Chapter Fourteen
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Peggy didn't wake again until early the next morning. She stared blankly up at the ceiling, feeling the cloud of deep depression fall over her that always came after waking from a dream of Steve. For a moment she had genuinely thought he was alive again. Their conversation, the feel of his hair between her fingers, his tears soaking through the shoulder of her nightdress - it had seemed so real this time...
Setting her jaw, Peggy mentally scolded herself for her foolish dreams, trying to shake them away. It was going to be a difficult day - she could tell already. First the dream, and now to top it all off, she appeared to be in a strange hospital room with no idea where on earth she was.
Dragging herself back to the situation at hand, she cautiously turned her head to scope out the situation. The room was longer than she'd expected, bright and airy. Raising her head, Peggy shifted slightly to get a better view, looking for anything that would tell her where she was.
Then her eyes fell on the man crowded into a small chair by the side of her bed, and the whole world swooped and vanished except for him.
Steve.
He was fast asleep, head tipped down at an uncomfortable angle over his broad chest, the early light gleaming off his hair. Stunned, Peggy watched the front of his shirt rise and fall with each breath. He was alive, and was watching over her - or had been, until he'd fallen asleep.
Ordinarily if Peggy woke up to find a man watching her sleep, she would have slapped him silly, but this was different. Breathlessly, pulse throbbing in her veins, she shifted closer to the edge of the bed, hand drawn irresistibly toward him until the tips of her fingers just grazed his knee. Her brief touch was feather-light, not enough to wake him, but enough to tell her that Steve was firm - real - solid - and in that moment, Peggy's heart almost burst.
Steve had been dead, she had heard him die, and yet somehow or other he had impossibly survived. Her dream had been reality after all.
Sunlight played across his slack face, lacing his hair with light. His haircut was shorter than before, but it didn't look bad, though she would miss the endearing way it used to fall into his face when he was concentrating. He wore civvies too, which was new, and Peggy suddenly couldn't remember if she'd ever seen him out of uniform before. Steve looked older, and his face at rest had fallen into deep lines of weary gravity that she had never seen before.
Apparently their time apart had not been easy for him either.
Pressing her cheek into her pillow, Peggy firmly blinked back the glad tears that threatened to come, and watched, waiting for her captain to wake up. She was still in a strange room, with no idea what had happened or where she was, but Steve Rogers was alive and there, and that was enough for the present.
With him by her side, she knew she was safe. Everything else could wait.
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Steve had eventually dozed off near dawn. Over the past few weeks he had run himself ragged, both physically and emotionally, and watching the reassuring blip of Peggy's wireless heart rate monitor had lulled him to sleep. Now the early sunlight woke him, and he dragged his eyes hazily open to see Peggy watching him steadily. For a moment he blinked back, smiling sleepily, only half awake. She was so beautiful...
Then his mind caught up with him.
"Peggy!" he croaked, trying to straighten his shirt and look alert. "I - um..."
Her mouth pursed with amusement that she tried to hide, and his heart leaped; he'd seen that look a thousand times, but had hardly dared hope to see it again.
"Have you been sleeping in that little chair all night?" she asked. She was certainly looking better than she had the day before. There was color in her face and she seemed to be back to her former self, eyes dancing as she looked at him, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
It suddenly occurred to Steve that he was staring at her like a giddy idiot, and that he probably ought to find something to say in response to her question. "I didn't exactly mean to," he managed. "How are you feeling?"
"Better." Peggy furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, and suddenly Steve didn't want to hear the questions he could practically see hovering on her lips. Desperately he cast around for a change of topic, cutting her off.
"Breakfast? You hungry?"
"I could use a drink," Peggy admitted, and watched as he unfolded himself from the chair by her bed, biting back a groan as something audibly cracked in his spine. Apparently even super soldiers could get stiff necks sleeping in a chair all night.
As Steve went to the little kitchenette in the corner, Peggy experimentally tried to sit up against her pillows, following him with her eyes, unwilling to let him out of her sight. Her mouth was dry and her body felt oddly shaky, but nothing hurt; she guessed she must have been unconscious for quite a while.
"I got juice and milk. Take your pick," Steve announced over his shoulder. Pepper and Clint had stocked the cupboards and fridge in an attempt to get him to eat, but he hadn't been interested until now. "Do you want any toast? There's..." he paused and inspected a row of jars, "...lots of jam," he finally finished, taken back by the variety. "Oh, and there's marmalade too."
Orange marmalade had been one point they'd always disagreed on. Peggy was very fond of it, while Steve didn't like the bitter flavor. Since waking up from the ice though, he had kept a jar in his cupboard to remember her by. Obviously someone had been snooping through his apartment, trying to figure out what to put in the kitchenette.
"Steve, what are those monstrosities?"
He turned around from where he'd been setting up a breakfast tray and saw her watching him from the bed, nodding toward the blinking equipment that had been fitted into the corner as unobtrusively as possible. He'd helped carry out as much of the heavy machinery as they would let him the night before, but Bruce had insisted a few of the non-invasive monitoring systems remain.
