Steve Rogers (captain_srogers) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2019-05-13 22:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, steve rogers |
Who: Steve and Peggy
What: New timeline, who dis?
Where: Steve and Bucky's apartment
When: Monday night
Partial GDoc/Low/Closed
Steve woke quietly. He didn’t move, left his eyes closed-only the change in his breathing any kind of indication he wasn’t still asleep. It didn’t sound right. The birds that built their nest in the tree just outside their window were missing. There were no thumps of the paper boy throwing the morning news on walkways and porches and sometimes in bushes. None of the neighbors’ cars pulling away, going to early jobs at factories and coffee shops and even Camp Leigh.
It sounded like the Avengers Compound; whirring electricity, mechanics moving somewhere deep in the building. But he hadn’t been there in over 5 years. It didn’t even exist yet. He sighed and willed himself to wake up, assuming it had to be a dream, nightmare maybe. But the scene didn’t change, there was no explosion, no one was yelling for help. And there was someone breathing beside him.
He finally opened his eyes and it only took a moment to realize where he was. He climbed out of the bed carefully. He glanced back at Bucky. In another moment he would have been jumping out of his skin to be with Bucky, and part of him was. He’d missed him so, so much. But, if he was here with Bucky, then Peggy wouldn’t be. Natasha and Michael wouldn’t be here, but Stevie and Luke and Sarah would. His life, his family, was split between two worlds and he never seemed to be able to experience both at once. He hated that when he was back there, he didn’t remember this place, what he had here, but when he was here he did remember what was there, everything he lost, and for the first time he’d had something he’d really, genuinely loved, and didn’t want to lose. And all he could feel about it was guilt. How could he have Bucky right in front of him but only think about how he wished he wasn’t here?
He left the room quickly and quietly. Now that he was here and aware it was like he’d never left. Like he’d just been here yesterday but at the same time like he’d spent 10 years away from this place. And somehow, he knew that was true. He walked past the kids’ rooms, listening, and when they were all asleep he went to the kitchen instead. He didn’t expect to see anyone else on the way there. “Peggy?” he gasped softly, not sure if she was real.
-----
In this world of Gods, aliens, incredible science, and the monsters they all had bred, Peggy Carter hadn’t met a cup of tea that couldn’t give her fortitude for the oncoming storm. Mr Jarvis had indeed made an excellent Darjeeling loose leaf pilfered from Howard’s long-forgotten stash. The man had insisted on getting some for guests, but they only ever wanted coffee. She wasn’t such a fan of that dark, bitter thing. Must have been an acquired taste since Howard had a line directly to his veins, while one taste of it made her nose wrinkle in disgust. Tea had always been superior, especially when one had absolutely zero recollection of how one had come to be standing in an unfamiliar kitchen.
It was so incredibly strange in design; cold, almost. Howard would have loved it, with his predilection towards chrome, Bakelite and other shiny things. But it wasn’t all bad. Someone had obviously tried their best, as messy as it was, to keep the counters clean and dishes put away. Still, it was strange. Unbelonging. Peggy didn’t know how she had gotten the cup of tea, but there it was in her hand, steaming hot, splash of milk, saucer on the table. What had she been doing before? Her first thoughts leapt towards a stroke or some kind of mania, an episode as her mother would have called them. It was on the tip of her tongue.
She didn’t feel strange, no, not at all. Her hands were clean and smooth, her dress a vibrant emerald green, her stockings aligned just so. It didn’t even disturb her, though intellectually she knew that something very wrong indeed had happened. Or right.
Oh yes. Her husband. She had a husband. He was standing in front of her, looking adorably dumbfounded.
“Yes, Steve, Peggy is my name, in case you’d forgotten. Might want to close your mouth, though, you might catch a fly or some such,” she said, placing the cup on the saucer. “Would you awfully mind filling me in on what sort of mess you’ve got us into again? If this is Stark’s absurd amnesia cannon idea again, I’ll cut his bloody mustache off.”
