Chapter Two

The first distinct dream came the night after Peggy and the Howling Commandos took out their third residual Hydra base. One moment Peggy was rolled up snugly in her blanket by the fire, her eyelids drooping heavily, and the next…

Smoke. Screaming. Dust choking her mouth and nose and eyes. Monsters shrieking all around her.

And there was Steve in the middle of it all, fighting for his life.

At the sight of him, Peggy's heart flipped and then sank into her stomach. She had thought that if she dreamed of him again her dreams would have been more wistful or more true to life.

But this—everything was wrong about this. Beneath the dust, Steve's uniform was strange, more garish even than anything Howard had ever dreamed up. Steve's face was tired and drawn, and his fighting style was just beginning to get sloppy with weariness.

Even as she watched, he raised his shield just a bit too high and a blast took him in the side, knocking his feet out from under him and slamming him to the ground with jarring force.

A horrible screech split the air as the monsters sprang forward, but Peggy was quicker. With that strange, light speed that only comes in dreams she found herself at his side, kneeling in the rubble, bending protectively over him.

"Steve," she said, and tried to touch his shoulder. Her hand slipped right through as if an empty space lay between them. She tried again, to no avail.

"Steve," she insisted. "Get up. You must get up."

He did not seem to hear her, but as if in response to her urgent words he began gathering himself, slowly, painfully. Peggy looked up apprehensively to gauge the monsters' approach, but the man who had been fighting at Steve's back was holding them at bay.

Looking back at Steve, she saw he had painfully raised himself to his hands and knees. Dust coated his eyelashes, and she spared a moment to wonder at the incongruous clarity of this bizarre dream. How could her unconscious get his uniform so wrong, but capture to perfection the weary, pained furrows in his brow?

"Steve," she said again, willing the dream to let him hear her. And for a moment she thought he had, as he raised his head, eyes startlingly blue in his dirt-smeared face.

Then a hand appeared in her peripheral vision, and Steve accepted it, hauling himself to his feet with a grimace of pain, hand pressed to his side.

Peggy tried to stand, tried to follow, but the dream was already fading.

The next moment she was wide awake, staring up at the sky, the stars blurred with her tears.

"You'd better stop reading that trash, Pinky," she heard Dugan tell Pinkerton the next morning at breakfast as they sat around the campfire, shoulders hunched against the chill of the early day. "It'll rot your brain."

Pinky just grinned, flipping the page of his most recent comic book. Aliens and monsters in garish color grimaced from the cover. "Aww, somebody sounds jealous that their kid brother doesn't send them the newest edition."

Ah, yes. He had been reading it last night too. That explained in some measure her wild dreams of monsters, though it didn't explain the clarity of the dream, nor Steve's presence.

"Let him alone, Dugan," Peggy spoke around a mouthful of only slightly burned oatmeal. "If he wants to read about fictional monsters, let him. But," and here she raised her voice to include the rest of the group, "I do want you to know how proud I am of you all for taking down the real monsters yesterday."

Because true, they might not be killing aliens like Pinky's comic book, but they were carrying out the rest of Steve's work in the aftermath of the war, burning out the last of the corrupt organization that had cost him his life.

It was the best tribute she could offer to Steve's memory.

Author's Note: Thank you kindly for reading! If you're enjoying so far, please review and feed the author! Next update should be tomorrow night sometime. :)