❝ love the hat. ❞

“It’s a long story Peggy.” Steven’s lips created a gap so a chuckle could emanate. Even himself couldn’t quite cope with his life ever since he had been found in the ice alive.

“They found me seventy years later, and well— here I am with the woman I thought I once lost replenished by your beauty.”

Leaning into her gentle touch, the soldier’s fingers curled around the agent’s waist, still deciphering the holy thought that they were finally reunited. At least it wasn’t a dream, for her fingers against his features were warm and delicate, prompting Rogers to smile widely.

❝ Seventy years ? ❞

Though the agent’s cheeks were coloured a light rose in response to his words, her eyes widened in response to the span of time passed between the day she lost him to sea — from her perspective, a number of years she could still count on her fingers — and where they apparently stood now. A whole new century, most of their own lost to her. To them.

❝ Howard’s machine sent me through time, then, ❞ she surmised, the hand not on his cheek resting on his mid-section. ❝ It was... February 1951.❞

In an instance, the man from Brooklyn had draped his hulky appendages around the female’s frame. There was something so warm, something that felt right, smelt right. “Peggy? This.. how is—” 

Cap let his body sag, muscles becoming loose for he ironically thought a dream of his was occurring. He gave Agent Carter the respect of an equal but cradled her like a cherished child. In that embrace Steven felt his worries lose their keen sting and his optimism raise its head from the dirt. Perhaps the hope had been there all along, but without some love it was trapped, like crystals in a stone.

“How can you be here? So pretty and alive?”

❝ I was in Howard's lab, and he was messing with this device... ❞ 

Peggy stopped, then, just barely having registered that he had used the word ‘alive.’ Not dead, then — but how could he be — 

❝ How am I here ? Where’s ‘ here ’ ? And how are YOU not frozen and very dead ? I don’t understand... ❞ 

Steven hadn’t been feeling all that great for the past week, he knew why, had something to do with the recurring nightmare of his best friend falling. He walked out to the balcony of Stark’s Tower after one night were it really seemed to hit him. He hadn’t told any of the others about this, not being a very open person about personal issues.

Running a hand through his hair, he breathed in the fresh air, trying to calm himself as he looked out at the bright lights of New York, the city never seemed to sleep. After an hour, the soldier could be seen in the training room— the location he adored best when his mind was swirling.

“Somethin’ I can help you with tonight?”

Rogers asked after hearing footsteps coming toward him. His cerulean orbs were focused on his hands while removing the wraps he had on to protect them from the blows to the punching bag.

Peggy caught herself just barely as she tilted forward, shaking off the encroaching unconsciousness and leaning against the wall. ❝ I — ❞ she began, and lifted her gaze, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and then freezing outright. ❝ Steve? ❞ With her other hand, she swiped at her forehead, finding it clammy; she tried to regulate her breathing before pressing her palms to the wall in an attempt to calm herself as she asked the question that — to her — made the greatest amount of sense. ❝ Did I...die ? Did that thing of Howard’s kill me ? ❞

❝ Howard, we shouldn't be fooling around with this before we understand it, did Zero Matter teach you nothi — ❞

Disapproving brown eyes, rested upon the co-founder of their fledgling organisation, widened in unveiled concern as whatever it was started to activate, and seemed quite intent on her to boot; was it like Zero Matter, perhaps ? Was it sentient, with a will of its own, a goal regarding a universe beyond them ? And, indeed, was Howard simply the next inventor to go barking mad pursuing such a thing ? ( Imagining him, alone and broken in a sanatorium like Whitney Frost, made her chest tighten in a way she’d never admit. )

Her scolding words were never finished, at least not from Howard’s perspective. The last Howard Stark saw of Margaret Carter — and would later commiserate this fact to Edwin Jarvis, and anyone who would listen while nursing his whiskey — was her wide eyes, furrowed brows, and carmine lips pressed into a thin confused line before she vanished in a blinding flash of bright light that Jarvis would describe as like ‘the coming of heaven.’ 

They’d think her dead, everyone would, and Howard Stark would have another friend to slave away at trying to find because he blamed himself for the loss. In fact, she surfaced in a different city, several decades out of time ( a cacophony of voices pressing on both sides of her head, a swirling and confusing kaleidoscope of lights meeting her eyes, everything so unfamiliar it made her dizzy trying to comprehend it all, or was that just what the object had done ? ) promptly purging her stomach, and pitching forward as it all made way for darkness.