---
Steve did close his mouth, but stepped closer to her too. He wanted to wrap her tight in his arms, confirm she was solid and whole there with him, but he didn’t want to scare her. Or knock her tea over, she’d kill him. He gently brushed one of her soft curls back away from her face and shook his head. “This isn’t Stark, for once.”
He sighed and studied her briefly, this was his wife, the woman he’d fallen asleep with last night. But was she also the one he and Bucky had married together, who’d gone to sleep on an island and somehow not ended up in this place with them?
“Do you remember the island?” he asked, after a moment, not sure which answer he wanted to hope for.
-----
“I’ll bet a pretty penny that he’s somewhere laughing then,” she replied, hoping that it was just an accident and nothing sinister. All those Hydra scientists had never sat well with her, and Howard was far too susceptible to influence.
Peggy didn’t quite believe him, somehow, there was far too much hesitancy in his tone and he looked rather different than she remembered. How long had she been catatonic for? Had she sat in this kitchen for months, mute, still and stoic, about as useful as a chocolate teapot? Steve swept a lock of hair from her face as if he didn’t do it every night before bed; instead of a practiced motion, it was a loaded gesture. His eyes seemed bluer, wide and scared. He was scaring her, too.
Her head tilted to the side, not appreciative of his cryptic question. “What island? Mokuhonu? Rhodes? Be more specific, Steve. Though I’m having trouble remembering much of anything. How did we get here, exactly? If it’s not Stark, then it must be something. You’re a magnet for trouble.”
---
He could see that his plan not to scare her works about as well as any plan to keep something from Peggy did.
“Neverland.” It seemed to come from his mouth before he even remembered it, “We called it Neverland.” He knew he dreamt about it sometimes, between nightmares about war and Thanos and the Winter Soldier and getting lost somewhere in the expanse of space and time. He got glimpses of a life he assumed he’d made up. Or maybe he did make it up, maybe none of this was ever real. He didn’t really ever have those answers, but he was here now, and he remembered it all, two, three lives swimming all side-by-side in his head.
“Would you believe if I said magic?” he half-grinned, knowing he had no real explanation.
-----
She was going to scoff at him and smile, call him sentimental or some such. Their children loved that cartoon about the boy who wouldn’t grow up, and Steve had read to them from the book every day for a week once. It had been a running joke, about Neverland, Peter Pan and Wendy Darling running away. Second star on the right and straight on until morning.
“Neverland, huh?” she smiled in that sweet way with a hint of condescension. “Did Michael tell you to name it that? He still thinks he’s the Michael from the books and it just hasn’t happened yet. Haven’t the heart to tell him we’re not having another baby.” Peggy looked down at her tea. Michael. Natasha. They were suddenly bursting in her mind, technicolour, laughter and knee-high socks. Where were they?
Frowning slightly, Peggy stood, shaking her head. “Magic? I’ve seen many a thing, Steve. Time travel, that was rather a big one. But magic? Neanderthals would collapse in shock at a solar eclipse, isn’t it all just relative?”
---
She didn’t remember, this would be a lot to explain, and he wasn’t really sure how to do it. Did he just wake Bucky and the kids and try to show her, did he try to talk her through it all before anyone else found out. Did he just walk her to a window and show her the planets and stars they seemed to be orbiting…
His thoughts were cut short. Michael. Would he be here? Would his sister? Peggy was here. Maybe they would get one more stroke of luck, maybe he could manage to have it all this one time. Suddenly nothing else seemed to matter, he needed to know, he could explain later but he needed to know how many kids were sleeping behind the doors down the hall. “I’ll be right back.” he said, instead of answering her questions and went back the way he came. He opened the doors he thought would lead to empty rooms first, checked them quickly but thoroughly, then went to the kids’ room and checked there too.
Three kids. And only three. And Peggy wouldn’t know any of them. It was a punch in the gut. He’d gotten them back, gotten Bucky and Peggy in the same place and time, but at the cost of two of his children. Of his wife’s memories of this life. He almost wanted to go back and forget again.
