This chapter is set after Chapter 77, A Friendly Game of Poker in Roots and Anchors

After telling Megan not to wait up for him, Steve tucked one of his old sketchpads under his arm and went to look for Grant. Megan had already picked up his uniform jacket from the chair where he'd left it, so he only had to gather his shield and new sketchbook as he made his way over to where the Sousa clan was sitting. It was difficult to think of Peggy having the last name Sousa. It was just another reminder of the decades he'd missed.

Grant was still sitting with his family, urging his mother to call it a night.

"Stop hovering, Grant. I swear, you're even worse than your father sometimes," Peggy snapped at him. The fatigue from the day had worn through the last of her reserves.

"You can't fault a son for worrying after his mother, Peg," Steve said, trying to diffuse the tension. "Besides, it's not like you've never pushed people to take care of themselves. I haven't forgotten the time you marched Colonel Philips to his tent with orders to get a solid four hours of sleep or you'd see to it that—"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, Steve. Let's leave Chester's dignity intact since he's not here to defend himself." Peggy's eyes flashed with their old fire as she stood up, leaning heavily on her daughter Caroline. "Unlike Chester, I recognize the value of sleep. I simply don't appreciate being treated like a fragile waif."

"I'll see if Stark can find the vita-ray machine then," Steve teased her gently as he nodded his understanding about her frustration. He'd never forgotten the experience of living with a chronic condition.

"Close your mouth, Caroline. I always told you he was a smartass."

Caroline smiled at Steve, clearly a bit embarrassed by her mother's comment. "I think you understated things a bit, Mom."

"Well, now you know."

"How can a comment about vita-rays possibly be funny?" Grant demanded.

Peggy shook her head at him. Steve smiled at the women but held back his laughter as he stood behind Grant and put a firm hand on his shoulder. "That's a long story, best told another time. Grant, I'd appreciate it if you'd come with me for a bit. I have something I want to show you."

Grant ignored him, clearly resenting the order framed as a request, but Steve waited patiently. No one at the table said a word, though Grant's wife Cynthia nodded, signaling that he should go with Steve. Finally, Grant sighed heavily, and stood up in a huff. Grudgingly, he followed Steve to the nearest elevator.

Jarvis had the elevator doors open and waiting as Steve lead Grant into the compartment. "Do you want to hit something or drink something?"

Grant gave him a look that didn't manage to hide his surprise. "Drink."

Steve nodded, "Rooftop penthouse, Jarvis," he said and stood silently as the elevator took them up. In the penthouse, Steve went behind the bar trusting Tony would have whatever Grant preferred. "What do you want?"

"Brandy."

Steve found a brand he liked and picked up two sniffers. "Ice?"

Grant shook his head and silently followed Steve outside to the terrace.

Steve could tell Grant's son was ill at ease and trying desperately to keep a tight rein on his emotions. After laying everything down on a table and leaning his shield against the table leg, Steve put more wood in the fire pit, started it burning, and sat down before he poured Grant a glass. "I can't get drunk, so don't make it into a contest," he said and handed Grant the glass. He poured himself a generous serving and put the bottle down reach of both of them. "You have a look in your eye I've seen in the mirror all too often. You can talk about it or not, but I figured you needed a break."

"What look?" Grant snapped.

Steve just raised his eyebrow, then reached for his sketchbook. The fire crackled and popped, overlaid on the sounds of traffic from the streets below. The night breeze rustled the leaves on the trees growing in two large planters nearby. Steve just pretended to ignore Peggy's son as he leaned back in his chair while he waited for Grant to crack. He had the skyline sketched out and was starting to fill in the details when Grant finally broke the silence.

"My wife Cynthia has had a lot of back pain lately and hasn't been feeling well. We finally got an answer from the docs yesterday morning. It's pancreatic cancer," Grant said as he stared into the fire.

Steve's hands stilled, though he didn't close the sketchbook. "How long does she have?"

"A few months. Six, tops." He finally pulled his gaze from the fire and looked sideways at Steve. "No questions about treatments?"

