmured something commonplace about how crowded the station had been; Steve nodded companionably and uncomprehendingly. His heart still beat a mad tattoo inside his rib cage; from the pounding pulse in her slim wrist, he suspected she felt the same.

He might be back, she might be young and alive—but both were such unexpected miracles that neither could quite trust that this whole reality wouldn't collapse on them both.

They'd walked a block before Steve discovered he was still holding her hand. He loosened his grip immediately, but instead of drawing away, she merely adjusted her hand more comfortably in his. It fit there exactly as he'd remembered; his heart leaped at the contact and, distracted, he nearly walked into a light pole.

It wasn't the first time they'd held hands—they'd done so often near the end of the war—but he still felt as awkward as a boy. When he glanced down at her, she looked as demure and self-possessed as ever, but he thought her cheeks were flushed from more than the heat of the subway, the dimple in her cheek a trifle deeper than usual.

Something in his soul ached at the sight.

Peggy hadn't asked him how long he'd be here for, which was just as well, since he hadn't decided what to tell her. If she knew he was here for good, his last vial of Pym Particles used up to get here, then she might feel pressured or trapped into a course of action by the enormity of his choice to return.

And that was the last thing he wanted. Peggy Carter deserved to make her own decisions—and if that decision was to say goodbye at the end of their time together, then it was her prerogative.

Even if it broke his heart, she needed the right to choose.

"You're looking somber." Peggy's voice pierced his thoughts. Shaking himself awake, he looked down at her. She was smiling, head cocked in interrogation. Steve found himself smiling back.

"Glad to be here," he told her honestly, and recklessly lost himself in the steady brown of her eyes.

Because regardless of what the future held, they were here together, today—and he wasn't about to waste a second of that time.

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When at last, they turned a particular corner, the resulting wave of nostalgia surprised Steve with its strength, hitting so hard that for a moment he could barely breathe. Briefly, he felt like the young man who had left this place so long ago and never come back.

It had been so many years. Back in the future, he'd gathered up the courage to return, only to find the entire area razed and reconstructed. During some initiative to clean up the city, the place he'd spent his youth had been swept up and discarded. At the time, it had been just one more blow in a series of devastating losses. Now he was back, and for a moment he couldn't tell which felt more like a dream—the future or the impossible present.

Peggy's fingers moved in his, and he looked down to find her watching him steadily, her eyes bright beneath the brim of her hat.

"All right?" she inquired briefly.

He nodded, and cleared his throat, which felt unaccountably thick.

"Yeah," he said, and smiled down at her. "Yeah. Here, let me show you."

And together they proceeded down the street, while Steve described for her the people who had shaped his youth in this place.

There was the barbershop, owned in Steve's youth by Mr. Mazur, and now apparently run by his son. Across the way stood the bakery, where Steve and Bucky had often peered in hungrily, though their mothers made their own bread and never shopped there. The small window on the top floor of that other building marked where old Mrs. Waikowsky had lived—the woman who had put all five of her daughters through stenographer school, and raised three of her grandsons.

"Always kept peppermints in her pocket." Steve remembered, grinning suddenly. "Used to rap us kids on the back of the head at church if she thought we weren't bowing our heads far enough."

Peggy snorted rather indelicately at the mental image.

Near the end of the narrow street, Steve directed Peggy into a sun-baked courtyard without a trace of greenery. Clotheslines criss-crossed above their heads, drying garments flapping in the breeze. It was a tenement housing block, one of many crowded into Brooklyn.

Steve stopped, his hand tightening around Peggy's at the rush of memories that swept over him. Glancing down at her, he could see that she understood even before he spoke. He tried to explain anyway.

"Second floor," he said, and pointed with his free hand. "Fourth door down. That's where my mother and I lived until she died."

The place seemed even smaller than it had when he'd been a child. Back then, this had been his whole world. His feet still remembered the climb up the stairs; raising his eyes, he could almost swear he saw the slim shape of his mother at the narrow window.

Time was so fluid.

At his side, Peggy looked up at him—a keen, probing look that saw more than he'd intended to show. "Tell me about her," she urged, so he did. The sun beat down on their heads as Steve spoke of his beloved mother in quiet halting sentences, briefly sketching the life of a young woman who loved her son more than anything else.

"I'm older now than she was when she died," Steve finished at last. Somehow he missed her more in this instant than he had in years. He'd barely spoken of his mother since her death, so long ago. There had been nobody to tell, other than Bucky, and he had already known it all. "I only wish she could have had more time."

Peggy squeezed his hand. Her voice was soft, infinitely tender. "She'd be very proud of the man you have become."

He looked down into her face, glowing with the heat of the courtyard and the faith burning in her eyes, and wondered if that might be true. He hoped it was. There was so much blood on his hands, so many mistakes in his past, but he'd tried hard to be a good man regardless.

