A/N 2: With some references to Peggy's backstory as seen in "Agent Carter."

Seeking Happiness

Chapter 3

Steve watched as Thanos's army dissolved into dust, vanished from around him, an echo of what Thanos had done five years ago. Their enemies were gone but he was still looking out over a landscape of carnage, of devastation. The battle was over. The war was over. Thanos had been defeated. Even after all these years, all the battles, he could not quite come to terms with how the aftermath of a battle looked the same, regardless of whether it had been a victory or a loss. Win or lose, there was always death, so much death and pain and suffering.

And then he saw Tony, who had fallen on the ground, was lying half-propped up against a pile of debris. The light from the reactor in his chest was flickering wanly, weakly, but he was alive. He was still alive.

Steve staggered forward a few steps and collapsed onto his knees beside Tony, his hand coming up to gingerly touch Tony's armor around the reactor. "Tony, you did it. Tony…" Not all his effort could keep his voice from trembling.

Tony's lips moved slightly and he had to bend forward to hear the faint thread of sound, little more than a breath. "We had… a… deal…"

He met Tony's eyes, trying not to choke on the threatening panic. It was the one thing Tony had asked for, that they preserve the life he had made for himself. And Steve was here and Tony was… dying. And Steve knew he could not help. He was no doctor, no scientist. He was no Tony Stark or a Bruce Banner or a Dr. Strange. All he had was super strength and super strength was useless when it came to healing someone else.

Even as he watched, the light in Tony's chest flickered and blinked and then went out. A brief little sound like a breath left Tony's lips and then he was gone, his eyes blank and staring. Lifeless.

"Tony," he choked, feeling hot tears flood his eyes. "Tony, no, you can't… Tony, I'm sorry…" Tony, who had Pepper and Morgan, a family, to live for.

Behind him, he heard a sharp, agonized cry and then Pepper was there and he half-fell, half-crawled to move, giving way to her and her superior right to be there by Tony's side. He watched as she leaned in to press a gentle kiss to Tony's cheek and then she almost fell forward to sob against Tony's shoulder.

And he could only watch helplessly, useless, futile tears streaking down his own cheeks. What kind of hero could only sit by and watch as a friend died? It should have been him. Better if it had been him, he who was alone, who had no family, not Tony, who had a family who would miss him, a daughter who needed her father.

But no, somehow, terribly, he was never the one who died. He had not been among those who disappeared in Thanos's Snap and he was still alive now. Others died–Pietro Maximoff, Vision, Nat, Tony, so many others–but not him. He never died.

"Steve."

The sound of his name–no, the sound of her voice speaking his name–had him jerking his head up, disoriented, confused. Terrified. No, she couldn't be here, not on this battlefield.

Her voice came again. "Steve, wake up."

He jolted awake, his eyes flying open on a sharp gasp, his heart pounding in his chest and for a moment, panic gripped him at the unfamiliar surroundings.

And then he felt a hand close over his, heard her voice again. "Steve, it's all right. It's me. You're safe."

Something like a choked gasp escaped him as he felt some of his tension leaving him, reality–memory–returning to him. Peggy, he was with Peggy, had found his way back to her. He wasn't alone anymore.

He belatedly realized that he had half-started up out of the bed and sank back down, turning towards her. He curled his arm around her, tugging her against him, and found himself burying his face against her soft curls, in the curve of her neck and her shoulder. He shut his eyes against the prick of tears at the lingering memory of his dream, even as he felt the warmth of her, the scent of her hair, sink into him, soothe him. A few tears escaped his eyes and were lost in her hair.

She slid her arms around him, her fingers lightly combing through his hair, and he felt yet more tension seeping out of him at the touch. How had he never known that such a light, gentle caress could soothe him so? But then again, he'd never had anyone who would give him such a caress so he'd never had the opportunity to learn such a thing.

"It's all right, darling," she murmured softly. "I'm right here."

He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that but gradually, her touch, her closeness, had him calming enough that he was able to release her, slowly shifting onto his back on the bed. She moved with him, curled snugly next to him, and he wrapped his arm around her, turning his head to brush a kiss to her temple. It was an incredible thing, he thought, this sort of intimacy—not the bare fact of their love-making earlier, as amazing as that had been–but this closeness, this newfound ease with touching, the way they could freely use touch to communicate more than words. Aside from their one fleeting kiss, they had never really touched before, constrained by wartime and the fact that as a woman surrounded by men in an army camp, she could not afford to attract that sort of attention. And after he'd returned from being frozen, when he had seen her older self, they had still been constrained, by the circumstances and the distance of years between them, and then she had looked so frail too that he'd been afraid to touch her in case he might inadvertently hurt her.

