Chapter 28

"Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life."

Peggy's words echoed in Steve's head over and over again as he walked out of the Smithsonian and into the bright sunlight, head ducked down in the hopes that no one would recognize him with the baseball cap shading his face. He even mouthed the words to himself silently as he walked to where his motorcycle was parked, not caring if the people he passed thought he was crazy: "Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life."

The thought was simultaneously a relief and a torment. So she hadn't forgotten him. She'd been grateful to him for saving the life of her future husband. He was glad of that, too. That was exactly what he'd been called to do, what Captain America had been created for. To save everyone else's lives. Everyone else's families. He hadn't allowed himself to think much of his own life. His own chance at a family. That had seemed right at the time. Why didn't it seem that way now?

At least he knew now that Peggy hadn't succumbed to the cynicism of the times like he had feared. He'd seen enough of her in the reels in the Captain America exhibit to be sure of that. She'd stayed faithful until the end. Firmly holding to her principles, to her determination to be a force for good in the world. And while that fact came as a comfort to Steve, it had also awoken a longing inside him that he had been fiercely suppressing for a long time now.

He wanted to see Peggy.

No more of Nick Fury's justifications. No more of his moral contortions. No more of his secret underground helicarrier bays packed full of weapons of mass destruction that Fury was bizarrely certain would never be misused. Peggy would have been as horrified by that as he had been. Steve was as sure of that as he had ever been of anything in his life, and the need to see her, to know once and for all that he wasn't crazy to think the way he thought, to feel what he felt, was like a drumbeat inside his chest. He reached the spot where his motorcycle was parked, but he didn't make a move to climb onto it. He wasn't going back to the Triskelion today, but he didn't want to go home either. There was only one place he wanted to go. Just one person he wanted to see.

He pulled out his cell phone, ignoring the noise of the cars zipping past and the chatter of the pedestrians on the sidewalk, and scrolled through his contacts until he found the one labeled "Peggy Carter." The only contact in his phone he had never actually called, although there had been days when he had hardly been able to think of anything else.

Maybe it was finally time.

His thumb pressed "Call" before he could stop to think about it too much, without even deciding what he would say when someone answered. There was a time for thinking, and there was a time for acting. This was definitely the latter.

The phone rang only a few times, and then someone answered: "Carter residence."

His heart practically stopped. It was her voice. She was talking to him. It had been so long. So long. And he knew in a flash: He never should have waited this long.

"Peggy?" he blurted out after a breathless pause.

"No, this is Dr. Capecci, her personal physician," the woman's voice said. "May I ask who's calling?"

It took Steve a moment to regain his footing again. That wasn't Peggy's voice? Well, of course it wasn't. The accent was American, not British. How could he have mistaken it? And anyway the voice sounded too young. Peggy wouldn't sound the way he remembered her, not anymore.

"Hello?" the woman said as the silence stretched out.

He forced out his next words, doing his best to sound normal even though he felt anything but that. "This is Steve Rogers. I'm... an old friend of hers."

He heard a quick exhalation on the other end of the line. "Captain Rogers. Yes. I'm so glad you called. She's been hoping you would."

He felt a wild surge of relief. "Can I talk to her?" he said hopefully.

There was a quick pause. "She's sleeping right now. But if you'd like to talk to her, you might as well come over. She'll be awake by the time you get here."

He hesitated, confused. "I'm... not in England."

"Oh, she isn't either," the doctor replied readily. "She's in Philadelphia, visiting family."

Philadelphia? Steve blinked several times in surprise. So close? Only a few hours' drive from D.C. He could actually go. He could see her face again, and look into her eyes, and talk to her just like they used to. His heart thumped wildly in his chest. All he wanted to do was say yes, but...

"I- I wouldn't want to interrupt a family-" he started, but the doctor interrupted him before he could finish.

"You won't," she said firmly. "They're out for the day."

Agent 45 directed Clint Barton to land the Quinjet in Ho Chi Minh City to refuel and pick up their team, but the coordinates he gave didn't lead them to the airport, but to a landing pad atop a downtown skyscraper bearing the words "Hoang Ky Su." A Vietnamese engineering firm, 45 explained briefly as Clint smoothly set down the Quinjet in a vertical landing.

Clint lowered the ramp and the two of them strode down into the bright sunlight. A group of jumpsuited mechanics hurried over and began the engine check and refueling procedures at the direction of a Vietnamese man wearing what appeared to be a very expensive suit. He was surrounded by six people, all of whom were wearing S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms.

"I thought you said-" Clint started in an undertone as the two of them approached the group.

