Alright, so, that took forever, but, ta-dah! New AU is finally here! This one is more or less based on the movie "Just Like Heaven", which you don't need to have seen to understand this. All will be explained within.
Robot was sometimes distracting but mostly helpful as I worked on this-thanks, pal!
"Okay," Angie said, pulling the door of her apartment firmly shut behind her and locking it. "I have got a great list of places for us to check out today."
Peggy sighed. She was ready for her own space and she knew she couldn't keep sleeping on Angie's couch forever. Apartment hunting was just so much work. And nothing good ever turned up—everything in Brooklyn seemed to be either a dump or charging an arm and a leg. "Why did I think moving here was a good idea?"
"Because you got a great job offer, an ex you should have dumped years ago, and you missed me," Angie said cheerily.
"Okay, those things are all true," Peggy agreed. After guest lecturing at Brooklyn College last year, they'd offered her a position as an English Literature professor. The idea had sounded exciting, and it would give her a chance to build something of her own, outside of her family's circle of influence in English academia. Everyone knew the Carter name when she introduced herself, but she was tired of that always being accompanied by the realization that she was Harold's daughter. Brooklyn College had been interested in her for her most recent paper on gender in literature, and she'd leapt at the opportunity. Her then-fiancé, Fred, had not leapt. He'd had no desire for Peggy to be so far away, nor had he had any interest in going with her. He'd expected that to be that, and Peggy had agreed that yes, it was. Fred's parting shot had been a sneer that he hoped Mary Shelley managed to keep her warm at night, making her realize just how many digs at her research she'd grown accustomed to tuning out over the years, and she happily packed up her books, tossed her engagement ring into the Thames, and hopped on a plane. Her old roommate from university, Angie, was living in Brooklyn now and was delighted to have Peggy stay with her until she found a place to live. That had been six months ago, and while Angie still didn't mind having her about, Peggy was ready to sleep on an actual bed again. The hunt itself was just so exhausting, though. "But I did have a lovely little flat in London," Peggy sighed.
"And we'll find you one here," Angie insisted, undaunted as ever. "Come on."
The first place they looked at actually did remind her of her flat in London. The asking price for the rent, however, was obscene for a one-bedroom. The next place was under Peggy's budget, but the rat in the stairwell had them marching right back out again. Two more overly expensive ones, then a studio with electrical wires hanging out of the walls, a third-floor walk-up with a roach problem, and a two-bedroom where the pipes literally burst while they were taking the tour.
"I'm never going to find a place at this rate," Peggy sighed when they stopped for lunch.
"It's not looking so good, is it?" Angie agreed. She took a long sip of her milkshake, then looked down at her phone as it dinged. "Oh, wait! Here's one more." She studied her phone for a minute. "Hey, this place looks nice."
She turned her phone around to show Peggy, and she was right, it looked good, but the place with the wires hanging out of the walls had been photographed from flattering angles as well. "If it's as nice as it looks, I doubt I can afford it," she said, picking up the last of her chips.
"It's right around the corner; we may as well check it out, huh?" Angie prodded.
Peggy inclined her head in agreement. No need to get her hopes up, but she may as well. Once they arrived, she couldn't help agreeing that it seemed a nice building. It was well-lit and homey, old enough to not carry the expense of trendiness, but everything seemed well kept-up.
"Oh, wow!" Angie said as they stepped inside. The door opened into a modest sized sitting room with floor to ceiling windows along one wall overlooking a nearby park. The place felt warm and inviting, and though Peggy knew a view like that certainly knocked this place out of her price range, she couldn't help taking a better look. It was furnished in dark wood and shades of blue, and there were two bedrooms, a surprisingly large bathroom, and a great deal of closet space. The kitchen was roomy enough to move around in without bumping into anything, and it even had a separate dining area. "Oh, check out this balcony!" Angie exclaimed, rushing forward and pushing open the glass doors. It was a lovely space, nearly as big as the dining room. It was currently empty, but Peggy could picture some chairs and a table, maybe a couple of plants and a string of lights.
"I'm almost afraid to ask the price on this place," Peggy said.
"The ad says it's in your budget," Angie reminded her, pointing at her phone.
"Then there's got to be something wrong with it. What's the catch?" Peggy had been keeping an eye out for suspicious smells or sounds or cracks, but she hadn't caught anything yet.
Angie nodded back to the man who had let them in, who was standing back by the front door. "Let me go get the dirt."
She went back inside and Peggy leaned against the railing. She could see herself out here in the mornings, having a cup of tea before work. A spot of color caught her eye, and she turned to look at it. There was a bright blue blotch on the concrete, with a pinkish one next to it. She realized it was paint, and she looked around curiously. The outside of the building was all red brick and dark iron. What were those colors doing out here?
"Okay," Angie said, coming back onto the balcony. "The reason this place is so cheap is because the lease is month-to-month. It's privately owned, so there's no rent to try to cover with a sublet, but they want to be able to cover, you know, taxes and stuff, and keep the place from getting all musty until whoever lives here gets back."
"Did they say when that would be?" Peggy wondered.
"No." She nodded to the man still standing inside. "There is definitely something juicy going on he didn't want to talk about. Maybe some family drama or something?"
Peggy nodded, intrigued. She didn't want to get into the middle of something messy, but this was a nice place. And as much as she loved Angie, she was ready for some space of her own. A bit more digging was required.
She went inside to speak to the man herself. His name was James, and he wasn't actually the one who owned the apartment. It belonged to his cousin who'd been away for a while. He was having trouble getting anyone on with the month-to-month thing, as he didn't know when his cousin would be back, but he assured her that if the cousin returned mid-month, she would be allowed to finish out her stay. She told him if she could get it in writing, they had a deal, and he smiled and shook her hand. She couldn't help thinking that Angie was right, though—there was something going on. His smile didn't quite reach his eyes. Not in a way that made her distrust him, but he clearly had something on his mind.
Angie had a great deal of fun speculating over what the mysterious cousin must be up to as they made their way back to her apartment, then a great deal more fun throwing an impromptu celebration for a successful hunt. Peggy packed up what few belongings she had and moved in the next day, rushing to get herself sorted before class the next morning. She fell into bed exhausted but happy. The new job was brilliant, but having her own place, temporary though it may be, made her feel like she was really building something for herself here. And the mysterious cousin whose furniture she was using had excellent taste in mattresses.
She woke up in the middle of the night to get something to drink, turning on the lights in the kitchen to help her find a glass when her reaching around in the dark proved fruitless. She filled a glass at the sink, then turned around to find herself face to face with a strange man.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "And what are you doing in my apartment in the middle of the night?"
Peggy yelped in surprise and dropped the glass. It shattered on the tile, and her eyes snapped down to it, then back up to the man. He was gone. Cursing, she jumped awkwardly over the glass on the floor and ran into the living room. Nothing. The only thing at hand she had to use as a weapon was a rainboot sticking out of a box of shoes she hadn't unpacked yet, but she picked it up and held it ready to swing. Turning on all the lights, she searched the apartment very thoroughly, seeing no sign of the man anywhere. The front door was locked and the chain still on the latch, and the door to the balcony was locked and bolted. Perhaps he hadn't really been there. She'd only been half-awake, and the shattering of the glass had woken her all the way up and dispelled him. He must have been a remnant of a dream. Peggy went and got some shoes, then cleaned up the broken glass and went back to bed. She slept a little uneasily, but she was alone and undisturbed when she woke up in the morning and decided it really must have been a dream.
The rest of the week passed peacefully, though she was busy. The apartment was furnished, and Peggy had brought all her things and bought some groceries, but she kept having to run to the store for all the little things one forgets one needs until they're not there, like salt to fill the salt shaker. She kept an eye and an ear out, but she saw no signs of the strange man again and put him out of her mind.
Her first Friday night in the apartment, Angie had urged her to come out with her to meet some friends for dinner, but Peggy was tired and wanted to put some finishing touches on the apartment. She didn't want to do too much decorating since she might have to move soon, but she readjusted the furniture and put up a few pictures and knickknacks she was fond of.
"How do you keep getting in here?" came a voice from behind her. "And why are you moving my couch?"
Peggy spun around to see the man from the kitchen standing there again. He was wearing the same faded blue jeans and t-shirt from last time, accompanied by the same scowl. His question seemed like such an odd thing for an intruder to ask that it caught Peggy off guard. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "I live here. How the hell do you keep getting in?" While the presence of a strange man in her living room was certainly alarming, Peggy was more irritated than frightened. Nothing about him telegraphed violence, but if it came to that, he was a couple of inches shorter than her and very skinny. Peggy was reasonably sure she could take him.
"How do I keep getting into the apartment that I live in?" he asked, arching an eyebrow. "Through the door. With my key. Seriously, what are you doing here?"
"You have a key to my apartment?" Peggy asked.
"My apartment," he said. He took a step forward and Peggy reacted, grabbing the nearest thing at hand and throwing it at him. It was a pillow off the couch, and he vanished abruptly as it struck him in the chest.
"What the…" Peggy breathed, staring at the space he had been in. After a moment, she stepped forward gingerly and picked up the cushion. He stayed gone. Not sure what good it would do but feeling unsettled, she searched the apartment again, armed with a heavy frying pan. Nothing. Like last time, the door was still latched. He'd said he had a key, but with the latch he shouldn't have been able to get in anyway. And she'd been standing in the living room. Her back had been to the door, but she still should have heard it open. She was definitely awake this time, and he seemed just as real as the other night. Was she seeing things?
Warily, she fixed herself dinner, then sat against the wall in the dining area to eat—she could see the front door, the living room and kitchen. No one appeared by the time she finished her meal. She got up and set her dishes in the sink, then switched off the kitchen light.
"Seriously?" She couldn't help a yelp of surprise as she spun around. He was standing just inside the darkened kitchen, arms crossed over his chest. "You break into my house to move my stuff and mess up my dishes?"
Surprised adrenaline still trilling up her spine, Peggy swung her fist at him, then stumbled forward with the momentum as her hand went right through him instead of hitting something solid. She should have crashed into him, but he was gone again.
"Okay," Peggy said to herself. "Okay." She drew in a deep breath, couldn't think of anything else to do, and decided to make a cup of tea. Wrapping her hands around the mug, she sat down thoughtfully on the newly-moved sofa. "Okay," she said again. Peggy had never been much of one for supernatural musings, but the fact remained that a strange man had appeared out of thin air and then vanished into it just as quickly while being troublingly un-solid. Either she was dealing with some kind of ghost or she was hallucinating. She didn't feel at all ill, and people didn't just go mad out of the blue, so unless some new evidence presented itself, Peggy was faced with the very real possibility that her new apartment was haunted.
She didn't see him again for the rest of the night, though she didn't sleep as easily as she would have liked. It put her on edge waiting to see if he would pop up again. She wasn't sure what she should do if he did.
The next morning, she woke up earlier than she liked for a Saturday. Still no ghost, so she got up and dressed and decided to do a bit of digging. The ghost seemed to think he lived in this apartment—she could assume, then, that he was a previous tenant. She made herself a cup of tea and pulled out her laptop. Other than the fact that the man had lived at some point after the invention of blue jeans, she didn't have much to go on as to when he would have been here, so she started by googling the building. She couldn't find any articles about deaths related to the building, which at least meant he probably hadn't been murdered here. That was good, she supposed.
She looked up at the sound of a throat clearing, and there he was. His arms were crossed over his chest again, and his blue eyes were burning with displeasure. "Just make yourself at home, why don't you? It is seven thirty on a Saturday morning."
Peggy closed her laptop and set it to the side, standing up carefully. "It is early," she agreed. "Did I wake you?" If he was a ghost, where did he go when he wasn't here?
"It—I…" The question clearly caught him by surprise. He didn't seem to know how to answer it. "No," he said after a moment. "That's not really the point."
"And what would the point be?"
"The point is that you are in my apartment, and I don't know you," he said.
"What makes you think it's your apartment?"
"What?"
"My name is on the lease," Peggy said. "What makes you think you live here?"
"Because, because I do!" he sputtered. "This is my house. This is my stuff," he said, gesturing to the furniture. "That's my—" He broke off, pointing at the coffee table. "What did you do with my picture?"
"What picture?" Peggy wondered.
"The one that was on the coffee table. Where did you put it?"
"There wasn't a picture on the coffee table when I moved in," Peggy said. She set her mug of tea down. "What's your name?" she asked.
"What?" Another question that seemed to catch him by surprise.
"Your name," Peggy said. "If we're going to keep meeting like this, I may as well know what to call you."
"I…" He frowned. He looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, "You know, you don't need to know my name because we shouldn't keep meeting like this because you shouldn't be in here. You need to leave."
"And what will you do if I don't?" Peggy wondered. He certainly didn't seem like the poltergeist type.
"I'd prefer not to call the cops, but I will if you won't go," he said. "This is getting ridiculous."
"Alright," Peggy said, reaching down to pick up her phone. "Go on, then. You can even use my phone."
She tossed it to him, and his hands moved instinctively to catch it. As she'd suspected, the phone sailed right through him. (Having thought that might happen, she'd aimed so the phone landed with a soft bounce on the armchair.) "What…" he began. He put a hand to his chest where the phone had hit him, then turned around to look at it sitting on the chair. "What just happened?"
"The same thing that happened when I threw a pillow at you yesterday," Peggy said. "Except this time you didn't disappear."
"What?"
Peggy looked at him thoughtfully. She had started to wonder, given the way he'd been talking… "Has it occurred to you that you might be dead?" she asked him.
"Excuse me?"
"I just threw a phone through you," Peggy said. She picked up a teaspoon and threw it through his head. "And a spoon."
"Yeah, okay," he said, swatting at the pen she threw after the spoon. His hand went through it. "You've made your point." He scowled. "But why do you automatically assume I'm dead?"
Peggy arched an eyebrow. "How many living people do you know that are intangible?"
He paused thoughtfully, but then frowned again. "I think I would know if I was dead," he argued.
"I would think so too," Peggy agreed. "But perhaps you're…newly dead? Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you keep sort of blinking in and out of existence. Last night, for instance. Where did you go after you got upset about the dirty dishes?" she asked.
"Those are still in the sink, by the way. That's how you attract roaches."
"You're dodging the question."
"I…" He frowned. "I'm…not entirely sure where I went," he admitted. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "I haven't been feeling like my head is on straight lately."
"Is that why you can't remember your name either?" she wondered. It was odd, but then again, it must be rather jarring, dying.
"I have a name," he insisted.
"What is it?" she asked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. "I don't know," he said quietly.
He looked troubled, and the silence started becoming awkward as it dragged on. Peggy began to feel sorry for him. "Maybe," she suggested. "Maybe you've just gotten a bit…lost, on your way on. Do you see a bright light anywhere?"
The irritated look was back. "No," he said.
"There's no need to snap; I'm only trying to help," she said.
"By messing with my head?" he retorted. "I…Look. There is something wrong with me. I will admit that. But I'm not dead. I don't feel dead. And whatever's going on, it would really help if I had some space to think, which is hard to get when you keep breaking into my house."
Peggy rolled her eyes. "I'm not—" He disappeared abruptly, and Peggy huffed. "Well, that's one way to get in the last word."
Peggy was unsure of where to go from here. She was being haunted by an irritating but so far harmless ghost who seemed to be showing up for longer intervals of time. The harmless part was nice, but the longer stays weren't really the direction she wanted to be going. Perhaps if she could figure out who this man was, she could help him figure out how to move on. (And earn herself a respite as well.) She sat down again and picked up her tea.
It seemed fairly obvious that the ghost used to live here. He couldn't be the mysterious cousin who owned the place—if he'd been dead, they wouldn't be giving out a month-to-month lease waiting for him to come back. Perhaps he'd lived here before that, then. It was a bit early in the morning to go around asking the neighbors, so she got dressed and went out to get some groceries.
While she was out, she passed a little bookshop on her way to the store. She'd always loved a good bookshop, and was happily diverted inside. The smell of old books greeted her as a little bell over the door tinkled, and she smiled. She spent some time perusing the shelves, and ended up with a couple of mysteries for herself and a history or two that would do well for the next unit she was planning to teach. On her way to the desk in the back, she found herself slowing down by a rather sizeable shelf with a sign above it reading 'Supernatural'. Feeling a bit silly, she stopped and looked at some of the titles.
"Um, sorry," she said, waving to catch the attention of the older man behind the counter. "But I'm doing some research, and I was wondering if you could help me make some decisions."
"Sure," he said, stepping out to walk over to join her by the shelf.
"Of the, ah, the books on ghosts you have here, which would you say are the more serious? I mean, I know it's all a bit…" She waved her hand vaguely. "But, I mean, which of these authors take themselves more seriously, and which might be more in it to cash in on a fad?"
"If you're in it for research, I'd say one of these two," he said, pulling down two thinner volumes from the top shelf. "You want to go hunt ghosts in the woods with night vision goggles, those are on the end here."
"Thank you," she said. She read the backs of the ones he'd suggested, then decided to get them both.
She lugged her bag of books along to the grocery store, thinking she really should have saved the bookshop for the way home. Then she headed home with her purchases and sat down with what seemed the more serious of the ghost books. They were quick reading, and she'd nearly finished the second one by the time there was a knock at the door. She stood up curiously, and opened the door to see the man who'd rented her the apartment standing there.
