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Chapter Text

On Trust and Teamwork

Chapter 1

“Peg.”  

“Hmm?”  Peggy didn’t turn from her position at her vanity where she was unclasping her watch from her wrist and then slipping out her small earrings and putting them away in her jewelry box.   

It was a sight he had seen countless times in the last decade and more but somehow, that evening, the sight seemed to strike Steve in the chest with a force that almost stole his breath.  Not with desire or even admiration at the innate grace of her movements, at least not then, but a thought that stayed in his mind as if it were some new profound insight.   

She was his wife, the mother of his children.  

It was an inane, absurd thought, of course.   They had been married for almost 15 years after all.  He had now spent more years with her than he ever had without her, as amazing as that thought still was sometimes.  He had spent so many years missing her, mourning the loss of her, so many years convinced he would never see her again.  And then he’d found his second chance, found his current happiness.  

He was settled into his life now, could go for days, even weeks, without thinking about his past years as Captain America.  He spent his days taking care of their children, overseeing their homework and mediating their little squabbles, working on the commissions for his artwork, and generally taking care of the house, and always, there was Peggy, Peggy to fall asleep beside every night and who was the first person he saw when he woke up every morning.  

Not that their lives were perfect.  There were times when the stress of parenting combined with the pressures of Peggy’s always-intense work at SHIELD and even his own occasional frustration when his artwork wasn’t proceeding as he wished wore on them.  He and Peggy could both be stubborn and had tempers so they had the occasional argument, a fact that had shocked and dismayed him more than he cared to admit the first time it had happened because he’d been forced to admit that he had spent so many years missing Peggy and mourning her that he had fallen into the trap of believing that once he was with Peggy, everything would be perfect.  It had somehow never occurred to him that the reality of being married to Peggy could not possibly be as perfectly happy as his imaginings.   

But they always made it past their arguments and even the bad days with Peggy were far better than the best days of being without Peggy.  And for him, more than most people, he knew exactly how true that was.  He had lived without Peggy for more than 10 years after all and while the loss of Peggy was only one item on the list of terrible things that had happened to him in his time in the future, the loss of Peggy had also been the worst, the hardest, thing about his years in the future.  No, their lives weren’t perfect but it was real and that was better than being perfect.  And he was happy, happier than he had ever been, so he didn’t need or want to dwell on his past.  

But sometimes, like now, the thought that she was his wife still took his breath away, the fact that they were so at ease together in their bedroom, at ease with undressing and preparing for bed together.  So familiar with each other that they didn’t even need to look at each other while conversing.  

Although he had to admit that tonight’s bout of amazement that this was his life now might not be that surprising considering the reason behind the conversation he wanted to have with Peggy.   He didn’t think she would be upset but it was rather awkward.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt quite this awkward about broaching a subject with Peggy.  

“Jamie’s parent-teacher conferences will be next Thursday.”   

“I expected they would happen soon since Sarah’s were last week.  That’s fine.  I’ll make sure I get home in plenty of time for you to be able to go.”  

“Actually, I wanted to ask if you’d come with me.”  

Now, she turned to glance at him.  “But who will watch the children?”  

“I’m sure the Jarvises will be happy to look after them for the evening.  You know they miss spending time with the kids now that they’re both getting busier with school work and friends.”  

“Well, yes,” she acknowledged, “but it seems unnecessary.  You were fine going to Sarah’s parent-teacher conference alone.  Why not Jamie’s?”  She paused and looked at him.  “Is there something going on with Jamie that you haven’t mentioned so you’re expecting some issue to come up at this conference?”  

“No, no,” he hurriedly assured.  “Of course not.  I just thought you might want to come.  You haven’t met Jamie’s teacher this year yet.”  

Peggy turned and faced him fully, her eyes narrowing a little.  “What is it, Steve?  There’s something you’re not telling me.”  

He hid a rather rueful smile.  He should have known trying to evade or even postpone this discussion was futile.  Peggy could always tell and he wasn’t very good at prevaricating anyway.  He was simply out of practice at concealing anything from Peggy and he had never been any good at it.  And after all, he and Peggy were a team and would deal with this as they did everything else, together.  “I don’t want to meet with Miss Pernell alone.”  

“Why not?”

He grimaced, letting out a breath.  “I think Miss Pernell has developed a crush on me,” he admitted and then hurried to add, “I swear I haven’t done or said anything to encourage her but–”  

He broke off as Peggy snickered and then laughed outright.   

He felt himself relax, rolling his eyes even as a faint smile curved his lips at the sound of her laugh.  Well, clearly, whatever mild nervousness he’d felt at the thought of telling Peggy this had been for nothing, which was nice, but still.  “I suppose I should be glad you’re not at all concerned about this.”  

Peggy valiantly swallowed the rest of her laughter although her eyes still danced.  “I’m sorry to laugh, but really, darling, you looked so uneasy about telling me.  Surely you know I trust you.   If only because you’re a terrible liar,” she added teasingly.  

“Thank you,” he said dryly.  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”  

She only smiled at him.  “Well, now that you know you don’t have to worry about my reaction, why don’t you tell me what’s going on with Miss Pernell?”  

He huffed a little as he sat down in the armchair in the corner of their room.  “I think you’re enjoying my discomfort,” he pretended to grumble but went on.  “I admit I’ve probably been slow on the uptake about this but for a couple weeks now, Miss Pernell has made a point of coming out every afternoon to talk to me when I go to pick Jamie up.  She’s always had some reason for it, of course, a reminder about his homework assignment for the day or some upcoming activity, that sort of thing, and I didn’t think anything of it until yesterday.  She hurried out to catch up with us just as I was about to leave with Jamie to remind me about the parent-teacher conference and said she was looking forward to seeing me then.  And there was just something about the way she said it that made me uncomfortable and when I thought about it later, I realized that all the excuses she’d made to talk to me were just that and she hadn’t done the same for any of the other parents.”   And he had belatedly remembered too that he’d absently noticed a few of the other mothers who’d been present at the time observing them rather narrowly and then when he’d turned away to leave, their heads had come together to start whispering.  So he’d realized that he might be the last person to have actually noticed Miss Pernell’s overly attentive behavior and what it could mean.  

Peggy gave a soft laugh as she came over to perch on his lap and he returned her smile almost in spite of himself, curling one arm around her.  “At least someone finds it amusing,” he observed wryly.  

He could not laugh about it, at least not yet.  He was still rather mortified at the realization and dismayed too.  It was just so…  oh, he couldn’t think of a word.  Maybe he was being a prude–it occurred to him that both Howard, and Tony too, had teased him at different times, more than 60 years apart, for being just that (like father, like son)–or just naive but he had not expected this sort of thing to occur.  Oh, he knew that plenty of men (and some women too) had affairs.  But that was a theoretical knowledge and he’d never even imagined that anything approaching the possibility of such a thing would ever affect him personally.   He was happily married to the love of his life but even if that wasn’t the case, he was simply not the type of man who would be unfaithful.  He didn’t claim to be a saint but he did try to always do the right thing, tried not to lie (made easier because he knew he wasn’t good at lying anyway), kept his promises, and the idea of breaking his marriage vows was as unthinkable to him as, oh, swearing his allegiance to Hitler.  Just as he knew to his soul that Peggy was too honest and too loyal a person, to say nothing of too loving a person, to ever consider an affair herself.  But most simply, it was because he knew that Miss Pernell and everyone else knew that he was married.  He always wore his wedding ring, privately delighted in wearing the visible symbol of his life with Peggy, and he had, perhaps naively, assumed that would be enough to warn any women off.  Apparently not.  

