Chapter Text
Italy
October 1943
When Steve woke, there was no way for him to determine how long he’d been out. Quite literally, no time had passed. In fact, it had reversed. More than eighty years.
He was so disoriented at first, only dimly aware that he was in a prison camp. He didn’t even resist as they herded him, and several dozen other prisoners, onto trucks and shipped them to a Hydra base. It took Steve a while to work out who he was, then where he was, and finally when he was.
No one. Late 1943. Italy.
Steve wasn’t exactly no one. As far as he could tell, he still looked the same as he had in recent memory. Older, more broken down than his contemporary in this time, but largely the same. He hadn’t shaved in weeks and his hair was longer than it had ever been. But as for who he really was in this war, he had no idea. He certainly wasn’t a young man, recently given a new lease on life by Erskine’s formula.
For so long, all Steve had wanted was to have another chance to live the life he was meant to live. Steve never would have thought he was one who was prone to nostalgia or sentiment. But somehow, he’d fallen victim. Because war torn Europe in 1943 was somehow darker than he remembered. More grim. More real.
Less like home than he would have expected.
Steve had read the work of Edward Lorenz. After the Avengers could no longer deny the fact that the time gem was real. Steve studied up, in the hopes that it would give him insight, strategy. All he felt he learned was that everything was ultimately unknowable.
Lorenz posited that something as insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings could create a devastating storm halfway around the world. The smallest changes could have greatly amplified effects. It was true of most things, but seemed particularly salient when dealing with time, alternate futures, alternate pasts. He’d glimpsed some of the alternate realms Wanda could access.
The smallest change could have enormous impact.
Steve knew the danger in getting what you wished for. He knew how terribly awry the best of intentions could go. Any action Steve took in this time, this place, could change the events of history. As problematic as the future was, if Steve took action, his interference could be damning humanity to something far worse.
Those thoughts rang in his mind, as he surveyed the horrors of the Hydra prison camp. They kept him quiet, kept him hiding among the other prisoners of war. Waiting. Watching. Trying to figure out if this was indeed the world he remembered, or some new hellish existence.
He wasn’t certain. Not until he caught sight of himself, his younger self, in the dancing monkey shirt, with that ridiculous shield. He watched, dumbstruck, as his younger self questioned the prisoners about Bucky. He watched his younger self bolt to Bucky’s rescue, mindless of the danger, invincible and unafraid, as only the truly young could be.
Even knowing how it would all play out, Steve was still on edge the entire firefight. He pitched in. He helped the prisoners to safety. But he didn’t fight, not the way Captain America fought. This wasn’t his fight. He stayed in the shadows.
It was doubtful that anyone would look at him, thinner, older, with a heavy beard and bum hand, and realize he was a double for the man who was leading the charge. But Steve gave no one any reason to question. He stayed to the back. He helped the wounded.
The march was arduous and they lost so many men. Had he ever known that? He remembered being so fiercely glad that Bucky was alive, so profoundly grateful that they’d saved as many men as they had. He’d been equal parts enamored with and afraid of his newfound abilities. But had he ever known how many they lost along the way?
When they finally made it to camp, he watched his younger self get his glory. He watched Phillips’ grudging respect. He watched Peggy, saw the look she gave the brave young soldier, barely more than a boy. Older and infinitely wiser, Steve now had no trouble reading her look for the invitation it was. Too bad his younger self was too stupid to realize. Of all of Steve’s regrets, that missed opportunity was the biggest.
It was depressingly easy for Steve to cobble together a new identity from the scattered pieces of so many broken men. He took dog tags off a dead man, assumed his life. No one questioned. Because Steve belonged there. He knew how to be a soldier in this war. And, to his own disappointment, his time spent in the twenty-first century did quite a bit toward honing his skills of subterfuge. Mostly it was easy to lie because he didn’t feel guilty about it. Dead men didn’t care. He knew that much with absolute certainty.
So Steve was a soldier. Not Captain America. Just a soldier. He fought next to men, laid down his life for theirs and they did the same in return. But he never quite managed to feel like part of the team.
It seemed even being back in his own time, in his own place, couldn’t make him feel like he belonged. He was as much a man out of time now as he had been when he woke up in Fury’s recovery room. And everybody was so goddamn young.
Knowing the outcome of every skirmish, every battle, made some things easier, some things harder. He wanted to go to Phillips, to lay it all out, to give him the information to save as many lives as possible. But Steve had no idea what folly his interference might bring. No gift, even one as dubious as his re-emergence in his own time, came without a price. He knew that well. And he wasn’t willing to let Phillips, or Peggy, or Bucky pay that price.
He had no idea what actions were safe to take. So he kept quiet and kept his head down.
But he watched. He always watched.
Peggy, as he’d already known, spent most of her time in London. He was grateful for that, grateful that she wasn’t on the front lines, even if he knew she wanted to be. Bucky, as always, was at his younger self’s side, looking far more haunted than Steve remembered. Maybe Steve hadn’t been damaged enough himself at that point to recognize it in Bucky.
He recognized it now.
It was difficult to be so close, to watch himself and the people he loved. So he volunteered for assignments farther and farther afield. His grand plan for avoiding familiar faces was shot to hell when he found himself part of a battalion trapped behind the German line outside Volgograd in early 1945. He remembered this battle. He knew his younger self was going to fight his way through the Hydra blockade and rescue more than a thousand men, himself included apparently.
Somewhere among Steve’s fellow soldiers was Peggy’s future husband. Steve tried hard not to scan the faces. Not that he knew what Peggy’s husband looked like. Steve had never seen a picture of the man. Steve avoided asking Peggy any questions about him, and she had never offered information. But the knowledge that her future husband was here, somewhere, still ate at Steve.