"They aren't S.H.I.E.L.D.," Agent 45 confirmed. "But they'll need to appear that way."

They came to a stop, and the man in the suit grasped Agent 45's hand and pumped it enthusiastically before handing over a briefcase. "Everything's ready to go," he said easily, his English easily understandable despite his accent, and a broad smile spread across his face as his gaze shifted to Clint. "And I see you've landed us the final member of the team."

"Hawkeye, this is Quyen Ngo, CEO of Hoang Ky Su," Agent 45 said. "He was kind enough to lend us his landing pad as well as design some equipment for the mission. Probably because he doesn't know how to say no to his wife... who also happens to be my daughter, Natty."

He winked at one of the women dressed in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, who winked back with a smile, and as Clint turned to shake her offered hand he was struck by how beautiful she was. Just exactly the type of woman you'd expect to land a rich businessman. He hadn't realized until now that Agent 45 must have married a Vietnamese woman, because his daughter looked as Vietnamese as her husband did.

"Natty will be partnered with you during the mission," Agent 45 continued. "She's experienced in espionage, and she's a force to be reckoned with when it comes to hand-to-hand combat."

"Sounds like you raised her right," Clint said lightly.

"There were times when my mother wasn't quite so sure about that," Natty said with a merry laugh that revealed a faint dimple in one cheek. She didn't exactly look like someone who would dominate in a fight — her frame was willowy, and every motion she made bespoke grace, not power — but Clint knew better than to judge a fighter by stature alone. Anyone who had ever met Natasha Romanoff knew that.

"This is my other daughter, Sammy," 45 went on. "She's our designated hacker, and my grandson Roger here will assist her."

Sammy was not as striking as her sister was — she wasn't even wearing makeup, as a matter of fact — and she wore a more serious expression as she shook Clint's hand. Roger, standing next to her, looked very young, almost too young to be part of a mission like this. Maybe still in his teens, although the uniform helped him look older and he was built along the lines of a quarterback. Well, Agent 45 wouldn't be sending some of his own family into the thick of things unless he was sure they could handle it, Clint figured.

"The other three will work to clear the helicarrier of hostiles before we launch it," Agent 45 said. "This is Aliyah, my nephew's wife." He accepted a warm hug of greeting from a tall woman with neatly beaded box braids that cascaded all the way down to her waist. There was a flash of reflected light as she patted 45's back, and Clint saw that she was wearing a metal bar across the fingers of one hand. Brass knuckles? But there were only loops for two fingers, and the metal bar was flat and heavily inscribed with symbols that he couldn't quite make out. Some kind of gaudy jewelry, he supposed. It didn't look very practical for fighting.

"She can take care of herself in a fight," 45 added as Aliyah released him, almost as if reading Clint's mind, "but she also has medical expertise if it becomes necessary."

Clint was startled when Aliyah turned and gave him a close hug, too.

"What?" she asked him lightly as she pulled back, still gripping his shoulders, her white teeth flashing in a broad smile. "They all wanted to do it, too." Her smiling gaze slid over the rest of the team, a few of whom fought to restrain smiles of their own.

Agent 45 cleared his throat loudly, and everyone sobered up as he moved on to the last two members of the team: a sturdily-built man with close-clipped brown hair and a sidearm in a well-worn holster strapped to his belt, standing side by side with a woman sporting a single lock of flame-red hair on her blond head. She was noticeably shorter than the man and wasn't armed at all, yet her body language fairly exuded unshakeable confidence.

"And last but not least, this is my niece, Amanda — I taught her to fight, too, since she was small — and her husband, Rob," Agent 45 said. "He's LAPD, more than a decade on the force."

Clint shot Agent 45 a surprised look. "The entire team is related to you?" he asked.

"I told you," 45 said steadily. "I needed people I could trust."

"Well, I'm not part of your family," Clint pointed out. "What makes you so sure you can trust me?"

"What makes you think you're not part of the family?" 45 asked facetiously.

"Our little brother's name is Clint," Sammy put in, the first time she had spoken. Her voice was soft but somehow carried clearly even in the wind whipping past the top of the skyscraper.

"Oh, you named one of your kids after me?" Clint joked, looking back at Agent 45. "What an honor."

"Yes, and he was born before I ever met you," Agent 45 said in a wry tone, "which makes it a real accomplishment."