He had been mentally reviewing his limited interactions with Miss Pernell over the course of the school year but he could absolve himself of having done anything to even inadvertently encourage her to develop a crush on him.  He had introduced himself to Miss Pernell at the beginning of the school year because he made a point of introducing himself to all of his children’s teachers, just to be familiar with them and make sure they were familiar with him and partly to let them know that he was the one who was his children’s primary care-taker, which was unheard of these days, at least where the father was not a widower, and therefore usually required an explanation of sorts.  And beyond that, at least until she had started seeking him out, he could count on his two hands and have fingers left over for the number of brief interactions he’d had with her in the couple months since the school year had started, and every word they’d ever exchanged had been about Jamie.  He didn’t even know what Miss Pernell’s first name was; if he’d ever heard it, he’d forgotten it.  He had simply treated her with the same politeness with which he treated everyone so really, he had no idea how Miss Pernell could have developed such an inappropriate crush but there it was.  

He had already decided that for the foreseeable future when picking up Jamie, he would make a point of going over to greet and talk to one or the other among the mothers of Jamie’s friends to ensure that he had no more one-on-one interactions with Miss Pernell but the parent-teacher conference obviously would not allow for that.  It wasn’t even that he expected Miss Pernell would be so brazen as to actually do anything–he didn’t imagine she would do anything similar to what Private Lorraine had done, for example, and certainly not in the classroom on a night where the school would be full of other people, not least because any hint of impropriety in Miss Pernell’s behavior would cost her her job–but he still did not feel comfortable with the idea of being alone with her.  And aside from all else, he wanted to do something to nip whatever inappropriate crush Miss Pernell had developed on him in the bud before it could develop any further because for Jamie’s sake, he could hardly hope to avoid her entirely for the rest of the school year.  

Peggy touched her fingers to his cheek.  “I imagine you’re rather horrified but I trust you.”  

Something in his chest seemed to soften.  “I know you do but I just never imagined something like this happening.  I’m married.”  

“Being married has historically not been an impediment against a person developing feelings,” Peggy observed dryly before adding more soberly, “And what Miss Pernell feels isn’t your fault.  I know you haven’t done anything.”  

He gave her a soft smile.  “Thank you.”  Her trust in him was the most precious thing in the world.  

Her expression softened into one of her tender expressions, one that never failed to make his whole chest feel warm, an expression he only ever saw directed at him or to their children.  “My darling.  ‘Who is so safe as we? Where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two?’”  

Not for the first time, Steve thought that Peggy might be too smart for him.  “Who said that?”  It was a beautiful sentiment and one that rang very true.  

“John Donne, in one of his love poems.”  

“I’ll have to make a note of that.”  

She gave him a skeptical look and he had to smile because she knew him so well, knew that he didn’t know anything about poetry and cared about as much.  His Peggy was so pragmatic and level-headed that he had expected that she would have as little appreciation for poetry as he did but he had learned rather to his surprise that Peggy occasionally liked to read poetry.  She said that she found it calming and in a way, comforting too because it reminded her of her old school days, which was when she had been introduced to the canon of great poetry.  She had even read poetry aloud to him on a few occasions and he’d found that at least when being recited by Peggy, he could appreciate poetry, although he knew that at least half of his appreciation had nothing to do with the poems themselves and was only because he liked listening to Peggy’s voice, softened from their usual crisp tones, her elegant accents.  He had always loved her voice, sometimes thought that she could read aloud from the dictionary or even the phone book for hours and he would happily listen.  

She returned his smile and leaned in to drop a quick kiss on first his nose and then his mouth, lingering just a little longer, before she drew back but only far enough to rest her forehead against his.  

After a moment, she murmured, “Poor Miss Pernell.”

He drew back just a little to stare at her.  “Really?”  

“Why not?  She doesn’t pose any sort of threat to me.  And I, of all people, can certainly understand how Miss Pernell or anyone else would develop feelings for you.  Men who look like you do are not that common.”  

He made a face.  “It’s not at all the same thing,” he objected, irrationally offended on Peggy’s behalf at her seeming to equate her feelings for him with whatever Miss Pernell felt.  “Whatever Miss Pernell feels or thinks she feels has nothing to do with me , not really.  For heaven’s sake, she doesn’t really know me at all, not even my name.”  

Peggy made as if to stand, a smirk curving her lips.  “Oh, well, if that’s the only objection, I could just tell her your real name and I imagine that will make her like you even more.”  

He promptly encircled her with his arms, trapping her in place.  “Don’t you dare,” he pretended to growl.  “That wasn’t what I meant.”  

Peggy’s smile softened as she ran her fingers through his hair.  “You know, you might be the only man I’ve ever met who doesn’t appreciate compliments about his appearance.”  

“ You know why that is.  The way I look now isn’t really me.  It’s something Dr. Erskine gave me with his serum.  I might not feel like I’m just wearing some sort of costume anymore but I can’t forget that so when anyone mentions the way I look, it doesn’t feel like a compliment to me but more like a compliment meant for someone else.”  

It had taken months before he had stopped feeling surprise and a little unreality when he saw himself in a mirror after Project Rebirth and even now, at odd moments here and there, usually when he was particularly tired, when he caught an unexpected glimpse of himself in some reflective surface, he still occasionally felt a little surprise because some small corner of his mind  thought of himself as the scrawny kid from Brooklyn to this day.  And he had never really gotten used to the way people looked at him when he was Captain America, that touch of awe in their expressions as if they were looking at, not a man or even a hero, but a god.  It was another thing that had been so surreal and disorienting about the time he had come face to face with his own former self when he’d been trying to retrieve Loki’s scepter before the final battle against Thanos, to actually see with his own eyes what other people saw when they looked at him, not just his height but everything about the figure he cut in that tight costume, the muscled arms, the broad shoulders tapering down to the narrow waist.  

One of the many things he did not miss about being known as Captain America was that no one looked at him with that kind of awe anymore.  Helped, of course, by the fact that he tried to dress in as nondescript a fashion as possible, doing what he could to disguise the actual breadth of his shoulders and his build.  He liked the fact that people treated him like a normal person now and it really wasn’t often when anyone even commented on his appearance at all.  

Peggy was the only person who had always seen past his appearance and treated him as just a man, whether it was when he was still his old scrawny self or after he had become Captain America.  

Peggy lightly traced her fingers over his features, his nose, his cheek, his chin, in one of her habitual caresses.  “Oh, I don’t know if I’d say that exactly.”  

