Author's Note: I still can't quite believe I wrote this but this is, apparently, what comes of rewatching the "Captain America" movies, rekindling all my love of the Steve and Peggy relationship. A very belated insert to the end of "Avengers: Endgame," showing what happened when Steve went back in time to be with Peggy.
Seeking Happiness
Steve had returned the last of the Infinity Stones to their places and now, he paused, the thought—the idea—that had been percolating in his mind since Tony's funeral solidifying. Thanks to the Quantum Realm and Bruce working his, well, magic for lack of a better term, he had all the time he needed. Which meant he had a choice. A chance.
He'd thought about Tony—Tony and Pepper and Morgan—the simple life Tony had made for himself, the life Tony would no longer get to live. The simple life he himself had never had.
He remembered what Tony had said to him, that the reason they fought was to be able to end the fight so they could one day have a normal life. After all, Tony had been right but at the time, Steve hadn't known what such a life could look like, not for him. Or no, that wasn't true, he admitted. Even then, always, when he tried to picture the simple life, a home, only one person came to mind. Peggy. He had tried—oh, he had tried—to stop loving her, to move on from her. had told himself it was impossible, separated as he and Peggy were by more than 70 years.
He had told himself he had to do his duty, serve, be Captain America—and he had told himself that, after all, what else could he do because the other life he might have wanted to live was impossible anyway.
But now, thanks to the Quantum Realm, to this bizarre new reality he found himself living in, traveling through time, back in time, was possible.
Now, if he chose, he could do it, take this time that he had and stay in the past, his past, to live through a new future.
To no longer be the man out of time. To no longer be alone.
He remembered what Peggy's older self had said to him, that she had lived her life. My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours….
And he knew he had to do this, had to try.
After a life—what felt like a century—of living for others, of being the hero the world needed him to be, he was simply tired. Not only physically but emotionally, spiritually, even. He was so very tired of fighting. He remembered the daydream, the vision, he had had of Peggy, of her saying to him, The war is over, Steve. We can go home. Imagine it. After all, in that war, his war, that was what people had fought for—with all the suffering, he remembered hearing the Commandos and the other soldiers saying that they fought to protect their homes, preserve their families' futures, fought to give their families peace and security. As Tony had put it, they had fought in order to end the fight one day.
But for him, the fight had never ended. There had always been threats—God knows, there had always been threats—and the world had still needed a hero, heroes. And the world had its heroes now. Not just him but better heroes, heroes with the background and the knowledge of science and technology and, yes, magic, to push the boundaries of what was possible in a way he could never do. Perhaps that was it. In this future, this modern world, more and more, he had come to realize, to understand, that it was science and technology—the Tony Starks, the Dr. Banners, the T'Challas and the Shuris—who made the heroes what they were. And of course, there were actual wizards like Dr. Strange and Wanda now too. He was not the indispensable hero. Maybe he had been once, back in his day, in his war, but that had been a simpler world. Now, the world had other heroes. If the last battle against Thanos had shown him anything, it was that. Avengers, Assemble, indeed.
Now, if he chose to go back and stay in his past, he could do so. To no longer be Captain America but simply Steve Rogers again. would it be a dereliction of duty? Deserting the world?
But he also knew he wasn't the only superhero in the world, wasn't even the greatest hero. And he simply was no longer sure how much more he had left to give. For so many years, he had been giving, dedicating all he had to the service of the greater good, of people who needed to be protected, the world that needed to be saved. But after all that had happened with Thanos, the long, long years after the Snap and all they had lost in this last battle to undo the devastation of the Snap, he felt… empty, drained. He felt… like a candle that had been burning its own substance for light and now, after all these years, he felt as if there was so little of himself left that whatever light he had was on the verge of flickering out.
He felt… as tired as the more-than-100-year-old man he technically was. Worse was the nagging fear inside that if another threat arose tomorrow, he wasn't sure he could go out and fight again. He could imagine–and it was terrifying–simply giving up, maybe not immediately, but the first time he was knocked down, for the first time in his life, he could imagine simply staying down, accepting defeat. He felt too old and too tired to fight any longer.
