Steve woke up and almost immediately wished he hadn't. He never spoke that thought aloud, but a few people could see it, he knew. Natasha, first, and then later, Sam. Peggy knew, he thought, but she never came out and directly said it besides gentle encouragement and calling him dramatic. But it was there; that nagging wish to have never come out of the ice, that desire to be back in the cold dark, forgotten by the rest of the world. But now they remembered him. Now they were paying attention to him. He wasn't sure if he liked that very much.
He had less than a year to recover, to get himself together into something resembling a human, instead of the grief-stricken robot he'd become. And then 2012 hit, and aliens were real, and the past - the past he'd been longing for so fiercely - felt a little further away. They put him on real missions again, and he took another step away, tried to move on. Almost two years passed of bitter progress, of a stubborn one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach to life. He made friends with Natasha, as weird as that was, and met Sam. Even asked Kate (who turned out to be Sharon) across the hall for coffee. And then everything that had been going south out of his sight, behind the curtain, all came forward.
And then there was Bucky.
And then he felt like a sixteen-year-old kid in Brooklyn again. Three years of hard-fought progress gone, out the window, totally forgotten. Bucky. He was alive. And after all this time...
Before, when people had asked him about the past, about the other Howling Commandos, he would try to explain whatever had been asked of him, would smile as politely as he could manage. But it still hurt to speak about them, and he avoided saying Bucky's name, avoided mentioning Kat. He let them think his only love had been Peggy; she was the most publicly acceptable partner he'd had. Peggy was almost more a what-if than a true lost love, but he still cared for her. Still, it only felt right to keep Bucky and Kat mostly to himself. Times hadn't changed too much in that way, anyway. People weren't ready to hear that Captain America had been in a relationship with more than one person at once.
But then Bucky dragged him out of the Potomac, and everything was so, so different. Sam and Natasha were supportive - where Nat had really gotten the file on Bucky he didn't want to know - and for the first time in three years he felt real hope for his future. Fear, too, and nagging doubt, but also the feeling that maybe, God maybe , not everything he loved had been lost.
Now, when people asked about his past, he said very little at all.
Before he left D.C. for his search, he visited Peggy, partially to update her, partially to see her one last time, in case... He didn't like to think about it, but she was deteriorating. Still, she had lucid stretches, and she was in one when he visited.
"Steve!" She beamed as he walked in, shifting in her chair by the window, her hair falling in a white cloud around her face.
"Hi, Peggy," he smiled wearily, and her gaze and smile softened. By now, they'd had time to get used to one another again. When she remembered him, that was.
"I heard about the Triskelion, and Bucky. Steve..." she trailed off for a moment, and he walked over to sink into the chair next to her, and he reached to take her hand in his. She squeezed his hand in her rickety grip for a moment before letting go and taking her hand to search the pockets of her loose, flower-print dress, and after a second she pulled out a folded up piece of paper. "I remembered something the other day, and I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget." She held out the piece of paper for him to take, and he did, brows drawing together slightly as he unfolded it.
There, in Peggy's beautiful cursive, was: Katherine Lewis was alive in the 1950s.
His gaze rocketed back to Peggy's. "Peggy, you.. What do you know?" He asked, blue eyes intent on hers, a hint of longing behind them.
"I wrote a whole report when I saw her. I don't remember it too well anymore, but S.H.I.E.L.D. should have a copy. It's probably on the internet, now," she replied looking back at him with as comforting of a gaze as she could make. "But..."
"But with Bucky alive, you think..." Steve continued, and Peggy nodded.
"I think she could be like him, Steve, yes. She never recognized me. And she was... so fast..." she shook her head slightly, raising a thin hand to rub at her eyes, trying to remember with more clarity what had happened. After a moment of effort, she sighed, and put her hand down. "It's escaping me, at the moment. But with HYDRA finally on the retreat... it might be worth looking for signs of her."
Steve nodded, and stood suddenly, a renewed energy driving him, and leaned in to kiss Peggy's forehead. "Thanks, Peg, I mean it. Maybe..." He stood back, and pushed a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath. "Maybe she's out there too. I'll visit as soon as I can, okay?"
"Okay," Peggy smiled, reaching out to pat his hand. "Go. Good luck, Steve."
He gently squeezed her hand, and then practically disappeared out the door, an energy burning up his spine, a feeling he couldn't pin down or really explain - all he knew was that Bucky was alive, and now there was a possibility that Kat was too. He pulled out his phone, and called Sam.
"Hey, Sam. We got some digging to do."