He had only been able to touch her in his dreams. So now, simply being able to hold her, to have her hold him, to feel the warmth of her body against his, soft and strong and so very alive, felt like a miracle.

He distantly remembered hugging Nat when she had come to find him after Peggy's funeral, the memory of which could still gut him even now, but this time accompanied by a sharp tug of grief over Nat. The hug had helped, provided a reminder that he wasn't entirely friendless even if he had just lost the woman he loved, again, but it hadn't done anything to really dull the pain he'd felt. Nat had been a good friend, the closest thing he had ever had to a sister, but Peggy was, well, different, as she had always been.

This kind of touch, holding and being held by the woman he loved and who loved him, was different. This sense of togetherness, of unconditional, unwavering support and understanding. He had seen glimpses of that when he'd seen Tony with Pepper or Clint with Laura but he hadn't really understood. Now, he did.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" she finally asked after a while.

He hesitated a moment, unsure. He was not accustomed to confiding. He had been alone for too much of his life for that and even with the Avengers, he'd always needed to be the leader, the captain, needed to be strong for everyone else. "It was about a friend dying," was all he could manage, his throat tight.

"Tony?" she supplied very quietly.

He startled a little. "I said that?"

"Just his name, that was all."

"Tony," he confirmed, his voice low. "He was… a good friend and he… died, in the final battle. He… was the one who ultimately won the war. But he… didn't survive and I… I can't stop thinking about it." Ironically, he thought that all the years since he had woken up after being frozen had taught him more about helplessness and the limits of what strength could do than all the years of his life before Dr. Erskine's serum had changed him. He had learned just how useless super strength could be.

"It wasn't your fault. You did everything you could. You would always do everything you could."

"He has a family, a young daughter, and now he…" His voice faltered and he couldn't continue.

"He had to have known the risks. And he chose to save his family and the world, no matter the cost. That's heroic."

For the first time in a while, he remembered the way she had come to find him after Bucky had died–after he had thought Bucky had died in the war. She had comforted him, had broken through his haze of grief and guilt with a few well-chosen, wise words and given him a measure of solace when just a few moments before, he wouldn't have believed it was possible.

"He was a hero," he agreed unsteadily. "I know that. I just… I'm so tired of losing people."

The words sounded almost petulant to his own ears but at the moment, he wasn't sure what else to say. He was so very tired of seeing others die while he was left alive. It wasn't that he wished to die himself but he hated being the survivor, one of the ones left behind to mourn and pick up the pieces.

She only turned her face to brush a kiss to his cheek and his eyes briefly closed, the tenderness in the touch comforting in a way he couldn't describe.

Confidences did not come easily to him but this was Peggy and she had somehow always been someone he could talk to. He had… almost forgotten that part of their relationship–or more accurately, had needed to bury the memory because it had hurt too much. Now, being with Peggy again, he remembered. He had always felt understood by Peggy, safe with her, if that made sense, safe to share his thoughts and feelings with her because she had seen and treated him as someone worthy of respect before Dr. Erskine's serum had made others start to view him differently. She knew the real him and with her, he didn't need to preserve any facade of being some sort of perfect hero. And that had still been true, even after he'd returned from being frozen. Even then, with so many years between them, he had been able to talk to Peggy and she had understood.

It made it easier for him to continue, try to put his emotions into words. "One of the recruitment doctors back in the war who denied me enlistment told me that I should be grateful for it because he was saving my life," he spoke slowly at first, a little haltingly, but then as if a dam had cracked, the words came easier as he went on. "I didn't understand that then and I still don't now. It's so much worse, so much harder, to be the one left behind. I thought so back then, hated that so many others had gone off to fight and die for the country and I wasn't given the chance. And when I woke up after being frozen, I was, literally, the one left behind again because everyone I'd known was gone."