"Oh, hello," she said. "Mr. Barnes, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," he said. He smiled apologetically. "I'm really sorry to bother you, but when I packed up my cousin's stuff to clean the place up for renters, I think I left something here. Do you mind if I come in for a minute?"
"Oh, not at all," she said, stepping back to let him in. "Please."
"Thanks," he said. "It's the closet in the back bedroom. Can I…"
"Of course," Peggy said. "I've got a couple of boxes in there, but I've been staying in the other one."
He nodded and moved for the back room. "You liking the place?" he asked her.
"Oh, yes, it's lovely," she said, following him down the hall. Interloping spirits aside, that is. She wondered if he knew anything about that, but couldn't figure out how to ask the question. Any iteration of it she could come up with sounded silly.
"Good," he said. He opened the closet and started fumbling about on the top shelf. "You have any maintenance issues or anything like that, you can give me a call—my number's on the lease papers. Ah! Here we go." He emerged from the closet looking slightly dusty with a small box in his hands. "Again, sorry about that. Space should be all cleared out for you now."
"Thank you," Peggy said. It seemed polite to offer him a cup of tea, but he thanked her and said he had somewhere he needed to be and departed. Peggy went back to her reading.
By the end of the day, she didn't feel like she had learned much of use. The books were scholarly, but perhaps a bit too much so. Normally, a well-written and researched piece of information was just what she was after, but these leaned more towards documenting sightings of ghosts, what natural phenomena might explain them away, and various cultures' mythologies about ghosts. It was all very interesting, but nothing in the way of how to get one to move out.
Speaking of which, she hadn't seen her spectral flat mate since this morning. It was too soon to hope that he had moved on, but she did wonder where he went when he wasn't around. Did he simply stop existing? Was he haunting someone else? If he didn't know he was dead, it was unlikely he was off floating around a graveyard somewhere.
It was as she was pushing back the shower curtain to reach for her towel that he appeared again. Peggy yelped in surprise and drew the curtain closed again, but not before she saw him slap his hand up over his eyes. "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!" he exclaimed. Peggy peeked her head around the edge of the curtain. He was still covering his eyes, blushing to the tips of his ears. "I didn't see anything, I swear," he said.
"If you insist on being here now," Peggy said. "At least go wait in the hall until I get dressed."
"Yeah, okay," he said, turning and leaving quickly. Peggy wondered if he realized he walked through the closed door.
She toweled off and dressed quickly. When she opened the door, he was standing in the hallway with his back to her. Peggy crossed her arms and leaned against the door jamb. "You've been gone all day and then you decide to pop back up when I'm getting out of the shower? Perhaps you're not the harmless ghost I thought you were," she snapped.
He jumped a little when she started speaking, clearly startled, and spun around to face her. His cheeks were still pink. "I didn't do it on purpose," he said.
Peggy arched an eyebrow. "Really? Very convenient timing."
"I didn't!" he huffed. "It's not like I was hanging out in the hallway and heard the water running and thought, 'Ooh, I know, I'll walk in there and try to see what this persistent intruder woman looks like naked!'"
Peggy decided to ignore what would have been the beginning of their never-ending argument about who actually lived here. "So what were you doing in here, then?"
"I don't know," he sighed. "I just…was, all of a sudden."
"And has all this blinking in and out of existence and walking through things convinced you that you're a ghost yet?"
He frowned. "It's hard to argue with," he admitted. "But I'm not sold on it just yet."
Peggy rolled her eyes. "What other proof do you need?"
"I just want to know what's going on!" he insisted. "I don't understand what's happening."
"What's happening is that you're dead and you're haunting me. God only knows why. I don't even know you." It probably didn't help things, being so curt, but she was still annoyed about him popping in on her in the shower.
"Fine," he snapped. "If you want me to haunt you, then I'll haunt you. Maybe that will get you to leave."
Peggy huffed and stomped past him to the living room. He followed her and dropped down into the armchair, crossing his arms and propping his feet on the coffee table. Peggy frowned. "How is it you can walk through a door but not fall through the chair?"
"I don't know." He nodded at the books on ghosts she'd left on the couch. "You're the ghost expert; you tell me."
Peggy rolled her eyes and sat down on the couch, pulling the stack of papers that she should have started grading that afternoon into her lap. She was nearly through the first one when he made a very loud popping sound with his lips. She looked up and glared at him, and he shrugged innocently. As soon as she turned back to the paper, he did it again.
Two very unpleasant hours passed in this manner, but Peggy was nothing if not stubborn, and she ignored him as best she could until she got a decent stack of papers done. "Shouldn't you be vanishing off somewhere by now?" she asked him. "You've never been around this long before."
He shrugged again. "Maybe deciding to haunt you was enough to help me stick around."
She shook her head and got up and went to the bathroom. He left her alone until she came back out, then followed her down the hall again. "I'm going to bed," she told him. "If you follow me in there and try to watch me sleep, the fact that you are already dead will not prevent me from finding a way to strangle you."
He scrunched up his face as if she'd said something distasteful. "I'm not going to watch you sleep." He sounded insulted she would suggest that. "I'm a ghost, not a pervert."
"Well, goodnight then," she said. "Feel free to flit off to wherever it is you go."
It was a very long night. While the ghost seemed to draw the line at sexual harassment, he appeared to have no qualms about regular harassment, and proceeded to sit in the hallway and sing his way through the entire soundtrack of Les Miserables. It was made all the more irritating by the fact that neither his singing nor his French were good.
There were snatches of silence, and Peggy wondered crossly if his throat had gotten sore or if he'd simply gotten bored, but she was able to get at least some sleep.
She woke up the next morning not long after dawn to the sound of him singing 'My Sharona'. She opened the door to see him lying on the floor in the hallway, singing and staring up at the ceiling.
"Morning!" he said cheerfully.
"I hate you," she growled, wishing she could kick him as she walked through him.
"You could always leave," he suggested. "I won't bother you then."
Peggy shook her head and slammed the bathroom door behind her. After getting ready, she did leave. Not for good, just for a bit of quiet. She took the remainder of her papers to grade and went on to the little place where she was supposed to meet Angie for brunch in three hours. Several cups of tea and a stack of finished papers later, she was feeling better, though she evidently did not look it, based on the way Angie frowned when she saw her.
"You alright, English?" she asked, sitting down across from her.
"Rough night," Peggy said.
"Oh, yeah?" Angie asked, perking up a little in a way that suggested she was expecting to hear that a man had kept Peggy up all night in a very different way.
"Not like that," Peggy huffed.
"Oh," Angie said. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Everything okay?"
Peggy sighed. "Alright," she said. "This is going to sound a bit mad, but…"
Over the meal, she told Angie everything that had happened since moving in that had led her to believe her new apartment was haunted. Angie listened thoughtfully, asking clarifying questions but not interrupting her or suggesting she was crazy.
"Well," Angie said when she was done. "Coming from anyone else, I'd say they were nuts, but I know you well enough to know that if you say there's a ghost in your apartment, there's a ghost in your apartment."
"Thank you," Peggy said.
"You want to move back in with me?" Angie offered.
Peggy smiled. "That's kind of you, but I'm not ready to admit defeat just yet."
Angie chuckled. "Atta girl. So, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Peggy said. "I mean, if ghosts really are real, you'd think you'd see more of them about. People have died all over the place—the world would be crawling with them. It makes me think there must be some sort of afterlife but he's…stuck or something. Like he can't quite get to wherever he was supposed to go when he died."
"And you're thinking if you can help him move on, you'll have the place back to yourself?"
"Exactly. I just can't work out how. He doesn't seem to remember much about who he was when he was alive, and I feel like if I knew that, it would help. Maybe he's got unfinished business or something." She sighed. "Although I must admit, I want to help him more just to make him leave than out of any sort of altruism."
Angie shrugged. "End result's the same though, right? Hey, can I meet him?"
"What?"
"I've never seen a ghost before. I'm interested. And maybe I can help you talk him down or something."
"I don't see why not," Peggy said. It wouldn't hurt anything, and Angie could be very charming when she wanted to be. Maybe she could sweet talk him into shuffling off the remainder of his mortal coil.
"I like what you've done with the place," Angie said as Peggy let her into the apartment. "Looks more lived-in now." She looked around. "Looks like he hasn't been making a mess or anything," she added, looking around for signs of the ghost.
"Well, objects seem to go through him, so I don't know if he can pick things up," Peggy said. Of course, he could sit on the furniture, but she didn't pretend to know how the physics of ghosts worked. But she imagined if he could move objects, he would add that to his arsenal of ways to irritate her, so the fact that he hadn't meant he probably couldn't.
A quick check of the apartment showed that he wasn't there.
"The one time I want him," Peggy muttered.
"I guess you can't call him if you don't know his name," Angie mused. "Your ghost books have anything on how to do a séance or something?"
"No," Peggy said. "But I think I've got an idea." She went into the kitchen and grabbed a plate, then pulled a bottle of mustard out of the fridge and squeezed a blob of it onto the plate. She smeared the mustard around a bit, then moved towards the sink. "Oh, no!" she said in a theatrical voice. "Look at this horribly messy dish that I'm about to leave in the sink! I might just set it down and leave it there all afternoon. The food will get all dried and crusty—"
A familiar throat cleared itself behind her. "You think you're very funny, don't you?" he said.
Peggy looked at Angie and gestured to the ghost. "Voila."
Angie was frowning at the ghost. "I don't see anything."
"What?" Peggy said.
"What?" the ghost repeated.
"There's nothing there," Angie said.
"Oh, well that's just great," the ghost huffed. "It's bad enough being dead, but now the only person who can see me is you?"
"You really can't see him?" Peggy asked.
"No," Angie said. She stepped forward and reached out a hand, feeling around in the air.
"Hey! Hey! Stop that!" the ghost complained, swatting at Angie's hand as it passed through his head. Realizing that wasn't going to do him any good, he stepped around and to the side until he was out of reach.
"Did you feel that?" Peggy wondered. She hadn't actually touched him herself. "Your hand was just waving through his head."
"Really?" Angie said, looking surprised. "No. Um, sorry," she said, backing up a couple of steps.
"He's behind you now," Peggy said, since Angie was still looking at the spot he had been.
Angie looked over her shoulder, then back at Peggy. "Okay, I still don't think you're crazy, but you've got to admit this is getting weirder."
"Yes," Peggy agreed. Peggy still didn't think she was going mad, but it worried her a bit that Angie couldn't see him. "Oh, wait, I know. He's behind you, so, maybe you could hold up some fingers or something and he could tell me how many there are. Just to prove he's really there."
"Really?" the ghost sighed.
"Yeah, okay," Angie said.
The ghost looked down to where Angie was presumably holding her fingers up behind her back, then back up at Peggy. "You know, I kind of want to not play along with this and just let her think you're crazy."
"You're a terrible person and I hate you," Peggy said.
"What?" Angie asked.
"No, not you," Peggy sighed.
"Oh," Angie said. "He doesn't want to do it?"
"No."
"Hmm," Angie mused. She turned around to look in the ghost's general direction. "Hey, um, sir? Look, I'm sorry you're dead. That can't be fun. I'd be in a bad mood too if it was me. And I get that you and Peggy here don't really get along, so, you know, wouldn't it be nice if someone besides her knew you were here?"
The ghost considered. "That's a good point," he decided. He waved at Peggy to go ahead. "Alright."
"He's says alright," Peggy told Angie.
"Great!" Angie said with a smile. She turned back around to face Peggy.
"Four fingers," he said.
"Four," Peggy relayed.
"Seven," he said as Angie moved her hands.
"Seven," Peggy repeated.
"One."
"One."
"Now she's doing the 'Okay' hand gesture."
"You're making the 'Okay' sign," Peggy said.
"Wow," Angie said. She turned around and looked behind her. "He really is there." She frowned. "I wonder why I can't see him?"
"I don't know," Peggy said, but it was a relief to know she wasn't mad.
Angie stayed for the afternoon, and while her knowledge of ghosts didn't go beyond what she had seen in movies, it could not be said that she didn't try. She was sweet, she was firm, she was understanding. The ghost, for his part, didn't necessarily seem to disagree with her, and even seemed interested at times by some of the points she brought up, but Peggy could tell he was getting frustrated by the end of it. Eventually, Angie had to go home, and Peggy locked the door behind her with a sigh.
"And what's got your knickers all in a twist now?" she asked him, looking at the frown on his face. "I feel as though she gave you a lot to work with. You're not just going to ignore it all and stay on and bother me out of spite, are you?"
He scowled. "Do you think I like this?" he asked. "You think I enjoy being stuck in whatever weird state of existence this is, not being able to do anything or talk to anybody but you?" He sighed heavily. "Sure, your friend had some great ideas, but they don't work."
"How do you know?"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" he said. "You're so insistent that I move on, and I figure if that or staying here like this are my only options, I may as well give it a shot. I've tried. There's no bright light, or Grim Reaper, or noise or sign or anything for me to follow or any hint that there's somewhere I'm supposed to go. So, it looks like I'm stuck here. Now, will you please go wash that mustard plate you put in the sink?"
Peggy rolled her eyes, but went to the kitchen to wash the plate and start working on her dinner. She thought over what he'd said as she did so. She didn't realize he'd tried moving on. Perhaps that was what he'd been doing last night when he hadn't been singing, or perhaps this morning while she'd been away.
"Alright," she said, sitting down at the table with her dinner. He had moved to sit across from her "So, if moving on is turning out to be difficult, what are you going to do, then?"
He shrugged. "May as well stay here."
"Really?"
"Look, I know we keep arguing about this, but this really is my house," he said. "Why I know that when I don't know anything else, I don't know, but there it is."
"Have you tried going anywhere else?" Peggy wondered.
"Yes," he said.
"And?"
"And I can't. So it looks like you're stuck with me."
"And your plan is to annoy me until I leave?" she wondered.
He shrugged again. "Well, you're not turning out to be a great roommate. You're a mess in the kitchen, you moved all my stuff, you're sleeping in my room, and you call me names and throw stuff at my head."
"It's not as though you can feel it," she huffed, flicking a green bean off her fork and through his left eye to prove her point.
"And now you're throwing food," he sighed. "That's mature."
"This from the man who has decided to aggravate me because he can't think of anything better to do with himself," Peggy retorted, throwing another bean.
"Hey, if you want me to be irritating, you ain't seen nothin' yet," he snapped. His eyes lit up. "In fact…You ain't seen nothin' yet," he started to sing. "B-b-b-b-b-baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Here's something, here's something you never could forget. B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet!"
Peggy groaned and picked up her plate, skirting around him to pick up the beans she had no intention of leaving on the floor. He carried on singing Bachman Turner Overdrive as she washed up.
"You know, normally, I enjoy music, but you are a terrible singer," Peggy told him when she was done in the kitchen. "Why have you settled on this as your means of annoying me?"
He shrugged. "Well, I can't turn on the TV to make noise that way, and I can't pick things up and throw them around, so music it is."
"So, you would be throwing things at me if you could?" Peggy confirmed.
"You throw things at me all the time," he countered.
Peggy shook her head and went and had a shower. While he continued to sing, at least the noise of the water was able to drown him almost all the way out, so she stayed in there for a while. Eventually, however, the water got cold and she had to get out. It was a bit early, but as she hadn't slept well the night before and she had class in the morning, she decided to go ahead and go to bed. She didn't get much sleep this time either as he continued his musical performance from the hallway, and she was in a foul disposition the next morning. She did the best she could not to take it out on her students, but she had just about had enough.
"Who's your friend?" the ghost asked when she returned home.
"He's not a friend, he's an exorcist," Peggy said, hanging up her coat. She turned to the man who had accompanied her home. "I suppose you can't see him?"
"No," the man said. "But I can feel him. There's definitely an angry spirit here."
"Well, he's got that part right, at least," the ghost said. He glared at Peggy. "You're going to try to exorcise me?"
"Well, if you would leave on your own, I wouldn't have to," she snapped.
"I told you I tried," he snapped.
"Yes, well, I've had enough." She turned to the exorcist and waved in his direction. "Whenever you're ready."
The man began his ritual, chanting things in Latin and sprinkling holy water about the place. Peggy watched the ghost carefully for any sign that it was having an effect, but he only seemed amused by the proceedings. "Is he supposed to be sprinkling that holy water on me?" he asked. "Because he's totally missing. I bet you ten bucks he can't really tell I'm here at all."
Nothing continued to happen, and she finally sent the exorcist away. Throughout the week, she branched out—perhaps other religions had more effective means of banishing the dead. But not a single cleansing ceremony, séance, or any other ritual had any sort of luck. All it succeeded in doing was annoying the ghost further, and he retaliated by continuing to make Peggy's life miserable. By Friday afternoon, she was so exhausted and frustrated that she didn't know if she wanted to cry or scream.
She decided to return to the bookstore. There had been more books on ghosts there, and perhaps one of them would have something useful. It would also give her a bit of peace to get out. Or so she thought. As she locked the door, the ghost stepped through it and started following her to the stairs. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me," she huffed. "I thought you couldn't leave the apartment."