And that thought, as always, led his mind back to her, to Peggy. When he doubted himself, when he wasn't sure what he should do, he had always turned to her and even now, after so many years, she was the first person he wanted to turn to in such times.
He wanted, desperately, to talk to her again. And now, for the first time in years, it was possible. Possible not only to see her again and talk to her but to hope for more…
Hope. In the end, maybe that, above all, was what decided him. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to be able to hope but now, he could remember what hope–hope for the future–felt like. And he could not, simply could not, turn away from that hope.
At the very least, he had to try for the second chance. Had to at least see if what he wanted—who he wanted—could really be.
Oddly, or perhaps not, the thought of seeing Peggy again felt, at that moment, more daunting than any battle had ever faced. But maybe that was always going to be true. Physical courage, risking his own body and life, had never been that difficult as he had never cared all that much for his own safety. But seeing Peggy, asking Peggy for the future he wanted, felt like a much bigger risk. One he had never taken. One he had never had the chance to take, yes, but in a sense it had been… easier, he thought, telling himself it was hopeless and never needing to risk his heart.
Now, it wasn't hopeless and it was entirely up to him. And at the thought, he felt much more like his old self, the one who had stumbled like a fool over his words on the way to Dr. Erskine's experiment site, the one who had felt so conscious and so certain that Peggy Carter was so far out of his league he might as well be wishing for a star.
Agent Carter, Director Carter of S.H.I.E.L.D., the heroine who would go on to become a legend.
But he remembered the picture he had seen on her desk in her office at S.H.I.E.L.D., so long ago now, or so it felt. The picture that had hit him with all the force of a punch from Thanos. The picture of him, his real self. In the last few years, he had seen more pictures and images and representations of himself as Captain America than he could count and he had become accustomed to them now, had stopped feeling the automatic wish to look around when someone referred to Captain America as being the Great Hero or something like that. (Being accustomed to something wasn't the same as feeling entitled to it).
But he had not seen a picture of his old self, his real self, in a long, long time. Had never expected to see a picture of his old self anywhere. Unsurprisingly, because no one had seen any real value in his old self. Well, no one except for Bucky and then Dr. Erskine and then—her.
He had wondered, thought, that he loved her because of it, because she was the first woman who had looked at him, his real self, and seen someone worthy. The woman who had first told him as Captain America that he had value as his new self too. The woman who had believed he was a hero before anyone else did. The only woman who still, always, knew him as simply Steve, not as Captain America.
And even after all those years, more than 20 years after they had last seen each other, she had kept his picture on her desk. She hadn't forgotten him, more, still cared about him, even then.
And he knew he had to try. She was, as she had always been, the one woman he dreamed of. And if he were going to have a real life at all, he wanted it to be with her.
Steve hesitated outside of Peggy's house in Los Angeles. He remembered having stopped in LA during his early song-and-dance tour as Captain America what felt like a century or so ago and while he hadn't seen much of the city back then, even he could tell that it too had grown and changed in the handful of years since. He had decided on LA during Peggy's year of service in the SSR office here rather than New York because New York brought back too many memories and it was Stark territory. Howard's territory in this time but even so, the thought of Howard brought back too many painful memories of Tony.
He knew New York much better, of course, but that was a drawback too. And aside from all else, New York was too crowded, too busy, to afford him and Peggy any privacy for this conversation, whatever might happen. Peggy lived in a boarding house for women in the city, as did most other unmarried young women, and he did not want to be sneaking into her building or somehow trying to waylay her outside of it and certainly could not count on being able to do so with any reasonable hope of privacy.
