Disclaimer: All things related to "Captain America" belong to the powers that be at Marvel.

Author's Note: Inspired by the deleted extended scene of Peggy's funeral in "Captain America: Civil War," and the look on Chris Evans's face as he served as a pallbearer, that had me thinking about what Steve must have felt at Peggy's funeral.

Time to Say Goodbye

Chapter 1

Steve hunched over the side of his bed, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands, his eyes shut as little shuddering breaths escaped him. His throat ached, his whole chest hurt as if he'd cracked a rib, but his eyes remained dry, burning but dry. And although it should have sounded absurd, he wished desperately that he could cry. It seemed so wrong not to cry. How could he not cry at the loss of Peggy? He wanted to cry.

He wanted… he wanted to scream out his agony, wanted to run as fast and as far as he could as if to outrun the pain in his chest, wanted to break things, pound a punching bag, something–but he knew none of that would do any good.

And he wished–oh God, he wished desperately–that he could get drunk. Temporary numbness would be very welcome for now. But even that was denied him.

And he still could not cry. Had not cried in the last endless minutes since he had first received the fateful–fatal–text message. How could he not cry?

Peggy was gone. For good. He would never see her again.

God, how many times could his heart break? His heart had already broken when he had realized fully what it meant that almost 70 years had gone by, that Peggy might still be alive but anything between them was now impossible. But he had still gone to see her, had needed to see her. Seeing her again, still beautiful even after so many years, had been a painful happiness. Happiness because he could not imagine ever not being happy in her company but also painful because of the chasm created by the years between them. And painful too because he had learned that she had married, had children and grandchildren now–not because he would have expected or even wanted her to stay alone her entire life but even so, it had made his feelings for Peggy seem wrong, almost… adulterous.

But she had still been here, still alive. And now she was gone.

If he had thought about it–and he had deliberately not allowed himself to think about it–he would have expected that the news, while terrible, would not be a surprise. She was, after all, 95 years old. And he knew she had been deteriorating, becoming more frail. He should have expected it, been resigned to it. But in spite of all that, somehow, the text message that she was gone had been a shock, had gutted him.

The realization that he would never see her again.

He hadn't seen her in almost two years, not since all that had happened with the end of SHIELD, and he had only hoped that she could be protected from the news of what had happened to the organization she had helped to found. He knew that her family had moved her to England afterwards, possibly in order to protect her from the fall-out or so he suspected. It was the one thing he had done for himself after the fall of SHIELD, even while he and Sam had gone in search of Bucky, contacting her home only to be told that she had moved back to England. And he had tried to be glad of it. She would be safer in England, he knew, far removed from the political and other repercussions of the revelations about Hydra, the threat that Hydra might well still pose to her, as the only living co-founder of SHIELD. But it meant he had not been able to see her.

And now, she was gone.

He would have thought he'd become accustomed to the way missing her had been an ever-present dull ache in his chest but he realized now that he'd had no idea. Missing someone when you could still hope to see them again was one thing but missing someone when there was no hope was a very different thing, the dull ache now a sharp stab.

She was at peace now, he told himself. At peace, no longer dealing with the terrible, slow deterioration of her so-clever mind. And he tried to tell himself he should be relieved for that, at least, relieved to know that she was at peace, that she had passed peacefully without pain. He was relieved for that–he was.

But oh God, what was he going to do now? He found himself wondering, rather sickly and even a little absurdly, how he was supposed to go on in a world that no longer had Peggy Carter alive in it. How was he supposed to go on knowing he could never see her again? Never talk to her again?

He remembered with sharp despair the last time he had visited her before everything had happened with the downfall of SHIELD, remembered the way he had talked to her about his doubts about what he was doing, his life and purpose as Captain America in the 21st century, in a way he had not talked to anyone else. Remembered how she had in her inimitable way managed to gently tease him and comfort him at the same time with her understanding. Even then, even after all the years that had separated them, he had been able to turn to her with his doubts, had been able to turn to her for comfort and guidance and support. He trusted her in a way he trusted no one else in his life. Trusted her judgment and her integrity so that when he doubted what was the right thing to do, he wanted to talk to her.

And now, he thought despairingly, he would have wanted to talk to her about these Sokovia Accords, wanted to know what she thought of them, wanted her to tell him what to do. Because he trusted her clear-eyed judgment more than his own in difficult times and if she had agreed with him on not signing the Accords, he could go forward with more confidence.

But she was gone and he was alone now. And he didn't know what he was going to do.

He pressed his fingers against his eyes with a little too much force, irrationally wondering if he could somehow force tears to come. But no, his eyes hurt but remained stubbornly, terribly dry.