"I thought so too," he said. "But then, it's been almost three days since I've blinked away anywhere. I think I'm getting more settled into the world now. Figured I'd give it a shot." He grinned. "Apparently, I can leave the apartment as long as I'm with you."
Peggy closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "Yes, well, maybe we'll get too far away and it will yank you back."
"Maybe," he agreed. "But we're almost to the bottom of the stairs and nothing has happened yet."
"I hope it does soon," Peggy said. "And I hope it hurts when it happens."
He did not vanish when she got to the ground floor and walked through the door, and that had been her last hope, that perhaps the building was some sort of barrier. But he followed her out, and it did not surprise her when he continued to walk with her down the sidewalk. Fortunately, he was keeping quiet. He seemed to be enjoying looking around, and had Peggy been feeling more charitable, she probably would have admitted that after so long inside, it made sense he was enjoying the change of scenery. At least he was being quiet, though. At this point, she would take what she could get.
In the book shop, she made straight for the supernatural shelf at the side. The same man was back behind the counter again, and he smiled at first in greeting when he saw Peggy, but then he sighed. "Really?"
"What?" Peggy asked, puzzled.
"How do you people keep finding me?" he huffed. "I'm retired. I haven't advertised in twenty years."
Before Peggy could work out what he was talking about, a woman with grey hair came out from the back room with a stack of papers. "What's going on, Chester?" she asked.
The man—Chester, evidently—waved a weary hand in Peggy's direction. "More spirits," he said in the same sort of voice one might use to complain that your car wouldn't start.
"Really?" the woman asked, looking over at Peggy interestedly. "Well, go on and help them, then; I'll mind the front for a while."
"Gwyneth," he sighed.
"I can manage just fine, dear," she said.
"That's not what I meant," he huffed.
Gwyneth smiled at Peggy. "Why don't you come this way, dear? Just up these stairs here—you and your spirit friend. Chester will make you some tea and help you figure this whole thing out."
"We're making tea now too?" Chester sighed.
"You are," Gwyneth said. She made a shooing motion at him. "Go on."
With a sigh of deep resignation, he beckoned for Peggy to come around the desk and follow him up a flight of stairs. Not sure what else to do, Peggy did. The ghost followed curiously.
At the top of the stairs was a small, cozy apartment. Chester was in the kitchen, noisily making tea. "Sit over there," he said, waving at a faded teal colored couch.
Peggy did so.
"What's going on?" the ghost asked, sitting down next to her.
"I'm not sure," Peggy admitted. "I just came to see if he had any books that would help me figure out how to get rid of you."
They said nothing more until Chester came and sat down in the armchair opposite the couch, setting the tray of tea things and a small plate of biscuits down with a clatter. "Chester Phillips," he huffed. "What's your name?"
"Peggy Carter," Peggy said. A little hesitantly, she picked up a cup of tea. "Thank you for the tea."
He nodded once. "And your friend?"
"I don't know his name," Peggy said. She looked at Phillips curiously. "Can you see him?"
"No," Phillips said, stirring sugar into his own tea. "But I can tell he's there. You want a cookie?"
"No, thank you," Peggy said.
"I wish I could have a cookie," the ghost said a little forlornly.
"Eat at least one or Gwyneth will think I didn't feed you," Phillips said.
That surprised a smile out of Peggy, and she picked up one of the biscuits.
"I'm not going to ask how you found me," Phillips said. "Can't ever seem to get out of this business."
"So you're a psychic?" Peggy asked. "Is that what it's called?" She decided not to mention that she hadn't actually been looking for him. Perhaps he could help.
Phillips shrugged. "Never had a name for it. But a lot of people call it that. So, sure." He nodded in the ghost's direction. "So, what do you want?"
"Well, I'm being haunted," Peggy said.
"You know, I don't think it's fair that I don't get to tell my side of the story," the ghost complained.
"Yes, well, your story is that you died and you won't leave," Peggy snapped at him. "There. Your side's told."
Phillips arched an amused eyebrow. "Not a very peaceful cohabitation, hm?"
"No," Peggy said. She looked back at Phillips and couldn't quite keep all the desperation out of her voice. "Can you tell me how to get rid of him? He's driving me mad."
Phillips took a long sip of his tea and studied them thoughtfully. "Well, for starters," he said at last. "I can tell he doesn't like you."
"The feeling is mutual," Peggy said.
The ghost stuck out his tongue at her.
"He says he doesn't know how to move on," Peggy went on. "Can you help him? Or, barring that, force him to?"
"Well," Phillips said, taking another long sip of tea. "Normally, I'm with you. It's always the same with ghosts, not wanting to move on." He shook his head. "Never understood that. They don't belong here anymore; why hang around?"
"Exactly," Peggy said.
The ghost sat back with a huff and crossed his arms. "Here we go again."
"But," Phillips went on. He set down his tea cup and pointed to where the ghost was sitting. "I don't think this is a ghost."
"What?" Peggy asked.
"What?" the ghost repeated, sitting up a little straighter.
"Seen a lot of ghosts in my day," Phillips said. "And this isn't one. This…this is the most alive spirit I have ever seen." He sniffed thoughtfully. "I don't think the little fella's dead."
"Ha!" the ghost crowed. "I told you! Okay, the 'little fella' thing was a little insulting, but still." He pointed a victorious finger at Peggy. "I told you I wasn't dead."
"What do you mean he's not dead?" Peggy asked incredulously. "No one else can see him, he can walk through walls, I…What else could he be?"
"Well, now, that's a good question," Phillips said. He inclined his head thoughtfully. "You said you don't know his name?"
"No."
"Did you ask?"
"I did," Peggy replied a bit curtly. "He doesn't remember it. Or anything, really, other than the fact that apparently he used to live in my apartment."
"Hmm," Phillips mused. He didn't say anything for a long minute, studiously picking up and eating one of the biscuits. "Well," he said at last. "My best guess is that your boy here has a living, breathing body somewhere, and he got cut loose from it."
They both looked at him in surprise.
"That's a thing?" the ghost asked.
"That sounds a bit…" Peggy wasn't sure what the word was she wanted.
"It's not common, but it'll happen," Phillips said. "Dollars to donuts, that's why he doesn't remember anything. When you die, that's it—you're done with your body and you take everything you had in it with you. Ghosts always know who they are. But if his body's still alive," he said, pointing at the ghost with the end of his biscuit. "It'll still have pieces of him in it."
Peggy pondered this.
"Hey, ask him if I'll remember my name," the ghost said.
"If he keeps staying out of his body, will he start to remember things?" Peggy asked. "He used to flit in and out in front of me, but he's stayed around for a while now, and he was able to leave the apartment with me today. He thinks he's settling."
"He's right," Phillips said. "The human spirit isn't supposed to live like this, so the switch can be pretty jarring. But as he settles, things ought to start coming back to him."
"So, how do we fix this?" Peggy asked.
"The is one time the whole 'unfinished business' hogwash holds some merit," Phillips said. "Normal ghosts, they might have a person or a job or something they want to stay for, but it's never strong enough to keep them here long term. Sooner they can accept that and move on, happier everyone is. But this guy's ties to life are stronger than any of that. He physically can't move on while his body is still alive."
"Told you," the ghost said again.
"Yes, alright," Peggy sighed. She looked back at Phillips. "So, what, we have to find his body and put him back in it?"
"That would be my best guess," Phillips agreed.
"A guess?" Peggy echoed.
Phillips shrugged. "This part's new. But, yeah. Putting him back in his body sounds like it'll work."
"How are we supposed to find his body?" Peggy asked, wondering if Phillips realized just how impossible a task that seemed.
"Well, you'll probably have to wait until he remembers his name. That oughta narrow it down." He smirked. "Might be stuck with each other for a little while. I've got some books on couple's counseling downstairs if you want 'em."
"We are not a couple," Peggy growled.
Phillips chuckled. "Just a suggestion."
"Ask him why no one else can see me," the ghost said.
That was a good question. "Why am I the only one who can see him?" Peggy asked. "It seems weird that he would be tied to me like this—we've never met before."
Phillips shrugged again. "That is also an excellent question. Your guess is as good as mine."
"That's helpful," the ghost said.
There didn't seem much more to be said, so Peggy finished her tea and biscuit and thanked him for his help. She offered to pay him for his time, but he shook his head with a kind smile and ushered them back downstairs.
They didn't speak on the way back to the apartment, each busy with their own thoughts. (That, and the fact that Peggy didn't want to look like a madwoman, walking down the street and talking to no one.)
"Alright," Peggy said once they were back inside. "This is evidently going to be a longer term problem. Until we figure it out, I think we need to work out some sort of cessation of hostilities."
He smiled sheepishly. "Yeah. I can stop being such a jerk."
"And I can stop treating you like some sort of infestation," she said.
His smile widened. "Truce?"
"Truce," she agreed. A weight seemed to lift off her shoulders, and relief at the idea that she would finally be allowed to sleep tonight was so powerful that she almost wanted to cry.
"You haven't eaten yet," he pointed out. "You want to get yourself some dinner and we can…I don't know, talk things out some?"
Peggy nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."
She fixed herself a plate of leftovers and sat down at the table. He sat down across from her by stepping through the back of the chair, then sitting down.
"It's so weird how you do that," she said. "How do you not fall through the chair?"
"I don't know," he said. "I think I go through things if I don't think about it, but if I think 'I'm going to sit here', I don't go through. Doesn't work with objects, though. I've tried really intentionally thinking about picking something up, but I can't do it."
Peggy considered this. "Can you feel anything? When you walk through a door or a piece of furniture or something?"
"No," he said. "I haven't physically felt anything since…Whenever this started."
He was looking a little wistfully at her plate, and Peggy remembered what'd he'd said about the biscuits at Phillips' house. "Do you get hungry?"
"No. I kind of miss eating, though."
"Would you rather I didn't eat in front of you?" Peggy asked a little awkwardly. She didn't want to rub it in.
"No, it's fine," he said.
Peggy nodded and ate a few more bites thoughtfully. "Right. So, as far as finding your body…I honestly have no idea how to begin." She frowned as something occurred to her. "But I would imagine you're in a hospital."
"Why?"
"Well, presumably, your body isn't walking around doing things without you in it. And if you were lying on the floor or in a back alley or something somewhere, you'd have starved to death by now."
"Huh."
"So, someone must be looking after your body somewhere," she finished. "Perhaps you're in a coma."
"That makes sense," he said. He looked up and off into the distance as though he were listening to something.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," he said. "I was just trying to see if I could feel anything. You know, like a breathing mask, or whatever else I might be hooked up to."
"Can you?"
"No. Can't feel anything else, though, so it's doesn't mean I'm not."
"Mm." Peggy ate her dinner thoughtfully. She had never thought that he might be alive before today. Out-of-body experiences had always seemed like an idea from a bad movie, but, then, so had ghosts. She wondered why she'd never considered it before.
"Peggy?" the ghost asked. Or whatever he was. She supposed she shouldn't call him a ghost anymore if he wasn't really dead.
"Mm?" she looked up at him.
"Are you okay? You've been staring at your plate for a while without saying anything."
Peggy looked back down and realized her plate was empty. "Oh," she said. "Yes, I'm alright. Just thinking, I suppose."
He nodded. "Tired too?" he asked a little sheepishly.
"Very," she agreed.
"Sorry," he said. "I, uh, I know that's my fault."
"It is your fault," Peggy agreed. She offered him a smile. "But I suppose you were provoked. Let me sleep in peace from here on out and all will be forgiven."
He smiled and nodded, though his cheeks colored.
Peggy stood up and picked up her plate. "I realize the fact that you're alive is quite the revelation, and I will admit myself very interested in puzzling it out, but I don't know that I'll be of much use in that regard tonight." She really was exhausted, and it was as though knowing she would be allowed to sleep uninterrupted tonight was her body's cue to stop fighting as it had been all week. She was feeling heavy and fuzzy-headed, and the idea of a hot shower and then falling into bed sounded delightful and was consuming nearly all the higher functions of her brain. "I'm going to have to go to bed."
He nodded. "You should get some sleep." One corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin. "I'll even refrain from haunting you if you want to leave that plate until tomorrow."
Peggy laughed. "Well, that's very gracious of you." She retreated to the bathroom and soaked under the hot water until she started falling asleep on her feet. Sleepy and cozy in her robe, she returned briefly to the living room. "Good night," she told him. He was sitting on the couch, hands folded on his stomach and feet propped on the coffee table. "Would you like me to turn the television on for you? It might give you something to do for the next several hours."
"Thanks," he said with a smile. "But not tonight. I've got a lot to think about."
She nodded. "Alright. Well, good luck. I hope you remember something."
His smile softened a bit. "Thanks," he said. "Sleep well."
Peggy left the light on for him, then retreated to her room and collapsed into bed. She was out before her head hit the pillow. She didn't wake at all until morning, and she slept so deeply that she awoke in exactly the same position she'd fallen asleep in. Her phone declared it was 8:15 when she swatted at it to see the time, and though that was early for a Saturday, she had gone to bed at 7:30. She could have rolled over and slept some more, but she was hungry, so she got up.
"Hello?" she called, moving into the living room. Her disembodied companion was no longer on the couch, and he had not appeared by the time she finished making herself tea and pancakes. It wasn't until she had finished her pancakes that she spotted him. The window over the sink looked out onto the balcony, and he was there leaning on the railing and staring out over the park. Peggy poured herself another cup of tea and went out to join him.
"Morning," she said.
"Oh, hi," he replied, looking over his shoulder as she came out to join him. "Sleep well?"
"Yes, very well," she said. She joined him at the railing. "It's a lovely view," she said after a moment.
He nodded. "I used to eat breakfast out here," he said. He nodded at her tea cup with a smile. "I like tea. I'd sit out here with a cup of tea and breakfast and watch the park wake up."
Peggy smiled. "You remembered that last night?"
"This morning," he said. He nodded out into the park. "A lady walked by with a fluffy black dog, and I realized I'd seen her before. She walks out here every morning." He looked over at her with a smile. "There ought to be a guy with a churro cart coming along in a couple minutes."
They stayed out a while longer, not saying anything, but enjoying the coolness of the morning and just watching the park below. Peggy smiled into her tea as the man with the churro cart appeared along the pathway. "Well called," she said.
He huffed a laugh.
"Did you remember anything else?" she wondered.
"A few things," he said. "Nothing earth-shattering. A few snatches of things I don't have context for."
"No name?" Peggy wondered.
"I feel like it's right there," he said. "Right on the edge of my brain." He stood up a little straighter and looked around the balcony. "There used to be a little table right there. It had a glass top with blue ripples in it."
Peggy looked at the spot he was pointing. "It's a bit tight. Wouldn't that be a better spot for it?" The place he indicated was right where a bit of the wall jutted out, but the spot to his right had more room.
He frowned thoughtfully where she was pointing. "No," he said at last. "I had something else there." He seemed to have found a trail of thought that Peggy didn't want to interrupt, so she went back inside to get dressed.
He was still contemplating out on the balcony, so she sat down at the dining table with some things to grade. She wasn't sure how long she'd been working when she looked up and saw him sitting across from her. "Oh! Hello."
"Hi. Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."
"No, that's alright. Being immaterial does let you move rather stealthily."
He chuckled. "Am I interrupting anything?"
"No, I could use a break." She pushed the papers in front of her away. "What's up?"
He shrugged a little self-consciously. "I've been doing a lot of thinking about me, and I'm kind of hitting a wall. I realized that for as long as I've been bugging you, I don't actually know much about you."
Peggy chuckled. "Fair enough. I suppose one normally starts with one's name, but you already know mine." She considered, wondering where to start. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not from around here."
"Never would have guessed," he said with a smile.
She told him some about her job in London before moving to Brooklyn, and she ended up talking for a while. He was a sympathetic listener, and she found herself telling him about growing up in her father's shadow, the offer she'd gotten at Brooklyn College and her subsequent spilt with Fred.
He snorted. "Well, he sounds like a tool." His cheeks colored a little. "Sorry. I mean, I know you dated him and all, but you had a big chance come up and he shot it down just because he wasn't feeling it? Sounds like you made the right call."
"Yes, I did," Peggy said. She hadn't been seeking his validation, but she appreciated that he agreed with her.
He chuckled. "What was your paper about? The one that caught the College's eye?"
"I wouldn't ask that unless you're really keen on how Mary Shelley was a perfect example of how defining contributions to a genre are received differently depending on the gender of the author."
"That sounds interesting," he said. "And I do enjoy the English Romantic era." He folded his fingers together and leaned forward to rest his chin on them. "Enlighten me," he said, not sounding the least bit sarcastic.
"Oh," Peggy said. "Alright. Well…" She hadn't expected the response, but it was a lecture she'd given so many times she could recite it in her sleep, so she was quickly back on the right foot again. He listened with interest as she talked about how Shelley had more or less invented science fiction with Frankenstein, but how sales had plummeted when it was revealed the author was a woman. As he listened, he asked questions that made her realize he really did know about the English Romantics. Curious, and having finished with her point, she asked him a couple of questions in turn, and they ended up discussing the Pre-Raphaelites for a while before she chuckled.
"What?" he asked.