Steve wondered, after a while, if he wasn’t stuck in some new hell where he was destined to bear witness to all the horrors of his past without ever taking action. He didn’t want to disturb things, didn’t want to alter the way things were supposed to go .
But the longer it went on, the more he asked himself if it really was the way things were supposed to go , or just the way they had gone .
Was there value in repeating the past, if it was full of horror? Was he dooming the future by taking action? Or could he spare some future heartache?
He didn’t know. He didn’t have a fucking clue. But as he stood in the deep shadows, across the street from the bombed out pub and watched Peggy try to console his younger self, he wondered.
Steve Rogers could have taken Peggy Carter home that night. They could have had at least one night together. If he’d been smart enough to realize her comfort for what it was. If he’d been brave enough to risk it all.
But he hadn’t. And so his younger self wouldn't. Steve already knew that, as he stood there watching. Steve and Peggy would both go home alone. And next week, she’d give him their first and only kiss before he jumped aboard the Valkyrie.
And that would be it.
But that wasn’t it.
And Steve hadn’t realized. Even as jaded and bitter as he felt he was becoming, he hadn’t realized that the crash of the Valkyrie wasn’t the end of it. Oh, it had been the end of things for him. For a good seventy years, his younger self was done.
But Peggy wasn’t done. Peggy was still here. And Peggy was lost in a way that nearly brought Steve to his knees. Because she didn’t visibly react. At all. But Steve knew. He had hindsight - foresight? - that no one else had. He’d seen the interviews, made decades after the fact. He’d spoken with Peggy herself. And he knew that beneath her impeccable facade, she was crushed, and alone, and unable and unwilling to admit it, for fear of truly falling to pieces.
He was shocked, and then irritated that he was shocked, when he stood outside her apartment watching, two weeks after the crash, and he saw her push through the door and out onto the sidewalk, dressed to the nines. He followed her, thinking maybe she was meeting the fellas for a wake, a memorial. But she didn’t go to any of the usual haunts.
She went somewhere he’d never been, somewhere he’d never seen her go. A club, crowded and dim. He watched her take a seat at the bar, realizing she was already flying high. Her laughter sounded forced, pitched too shrill.
Steve understood. He did. Too well. Peggy was lonely and sad and she needed to forget. He’d felt the same way many times. And she was so damn young. He couldn’t believe how young she seemed. With the weight of the world on her shoulders.
By contrast, he felt about a thousand years old. He’d aged, what? Fifteen years since he last saw her like this, since he kissed her. He’d been alive for another seventy beyond that. He felt every second of it. At this point, he wasn’t even sure if she would recognize him as the man she knew. It was both a tempting and frightening thought.
So Steve, older, if not wiser, found a table in the corner and ordered a drink. He watched Peggy flirt and dance. He watched her brittle smile and her sad eyes.
He watched men, who did not value her, ply her with drinks and empty words. He watched them touch her too casually. And he watched her lean into the contact without seeming to actually enjoy it.
The final straw was the bet. He’d seen the table of British soldiers, overheard their wager. When the dashing young lieutenant pressed in close to Peggy, Steve couldn’t keep his distance any longer. He tapped the guy on the shoulder and when he turned to look, Steve motioned for him to get lost.
“Take a hike, son,” he said. “She’s with me.”
The lieutenant wasn’t a big guy and maybe he saw something in Steve’s expression, but either way, he didn’t argue. He left quietly.
Taking a deep breath, Steve looked down at Peggy, who was blinking at him. He gave her a tight smile, knowing this was dangerous. “Care to dance?” he asked, sounding far more calm and collected than he would have thought possible.
She continued to stare at him mutely, and his fear that she might not recognize him was burning away. He placed a hand at her waist and guided her to the dance floor, pulling her close. Too close if she believed him to be a stranger, and not nearly close enough if she understood.
She was incredibly intoxicated, wobbly on her feet and having trouble focusing on him. She placed her hands on his upper arms, staring up at him. She gave her head a little shake. “H-How?”
He looked down at her, pursing his lips together, pulling her just a little closer. She knew. He knew she would, but it was still gratifying. “I’m not here,” he said. He stared into her eyes, shaking his head. “I’m not him.”
She frowned, her brow puckering. “What on earth do you mean you’re not him? You’re clearly Ste-”
He leaned down, kissing her, long and deep, with teeth and tongue. The way he’d always wanted to. And she responded the way he knew she would, matching him in every way. She melted into him, her fingers biting deeply into the muscles of his arms as she pushed up on tiptoe, demanding and full of surrender.
He finally broke off the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers. “I know it’s confusing,” he said quietly, “but I’m not him.”
She pulled back and frowned again and her eyes were glassy. “Is he you?” she asked.
He opened his mouth and then closed it again, thrown by the question. “Not yet,” he said. It was the only answer he had.
He walked her home, his jacket around her shoulders, her hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, feeling lighter than he thought possible. She teetered, leaning heavily into him as they walked. The amount of blind trust she put in him was humbling. He wanted nothing more than to keep her safe, for as long as she would let him.
When they reached her flat, he scooped her into his arms, carrying her up the stairs. She made a contented sound and rested her head on his shoulder. By the time he unlocked the door to her flat, she was asleep.
He made her as comfortable as he could on her little, threadbare sofa. He left the jacket. It was stupid. He had no idea how much she might remember. It would have been better if he took all traces with him. But looking at her, sleeping peacefully, he couldn’t do it.
He kissed her gently on the cheek and let himself out.
END CHAPTER