He had already taken a walk around the block, telling himself he was simply curious to see more of the neighborhood in which she had chosen to live, but conscious that it was a delaying tactic. And for all his delays, he still wasn't entirely sure of what he was going to say to her. What did one say to the woman whom he loved but who he'd never told, a woman whose death he had grieved over? What did one say to a woman who had believed he was dead for a few years now? A woman who might well have found a measure of closure and peace over his death. A woman who might be seeing another man, it suddenly occurred to him. He didn't doubt that a woman as beautiful and capable as Peggy Carter would always have admirers. He knew she wasn't married yet but it did not mean she wouldn't have already met the man who was to become her husband. And she might care, might cherish the memory of him, but would that be enough for her to want to live her actual life with him? A life after the war which she had already begun to build on her own. What right did he have to throw her life off course? Reopen old wounds?
No right, of course. And yet… she had kept his picture on her desk for years. His picture. One of the real him, not of Captain America, the man he had become thanks to Dr. Erskine and his formula, but of him. And it was personal, had to be personal, because his old self had no place in S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization, while Captain America did. He knew what S.H.I.E.L.D. had originally done to keep the legacy of Captain America alive, how he had become a symbol to them. There was a reason that Howard Stark's biographies still tended to be headlined with two things: Stark's role in founding S.H.I.E.L.D. and the role he had played in creating Captain America, both by being there when the serum had worked and later creating Captain America's shield. Whatever else Howard had done in his life, his association with Captain America had lasted, burnished Howard's legacy. So no, Steve's old self did not belong there.
He had to try. And the one thought that kept him moving, to finally knock on her door, was that no matter what happened, he would get to see her again, talk to her again. After all these years, the need to see her, hear her voice, felt like his need for oxygen. Just to see her again would be enough, he told himself. Almost enough.
The door opened and there she was, wearing a simple navy dress, as beautiful as she had ever been. He felt his breath stall in his chest, his heart starting to race, even as tears pricked at the back of his eyes. Peggy. His Peggy, after all these years….
"Peggy," was all he managed to say, almost croak, over the constriction in his throat.
She gave a sharp gasp, almost a cry, and went paper-white but then before he could react, could say or do anything else, her fist flew out and she punched him, the punch of the trained agent she was, making his head snap back.
He grunted with the shock of it and then she was retreating backwards into her house.
"Who are you? What do you want?" she demanded, her voice unsteady, as she lunged and grabbed a gun from a side table and pointed it at him.
Of all his imaginings of her reactions, this had not been one of them. His hands flew up in surrender. "Peggy, it's me! I'm sorry I'm so late but I—I was wondering if you'd want to go dancing, even if we don't have the Stork Club here," he blurted out in a rush, feeling like an idiot even as he said it but it was all that came to mind.
She choked a little. "Th-the Stork Club?" she repeated unsteadily, her voice sounding unlike herself, so weak. "How do you—no one knows about that," she breathed still unsteadily and very quietly, almost more to herself than to him.
"It's me, Peggy," he repeated quietly.
Now he saw tears starting to her eyes as she stared, her hands trembling. He kept a somewhat wary eye on the gun she still held although her hands had fallen, even as he felt his throat close, tears again threatening his own eyes at the sight of her emotion. This was the emotion he had expected.
"S—Steve?" she faltered. "Is it really you? You—you're alive?"
He forced a faint smile. "Yeah, Peggy," he managed in little more than a whisper, his throat so tight even those two words took a concerted effort.
"Oh!" It was a small cry, tears spilling over out of her eyes as she reached out blindly and dropped her gun onto the small side table. "Steve…" Her voice was almost a sob and revealed more of how much she had grieved for him, mourned him, than he'd known or even realized. Revealed how much she cared. Perhaps even almost as much as he did…
He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat but couldn't manage to clear it enough to speak, not that he had any idea of what he should say, but then before he could think, she had taken a couple steps forward. He felt as if he were holding his breath and perhaps he was and then she had lifted trembling hands to touch him, light fleeting touches to his chest then his shoulders and lastly, his face, as if to assure herself he was corporeal. "Steve," she breathed again shakily.
"Yeah," was all he could manage.