"I just think it's funny that you seem to have remembered the symbolism in The Lady of Shalott before remembering your own name."
He blinked, then huffed a laugh. "Evidently, it's something I know a lot about. Maybe if we talked about something where my name came up, I'd remember it was mine."
It was nearing time for lunch, so Peggy got up to fix herself something. He had wandered away by the time she came back, and she found him in the hallway, staring intently at a painting on the wall. "It's nice, isn't it?" Peggy said, walking over with her plate to join him by the painting. She took a bite of her sandwich. "It came with the apartment, so I don't know the story behind it, but it's one of the most relaxing paintings I've ever seen." It was a painting of a large tree, leafy and green, standing in front of a broken stone wall that looked about waist-high. Beneath the tree and beyond the wall was rich, green grass. Her favorite thing about it was the way the light played through the tree branches, dappling the grass and wall below. It felt as though the spots of light were moving in a gentle breeze, and every time Peggy looked at the painting, she wanted to step into it and lean against the tree with a good book and read until she fell asleep.
"It's a tree in Kilglass. In Ireland," he said softly, reaching up for the painting but not quite touching it.
Peggy looked at him in surprise, but he wasn't looking at her, his eyes miles away.
"My mom lived there when she was little," he went on. "It was her favorite spot in the yard. She told me about it a lot when she told me stories. Then when she got sick, I…I painted this for her. It hung in her room until…" He trailed off, closing his eyes. "She told me it made her feel better, looking at it," he whispered. "She…" His eyes were shining when he opened them, and Peggy suddenly wondered if someone without a body could cry. "Steve," he whispered. "That's what she called me." He looked at Peggy. "My name is Steve."
Peggy smiled. "Hello, Steve."
He smiled back. "I have a name," he said, sounding a bit relieved. He blinked away the moisture in his eyes. "I'm Steve."
They left the painting and returned to the living room. Peggy finished her sandwich, and Steve sat thoughtfully on the couch. Peggy was glad he'd remembered his name, but she was curious now too. If he was in a hospital somewhere, was his mother looking after him? It didn't seem likely—the way he'd spoken about her made it sound as though something had happened to her. Perhaps there was someone else. She hoped he wasn't alone.
"I remember more," he said. "Some stuff about my mom. A little bit about me."
"Do you think she's worried about you?" Peggy asked, hoping that wasn't a stupid way to broach the subject but unable to think of another way to do so.
He shook his head. "No," he said with a sad smile. "She's dead."
Peggy had suspected as much, but her heart hurt for him, hearing it. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright," he told her. "It's not like you could know. I didn't even know until just now." He bit his lip thoughtfully. "It was a long time ago. I think I'm twenty-eight now, but I was eighteen when she died."
Peggy nodded. "I'm sorry." It was a shame the first significant memory he had had to include that.
He nodded. "Thanks."
"Do you remember any other family?" she asked. "Maybe there's someone we could track down to try to track your body down."
He frowned thoughtfully. "I don't think so? I'm not sure. I know I didn't have a dad around, but…" He waved at his head. "Still kind of foggy in here." He smiled. "But, hey, you know what? I have a name and I paint. That's a lot more than I knew about me yesterday."
Peggy smiled. "That's true. And evidently, you paint quite well."
"Aw, well…" he said, his cheeks coloring.
"No, I mean it," Peggy insisted. "That painting is gorgeous."
"Thank you," he said with a smile, still blushing a little.
They chatted for a little while about the painting and the things he had remembered. He did a lot of painting, and drawing as well. The spot out on the balcony where Peggy had thought a table would fit was where he kept an easel for painting when the weather was fine. (That explained the splotches of color she'd seen out there on her first day.) He'd lived in Brooklyn for all his life, and he seemed to know a fair bit about the city. He couldn't remember his last name, but he did remember that he liked pancakes.
"Would you like to go for a walk?" Peggy asked.
"What?"
"You seem like you know a good bit about the city, so maybe a walk around some familiar places might jog some memories?" she suggested. "And since you can leave the house now, I thought you might enjoy the change of scenery for a bit."
"Oh." He smiled. "Yeah, that sounds nice."
They spent the rest of the weekend trying to spark more memories of Steve's. Nothing on the walk jumped out at him as a specific memory, though he did say he found a general sense of familiarity about it all. They talked a lot as well, just sitting in the apartment, or walking through it and studying the rooms. He remembered little things, but nothing of great consequence. This seemed to trouble him less than it did Peggy. She imagined if it was her, remembering that she liked fuzzy socks but not remembering something as important as her own surname would drive her mad. Steve pointed out that after remembering nothing for so long, the fuzzy socks felt like a fairly significant memory, and she supposed she could give him that one. It was all in how you looked at it.
Monday she went back to work. They soon fell into a routine—in the mornings she would ask Steve if he needed anything before she left, and sometimes he would be content to sit around and think, and sometimes she would cue up a lengthy audiobook and set it to play so he could have something to listen to while she was away. In the evenings they would chat as she made dinner and did chores. She liked talking with him, even if she did roll her eyes at his sense of humor—he enjoyed making terrible puns, and it was getting harder not to laugh at them. They sat down on the weekends and played a couple of board games, although Peggy had to move Steve's pieces on his behalf. It was starting to feel like having an actual roommate, though he did not contribute to any of the bills. (He didn't really contribute to any of the expenditures either, so it balanced out.)
After a couple of weeks of this, he asked if he could follow her to work. "Even with the books on, it gets a little boring sitting in here all day," he admitted. "I don't want to cramp your style or anything," he hurried to assure her. "But, you know, maybe I could sit in the back and listen to a couple of your classes, and I could wander around campus while you're grading or in meetings or something."
"I suppose that would be alright," Peggy said. "It's a lovely campus. Perhaps the artist in you will enjoy some of the architecture."
The following morning, they made their way down to the campus. Steve was frowning thoughtfully the closer to the school they got. "Something wrong?" Peggy asked.
"No," he said. "I just…There's that niggling feeling of something being familiar, like when we were walking the other day. I think I've been this way before."
Peggy considered. "Perhaps you've come to the library? It's open to the public. Or maybe an exhibit or something?"
"Maybe," he said. "Hopefully it'll come to me."
His thoughtful frown increased as they finally arrived on campus, but he said nothing more as Peggy was approached by one of her students. They walked to class discussing the latest assignment, with Steve trailing along behind thoughtfully. As Peggy got ready to start her lesson, she felt a bit self-conscious at first seeing him sitting there in the back row. But he'd always seemed interested when she talked about her class before, and he listened with rapt attention now and she soon forgot he was there.
Several of her students stayed around after class, and she noticed him drifting through the back wall, presumably to go and walk around. She wondered idly how far away he could go. At first, he'd only seemed to exist when she was around, and while now he was there all the time, she wondered if he was still tied to her in some sort of way. She put it from her mind and turned her attention to her students, and it was midafternoon before she saw him again.
"Peggy!" he said, sounding a little out of breath.
She looked up with a start from the paper she'd been grading. "Oh, there you are. Is everything alright?"
"I think so. I don't know. It…" He put his hands to his head and clutched fretfully at his hair. "Peggy, this is really weird."
"What is?"
"Okay, well, I saw this mosaic, right? And I thought, well, okay, I don't even know why I went over there—it's not like I knew it was there, but I just felt like I should walk that way, and—"
"Okay, hang on," Peggy said. She put down her pen and folded her hands together in front of her. "First of all, inhale. Then back it up and start from the beginning."
Steve stopped and drew in a breath. "Okay."
There was a knock at the partially-opened door before he could get any farther. "Professor Carter?" A young woman peeked her head through the door tentatively, then her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she spotted the seemingly empty room. "Were you…Are you talking to someone?"
Peggy blinked, and then, thinking quickly, looked over at her phone that was sitting on her desk. "Let me call you back, alright?" She tapped the phone, then looked up at the girl. "Yes, Madeline, how can I help you?"
It took a while to sort out Madeline and her confusion with the week's writing assignment, and it was time for her to be heading home by the time it was all set right. Steve left again, perhaps feeling it was rude to listen in on the consultation, but she found him sitting in one of the chairs in the hallway outside her office. He seemed to be deep in thought, and still hadn't said anything by the time they left campus.
"Steve?" Peggy asked. She would have nudged his arm if her hand wouldn't have just gone right through him.
"Hmm?" He looked up from watching his feet, distracted.
"What was it you wanted to tell me earlier? Something about a mosaic?"
"Oh, right!" he said. "There's a mosaic in the Art building, and I've seen it before. It's a student's piece that they left after they graduated. It's a wave in the ocean, and when you walk by it, the way the light hits it make it look like ripples in the water." He drew in a deep breath as Peggy wondered what was so important about the mosaic. "I always liked the effect, and I used to walk the long way around the building so I could walk past it. Peggy, I've been there before. I think…" Another deep breath. "I think I used to work there."
Peggy's mouth dropped open and she stopped walking. "You used to work there? At the college?"
Steve nodded. "Yeah. The longer I was in the Art building…It was coming back to me, the classes I would teach, and the way I would set up my rooms. There's someone else in there now, but I could see where I would put the lights, and the spot I liked to sit where I could see what all the kids were working on, and the old projector for Art History slides that you had to bang on it in the right sequence to get the light to come on…I remember it, Peggy."
Peggy started to turn around. "Well, if you remember it, we should go back! I'm sure there's someone around—"
Steve shook his head. "Peggy, it's after office hours. Pretty much everyone's gone home. And you need to eat dinner. We can go back tomorrow."
Peggy still thought going back was worth a try, but Steve insisted it was alright and that he wanted to think over what he'd remembered anyway.
"I wonder how long ago you worked there?" Peggy wondered. She and Steve were sitting on the sofa watching a home renovation show while Peggy ate leftover pizza.
Steve shrugged. "Dunno. I mean, it all looks pretty much the same. How long can someone be in a coma for?"
"Ages, I think," Peggy said. It occurred to her suddenly to wonder how old Steve's body was. He'd mentioned something before about how he thought he was twenty-eight, but had that been the age he was when he went into the coma or how old he was now? Suppose he'd been in a coma for decades but his spirit was only twenty-eight because that's how old he last remembered being? She couldn't figure out how to ask the question, and it would all just be speculation anyway, so she decided not to say anything and freak Steve out over what might be nothing. One step at a time.
Peggy only taught one class on Tuesdays, and it was an early one, so by nine-thirty she and Steve were free to make their way over to the Art building. Peggy had walked past it once or twice, but she'd never actually been inside. It had such a different feel to it than the English building did. The rooms they passed by had music playing, the students they passed were in paint or clay-covered clothes, and the hallways were filled with student artwork, and in spots with students themselves as they lay out on the floor with pencils and pads of paper.
"Perspective drawing," Steve said, as they stepped around a group of freshmen sprawling across the floor. "The beginners' drawing class comes out into the hall to practice perspective. Lots of receding lines with the lockers and the floor tiles and everything. Good practice."
He showed her the mosaic he had mentioned yesterday, and Peggy did see what he had meant about it being something one would have to know was there. It was hanging just over a corner stairwell, so it didn't get a lot of traffic that wasn't intending to go that way. She also saw what he meant about the effect of the light. It was lovely.
They went up the stairs, and it was there they spotted a staff member who was not currently engaged in teaching a class. A man about Peggy's height was struggling with a stack of boxes and attempting to open a door. "Let me help you," Peggy said, darting forward to catch the top box as it started to slide off his pile.
"Thanks," he said. With the box out of the way she could see his face, and she fancied she'd sat near him at a staff meeting before. Evidently he found her vaguely familiar too, because he tilted his head and said, "I've seen you somewhere before."
"Peggy Carter," she said, opening the door he'd been struggling with since her hands were less full than his. "I'm one of the new literature professors."
"That's it," he said. "Think I saw your picture in an announcement email or something. Jim Morita. Metalworking and Advanced Drawing."
"Pleasure to meet you, Professor Morita," Peggy said with a smile. She gestured for him to go through the door and she followed him through.
"That's Jim," she heard Steve whisper, sounding surprised. She shot a look back at him. "I know him."
The room they had entered was evidently the staff breakroom, judging by the battered couches and the coffee machine on top of the mini fridge. She helped him unload his boxes onto the table in the corner, and a woman came in just as they finished.
"Tell me one of these is our new coffee machine," the woman said in an unexpected London accent, eyes lighting on Jim's packages.
"Helen," Steve said in that same surprised whisper. "She does textiles."
"This big one should be it," Jim said. "Oh, this is Peggy Carter, from the Literature department. Helen Thorpe, Textile Arts," he said, gesturing to Helen.
"Nice to meet you," Peggy said, reaching over to shake her hand.
"Oh, and you," Helen replied, shaking her hand. "And a fellow Londoner! What brings you over to our neck of the woods?"
"Oh, ah…" Peggy said. She could hardly say she was here with a not-ghost helping him attempt to decipher his former identity. She should have had something prepared. "A friend of mine has this painting," she said at last. "It's an absolutely gorgeous painting, and I was hoping to commission one like it. Trouble is," she said with an apologetic smile. "My friend has a dreadful memory. He knows it was painted by someone who works in the Art department here, but he couldn't recall the name. The best we could make out from the signature was the first name 'Steve'."
Steve snorted and rolled his eyes, though an amused smile quirked up the corners of his lips. She looked back at him quickly at the sound, but looked forward again in time to see the look that passed between Jim and Helen.
"What is it?" she wondered.
"You're…probably talking about Steve Rogers," Jim said.
"Rogers," Steve breathed. He put a hand to his head and stepped back a couple of paces. "Rogers." He looked up at Peggy with an amazed grin. "That's it! That's me! I'm Steve Rogers!"
"Yes!" Peggy said. "Yes, I think that was it."
Jim and Helen gave each other that look again.
"What?" Peggy asked again.
"Well, Steve is…" Helen began.
"If you only started this year, you wouldn't have heard," Jim said. "It was pretty big news on campus at the time. Right before the end of the last school year, there was, well, there was an accident."
"An accident?" Peggy asked. She felt as though she was playing a part. She knew something had happened to Steve, but she didn't know what. She hoped she wasn't coming off as morbidly curious.
"Steve was walking home, and it was dark and it was raining, and he got hit by a car," Helen said.
"Oh, no!" Peggy said, feeling less like she was acting now. Whether she'd suspected something like that or not, it was still awful.
"He's still in the hospital," Jim said. "Saint Francis's, I think. It was…It was pretty bad."
"It must have been," Peggy said. That was nearly nine months ago now. "Is he, I mean, do you know if…"
"He's in a coma," Helen said. Her voice wavered a little. "They don't know if—" She sniffed. "I'm sorry," she said, dashing her sleeve across her eyes. "It's just, Steve is…He was such a big part of the department."
"He's been here for years," Jim said. "Seemed like there were times he held the place together."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said, and she was. She'd hoped they'd find something to help Steve, but she hadn't wanted to come in and rake up bad memories.
"It's alright," Jim said. "You didn't know." He seemed to pull himself together a little bit. "I guess if you still wanted a painting, you could talk to the new painting teacher?"
Even as Peggy was trying to figure out how to protest politely, Helen snorted. "Oh, she doesn't want to do that. Nobody wants to talk to John Walker if they can help it."
"Helen!" Jim chastised. She just arched an eyebrow at him and he deflated. "Yeah, okay. Besides," he added, as if worried about encouraging departmental drama. "If it was Steve's style you liked, Walker's is a lot different. I don't think you'd get what you were looking for."
"He's kind of the worst," Helen went on, and Peggy had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. "And he's so harsh with the students. I mean, okay, I know I just sound bitter that Steve is gone, but it's not…We waited as long as we could to hire someone, hoping Steve would…We had to hire someone, but we could have looked around more."
"Why are you glaring at me?" Jim asked. "I didn't hire him."
Peggy sensed a recurring argument brewing. "Thank you for your time," she said, stepping back towards the door. "And I am sorry to hear about Professor Rogers. I hope he gets better soon."
"Thanks," Jim said. Helen nodded. Peggy could hear them start to argue again as she shut the door.
Steve chuckled. "They're always like that. Everyone in the department always said they should just kiss and get it over with already."
Peggy let out a surprised laugh at that.
"But you were right," Steve went on. "I am in a coma." He grinned broadly. "And my name is Steve Rogers. I have a whole name now!"
"Better than that," Peggy said. "We know where your body is."
"That's right," Steve realized, evidently not having processed that yet in the joy of discovering his name. "We can…I can get back in my body."
"Well, let's go, then!" Peggy said.
St. Francis's was a bit of a distance, but they made it to the subway in time to catch the next train. As usual when they were out in public, Steve didn't talk to her, lest people think she was a crazy woman talking to herself. Even if they'd been alone, though, Peggy didn't think he would have said much. He appeared deep in thought.
"Are you alright?" she asked, once they were alone on the sidewalk and walking in the direction of the hospital.
"Hmm?" he asked. "Yeah. I was just thinking…" His eyes were glistening just a little. "What Jim and Helen said earlier, it, well…"
"About you holding the department together?" she asked.
He blushed. "Yeah. It's kind of nice to—I mean, people don't really say that kind of thing when you're, you know, alive or whatever."