He reached into his pocket to bring out his compass, opening it to look at Peggy's picture inside, her beautiful youthful face, the way he always pictured her, even after he had seen her older self.

There was a brief, perfunctory knock on the door and Steve jerked upright, hurriedly snapping his compass shut and slipping it back into his pocket.

Just in time before the door opened and Tony walked in.

"Tony, can we not–" Steve began, trying to sound reasonably normal.

Tony waved a hand. "I'm not here to argue. I want to know what happened. I know something did."

Steve swallowed, opened his mouth but found that any words were beyond him. He could not bring himself to say the words, Peggy Carter is dead, or anything to that effect aloud. Could not even think the words without flinching. Instead, he handed over his phone and let Tony see the text.

Tony read the text and handed his phone back and, to his credit, did not ask.

Steve inwardly steeled himself and clarified, "It's Peggy Carter," and just saying her name sent a sharp pain through his chest and not all his effort could keep his voice steady as he said it.

"I'm sorry," Tony offered and then went on, "But she must have been, what, nearly 100 now?"

Steve gritted his teeth. He knew Tony well enough by now to understand that Tony's quick, clipped tones were not meant to sound insensitive. It was, he knew, simply Tony's manner, to speak quickly, in rather disjointed fashion at times, reflecting his rapidly jumping thoughts. He knew that but all the same, at that moment, Tony's manner abraded every sensibility he had. "She's 95," he managed.

"Ah. Well. I was close then." He nodded, paused, and then went on, his voice quieter than usual, "I knew her, you know, although I didn't see her much. SHIELD headquarters wasn't a place for kids and my dad never wanted me there. But she came to–the funeral and I'd met her occasionally while I was growing up."

Steve had known that Tony must have met Peggy, Peggy's ongoing collaboration with Howard through SHIELD had made that inevitable–but he had never asked Tony about her. He had felt too self-conscious to do so, hadn't known how to ask without somehow stripping his emotions, how he felt about Peggy, bare for Tony to see and he hadn't felt able to do that. Peggy was… too important, too precious, to him for him to easily speak about her. He inwardly winced at Tony's mention of his parents' funeral. He knew that Tony didn't mention his parents often and Tony's only references to Howard tended to be ambivalent at best. Steve suspected from Tony's conspicuous silence about her that Tony must have been closer to his mother but Steve didn't dare ask and he had no reason to do so since he had never met Tony's mother.

"Peggy and Howard worked together for a long time," Steve finally murmured, stating the obvious. Peggy and Howard had known each other and, yes, worked together for around 50 years, starting during the war and continuing up until Howard's death.

"Yeah. I didn't know her well but I know Jarvis thought the world of her. A couple times when my dad was trying to figure something out, rambling out loud as he occasionally did, I remember hearing Jarvis suggest that Dad ask Director Carter for her opinion. I noticed it because Jarvis, proper butler that he was, almost never made suggestions or offered his opinion but a couple times, Jarvis suggested my dad ask her."

Steve had to wonder at that too. He had assumed that Peggy would have been familiar with Jarvis, as Howard's personal butler, chauffeur, etc. but he wouldn't have supposed that Peggy would have known much of Jarvis beyond his name or that Jarvis himself would have known Peggy well enough to trust her opinion. He should ask Peggy about that–and then remembered with a fresh stab of pain that Peggy was gone now and he could never ask her anything again.

"Beyond that, I remember she came to the house a few times and I met her then."

He stopped and Steve slanted a glance at him. Tony's voice, his expression, were somewhat softer than usual and Steve realized with a strange little flicker of something like warmth inside him that Tony was, in his own way, attempting to comfort him. Without actually saying any such thing, of course. But Tony was trying to comfort him, sharing old memories to talk about Peggy. It was all the more noticeable because Tony was not generally someone who reminisced or spent much time talking about the past. He was too much of a forward thinker for that, always focused on the future. Unlike Steve himself.

"The first time I met her, I was just a kid, don't know how old, but I was putting together a model airplane, one of those prehistoric World War II flying deathtraps."

"Hardly prehistoric," Steve interjected with a touch of dryness.

Tony made a dismissive gesture with his fingers. "Ancient, then. Not the point."

Steve had to roll his eyes a little at that. Tony did like to needle him about his age. And after all, Tony had a point. Steve was, still, anchored in the past, could not help but be anchored in the past, and by now, Steve had stopped expecting that would ever really change. He had managed to adjust, at least for the most part, to the daily realities of the future, the technological changes like cell phones and the Internet, but his attitude, his world view, everything about him was still that of the man he'd been before going into the ice. Tony and Nat were not wrong when they teased him for being an old man. He might not look it or feel it physically but in every other way that mattered, he was an old man.

