Work Text:
Finding His Time
2014
Steve’s heart ached when he went to the care facility. He could hardly bear to look at Peggy, in her nineties now and becoming senile. Despite her advanced age, there was still a fire in her eyes when her mind was good and he could still see the beauty she had been the last time he’d seen her.
“How are you today, Peggy?” he asked as he sat down beside her bed.
“Steve! I’m so glad you’ve come.”
“Me, too. Would you like to take a ride around the grounds today?” he asked. She couldn’t walk anymore, but she usually liked to ride around in the sunshine for a few minutes with Steve pushing her.
“I would. Could you ask Michelle to come help me put on some lipstick and comb my hair? I must look a fright.”
He did as he was told and Peggy was ready for their outing in a few minutes. He pushed her wheelchair down the long hall and out the double doors. The Home Place was a lovely facility that looked much more like a real home than it did a care facility. The grounds were all green grass and lovely oak and maple trees with a few dogwoods thrown in for spring color. The flower beds near the front drive were always filled with seasonal color. Nearby was a meadow with dairy cattle grazing peacefully. Steve pushed Peggy over to see the cows.
“My grandfather had dairy cows,” she told him. “They milked by hand back then. Michael and I used to fight over who got to help Grandfather with the milking.”
Steve knew Michael was her brother, whose death in the war had inspired her to join up.
“My husband came yesterday,” she told him.
He was certain her husband was dead. Wasn’t he?
“I told him you had been to visit me.” She looked over her shoulder at Steve. “He asked if he needed to be jealous. I told him that made no sense since he’s Steve, too.”
“Your husband’s name is Steve, too?’ he asked.
She laughed. “Of course not. His name is Jonathan.” She winked at him. She was just confused, he told himself.
They chatted about old times and some new things as well. When she grew tired, he took her back inside and kissed her cheek before he left. She was already drifting off to sleep as he closed the door.
Steve looked up records to see what Peggy’s husband’s name was. The name was redacted, as were the names of her children. He hunted up Nick Fury and asked him if he ever met Peggy’s husband.
“We were in a business that made life dangerous for our families. We didn’t share names with our co-workers or have company picnics like other businesses did. Hell, many of us never even used our own names at all. Is Director Carter’s husband even still alive?”
“She says he is, but sometimes she seems to be drifting in and out of reality. They said she is in early stage Alzheimer’s.”
“You might check with the new SHIELD, but I doubt they’d tell you much.”
Steve nodded. He checked around with a few people at SHIELD. They all told him that many of the old records were gone since the Triskelion had been destroyed. He asked Natasha if she might be able to find anything.
“I’ll poke through some of the secret stuff that I made public,” she told him. “You don’t have enough stress trying to find Bucky?”
A few days later, Natasha came by to talk to him.
“This is really weird. The name I found was Joanthan Carter.”
“Odd that she’d marry a man named Carter. Not impossible though. My dad’s sister married a man whose last name was Rogers.”
“Oh, it gets weirder.”
“How so?”
“I couldn’t find a record of Jonathan Carter anywhere – before or since. His name is on their marriage license and that’s all. I couldn’t find a birth or death certificate, a Social Security number, nothing.”
“Maybe he used an alias for his own protection,” Steve offered, lamely.
“Do you want me to keep digging?”
“I – no, I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll run into him if he’s still alive.”
Natasha laughed. “I don’t want to hear any stories about you fighting an old man over Director Carter.”
Steve gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry. I think I can protect myself.”
Maybe he should ask Peggy if she has a photo of her husband.
The next time he visited, she had taken a turn for the worse and seemed to think they were back in England during the war. He never got a chance to ask her about the photo.
The last time he visited, he met an elderly man coming into the building, He nodded and said hi to the man, who returned his greeting. There seemed to be something familiar about the man, but he couldn’t remember where he would have met him.
1949
Peggy looked surprised but not shocked to see him when he knocked on her front door. She invited him into her house and her life. By the next morning, they’d decided to marry.
“You know you can’t be Steve Rogers, don’t you?” she asked as she poured them a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.
“I – how about Jonathan Carter?”
“Isn’t it odd to be a Carter?”
“My aunt married a Rogers back in Brooklyn. Not too odd with a common name.”
“Okay. Do we need to try to get documentation for you? In the secret government agency world, we keep our family’s names secret anyway, for their protection from foreign threats.”
Steve looked at her. Her hair was tousled and her face was clear of makeup. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And she was his at last.
“I have all I need right here.”
“Very well, then, Jonathan Carter. Let’s get married.”
She took a sip of her coffee and stood. She reached for his hand. “First, let’s go back to bed. I can’t seem to get enough of you.”
Their coffee grew very cold before they came back to the kitchen.
2014
Jonathan Carter watched the boy leave the nursing home. He knew Steve would never see Peggy here again and he’d have to wait nine long years until he went to her. He wished he could tell him that it would be all right in the end, but so many things needed to happen before he could go to her, so much heartache and pain, so much triumph.
He turned around and watched Steve get on his bike and ride away. He turned back to the doorway. He hoped Peggy was having a good day today.