And then she all but threw herself at him, clutching at him, as if she feared he would disappear if she didn't hold on tightly enough.
He closed his arms around her, his eyes falling shut, a trembling breath escaping him. He was holding Peggy. Finally, for the first time, Peggy was in his arms. And she fit against him as if she'd been made for him, or more accurately perhaps, as if he had been made to hold her. and maybe in a strange sense he had been. At that moment, he could almost believe the fanciful thought was true. That Dr. Erskine's formula, his choosing Steve, had all been meant, intended by fate so he, Steve Rogers, could hold this woman.
She was trembling against him, crying, he realized, this woman, who had always amazed him with her strength and her cool competence, was crying. Crying over him. The thought had his own tears welling, tracing down his cheeks, as he rested his cheek against her hair. Peggy. His Peggy. God, how he had missed her, longed for her.
He tightened his arms around her and then turned his head to kiss her hair, her temple. "I'm here, Peggy," he managed to whisper, not entirely steadily. "I came back. I—I couldn't leave my best girl."
She choked a little on a sob and then lifted her face to his, close enough that he knew their breaths mingled, close enough so he could see the wet spikes of her eyelashes from her tears. And finally, oh finally, he was able to do what he had wanted to do for so long, what he'd dreamed about doing again, and lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Kissed her knowing she could taste the salt of his tears on his lips just as he could taste her tears, kissed her as images, memories, flashed through his mind. Their one previous, precious kiss, the wind rushing around them, his heart thundering in his chest, the roar of the car engine and the jet ahead of them. Finally, he was kissing Peggy again.
He lifted his head slightly, slowly, reluctantly breaking the kiss but retreating only enough that he could still feel the warmth of her lips hovering just below his. But she made a soft sound in her throat and rose up, lifting her mouth until they touched his again. He gave in—not that he would ever—could ever—deny her anything. He kissed her again and again and again and his last coherent thought for some time was that kissing her felt right, more right than anything in his life had ever done. As if he'd been made for this moment, this woman.
Steve could not have said how much time passed before they stopped kissing, the kisses slowing and gentling through some unspoken mutual communication—how that was possible he didn't know but it was. He had to blink a couple times before his mind cleared, at least somewhat. "Um, wow," he breathed. And then immediately felt like an idiot. He knew he would never be what anyone would call suave but he liked to think that he had at least become somewhat better around women in the last few years, had learned how to talk to them at least. But then again, he doubted any other woman would have the same effect on him. Peggy had always been able to do this to him, make his brain go blank.
Her lips tipped upwards slightly. God, she was so lovely. His heart thudded in his chest and he vaguely wondered if this was normal or if the serum had made his reaction to her stronger too. But he suspected–no, he knew–that it had nothing to do with the serum at all and everything to do with the fact that it was her. He didn't react like this to the sight of any other woman's smile.
"Steve. You're really here," she breathed wonderingly. "But—but how? What happened to you?"
Oh, right, that. He had, somehow, not thought ahead to all the explanations he would need to give, perhaps because he didn't know how to tell the story of all that had happened to the world in the last years, all that he had seen and done since he had first woken up from his long sleep. But then, right now, the details weren't important. He could tell her more later. For the first time, they had time. What they had never really had before, not in the exigencies of war when all they'd had were brief stolen moments.
"It's a long story. A very long story," he amended.
"We have time." She paused and then added with a little uncertainty, "We do, don't we?"
"We have time," he assured—and just the thought felt miraculous.
A touch of something like awkwardness, of self-consciousness, returned as he reluctantly lowered his arms from around her. He abruptly became aware that he had essentially barged into her home without any thought to what she might have been doing, any plans she might have. He hadn't even paid any attention to his surroundings at all, not to notice. He was pretty sure the house could have collapsed around them and he wouldn't have noticed.
Now, belatedly, he did notice. Her home looked comfortable, very simple, nothing fancy. It suited her. He realized with some heat creeping into his cheeks that her front door had been left open all this time so anyone passing by could have seen them kissing. Her street might be a quiet one but still.
