You can take a wild guess to what’s the name of the little cherub sitting on Steve’s shoulders. It’s kinda amusing how some fandoms has a collective agreement on what their ship’s child’s name would be.
Steggy Week is a celebration of the Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter ship. We’ve got a lot to celebrate this year, so come and join us!
This year's Steggy Week is July 15 - 21, 2019.
How to join:
pick a theme
make a fanwork
post it on the theme day
tag it with #steggyweek2k19 in the first five tags
Complete event guidelines here.
Themes:
Day 1 (Monday): It’s Endgame, baby!
You asked for it, you got it! We’re kicking off Steggy Week with our most popular write-in theme, the aptly-titled Avengers: Endgame.
Day 2 (Tuesday): Headcanons and favourite moments
We know you've got strong opinions, and we want to hear them!
Day 3 (Wednesday): Firsts and lasts
Before the start, after the end, and all the milestones in between.
Day 4 (Thursday): AUs and crossovers
Share your favourite what-ifs and should-have-beens!
Day 5 (Friday): Domestic bliss
Family, marriage, babies, the whole deal.
Day 6 (Saturday): Tropes, clichés, symbols, and associations
All the little things that make you think of Steggy.
Day 7 (Sunday): Free choice
Got an amazing idea that doesn’t fit in with the themes above? Today’s the day!
New this year: the Steggy Suggestion Box!
In addition to suggesting themes, a lot of you sent us prompts you’d like to see. So if you’re looking for inspiration, here’s the list!
For day 1 of Steggy Week: Endgame. I posted part of this story back after I’d just seen the movie, and it became my most popular post on this website. So, no pressure on me to deliver with this one, LOL. Here goes:
Ever Wending Home
Bucky sits in on the meeting at Steve’s request. Afterwards, they walk back to the lake and stand on the dock, Steve skipping stones with little flair and expert aim. It’s peaceful, meditative. Steve finds Bucky’s solid, quiet presence comforting, now that he’s used to it. Before, Bucky had been the talker.
“You sure you’re up for this?”
His voice is pitched low and gravelly, another difference between this Bucky and the Bucky he’d known before.
Steve gives a curt, decisive nod. “It has to be done.”
Bucky moves closer so that their shoulders touch as they look out onto the water. “‘S not what I asked.” He nudges Steve with his elbow, just barely. “You could let someone else clean up the mess.”
Steve sighs and let himself sag a bit against his friend. The silence creeps back.
After a while, as the sun starts to sink behind the nearest mountain, Steve turns back and sits on the bench. Bucky hesitates at the end of the dock, watching as a bird wheels lazily over the water.
Eventually Bucky joins Steve on the bench. “You could let the Wasp do it. Scott would fuck it up but Hope would hardly break a sweat.”
“It’s gotta be me, Buck.” Steve ticks off on his fingers as he goes through the list. “Bruce, Nebula or Rocket would draw too much attention, Clint just wants to be back with his family, Carol’s got another intergalactic emergency on her hands, Thor has enough he’s not dealing with right now, Rhodey wants to be here for Pepper.” He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “And the rest of you were only very recently dust.”
Bucky hunches his shoulders and nods. “I figured you’d say that.” He looks at Steve. “But after this mission, if you wanted. You could take a break. Get some rest.”
Steve nods back. “I could take a break.”
“You could at least try.”
Steve looks back out over the lake, gone orange with the sunset. “I could try.” He hears an echo, faint in the back of his head. “Allow him the dignity of his choice.” Steve thinks Peggy would approve of this choice. He thinks she’d choose the same, in his shoes.
—
Steve knows from Bruce to expect her, but seeing the Ancient One is still something of a shock. Not her appearance, of course. It’s the way she looks at him. The way she looks into him, looks through him.
“Your friend kept his promise,” she says, after looking her fill.
“Yes ma’am,” is his reply.
She takes the stone from his outstretched hand, tucking it safely back into the amulet around her neck.
“Have you thought, Captain Rogers, that this might be the one chance you have to keep yours?”
Steve blinks and knows he’s failed to keep the surprise off his face. He’s been trying not to think of it, preparing for this mission.
She folds her arms, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her robe. “You don’t think you deserve it.”
“That’s not exactly—” Steve begins, but she cuts him off.
“Oh yes, Banner told you about the branches.”
“It’s my mission to clip them.”
She tilts her head, reminding him of a bird as she looks down her nose at him. There’s no humor in her voice, but she has the ghost of a smile on her face. “Yes, the ones without the stones in them must not exist.”