-----
There was another comment on her lips before Steve was suddenly gone from her, his footfalls heavy on the floor. “Steve?” she answered as he almost ran away from her. Her head was starting to hurt, the air stale and recirculated; she could always taste that cheap air conditioning on planes and the such. Peggy gathered herself and followed him quietly, carefully, as if there was a trap around the corner. He could have been bait, she supposed. He could have been a hallucination, some drug in her system. But he’d touched her too, she thought. Felt the heat from his skin. That wasn’t a dream.
“Steve?” she asked again. It took her a moment to find her bearings. The rest of this apartment was much like the kitchen – lived in, but strange, messy but clean. A perfect anachronism of things.
She found him fairly quickly, standing at a half-closed door. “What is it? I don’t understand what’s going on and all you’ve said to me is Neverland and to ask if I believe in magic. You’re giving me the most awful headache, Steve.”
---
He sighed and shut the door quietly. His posture had slumped in a way they hadn’t done in a long time. Like he was Atlas and the universe was on his shoulders. “I’m sorry Peggy. I don’t mean to be so...confusing” he whispered, placing one hand gently on either side of her face and gently kissing her forehead. He rest there for a minute, lips just gently pressed to her skin. He let go of her and took one of her hands in his, “C’mon, you should finish your tea, I’ll try to explain.”
-----
She let herself take comfort in his kiss to her forehead, if only for a moment. It was a familiar gesture too; he had beaten down her walls and placed kindness and love on her for years. That was her Steve, her husband, the only man she’d ever truly loved. She held his arms, wondering if he was feeling sick too. She never liked to say.
“I’m just confused, like I’m being made a fool of,” she said, slipping her fingers around his wider palm. “I’m not sure any amount of tea can help me make sense of this. You obviously know where we are, you’re looking at me like I’ve been away for years, like I’m a ghost. Whatever’s going on… it’s not right, is it? You’re not my Steve, are you?”
---
He led her back to the main living area, but instead of going back to the kitchen he steered them toward a couch and sat down. He waited to see if she would follow or chose to stay standing.
“I am.” he answered finally, after a bit of thought. “But at the same time I’m not.” He knew he was going to sound insane no matter how he tried to explain this so he figured just being straight to the point might be best. She had always been able to take it in before.
“I think someone called it the multiverse theory once. It’s this idea that...that for every life we live there are thousands or millions or god-knows how many other versions of us living separate lives, side-by-side. Different universes, realities. I think...somehow the lines got crossed somewhere along the way.” he sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.
“I remember my life with you Peggy. I remember dancing with you, that first night, I remember last Christmas, when Michael tried to eat the popcorn strung up on the tree, and I remember you punching Bill Davis when you thought I wasn’t looking after that party last Tuesday because he kept trying to convince you I obviously wasn’t a ‘real man’ and that he could show you something better.” He glanced up at her briefly, “But I also remember being here at Christmas, in this room, with different people, a different tree. And last Tuesday night I was in that kitchen, cooking a mediocre dinner because everyone else was busy and I’ve still never learned to cook properly.”
“I don’t know how it works Peg. Or why we’re here. But I’ve been here for a long time. And you were too once. When it was an island we called Neverland.”
-----
It was rather a lot to take in; multiple universes, multiple lives, different versions of herself, of him too. She remembered only one, though, the life she’d lived in a linear narrative fashion, but it seemed Steve had already lived a few different lives in one mind and now would be living another.
She sat down on the couch but remained a little guarded, not sure what to quite think about this whole thing. “You’re both. My Steve, and another woman’s Steve, rolled into one? And in neither of them have you acquired the ability to cook a decent meal? Why am I not surprised,” she tried to joke, putting her hand on his arm and squeezing lightly. “So, this is the hand we’ve been dealt with. I’m not the person you quite remember and you’re not quite the man I married, but somewhere we’re still us. You’d still dance with me every Sunday night, just as tight as the first time in my bloody living room. Tell me you’re still that man and I can believe it.”