Steve shook his head. "I know more about cancer than I ever wanted to learn. Medicine has come a long way since my day, but…" He let his voice trail off. There was no need to state the obvious. Instead, he thought back over the evening. "I take it you haven't told anyone yet?"

Grant shook his head. "Mom's been looking forward to this weekend too much. We didn't want to spoil it." With that bitter admission, he drained his sniffer and poured himself another serving.

"That's not how it works. You need to tell her. Her mind's pretty clear today. Let her be your mom while she can. She can't fix the fact you're losing two of the most important women in your life, but she can share the pain with you. And as someone who lost a mother to consumption, I'm telling you to tell your kids tonight. At least then they'll know what you're all up against instead of wondering what's wrong. You can't protect them from what's coming, but you can help prepare them for it. Ma saw it time and time again working the wards… it's the uncertainty that wears you down the most. As awful as it was when we found out she was sick, it gave us time to talk about things we might otherwise have left unsaid." With that, he went silent.

He tried to avoid thinking too much about those days; the pain was still too raw. But there had been comfort to be had in those long afternoons at his mom's bedside, reading aloud to her while she tried to rest, sketching while she dozed, talking about her family back in Ireland and the father Steve had never known.

Greg kept swirling the brandy in his sniffer and watching how it changed colors in the firelight. "Ever since Mom got her diagnosis, Cynthia's been keeping me together." He sighed again. "I don't know how to do this."

Finally, Steve closed the sketchbook and set it down. "No one does. You just keep moving forward as best you can. There are days when trying not to lose too much ground is all I can manage. Other days are better. But you have your whole family to lean on. You can get through it together."

"I feel so helpless."

"Focus on what you can do. You went above and beyond making sure I got to see Peggy. Now you should spend this weekend with your family. Order food in or let us bring you stuff from the buffets. Send the youngsters down to hang out with the other kids. Building security will keep them out of trouble."

Grant slumped a bit in his seat. "You're not what I expected."

"Been reading too many comic books?"

"Lord no. Mom never let those in the house. She never talked about you much. Neither she nor Dad liked to talk about the war. But you were larger than life and a ghost in our house at the same time." He paused, took another sip of his brandy, and asked. "What did you want to show me?"

Knowing Grant needed time to regroup, Steve went along with the change in subject. "This." Steve picked up his old sketchbook from his days with the Howling Commands and quickly flipped through to find an image he'd drawn so he could try to forget. Holding the book open, he passed it to Grant. "Is this you father?"

Grant gaped at the drawing and looked back at Steve. "You met him?"

Steve nodded, looking out at the skyline. "I'm the one who took his leg off." He swallowed the rest of his brandy in one long pull, wishing desperately the alcohol would do something to blunt the memories.

Grant swore as the color drained from his face as Steve's words finally registered.

Steve looked at him silently.

"When I was in high school, I once asked Mom about you and Dad. It was an insensitive jerk question about Dad being her second choice."

Steve winced. "Ouch."

"Yeah, not one of my better moments. I'd just been dumped and was taking out all the angst on Mom. She just smiled and said it wasn't like that, that you'd made sure she knew she and Dad had your blessing in the clearest way possible."

Steve let out a pained laugh. "It always comes back to that damned shield." He set his sniffer down and picked up the shield, standing it on edge in front of his feet, rolling it side to side between his fingers as he talked. "Did Peggy ever tell you about the time she shot at me?"

"No." Grant was wide eyed.

"She was hopping mad…" Steve began, telling him the story, a smile flitting across his face as he remembered. Looking back at the shield, he picked up the narrative. "People tend to forget this is a weapon, too," he said as he ran his fingers along the beveled edge, then rolled it over to Grant. "It's not a knife, but with enough force behind it—"

"You could cut someone in half," Grant finished softly.

Steve nodded. "Or take off a limb." With that, he got up, walked to the terrace railing, and looked out over the city. "Seventeen men. Ma was a nurse." He looked down at his hands and shook his head. "I'm getting ahead of myself. It was a brutal winter that year. Guess it would have been late January of '45. Morita and Gabe overheard some radio chatter about a battalion pinned down behind the German lines. No one was doing anything about it. They told the others… the decision was unanimous before any of the Howlers told me. After being Hydra's prisoners, they were a bit… sensitive to the idea of letting any of our troops down, lousy odds of success be damned. We informed Colonel Philips on our way out of camp. He knew better than to try and stop us since we'd have gone anyway.