Sharon couldn't quite suppress a yawn as the briefing wrapped up; she'd gotten back from an assignment in Berlin in the wee hours of the morning, and even though she had gone straight home and to bed for a good six hours before heading to the Triskelion, her internal clock was still confused. But it had been quite a while since she'd been able to spend time with Cameron Klein, and she wouldn't have a chance tomorrow; too many meetings of her own scheduled.

And so she'd slipped into one of the briefings that Klein consistently attended and made her way to the seat behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and flashing him a smile when he turned around, although of course they couldn't talk during the briefing. But when the presentation was over, Klein turned around and readily made small talk with her. For the longest time after she had been assigned to watch him, he had struggled to get through a sentence without stammering. But with a lot of patience, persistence and friendliness on her part, Sharon had finally gotten him comfortable enough that he didn't tense up when he saw her coming anymore. He was now even describing her as a friend when he introduced her to other agents, a milestone she had never managed to reach with Brock Rumlow.

Today she kept the conversation going as she followed Klein into the control center where he worked, and he didn't even seem to mind when she hung around for a while chatting. She wished she could get in a visit with Rumlow today, too, but he had gotten back from an international mission earlier in the day and gone home as soon as his report was filed. He was much harder to catch than Klein was, which was unfortunate; the more time Sharon spent with Klein, the more convinced she became that he was exactly what he seemed to be: a highly intelligent but socially awkward, good-hearted technician who liked being in Steve Rogers' company for no reason more complicated than the fact that Rogers was nice to Klein.

Klein was in the middle of a funny story about his little sister when Sharon's phone chimed in her pocket.

It was a very particular chime, not the one she used for text messages, so Sharon quickly excused herself and walked to a quiet corner of the room to check it. And sure enough, it was the tracking device installed on Rogers' motorcycle, signaling to her that he had just left the D.C. area. Hill hadn't alerted Sharon that Rogers was being called up for a mission, which meant he was leaving on personal business.

Sharon frowned; with the kind of hours Rogers worked it was pretty rare for him to leave town spontaneously, and she knew he hadn't requested any vacation time this week. Her eyes flicked up to the corner of her screen and saw that it was only 3 p.m. Normally he would be in the Triskelion attending briefings at this time of day. Curious, she opened the tracking app and looked at his location: Baltimore Washington Parkway, heading northeast. Her eyes traced up the line on the map. Could he be headed to Baltimore? Why? He didn't know anyone special out that way.

She moved the timestamp back to see if he had headed out straight from work, or if he had gone to his apartment first. Neither one, it turned out: He'd left from the Smithsonian. Sharon's brow creased even deeper. He'd left work in the middle of a weekday to go to a museum, and then jumped on his bike and taken a spontaneous drive out of town? It wasn't exactly normal for him. She quickly typed out a message to Hill to let her know. A minute later, Hill sent a reply.

MARIA HILL: Fury isn't surprised. He's probably just blowing off steam.

MARIA HILL: Keep an eye on him, but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.

Sharon blinked. Blowing off steam? What could have gotten Rogers steamed up enough to take off like that? He was usually so controlled.

She said goodbye to Klein and headed up to her own desk to work, and as promised, she glanced at her phone from time to time throughout the afternoon to see where Rogers ended up. He drove straight through Baltimore and crossed the border into Delaware, and by the time she got off work a few hours later he was in Pennsylvania.

This was turning into quite the cool-down drive.

Sharon drove to her apartment and jogged up the stairs to her apartment, glancing at Rogers' door and then, acting on some instinct she didn't fully understand, she tried the doorknob. It was locked, as always.

Shrugging to herself, she went into her apartment, kicked off her shoes, sat on the couch and checked the tracker again. She half-expected him to be well on his way to New Jersey, but it turned out he had finally stopped in Philadelphia. Or rather, Berwyn, one of those charming little middle-class suburbs outside the city. Sharon looked at the address where his motorcycle was parked, and suddenly went very still.

It was her Uncle Mike's house.

"What?" she blurted out loud, staring down at her phone.

Steve Rogers didn't know Uncle Mike. Uncle Mike didn't know him. And yet there Rogers was, parked in front of his house, plain as day on the map.

Steve Rogers was visiting Peggy Carter's son.

It slowly dawned on Sharon that that hadn't been a long drive to blow off steam after all. Rogers had driven to a specific place for a specific purpose. It was just that Sharon had no idea what it was. She was not used to being caught off guard by her reassuringly predictable charge, and it was a little unnerving to think that he was making contact with her own family, even though he didn't know — he couldn't possibly know — about her connection to them. She was just Kate the nurse who lived next door.