Steve isn’t sure what to say to that. It’s not as if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Return the stones and use the Quantum Realm to travel not back to Bruce and Sam and Bucky, at least not at first. His mind keeps straying back to that framed 8x10 on a desk in 1970. Back to Peggy. His breath caught now, just thinking about it, the same way it had when he’d stood in her office and watched her at Camp Lehigh. He hadn’t realized it was possible for her to be even more beautiful than she had been during the war, but he’d seen her, and she was. She was so grounded, even more than she had been in the ‘40s. So comfortable in her skin, secure with her power. Seeing her had been like lighting striking: illuminating all the shadows and deficiencies of his life up until then.
The Ancient One, her eyes kind and sad and, yes, ancient, takes pity on him. “Once the stones are returned, Captain Rogers, you may do what you wish. The timelines exist whether you remain in them or not.”
Steve takes a deep breath and meets her level gaze. “And what if I choose a different time?” 1970 would be too late to keep that particular promise. He’d done his research. “The Stork Club, a week next Saturday. Don’t be late.” He could try.
At that, she does grace him with a real smile.
—
When Clint had said “the floaty guy”, Steve hadn’t pictured the ghost in front of him. Immediately, he recalled that day on the Valkyrie, Schmidt holding the cube in his hand and the stone within reacting—defending itself?
“I’d like to see her,” Steve tells him.
“Steven, son of Sarah,” the Red Skull intones, “there is no way to return her to the living.”
He nods. “So I’m told. She was my friend. I want to see her.”
The Red Skull smirks but draws back and points at the distant mountain crowned with two stone towers.
Mouth in a grim line, Steve sets off.
It’s a hard climb to the top, made harder by the knowledge of what waits for him there. He’s not sure how much time passes on the trek. Cold wind stings his cheeks and sneaks down the neck of his suit. The alien landscape is foreboding, hostile, even though it seems like there’s nothing living on this rock. Not even Schmidt.
As Steve ascends, panting in the thin air, the Red Skull overtakes him on the path. He’s floating near the edge, between the stones, when Steve finally makes it to the summit.
Steve hesitates, and Schmidt can sense it. “What you seek is below.”
Steve nods and begins unpacking the gear he brought with him.
Schmidt floats closer. “She cannot be saved, Captain.”
Steve grits his teeth. “She’s my teammate. I won’t leave her behind.” He sets out the ropes and spikes, squinting back at the ledge, calculating how much he might need.
It takes him a while to get everything set up. Steve finds the work clears his head. His grief for Nat threatened to bring him down, back on the road here. The thought of her, in this barren place. Cold. Alone. Steve can’t leave her like this. It’s why he left the Soul stone for last. There’s a chance he might fail, but at least he’ll have finished this one last mission. Either he brings her body back, or she’s no longer alone.
As Steve works, Schmidt watches him. He’s silent, offers none of the taunts he would have thrown at Steve before. Still, Steve can’t shake the feeling that the Red Skull is waiting for his moment. That he’ll do what he can to see Steve fall. Steve just isn’t sure what Schmidt’s abilities are in his current form. So far, he’s only been floating. Steve can’t even tell if he has a corporeal body.
“Why you?” he finally asks, curiosity getting the better of him. He’s nearly ready to strap into the harness.
He can feel the change in the air as Schmidt glides closer. “You will be disappointed to learn the truth, Captain.”
His hands have been steady the entire trip and now as he methodically tests the carabiners, a small tremor starts. Steve keeps his head ducked, focusing on the task in front of him. He makes no reply, only waits, and works.
“I only mean it is not a punishment, to guard the stone.” Schmidt’s robes flutter in Steve’s peripheral vision. “I was not handed this task as a judgment against my life on Earth. In fact, I volunteered.”
Steve’s head snaps up at this.
Schmidt is not facing him, but looking out over the ledge. “The stones are connected by the elemental energy from which they were formed. When I held the Tesseract, with the Space stone within it, I was able to reach out along the connections. As it happened, the Soul stone was without a keeper. It called me here, burning away what remained of my human self in the process, and I took up the mantle.”
Steve blinks down at the ropes in his hands. “But why? Why would the stone choose you?”
“Because I was there to be chosen.” Schmidt looks at Steve with something like pity in his eyes. “All of life is chance.” He looks back down over the ledge. “All that happens after, too.”