Everyone except for her–and he remembered, again, how he'd felt when he learned that she was still alive. More, he remembered when he had first seen her older self–and had his heart broken all over again because the sight of her had brought home to him in a way that the bare fact of how many years it had been had not, that he and Peggy could never be, that the passage of almost 70 years in which she had aged but he had not, had created a chasm between them that could not be crossed. A chasm that had made his feelings for her seem worse than impossible but also… wrong… He pushed the memories aside. He was here, with Peggy, with nothing separating them anymore, and that was all that mattered.

"Oh Steve…" she murmured. He heard the emotion in her voice and was abruptly rather dismayed at how openly he had spoken, at the burden he had now placed on her. He hadn't meant to make her cry. He would never ever want to make her cry, wanted only to make her happy. He wondered rather sickly if, after all, he'd made a mistake in believing that simply coming back, being with Peggy again, could make her happy. Had he been thinking only of himself, of what he wanted, and not what would be better for her? Perhaps he'd been through too much to make her happy.

"It is harder to be the one who survives," she went on after a moment. "I know. I understand. I've sometimes thought that I've made a habit of losing the people closest to me. I lost my parents, lost friends, lost Michael…"

"Who's Michael?" He interrupted almost in spite of himself, distracted, forgetting his own emotions entirely in concern over her and caught by the softness of her voice, the warmth of it when she'd spoken the name Michael. Whoever Michael was, she had loved him. Still loved him, even now after his death, and grieved for him. Steve was not jealous, could not feel jealous with Peggy lying in his arms, but his chest did feel a twist of pain at the thought of Peggy losing anyone she loved.

"He's my brother," she answered, her voice so low he almost had to strain to hear it. "He died, early on in the war."

He remembered, now, that Peggy had had a brother but he didn't think he'd ever learned what her brother's name had been. "Peggy," he breathed. "I'm so sorry." He tightened his arm around her, brushing a kiss to her hair. He could picture a younger, more innocent Peggy in some comfortable home in England and then dark-suited men arriving to tell her the news, could imagine the bland, routine words of condolence. His heart hurt.

"He was the one who first recommended me for the SOE. And I turned them down."

"You did? Why?" To him, it seemed almost incomprehensible. Being Agent Carter seemed so much a part of her, was who she was. It had somehow never occurred to him that she hadn't always thought so too. And he was fascinated at this glimpse into her past. Somehow, stupidly, he had never wondered much about her past before he'd met her. He had eventually learned the bare facts, when and where she had been born, when she had joined the SOE and then the SSR, but he had not looked more deeply. Perhaps because it would have hurt too much, made him miss her too much. He had not allowed himself to spend much time looking into her life either before or after he had known her.

"I was going to be married. To a 'most suitable young man,'" she went on, her tone a touch dry and he heard the echo of other people's words, their opinions, in her voice.

"I was going to live a proper life as a lady, do what everyone told me I should do. Michael challenged me on it. He told me that I'd allowed everyone else's opinions to deny who I really was and I should stop pretending to be someone I'm not. I didn't want to listen. But he was right." she sniffed and now he heard a faintly rueful thread enter her voice. "He was always right."

"And when he died, I knew… I had to listen to what he'd told me. He was, had always been, the person who knew me the best, who encouraged me, told me I should be myself and not allow anyone to tell me I was too much or not enough, too headstrong, not lady-like enough."

He suddenly remembered what she had told him in the car on the way to the lab for Dr. Erskine's experiment, that she knew what it was like to have doors constantly closed in her face. And he had seen enough of how the world viewed women, especially back then and even in the future too, to know how true that would have been. She would have needed to fight for everything and so she had. She knew what it was to be doubted and looked down on by everyone. It was no wonder, he thought, that she had understood him too, from the beginning. Maybe, after all, that was at least part of what had drawn them together, because they both knew what it was to be doubted by the rest of the world.

"So you joined the SOE and then came over here, to be seconded to the SSR," he finished for her gently.

"Yes," she agreed. "It wasn't easy. But for the first time in my life really, I felt as if I were doing something worthwhile, something that mattered, so I told myself it didn't matter that no one wanted me there, that even in the SSR, no one was prepared to accept me as me, a real agent, treated me more like some sort of novelty, a mascot or a doll, they were allowing to stay as a favor."

He suddenly remembered one of the first things he had said to her, that he didn't know why a "beautiful dame" would want to get involved in the army. He inwardly winced.