But she needed to understand what was going on. So she tapped into his recent calls to see who he had talked to earlier that day, and was surprised again. Uncle Mike's name was not in his contact list, and the only number Rogers had called that afternoon was...

Peggy Carter.

Steve Rogers had called Peggy Carter in England. And then immediately set off to her son's home in Philadelphia.

Sharon stared at nothing in particular, mind churning. So he'd finally done it. He'd finally called the number on Aunt Peggy's S.H.I.E.L.D. file, the one he had agonized over all the way back in New York City in those first terrible months after he'd been revived from the ice.

But if he was ready to talk to Aunt Peggy, if he was ready to see her at last, why go to Uncle Mike's house? Aunt Peggy was in England, bedridden and too weak to travel overseas. And Sharon didn't see why Rogers would want to visit her son, a perfect stranger to him. It was true that Michael Carter happened to be a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., who had operated under the name of "Agent 45" to avoid any career complications from being the son of the director. But Steve Rogers wouldn't know anything about all of that. Only the Carter family knew the true identity of "Agent 45."

She could call Aunt Sarah or Uncle Mike to ask, of course. But that seemed unnecessarily intrusive. Rogers was free to visit whoever he wanted, and unlike his friends at S.H.I.E.L.D. who Sharon was assigned to keep an eye on, there was no reason to fear him coming into contact with the Carters. They were above suspicion.

So Sharon put down her phone, pushed her worries aside and started gathering up her clothes to do a load of laundry.

But she couldn't quite stop herself from checking his location every now and again, even so.

An Asian man who looked to be about Steve's own age answered his knock. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt that was a little too tight, showing off highly toned muscles... and an intricate geometrical pattern inked around one bicep.

"Is... this the Carter residence?" Steve asked him, wondering briefly if he had knocked on the wrong door. "I'm looking for Dr. Capecci."

"Dr. Capecci is in England," the man said readily. "I'm Clint. I'm taking care of Mrs. Carter while she's here."

"Oh." His accent was American; Steve could even detect a touch of the Baltimore inflections. He must be a local nurse, hired to help for the duration of Peggy's visit. He didn't exactly look like a nurse — more like a bartender, actually — but Steve supposed they must come in all shapes and sizes.

"You must be Steve Rogers," the nurse — Clint, that was an easy name to remember — continued. "She told me to expect you."

Automatically Steve held out his hand to shake his, and after a slight hesitation, Clint took it. Then he ended up clasping Steve's hand a little too long, which was the kind of thing that happened to him all the time when people recognized him on the street and converged around him to meet "Captain America." Usually it made Steve uncomfortable, but somehow he didn't mind this time because he was nervous and it was reassuring to feel the warmth of human touch, even it was only from a stranger.

"That your bike out there?" Clint asked conversationally, as he let go of Steve's hand and leaned to look out the front door.

"Well, one of them is."

Clint smiled briefly. "The other's mine. Look at that. Matching set."

Steve was struggling to focus on small talk at a time like this, but he made himself do it for politeness sake. "You have good taste."

Clint chuckled low in his throat, amused eyes sliding back to meet Steve's. "Now there's something I never hear from my family. Most of 'em, anyway." His grin lingered as he stepped back to let Steve into the house. "Come on in."

The moment Steve stepped over the threshold, a powerful frisson swept over him, and he found himself standing stock-still in the entryway, fruitlessly trying to understand what he was feeling, and why. Whatever it was, it had just barreled over his eager nervousness to see Peggy like a tidal wave crashing over a gentle surf on the beach. He could feel every hair on the back of his neck standing straight up.

"You all right?" Clint asked him, brow slightly furrowed. Steve realized the man had started to lead him into the living room before turning back to see that he wasn't following.

"It's a beautiful home," he said quickly, even though he'd barely registered the furniture or the decorations. It wasn't how the home looked. It was how it felt. A sensation his old friend Jacques Dernier had once described to him as deja vu. But of course he'd never been here before, and he hadn't taken much stock in the strange theories Jacques had had about the causes of deja vu.

"Yeah," Clint agreed readily, looking around with an appreciative eye. "Very homey."

Steve swallowed, pushing past the strange sensation still flooding over him, eager to get on with seeing Peggy. "Is... is she awake now?"

"She's awake," Clint confirmed. "But before you go in, why don't you sit down a minute so I can explain a few things. Can I bring you a drink? That's a long drive to make in the heat."

He nodded, trying to tamp down his nervousness. "Thank you. Water's fine."

"Okay. Have a seat."

Clint brought over a glass of water for each of them, and sat down on the couch across from him.