He frowned slightly.  “You wouldn’t?  But you of all people know exactly how much my appearance changed because of the serum.”  

“I do and if we’re only talking about compliments to your height or your broad shoulders, then yes, the compliment isn’t really about you.  But your face didn’t change that much, you know.  I can still see you , the you I first met.”  

“Can you?  You might be the only one who can.”  Even he’d had a hard time recognizing himself in a mirror in the first months after Project Rebirth and after so many years, it was even harder.  He remembered what he’d looked like, remembered how it had felt to be short and skinny and weak, of course, but being able to see and recognize his old self in his current one had become harder.  

“Yes, I can,” she confirmed quietly.  

“Is that why you kept the picture of my old self all those years, rather than some other picture of me?” he asked, warmth sprouting inside his chest as usual when he thought about the way Peggy treasured the picture of his old self.  He’d been photographed many times as Captain America during the war and most of those photographs were, he knew, in the SSR’s old files about him so Peggy had access to them and could have kept any of those pictures of him after Project Rebirth.  But she hadn’t, had chosen to keep only the picture of his old self, first on her nightstand where he’d seen it when he’d first returned to her and now on her desk in her office.  He glanced over at her nightstand that now held a picture of their family, himself and Peggy and the children, while he knew that the picture of his old self on her desk was the only picture of him she would ever display in a public place, for obvious reasons.  And he knew how much she treasured that picture of his old self

Her expression softened, became tinged with melancholy in that way it always did, even now, when she remembered the years she had mourned for him.  “I suppose.  I liked that old picture of you the best.  I sometimes thought–never mind.  It was silly–”  

“You’re never silly,” he interrupted her, tightening his arms around her.  “What did you think?”  

For a moment, she glanced away from him, some faint color creeping into her cheeks.  He knew Peggy well enough by now to know that she was about to make some sentimental admission.  He of all people knew just how deeply she loved but she always seemed faintly abashed to admit aloud to any sentimentality.  “I used to think that your old self was, well, mine .  In those first months after you… were gone, everyone was mourning Captain America and I remember thinking that I was probably the only person who was grieving for you , just Steve, not Captain America.”  

His throat felt a little tight.  It was true.  Peggy was, aside from Dr. Erskine and Bucky, the only person who had valued him, cared about him, even before the serum.  He had only started mattering to other people, the rest of the world, after he had become Captain America, been given this improved body meant to be at the service of the world.  

“Dearest,” was all he managed to say, his voice husky, and then he kissed her because that was all he could do to even begin to express what he felt.  He would never be what anyone would consider a smooth talker and when it came to his feelings for Peggy, he felt too much, too deeply, for eloquence anyway.  So he could only kiss her and call her by the endearment he reserved for tender moments.  

After he drew back, Peggy blinked and he recognized the way she pushed past her emotion, became once more her usual, brisk self as if to deny her admission of vulnerability.  “Anyway, even now, I like the reminder of when I first met you because all the things I first liked about you are still true.  You’re still you .”  

His lips quirked and he couldn’t help a soft laugh in spite of the emotion he still felt at the seeming absurdity of the statement.  

Her eyes narrowed.  “Don’t mock me.”  

He promptly straightened his lips.  “I wasn’t, I promise.  I was only thinking, remembering something that Bucky once told me.”  

She blinked a little.  “About me?”  

“No, well, yes,” he corrected.  “It was about you.  He just didn’t know that at the time and neither did I.”  

“Are you deliberately trying to sound mysterious?”

“I’ll explain,” he hurried on.  “It happened years ago, a few months before we met.  Bucky had arranged a double date for himself and me, back when he was still trying to find dates for me.”   His lips twisted slightly, feeling a quick pang at the memory, not of the dates, but of Bucky’s loyalty.  “Bucky was always popular with girls.  Well, you remember what he looked like, tall, good-looking, and always up for a laugh.  And in his role as my best friend, he was constantly arranging double dates to find me a girl but all those double dates were disasters.”  

“Girls not lining up to dance with a guy they might step on?” she asked softly.  

His lips lifted at this echo of the well-remembered words he’d once said to her.  “Exactly.  Anyway, at this one double date, that turned out to be one of the last Bucky ever tried to arrange for us, my supposed date spent the evening ignoring me, as usual, and about halfway through, I excused myself saying I needed to use the restroom and then just left and went home.”  

“Oh, Steve…”  

“It’s fine,” he hurriedly assured her.  “I left mostly because I was just so bored, not because she was ignoring me.  The girl hadn’t said a single interesting thing over the course of an hour while she was constantly talking to Bucky.  Anyway, I went home and after a while, Bucky came and found me and I told him he should just give up on finding a date for me because there was no point since I might as well have been invisible to girls.”  

“What did Bucky say to that?”  

“Oh, he pretty much ignored the part about me being invisible to girls and said, ‘that just means she wasn’t good enough for you.  The right girl will see past all that.’  I laughed in his face, told him he was being stupid, but he was right after all.”  He smiled at her.  “I met the right girl and she did see past all that.”  

Her lips quirked.  “You’re not so bad.  I think I’ll keep you.”

He laughed and kissed her.  His Peggy.  She was, still, adorable when she teased him.  

“Anyway, that’s why I don’t want to go to the parent-teacher conferences and have to meet with Miss Pernell alone.”  

Peggy shook her head at him in mock disappointment.  “I wonder what people would say if they ever found out that Captain America, who defeated more than one alien invasion, was scared to meet with one lone woman.”  

“I think I’d rather face an alien invasion than one lone woman,” he told her wryly.  “I know how to fight an alien invasion but I can’t do anything against a lone woman.”  His strength was useless since he could never use violence against a woman and it wasn’t in him to be rude or mean to a woman either.  He supposed it was absurd but even after the incident with Private Lorraine during the war, he’d never really learned how to reject a woman with any sort of finesse and in all honesty, had spent his years in the future essentially doing his level best to avoid ever getting into such a situation.  For all Nat’s teasing about how he should ask out this girl or that, he hadn’t followed her suggestions and it had been easy enough not to do so because he hadn’t been interested and had, after all, been so busy with other things.  And focusing on all the missions, the battles, had made it easier for him not to dwell on the painful truth that he was still in love with Peggy.  

“That’s what you have me for.  I’ll go with you to the parent-teacher conference and I’ll protect you from any women,” she quipped.  

“I’ll call the Jarvises tomorrow and ask them if they can watch the kids that evening.  And I need you for everything, you know.”  

“Well, I do like being useful.”  

“You are very useful,” he assured her with mock gravity.  

She laughed softly and leaned in to kiss him and he tightened his arms around her and devoted himself to showing her all over again that she was the only woman in the world for him.  

