Work Text:
who knew that awe is like an apple,
sweetest where the light collects,
under the skin.
- Anne Michaels
Everyone’s life is framed by death. War hammers this point home like a nail. Peggy has scarcely stepped out from the shadow of her brother into the shape of Agent Carter before she meets another hero. This one is, at first, a good deal smaller than Michael was.
This one, she is deadly certain, will not be allowed to break the rest of her heart.
Still—a hero.
Steve Rogers, before he becomes a symbol, is a very interesting man. She sees that a glance. She hears it—the deep voice in the shallow chest. He is confident in all the most childlike principles, which men—even young men—have mostly abandoned for something more like bravado, hastily covering for fear.
Steve Rogers, as a symbol, is sadder than Peggy wants him to be. He was made practically bulletproof, so that nobody would have to worry over what was done to him—only over what he could do himself.
Yet she is dangerously close to being a fool, though it grates at her soul. She has assignments to manage. Secrets to transmit. She should not be so consumed by the sorrow in the pencil sketches, the archangel-sword in his eyes, the shadow of death, death, death haunting his steps like a faithful hound.
Such men (heroes) are not meant to live forever—it is a test of fate that he was given a serum which might allow him to.
Even the man who chose him for this life is already dead.
“You like him,” Howard says, one evening in ’44, when Steve has led the Commandoes to an underground base, and there are still six hours before anyone is scheduled to expect confirmation or crisis. “Never thought I’d see you with a crush, ma’am.”
“You’re an idiot, Howard,” she says, icily calm. “And if anybody has a crush on such a scientifically intriguing asset, it’s you.”
“I can’t even deny it,” he says. “What’s next, man and machine in one? That’d give Stark Industries a leg up, doncha think?”
“Most men should think more before they speak,” Peggy answers. “You should think less.”
(She, of course, is thinking of Steve.)
Before she lost him, she was already asking herself the question—What are you going to do, when you don’t have him?
And she was already answering, What I must.
Everyone’s life is framed by death. Peggy’s picture is framed in Steve’s compass, because they can’t fight on all necessary fronts at the same time, or in the same place. I’ll always be with you is the promise heroes give to each other, though Peggy, in giving it, never thought of herself as anything more than a woman who knows that the ground beneath her shall one day be everyone’s grave.
It is necessary to bury one’s heroes. It is safest, perhaps, to bury one’s heart.
Peggy’s rest in the same place.