"A bunch of things Stark knocked together to make sure you were doing okay," he explained, grinning a little dopily at the sight of her sitting up.
"Of course he would," she sighed with a touch of resignation, exploring the braid around her head with curious fingertips. "Just as long as they don't suddenly blow me up. Milk, please, and I'll take marmalade."
They watched each other wordlessly, as Steve fumbled with the breakfast things. Each was hardly able to believe that the other was alive, hurriedly glancing away if their eyes met, trying to avoid looking like they were staring. Peggy's cheeks were very rosy, and when he brought her the tray, she thanked him with a look that made him flush with pleasure.
It was like a picnic, eating over the bedspread, and neither one could stop smiling. Steve spilled a little juice on the floor, and Peggy insisted on putting marmalade on his toast, just to tease him about the face he made when he ate it. The bittersweet taste on his tongue mingled with the laughter in her eyes, and suddenly Steve discovered that perhaps the stuff wasn't so bad after all.
Then, halfway through breakfast, Peggy abruptly asked the question he did not want to answer.
"Steve," her voice was soft and careful. "How did you survive? It's been years."
Steve's smile died, and he slowly set his glass down, dreading the coming conversation. Ever since Fury confronted him in Times Square and told him the truth, his life had been irrevocably changed. Now he had to hurt the dearest person in his life, and every square inch of his soul quailed at the thought.
"I froze," he admitted quietly. "The windows of the plane broke, the water came in, and I was pinned down - couldn't escape." He saw the pain in her eyes and hurried on. "If I understand it right, some Russians found the wreck and contacted the U.S. When they thawed me out, I woke up."
Peggy's throat tightened. The moment when the radio went dead had been one of the most awful of her life, and the tight bleakness in his face as he skimmed over his story told her more than any words how terrible it had been for him as well. "So did they find me at the same time?"
Steve played with the edge of the blanket. "Not exactly. You somehow ended up in Stark's cryo tube when you came after me." He glanced up at her, curious whether she remembered anything.
She frowned, shaking her head. "I know it was Dugan, but I don't remember much after that." The idiot had shut her in there after she had refused to go, and died saving her life. Peggy resolutely folded those thoughts away. She would grieve for her friend later, when there was time.
"I owe him one," Steve promised under his breath. "It protected you from the crash, but you froze too. They didn't tell me the details of how they found you - must've been poking around looking for pieces of Schmidt's plane or something."
He hesitated. The hardest part of all was coming, and although he had tried to figure out the least painful way to break the news, he still recoiled from hurting her.
"We," he cleared his throat. "We were both frozen up there a long time."
Peggy nodded, her sharp eyes scanning his face. She could tell that something was wrong, something was different, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "I know it must have been a while. Dugan and I flew out in the autumn, but it's probably springtime now, isn't it?"
Steve shook his head, meeting her eyes steadily. She needed to know.
"It is April," he admitted, "but it's been longer than you're thinking. Peggy, we've both been frozen for years."
She grew very still, searching his face for some joke, though he'd never been one to tease her mean-spiritedly. "How many years?"
He swallowed hard and thought the marmalade's bitter aftertaste would make him sick. "Almost seventy."
Peggy blinked and then half-laughed, incredulous. "Seventeen? You've got to be joking. That falls into the realm of bad science fiction." The apprehension in her eyes belied the lightness of her voice, and he could almost see the slow fear creeping across her heart.
Steve's own heart was in his throat, throbbing as he tried to talk past it. "Seventy, not seventeen. It's - Peggy, it's a whole different century now."
For a long moment, she simply stared at him, face blank, lips parting in silent shock. Her eyes were a different story though, and he could read every emotion; the crippling sorrow, the panic, the growing realization of loss. Then, very carefully, she put her half-empty glass on the bedside table, meticulously wiping the condensation from the bottom before setting it on the wood.
"What about Howard?" she finally asked, no strength behind her voice. She wouldn't meet his eyes, and he understood she was struggling for composure.
"Peggy…" he didn't know what to say.
"Jarvis? Ana? Angie?"
Steve reached for her hand, but Peggy shrank away from his touch, and something sharp shot through his heart. She pressed her palms into her eyes and took deep breaths for a few moments before decisively throwing back the edge of the covers.
"I need to look out of the window," she demanded breathlessly, still not quite looking at him, and he didn't try to stop her. He did get up to follow her though, in case she fell.
Peggy made it to the window under her own power, with Steve hovering closely behind. For just a second she hesitated, and he could see her fingers shaking before she pulled open the thin curtains in one smooth movement and looked out at New York City, circa the twenty-first century.
A very long moment passed before she leaned numbly against the window frame and put her head against the glass. Steve could hear her uneven breathing, see her trying to blink back tears, and his heart broke. He didn't dare touch her, but he stood close by, trying to offer some support.
"I know how this feels," he said quietly, once she seemed to be regaining some measure of composure. "SHIELD found me in the ice a couple years ago, thawed me out, and put me to work."
From what he could see of her face, he could tell that she was listening, so he continued, feeling his way carefully. "This world isn't so bad. It's crazy, and it's got a lot of problems, but there's still a place for us. For you, I mean. People like you," he hurriedly corrected. "And me. I'm still not very good at this, am I?"