~To be continued...~

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The following Thursday, as promised, Peggy returned home from work earlier than usual and Steve and Peggy had an early dinner with the kids with Jamie blithely expounding on the fun he’d had with his friends at recess that day while Steve and Peggy tried to gently interrogate Jamie on what he’d learned at school that day, with limited success.  Anyone listening to Jamie would probably come away with the impression that recess made up about 90% of Jamie’s school day because it certainly comprised more than 90% of what Jamie ever wanted to say about his school day.  Not for the first time, Steve reflected on how very different in temperament his children were.  They were both bright–a fact that Steve attributed mostly to Peggy–but while Sarah was quietly diligent, Jamie was quick-witted but not very self-motivated and appeared happy to get by without expending much effort and was able to do so without suffering any drop in his marks due to his cleverness.  Peggy fretted sometimes over Jamie’s failure to apply himself and Steve worried over it too but he hoped that as their son grew older and presumably more mature, he would become more motivated too.  

After dinner, they herded the kids into the car (and herding was definitely the apt term for it) and drove over to Howard’s house, not to say mansion, just outside the city.  Steve thought it was something of a minor miracle that they got through the drive without Sarah and Jamie getting into a tiff and to try to ensure that streak continued, he turned to Jamie the moment he had parked the car.   “Why don’t you run on ahead and ring the doorbell to let Uncle Edwin know we’re here?”  

Jamie was all too delighted to be given permission to jump out of the car and race up the driveway and the front steps while Sarah, now 13 and starting to affect more grown-up airs that both amused Steve and made him feel a little pang because of how soon she would be grown-up in truth, followed more sedately.   He and Peggy drew up the rear with him carrying Jamie’s backpack which Jamie had, of course, forgotten in the car in his eagerness to run.  

Jarvis opened the door and his usually impassive English butler’s expression cracked into the smile he only ever showed for children and not for the first time, Steve thought that seeing the way Edwin behaved with children made it so much easier to understand why Tony had been so fond of the man that he had immortalized him as his AI assistant.  Not that Tony had ever said as much but from what little Tony had let slip, Steve had guessed that Tony had viewed the real Jarvis as a second father and one who was closer to him emotionally than Howard had been.  

“Uncle Edwin, we’re here!” Jamie announced, quite as if Jarvis couldn’t see that for himself.  

“So you are, Master Jamie,” Edwin beamed down at the boy.  “I do believe you’ve gotten taller in the last weeks since I’ve seen you.”  

Jamie nodded vigorously, all but preening at the way Edwin had addressed him so formally as ‘Master Jamie,’ something that Steve knew Edwin only did occasionally because it never failed to delight Jamie, as it had tonight.  “Uh huh.  I think I’ve grown a whole inch!”  (This was an exaggeration as Peggy had noted that it was more like a half-inch in the last month or so but of course, no one corrected him.)  

By now, Steve and Peggy had arrived at the door and Edwin greeted Sarah with as much fondness as he had Jamie and inclined his head at Peggy while shaking Steve’s hand.   

“You’re just in time, children.  Aunt Ana made your favorite apple strudel for you and it’s waiting for you in the kitchen.”  

Sarah and Jamie both turned to look at him with almost identical pleading expressions.  “May we go, Dad?” Sarah asked.  

They had already had dessert before leaving the house but by now, Steve had learned that parenting required picking one’s battles and trying to forbid a second dessert and one made by Ana Jarvis at that would be a futile one, at least if he wanted to avoid tantrums.  “Yes, run along,” he agreed.  “But make sure you behave and listen to your aunt and uncle.” 
“Don’t forget to wash your hands first,” Peggy called after them as they turned and rushed off with even Sarah momentarily forgetting her 13-year-old dignity and running after Jamie.  

“Thank you for agreeing to look after the kids tonight,” Steve turned back to Edwin.  

“Oh, it’s our pleasure,” Edwin demurred.  

“You say that now but if they start squabbling, you might find it less than pleasant after a couple hours,” Steve noted dryly.  

“Ah well, if that happens, the house is large enough that we can separate them until they cool off,” Edwin returned philosophically.   

“And they do have homework to do so that should keep them busy for at least a little while,” Peggy inserted.  

Edwin nodded.  “I’ll be sure that they finish up their homework, Director Carter.”  

Peggy thanked him with a smile.  “We appreciate it.  We know that part of the evening isn’t likely to be entertaining.”  

Peggy sobered and went on to remind Jarvis that Howard needed to be at SHIELD the following Wednesday as they would be having a meeting with the heads of the different divisions at which Howard needed to be present and Jarvis duly promised that he would remind Howard of that once Howard and Maria returned from their current trip to Washington, D.C. on Sunday.   A necessary reminder, because with the way Howard split his time between SHIELD and Stark Industries, to say nothing of Howard’s peripatetic brain as his restless mind tended to move from subject to subject, mundane things like such scheduled meetings often got forgotten.  Peggy had realized that early on and so she coordinated closely with Jarvis, who, because he also acted as Howard’s chauffeur, was relied on to ensure that Howard was where he needed to be at any given time.  

The plans for Thanksgiving, coming up in a couple weeks, were confirmed as they would be going up to Howard’s country house in upstate New York for it as usual and which the children were looking forward to, for once not only because of the holiday from school and the prospect of spending a couple days at Howard’s country estate which was viewed almost as an enormous playground by the children, but because Howard had agreed (after what Steve knew had to be hours of wheedling by the kids) to “blow something up” for the children’s benefit in his lab.  Steve had already resolved to accompany the children for this experiment or barring that, ensure that Edwin went along.  Steve freely admitted to being somewhat overly protective of his children–Peggy teased him as being over-protective to the point of paranoia–but he had been through too much danger in his life and was terrified at the idea of anything happening to his children and if that made him over-protective, not to say paranoid, so be it.  Besides which, as much as he trusted Howard in most other ways, Howard’s judgment as to what was safe or advisable for children was not exactly stellar.  

This had become glaringly obvious when Howard’s idea of a birthday gift for 7-year-old Jamie three years previously had been a hip flask.  Peggy had initially wanted to confiscate the gift entirely but Steve had interceded to fend off a storm of protest from Jamie and come up with a compromise that Jamie would be allowed to keep the flask and use it on certain special occasions when Steve would, of course, fill the flask with either water or juice.  Jamie had not been thrilled but faced with that option versus losing the flask entirely had agreed.  As it was, once the children had been out of earshot, Peggy had subjected Howard to a lecture on appropriate gifts for children that had, if not cowed Howard (the man was impervious to being cowed), at least impressed Howard enough that since then, he had mostly delegated all gift-buying responsibility for the children to Edwin’s far-more-trustworthy hands.  

(Steve was troubled by Howard’s apparent lack of paternal instinct, less for his own children’s sake than because he couldn’t help but think of the fraught relationship that Howard would end up having with his son and the lingering wounds that relationship had left on Tony.  It was one thing for Howard to avoid interacting with either Sarah or Jamie for the first years of their lives until they had grown up enough to hold their own in conversations.  But obviously such avoidance wouldn’t be as possible when it came to Howard’s own child and it could not bode well for the sort of father Howard would be.  Steve tried not to dwell on it; it was years in the future, after all, but sometimes, when he saw how awkward Howard was with Sarah and Jamie, he felt a stab of concern.)  