"She came to the house to give my dad some files. And while she was waiting for Jarvis to get him, she came and knelt by me. Took one look at the pieces of the model and pointed out where the next piece should go."

Steve managed a little sound that was something like a choke, or a gasp, or even a small laugh commingled. "She was always smart like that."

"And then she told me that I should ask my dad to tell me about the time he flew a plane very like the model one behind enemy lines. And I told her she had to be wrong because Dad wasn't a pilot during the war. But she told me she'd been there herself and seen it and I should ask my dad about it. And then she smiled. And I remember thinking that for an old woman, she was almost pretty."

Steve choked again. Almost pretty?! Tony was blind, crazy. Peggy had still been beautiful even when she'd been over 90. He had no doubt that she would have been even more so some forty years earlier. She had always been beautiful.

"Jarvis came to get her then so she left. I asked my dad later what she'd been talking about and he told me it was a mission for Captain America–you–and that it was one of the things he'd done during the war that he was proudest of. But then he said he had to get to work, looking through the files she had brought, so he didn't have time to tell me anything more and I should ask him again later when he had more time."

There was something of an edge in Tony's voice and Steve hid a little wince. The rare times when Tony mentioned Howard and how distant their relationship had been, especially when contrasted with the way Howard had, apparently, praised Captain America to the skies, always made Steve feel vaguely, irrationally, guilty. He could understand how Tony might well resent him if Howard had held Steve up to be some sort of saint while always being a distant father to Tony himself. It was nothing Steve could do anything about and certainly, in the time he'd known Howard, Howard had not treated Steve with any kind of hero worship. Certainly, Steve would never have guessed that Howard would one day say that the mission after Azzano was one of the wartime accomplishments he was proudest of, but he had come to realize that his supposed death had placed him on a posthumous pedestal to everyone who had known him and certainly to anyone who hadn't known him as anything other than some mythologized hero.

But not with Peggy, he thought, with another sharp stab of grief. Even in these last few years when he had seen her again since he had woken up, she had never treated him as some hero.

Tony paused and then added, his lips twisting a little, "I never got around to asking him again." Now Tony eyed Steve. "So I guess it's up to you to tell me the story. What was Carter talking about?"

The memories of that flight, his first mission, flooded his mind–with a sharp twist of pain in his chest at the thought of Peggy telling him that he'd been meant for more than just being a dancing monkey. "It was Captain America's first mission," he answered briefly. "The rescue mission after Azzano."

Tony scoffed. "You forget, I never collected Captain America trading cards. I'm not exactly up on everything you did. Besides, this isn't about you. It's about what my dad did."

He supposed Tony had a point. The stories told about Captain America, even the well-documented rescue from the Krausberg Hydra base after the Azzano raid, focused on him, barely mentioned Howard's role and no one mentioned Peggy's. No one really understood just how essential Peggy's belief in him had been.

His heart clenched on a fresh spasm of pain and he kept his voice steady and controlled by sheer dint of will. "I'd just found out that Bucky, along with most of his unit, the 107th, had been captured and was being held at a Hydra base behind enemy lines and I decided to go after them." He flicked a glance at Tony. "I had to save Bucky. He'd always done the same for me growing up."

"Sentiment," Tony dismissed with another flick of his fingers.

Steve bit back a sharp retort, reminded not for the first time how different he and Tony were. He knew Tony was capable of loyalty, even devotion, but he was allergic to saying such a thing outright, deflected behind sarcasm and quips. While Steve was just not the type to make a mockery of important things, even in jest. Maybe it was at least partly a reflection of the times they had grown up in. Steve had seen enough of the modern world now to understand that it was more cynical, less respectful, less sentimental, but he also knew that he and Tony were just very different kinds of people, even without the occasional tension due to their respective differing relationships with Howard Stark. But even so, they had become friends. Good enough friends that even when they were in the middle of this fundamental disagreement over the Accords and the future of the Avengers, Tony had come here to find out what had happened and try to provide some comfort in his own way.

"Anyway, Colonel Phillips was against it, told me it was impossible, but I had decided I had to go and had some crazy idea of trying to drive behind enemy lines as far as possible and then sneaking the rest of the way. But Peggy–she told me she could help and she did. She called up Howard–your dad–on the radio. He was over at the nearby makeshift air base in his role as a weapons contractor so we–Peggy and I–ended up driving over to the air base and your dad took us up in his own plane, the one he had used to get to the base from London where he was technically stationed."