"Is she well?" Steve asked before he could stop himself. He already had some idea of the answer. Peggy wouldn't need a personal physician in England and a hired nurse in America unless she was having some kind of health issue, and after all, she was in her 90s.

"Today has been a good day for her," Clint said quietly. "Other days... aren't always as good."

He began to explain, clearly and gently, that Peggy was suffering from the effects of Alzheimer's, exactly what that meant, and what Steve could expect when he spoke to her. Then he had Steve wait in the living room for a minute while he went into the bedroom first.

Steve could faintly hear their voices from down the hall, and he could tell Clint was helping Peggy sit up in bed and get situated comfortably. Clint sounded every bit as gentle and solicitous as Steve's own mother had been when she had cared for him through his bouts of scarlet fever and rheumatic fever. Not the kind of bedside manner he would have expected from someone who looked like a bartender. Apparently appearances really were deceiving in this case. Steve tried to focus on that fact, tried to reassure himself that Peggy was getting the best care possible, but his palms were sweating so badly that he kept having to rub them against his pants, and his heart was racing like he'd just run a marathon.

He realized he had no idea how he was supposed to act around Peggy now. The last time he'd seen her, she'd kissed him goodbye. The last time they'd spoken, she'd been in tears, and he'd been trying not to be. Obviously, a lot had changed since then. For both of them. Sixty-six years stood like a gulf between them. She was no longer his girl, and yet he couldn't go back to seeing her the way he first had, as an SSR agent who happened to be overseeing him during training, someone to obey and look up to and maybe be a little intimidated by. He knew her too well for that now.

He guessed that left them as friends. It didn't really feel right to put Peggy on the same level as Nat and Bruce and Thor and all the rest, but it would have to do.

Clint reappeared in the living room again, and gestured silently for Steve to come. Swallowing his nervousness with determination, Steve went past him, down the hallway, and through the open doorway. Clint closed the door behind him, and just like that, Steve was alone with Peggy.

The bedroom was clean and pleasant, with sunlight coming through the open curtains and shining on a bedside table cluttered with journals and prescription bottles and flowered vases, and illuminating the bedcovers, soft and white and pulled up to Peggy's waist. She was sitting propped up by pillows, dressed in an embroidered white nightgown, and her iron-gray hair fell to her shoulders in soft waves. She met Steve's eyes, and then her face lit up in the same way he'd seen sunlight easing over the horizon during his morning runs.

"Hello, Steve," she said, in exactly the same way she'd said it to him a thousand times before.

It was so prosaic, so ordinary, that Steve could instantly feel his shoulders relaxing, and the nervousness he'd been feeling just a minute ago suddenly seemed ridiculous. This wasn't so bad. What had he been worried about? It was just Peggy, after all. It was true that she looked different — she had wrinkles lining her face and her hands looked too thin, the skin just a little too translucent — but she was the same Peggy she had always been.

Even so, underneath the familiar uplifting effect of Peggy's presence, there was an undercurrent of sadness running through. She looked so weak. Confined to the bed. He'd braced himself for that. It was a natural part of life, he reminded himself. One he would face someday, too. Hopefully.

"Hi, Peggy," he said.

She smiled a little deeper, enough for him to see the flash of dimple in her cheek. "I'm so glad you came," she said. All those years she had spent in America as the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't changed her accent; it was as crisp as ever. He was glad. She wouldn't have seemed herself without it. She lifted a welcoming hand toward him. "Sit down. Come and talk to me."

He sat in the chair pulled up by the bedside, and she looked him over for a long moment.

"You've changed a bit," she said at last, although she didn't look disappointed, only thoughtful, as she studied his hair and his clothing. "A man of the 21st century now, aren't you? Must have taken some getting used to."

He tried to smile, but she had instantly cut right through to the heart of his problem. Just like she always did. "I'm trying."

"Only skin deep?" she asked him lightly. "Well, don't try too hard. I wouldn't like you half so much if you were just like everyone else." She tilted her head at him. "I saw you on the news. Saving Germany. Saving New York. Just like old times, isn't that right?"

Steve smiled slightly. "Not exactly. But... close enough, I guess."

"It was good to see you working with Tony Stark," she said. "Howard would have liked that very much, the two of you together. Do you like him?"

"He's a lot like Howard."