"It was bitterly cold, but the smell of the camp was overpowering. I'll never forget it. The conditions they'd been living in, trying to survive without supplies or reinforcements. The men were thawing snow for drinking water. The ground was frozen solid, digging new latrines was impossible." Steve shuddered at the memory and swallowed hard. "They'd used up their medical supplies and lost their most experienced medics in the fighting. Some of them were in bad shape. Infection, gangrene, starvation… the only hope we had of saving those seventeen was amputation. Even then, it was a gamble. May as well have been back in the battlefields of the Civil War. But my ma was a nurse and I'd had cleanliness drilled into me before I could walk. We had to make do. Between each man, I cleaned the shield with boiled water and then I'd heat it in a fire to try to get rid of what any germs the water couldn't. It took half a day. Buck and Dum Dum held 'em down. Gabe and Morita tended 'em after, and Monty and Frenchie prepped the next one, getting their permission, prepping bandages and tourniquets. The only booze we had, we used to dose them before hand. Not that it did much good."

"Whiskey."

Steve nodded at Grant's softly spoken word.

"Dad hated whiskey. We never had it in the house though I know Mom likes it." Grant rubbed his face with his hand and got up to join Steve at the railing. "I remember one time, there was a guy from S.H.I.E.L.D. who came over, and he ragged on Dad about it something fierce. Said with all the other great liquor he had on the shelf, it was a crime not to have a bottle of whiskey in there, too. He was just trying to tease, didn't mean anything much by it, but Dad got all tense. Said he'd left his taste for whiskey in Europe, but that was okay since the rest of him got to come home. I never knew… Why didn't they ever say anything?"

"It's not a bedtime story fit for children and Peggy would never have stood for sanitizing the truth out of the tale. We had our fill of that during the war when the film crews came in for their propaganda shots. The only good part of filming was that we were all guaranteed a shower before hand. Sometimes, the water was warm." Steve bowed his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to drop all this on you. I just wondered if your father was the same Daniel Sousa."

"You never checked?"

Steve shook his head. "I made it a point not to find out. The only way I was able to keep going during the war was to pretend everyone we ferried to safety got a happy ending. After…" He took a deep breath. "It was still the best way forward. When Peggy used your middle name, though, I got curious. You look enough like him it seemed possible." He sighed again, tracing the stonework with his fingers. "It's still hard to believe he lived decades when it was barely three years ago. I wonder if I'll ever get used to that."

"Seeing Mom again had to be a shock," Grant offered tentatively.

"A good one, though. I learned so much from her in the short time I knew her. She was the backbone of the Howling Commandos. I'm really glad she lived a life worthy of her potential. Even Howard respected her, and he didn't respect many people, much less women. When Peggy told him something, he listened."

"The drawing… you used the shield as a sled?"

Steve sighed, nodded, and went back to his chair. "Bucky's idea." Lifting shield into his lap, he pointed to the picture, where a mesh of some sort supported Daniel's weight as he sat in the curve of the shield, leaning into the cloth, while a bundled figure, rifle slung over his shoulder, pulled him through the snow. "Bucky worked down on the docks, got to know a lot of sailors. He made friends easily and was always picking up new skills. Somewhere along the line, one of them taught Bucky a bunch of knots. The snow was deep and a lot of the men weren't up to hiking for one reason or another. We scavenged what we could to build travois and someone came up for a way to put runners of a sort on the poles so they were easier to pull. Daniel was in such bad shape… Bucky cut up his own blanket to make a mesh of sorts he connected through the straps of my shield. It kept Daniel from being jostled too much as Bucky pulled him."

"From what little Mom said about you, I'm surprised you let anyone else do that."

Steve ducked his head a bit, trying to hide his embarrassment behind his glass. "I was out in front, breaking a trail."