"Michael was the only person who had ever seen and valued me for who I really was and didn't think I needed to be anything else and I didn't expect that to change. But then I met you and you saw me too… but then when… I lost you too, I thought… maybe it had to happen like that, because that was what I did, lose the people I loved…"

"Peggy." He tightened his arm around her, pressed a kiss to her temple, the corner of her eyebrow, her nose, and finally, her mouth. "Ssh, no, that's not what you do at all. You're a fighter; you fight for others, defend others. It wasn't your fault, could never have been your fault." His chest hurt with an almost physical pain. He knew all too well what it felt like to be the survivor, to wonder why and if there was something, anything, else he could have done. But to hear Peggy admit to feeling the same way was devastating. She of all people should never feel such guilt.

She returned his kiss but after a moment, drew back, her hand touching his cheek. "I'm all right, Steve. I–I've come to terms with everything that's happened. I've come to realize that dwelling on what might have been is no way to live and all we can do is move on, not only for ourselves, but because… we owe it to the ones we've lost to go on living. That's how we honor their memory, their sacrifice. It's not easy; sometimes I've thought that simply moving on and living might be the hardest thing to do but it would cheapen the sacrifice of those we lost if we gave up. We have to keep on fighting, keep on living, and that's the best way that we can make sure that their sacrifice wasn't in vain."

Tears pricked at the back of his eyes. He remembered Tony talking about the simple life, remembered Tony vowing that he had to protect the life he had made for himself in the years since Thanos's Snap. He remembered talking to Nat and saying that he thought they both needed to get a life and Nat's watery quip in response, "You first." The thought of Nat and Tony had been what had pushed him to decide to come back to Peggy, to finally try to find a life of his own. As he knew they had both wanted him to do. He had not thought of it in such terms, not with her wisdom or eloquence, but he felt the echo of his own emotions in her words.

And he thought that perhaps this was why he loved Peggy. More than her courage or her dry humor, it was because something in the quality of her mind, her wisdom, had always called to him, resonated with him. As improbable as it seemed, somehow, in her, he had found a consonance, an echo of his heart. So that she, who had been born to privilege an ocean away in England and had more class and elegance in her little finger than he would ever have in his entire body, understood him, a kid born with nothing and from nowhere in Brooklyn, better than anyone he had ever met. And even after all this time, it was still true.

"You're right," he finally managed. "You're right and I should stop feeling sorry for myself. Some hero I am, feeling sorry for myself when my friends lost their lives."

"Ssh." She lifted a hand to touch her fingers to his lips. "This isn't self-pity. It's grief. You're allowed to grieve; you should mourn the loss of your friends. Being haunted by their deaths doesn't make you any less of a hero. I simply don't want you to torment yourself with guilt when I'm sure it could not have been your fault. Your friend, Tony, wouldn't want that either, I'm sure."

He raised his hand and grasped hers, kissing her fingers before he lowered their clasped hands to his chest. "No, Tony wouldn't," he agreed quietly. He remembered what she had said to him so many years ago about Bucky, that he should allow Bucky the dignity of his choice. Tony, too, had made a choice. He had known there was a risk in being the one to bring all the Infinity Stones together and wielding that much power but he had still done it. Tony had known what he had to lose and made his choice.

No, Steve could not deny Tony the dignity of his choice. Any more than he could deny the choice Nat had made to ensure they could gather all the Infinity Stones.

"Tony is why I'm here," he went on after a moment. "Not only because of the sacrifice he made but because he was the one who told me years ago that I didn't have to spend my entire life fighting for others, being Captain America, that I should try to make a life for myself, find a home, settle down. And I told him at the time that I didn't think that kind of life, a normal life, was something I wanted. But it wasn't because I didn't want that life. I just didn't think it was possible." He stopped, hesitated, but after all they had already shared, considering where they were now, in a bed together, his earlier doubts seemed trivial. "Because when I tried to picture that kind of life, a home, all I thought of was you."

She turned and slid her arm across his chest, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. "Oh, Steve…"

He tightened his arm around her and turned his head to press a kiss to her temple. "I thought I could never have what I wanted so it was easier, hurt less, to pretend I didn't want that simple life at all." He understood that now. When Sam had asked him once what made him happy, he had said he didn't know but all along, Peggy had been in his mind, in his heart. He had tried to tell himself he was resigned to losing Peggy but it had never been really true. Losing her, believing that he and Peggy could never be, separated as they were by 70 years–worse, feeling as if his still loving Peggy were somehow wrong because she had moved on, married and had a family of her own, as if his love for Peggy were somehow, in a tortuous way, adulterous–had been a wound that had never healed. Until now.