Peggy was starting to tear up, realising he’d been looking for their children before. Her children, her little boy, her little girl, gone from her hands by a cruel universe and the man trying to explain it to her was sidestepping it. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew they were gone. That a reset button had been pressed and couldn’t be changed by them. But she was so tired, so, so tired, that Steve presented himself as a life raft in the middle of a cold sea.
“The other life you had, the other Christmas, is that here?” she almost whispered.
----
He let her talk, just sitting next to her quietly, hoping she would be alright. She always had been so far, rolled with the punches of super soldiers and time travel and mad titans, but maybe this would be too much. He put his hand over hers on his arm, “You should know by now it was never another woman Peg. It’s always you.” he said rubbing his thumb against hers. He leaned in to kiss her temple, “I’ll dance with you any time you like, I promise.” he told her, wondering if maybe he should continue to rip the band-aid and mention Bucky before he woke up.
But when he noticed the tears in her eyes, he knew she realized the same thing he had when he’d gone to look through the apartment. He put his arm around her, holding her lightly to his chest. No matter who or what they had here, there was no way the ache of their missing children would be easy for either of them to bear.
“Most of it.” he told her, figuring there would be no better time. “There’s three kids in the other rooms. And...and Bucky.”
-----
She wasn’t quite sure if she’d be able to handle all of this on her own, her whole world both widening and narrowing instantly. Peggy had lost her whole family, but so had he, apparently. Her palm pressed to his chest as he held her, wanting both distance and closeness, a reassurance that he wasn’t about to walk out and reject her in favour of his new life. He was a little broken too, at least. As morbid as that seemed, it helped ease her own burden of pain. My God, what world would rip both children from a woman, from a man, a family torn. Peggy heard how people were driven insane through grief, but this seemed all the more cruel and torturous. And here she was, with glistening eyes and numbness.
Peggy reeled back at his revelation, blinking in shock. “Barnes? But he’s dead, for over a decade. Is that another universe as well, that Barnes survived?” perhaps she should have been more shocked that he’d chosen Barnes to love, but she’d wondered about the two of them in the beginning and hearing it now only made more sense. Don’t ask, don’t tell and all that. Gossip spread far quicker among the few women in the camp than among the men, and she’d heard about his showgirls on tour. “Three children. Who’s their mother? They must have one, surely, Steve.”
-----
Steve sighed heavily, a look of guilt moving in behind his eyes. “He’s not. He never has been. Hydra found him, they…” he hesitated, “It’s a long story, but they saved him. Brainwashed him and kept him hidden. He never died.” He ran his hand over his face. Steve’s plan has always been to rescue Bucky, to find him and get him away from Hydra and help him get better before he can do all of the terrible things they make him do, before he endures the torture they inflict on him for decades. But he hasn’t known where to look, not yet. Hydra either hasn’t finished working on him or just hasn’t given him a mission yet, and even the files Steve has seen of the project never said where they kept him at first. He’d had to wait. “But this one never made it that far, he’s from a different spot in time, before he fell. In this...reality, we’ve been together for five years.”
At her last question he reached out and took her hands in both of his, holding them gently, looking down at them. “One is adopted, we don’t know who his parents are really. He showed up here the same way we did and we took him in. The other two…” he looked back up to meet her eyes again, “You were their mother. Or...a version of you. One with me, one with Bucky.”
-----
Peggy couldn’t really keep up with the emotions that crashed over her like hurricanes in quick succession battering a shanty town. All this time, Barnes had been alive? It had been hard when Steve had come back, had told her about the Winter Soldier myth, but that’s all it had ever been to her. Myth. She thought he was desperately searching for a lead on a dead man, but she’d been wrong. And had held him back because of it. She should have searched harder with him, had done something to help because she was the one with connections, with teams of people at her hand to deploy in search. And she hadn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a tear crashing down her face. “I didn’t believe you. For years, all that talk of the future, of Barnes, I thought it was just another alternate world. We found nothing. Turns out I just wasn’t listening in the right places,” she swallowed through the thickness in her throat. “And now here we are. You have too many lives in your head and I don’t have enough. How is this ever going to work? Those aren’t my children, are they? They’re hers, yours and Barnes’s. I’m a puzzle piece with the right shape but the wrong picture.”