Aside from these brief exchanges, Steve and Peggy did not linger at Howard’s house as they needed to drive to Jamie’s school and so they left shortly thereafter, with Steve assuring Edwin that they would be back to pick the children up in a couple hours.  

They passed the drive to Jamie’s school with Peggy grumbling to him about one of the new young Agents who had just completed his first solo mission and submitted his mission report but the report was perfunctory to the point of reading like a children’s story, as Peggy acidly described it, so she would need to summon him to her office the next day to have him rewrite the entire report.  

Steve bit back a small smile at Peggy’s disgruntled tone, her caustic turns of phrase.  Not that he liked it when she had a frustrating day at SHIELD but he did love the way she talked to him about her day.  She was too good of an Agent and now, the Director, to ever speak about her work when the children were around but when they were alone, she talked to him, freely sharing not just her frustrations but also her triumphs, little and big, although even with him, when necessary, she spoke in generalities so as not to reveal classified information.  So he listened and gave mild responses.  In spite of Peggy’s cutting tones that would, he knew, probably strike terror into the heart of the young Agent if he were around to hear them, Steve knew Peggy and her kindness too well to fear that she would actually be very harsh to the Agent when she spoke to him.  

Steve’s role was to listen as Peggy let out her frustrations in these private conversations and while he always answered when she asked for his opinion, he didn’t otherwise advise her.  SHIELD was hers and he had no desire to become involved in it, not least because his own experiences with SHIELD in the future and knowing what would happen to it, had left him with a bad taste in his mouth where SHIELD was concerned and not even all of his faith in Peggy had entirely eradicated it.  

When it had become clear that Peggy and Howard, with the help of Colonel Phillips, were definitely going to move forward with creating a new agency, he had cautiously and rather reluctantly told Peggy about what had happened to SHIELD in the future he had seen and he and Peggy had discussed at some length whether she should move forward with creating SHIELD at all, knowing that it would probably be infiltrated by Hydra, but in the end, she had decided she still wanted to do so.  The reasons for dissolving the SSR and replacing it with a new agency were still valid and as Peggy had reasoned, choosing not to create the new agency out of a fear of what might happen seemed too much like giving up preemptively and that Peggy was constitutionally incapable of doing.  But then she had softened and slid her arms around his neck and told him that if he honestly felt that she should not go ahead with creating SHIELD, she wouldn’t.  And he had told her she should do it, had not been able to say anything else.  He could never ask her to compromise on doing what she believed she should do for his sake and in spite of how SHIELD had ended, he also knew that it had been Peggy’s life’s work and for years, decades, it had done a lot of good, not least in being responsible for initially creating the Avengers.  

And the fact remained that he was proud of her.  He had always been proud of her for what she had done in founding SHIELD.  He had always loved her cleverness, her determination, her strength, and he was proud of her for the way she worked so hard to prove herself, overcame all the obstacles in her way just from being a woman to do this work that was so important.  But he had found that knowing in broad strokes what Peggy had done wasn’t the same as being there from the beginning.  It was different to watch SHIELD develop and grow from its inception.  Knowing what Peggy had done was different than being able to see her in action as the Director of SHIELD, to see all her talents and abilities being put to use, being able to watch first-hand as she learned and changed with her hard-won role as the Director, rather than simply an Agent.  He’d been impressed by Agent Carter from the first moment he’d met her but watching the way Peggy was growing into her role as Director Carter meant so much more, filled him with so much pride and love it was almost painful at times.  

Peggy’s recounting of her day at work took them until they arrived at Jamie’s school and Steve felt himself start to tense, his nerves tightening even in spite of Peggy’s presence.  He really did not relish the thought of the coming conference.  

He blew out a breath as he fell into step beside Peggy.  “Well, here we go.  ‘Once more, unto the breach?’” he quoted wryly.  

She huffed a little laugh and linked her arm with his.  “Always so dramatic.”  

“I guess it’s the artist in me,” he joked and felt some of his tension start to dissolve.  Peggy was with him and he hoped that by the end of the evening, Miss Pernell would understand that any crush she might harbor on him was utterly hopeless.  

Peggy threw him one of her sparkling glances, as he mentally termed them, where her eyes were bright with humor and her lips faintly curved, the sort of glance that even now after so many years of marriage never failed to make his heart skip a beat.  “Come along, darling.  I’m rather curious to meet Miss Pernell, especially since she has the good taste to like you so much.” 

“Must you enjoy my discomfort?” he pretended to grumble.  

“Yes, I think I must,” she returned with feigned solemnity.  

He had to laugh and briefly covered her hand on his arm with his.  

Inside the school building, he steered Peggy down the hallway towards Jamie’s classroom, pausing along the way to exchange brief pleasantries with Mrs. Judy Alderson, the mother of Jamie’s friend Paul, having apparently just finished having her own conference with Miss Pernell.  

Steve had half-hoped that his suspicions of Miss Pernell’s feelings towards him had been mistaken, just a misunderstanding, but the moment he and Peggy arrived at Jamie’s classroom and Miss Pernell looked up at his perfunctory knock on the open door with a smile of greeting, he knew that he hadn’t been wrong.  It was there in the brightness of her smile and the way her smile momentarily froze when she saw Peggy with him.  He noticed too that she had changed clothes from what she’d been wearing earlier when he had picked Jamie up from school into a dress that was less professional in appearance and more, well, feminine, although Steve was too much of a man to identify what it was about the dress that gave that impression.  

Peggy had noted Miss Pernell’s quickly-concealed reaction as well.  He felt it in the slight tightening of her hand on his arm, but he knew that Peggy would not otherwise have reacted visibly in any way.  

He did, at least, have to give Miss Pernell credit for how quickly she recovered, her expression smoothing into courtesy as she focused on Peggy.  

“Dearest, this is Miss Pernell,” he addressed Peggy, feeling Peggy’s swift glance at him since he had never used an endearment with Peggy in front of anyone other than their own children.  But tonight, he thought it was necessary to step outside of his comfort zone to make a point.  He turned back to Miss Pernell.  “Miss Pernell, my wife.”  

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Carter.   Welcome to my classroom,” Miss Pernell greeted with enough apparent sincerity that Steve thought again that Miss Pernell seemed a sensible sort, honestly far too sensible to have formed an inappropriate crush on him based on nothing but apparently not even an otherwise sensible woman could be entirely sensible all the time.  

“I’m delighted to finally meet you, Miss Pernell,” Peggy returned the greeting and Steve knew Peggy too well to be surprised at how sincere she sounded, to say nothing of how oblivious she appeared to the way that Miss Pernell was, somewhat conspicuously, avoiding greeting Steve at all or indeed even looking in his direction.  “I’ve heard so much about you from Jamie, who appears to be enjoying your class very much.”  

This was a polite fiction, of course, since Jamie only admitted to enjoying the recess portion of his school days.  

“Please take a seat,” Miss Pernell gestured to the two seats before her desk in one corner of the classroom as she resumed her own seat.  “Jamie is a wonderful boy.  You must be very proud of him.”  

