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Steve thought he could live with the guilt. Thought he could live with himself after abandoning his friends to Thanos. He justified it to himself that it was better this way. That he could save Bucky from years of torture at the hands of the Russians and HYDRA. That he could even save Natasha from having to go through her training and graduation ceremony. And that getting to be with Peggy again was just a happy bonus to all the other wrongs he could right.
He even started believing himself. And then she fell through a portal. Right into the New York SSR offices. He and Peggy were called in as soon as the SSR went through her initial intake interview. And as soon as he stepped into the interview room to her irreverent, “Hey Steve-o. What’s shakin’, bacon?” He knew he made a mistake.
As happy as he was with Peggy, something was always missing between them. It seemed that, without a war to fight, they really didn’t have any common ground. She was raised in a well off family in England, never wanting for anything. He grew up in the tenements of Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Luckily for him, he still had battles to fight: rooting HYDRA and Leviathan out of existence; building the SSR up to become the SHIELD he believed in; ensuring that his future friends were able to live as untroubled a life as possible. These things all kept them both occupied, so they wouldn’t have to look too closely at their relationship.
But when Darcy appeared in 1946 New York, telling stories of the Avengers and how a portal experiment landed her in the past, he quickly realized, while she was essentially the same woman, she wasn’t his Darcy. She had no memory of the years they spent together. No recollection of the memories they made together. To her, he was just her friend Steve, who in her time is an older, possibly wiser Captain America, still fighting the good fight, but he wasn’t anything more to her.
Steve thought he had been given as much heartbreak as he could handle, having left her in the future to return to his past, but then he had to watch her fall in love, and not with him. Daniel was a good man. One of the best, but it tore him to pieces every time he saw them together. Every brief touch, every whispered conversation, his heart fractured just a little bit more.
He took to spending more and more time training with the other Howlies. Putting each round of new SSR recruits through grueling training. It was the only thing that reminded him why he made this choice — t he choice to return to the past — because everyday Darcy was there, he found it more and more difficult to remember.
Until one day, seven months after Darcy’s arrival in the past, Peggy found him in their garage working on his bike.
“Steve, darling. Howard has found a way to open a return portal for Darcy. She’s going back next week.”
He grunted his acknowledgement at her, grateful the reminder of his past would soon be out of sight, but Peggy continued.
“She’s requested minimal staff on hand for her departure, but she wants you there specifically, says she wants to say goodbye in person.”
“That’s fine, Peg. I’ll be there, just let me know the particulars later. I’m almost finished here.” He looked at her with the best smile he could muster under the circumstances.
“Alright, darling. I’ll be in my office.” She gave him a brief kiss on the forehead before returning to the house.
He threw the wrench across his workspace and leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees, hanging his head.
The departure date arrived quickly. She would be leaving from Howard’s secure lab. The only people in attendance were himself, Peggy, Howard and Daniel. He couldn’t help a slight feeling of malicious glee, knowing that Daniel would soon be feeling the same thing he had been feeling since he returned to the past, knowing that the woman you love is forever out of reach.
Darcy went through her goodbyes rather quickly before coming to him.
“I know you warned me, in my time, to not take anything that happened between us in this time personally, but I’ve missed our friendship, Steve. I know I’ll be seeing you soon, so be good.” She gave him a quick hug before going to stand on the platform Howard had invented. She stood there, head held high as she prepared to leave. Looking wistfully, not at himself, but at Daniel, as Howard fired up the machine that would take her from their lives.
He watched the tears fall from her eyes as she said goodbye to the man she loved. The man who wasn’t him, not anymore, and then she was gone, in a bright flash of light.