---
Steve wiped the tear away from her skin gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong, they were so secretive about this that they didn’t even put his location in their own files. I know what to look for, when he’s going to be out. We’ll find him then.” he told her, voice resolute. He wished he knew a better way to do it, that there was some way he could get Bucky before anything awful was done...but he also knew that it was just as important for Peggy to focus on her position with the SSR and founding SHIELD. Her getting lost in a mission for years, jeopardizing her professional relationships on hunches and calling in favors too early would leave Hydra with too much power in the ranks, they were afraid of Peggy, so she had to be the one on top.
He brushed her cheek and thread his fingers gently in to her hair to cup the side of her face, “We’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.” That was one thing he would never worry about, never question. Somehow, they would always make it through, the world could throw literally anything at them (and really, how much more was there to throw at this point); they would figure it out. They would be okay in the end. Not without their cracks and flaws and glued-back-together bits, but still okay. “It probably won’t be easy, especially not at first, but...we’ll get there. We’ll just have to paint it all over with a new picture.”
-----
“Except I could have found out, Steve, I know I could have if I’d just not been so goddamn stubborn about it for once in my life. Everything you talked about that had happened to Barnes is happening, right now, in our world. And now we’re stuck here, and I can’t make it right again,” she stressed, looking into his eyes. “I can’t do anything, can I?” She already knew, deep down. If there’d been a way home, he’d have tried to find it. He’d try to have it all, because he’d tried and succeeded before. Created a whole new reality just to spend it with her.
Peggy just had to remember he was her husband too, her love as much as he was Barnes’s. She’d waited years, trying to find someone who gave her the sparks as much as he did, but it was always muted. It was nothing compared to Steve. “And what if we can’t?” she said, scared of the answer. “My children, the ones I carried, gave birth to, kissed goodnight, they aren’t here,” her voice wavered. “The life we had together is gone and I’m supposed to… I’m expected to just gloss over it? Kiss another set of children goodnight? That’s not fair on anyone. So what do I do, Steve, I need to do something. Maybe you’ve gone through this insanity before, and walked it off, but I haven’t. You’re asking me to be an imposter in my own life.”
----
“Peggy, please just trust me, you were doing exactly what you needed to be doing. We’ll get Bucky. We’ll help him.” He met her eyes when she sought his and shook his head. “Once we’re here, nothing we can do has any effect on the world we came from. We don’t get to decide who comes or goes or what happens. Our life back there doesn’t change, no one knows we’re gone and if we go back we won’t remember we were ever here.”
He held her a little tighter when she brought up the kids, the fear and pain in her voice making his chest ache just as much as it did for the loss of them. He hated that there was nothing he could do to make her feel any less hurt. “You’re not supposed to do anything Peg, I’d never ask you to do that.” he answered her softly, “If you don’t want to do anything, you don’t do it. I can’t keep Bucky from finding out you’re here, but the kids don’t have to know. Bucky loves you, but he knows how this place works too, he would give you space if you want it.”
He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I can’t...I can’t be exactly what we were. I can’t leave them on their own, but if you want to find another place to live we can do that. I can go back and forth and keep them separate as long as you need. It won’t be the same, but you don’t have any obligation here.” He knew it would be hard, on all three of them, but he would find a way. He had to. “I don’t have a perfect answer, I don’t think there is one, but we can figure it out as we go along, we’ll get there eventually.”
-----
God, sometimes she just hated that he was so good to her, so sweet and understanding. There were times she wished he’d just hate her for even a moment, to fight and scream, realise she wasn’t perfect. He was just too good to her, she had never deserved that, deserved a second chance at forever with the only man she’d ever dreamed of loving, but now loving him meant a whole new life. She’d blinked and everything had changed, and he was so damn calm and understanding.