"Well, that really says it all, doesn't it?" Peggy's tone was wry, and the memory of their mutual fondness for Howard, mixed with a shared exasperation with his quirks — which they had once quietly confessed to each other in a moment of privacy — was stirred up in his mind. He hadn't thought of that conversation since he'd woken up here. And suddenly it was as if the old Steve Rogers was trying to climb out of his skin and reassert himself, and Steve wasn't completely sure if he liked that or not. The world didn't really want that Steve Rogers. He didn't fit in here. Not even with a friend like Nat, and definitely not with someone like Tony Stark.

"Do you like working for S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Peggy asked him.

He took his time answering her. "I think I've been able to do some good there."

"Oh, dear. Steve Rogers is avoiding the question," Peggy spoke to the air casually, her wrinkled brows arching upward. "That isn't a good sign, is it?"

"I was proud of you," he said quickly, not wanting her to misunderstand. "When I heard that you had founded it. It was something the world really needed. Still needs. It's just..." He trailed off.

Peggy nodded, growing more serious. "I know. Working for an intelligence agency when we aren't at war is different, isn't it? Priorities change. Politics are played. I noticed it, too."

He was relieved she understood. "There are good people there. But..."

"It's hard to know who to trust," she finished readily.

"Yeah."

"Steve, look at me." He did, and Peggy said slowly, with great emphasis, looking directly into his eyes: "If you don't know who you can trust, then find someone you can. Wherever you have to look for them. Even if that means looking outside S.H.I.E.L.D."

He absorbed that silently for a long moment.

"I know you're not afraid to stand alone," Peggy said quietly. "But you shouldn't have to." She took a deep breath, her brown eyes fixed on his. "Promise me you won't try to do it alone."

He frowned slightly, not completely following her meaning. "Do what?"

"Anything," she said simply. "You'll make the right choices. I trust you. More than anyone else."

Her faith in him meant more than she could ever know. But he shook his head slightly, eager to get past this topic and move the focus off himself. "I came here to ask about you," he said, pushing forward determinedly. "I don't know much about what you've been doing since... since I left. Other than your work."

"I published my memoirs," Peggy said with a hint of gentle remonstrance. "Didn't you read them?"

"I wanted to hear it from you."

She smiled knowingly. "I raised a family," she said after a beat. "Children. Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren." She glanced at the wall, where a crayon drawing of a tree bright with autumn colors, addressed in scrawled letters "To Gramma," held a place of prominence. "Seems strange to say all that in only a few words. Work took up a good deal of my time when I was younger. But my family... they took up every last bit of my heart and soul."

"That must have been hard. Running S.H.I.E.L.D. and juggling a family at the same time."

Peggy nodded slightly. "Sometimes. But I was blessed. My husband-" She paused for a long moment, eyes abruptly moistening, and then she pressed her lips together as if to still a sudden trembling. Was her husband deceased, then? Had it been recent? His heart went out to her, if that was the case.

"-he had a habit of finding out what I needed to be happy," Peggy finished at last, her voice steady, "and doing whatever it took to make it happen." Her eyes roamed over the bedside table, and Steve followed her gaze to see a framed family photo, black and white, with a young Peggy sitting on a couch beside two smiling children, all three of them dressed in their Sunday finest. Steve caught only the barest impression of the children — a boy with dark, neatly combed hair and a girl with blond hair pulled in two matching braids — before he quickly looked away. He didn't resent Peggy's happiness, and he was glad she had become a wife and a mother, but it was hard not to resent the existence of her husband, as unfair as that was. He didn't want to know anything about the man who had probably taken that photo, in addition to taking Steve's place at Peggy's side.

But he managed to keep his own voice even as he said with real sincerity: "You should be proud of yourself, Peggy."

Her eyes lingered on the family pictures a little longer. "Mmm. I have lived a life," she said with quiet satisfaction. "My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours." He couldn't have put it better himself, and seeing his expression, she looked at him far too knowingly. "What is it?"

"For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right," Steve said slowly. "I guess I'm not quite sure what that is anymore." He let out a soft breath. "And I thought I could throw myself back in and follow orders, serve..." He shrugged a little. "It's just not the same."

Unexpectedly, Peggy laughed lightly. "You're always so dramatic," she said with a smile, and it had been so long since she had teased him like that that it nudged him out of his grim mood and left him smiling almost against his will. "Look, you saved the world," she continued, pressing a wealth of meaning into each word. "We rather... mucked it up." Her face fell slightly, and he knew for certain then: the rot in S.H.I.E.L.D. had begun before Peggy had left. She'd tried to fix it, too. Tried, and failed.

"You didn't," Steve said loyally. "Knowing that you helped found S.H.I.E.L.D. is half the reason I stay."