"I-um-I'm not disturbing you, am I?" he managed lamely.
And knew it was an absurd thing to say under the circumstances, because she threw him one of her old teasing, half-sardonic looks. "I see you're as much of a smooth talker as ever."
He had a sudden flash of vivid memory, of her giving him the same look, the same tone, as she'd commented, "Well, nobody's perfect," after he had marked down the locations of the various Hydra bases on the map.
His heart seemed to clench in a sudden stab of something like longing. God, how he had missed her. It was strange to be standing right in front of her and only then realize to the full just how much he had missed her.
"Steve? I was only teasing."
"I know," he assured her. "I was just… remembering." He wanted to tell her how much he'd missed her but the words seemed to catch in his throat, seemed so… inadequate.
Her expression softened as she moved to close her front door, locking it, and then returned to slip her hand into his and draw him with her, gently, not that he needed any urging, to join her on the sofa in the adjoining room.
He sat down next to her, turning so he could look at her, her so-familiar-and-yet-somehow-not-entirely-familiar face. He vaguely remembered thinking before, in one of those brief moments during the war, that he could happily look at her for hours. And now, after missing her for so many years, what felt like a century, he knew it was true. Just seeing her again. He had thought he remembered what she looked like, not just from his memories but from her picture in his compass, but he realized again that the picture had not done her justice. No grainy black and white photograph could capture her, her vitality, the brightness of her eyes, the delicate color in her cheeks, the color of her lips.
"What happened to you, Steve?" she asked again, quietly this time.
What had happened to him? It occurred to him with the first flicker of humor he'd ever felt at the thought of all that happened to him, mordant as the humor was, that it might be a shorter and altogether easier story to tell what hadn't happened to him in the years since he had first woken up after going into the ice. He hadn't fallen in love again. He hadn't found a home. He hadn't been Snapped out of existence or died.
But of course, any flicker of humor was short-lived. He sighed, briefly closing his eyes at the memories, before opening them again to focus on her. On her face, the last face he had seen before the crash.
"I crashed," he began slowly, uncertainly, noting the way something like a quick flinch crossed her face. His heart twisted at this tell-tale sign of how much the thought of his supposed death had haunted her, this so-stoic agent who could face down a car driven by an assassin without flinching and even berate him for saving her from being hit by it. He reached out and grasped her hand and she curled her fingers around his. "Everything went black and the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes in an unfamiliar room, what looked like a hospital room, but it wasn't quite right somehow, felt… off, and I found out that the reason it all felt wrong was because… I'd been asleep, in hibernation really, for a very long time. Almost 70 years," he added quietly after a moment.
He hadn't decided how much to tell her of the future he had seen—did not know how much he could or should tell her about her own future, the life she would go on to live—but he couldn't hide the bare facts of what he'd seen, that he had been in the future. The details of the story of what had happened to him, all he had lived through, could wait for later—because they did have time-but for now, a very general summary would do. Enough for her to understand at least some of what he'd been through, what had shaped him to be the man that he now was. The detailed story would not be an easy one to tell but he knew he could tell her. Even if he told no one else the full truth, he could tell her.
Even after all this time, he trusted her implicitly. As he always had. As he knew he always would. After a life where he had experienced and seen so much more of the evil that was out there, after he had learned betrayal and how hard and conflicting it could be to figure out what the right thing to do was, she was still, always, his lode stone. She had been the person he turned to when he didn't know what to do and nothing else in the world made sense and in spite of all that had happened, the years that had separated them, she still was. After all, it occurred to him that it was only fitting that her picture had lived in his compass all this time because she was his true north.
She sucked in a breath. "70 years… You—you were in the future? But—but how?"