“Why am I the only one falling apart?” she said into his chest, just letting him hug her. She didn’t know Barnes, didn’t know Steve’s children, this life, not even the bloody television. “One second, I was sitting and drinking tea, and the next… you, you tell me there’s children that are mine but not mine and a man I don’t know loves me? I have seen so many things, Steve, not once did it scare me. This scares me.”
She felt like a hysterical woman, all the stereotypes she’d fought against. Her calm, numb demeanour sinking into a pit of fear. “How can you be so… hopeful?”
----
“Because I’ve done it before.” he told her simply. He ran his fingers through her softly curled hair gently. “Because, as insane as it all is, this was my heaven once. The first time I came here I had...nothing. No one. I’d woken up in a future I didn’t understand, surrounded by people who had built me up as a hero for almost a century but I was just a lost kid with PTSD being thrown from one war to another. Then I woke up here. And you came, and Bucky came and we had a little cottage covered in flowers and kids and a dog and hell, even a flock of chickens in the backyard.” Hid voice was soft around the edges as he remembered it all, always wondering how he could ever forget. “And then I would go back, and fight and kill and deal with more and more. But I kept waking up here. And I could just do what I wanted to. There were no expectations and no one cared that we buried the shield and I was just Steve. Always Steve. This world was what held me together I think, even if I didn’t know it back there.”
“This is my…” he thought for a moment, “I think it’s my fifth time waking up here. With new memories and new scars, but hope comes easy now. Because we’ve built it once before. We can do it again, even if it looks completely different in the end.” He kissed the top of her head then rest his cheek against it, almost mimicking the way he held her as they danced to the radio on Sunday nights. “You’re worth it Peg, whatever it takes, you’re all worth it.”
----
“Five times?” she said, shaking her head a little. “Doesn’t it drive you mad? The constant resets, playing with your life like you’re a puppet on a string?” Peggy wiped her cheek with her fingertips, not caring. He’d seen her broken down, screaming in pain, crying in joy and scared for her lives. “A cottage sounds nice. I don’t even know where this is. There’s no… outside, no light, or noise coming from beyond the door. We could be in a vacuum for all I know.” She tried to joke. “I never thought I’d see the day where Steve Rogers would willingly lay off from a fight, but then the children came along and you were just the best father anyone could have ever had. They’re so lucky,” her voice broke. “So was I.”
Could she do this again? Be mother to children from a different version of her? Watch Steve kiss someone else good morning? It was painful to even see the other women try and flirt with him, offer to give him cooking lessons back home. He’d never batted an eyelash at anyone else. It was selfish and conceited, and irrational even, but she didn’t want to be the one to turn his head away from Barnes.
But he pressed his cheek to her head and held her simply. She did want it. Him, at least, that she knew. “What if I can’t?”
---
“Sometimes. But I could either fight it and dwell on everything I can’t change, or I could enjoy what I could, live through what I couldn’t enjoy, and hope that somehow it’s all worth it.” he shrugged minutely, not enough to disturb her. “I only remember both halves when I’m here, if I spent the whole time trying to fight and be angry at what brought me here, then I’d have never had a chance to be happy before five years ago.” He ignored her comments about where they were, about the vacuum, that could wait a few more minutes. He knew she wouldn’t like it, he didn’t really like it, if he were honest, but at least they had the parks and open spaces. He had gotten used to it. “I can show you around later, it’s a lot to take in.” He heard her voice break and his arms got just a little bit tighter, “We were all lucky.” He felt lucky then too. As much as his heart hurt that their kids weren’t there, Peggy was. At least he hadn’t come back alone. It felt selfish to think that way, but he wasn’t sure what would have happened to him if she hadn’t been there.
“Peggy Carter, when have you ever not been able to do something you wanted to?” His smile was clear, even in his voice. She was nothing if not stubborn, they both were, but it had worked to their advantage so far.