“Yes, he has his moments,” Peggy demurred, her tone faintly dry.  

Steve glanced briefly away to hide his smile, feeling a renegade flicker of humor at the way Miss Pernell blinked in clear surprise at Peggy’s response.   He was sure that most mothers would have preened at such praise for their child–he was not immune to that wish himself–and would likely have followed up by gushing over the many perfections of their child but his Peggy was not most mothers.  As much as she loved their children and was proud of them, she was not the sort to gush or even to say as much outright to a near-total stranger, even if it was to one of their children’s teachers.  

He obeyed a sudden impulse and reached out to place his hand on top of Peggy’s where it rested on the arm of her chair, something else he would normally never do in public, and felt Peggy’s slight surprise, although he didn’t need to look at her to know that not a particle of her surprise would show outwardly.  

Miss Pernell’s gaze flickered down to his and Peggy’s joined hands and for a fleeting moment, her expression tensed in a way he couldn’t describe before going blank.  

He felt a sudden pang of sympathy almost in spite of himself, for the first time in years remembering how he had felt when he had gone to visit Peggy’s older self in the future and learned that she was married to another man, had children and grandchildren.  He knew the situations weren’t the same but he remembered the sharp twist of pain he hadn’t been able to help, no matter how many times he told himself that he would never have expected or wanted Peggy to stay alone for her entire life in the long decades after he had gone into the ice, that he had always wanted her to be happy more than anything else.  It was all true but even so, he’d never gotten over the hurt of loving someone who was married to someone else, the way it had made his feelings for Peggy, already painful enough because of the chasm of years between them, seem wrong, even adulterous.  In all his years in the future, the knowledge that Peggy was married to another man had never entirely stopped hurting, even after she had actually passed–Steve abruptly cut off his thoughts.  No.  He tried never to think about that, refused to think about it.  Could not think about it.  

He belatedly became aware that his hand had almost convulsively tightened on Peggy’s when he felt her thumb lightly stroke the back of his pinky, the small caress gaining his immediate attention and managing to calm him as well. 

“Tell us, how does Jamie generally behave in class?” Peggy prompted.  

The question led to the intended purpose of this parent-teacher conference as Miss Pernell immediately became professional.   She had one of Jamie’s recent vocabulary tests which Jamie had aced and one of his recent math quizzes on long division on which Jamie had made only one mistake to show them, using them to demonstrate the truth of what she said.  By her account, Jamie was bright, outgoing and active but still well-mannered and generally a pleasure to have in class, and popular with his classmates, all of which Steve and Peggy knew.  Except, Miss Pernell admitted, that she had recently needed to admonish Jamie a few times for being distracted and inattentive in class, particularly when they were covering subjects in which Jamie did not have much interest, namely math and science, and that she had caught Jamie doodling and drawing cartoon-like sketches in his notebook when he should have been focused on classwork.   

At this, Steve coughed to disguise his abrupt, renegade spurt of amusement and something not entirely unmixed with pleasure because the words, the behavior, sounded so familiar.  He had dim memories of having done much the same thing himself a lifetime ago when he’d been in school at Brooklyn’s PS 87–when he had doodled and drawn on just about every scrap of paper he’d had access to.   And he couldn’t help the flicker of something approaching delight at the thought that their son, who was almost entirely Peggy’s in his appearance and personality, had inherited his artistic inclinations and was even unconsciously mimicking Steve’s own behavior.  He was only rather surprised that he hadn’t noticed it before but then again, on second thought, that was almost certainly because Jamie was so active that when he was at home, he spent as little time as possible sitting down.  Unlike Steve when he’d been Jamie’s age because his poor health had meant that he was often stuck indoors with nothing much to do except draw.  

Peggy subtly squeezed one of his fingers and he promptly assumed an expression of as much gravity as he could muster as Peggy assured Miss Pernell that they would have a serious talk with Jamie about the importance of paying attention in class.  

Miss Pernell thanked Peggy for the assurances and gave them a brief potted summary of her lesson plans for the next few weeks, noting in particular that they would be starting to learn about fractions and as a new subject, the children might need some additional help with their homework, which he duly promised to keep in mind.  

With that, the parent-teacher conference ended and he and Peggy stood up, their hands perforce separating, as they each bid Miss Pernell goodbye and thanked her for her time and her efforts with Jamie.  It was only in saying goodbye that Miss Pernell looked directly at him for the first time that evening and he gave her his usual polite smile. And then he and Peggy left the classroom, heading back down the hallway to the school building’s main entrance, with Steve conscious of feeling Miss Pernell’s gaze on them until they had turned the corner.  

Gladys Pernell watched almost against her will as Mr. and Mrs. Carter walked away.  They appeared to only be exchanging a few idle words but even as she watched, Mr. Carter laughed at something Mrs. Carter said and their gazes met for a moment while she gave him a smiling glance as she took his hand.  And that was the moment when Gladys, with a little sigh, gave up once and for all whatever fantasies she had built up around Mr. Carter.  

Gladys wasn’t, she liked to think, that silly and she knew now in a way she hadn’t before that Mr. Carter was not just married but very happily so, was devoted to his wife.  In the course of her work, she had seen enough couples to recognize those whose marriages were of the more convenient variety, those that were tepidly comfortable, those that were unhappy, and those that were happy and the Carters were happy, strikingly so considering they had to have been married for at least 14 years because she knew from things that Jamie had said that he had a 13-year-old older sister.  

It wasn’t only about the way Mr. Carter had addressed his wife as ‘dearest’ or the way he had rested his hand on his wife’s during the conference.  The endearment had given her momentary pause but she knew that many men simply said such things without meaning them and although she would not have said that Mr. Carter appeared to be one of those men, she did not know for certain.  The touch of their hands had been more telling, not so much because of the way Mr. Carter had rested his hand on his wife’s but because of the way Mrs. Carter had reacted–or not reacted really–which was proof of just how comfortable and easy the relationship was that such a small caress was commonplace.  But really, more than all that had been the way Mr. and Mrs. Carter had looked just now as they walked away because there had somehow been an air of almost palpable togetherness enveloping them, that had made it appear as if they were alone rather than walking down a hallway with a number of other parents and teachers milling around and that was lined with classrooms that all had people inside them.  It was in the way Mr. Carter had smiled at his wife as if she were not just the only woman in the room but the only woman in the world.  

Gladys turned away from the hallway and returned to her chair behind her desk.  She could acknowledge now, albeit with some mortification, that she had almost talked herself into having a crush on Mr. Carter, concocting silly fantasies about him that even she knew in her more sensible moments had no chance of ever coming true.  But oh, Mr. Carter was hard to resist.  

She had been feeling lonely one evening and had found herself picturing the smile Mr. Carter had given her when she had happened to praise Jamie for getting a perfect score on his last quiz, a smile that in retrospect she could recognize as having been an impersonal sort of smile but that at the time had still made her foolish heart flutter when combined with Mr. Carter’s height and handsome features and bright blue eyes.  