Peggy smiled, knowing what he meant. "They seem very fond of you."
"Yeah," he said again, more softly this time. "They were really good friends."
"Well, we get you back in your body, you can get it all back," Peggy said, and he straightened up a little.
"Yeah," he agreed. He smiled. "Let's go find me."
At the front desk, they ran into another problem. For as long as they had been working towards this, Peggy really should have planned things better. But it was turning out she wasn't bad at winging it.
"Can I have the number for Steve Rogers' room, please?" she asked at the front desk.
"Relation to the patient?"
"I'm his cousin," Peggy said, saying the first thing that came to mind. She'd almost said 'girlfriend', because a good love story always tugged on the heartstrings and opened doors, but if he'd been in a coma for nine months, any decent girlfriend would have known about it by now and known where to find him. "I've been away at school in London," she explained. "He's been here for so long and this is the first chance I've had to get back to the States."
The receptionist nodded. "Room 1203. Fourth floor."
"Thank you," Peggy said. She and Steve made their way to the elevator. Steve was bouncing nervously on his toes. He froze for a moment inside the elevator, then moved to follow Peggy out.
"Here we are," she said. "1203."
Steve nodded, and his earlier nervousness seemed to be overcome by determination, and he drifted through the door before Peggy could open it. She huffed a soft laugh and turned the handle.
The room inside was filled with warm light from the window that ran along one wall. It was quiet, and smelled clean in that sterile hospital sort of way. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner and the soft clicking sound coming from one of the machines near the bed. And there on the bed…
"Steve," she whispered.
It was Steve, looking just the same as the spirit standing beside her except for being in a hospital gown. Aside from the bits of monitoring equipment attached somewhere beneath the neck of his shirt, he could have just been asleep.
"It's really me," he whispered, staring down at himself in shock. He huffed a disbelieving laugh. "The old psychic guy was right."
"You hardly look as though you've been in a car accident," Peggy said. She reached out almost unconsciously and brushed a lock of hair away from his face.
"I guess I've had a while to heal," Steve said, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "It's been nine months, after all."
"Good point." Silence for a moment. Being faced with his own comatose body seemed to be a significant sort of moment, and Peggy didn't want to rush him. She looked around the room, and she noticed what she hadn't at first, since her eyes had gone right to Steve. A picture frame, a little African violet in a clay pot, and a small canvas painting were set on the window sill near the bed. A couple of cards were propped up there as well. On the table next to the bed was a battered copy of The Hobbit with a sweet wrapper folded between the pages as a bookmark, and Peggy felt a lump of emotion rise up in her throat. Someone was coming in and reading to him.
"How does this…How do I do this, do you think?" Steve asked. She looked back over at him, and he was still staring at his body, thoughtful now instead of emotional. He poked a curious finger at his hand.
"I don't know," Peggy said. "Could you just climb in?"
He inclined his head in a thoughtful shrug, then climbed up on the bed. He sat down, shifting so that his spirit legs lined up with his physical ones. They disappeared inside them, just as his finger had poked through his own hand. "This is weird," he said. "I'm sitting in my own lap."
Peggy huffed a quick laugh. "Is it working?"
"I don't feel different, but I'm not all the way in yet. Gimme a second." He shifted again and lied down, and his spirit form seemed to disappear completely into his body. For several long seconds, nothing happened. Peggy watched his body curiously for any sign of movement or flicker of life.
He sat up abruptly. "Is it working?" he asked. His body stayed lying flat on the bed, and Peggy shook her head. He looked back down at the prone body with a frown.
He tried several more times, lying down again and shifting and adjusting his angles. Peggy assumed he was trying different methods of mentally connecting with his body as well, whatever those may be. He got off and on the bed, and tried jumping, rolling, and even coming up from underneath the bed. Nothing seemed to be working.
As he was trying these different methods, Peggy looked around the room again. Her eyes went to the painting in the window, and she stepped closer. It had the same feel to it as the one of the tree, and she realized it must be one of Steve's. Perhaps it was important to him, since someone had seen fit to bring it here. She started to ask him about it, then stopped with her mouth open as her eyes landed on the photograph in the frame next to it. She picked it up to get a closer look.
"Steve," she said.
"Yeah? What are you—"
They both turned as the door swung open behind them. The newcomer stopped, looked back at the number on the door he'd come in as if making sure it was the right one, then looked back at Peggy in surprise. It was James Barnes, the man she was renting the apartment from, and the man standing with his arm around Steve's shoulders in the photograph she was still holding.
"Miss Carter?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Bucky?!" Steve exclaimed, staring at him as though he was seeing a ghost.
"Ah," Peggy said. "I'm sorry. I didn't…"
"What are you doing here?" he asked again.
"Bucky, it's me!" Steve said, jumping off the bed and stepping forward. "It's me; I'm here!"
"Steve and I worked at the college together," Peggy said, stepping forward and trying to tune Steve out for a moment since it seemed James couldn't see him and she needed to explain her presence quickly. "I, well, I come by every now and then to see him." Pieces were clicking together inside her head. "Are you…Steve is your cousin who owns the apartment I'm renting, isn't he? I'm so sorry—I had no idea."
"He can't see me," Steve realized, his face falling.
"You…You knew Steve?" James asked, clearly not having expected that answer.
"Yes," Peggy said. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to intrude on…"
"No, no, it's fine," he said, waving a hand. "If you knew him, it…" He trailed off, his eyes going to the bed where Steve's body was. They were shining just a little bit when they came back to her. "Thank you," he said. "For coming to see him. I…I think that would mean a lot to him."
Peggy nodded, not sure of what else to say.
"You really can't see me?" Steve said sadly. He stepped forward and reached for his cousin's arm. His hand went right through. "Bucky, please," Steve said. "Please, come on! I'm here! I'm here, Bucky, please, look at me!"
This was all becoming quite a lot very quickly, and in any case, the decent thing to do seemed to be to allow James his visit in private. "I think I should be going," Peggy said. She realized she was still holding the photograph, and she stepped over to set it back by the painting. Not sure of why she was doing it other than because it simply seemed the thing to do, she reached over to the bed and picked up one of Steve's hands. "I'll see you later, Steve," she said, squeezing his fingers.
There was no reaction from Steve's body, but his spirit turned around and stared at her with wide eyes and an expression Peggy couldn't decipher.
She nodded to James, who gave her a grateful smile, then headed for the door. She wasn't terribly surprised when Steve didn't follow. She imagined he was going to continue trying to get his cousin's attention, or perhaps to get back into his body.
She supposed she could have gone back to campus and gotten some work done, but she found herself on the subway taking her back home instead. There was suddenly a lot for her think over.
The motions of making a cup of tea calmed her mind somewhat, and she wrapped her hands thoughtfully around the mug and went out to the balcony, leaning against the railing. She'd never imagined that Steve was the mysterious missing cousin whose apartment she was in, but in hindsight, it seemed to make sense. Why the place had his furniture in it, and his painting. Why he recognized people in the neighborhood, like the woman with the black dog and the man with the churro cart who walked in the park every day. If nothing else, she should have worked it out this morning when they'd learned he'd only been in the coma for nine months. She could only blame it on the fact that they'd been in a hurry to go and find his body. And hadn't James said his cousin was travelling? Peggy thought back over his words and realized he'd never actually said those particular words. He'd said his cousin had been gone for a while and he wasn't sure when he was coming home. Although, in fairness to her, why should she assume that had meant he was in a coma? Travelling was a much more likely explanation.
She took a long, thoughtful sip of her tea. More pieces of the puzzle of Steve's life were falling into place. It didn't seem to be doing them a lot of good, though. They'd found his body, and he couldn't return to it. They'd even found his family, but there had been no luck there either. If anyone should have been able to see him, Peggy would have thought his own relative would be a more likely candidate for it than her.
It was nearly sundown when Steve returned. It was getting chilly outside, and Peggy had just come back in when she saw him drift through the front door. "Hello, Steve," she said.
He looked up, and though his eyes were sad, he smiled at her. "Hi, Peggy."
"No luck, then?"
He shook his head.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"He couldn't even see me, Peggy," he said, dropping down onto the couch forlornly. "I thought maybe I could…" He shook his head. "He had no idea I was there."
"I'm sorry," Peggy said again, sitting down beside him. It had been a rather disappointing day, and that would be just another blow. "Were the two of you very close, then?"
He nodded. "Yeah. We were like brothers growing up. And then after my ma died…" He looked up at her, his eyes glistening. "He's the only family I've got, Peggy. And he doesn't even know I'm here."
His voice wavered just a little on this last statement, and Peggy wished she could reach over and take his hand.
"He's been coming to see me every day," he went on with a sad little smile. "Said he was surprised he hadn't run into you before, but that he was glad friends from work were coming to visit me." He swallowed down a knot in his throat. "He's reading me The Hobbit," he said softly. "It was my favorite book when I was a kid. I couldn't get him to see me or hear me, so I sat down and listened to him read. He does the voices and everything. Like when we were kids having a sleepover."
"Oh, Steve," Peggy said, reaching out for his shoulder before she could stop herself. Her hand passed right through and hit the back of the couch.
Steve looked up at her. "Before you left," he said, his voice a little steadier. "You touched my hand."
"Yes," Peggy said, remembering. She remembered the strange way he'd looked at her. "Was that not…Should I not have done that?"
"No, no, it was fine, it…Peggy, I felt it."
"You felt what?"
"When you touched my hand." He lifted his hand. "I felt it."
Peggy gaped at him. "You felt it? Like, you felt it?" She gestured at him, waving a hand up and down to encompass his spirit form.
He nodded. "Yeah. Just a little. But I did."
Peggy remembered reaching down to the body in the bed to brush his hair back, and the way he'd absently touched a hand to his forehead. "You must still be connected to your body somehow, if you can feel it when people touch you."
He shook his head. "No, not people. Just you."
"What?"
"I can't feel it when other people touch me. A nurse came in to change one of my IV's while I was there, and I didn't feel that. I didn't feel it when Bucky touched me either. Just you."
Peggy opened her mouth then closed it again, unsure of what to say. "Only me?" she repeated at last.
He nodded. "Only you."
She didn't know what to do with that information. Steve didn't seem to either.
"Well," she said at last. "I think tomorrow we should go back and see Mr. Phillips. Now that we know more about you and we know where your body is, maybe he'll have some ideas to get you back in it."
"You have classes all day tomorrow," Steve pointed out.
"No, I don't," Peggy said, picking up her phone. "I'm taking a sick day."
"Peggy, you don't have to—"
"Hush, I'm writing an email," she said. She hit 'send' and dropped the phone onto the couch. "Done. Too late now."
Steve huffed a laugh and shook his head. "Thank you. But it could have waited until Thursday. You really didn't have to do that for me."
"I know it could have waited," she said. "But I want to help."
He smiled. "Thank you."
He was still looking kind of wistful, so Peggy asked him to tell her more about James, and why he called him 'Bucky'. They sat up for a while talking, and he was smiling by the time Peggy went to bed.
The next morning, they made their way down to the Phillips' bookshop after breakfast. After listening to everything that had happened so far, Chester was quiet for a couple of minutes, then said, "Huh."
"Well, that's helpful," Steve said.
"Well," Chester sighed. "I'll admit, this is a new situation for me. I would have thought contact with the body would be enough to do it, but if not…" He was thoughtfully silent for another couple of minutes. "It might be that he's been out of his body so long, he's having trouble getting it to stick. Like I said earlier, the human spirit isn't really supposed to be living this way. It messes things up."
"Do you have any ideas for making it stick?" Peggy wondered.
"Let me check something," he said, and he rose from his chair and disappeared into another room. He came back with a dusty book in his hands. "Couple of these might be worth a shot," he said, scanning the page of contents. "You want me to go down with you and take a look?"
"That would be wonderful," Peggy said. "Thank you."
"Sure," he said. "Energy between you two seems to have calmed down, but I'm sure you're tired of being haunted. Let me just go tell Gwyneth I'm leaving."
He went down the stairs, leaving Peggy and Steve standing somewhat awkwardly in his living room.
"I hope you don't…" Peggy began, then shut her mouth. "I'm sorry. I just…I hope you don't think that's why I'm still helping you," she said.
"It's alright," Steve said. "I guess I have kind of overstayed my welcome. Once I started being able to stick around all the time, I should have asked—"
"No," Peggy cut him off. "I think you know me well enough by now to know I would have said something."
He huffed a laugh.
"I don't want to help you just so that you'll go away. Not anymore. I…Well, I care about what happens to you. I want to make sure you're alright."
He smiled at her warmly. "Thank you," he said. "I really…Thanks."
Phillips returned, and they went out the back of the shop and down to his car to drive to the hospital. Since Bucky seemed to make his visits in the afternoon, they had a bit of time. Phillips contemplated Steve's prone form for a long minute before sniffing thoughtfully. "He's taller than I would have thought." He shrugged. "Tell me what you've tried."
Steve explained the various ways he'd tried to reconnect with himself, and Peggy relayed them to Phillips. He nodded thoughtfully and asked a couple of questions. Then he flipped through the book he'd brought and tried a couple of things. To Peggy, whatever he was doing looked like he was simply standing there, but whatever the second thing was made Steve shiver. None of them put him back in his body, though. Phillips tried a couple more things, telling Steve where to stand or sit and what to do or concentrate on, but none of those produced any results either.
Phillips sat down to flip through the book with a glare. Peggy drifted closer to the bed, and, remembering what had happened yesterday, reached down and took Steve's hand in hers. He looked up from the painting at the window.
"You can feel that?" Peggy asked. He nodded and she squeezed his hand. "Did that feel any different?"
"Yeah," he said. He drifted closer and watched as she touched his other hand, his forehead and his arm, confirming each time that he could feel it. Curious, Peggy reached down and drew a quick finger along one of his feet. Though it was still under the blanket, Steve gasped and jumped. "Hey!" he exclaimed.
She grinned. "Ticklish, are you?"
"Apparently."
She felt Phillips's eyes on her, and she turned to see him looking up from his book. "Does it mean anything that he can feel it when I touch him?" she asked.
"Probably," Phillips said. "Just you?"
"It appears that way so far. Isn't that odd?"
He shook his head. "Considering you're the only one who can see him, no, not really. Why that is, I still have no idea. But let's try something else."
He had Peggy hold onto Steve's hand while Steve placed his hand over the top of them to see if he felt anything more that way, then had them stand like that as he tried one of those silent psychic things he did. No luck, nor was there any in any of the other configurations he had them try.
"Well," he huffed. "You sure are a difficult little fella, aren't you?" he said with a look in Steve's general direction. "Gonna have to call this a day."
"Is that it, then?" Peggy asked, hoping the answer was 'no'.
"No," he said. "I've been retired twenty years. I'm rusty. Going to have to dig deeper into the archives on this." He nodded and tucked his book up under his arm. For all his annoyance, Peggy rather got the feeling he was intrigued by the challenge. "Give me a week or so. Let me look into some things and make a few calls. You need a ride back anywhere?"
"No, that's alright," Peggy said. "Thank you for your help."
He nodded. "Let me know if anything changes."
Peggy looked back at Steve as Phillips left. "Are you alright?" she asked.
Steve nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I'm disappointed he couldn't come up with anything. But he's still looking, so, you know, that's good." His cheeks colored a little. "Sorry you had to waste a day off with nothing to show for it."
"I wouldn't call it a waste," Peggy said. "Learning what doesn't work is still progress."
Steve inclined his head in agreement.
"And I've got an afternoon free now," she added with a smile. "Would you like to go somewhere that's not work or the apartment?"
He smiled. "You know what? That sounds nice."
"Although," she paused, remembering. "If your cousin is coming back, you could stay and wait for him of course, if you'd rather."
"No," he said. "I…Right now, it'd be nice to be with someone who can see me."
Peggy smiled. "Where would you like to go?"
Steve chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully, then smiled. "Have you ever been to the New York Aquarium?"
"I can't say that I have."
"Oh, it's great!" he said with a grin. "It's down at Coney Island. You want to give it a try?"
"That sounds like a lovely idea," Peggy said. "Lead on."
After detouring by the hospital cafeteria for Peggy to grab a sandwich, they made their way to the subway and down to Coney Island. Peggy admitted that she'd never really been down here either, and Steve declared that they should come down for the fair another time.
"Preferably after I have a body," he said. "Although," he mused. "I'll bet you I wouldn't throw up on the Cyclone if I rode it like this."
At the aquarium, Steve drifted through the front gates, then hung a bit awkwardly off to the side while Peggy bought herself a ticket. "I guess I'm worse than a cheap date," Steve said with an embarrassed laugh. "I suggest the place and make you pay your own way in."
"You can buy me dinner somewhere later to make up for it," Peggy told him. "Where to first?"
They decided to start at the beginning and simply work their way through. It had been ages since Peggy had been to an aquarium, and her inner child was gleefully drawn from colorful display to colorful display. Delighted laughter came from a group of children at one of the 'touch and discover' displays, and Steve told her with a fond smile of many happy childhood summers that he and Bucky had come here for the educational day camps.