-----
“Always so dramatic,” she chuckled under her breath, just enjoying being close to him as the shock of it all started to wear down. “I have never liked being out of control, and even less have liked being actively told where I’m going to be, or what I’ll be doing or who I’ll be loving. I tried, many years ago, to force myself into a life that was never meant for me and I joined a bloody war effort to get away from it.” She leant back a little, breaking his hold. “I don’t like that this was out of my control, or that Bucky will love me when I barely know the man. It might be hard for you to hear that, but it’s my truth. I am not her. I didn’t live her life or anything of the sort. If I fail to meet that now, I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go after it or run in the opposite direction.”
Loving Steve was simple. It was her life, her soul. Barnes was a relative stranger, a man who flirted with her once in a bar when all she had eyes for was his friend. “But most of all, I don’t want to let you down,” she said in a strong voice. “If we lost each other again, if you chose to love Barnes and your family because I’m not the woman he loved, then I’m not quite sure what I’d do.”
----
He chuckled softly with her, his eyes closed for a few moments. “You have to know by now that I would bring you back if I could. But everyone has tried, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor, even Loki. They’ve all been here, and they’ve all been just as stuck. But...they’ve also all found happiness here. I just have to hope that you can too.” He let her move away from him and nodded, “I know Peggy, I know it’s going to be different. And, I admit, it might take a bit of time for Bucky to get used to it all, but he’s not always as dumb as he looked in that bar. He’ll understand too.”
He closed the gap between them and kissed her, “I’m a very selfish man Peggy, it’s never going to be either/or with me.” He smiled softly. “You are not a choice. I literally created an alternate timeline just so I could have a dance with you.” He brushed some hair away from her face again, “There is no hierarchy, none of you with ever mean more to me than any of the others. That will never be a choice I can or will make.” he said, with a strong sense of finality behind his voice.
-----
She chuckled as well, wiping her damp cheeks as best she could. “Which me, exactly?” Peg replied, “The cottage version, the old lady, the 1970s, what’s the word you said, cougar version?” she said, rolling her eyes a little bit. “I want to be happy, of course I do. What absolute sod would want to chose loneliness and misery over a happy life with someone they love? I don’t doubt that it’ll take time, and there is really no damn guarantee Barnes would ever love this me, but I do want to try. I just…” she swallowed again. “I need time. The children. Don’t you need time, too? We’ve just lost… it’s grief, isn’t it? It feels like grief.”
Peggy wished with all her heart that she could have the optimism he gave in that kiss. It was the fact that everything she’d built with him was gone and all that remained was the question of whether he loved her enough to help her survive this and push through whatever it was that got thrown at them. Whether she could watch him raise children that weren’t hers. It would, inevitably, hurt.
“We can’t go back. All that’s left is to push forward and try, I suppose. To hope. Dangerous thing, hope. Armies marched on hope. We can but.”
-----
“We have time.” he reassured, “And there’s no money here, no obligations. We’ll get another apartment, the kids don’t have to know you’re here yet. There are plenty of people who can help Bucky while we figure this out.” It did feel like grieving. And he knew his real grief would hit him. It ached now, dull and deep in his chest, but it would truly hit him later. It always did. He focused on what needed to be done first, but then, when the world was dark and calm and quiet again, it would crash in to him and take over. He’d never lost children before. The life he usually left was, more often than not, one of turmoil and sadness. He wasn’t sure how this would go. “And if Bucky doesn’t love you, or you don’t love him, then you don’t.” It would hurt, he knew it would, but it would still be worth it.
“The only thing I have to ask, of both of you,” his voice was a little quieter now, more vulnerable. “Is that you let me love the other. I can’t...not.” He knew it was a lot. It was a monumental thing to ask the woman he had promised his whole life to, promised his whole self to. But it was the one and only thing he wasn’t sure he could handle.
“Hope is enough for now.” he whispered to her, “I have to believe that.”
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