If it had only been that, it might well have faded into nothing before long.  After all, she had eyes so she inevitably noticed a handsome man but appreciating a man’s looks was not the same thing as starting to feel something for the man.  

But she just continued to see Mr. Carter so often and everything she saw about him made her opinion of him rise.  She saw him at school almost every day when he came to pick up Jamie every afternoon and even some mornings when he dropped Jamie off for school, and she saw the way his expression lit up and softened whenever he looked at his son and how could she not like a man who was so clearly a loving father and so unusually devoted as to be his children’s primary caretaker at that?  Gladys was aware that sentiment in the teacher’s lounge was somewhat mixed regarding Mr. Carter staying at home to take care of his children while his wife worked with many disapproving of the reversal of the natural order of things and sure that Mr. Carter as a man could not possibly be providing his children with the same level of care that a mother would provide but Gladys was firmly in the opposite camp.  From what she knew of Jamie, she was perfectly certain that Mr. Carter cared for his children as well as any parent could because Jamie was as cheerful and well-behaved a boy as she’d ever come across and she had been a teacher for long enough to know that children did not become so by accident.  

And as if all that wasn’t enough was the fact that Mr. Carter was just a nice man, possibly the nicest man Gladys had ever met.  He was always courteous, opening doors for people, greeting everyone from the colored janitor on up with a nod and a smile.  He had even engaged the colored janitor, Mr. Brace, in an animated conversation shortly after the start of the school year, which was unheard-of and had made even Mr. Brace blink and respond cautiously at first before Mr. Carter’s friendliness had thawed his demeanor.*  (More than one person had been so curious to know what Mr. Carter could have been talking about with the janitor that they had wandered close enough to overhear at least some of the conversation so Gladys had learned that the two men had been discussing baseball and Jackie Robinson.)   And that conversation had only been the first so that since then, Mr. Carter and Mr. Brace appeared to have become quite friendly, exchanging greetings and at least a few words whenever they crossed paths.  Gladys had seen Mr. Carter stop and turn back around to help one of the teachers, Miss Welland, who had dropped the stack of papers she had been carrying.  On another occasion, he had volunteered to assist the librarian in carrying some stacks of new books the school had acquired for the library.  Gladys had never seen Mr. Carter be brusque or curt with anyone, let alone displaying any temper, and while she knew she hadn’t seen much of Mr. Carter, his politeness and his kindness to everyone he interacted with were still notable.  

And somehow without her quite realizing it, she had started to look forward to seeing him every day, had started to think about him often, daydream about him, and… well, generally set herself up to make a fool of herself.  But now that was over and she would simply have to get over her own foolishness.  She would have to avoid Mr. Carter as much as possible for the foreseeable future, she resolved.  And at least, she had recovered her senses before anyone else, including Mr. Carter, could know of her own folly–well, she thought, hoped, that she had.  She hadn’t noticed any particular self-consciousness in Mr. Carter’s demeanor so she hoped she could be spared that much mortification.  

Gladys gave a little sigh as she turned to preparing for the next conference with the parents of Eileen Dornton.  Was it so unreasonable to hope to find a man as kind as Mr. Carter and who would look at her the way Mr. Carter looked at his wife?  

Steve knew Peggy too well to expect that she would want to talk about even what Miss Pernell had reported about Jamie while still in the school building with so many other people around so instead he recounted a story Sarah had told him when he had picked her up from school that day.  Peggy made a tart comment about how melodramatic some of Sarah’s classmates were and he laughed and thought, for at least the millionth time, that one of the many things he loved about Peggy was how much he liked her, liked talking to her more than anyone else he’d ever met.  She returned his smile with one of her sparkling looks and slipped her hand into his, warming his chest straight through because from Peggy, in public, such a gesture was as revealing as a kiss.  

They were outside in the relative privacy of the parking lot when Peggy glanced at him.  “You can stop pretending you’re not delighted to find out that Jamie’s inherited something of your artistic inclinations.  Although of all the ways in which Jamie could have followed in your footsteps, I would really have preferred that it not manifest itself in not paying attention in class.” 

He bit back a smile but at least, it didn’t require much effort to sound sober as he responded, “We’ll have to talk to him about that and make it absolutely clear that drawing in class when he should be paying attention is not acceptable.  And I’ll keep a closer eye on him in the next few weeks, make sure he’s keeping up with all his math homework in particular.”  

“Yes, we’ll certainly talk to him.  And then I think in about a month or so, you should check in with Miss Pernell and make sure Jamie’s taken our words to heart and there haven’t been any more incidents of his drawing in class when he should be studying.”  

He grimaced.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already known that he couldn’t hope to avoid Miss Pernell forever and while he hoped that she had received the message today, he couldn’t be sure.  “You’re right.  I’ll have to check in with her.”  

“Don’t look like that, Steve.  I think Miss Pernell understood.  And if you’re still worried about being alone with Miss Pernell, I’m sure you’ll be able to catch her attention in the parking lot some morning or afternoon when you’re dropping Jamie off or picking him up so there’ll be plenty of other people around.  Anyway, she struck me as being a sensible sort, in spite of everything, and a good teacher.”  

“I would have said she was sensible too until all this happened,” he returned wryly.  Sensible or not, he had every intention of avoiding being alone with Miss Pernell.  

“I wouldn’t be so hard on her.  You are a hard man to resist.  There’s a reason I’m pretty sure at least half the nurses during the war all had crushes on you.”  

“Peggy,” he almost groaned.  “It’s not at all the same thing.”  They had reached their car and he paused as they unlocked the car and slid inside and now that they were safe in the complete privacy of the car, he went on, “That was all about Captain America but I’m not Captain America anymore.”  

“You’re wrong about that, you know, darling.  You are still Captain America in every way that really matters.  You told me that Dr. Erskine said that the serum doesn’t change who a person is.  He was right.  I know you tend to think that the most important things about being Captain America were the serum and the super-strength and the shield but that’s not really true.  The most important things about Captain America, what made Captain America such a hero, were his courage, his integrity, his sense of duty.  All the things you already had, Steve.  You’ve always been Captain America inside.   All that the serum did was essentially make your exterior match what you always were inside, with some added strength and abilities as a bonus,” she added with a sudden impish flash of her smile.  

He choked on a watery laugh, a little amazed that he could be laughing when his throat was still tight with emotion but then again, this was Peggy and she could always make him laugh.  Just as she could move him to tears with just a few words.   And he couldn’t think of another person who would refer to Captain America’s super-strength as if it were just an afterthought, the least important thing about Captain America.  Always, only Peggy.  

“That’s what makes you so hard to resist, your kindness and your gallantry.”  

“My gallantry?” he repeated the old-fashioned word rather skeptically.  “You of all people know that I never learned how to sweet-talk a woman.”  

She gave him a soft smile.  “Gallantry isn’t about sweet-talking.”  She paused and went on, “It’s just you, the kind of man you are.  Do you remember Nancy Arnett, one of the nurses during the war?”  