Grant laughed. "Of course you were," he said and picked up the sketchbook reverently. "Thank you, not just for saving him, but for telling me." His fingers ran over the edge of the page, carefully avoiding smudging the drawing, but Steve could tell that Grant itched to touch his father's face. "It's hard to imagine him so young, with his whole life ahead of him. He must have been terrified when he was injured like he was."

"He was terrified from the day he shipped out, if not before," Steve corrected. "It's always there, lurking in the shadows. Any soldier who tells you otherwise is either lying or a damned fool. Possibly both."

Feeling Grant's eyes on him, he pointed to the book. "Take that with you and show your family, if you want. Just don't let your grandkids look at the other pages. I tend to process things by drawing them, and war is a gory affair. There are images in there no child should see."

"Captain,"

"Steve," he corrected.

Grant nodded. "Steve, thank you. As strange as it may sound, this has helped." He looked again at the book in his hands and continued, "Knowing Dad was scared and kept going…. it helps."

"I'm glad. Now go hug your wife and love her while you can."

Grant stood up, hearing the gentle dismissal, and started to say something, then paused, rethinking. Finally, he said, "I'll see you tomorrow," and went indoors to join his family.

Alone on the rooftop, Steve poured himself another glass of brandy and blinked back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. He was startled from his reverie by the thump of someone landing on the rooftop nearby. Steve whipped his head around as he reached for his shield.

"Peace, Brother," Thor said, holding his hands up to show he was unarmed. "I apologize for eavesdropping. I was sitting on the ledge above, lost in my own thoughts, when you and Grant came out onto the terrace. I dared not disturb your sensitive conversation by announcing my presence. Even departing with Mjölnir's aid would have been a disruption. I will not speak of what I heard; This is my oath to you."

Steve nodded, unsure of what he could say without breaking down completely. Tonight had stirred up too many memories which would certainly incite an onslaught of nightmares if he dared to let himself sleep.

Thor added wood to the fire and sat down in the chair Grant had abandoned before pouring himself some brandy.

"Grant used that glass."

"I mind that not." Thor drank it down and grimaced slightly. "The flavor is pleasing, but it lacks soul." From a pocket of his vest, he pulled out a flask and poured himself a serving before adding some to Steve's empty glass. "See how you like this, but have a care, as it is not meant for mortal men."

Steve took a cautious sip and smiled as the ale sent a pleasant burn down his throat and made his insides grow warm. "I'd almost forgotten this feeling," he said as he took another sip.

"Perhaps it will help file the sharp edges off of this most joyous and difficult of days," Thor said kindly as he made himself comfortable.

"I just want to go home," Steve confessed softly. "I miss them all so much, and they're gone." The Asgardian ale shredded the last of his control and tears began to run down his cheeks, though Thor made no mention of them.

"You missed much and were grieved for by many. It is only fitting you would grieve that lost time with them, too. Would you honor me with stories of your past? I believe you spoke of your mother being a healer."

Steve nodded. "She was a nurse. Her name was Sarah. It was her skill that kept me alive when I was young." As he talked, his eyes grew heavy and he felt himself drifting off. A part of him noticed Thor taking the sniffer from his hand, and then he was sound asleep, pressed against Bucky in his tiny bed in his apartment while his mother sat darning socks by candlelight.

Steve woke to the sound of Greg and Thor talking softly.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," Greg teased when Steve stretched cautiously and sat up. "I brought breakfast," he added, gesturing to the cart of food Jarvis had ordered. Thor and Greg were already helping themselves to the bagels and fresh fruit.

"What time is it?" Megan mumbled sleepily as she yawned and opened her eyes.

"Six thirty."

"Why didn't you block the sun, Thor? It's too early to be awake. Next time, bring in some really dark storm clouds or something."

Thor laughed. "I apologize for my failings, Lady Megan. I trust you rested well?"

Megan nodded and reached for the teapot. Jarvis knew her well. "Very well, thank you."

"You're not the only one," Steve said as he fixed himself a plate. "I haven't slept that well in… a very long time. That was powerful ale."