"Hey," Peggy said softly. She held out her hand, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to take it in his own. "The world has changed, and none of us can go back," Peggy told him. Her eyes locked intently on his and her grip on his hand tightened, almost as though she were trying to communicate something more than just words.

"All we can do is our best," she said, "and sometimes the best that we can do... is to start over."

She started coughing weakly, and quickly Steve got up and poured her a glass of water. When he turned back, she was looking away from him.

"Peggy," he said to catch her attention, holding out the water glass.

Her coughing abated, Peggy looked up at him and made no move to take it. "Steve?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

Her eyes widened, lips parting in surprise. "You're alive!" she blurted out. Joy and grief warred in her expression. "You... you came, you came back!"

It was like a physical blow, that she had forgotten so much so suddenly, but he didn't let the pain touch his expression. "Yeah, Peggy," he said gently, giving her a soft smile, remembering her nurse's warning beforehand: "Whatever she says, whatever she forgets, don't let her see you upset. She'll be upset that you're upset, even if she doesn't understand why."

Peggy's eyes welled with tears. "It's been so long," she said brokenly, looking at him longingly. "So long..."

A slow tingle of horror spread through his body. How much of her time did Peggy spend not remembering that he had been found alive? After all, for most of her life she had believed him dead. Anytime the Alzheimer's made her forget his recovery from the ice, it would be like him dying all over again. Steve had thought that waking up to find he had lost so much time was the worst thing that could happen to a person. But Peggy had it even worse. She had to relive his death over and over again.

"Well, I couldn't leave my best girl," he reassured her with a smile that he hoped was convincing. "Not when she owes me a dance."

Peggy seemed to think about that for a long moment, blinking until her eyes had cleared up a little, and then she said slowly, with a hint of indignation: "I don't owe you any dances."

It was like a stab in the heart to hear her say it, but he held his tongue. It wasn't her fault she didn't remember; she wasn't herself.

"Steve, don't tell me you've forgotten," Peggy went on, looking both puzzled and disappointed. "Our trip to London? The day we went to the Stork Club?"

"Peggy..." he said slowly, and then pressed his lips together to stop himself from reminding her that they had never made it there.

"You were wearing your uniform," she continued, eyes growing distant. "I wore my red dress that you liked so much. And I was so sick that day. Of course, there's no better reason to be sick. Very fitting for the Stork Club. Remember how we laughed about that?" A flash of mischief lit up her brown eyes. "We didn't stay long. Just long enough to have that dance." She smiled at him slowly, her eyes crinkling up with happiness. "Not the first one or the last one. Right, darling?"

He smiled sadly. "Right."

It was the longest speech Peggy had given yet, and it seemed to exhaust her; she relaxed against the pillows, her eyelids slowly drooping closed. Steve allowed his smile to fade. So even the memory loss wasn't the worst part. Somehow Peggy had created false memories, too.

He hadn't know that was possible, but maybe it was something she had done in self-defense, trying to paper over the painful memories that were all too real. He could only imagine what she must have felt once their last communication over the radio had been cut off. What she must have gone through, trying to hold out hope those months that Howard Stark spent combing the Arctic for him. Well, if she remembered a life with him that she had never actually had, he wouldn't destroy that illusion for the world.

If only it weren't an illusion.

"Did Maggie see to the garden?" Peggy murmured faintly, her eyes still closed. "The roses on the south side... they need trimming."

"Yeah," he reassured her quietly, wondering if Maggie was even a real person. But it didn't really matter one way or the other. Peggy believed she was, and so she was. "Your garden's all taken care of."

A faint smile touched her lips, and then she sighed deeply and sank into a deeper sleep, her head tilting a little to the side with her gray curls resting against the white lace on her nightgown.

A few minutes later, when Steve went back down the hall, he found Peggy's nurse pacing the living room, waiting for him.

"You'll come again, right?" he asked Steve, looking a little anxious. "She talks about you all the time. I think she's been hoping-"

"I'll come again," Steve assured him.

Clint's shoulders relaxed. "You'll always be welcome here," he told Steve, and then paused for a moment before adding with a softening of his gaze: "No matter what."

As Steve sped his way down Highway 95 on his motorcycle, the wind tearing at his hair as he headed back home to D.C., he allowed Peggy's words to settle back into his mind, where they could percolate.

"The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over."

He wasn't even sure exactly what Peggy meant by that, but he knew it was important.