They wandered from tank to tank, looking at the fish, reading displays and studying dioramas of deep sea creatures. Steve pondered over the logistics of building a tank that could hold a giant squid, and they had an amusing debate about krakens and mermaids by the display that speculated which real sea creatures might have been the origins of oceanic mythology. Peggy's favorite part, however, was the giant, multi-story tank with a long tunnel where you could walk across the bottom of the tank. Fish swam beside and above them, while light sparkled down through the water and played off the rocks, coral, sand and seaweed.
"I always loved the tanks like this when I was small," Peggy said. "It felt like you were really under water, and I could imagine myself out there swimming with all the fish, like a mermaid or something."
"I always liked it too," Steve said, staring up as a stingray slid over the dome of the tunnel. "A whole different world I could imagine I was part of." The stingray passed by, and Steve studied the glass barrier thoughtfully. "Actually," he mused. "I wonder…"
He rested his hand against the glass, then let it pass through. He waved it up and down curiously in the water on the other side of the glass, then Peggy couldn't help but gasp when he stepped all the way through and into the tank. He stood curiously on one of the rocks at the bottom of the tank, then laughed as a school of shiny little blue fish swam right through him. The tank's resident shark rounded the corner and swam in his direction, and he jumped a little and hurried back out of the tank to stand next to Peggy. She laughed, though her heart rate had sped up some too as the shark approached. Incorporeal or not, most people weren't in the habit of relaxing when a shark appeared.
"You're just showing off now, aren't you?" Peggy said with a smile. She'd half expected him to be dripping wet when he emerged, but she supposed it wasn't surprising that he wasn't.
He blushed a little and smiled. "I just wondered if it would feel any different. It doesn't—even though I felt like I should be holding my breath. It was kind of cool, though."
They spent some more time in the tunnel beneath the tank, then slowly took in the rest of the place until the voice over the speakers announced they were closing.
"That was lovely," Peggy told him as they made their way home. She hadn't done something like that with a day off in ages, and she felt rather lighter than she had in a long time. "Thank you for sharing it with me."
He smiled back. "You're welcome. Thanks for coming. I had fun today."
"Me too," Peggy agreed. "We'll have to do something like this more often."
The rest of the week passed as normal. Peggy had her classes, and Steve followed her along to work. He always sat in on at least one class, but he would drift off and wander around campus for a good portion of the day. He even went down to the hospital on his own a few times, to see if he had any more luck getting back into his body, and to listen to Bucky read to him. On Saturday they went down and had lunch in the park, and on Sunday they took a train into Manhattan and Steve gave her a walking tour of some of the more interesting architecture. The next weekend she asked him if he would teach her how to paint—her grandmother used to make the most lovely water colors, and she'd always wanted to give it a try. The lesson itself was disastrous, firmly cementing Peggy's belief that she had not an artistic bone in her body, but they had fun and didn't make too much of a mess. Steve pointed out that that was why he didn't normally take students in his apartment, and Peggy had stuck her tongue out and retorted that at least water color was easy to clean up, and of the two of them, he was the one who'd spilled paint on the balcony.
It was the following Tuesday when Peggy had an unexpected surprise. She'd finished her early class, and though she'd been tempted to join Steve on his trek to the hospital, her grading was piling up, so she'd waved him off and promised to see him back at home, and settled down with a stack of papers and a pen. She'd made it about halfway through when there was a sharp, purposeful knock at the door. She looked up, but before she could say, 'Come in', the door was already opening, and she felt her mouth dropping open.
"Fred?!" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Peggy!" Her former fiancé entered with a smile. She'd forgotten what a nice smile he had. She hadn't seen it much before she'd gone. "There you are!" he said. "I've been looking all over for you. What a funny little maze of a place this building is."
"Yes, I suppose the corridors do take some getting used to," she allowed, getting to her feet. "What are you doing here?" He stepped forward and flung his arms around her, kissing her cheek. She pressed an automatic kiss to his cheek, then stepped back.
"Why, I came to look you up, of course," he said, not letting go of her arms. "You couldn't expect me to be in town and not come and see you."
"I didn't know you were in town," Peggy said. "And even if I had, I can't say I would have expected a visit after the way we left things."
"Yes, well," Fred replied, looking a bit uncomfortable. "One does say things one doesn't mean in the heat of the moment." Peggy wasn't sure if he was referring to what she had said or what he had, but she suspected that was as close to an apology as she was ever going to get. "As to why I'm in town, I'm here for a conference. As to why I'm in your office…" He gave her a charming, lopsided smile. "I've missed you, Peg."
Peggy opened her mouth, then closed it again. Politeness would suggest she say the same to him, but it wouldn't have been true.
He seemed to take her silence and awkward smile as agreement, and saved her the trouble of having to say anything by carrying on. "It's getting on to dinner time," he said. "Shall we go and have a bite? We've got a lot to catch up on."
"Have we?" Peggy said. She pulled her arm away from him to look down at her watch, and this time he let her go.
"Of course we have," he said. "It has been nearly a year, after all, and you've been over here having grand adventures in the New World." And there it was, that touch of condescension that was so often there whenever he brought up her work.
"I'm afraid I can't, Fred," she said. She gestured back at the stack of things to grade. "I've got a great deal of work to do."
He nodded. "Quite right, quite right. Students come first and all that." He smiled. "You were always the responsible one. Tomorrow, then?"
Peggy sighed. "Fred…Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"We didn't end things well, you and I," she said. "And it's clear that we want different things from life."
"It was rather a dramatic affair," Fred agreed. "But you've had some time—stretched your wings a bit—and, Peg, be reasonable. You can't honestly tell me you're happy here."
He reached for her hand, but Peggy pulled it back. "Can't I?"
He huffed a laugh. "In this little fourth-rate college? Peg, you were on track to be at Oxford. Still could be, in a couple of years, if you stop wasting time. Guest-lecturing in America is a bit exotic, but if you're gone for too long, they'll forget about you."
"I'm not guest-lecturing," Peggy snapped. "I have an actual job here. And I'll thank you not to be so dismissive of where I choose to work."
"Yes, alright," he said with a smile that was clearly humoring her. "You've done very well for yourself. But there's no need to keep up the fight when you've proved your point."
"And what point would that be?" Peggy demanded.
"I understand wanting to get out from under your father's shadow," he said, and it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say and was even a large part of the reason she'd made the move, but there was that hint of condescension again. Why did he make everything she did sound so childish?
"And you've proved you're your own woman," he went on. "Aren't you ready to come home now?"
"Perhaps I am home, Fred. Have you considered that?"
He huffed a laugh and shook his head. "Now you're just being stubborn."
"I'm really not," she said, taking a few more steps back and rounding her desk, putting it between them. She placed her hands on the desk and leaned forward. "I like it here, Fred. I like my job, I like my students, and I like the people I work with. I like the city, and I have friends and a life here, and I really don't intend to come back to London any time soon." She arched an eyebrow. "Have you really spent this past year thinking I would come back? I thought I made myself rather clear when I left."
The charming smile fell away, and there was that scowl that colored so many of Peggy's last memories of their relationship. "You can't be serious, Peg."
"I can," she said. "And I've never liked it when you call me Peg. I've told you that."
He brushed that aside. "You honestly like it here?" he demanded. "Here in this, this cut-rate little school in a city full of boorish Americans?"
"The only one I see being boorish here is you."
"Rubbish!" he said, ignoring her again and continuing his point. A spark lit in his eyes. "Of course. You've met someone, haven't you? That's why you don't want to leave."
"Even if I have, it's hardly any of your business," she snapped. "And that was always your trouble, Fred—assuming my life revolved around the men in it instead of having anything worthwhile of its own."
"So there is someone!" he crowed.
"No, there isn't!" she shot back. "And it shouldn't trouble you if there was. After all, as you so kindly pointed out a year ago, any man in my life would have to play second fiddle to Literature. And Mary Shelley does keep me a great deal warmer at night than you ever did."
Fred's face turned a very interesting shade of red, and his lips quivered as though he were about to spit out something frightfully insulting. But he nodded sharply, spun on his heel and left without a word, slamming her door hard enough that it bounced open again and knocking the picture hanging next to it askew.
Peggy packed up and headed for home—she had more to grade, but she knew from experience that her red pen was a great deal harsher when she was out of sorts. It wasn't her students' fault that Fred was such a cretin.
She stopped to get dinner on her way home, and it wasn't until she was clearing it away afterwards that Steve poked his head into the kitchen. "Oh, there you are," she said. "Have you been at the hospital all this time?"
"No," she said, shaking his head. "I was in the back. You looked like you needed some space."
She arched a questioning eyebrow.
"You just ate an entire supreme pizza at a slightly alarming speed," he pointed out, looking a little embarrassed to have brought it up. I've only ever seen you do that when you look like you'd much rather put your fist through a wall."
"Oh." She felt her cheeks going red.
"Oh, no, I'm sorry! Don't feel bad about it!" he said. "I do the same thing with a box of frozen waffles."
Peggy couldn't help a small laugh. "You rage-eat frozen waffles?"
"I do," Steve said. He smiled. "Do you still need some space? I can leave again. I just wanted to check on you."
Peggy's smile widened. "That's…" That was very sweet, actually. "Thank you. But I think I've burned through some of it now and would prefer some company. If you're up for it, of course."
"Always," he said with a grin. He hopped up to sit on the counter opposite the sink and swung his feet back and forth as she tidied up the dishes. "You want to talk about it?"
"At the moment, no," she said. Talking about Fred right now would just set her off again. "How was your visit to the hospital today?"
"Well, no luck getting back into my body," he said, raising a hand and swiping it through the microwave in demonstration. "But it was nice to sit there and listen to Bucky read to me." He smiled softly, a far away sort of smile as some sort of memory passed across his eyes. Then he shook his head and looked back up at her. "I was thinking about the book while I was heading home, and then I remembered what you said in your Writing Women of the 20th Century class the other day about Diana Wynn Jones showing up in Tolkien's lecture courses when he wanted to stop teaching and go back to writing." He chuckled. "And, you know, I saw the movie Howl's Moving Castle, but I've never read it, or any of her books. Are there any you recommend?"
"Oh," she said, feeling a bit taken aback, though she wasn't sure why. She supposed her headspace was still occupied with Fred, who had never been to any of her classes and who had pretended to read half of a book she'd recommended to him once. At first she'd wondered if Steve's interest in her classes and research stemmed from the boredom of not having a body and being able to do very little on his own, but the longer he'd been around, the more she'd realized he was simply like that. He was interested in the things she did, and more than that, he listened well enough to actually have a conversation about them. He'd been like that as long as she'd known him (well, after that first week or so where they'd been determined to run one another out of the apartment), but it felt like a breath of fresh air now after her encounter with Fred and the memories that had dredged up, and a wave of fondness swelled up in her chest.
"What is it?" he asked, and she realized she was just standing there looking at him without saying anything.
"Sorry," she said. "Got lost in thought for a moment. Actually, there a few I would recommend, though the only one I have handy is Howl's Moving Castle on an audio book. I could put that one on for you tonight, if you'd like?"
"That'd be great," he said with a smile. "Thanks."
They talked a little bit more about her classes, Steve told her about the dog that had gotten loose on the train and the ensuing comedy of errors, and they argued good-naturedly over whether or not to watch a rerun of Friends or give the new renovation show where they were building a hotel on an island a try. Throughout the whole thing, Peggy still felt this slight undercurrent of tension, and it took her a little while to realize that it was because she was waiting for Steve to turn the conversation around to where he could figure out what she was upset about. Fred used to do that. He was never capable of leaving a thing be, even if it had nothing to do with him, until he knew all about it.
She looked over at Steve during a commercial break. "Don't you want to know what got me so angry earlier?"
"Sure," he said, turning a little so he was facing her more. "But you didn't want to talk about it, so…" He shrugged and smiled a little. "I wasn't going to make you."
He really meant that, and Peggy smiled back. "Thank you," she said. "It's not that I don't…I find you a very reassuring person to talk things out with."
He smiled.
"But I don't have the mental energy for it right now," she went on.
"Sure," he said again. He smiled at her kindly. "You don't have to explain how you're feeling to me. I asked because I noticed and I wanted to make sure you were alright, but if you never feel like telling me, the curiosity isn't going to kill me. And if you do feel like telling me, you know, I'm around. Whenever you want to talk."
She smiled warmly, and there was that wave of fondness again. "Thank you," she said again. "You're a very good friend, Steve. Clearly, we could have met under better circumstances," she said, reaching over and passing a hand through his shoulder. "But I'm glad that we did."
He smiled at her softly. "I am too."
Had he had an actual body, Peggy would have liked very much to scoot over and lean her head on his shoulder, or perhaps give his hand a squeeze, but as it was she just smiled back and nodded, and after a moment they returned their attention to the crisis of electrical engineering taking place on the island hotel.
The rest of the week passed on much as usual. Mr. Phillips had called up with a couple of ideas for them to try, and had even joined them at the hospital Thursday evening, but to no avail. He seemed thoroughly annoyed that it didn't work, but Peggy was getting to know him well enough by now to know that he was really just thoroughly annoyed about everything in general. For all his complaining about being retired from this spiritual business, he seemed to be enjoying the challenge.
"If he got knocked out of his body somehow, we can knock him back in," he'd said several times. He suspected that the fact that Steve could feel it when Peggy touched him was significant, but the how was escaping him. After their Thursday night attempt had failed, he drove Peggy and Steve back home and spent the whole ride asking Peggy questions about herself, trying to figure out if it was something about her in particular that would do it. He seemed to think that if she could 'really touch him', they could get somewhere, but none of them, including him, were entirely sure what that meant on the physical plane.
Saturday morning, to Peggy's surprise, Steve wasn't in the apartment when she woke up. That was a bit odd, but perhaps he'd gone for a walk. He did that sometimes at night when the city was quiet. Perhaps he'd gone a bit further today, or gone to visit himself in the hospital. She spent the morning grading things, and by lunch time the silence was starting to get to her. Not to say that Steve was loud or disruptive, but it was a bit of a shock to realize she'd gotten that accustomed to having someone else around.
It wasn't until she'd finished with lunch that he came back. She'd just finished with her dishes—she'd gotten in the habit of doing them after she ate out of consideration for Steve because the dirty dishes bothered him so much—and saw him standing in the living room as she came out of the kitchen. "There you are!" she said with a smile. "I was wondering where you'd got to."
He was looking out the window, and he turned to look at her slowly. He wasn't smiling back.
"Is something wrong?" she wondered.
"I…don't know," he said thoughtfully.
"What do you mean?"
"What time is it?" he asked.
"About one o'clock."
He frowned. "It was dark."
"What was dark?"
He waved at the window. "It was night. And now…Now it's one in the afternoon."
"Yes," Peggy said slowly, not sure what was going on.
"I didn't go anywhere," he said. "I was in here, and I just…stopped."
Peggy considered for a moment, then her eyes widened. "You mean you faded out? Like you were back at the beginning?"
He nodded. "I think so."
Something cold twisted in Peggy's stomach. "That shouldn't be happening."
"No," he said, shaking his head.
"How do you feel now?" she wondered. He was supposed to be settled in his spirit form by now, but maybe, maybe it was a fluke of some type. She was hardly an expert on spirits, after all. Maybe this was something that happened.
"I don't know," Steve said. "Not…Not too different, I think." He put a hand to his stomach. "I sort of feel like if I was in my body, I would be nauseous, but that might just be because I'm a little freaked out."
"I think we should go and see Mr. Phillips."
"I don't know," Steve said. "Maybe it's just a fluke."
"Maybe," Peggy said. "But I still think we should check. I would feel better," she added. She would feel better, checking on it, but she also knew that Steve hated to be a bother (when he wasn't trying to haunt anyone, anyway), and that framing it that way would make him more inclined to come.
"Okay," he said. He followed her down to the street, and seemed to come back to himself a little more as they walked. He asked about her morning and even teased her a little that she must not have gotten to grading Harrison's paper yet, as her hair was still tied up neatly in a ponytail. (Harrison had an…interesting way of looking at things, and Peggy often wound up running her hands back through her hair in bemused frustration as she worked through his writings.)
Phillips seemed as surprised by the revelation that Steve had faded out again as Peggy had been, and equally as bothered by it. "You're right," he agreed. "That shouldn't be happening." He looked more or less in Steve's direction. "And you don't know where you go when that happens?"
"No," Steve replied. "I don't feel like I go anywhere, just that I…stop."
Peggy relayed this answer, and Phillips frowned into his tea. He ate his way pensively through two biscuits before he said anything.
"Okay," he said at last. "Go down to the hospital and check on his body. It might be that he's getting pulled back in and it's slow like settling outside of it was. Or it might be that he's getting worse."
Steve looked up at the older man in alarm. "What do you mean, 'getting worse'?" Peggy asked.
"Either that his body's getting worse and it's affecting his spirit, or that he's just been outside his body too long and he's starting to deteriorate."
Steve looked even more alarmed than before at this prospect. Peggy wasn't feeling exactly well herself. "Shouldn't you come too, then?" she wondered. "Since you know what to look for."