He hesitated but made himself go on. She needed to understand the decision he'd made and why he had made it. But he did wonder, was afraid of what she might think, if she, with all her own courage, her determination, might think he was deserting, abandoning his duty. "I told myself it was all I could do, that I didn't have a choice, and I've always wanted to do the right thing, you know that. It was my duty, to fight the battles to protect those who can't protect themselves. It's… what I was made for."

"You were made to defeat Hydra and the threat of the Nazis–and you did."

No, he hadn't defeated Hydra, not really, but those words caught in his throat. He would have to tell her about S.H.I.E.L.D., which she hadn't even founded yet, and its eventual fate. But that could wait for a later time.

"It's been so many years of fighting since I woke up from the ice, more than a decade of fighting, of being Captain America in the 21st century. And after losing Tony and so many other friends in this last war, I'm just so… tired." He gave a shaky sigh. "I'm afraid of letting everyone, the world, down but… I just don't know how much more I have it in me to give."

"Steve." She lifted her face to brush her lips against his cheek. "You've always dedicated your mind, your body, your entire life for this country and this world. You gave your life, saved the world more than once. No one could expect more. The world is not your sole responsibility. You said yourself that the world has other heroes now." She paused, lifting a hand to trace her fingers lightly over his eyebrows, his cheek, his mouth, and he closed his eyes at the tender caress. "You've given enough, my darling."

He released his breath, indefinable tension leaving him, warmth coiling around his heart. She understood. She didn't blame him. "So that's why when Tony and some other friends made time travel possible, gave me the chance to come back to you, I had to take it. I had to see you again. I'd spent so many years dreaming about being with you, but believing it was impossible that when it became possible… I had to come back, see if my dream could actually come true."

She was quiet for a moment and then began, her voice quiet, "For more than a year after you… were gone, I dreamed that you'd come back, that you were alive. And every morning I woke up and you were still gone. And every morning it was like losing you all over again."

Oh, Peggy… His whole chest hurt so much it was almost physically painful to breathe. It occurred to him that in some ways, she might have suffered more than he had. As much as he had mourned being separated from her after he had woken up from the ice, even then, he had known that she was alive and what had happened to her, that she had lived a long, fulfilling, even happy life. He'd had that comfort, of being able to be happy for the life she'd been able to live. She had believed he was dead and had to live with the loss every day for more than two years.

She sniffed and turned her face up to smile at him. "But it's all right now. You coming back is my dream come true and that makes it all worth it."

His throat felt tight. Even after all she had suffered, she could say it was worth it simply because they were together again. And hearing her say the words, he could believe that.

For the first time, he could even see the value in all the years he and Peggy had spent apart, that maybe they had needed to lose each other to truly appreciate what they had found in each other. He knew that he himself had changed, matured, because of all he'd been through, all he had learned about himself and the world. He was no longer just the kid from Brooklyn who'd never seen anything of the world beyond New York. He was no longer the newly-minted hero who could be so flustered and flattered by that secretary's flirtation and her kiss. Before, he had still been awed by Peggy, had not believed he could really be enough for her, the level-headed, so capable Agent Carter, who could make his brain go blank with just a look. After all he had been through, the awe was gone, until only love remained. They were, somehow, on equal terms now.

And if he had wondered whether his feelings for Peggy were the simple result of her being the first woman he'd ever really talked to, he knew better now. Now, he knew, with a certainty that went to his very soul, that Peggy was the one woman in the world for him, the love of his life.

He turned, lifting his hand to brush a few strands of hair away from her face and then cupped her cheek. He wished that he were the type of man who could speak words of poetry or something to express all he felt but he wasn't. And besides, too much emotion still clogged his throat for that. "Peggy," he breathed. "My love."

"My love," she echoed, equally quietly.

And after all, maybe they didn't need poetry, only that.

He lowered his head and kissed her again, softly at first, but then deepened the kiss, desire and passion rising again, irresistibly. Nothing in his life had ever felt so right as being here with Peggy like this because this was love. With her, he had found his home.

~To be continued…~