When they finally left the courtyard, hand in hand, Steve didn't look back.

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In the end, he did take Peggy to the ice cream place on the corner after all. He and Bucky had once come here on double dates, though by that point in the evening Steve had usually lost his date, lingering on as an awkward third wheel.

This time, though, he was with Peggy. They found a table for two beside the large plate glass window, and shared a twenty-five cent sundae.

"If you grew up here, surely somebody will recognize you?" Peggy pointed out, licking melting ice cream and chocolate sauce from the end of her spoon. She didn't miss the way Steve's eyes dropped to her lips, nor the way he resolutely hauled them back up to meet her own. The man was a gentleman, but it was nice to know that he was human as well. She wondered if he thought about last night's brief, tender kiss as frequently as she had.

"I think most of them have moved out," he answered her, his spoon clinking against the glass of the dish as he took a bite of his own. "But I'm pretty sure the girl at the counter is Rudy O'Donnell's kid sister. She wouldn't recognize me, but her brother was my age." Steve leaned back in his seat, a reminiscent grin tugging at his lips as he pushed the rest of the sundae towards her. "He and Bucky had a long standing feud. Used to lick me every chance he got."

Peggy looked past him at the girl behind the counter. She was pretty, red headed, and the last name written on her name tag clearly betrayed her Irish heritage.

"Did Bucky grow up around here?" she asked.

Steve nodded, gesturing with one finger as he tried to point out the building through the window. "Just down the street. We'll pass it on our way back to the subway station."

Peggy settled her elbows on the table and savored the last bite of ice cream, looking around the world Steve had brought her to. This wasn't the New York most tourists saw. It wasn't even the New York she had come to know, the underworld riddled with crime, deceit, and intrigue. This was Steve's New York, filled with ordinary people living ordinary lives, and there was beauty in it.

"Thank you," she said. "For showing me your world."

His eyes lifted to hers, and then caught and held. For a long moment, there seemed to be nobody else in the world except for the two of them. On the tabletop, Steve's hand shifted slightly, his fingertips grazing hers. He drew in his breath as though he was about to speak.

Then the bell over the door jingled merrily, and the sudden sound jerked them both back to the present. A crowd of young people were just coming in, laughing and chatting. They were working girls and boys, Peggy noticed. The work day had come to an end, and the sun was slanting between the buildings at an increasing angle.

Steve looked at the empty dish between them, and smiled ruefully. "Guess we should head out."

As they left, his hand found hers again. Peggy didn't mind in the least.

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They passed the Barnes home on their way out of the neighborhood. Peggy knew it even before Steve pointed it out, because the pretty, dark-haired young women bounding up the steps of the apartment building could only be Sergeant Barnes' sister. Steve stopped short when he saw her, stepping into the shadow of the nearest building and averting his face until the girl was safely inside.

"Afraid she'll recognize you?" Peggy asked.

Steve's face was full of startled wonder, as though a thunderclap had burst around his head. She had to repeat her question twice before he heard her.

"Must be Rebecca," he managed at last. "She's so—young." The last time he'd seen her, she'd been in her late nineties. Bucky had finally been mentally healthy enough to meet her, and Steve had gone along. He hadn't seen her since; she'd been among those vaporized in the Snap.

Peggy laid her hand on his arm. The Barnes family was like his own, she knew. They had been entered on his service record as next-of-kin; Mrs. Barnes had written both him and Bucky during the war. "Would you like to go say hello?"

He shook his head, and his face briefly tightened into an expression she'd seen once before on a rainy day in the middle of Italy. Only for an instant, though—and then something behind his eyes shuttered. Peggy already knew that look. There was something from the future that he wasn't telling her.

"Not yet," he said very low, something achingly raw in his voice. "I can't face them yet."

He didn't say anything else on the matter, and she didn't press him as they walked on in silence. When he turned to her with a smile and spoke again, a block later, the conversation was on other matters.

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The sun was low in the sky as they turned their footsteps back towards Peggy's small apartment. Steve knew her feet were hurting her, after walking for the entire day, but Peggy insisted they walk across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of taking the subway home.

"I want to walk across the bridge with you" she'd demanded, looking up at him with a face he could deny nothing to, and he'd agreed as a matter of course. They took their time, walking slowly.

Steve wondered if she could tell how happy he was. Whatever happened after this, whatever decisions she made about her future and therefore his, at least they'd had today, and it had been wonderful beyond his wildest dreams.

The setting sun painted the sky and water in wild colors as they neared the middle of the bridge. The breeze from off the river picked up, blowing tendrils of Peggy's hair around her face. Steve realized he was staring at her again, but didn't bother even trying to stop. She was alive and here, by his side. Stronger than when he'd left her, perhaps more jaded, certainly more weary—but always so deeply beloved to him.