"I have no idea what to look for," he said with a snort. "But you go down there and do two things. See if his body's getting worse or not. That way we'll have a little better idea of what we're working with. Then try some of the stuff we've been doing to see if he can get back in his body. If he's getting pulled back in, it might make it easier to get back in on purpose." He put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself up. "I'm going to go uptown and see a guy I used to work with. He's got some books on the weirder stuff."
The plan thus established, they set to their tasks. It was a quiet ride to the hospital. Until they knew any better, Peggy saw no reason not to be hopeful that this was a sign his body was trying to pull him back into it, but the mind did tend to wander into the what-ifs of the negative. What if something was going wrong with Steve's body? What if he was…dying? What would happen to his spirit then—a spirit that had already been cut loose from its home?
Some discreet inquiries at the hospital made it sound as though Steve was in the same condition as always. Not being family, Peggy couldn't pry too deeply. Feeling slightly emboldened, they proceeded to try getting him back into his body again, going through every exercise Phillips had shown them. No luck.
"It feels different," Steve said on their way home.
"What does?" Peggy wondered.
He held up his hand. "When you touched me. I can still feel it, but it feels a little farther away."
That cold knot was back in Peggy's stomach again. That couldn't be a good sign. She didn't know what to say, though.
Steve faded out again as Peggy was getting ready for bed. She saw him this time—he quickly grew more and more transparent and then vanished entirely. She couldn't go to bed wondering, and so she sat up and waited. He faded back into existence a couple of hours later, in the same spot he'd gone.
"Are you alright?" she asked, jumping up off the couch.
He blinked several times, looking as though he'd just woken up and was clearing the sleep from his head. "I think so," he said after a minute. "That was weird."
She stepped over closer to him. "Do you know where you went this time?"
He shook his head. "No. I could feel myself going, and I tried to pay attention, but I just…It was just…nothing." He swallowed and looked up, meeting her eyes. His own were shining blue. "Peggy, I…I'm scared," he said softly.
She ached to throw her arms around him and hug him and tell him it would be alright. "I am too," she said. She sat back down on the couch and patted the space next to her. "Come sit with me."
He did.
"We're going to figure this out," she said, reaching over and resting her hand inside of his since she couldn't hold it. "I promise."
He smiled. "Big kind of promise."
She smiled back. "And I don't make it lightly. In something of a plot twist from when this whole thing started, I very much enjoy having you around, and I, well, I don't intend to lose you now."
He smiled at her, looking slightly awed. "Thanks," he whispered.
"As I'm not sure what else to do about it at this hour of the night," she said, scooting a little closer to him. "Let's just talk. I think we're both feeling rattled by this. Let's do something normal. We'll go back and see Mr. Phillips in the morning."
Steve nodded.
"Right," she said with a nod, feeling a bit better for having a plan. "Tell me more about the time you and Bucky had to ride back from Coney Island in the back of a freezer truck."
They talked all night, trading childhood memories back and forth. Peggy drifted off a little bit before dawn, and came awake to find Steve leaning against the back of the couch, turned to watch her with a smile. "Morning," he said softly.
"Good morning," she said. She sat up and stretched. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to fall asleep on you."
"It's alright," he said. He smiled fondly. "You know your nose twitches when you're waking up? It's really cute."
She blushed a little, but couldn't help smiling back.
"When I could tell you were going to wake up, I thought about making you tea," he went on. "I thought it would be nice to wake up to a nice warm cup of tea." His smile turned wistful. "If I'm ever able to pick anything up again, I'm going to make tea for you. I always did make a good cup of tea."
Peggy smiled. "I'll hold you to that." She got up off the couch. "Let me just go get dressed, and we'll go down and see Mr. Phillips."
"It's a little early," Steve said.
"It's important," Peggy retorted.
She intended to go down to the bookshop as soon as she was dressed, but it ended up being a more reasonable hour when they went because Steve faded out again. It took him a few hours to come back. Peggy didn't think the fact that his vanishings were coming so close together was a good sign, and she got even more worried as they descended the stairs and he asked her a question.
"Peggy…" he began slowly. "I…Did I ever tell you my mother's name?"
"You did," she said, wondering where this was going.
He swallowed hard. "What is it?" he asked. "I can't remember." His voice was almost a whisper.
Peggy had to swallow a couple of times before her own voice was steady. "Sarah," she told him. "Sarah Rogers."
"Thanks," he whispered. He was silent for the rest of the walk.
At the shop, Peggy told Phillips everything that had happened. They then spent several minutes with her acting as a translator for Steve, as Phillips questioned him in detail on what it had felt like, what he had seen, and what he could remember. At last, he sat back in his armchair with a grave sigh.
"This isn't good," he said.
Steve swallowed hard, but gave a determined nod. Peggy sat up a littler straighter. "Tell us."
"Like I said at the beginning, the human spirit isn't meant to live like this. He settled and adjusted for a while, because even though it's not supposed to live this way, the human spirit is a resilient thing. But it's gone on too long and he's wearing down." Phillips sighed heavily. "If he doesn't get back into his body soon—and I'm talking a couple of days here at the rate he seems to be going—he's going to fade all the way out and not come back. And his body won't be far behind him."
"This is killing him?"
Phillips nodded. "It is."
"What can I expect?" Steve asked quietly.
Peggy relayed the question.
Phillips sighed again. "More fading. More forgetting. There might not be much of you left by the time you fade out for good." He looked genuinely remorseful as he said this, though he cast an angry glance at the pile of books that seemed to have failed him.
There didn't seem to be much more to say, and they thanked him and headed back out into the street somberly. Peggy was about to suggest they return to the hospital, seeing as they were running out of time, but Steve spoke first.
"Can we go see Bucky?" he asked.
"What?"
He smiled. "I figure you were about to say we should try the hospital again, and I'm up for giving it another shot, but…" His smile turned sad. "My odds don't look good, and I'd like to see Bucky before I forget who he is. There's some stuff I should say."
A painful sort of knot twisted in Peggy's chest, but she nodded. "Alright."
"I'm sorry—you're going to have to do all the talking, and it might not work and he'll think you're nuts, but—"
"It's alright," she assured him. It would be strange, but if there was a chance it would work, Steve deserved to have that much. "I'll do it for you."
His eyes watered a little bit, and he smiled in thanks. She had no idea where Bucky lived, but Steve knew the way, and they were soon standing at the door of his apartment. Peggy gathered her courage and knocked.
It took long enough for the door to open that she was just raising her hand to knock again. She nearly gasped when it did—she'd only ever seen Bucky as Mr. Barnes, her landlord, and he was always composed and professional. The man who greeted her when he opened the door was the complete opposite—he looked dreadful.
"Bucky!" Steve gasped, looking worried.
"Mr. Barnes?" she asked. "Are you alright?" Perhaps he was ill. He looked pale and shaky and miserable.
"Miss Carter?" he asked. He pulled himself up a little straighter, running a hand back over his hair in an attempt to smooth it down and pull himself together. "Um, are you…" he began, clearly wondering what she was doing here. "Is there something wrong with the apartment?"
"No," she started, trying to figure out how to tell him what she needed to say.
"Then I'm afraid this isn't a good time," he said, putting a hand to the door to close it. "I'm sorry."
"It's about Steve," she said quickly.
He froze. "Steve?"
She nodded. "It's terribly important."
He looked her up and down curiously. "Alright." He pulled the door back and open and stepped back to let her in. "Come in."
He offered her a drink of water, which she accepted as she tried to work out what to say.
"You're not going to tell me that you and Steve were secretly dating and you're having his kid or something, are you?" he asked.
"What? No!" she said as Steve let out a surprised bark of laughter.
"Right. Sorry. I just…You made it sound really dramatic. That was what came to mind."
"Well," Peggy said. "To be honest, it sounds less dramatic than what I'm going to say."
He arched an eyebrow. "Which is?"
"Steve is alive," she said. "I mean, he's—of course he's alive, you know that—but I mean he's…he's here." She pointed to him. "His spirit is here. His body is in the hospital, but his spirit isn't in it. He's been here ever since I moved into his apartment."
Something very hard came over Bucky's face. "I think you need to leave," he said coldly.
Peggy realized she sounded mad, and no doubt from where Bucky was standing she had probably crossed a line, but she couldn't stop now.
"He calls you Bucky," she said quickly. "You've been like a brother to him since you were children. You used to go to educational camps together at the New York Aquarium. His mother died when he was eighteen and you stayed in his apartment with him for three weeks, and for the first week you slept on the sofa cushions on the floor next to his bed even though he kept telling you there was a perfectly good bed in the room next door." She smiled as she remembered how softly Steve had smiled when he had relayed the memory. "Even though he complained about you doing it, he said it meant the world to him and it kept the nightmares from getting so bad, having you there."
Bucky froze in place. "How do you…" he began. "How do you know that?"
"He told me," Peggy said.
"Okay, but you worked together; he could have told you all that then, I—"
"We never worked together," Peggy admitted. "I do work at Brooklyn College, but I didn't start until after he'd had his accident. I've only ever known him as a spirit."
Suspicion etched its way across Bucky's brow, and Peggy turned to Steve. He needed to tell her something personal, something she shouldn't know.
"He had his first kiss when he was fourteen," Steve told her.
Peggy repeated the information. "Her name was Vicki Marlowe," she went on, relaying each sentence as Steve said it. "You were the first one of the two of you to kiss a girl, and Steve made you tell him all about it. She had red hair and green eyes, and the two of you bumped your noses together several times before you worked the angles out. When you get drunk, you still like to wax poetic about how soft her lips were and how good she smelled."
Bucky's mouth dropped open.
Steve kept talking, and Peggy kept repeating. "Six days ago, in the hospital," she said. "You told him you'd been thinking about Tiger, that kitten you found when you were nine. You remembered how sick he was, and how the two of you took him home from the alley and tried to nurse him back to health. You sat up with him all night, and he didn't make it, and it was the first time you'd seen anything die. You cried, and Steve held on to you, and you…" She had to stop to swallow down a knot in her throat as Steve continued to relay the story. "You cried there in the hospital and you said you wished Steve was there to hold on to you now. Because you thought it broke your heart when the kitten you'd known for a day died, but to lose the brother you'd known all your life…" Steve's voice was wavering now, and Peggy's was too. "You asked him to wake up and hold on to you and tell you it was going to be okay."
Tears were pooling in Bucky's eyes, but the anger and suspicion there had completely drained away. He looked to Peggy's left, where she'd pointed when she'd said Steve's name. "Steve?" he whispered.
"I'm here, Buck," Steve said, stepping forward and holding out a hand as if he wanted to rest it on his arm.
"He's here," Peggy repeated.
Bucky took a step back and staggered and probably would have hit the floor if he hadn't run into the fridge. He gaped wordlessly for a moment, then finally managed to stammer, "how?"
"I don't know," Peggy said. "Only that he's here, and he's been here, and I'm the only one who seems to be able to see or hear him."
"Why you?" Bucky wondered, his eyebrows furrowing quizzically.
"I don't know," Peggy said again. It was quiet for a minute as Bucky absorbed this information. "We've been trying to get him back into his body," she started, but Bucky stiffened and stood up straighter.
"His body…" he repeated. That look that he'd had when he first opened the door came back over his face.
"Buck, what is it?" Steve asked.
"What's wrong?" Peggy said at the same time.
"His body," Bucky said again. He gestured at the cell phone on the counter by the sink. "Right…Right before you got here, the hospital called. They said Steve was, that he was…" He closed his eyes and bit his lip, drawing in a breath. "They said he was dying," he said softly. "He's been…getting worse for a little while, and they said things took a bad turn last night and…" He looked up at the ceiling, as if the strength he needed would be up there. "They've got him on life support. But they said even with that, he doesn't have more than a few days." He looked back down at her sadly. "I'm supposed to go down there this afternoon so the doctor can give me the spiel about whether or not we should…we should…"
"They want you to take him off life support," Peggy realized.
Bucky nodded. It was no wonder he'd looked so awful when he'd opened the door, if he'd just gotten a call like that.
"Buck," Steve sighed. "I'm so sorry, I—" His eyes went wide. "No. No, I'm going again!"
He was looking a little more transparent. This couldn't be it, could it? They were supposed to have a few more days! "Steve!" Peggy exclaimed, reaching out for him though she didn't know what that would do.
"It feels like before," he said, rapidly losing opaqueness. "I'm just fading; I'll be back. I swear I'll be—"
He was gone.
"Steve!" she said again.
"What?" Bucky asked, unable to see anything but knowing something was wrong. "What happened?"
"He faded out again," Peggy said.
"That sounds bad. What does that mean?"
Figuring they had a couple of hours until Steve came back, Peggy took a seat on one of the barstools. She started explaining everything that had happened from the beginning, since the first time Steve had appeared in the apartment in front of her in the middle of the night.
Bucky was shaking his head by the time she was done. "Wow," he breathed. "That's just…" He looked up from the orange peel he'd been shredding into smaller and smaller pieces while she talked. "That's insane, is what it is."
"But you believe me?" Peggy asked.
"Yeah," he said. "It's nuts, but…yeah." He looked around the room uncertainly. "Is he back yet?"
"No," Peggy said. "She looked down at her watch. "It's been a couple of hours now, though. Hopefully he will be soon."
"I'm here," Steve said from behind her.
She whirled around. "Are you alright?"
He nodded. "I guess. I feel like I want to throw up." He looked around. "This isn't our apartment."
"No," Peggy said slowly. "This is Bucky's apartment. Do you not recognize it?"
Steve shook his head slowly. "No," he said quietly.
Bucky, having deduced that Steve was back but only hearing half of the conversation, was looking incredibly alarmed. "What's wrong? Does he…Does he not remember me?"
"No," Steve said. "I remember you," he said. Bucky looked marginally relieved when Peggy relayed this to him. "There was something I was going to tell you…" He trailed off, thinking.
Peggy didn't want to rush him or worry Bucky further, but she couldn't help chewing on her lip nervously. Her heart ached at how quickly he seemed to be deteriorating. If he was going to die, it seemed unnecessarily cruel to pick him to pieces first.
Steve looked up at Peggy, having remembered what he'd been meaning to say. "Will you tell him I love him? He's always been there for me my whole life, and I never told him that. I wanted him to know."
Peggy had to swallow down a catch in her throat before she could repeat the message.
Moisture shone in Bucky's eyes. "I know," he assured Steve. "Don't worry." He reached a hand towards where Steve was standing, then dropped it, smiling sadly. "I'd give you a hug if I could see you. I love you too, Stevie."
Peggy cleared her throat. "Well, perhaps you'll still get a chance." She turned to Steve. "We may be running short of time, but I'm willing to keep trying until the last possible second to get you back into your body. Are you up for it?" She was willing to fight, but if Steve was tired and wanted to spend his last hours in peace, she would respect that.
Steve smiled. "Let's do it." The smile turned a little rueful. "Though I don't remember everything the guy, um, Mr. Phillips showed us. You'll have to remind me."
"I can do that." She turned to Bucky. "Let's go to the hospital."
Since time was growing ever more valuable, Bucky took them in his car instead of them taking the subway. Peggy called Phillips and asked him to meet them there. In the hospital, Bucky sent them on into the room to get started while he had a brief word with the doctor. (Or rather, eight brief words, to be precise, those words being, "We are not taking him off life support!") Peggy couldn't quite get rid of the tight feeling in her chest when she saw Steve. There was more equipment around the bed now, with wires and leads everywhere, and a series of straps across his face holding the nasal endotracheal tube in place to help him breathe.
She heard Steve exhale softly beside her. "I really am dying," he whispered.
Peggy drew in a deep breath and pulled herself up a little straighter. "Well, you aren't dead yet."
Several hours passed as they tried everything they could think of—rituals and exercises they had done before, and new ones Phillips tried out of the stack of books he had brought. Though the visiting hours had been lifted for them, considering Steve's condition, the extra time seemed to be doing no good. The longer it went on, the more nervous Peggy got, worried that Steve would fade out again and they would have to wait for him to come back. She didn't think they could carry on trying to put him in his body if he wasn't there.
"Why isn't anything working?" Bucky growled. Sunset was approaching, and they had gotten no closer to success. He glared at Phillips. "You're supposed to be the psychic here; can't you do something?"
"What do you think I've been doing all this time?" Phillips snapped back. "Having a picnic?"
Steve was sitting over to the side, staring contemplatively down at his unmoving body. He looked exhausted. "Are you alright?" Peggy asked him.
He shook his head. "I don't feel so good," he said.
"Steve, I'm so sorry," she said, struggling to get the words out over the knot in her throat. There had been very in her life she had ever truly failed at, but she was failing him now. She'd honestly thought she could save him.
"It's alright," he said. "Not your fault." He looked up at her, and his eyes were shining, but he was smiling. "It's a weird way to go, but…But it gave me some extra time, and I…I'm glad I got to spend that time with you." He reached over and brushed his hand through hers. "You're really something, Peggy Carter."
"You're not so bad yourself," she replied, smiling back at him. She reached up to the bed and took his hand and squeezed it. "I guess I'll never know why, but thank you for haunting me."
He chuckled softly, then lifted his spirit hand up to rest where she was still holding his physical hand. "I can almost feel that," he said. "Really feel it, I mean." He sighed. "There are a lot of things I would have liked to have felt again before I leave." He looked back up at her. "I would've…It would have been nice if I'd been able to kiss you."