How could he start over? Did she want him to reform S.H.I.E.L.D. somehow? Start from square one, rebuild it from the bottom up? But if she hadn't been able to fix S.H.I.E.L.D. in her day, how could he do it now? She had always been the diplomatic one. He could pull a team of disparate individuals together when there was a mission to be accomplished, yes, but he wasn't cut out for politics. He wasn't on the inside track at S.H.I.E.L.D., as valuable as he might be to them as an operative. He'd never even met the undersecretary, Alexander Pierce. He had no authority or even influence with the man who called the shots for Nick Fury himself. Just what exactly did Peggy think he could do under the circumstances?

It was a riddle he'd need time to puzzle out. With an effort, he suppressed the instinct that he had to figure out a solution on his own. Peggy had made him promise that he wouldn't do anything alone, and the more he thought about that, the more he could see the wisdom in it. It really would help if he had someone he could use as a sounding board, bring in a fresh perspective, help him see new angles to the problem.

Which brought him to the advice Peggy had given him. So she wanted him to find someone he could trust. Well, ordinarily it would have been Nat, but he was uneasy over what had happened on the Lemurian Star mission. He still didn't know what that memory stick had been all about. Whatever was going on in S.H.I.E.L.D., she might be part of it. Clint Barton would have been a good second choice, but he was in Afghanistan, and anyway he and Nat were so close that Steve couldn't be sure that Clint wouldn't bring her into a discussion like that whether Steve wanted it or not.

Bruce Banner or Tony Stark weren't out of the realm of possibility... except they were both entangled in S.H.I.E.L.D. interests, too. It had been an unpleasant shock to find out that Tony had helped Fury revamp those heavily-armed helicarriers hidden in the depths of the Potomac, with never a word about it to Steve. And now that Bruce and Tony had become good friends, Steve could hardly imagine venting to Bruce about S.H.I.E.L.D. without Tony finding out about it. So that was out.

No, Peggy had probably been right: He needed to find someone completely independent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to advise him. It was too bad Thor, as a true outsider, wasn't within reach... although it occurred to Steve that an Asgardian god might be bored or mystified by the complexities of "Midgardian" politics, anyway.

The scenery flashed by as Steve sped on, and he let his mind roam over the people he knew outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. The list was pretty short. Ever since the Battle of New York he had practically ate, slept and breathed work, and almost everyone he considered a friend was also a co-worker. There was his priest in D.C., Father Andreassen, a good man and a good spiritual advisor. Steve trusted him, but he had no expertise in advising anyone on something like this. There were a few veterans in the nursing home he visited from time to time. A military man might have some idea of what it was like to be led by people who sometimes had more than just the straightforward success of a mission in mind. People who had to answer to politicians. People who didn't always do the right thing, even when lives were on the line. But Steve had sought them out so that he could have someone from his own time to reminisce with, which meant they were elderly and, like Peggy, their minds had a tendency to wander.

Except...

Suddenly Steve remembered: He knew one veteran who wasn't elderly. That man he'd met just a few days ago while running around the National Mall, the one wearing a sweatshirt with the Air National Guard logo.

Sam Wilson. That was the name. They hadn't talked long, but there had been something about him that had instantly put Steve at ease. A good sense of humor, but not as biting as Tony Stark's. A good listener. And perceptive. He'd instantly picked up on Steve's discomfort after the topic of the ice came up, and tactfully backed off. Most people didn't do that.

He'd struck Steve as the trustworthy kind.

And then Steve wondered: that invitation Sam had extended to him as they said goodbye, almost as an afterthought — asking Steve to visit his workplace and make him look good in front of his co-worker — had that really been what it seemed? There had been nothing of the star-struck eagerness Steve was used to seeing from strangers. And he had said it right after they'd been commiserating about the difficulty of transitioning out of military life. Had that actually been an invitation for Steve to come talk to him if he needed it?

Steve pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, glanced at his watch and did a quick calculation. It would be past 8 p.m. by the time he got back to D.C. He had no idea what exactly Sam Wilson did at the V.A., but chances were good he wouldn't be at work by then. Well, maybe it was worth stopping by the front desk anyway to see if he could get his contact information. He could get to know Sam a little better, feel him out. It might take a few weeks, but eventually he would see if it felt right to talk to him about more sensitive things.

His mind made up, he drove straight to the V.A. when he got back to the city just before the sun set. But to his surprise, the girl at the front desk readily told him that Sam Wilson was in the meeting room down the hall, and that his session was supposed to let out in just a few minutes.

"Session?" Steve asked.

"Group therapy for veterans," she explained. "You're welcome to wait."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: I'd love to hear what you think: about Agent 45, and Steve's meeting with Peggy, and where you think the story might go next. Please share your thoughts!