He searched his memories of the nurses and after a moment, came up with a dim mental image of one of the nurses, a young woman with light brown hair and a friendly smile.  “I think so.  She was one of the nurses you shared a tent with for the couple weeks we were stationed in Italy, wasn’t she?”  

“Yes, that was Nancy.  Anyway, Nancy told me a story about how one of the soldiers tried to steal a kiss from her while she tried to get away but couldn’t until you came along and pulled the soldier off of her and sent him packing with a flea in his ear.”  

“Did I?”  He had to stop and think.  “I think I vaguely remember that but what about it?”  

“Nancy had quite a crush on you after that incident.”  

“I had no idea.”  From what he could remember, he didn’t remember having had many interactions with Nancy or any of the nurses.  His accelerated healing had meant that he rarely required any help from the medical team himself and the other interactions he’d had with the medical team usually only consisted of delivering wounded men to the medical tent to be cared for.  

Peggy shot him a smile that was both teasing and affectionate.   “I know you didn’t but you could be quite oblivious to that sort of thing unless the woman in question was as obvious about it as Private Lorraine.  And Nancy didn’t try to act on her crush because she knew you weren’t interested.”  

His lips twisted ruefully.   “I feel like I should apologize for that but it’s true I wasn’t interested.  After all, I was already head over heels for someone else.”  

Peggy smiled at that, as he’d intended, before she sobered.  “But Nancy still never forgot what you did to help her that day and neither did any of the other nurses who heard about it.”  

“What else could I have done, just ignore the fact that she was being hassled?”  

“Most men would have,” she pointed out.  “Just like most men would never have bothered to intervene to help Donna deal with her brute of a fiance years ago.”  

He made a face.  He didn’t like to think that she was right but Peggy knew better than anyone to just what levels men were capable of stooping and was more clear-eyed about it than he was because he preferred to believe better of humanity.  “I suppose,” he admitted, “but I guess I’m not like most men.”  And for once, he wasn’t referring to the serum.  He remembered all the crude language, crass comments, the casually demeaning attitude towards women that were such a standard part of military life.  He’d never felt comfortable with it, perhaps because he had been raised by his mother as a working woman who had taught him early on that a woman could be smart and strong and capable, and then too, thanks to his poor health and his size, he had mostly spent his life on the outside looking in, not a part of any of the various groups of boys in the neighborhood.   Even in the army, after he’d become Captain America, his general distaste for the crude language and otherwise insulting-to-women behavior had been just another reason why he’d never quite felt as if he fit in.  

She flashed him a smile.  “No, you’re not.  You’re better.”  She sobered and then added quietly, her tone changing as she quoted, “‘A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.’”  

He slanted a faint smile at her.  “There’s no need for any woman to run through fire or water on my account because I’m taken.  I met the love of my life almost 20 years ago and I never recovered from it.”  

She huffed a little laugh.  “If your idea of sweet-talking is to compare me to a disease, you really do have a lot to learn.”  

He pretended to think about it.  “But love can be rather like a disease.  It can also have physiological symptoms and in my experience at least, like some diseases, it’s permanent and incurable.”  

“Please spare me any more of this attempt at sweet-talking,” she drawled but her lips were twitching.  

“Well then, how’s this?   You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, right?” he told her, sincerely.  Even including the birth of their children because those miracles too were only possible because of Peggy.  

“As sweet-talking goes, that is a marked improvement,” she quipped but her eyes were soft.  

“That’s good to know because the only woman I want to sweet-talk is you.”  

She affected sternness.  “I hope you realize I’ll hold you to that.”  

“That’s an easy promise to keep.  I’ve been yours since the day we met and I saw you knock down that jerk Hodge.”  

“I find it very disturbing that you’re apparently so fond of my tendency to violence,” she commented with mock concern.  “I punch a man and you develop a crush.  I try to shoot you and you fall in love with me.  That’s not a normal response.” 

“You were standing up for yourself and I respect that.  And in doing so, you knocked down a man who was significantly taller and broader than you with one blow and that was something I could only dream about doing at the time and when you combine that with the fact that you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, it’s no wonder that you took my breath away.”   His lips curved as the memory returned to him as vividly as if it had happened yesterday and not for the first time, he thought that maybe what had really drawn him to Peggy from the beginning was the fact that she too knew what it was to be mocked and doubted and she had fought back, fought and won in order to become Agent Carter of the SSR.  

“If you put it like that, it almost makes sense,” she teased.  

“Almost?”  He shook his head and heaved an exaggerated sigh.  “You are a hard woman to impress, Peggy Carter.”  

“I know.”  She flashed him one of her adorable smirks.  “You see, I met a man during the war who became the standard by which I compare all other men and somehow no one else has quite measured up since.”  

“Such flattery.”  

“Who said I was talking about you?” she returned with an impish look.  

“Okay, who were you talking about?”  

She affected innocence.  “I was talking about Captain America but I have it on good authority that you’re not Captain America anymore.”  

“Funny girl,” he drawled.  

Their eyes met and held and then they were both laughing and he leaned over and kissed her, lingering just a little longer than he normally would when they weren’t in the privacy of their home.  

“I love you, Peggy Carter.”  

She smiled.  “I love you too… Captain America.”  

He laughed softly and kissed her again, briefly this time, warmth swelling in his chest.  And thought not for the first time that love seemed like too small a word for what he felt for Peggy.  

“Now, I think we had better go pick up our children before the Jarvises regret agreeing to watch them.”  

Our children.  Even after so many years, he never got tired of hearing those words from Peggy, the reminder that he had children with Peggy.  

“Whatever you say, Director Carter, ma’am.”  

She laughed as she usually did when he called her by her work title, which was why he liked to do it, well, that and because he was proud of her.  

And then he started the car and, as she had suggested, set out to pick up their children.   

He and Peggy would need to scold Jamie and make it clear that Jamie absolutely should not be doodling in class rather than paying attention to his lessons and Steve had no expectations that the conversation would be a pleasant one.  Jamie, unlike Sarah, tended to get defensive and defiant when scolded and while Steve was reasonably confident that Jamie would obey, he could be very sullen about it, which did not make for a pleasant atmosphere while the fit lasted.  

Steve inwardly grimaced.  He was more inclined to be indulgent than Peggy was but he also knew that too much indulgence would not do their children any good so he generally followed Peggy’s lead when it came to disciplining their children and whatever else, he and Peggy always presented a united front to their children.  Both their children had already put this to the test, asking either himself or Peggy for permission for something or another and then when it had been denied, running to the other in hopes of receiving a different answer, and he and Peggy had learned to be suspicious and careful when it came to such things.  

Steve suppressed a sigh.  He never liked having to scold one of the children, as necessary as it was, and because he was his children’s primary care-taker, he was inevitably the one who enforced discipline, no matter how difficult it sometimes was.  Seeing his children unhappy, no matter the reason, was what he hated most in the world.  

It was just part of the experience of parenting but then he managed a smile.  His life with Peggy wasn't perfect but it was real and it was all he had ever wanted.  

~The End~