Steve noticed that Megan looked at Thor, asking for permission of some sort, which he gave with a careful nod.

"It is no great secret you must keep from the son of John, Lady Megan," Thor said gently. "My friend, it was not the ale that aided your slumber. Rather, it was my humble honor to guard your sleep from troubling dreams this past night. I sought your beloved's permission on your behalf after you succumbed to your exhaustion. If we acted out of turn, I apologize. I merely sought to provide what comfort I could in your time of need." With that, he held up Megan's tablet. "Friend Jarvis was kind enough to suggest some accurate reading about your history. Though we have fought as brothers before and I believed I had the measure of your courage, I have learned I vastly underestimated you."

Steve didn't know what to say to that.

Greg must have sensed his discomfiture, because he immediately changed the subject. "Speaking of Jarvis, he introduced himself to me this morning,"

"So you have met the voice in the ceiling?" Thor beamed, patting Greg across the back affectionately. "There are very few guests to the tower he greets so openly."

"That was after the refrigerator displayed a text message on the door explaining you were asleep on the roof and breakfast was ready to be delivered. I have no idea what Kathy is going to say about all this."

"She seemed rather pleased to find there is someone besides Megan keeping watch over Captain Rogers, given his skill at getting into trouble," Jarvis chimed in helpfully.

"I do not!" Steve protested. Three pairs of eyes dared him to argue further.

"Let me rephrase that, Captain. You have a talent for being in the right place to get injured all too often," Jarvis teased.

Megan laughed softly as she leaned against Steve and sipped her tea. "Until you've gone six months without a visit to medical, no one is going to believe Jarvis is wrong."

Greg laughed. "The lad can't even make it three months."

"I shall rejoin you later in the day, my friends," Thor said, standing up and taking his cloak back when Steve held it out to him.

"I'm going to go get a shower and more caffeine in me. You boys have fun admiring the sun," Megan added. "I'll get the pillows if you bring the blankets later." She stuffed one pillow under her arm, held the other by the case, and padded off towards the elevator while still sipping her tea.

Steve watched them both go. "Did Thor just tell me he kept me from having nightmares last night?"

"I think that was the message underneath all that formal talk," Greg said, helping himself to an apple muffin. "You have a very strange life, Steve."

"You think so?"

"I know so. But you also have some very good friends. I was worried about you last night, but this morning you look good. Do you think you're up for all that Megan has planned today?"

"I have no idea what the plans are, but I'm okay. Better than Grant, actually." Steve grew somber. "He and his wife are dealing with some difficult news. Jarvis, are the Sousa grandkids awake yet?"

"Yes, Steve, much to the dismay of their parents."

"Will you ask if I can take the kids swimming? Since the banquet kitchen is open, if I can get a cart like this one with some breakfast items for them, I'd appreciate it." Steve turned to Greg and added, "Invite Megan's nephews, too, as soon as they're up. They'll enjoy having other kids their age to play with."

"Certainly, sir. The breakfast cart will be delivered to the pool area shortly. Caroline extends her gratitude. Do you wish to escort them yourself?"

"I'd rather not give the kids any ideas about testing your skills, Jarvis." Steve said. "And be careful about talking too much around Keith and Christopher. Their parents can't be trusted with secrets, for reasons that are not their fault."

There was true warmth in Jarvis' voice as he replied, "Megan already warned me, Steve, but I appreciate your concern."

"Don't you get bored running the building?" Greg asked, looking towards the speaker that had projected Jarvis' voice.

Steve couldn't hold back his laughter. "Bored? With Tony Stark around?"

"Steve is correct, Greg. Working with Sir is many things, but boring is not an adjective I would ever use."

Greg smiled sheepishly. "I stand corrected, then. Will you ask Kathy if she wants to join us at the pool?"

A moment later, Jarvis had her reply. "She says to tell you that as delightful as she finds your company, she isn't crazy enough to go swimming at this hour of the night unless you two are alone."

"I'll keep that in mind, Jarvis." With that, Greg stood up and put a warm hand on Steve's shoulder. "Let's go wrangle a bunch of kids."