He twisted his lips wryly. "I don't know. I'm not sure anyone really does, how I stayed alive, if asleep, for so many years. The serum, somehow, but beyond that…" He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. "So I had to adjust, somehow, to being a man out of time in a future that was so incredibly different from everything I'd known and eventually, I sort of did, made easier because I didn't have much time to dwell on anything because the world was under threat from—" he paused again before finishing, "aliens from outer space."
He felt her stiffen slightly and met her eyes. "I know. If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't believe it either. But it did happen."
Her expression softened slightly. "I know."
He blinked. "You do?" How could she know what had happened?
"If you say it happened, it happened," she told him. "You don't lie."
He slanted a look at her. "I know you've seen my file. You know how many times I tried to enlist, with five different hometowns."
"That was different," she dismissed, her tone regaining some of her characteristic crispness. "Besides, even in the rare times that you do lie, you're terrible at it. And I don't think your imagination is good enough to come up with such a far-fetched story so it must be true."
A little chuckle that even to his own ears sounded rather rusty escaped him. Oh, how he had missed her dry wit.
"I missed you," he found himself blurting out.
He felt heat creeping into his cheeks at the graceless confession but her expression softened. "I missed you too."
He blinked and had to look away, a little abashed at the prick of tears he felt, the rush of emotion once again clogging his throat. He had imagined the joy of this reunion. He had not imagined, not been prepared for, the tears, the power of the emotions all but knocking him flat. He supposed it would take time, days if not weeks, before all this would feel real. before he could start to feel even a little accustomed to being… happy. Because that had to be what this feeling was, as if his heart, his entire body, was somehow lighter. He had… forgotten what it felt like to be happy.
"I-uh—" he began, rather horrified to hear that his voice sounded rather hoarse with emotion and had to stop lest his voice betray him yet more.
"You won the battle," she finished for him.
Something about her calm, the matter-of-fact tone, eased the knot of emotion in his throat. "I didn't do it alone," he went on. "I couldn't have done it alone. I had friends helping me, probably the best friends I've ever had," he finished more quietly. And it was true. He thought about the Avengers—Tony, Thor, Bruce, Nat, Clint—yes, they had been, had become, the best friends he'd ever really had. They, along with Sam and Bucky and T'Challa and Scott, Wanda and Vision, had become his best friends. Real, true friends in a way not even the Howling Commandos had been because with the Commandos, for all the camaraderie and the loyalty, he had always known that they looked to him to lead them. There had been a distance, between him and the Commandos so he had never been one of them, because of the serum, the super strength, even the bare fact that he had rescued them. It had not been a friendship of equals. With the Avengers, it had been different, perhaps why they had clashed at first and later too. But they had been true friends.
He pushed back the swell of emotion at the thought, the memories. In the end, he knew, they had been together, been united. And the world, their world, was safe.
"That first big battle wasn't the end," he went on. "It led to a war, people and countries and finally even other planets, were divided, which led to another war. We faced threats that made Schmidt look like a playground bully. Once Earth had been exposed to the dangers out there in the galaxy, it couldn't retreat. It took years, so many years. I lost…" his voice trembled slightly before he managed to catch it, "we lost friends, family." He broke off because he could no longer trust his own voice.
"It wasn't your fault."
He glanced at her, a little startled almost in spite of himself, at her words, her certainty.
"You would always do whatever was necessary to save anyone, let alone a friend. It could not be your fault." She paused and he felt her eyes roaming his face. "It must have been terrible," she went on quietly. "You look... different. Older."
The compassion in her eyes and in her voice, the concern for him, shook him to his core. He had always done whatever he could to stand tall for others, to help and support everyone who needed it, being the hero the world needed him to be. He was used to it and he had to acknowledge that other people had lost and suffered so much more than he had in the last five years since Thanos's Snap. Everyone had lost so much, been left decimated. He wasn't the important one. But now, Peggy was concerned for him, worried about him, and what he had suffered and it was only then that it struck him just how different that was. In the last five years, and even before that if he were honest, no one had really been worried about him as a person and he was so used to that, so used to being alone in the world, that he rarely stopped to think about it.