Peggy laughed despite herself. It was shaky and probably three parts of a sob, but she was looking a little more herself as she wiped her cheeks and turned to face him. For a long moment, she scanned his face closely before poking one finger straight into his chest.
"Steve Rogers, on pain of death, do you swear this is not some kind of hallucination or dream or trick or something?"
"I swear," said Steve, and she knew he was telling the truth.
"All right then," said Peggy weakly, and put an apologetic hand on his arm. "I think I need to sit down now."
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Once she was back in bed, sitting up against the pillows with an afghan around her shoulders, he sat at her feet and told her everything: waking up in New York City, being re-recruited by SHIELD, the alien invasion, and the birth of the Avengers. Fumbling out his pocket notebook, he briefly sketched the members of the team, describing them each as he drew, and glancing up at her every few moments.
She watched his face as he concentrated on the paper, large body sprawled half over the little chair and against her bed. The gravity and weariness were still there, but so were the good humor and strong convictions of the man she had fought beside. Their two years apart had changed them both, and yet he was still the same in all the ways that mattered.
A little more carefully, he told her the more recent story of SHIELD, Hydra, and Bucky Barnes, who was still at large, location unknown. Peggy took most of it with a stiff upper lip, but he could see she was severely shaken over the fate of their friend, and what her own organization had become.
"To think they were right under my nose, and I didn't notice," she cried in frustration. Her lips were a good deal paler than he liked, and her hands were trembling minutely even as she clenched them into stubborn fists. Steve bowed his head.
"None of us noticed, Peggy, and I know I should have. SHIELD is rebuilding now, and hopefully they'll be better for it. We - the Avengers don't work for them anymore, but we work with them on a case by case basis." He didn't add that at the moment, the two organizations were in a pitched battle, centered around the woman at his side. There was a good deal more he wanted to tell her, but this wasn't the right time.
"Oh, speaking of the Avengers," he suddenly remembered. "They've been wanting to meet you. Would you like - I can go get them now, if you'd like to meet them." He started to get to his feet, but Peggy put out a restraining hand.
"Steve, it's really very sweet of you, but if I'm going to meet your new team, I'd rather do it wearing something other than a nightdress and a blanket. I don't suppose," she looked a little apprehensive, "I mean, if it's been seventy years… Maybe they've got my flight suit still, or something I can borrow?"
At the mention of what she was wearing, Steve blushed fire-hot and Peggy demurely pulled the blanket a little more firmly around her shoulders. Somehow her state of dress hadn't mattered very much in light of the momentous morning they'd had, but now they both felt suddenly self-conscious.
Then Steve snapped his fingers. "Remember I told you about Pepper Potts?" He flipped through the notebook until he reached the page with the keen-faced woman in a ponytail, and Peggy nodded. "She said she had some things for you. You'll like her."
Keeping an eye on her face, he directed his next words to the ceiling. "JARVIS, will you ask Miss Potts to come here?"
Steve had tried to explain the concept of the AI, but for a split second, Peggy wondered if he was actually teasing her. Then an artificially modulated, distinctly British voice sounded, although nobody was to be seen. "Certainly, Captain Rogers. And may I extend my welcome to Miss Carter?"
"You may. Thank you, JARVIS," she answered carefully, and suddenly the weight of all those lost years crashed into her again as she thought of her dear old friend, also named Jarvis, and surely long dead.
Steve could see that she was struggling with memories; he knew the feeling well, though he wasn't sure what had triggered it. He desperately wanted to put his arm around her, but wasn't entirely certain she would let him, so he quietly covered her hand with his where it lay on the covers, and they sat a long while in silence.
"I'm sorry I missed our date," Steve told her at last. "I overslept. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up."
Peggy surprised herself with a tearful laugh. "Oversleeping by seventy years - that's got to be a record."
She would never tell him, she decided, how she had sat at the Stork Club that Saturday night, turning down every opportunity to dance, sipping her drink until they closed the doors and started sweeping up the place and asked her to leave. That had been the night she'd finally fully realized he would never, ever come home to her. She had walked back to the barracks and fired clip after clip into the shooting range targets until she couldn't see for the tears, and Colonel Phillips came out to take her gun away and walk her back to her room.
"It's just hard, you know?" she finally asked, and bit her lips together to keep them from quivering. "Everyone, everything's changed," she laughed a bit shakily, "and I should be glad because I thought I was going to die, and I didn't. But everything's different now."
Steve nodded, his eyes seeking hers out, his large hand very gentle around her cold fingers. "I know," he said, and she could close her eyes and allow herself to be vulnerable for a moment because he did know. He understood better than anyone else in the world.
They sat hand in hand together, each supporting the other, until the sharp tap of Pepper's stilettoes sounded down the hall, and they had to pull apart.
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Thanks for all the lovely reviews on the last chapter! Honestly, I get the biggest grin when I read them. :)
Story's still not over - as it currently stands, we've got six chapters and an epilogue left, so don't run away!