He remembered, as distinctly as if it had happened yesterday, the dampness in the air after the rainstorm, remembered the lingering drops of rain on her hair, sparkling in the emerging sunlight, remembered her voice telling him she could help him. Remembered, too, that even then, he had trusted her so he hadn't questioned what her plan was, had only followed her lead as she had directed him to drive to the air base and then he had only stood by and listened as Peggy had persuaded, not to say harangued, Howard into agreeing to fly them in.

"The Hydra base was 30 miles behind enemy lines, heavily fortified, but your dad barely hesitated or questioned, agreed to fly me over to the base or as close to it as possible and gave me a transponder to use to signal when I was done so he could come pick me up again. We were still a few miles away when we started taking enemy fire and your dad had to do some fancy flying to keep from getting hit. Peggy said that your dad was the best civilian pilot she'd ever seen and we were lucky to have him especially because he was mad enough to brave enemy air space."

Amazingly, he felt a little spurt of amusement as he remembered hearing Howard's invitation to Peggy and, with the insight gained from years of living in the modern world, recognized Peggy's little roll of her eyes as the mild sign of irritation it was at one of those casual flirtations, the innuendos, and the crass invitations, that she was perpetually subjected to as the only woman around for miles. While his younger self hadn't registered any of that, assuming Howard's invitation and her non-response indicated it might be something simply understood between the two of them, and had asked, inanely, if Peggy and Howard were "fondue-ing," without even the smallest idea of what fondue was and assuming it was a euphemism for a relationship.

He really had been such a wide-eyed innocent, he thought. It was no wonder he had been so awed by her and so irresistibly drawn to her, even as he'd been convinced that she could never return his burgeoning feelings because what could a woman as beautiful and capable as Agent Peggy Carter ever see in him, who still felt more like the scrawny kid from Brooklyn than any sort of hero.

And yet, somehow, Peggy–clever, competent, cultured Peggy–had never mocked him or made him feel lacking. She had seen him, believed in him, from the beginning. And because she had believed in him, he had started to believe that he could actually live up to the absurdly bombastic title bestowed on him by Senator Brandt. She was the one who had made him Captain America.

Oh God, Peggy. His heart clenched with a fresh spurt of pain.

"I parachuted down so your dad, and Peggy, could get out of there without further damage." He paused and added, "Howard stuck his neck out for me then. He barely knew me, had no reason to believe I could get into a Hydra base and have even the smallest chance of making it out alive. But he still agreed, took a chance on me. If I hadn't made it back, if something had gone wrong, he would have caught the flak for it." It was true enough, he could recognize that now. Maybe not from the Army; the Army had needed Howard too much as a weapons contractor to give Howard much grief but there would have been political fallout and not even Howard was immune to that. But Howard had still agreed. Thanks to Peggy, who had been the one to persuade Howard to take them both up in his plane.

He remembered it now with a surge of pain, the fresh realization of just how much he owed to Peggy, of how much she had believed in him from the beginning. Peggy, whose position in the SSR had been so much more tenuous and who would have been affected so much more if anything had gone wrong. She had, he knew now, risked everything she had spent so many years fighting for, risked her entire career at the SSR, in order to help him. He could never have become Captain America if it were not for her.

"Huh," was Tony's response. "So she was right then."

"Peggy was always right," Steve tried for a small smile that he knew came out more like a rictus instead.

Tony paused and then an odd sort of smile crossed his face. "I just remembered another thing my dad mentioned about Carter, that she once tried to shoot you." He slanted a dry look at Steve. "I can understand the wish but that's just me. What did you do to make her want to shoot you?"

Sheer surprise had Steve choking and then coughing and then, although he would not have believed it was possible, even laughing a little. "Howard told you about that? And she wasn't really trying to shoot me."

"She accidentally fired a gun in your direction?" Tony asked sardonically. "I'd have thought she'd have been trained better than that."

Absurdly, he felt the need to defend Peggy. "She could load and unload a gun faster than most of the men in the 107th and was a better shot than most of them too. If she'd really wanted to shoot me, she would have. She shot at the shield while I was holding it to make a point. She was annoyed at me at the time," he admitted, the memories flooding his mind, his own long-ago foolishness.

"Why?"

"I-uh–" He hesitated, felt again some of his embarrassment then, but then again, it wasn't as if Tony didn't have his own checkered history where women were concerned. "She caught me kissing Colonel Phillips's secretary."