At the middle of the bridge, Peggy stopped and leaned against the rail. He took his cue from her, standing quietly at her side. She looked out at the water, her profile clear-cut against the darker shore. He traced her features with his eyes, memorizing every strand of loosened hair, the line of her throat, the determined press of her lips.

"I let you go, here," she said suddenly, her voice so soft that he nearly missed it. "I said goodbye, and I let you go."

Her hand was on the railing. Steve carefully covered it with his, and the touch seemed to jerk her into the present. She sucked in a sharp breath, and then looked up at him with eyes so vulnerable that it was all he could do not to kiss her then and there.

"Tell me about it," he suggested instead.

Peggy shrugged wearily. "Howard had one vial left of your—of your blood. It fell into my hands, and I—I just wanted to keep you safe." She looked back out at the water. There were tears in her eyes, her voice unsteady. "So I came here, and I poured it into the river because it was the only thing I could think of, and I said goodbye."

Her voice broke on the last word, and it stabbed at Steve's heart. Holding hands wasn't enough. He moved closer to her and put his arm carefully around her shoulders. She froze for an instant, before relaxing into his side with a shuddering sigh.

Steve knew better than anyone how much security his files had always been kept under. She must have had to go through quite the ordeal to get her hands on that last vial of his blood. The thought of Peggy Carter straining every nerve to keep him safe before finally letting him go brought a lump into his throat. He bowed his head until his cheek just brushed her hair.

"Thank you," he said quietly, "for keeping me safe."

She gave a sudden sob, swiped at her face impatiently, and then turned into his chest as he brought his other arm around her and folded her close.

For a long time they stood together, holding one another as the sunset slowly faded from the sky. The clouds and water were quite gray when she eventually straightened, pulling back out of his arms and groping for her handkerchief. He turned his eyes away, looking out across the water, giving her time to collect herself.

"You're not going back tonight?" she demanded presently. When he looked back at her, she was composed again, though her nose was a trifle more red than before. Nothing could disguise the anxiety in her eyes, though, as she awaited his answer to her question.

"No," he promised, still searching her face. She was the strongest, most beautiful woman he'd ever known, and the temptation to lay his heart right at her feet then and there was almost overwhelming. "Will you…" marry me, he wanted to say, but didn't. It wouldn't be fair to her. "...would—would you let me take you out dancing sometime? Someplace nice this time, like I promised?"

He saw the light leap up in her eyes. "I'd like that," she breathed. And then, "When? Tonight?"

Steve's heart skipped a beat at the thought, but he knew she was footsore and weary, though she'd never admit it. "I might need to make reservations."

Peggy nodded briskly. "Tomorrow then, eight-o-clock sharp." Her voice trembled; she visibly marshaled her forces and added, with a sternness he found irresistible, "And don't you dare be late this time, Steve Rogers—don't you dare."

The reminder of their last radio conversation was poignant. Steve nodded firmly. "I'll be there," he promised, his own voice thick with emotion. Reading her permission in her eyes, he put his arm around her again. Peggy swiped at her eyes once more and then leaned into his side, her hand closed around a fistful of his jacket as though to reassure herself that he was real, alive, and here.

She had said goodbye to him long ago on this very spot. Now, something tentatively hopeful in Steve's heart whispered of new beginnings.

"I'll be there."

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He bade her goodnight on the steps of her apartment building. Peggy had rather hoped for a repeat of last night's kiss, but he just took both her hands in his with one of those little gestures she'd never thought to see again. They used to part that way near the end of the war, when both of them knew their feelings were beyond those of friends, but neither knew quite how to act about it.

"See you tomorrow, Peggy," he promised—and then, with a movement so shyly awkward that it was downright endearing, he leaned in and brushed her cheek with his lips. It was nothing like the kiss she wanted from him, but it still shot a thrill straight through her. "Good night."

"See you tomorrow," she echoed back, and for the first time since the report of his death, she felt a surge of hope and excitement in those words.

Because there would be a tomorrow—and he would be in it.

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...hi folks?

When I started writing fanfiction, I swore I'd never apologize for updating late. But I need to break that promise now, because it's been what, nine months without a word? And that wasn't fair of me, especially to those of you who have been my readers for years. I apologize for the wait.

2020 was a beast. It ate my creativity, my schedule, and my confidence—and I imagine you each suffered losses as well. But we've survived, and we're on the other side of it now! Here's hoping 2021 treats you better. Thank you for reading, and for your infinitely kind reviews. You mean more to me than you know. :)


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Also, to guest reviewers Sandra, DBZfan45, Janece Thompson, and Guest—thank you so much! And yes Sandra, I am writing that sequel. ;)