It occurred to him now that in his life, since his own mother had passed when he'd been 18, he had really only had two people who had worried about him and how he might be coping. Bucky, his first and oldest friend, who had told him that he didn't need to manage alone–and Peggy, who had been the one person to seek him out after Bucky's supposed death in the war and who had provided the only measure of comfort he had found. And even now, after all these years, it was still true. He was still alone, in every sense that mattered, except for Bucky–Bucky, who was haunted by his own demons and Steve could not, would not, add to Bucky's burdens now when Bucky had suffered so much more than Steve himself ever had–and Peggy.
He tried for a faint quirk of his lips but knew he failed. "Thank you."
"You know that's not what I meant." She lifted a hand and touched his chin, lifting his face so he faced her fully. "You look as if you've been through hell and back, more than once."
"I guess… I have been," he agreed slowly. That was what it felt like, although it felt… odd to be speaking in terms of his own personal pain. But how had she known, how could she put it into words just from looking at him? Except… this was Peggy. And somehow, it seemed as if she had always been able to do that, seen the real him, seen through him, even. She had always seen past the hero to the man. And she cared enough to look and notice and worry.
This, he thought, was what it felt like to no longer be alone.
"But you did it. You saved the world, again."
His lips curved faintly. "Yeah, we did, but how can you be so sure of that?"
To his surprise, she laughed a little. "Steve, you've never run from a fight in your life. You wouldn't be here if there was even the smallest remaining threat."
"You know me so well," he responded, trying to sound light, even as he felt their truth. Somehow, in spite of everything, in spite of the years that had passed, even—he could admit it now, with the clarity of years—in spite of the fact that he and Peggy had not actually spent much time together before—she did know him, the real him.
"As usual, you're right," he went on, trying to sound calm. "We did win and, well, some of my good friends had come up with a way to time travel." He sensed rather than felt the little quiver of shock that went through her at the words, so baldly stated. She might have guessed from his earlier admission of having been asleep for almost 70 years but even so, hearing it wasn't the same. He could understand that and he had lived it.
"We needed to, in order to win the war, and when we were done, my friends made it so I had a choice, to stay in the new life I'd made or to come back, to actually live my life. The simple life I've never had. They gave me a chance. And I took it." He paused, aware that his heart was beating abnormally rapidly now, his pulse uneven. He couldn't quite bring himself to meet her eyes anymore as he went on, knowing the next words would be, in spite of all that had just happened, the crucial ones. Not that he had any real idea of what he should say. "I just… needed to see you again. Because…" Because the only life I want is with you. The words stuck in his throat. They were too direct, too… much. "I still don't know how to dance and I was wondering if you were still willing to teach me," he finished in a rush, all that came to mind, and only after the words were out and he heard them did he think how inane they sounded.
A brief silence fell and this time, he knew he really was holding his breath. He felt rather as if the whole world might be holding its breath too.
He knew she'd understood what he meant. She knew him, understood him too well not to.
"Well," she responded slowly after what felt like an excruciatingly long time but was in all likelihood little more than a few seconds, "I did promise to show you how. And I'd hate to have it said that I don't keep my promises."
His eyes flew up to meet hers and he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. "Peggy. Really?"
Her eyes glistened with tears but her lips managed a faint, somewhat trembling, curve. "I've been waiting for the right partner."
His throat closed on a rush of emotion, of hope and joy and incredulity and love. He had no words. He swallowed hard but all he could do was breathe just one word. "Peggy…"
He lifted a hand that wasn't entirely steady to cup her cheek and she tilted her face into his touch. And then he kissed her, again. And if their last kisses had been about relief and memory and hope, this kiss was a promise for life.
~To be continued…~
A/N 2: I decided to have Steve returning to Peggy in late 1947, a few months after the end of Season 2 of "Agent Carter," as the option that made the most sense and fits with what we saw in the end scene from "Endgame," where it looks like fall and Steve and Peggy are in a house that doesn't look like it's anywhere in New York City.