Tony gave a crack of laughter. "Nice boy scout you were. Were you and Carter–"

"No!" Steve interrupted him. "We weren't. It wasn't like that," he gave up on explaining more coherently and part of him cringed at how much he had already revealed of his relationship with Peggy–and he tried to tamp down the little spurt of irritation he felt at Tony for assuming he would have kissed the secretary–Lorraine, he vaguely remembered her name had been–if he and Peggy had actually been a couple, as if he would ever have been unfaithful to any woman, let alone to Peggy. "Anyway, she was annoyed. Howard had just shown me the shield and I asked her what she thought about it." He really had been so… young, such an idiot, first to be so flustered by Lorraine's flirtatious, not to say predatory, advances, and then in allowing some of that first rush of hero adulation to go to his head so he could preen with the shield in front of Peggy. "And Peggy's response was to shoot at the shield."

He remembered as if it had been yesterday the fake, even a little condescending, smile she had given him as she'd retorted, "Yes, I think it works," and then the look she had given him as she'd walked past him. He'd been so bowled over by her and he sometimes thought that he had fallen at least half in love with her in that moment, as strange as it might sound. He had, at least, realized how much her opinion meant to him, how much he wanted to keep her respect. She, who had been the first woman to look at him as if he was worth something even before the serum. She, who was too smart and too capable in her own right, to be impressed by any shallow labels of him as a hero or to flatter him in any way. She had made him want to be better, do better, try harder. She had made him want to live up to the title of Captain America, to be a hero in her eyes.

Amazingly, he found his lips curving in wry amusement. "She might not have really been trying to shoot me but she certainly succeeded in making my heart almost stop with the surprise of it. And as for Howard, I'm pretty sure he started taking her a lot more seriously from that moment."

Tony gave a little huff of a laugh. "Yeah, maybe. I know my dad thought a lot of her, respected her even when they disagreed." Tony glanced away, took his phone out and fiddled with it, his fingers restless as usual. "I remember hearing my dad once–I think I was in high school at the time–and he was stomping around in a rage. He and Carter were disagreeing over something and I guess she won the argument. Dad was never so angry as when someone got the better of him in an argument. And he gritted out that Carter was tougher than all the idiots running around in uniforms put together."

She was tough, had needed to be tough, had needed to fight for everything–but he also remembered her compassion, her understanding. He remembered the softness of her eyes and her voice when she had come to find him after Bucky's death–his supposed death–heard again the quiet resolution of her voice telling him, You won't be alone.

But he was alone now.

And that was what did it, what broke through the wall that seemed to have encased his heart since he had received the news. A sharp gasp escaped him and he abruptly turned away, shutting his eyes, so Tony could not see the welling tears.

Behind him, he heard the sound of movement and then Tony's voice. "Let me know about the funeral. Plane's yours if you need it."

Oh God, the funeral. Peggy's funeral. He hadn't thought–and for a moment, Steve was convinced that going to her funeral was the last place he wanted to be. He simply couldn't do it, he thought wildly. Going to the funeral, meeting her family, hearing people speak about her in the past tense, would be too much, a painful, unavoidable reminder that she was gone, for good, and he would never see her again. But even as he thought it, he knew he had to go. He owed her too much not to. Whatever else, however harrowing to his own feelings, he had to go pay his respects. He had to go and he had to say goodbye to Peggy.

He choked again but managed, although he knew that Tony could hear the break in his voice, "Thanks. For everything," he added and meant it. Not only for the loan of Tony's private plane but for the last few minutes, for sharing his memories of Peggy, for this gesture of friendship.

"No sweat," he heard Tony's dismissive voice. "Besides, the pilot gets bored if he's sitting around for too long. A quick hop across the pond will be just the thing, give him something to do."

It was so like Tony to downplay any kind act, Steve thought dimly.

And then he heard the door close behind Tony, leaving him alone, and finally, finally, Steve let the tears escape. Broke down into shuddering sobs that wracked him as he cried in a way he could not remember ever crying before. He had felt like he had lost everything before, when he had first come out of the ice. But then, Peggy had still been alive. And now she was gone. Now, he really had lost everything.

He could not have said how long the tears lasted but when they were over, he felt hollow, emptied out. Hopeless.

And he wondered dully, not for the first time, how he was supposed to go on now that Peggy was gone and he could never see her again. He didn't want to go on in this bleak world without Peggy in it but as always, it seemed, he didn't have a choice. He would just have to grit his teeth and bear it, continue to be Captain America, always fighting, doing the right thing, because it was all he could do. Being Captain America was all he had now, the only way to continue honoring Peggy's memory. He had to keep being the hero she had always believed he was.

~To be continued…~