Fall, 2023
Steve held the small body of the little boy close to him, feeling his weight fluctuate as he drifted from sleeping and waking. His small body was still warm where it met Steve's chest, warm from the bed he had been tucked up in only moments earlier. A jacket had been wrapped over the boy's shoulders and a fleece blanket bundled around his lower body. It was early morning, the sun was beginning to lighten the sky around them into a purple haze, the world was mostly silent, only birds twirping and flipping around in the branches of naked trees. He wondered how strange it would all be to James, a world which was so much quieter than the one he was born into. The lack of technology would be one thing but the slower, simpler pace, fewer cars and fewer worries, they would be so strange to the little guy.
It was the best choice, he knew that. Feeling the soft strawberry blonde hair nudge closer into his neck Steve placed a hand on the back of the little boy's head, remembering with a sting in his eye the day he had first placed his hand on the head of his son, the first time he had lifted the tiny baby, so helpless and unbelievably mad at the world. He remembered thinking how the little boy was already so full of his mother's fight.
She had held him only once, only on the day he was born, deciding only moments after he came into the world that she wanted to feed him. She had mumbled to Steve how it was important, he would get antibodies and such through the first milk, antibodies that were far stronger than those of the average population. She had joked about preventing him from missing out with the girls later on from ugly measles scars. Steve remembered those, he had chuckled at her outdated reference but he would never forget her eyes. The love in her eyes as she held the naked infant against her own skin, and the pain that was also there, a pain that he wished she wouldn't feel but he knew there was no persuading her. This whole venture, all of it was at the agreement she didn't want to be a part of his life.
He hadn't known where to look, but there was less embarrassment than he had expected to feel around a topless Natasha, instead, he hadn't wanted to interrupt their moment together, knowing it was incredibly special.
James stirred again in Steve's arms and he realised that tears had dripped from his cheeks into the boy's hair. He never knew his mother, and now he never would. She gave everything she could, knowingly, actively. She gave everything so that others would be safe and loved. To Steve she had more than wiped out every single event of her past life, every bad deed balanced and more.
He looked towards the house across the road, he knew it was the house he wanted but he had stood here for a while, unable to bring his thoughts together, to find a balance of emotions between the desperation to ring the doorbell and be met with Peggy, the real Peggy, the one he had known and dreamed of being with for the rest of his life, and the grief he felt for his son, even if the little boy knew nothing of what had happened.
How would he explain this, how would any of this make sense? He was back, only a few years after he had died, but he was from the future and he brought with him the love child he had with a girl who was currently not much more than a teenager and lived hundreds of miles to the West. How would he explain knowing more than he should about events yet to come, how would they explain the red-headed child, how would James feel if he and Peggy were to have children one day knowing he wasn't the same as them?
Two birds flew over them, moving from a tree behind to land on the lawn at the front of their target house. The home of Margaret Carter, the place they would call home. Steve thought back to that image of James on his birthday, to Natasha with her hair dishevelled, some still sticking to her forehead, her cheeks red and her eyes full of exhaustion after the birth. He thought of that first meal she had given him, the way mother and son had looked into each other's eyes for that brief time. She had pushed past her own desires to do what was best for James, and now Steve would do the same.