Peggy felt tears spring to her eyes, and she blinked them away. "Yes," she agreed softly. She squeezed his hand again. "It would have."
Something started fidgeting in the back of her mind, but before she could give it a proper look, Steve gasped and stepped back, clutching his stomach. "Steve what's wrong?" she cried.
"What is it?" Phillips demanded at the same instant, cutting off his argument with Bucky abruptly. He may not have been able to see or hear Steve, but however it was he sensed these things, he'd felt that.
"That felt different," Steve said. "And not in a good way."
"No, no, no, no…" Bucky said, stepping closer to the bed. He couldn't see what was happening with Steve, but his eyes were on the machines. Peggy didn't know what the numbers meant, but Bucky spent a lot more time in here than she did. He could read them, and they were changing. "No," he said again. He looked down at the bed. "This is it. He's going, he's…"
"He's right," Steve whispered. He was fading again, more slowly this time, but steadily. "It's different this time; I can tell. I'm not coming back from this one."
"No!" Bucky exclaimed. He whirled around, his eyes pleading with Peggy and with Phillips. "Do something! Please!"
"I don't know what else we can do—" Phillips started.
"Shut up!" Peggy snapped. Whatever it was that had been fidgeting in her head had been getting stronger, but they were talking so loud and Steve was fading away—his feet had disappeared now—and she just needed to think! She was so close! Something Phillips had said earlier, something Steve had said just now…
"If I could really touch him…" she breathed.
It came to her in a flash, and before she could overthink it or Steve could disappear any more, she leaned down to the bed and grabbed his face in her hands. It was awkward with all the bits of straps and tubing, but his mouth was mostly free, and Peggy planted her lips on his as best she could and kissed him for all she was worth.
The room was dead silent when she stood up. All three men were staring at her with wide eyes. "You kissed me," Steve whispered, so transparent that he was little more than an outline. Then he disappeared completely.
"No!" she cried. "No! Steve?" It didn't work, it should have worked, why didn't it…
A weak cough sounded from the bed.
They all looked down. Steve was lying utterly still. Then he shifted his head and coughed again.
"Steve?" Bucky asked hopefully, stepping forward and resting a hand on his forehead.
Steve coughed again, then slowly, so slowly it was agonizing to watch, his eyes blinked open. His mouth moved, and though no sound came out, his lips formed what looked an awful lot like, "Buck?"
A watery laugh escaped Bucky's throat. "Steve! You're awake!"
"S'goin' on?" he croaked.
Bucky laughed again, unable to speak, and Peggy finally remembered how to breathe and speak herself. "You're alive," she breathed. "Really alive."
She reached out to take his hand again, but Steve pulled it away, uncertainty in his eyes. Peggy stopped.
"Who are you?" Steve asked.
Peggy forgot how to speak again.
"That's Peggy," Bucky told him, looking down at him with concern. He sat down on the edge of the bed and put a hand over Steve's shoulders. "You don't remember Peggy?"
"No," Steve said softly, leaning a little closer into his cousin's side, still watching Peggy as he did so. Peggy still couldn't speak, but she managed to swallow. She hadn't thought one word could hurt so much.
"What's happening?" Steve asked. He looked back up at Bucky. "Where are we?"
"We're in the hospital, Stevie," Bucky said. "There was an accident. Do you remember?"
Steve rubbed a hand across his forehead, looking very small and lost. "I don't know. I remember…something hurting. Some bright lights, maybe? I was just walking, I…how did I get here?"
Peggy felt a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't we go find a doctor?" Phillips said gently. He steered her out into the hallway, and Peggy was grateful for the steady hand on her shoulder and for the fact that he did not seem to expect her to talk. She stood there next to him as he talked to the doctor, then followed them back into the room, feeling a little better for moving around. As shock as was fading, she was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Steve was alive, but he didn't remember her. That wasn't right. He was alive and back in his body—he was supposed to be better.
More doctors were called in, and they examined Steve and asked him questions, and Peggy and Phillips stood back in the corner out of the way. He kept his hand on her shoulder.
It might have been hours or minutes later that Bucky approached them. Steve was being settled back into the pillows by one of the doctors, looking sleepy and less confused, but still lost.
"How is he?" Peggy heard herself asking.
"He's going to be okay," Bucky said. He smiled. "The docs have idea how, and I didn't figure I should tell them, but they said he's going to be alright now." He nodded back in Steve's direction. "He's a little fuzzy about the accident still, but they said that's pretty normal. Seems like the rest of his memories are alright."
"Does he remember me?"
Bucky's smile faded and he shook his head. "No. But listen," he said, reaching over and taking her hand. "Come back in the morning, okay? He's still shook up, but he should have had some time to settle by then."
"I…" What if he didn't remember? What if it was too jarring, being thrown between planes of existence like that? She didn't want to get her hopes up and then come back and have them dashed again. "I don't want to intrude." If Steve really didn't remember her, she didn't want to be barging in on his recovery and making him even more uncomfortable.
"You won't be," Bucky said, not letting go of her hand. "Listen, if he doesn't remember, then I'll tell him. You saved his life, and he deserves to know. And…" He huffed a laugh. "I don't know what it says about you two that you kissing him brought him back to life, but…Please come back tomorrow."
Peggy nodded. "Alright," she said softly.
Bucky nodded back, then to her surprise, he pulled her forward into a fierce hug. "Thank you," he said in her ear, his voice rough with emotion. "Thank you. I can't…" He pulled back, his hands still on her shoulders. Grateful tears were swimming in his stormy blue eyes, and Peggy hadn't realized before how very like Steve's they were. "Thank you," he said again. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then squeezed her shoulders warmly. He nodded and turned to walk back to Steve's bed, and Phillips put a hand on her shoulder again and steered her toward the door.
"Come on," he said. "I'll give you a ride."
The ride back was mostly silent, save for Peggy pointing out a turn here and there. He pulled to a stop in front of her apartment building, looking over at her as she moved to open the door. "One of the things about being able to do what I can do," he began. "Is that I'm pretty good at feeling what other people are feeling. Whether I want to or not. Gwyneth says that's what makes me so ornery," he said with a small chuckle, and Peggy found herself smiling. "And it turns out, a person not being in their body doesn't stop me from feeling those things. Since the first time you came into my shop, I could tell things changed between the two of you. For both of you. And now…Well, he needed time to get used to being out of his body before he got his head on straight. Give him a little time to get used to being back in it again before you go giving up."
Peggy smiled. "Thank you. For everything, really."
He nodded. "Anytime."
Peggy got out of the car, walking up the steps and turning to wave to where he was waiting until she got inside. It was a long journey up the stairs all the way to the top, but she was so wrapped up in her thoughts, it didn't seem to take any time at all. She knew Steve wasn't going to be in there, but it felt odd all the same stepping into an empty apartment.
She flicked on a light and sat down on the couch. After a moment, she pulled out her phone—whether or not she went back to the hospital tomorrow, she certainly didn't think she was in a state of mind to go back to work. The email sent, she swiped idly through her notifications, smiling at the note saying since she'd listened to Howl's Moving Castle, perhaps she would enjoy something from the suggested list of audiobooks next. Steve had said he'd liked it, but they hadn't gotten a chance to talk about it yet. She wondered what he'd thought of it.
Her stomach took that moment to remind her that she hadn't eaten all day, so she dragged herself to the kitchen and fixed a plate of leftovers. She sat down to eat, leaning into one hand and getting lost in thought again as she did so. It had hurt, Steve not recognizing her, and until he hadn't, she hadn't realized just how much it would. It had cut her to the core, and it shouldn't have hurt that much, no matter good of a friend he was. But who was she kidding? He'd been more than a friend to her for a long time now. She'd never really let herself think it, because he was just a spirit, so what was the point? They weren't exactly compatible. In the end, the only one she'd been fooling was herself. And Steve…
Well, there had been something there on his end as well, hadn't there? He'd said he'd wished he'd gotten the chance to kiss her, after all. And she remembered the way he noticed things about her, and the way he smiled at her. The way he'd been watching her (was it only this morning?) when she'd woken up on the couch beside him. No, she hadn't been alone in her feelings.
But what if she was now?
She hadn't been planning on falling in love with anyone, and though it hadn't exactly been slow in coming, it had still taken her by surprise. It felt unnecessarily harsh to have only realized it was there when she'd lost it. But maybe she hadn't. It had taken him some time to remember things when they'd first met, and he'd just been through the same sort of existential crisis this time, just the other way around. As Phillips had said, it made sense.
But what if he didn't? The mind had a way of blocking out traumas, and being knocked out of your body and then back in again was certainly traumatic. He might never remember anything that had happened while he'd been a spirit. And Peggy was one of those things.
She caught herself before she went too far. It was no good guessing and worrying about the future. Besides, she was exhausted. She'd slept for an hour or so the night before, then had a very long and worrying day. She wasn't in any sort of position to be doing any deep thinking. She needed a hot shower and a long sleep. Then she would go back to hospital and see what the state of things was before she did any more wondering about the future.
Besides, she thought to herself a little later as she fell into bed. Steve was back in his body now, and he was alive. She could still talk to him, and if it turned out that she needed to get to know him again, then she would. She'd done it once before, after all. And they had time now. It might hurt at first, going back over old ground, but it would be worth it. And if something needed doing, Peggy Carter was not one to shy away from a little pain. And with that thought, she fell asleep.
Her nerves had returned the following morning, but she squashed them down and focused on fixing her breakfast, fortifying herself with a good cup of tea, and getting dressed and fixing her hair. She made her way down to the hospital, stopping at a little bakery along the way.
Steve's room felt so much different than it had the night before. It wasn't a sick room anymore, a room where someone might be dying, but it was a recovery room now, feeling lighter and cleaner and more hopeful. All but the most basic monitoring equipment had been cleared away from beside the bed, and Steve was sitting up against his pillows, free of the wires and tubing and things strapped to his face.
"Good morning," Peggy said.
"Hi," Bucky said from the plastic chair beside the bed. He looked a little rumpled, having clearly spent the night in that exact spot. Steve echoed the greeting, politely, if a touch more formally. A knot twisted in her stomach. He didn't remember her, then.
Bucky stood up and walked toward her. "Thanks for coming back," he said. He looked back to the bed. "He, uh, he doesn't remember anything that happened since the accident. But I told him about it, and I think you should still talk to him."
Peggy nodded. "Alright."
He nodded at Peggy, turned back to Steve and gave him a nod, then walked past Peggy and out of the room. Steve didn't seem surprised by this, so they'd evidently discussed it beforehand.
"Do you want to sit down?" Steve asked, nodding at Bucky's chair. Peggy realized she'd just been standing there for a minute looking at him.
She came and sat beside him, though she wasn't sure where to start. "I thought about bringing you flowers," she said after a moment. "It seemed the sort of thing to do in a hospital. But I passed a bakery on my way here, and I don't know if it's allowed, but I thought you might prefer this instead." She held up the little paper bag she'd brought in containing a large chocolate chip cookie. Steve had missed eating when he'd been a spirit, and hospital food was hardly the tastiest way to start it up again.
Steve smiled as he caught sight of the shop's name on the side of the bag. "I love that place," he said. "They make the best cookies." He took the bag, inhaled deeply, then closed it with a smile and set it on the table next to the bed. "Thank you," he told her. He smiled again. "I do prefer that to flowers."
"I thought you might," she replied with a little chuckle.
"So, um," he started. "Bucky told me about what happened since my accident. About…about you and everything. It's kind of a lot."
"It is," Peggy agreed. "I suppose you don't remember?"
He shook his head. "No. To be honest, I'm not sure I believe it, but…" He shrugged. "I have no idea why he'd make something like that up. So, um, thank you, I guess."
"You're welcome," Peggy said, and it hurt, but she'd been expecting it to.
"I'm sorry I don't remember you," he went on, as if he'd sensed that he'd hurt her.
"It's not your fault," she said. "From what I understand, it's rather jarring, being thrown in and out of your body like that."
He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I guess so."
"How do you feel now?"
"Not bad. Kind of tired. A little weak, but evidently I haven't moved in almost a year, so I guess I should expect that. Docs say I'm fine—they want to keep me here for a few more days just to make sure, and show me some exercises and stuff to do to start getting my strength back up."
"I'm glad you're getting better," Peggy said.
He nodded his thanks. "Look, I…I really am sorry I don't remember you. After everything you did to help me, that seems…" He shook his head, not sure of the word he wanted. "But, uh, Bucky says you work at Brooklyn College too?"
"I do," Peggy said. "I'm in the English department."
He nodded again. "So maybe, after I get out of here, I'll still see you around." Was it just her imagination, or did he sound hopeful? "I, uh, I mean, for all I know, you're glad to have me gone after haunting you for so long, but, uh, I'm really…I'm really grateful for what you did for me. I'd like the chance to get to know you. If that's alright with you," he added.
Peggy smiled. He'd forgotten, but maybe there was still something there. "I would like that very much," she said.
He smiled a little wider. "Okay."
"Okay," she repeated. It still hurt, but there was a chance now, and that made it hurt a little bit less. She leaned in to reach for his hand. "It really is good to see you alive again."
He didn't pull back this time, but as soon as her fingers wrapped around his, he gasped and went stiff as a board, his eyes going wide.
"Steve?" she asked worriedly. "Steve, are you alright?"
Another gasp and then he was breathing again, and he was looking at her, but his eyes were still wide. "You kissed me," he whispered.
"What?" That was what he'd said last night. Right before…
"You kissed me," he said again. "You touched me. You really touched me." He looked down at their hands and turned his over so he could grab on to her fingers tightly. "You can really touch me."
Peggy's eyes went down to their hands, then back up to meet his. "You remember?" she breathed, not wanting to hope but unable to stop.
"I remember," he said. An amazed smile was stretching across his face. "I remember," he said again. "I remember all of it. I remember everything. And you…" He let out an amazed huff of air. "You kissed me."
"I did," Peggy said, a smile stretching across her own face.
"Can I kiss you back?"
"It's about bloody time," she said with a laugh, and she might have been crying too, but it didn't matter because he was leaning forward to take her face in his hands and he was kissing her, long and slow and good. It was just as desperate as the way she'd kissed him last night, but it was different—the sense of something long awaited finally happening.
"I can't tell you how long I've been wanting to do that," Steve breathed when they pulled apart, resting his forehead against hers.
Peggy smiled. "I think I have an idea."
"I can't believe I forgot you," he whispered, putting a hand to her face and stroking a thumb across her cheek. "I'm so sorry."
"Shh," she said, turning her head to kiss his hand. "It's alright. I've heard that happens when you're hopping about between planes of existence."
He laughed, blinking back the moisture in his eyes. "You really saved me."
"I told you I would."
"Yeah, you did," he said, still grinning widely.
"I love you," she told him, and if she'd thought his smile was beautiful before…
"I love you too," he said, after he'd kissed her again.
She smiled, reaching up a hand to touch his cheek. She could actually touch him now, actually feel the warmth of his skin beneath her hand, actually feel him. "And you're sure you're alright?"
"I'm sure," he said, and though they'd both sat back up straighter, he was still holding on to her hand. Now that they could touch one another, neither seemed ready to stop. "Like I said before, just tired." He grinned. "My body was in a coma, but my spirit hasn't slept in months. Probably has something to do with it. But even being tired, I feel better than I've felt since this whole thing started."
"Good," she said. "I'm glad." She squeezed his hand. "I'm still getting used to the fact that you're really real."
"Me too," he said, returning the gesture. "Guess you can't throw things through me anymore."
She laughed. "I'll try to restrain myself."
"I appreciate it."
"I suppose," she said, realizing that his having a body again meant that once he was released from here he'd be coming home. "I'll have to tidy things up around the flat. Put all the furniture back where you had it when I moved in."
"Nah," he said. "I like where you have it. Though if you have any dirty dishes sitting around, yes, I'd appreciate those being cleaned up," he added with a cheeky grin.
Peggy laughed again. "Don't worry, I'll leave everything nice and neat for you."
"Leave?" he asked. His smile fell away. "You're leaving?"
"Well, I was only renting it until the original owner came back, which I imagine you'll be doing very soon." She smiled. "You don't want me in the way while you're trying to get your life back together."
"Maybe I do," he said.
She couldn't help smiling fondly at that. "You are sweet," she told him. "But it's your home."
"It's yours too," he pointed out. A smile quirked up one side of his mouth. "Besides, you say you'd be in the way like we haven't been living together this whole time anyway."
"Well, I…" she supposed she hadn't thought of it that way.
"Please stay."
She smiled again, and there was so much emotion swelling up in her chest that it hurt again, but not in a bad way this time. "Alright," she said. "I'd like that."
He smiled back, and there was so much joy in that smile. She could get used to seeing that smile more often.
"Okay," he said, squeezing her hand again.
She could see he was starting to get tired, so she nudged him to lie back against the pillows. She kissed his cheek, then shifted her chair closer so she could keep holding his hand more comfortably. "Will you make me tea in the mornings?" she teased. "I hear you make a good cup of tea."
He laughed and brought her hand up to his mouth to kiss her fingers. "I do make good tea," he said. "And I'll make you all the tea you want."