Steve shakes his head. He’s finished his work, and he tugs at the knots one last time. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re not telling the whole truth.” He steps to the ledge, deliberately not looking down to where he knows Natasha’s body landed, and turns back to face Schmidt.
The Red Skull moves, lightning fast, in front of Steve. He looms over him, the smirk back on his wretched face. “What is truth, to the dead?”
He pushes hard, and Steve thinks, stupidly, as he pitches over the cliff, that even without a body Schmidt is strong as he ever was.
As the ground rushes towards him, Steve reaches for the ropes at his waist, to reassure himself, but they’re gone.
Oh, Steve thinks, this is the last mission after all.
Everything goes dark.
—
There’s an orange glow behind his eyelids and a throbbing in his skull. Groaning, Steve sits up and raises a dripping hand to his aching head. He’s been lying in a shallow pool, somewhere on Vormir. The sky remains the same hazy orange, the landscape a muted purple, shadows clinging to every rock and crevasse. He moves his arms, flexes his hands, pats himself down experimentally. Aside from the headache, he is fine. Schmidt is not there, the cliff is nowhere on the horizon. He’ll have to go back, figure out another way to retrieve Nat’s body. But he doesn’t know which direction to go.
“I’d say you should get off this rock, for starters,” comes a voice from behind him. “It’ll be a long walk back to Rocket’s ship, though. You up for company?”
Steve can’t believe what he’s hearing, and he’s suddenly, paralyzingly terrified of turning around to prove his suspicion wrong. But he can hear her moving behind him, and then there’s a gentle hand on his shoulder as she comes around.
“Sorry, Rogers, we don’t really do towels here.” The Black Widow stands before him, offering her arm to help him up. “It’s a dry heat, though, so you won’t be damp for too long.”
She looks just as she did when they left on their mission, her two-tone hair swept back from her face and trailing over her shoulder in a braid. Natasha even has the same anticipatory gleam in her eye, the same fond smile, the same leashed, buoyant energy she has when she’s spoiling for a fight she knows she’ll win and have fun doing it.
Steve takes her arm and leans on her heavily as he stands. Her hand is warm in his, warm and calloused exactly where her hand grips her gun, where her thumb meets her palm.
He pulls her into a bruising hug and weeps into her braided hair.
“Aw, buddy, it’s okay.” Nat pats his back, a little stiff. If he’s imagining this, he’s imagining her exactly how she would be and not, necessarily, how he’d want this reunion to go. “Steve.” She pushes at him, just a little, and pulls out of his embrace. “I missed you too.” She reaches up a hand to cup his cheek, and her smile is still fond. Then she’s all business and sass. “Come on, Grandpa, I bet you forgot where you parked your ride.”
He wipes his face with the back of his hand and lets out a shaky laugh, a broad smile overtaking his face. “Nat, we thought you were dead.” The relief coursing through him makes his hands shake harder, somehow.
She looks back at him with that fond little smile, her wide eyes luminous in the perpetual dusk. “I am, Cap.” She shrugs and starts walking. “I fought Clint hard for that dubious honor, Steve, you think I’d give it up so quick?”
Steve scrambles a little to catch up with her. “But you—you’re not like Schmidt, I held your hand.” He feels muddled and dull, the earlier joy curdling in his veins.
She shakes her head. “I don’t pretend to know how it works, Steve.”
“You have gone through some big changes,” he retorts automatically.
Nat swings around to give him one of her sly grins, the one that tucks up into the corner of her cheek. “Gotta say, I thought it would take you longer to recover from the shock.”
Steve shrugs and picks up the pace, steadier now that they’re back in a familiar conversational rhythm. “You know me, I’m adaptable.” That earns him a snort.
They walk in companionable silence for a while. Steve isn’t sure what to ask Nat, or tell her. He’s had several friends return from the dead now; he’s not had the opportunity to make conversation with one who is still dead.
“I feel like I can hear the gears turning from over here,” she observes.
“Well, I can’t say I’m not thrown,” he admits. “This is a first for me.”
“Would you believe it is for me, too?”
He studies the side of her face. “Which part? Being dead, or having to talk to a friend about it?”
Nat never answers any question she doesn’t want to. “Since you’ve got the stone, I assume the plan worked.”
“Yeah, it did.”
She gives him a moment to elaborate, but he can’t find the words to tell her what it was like, fighting Thanos without her. Getting everyone else back. Losing Tony.
The Black Widow, however, is as perceptive as ever. “Who else, Steve?”
He heaves a sigh and his eyes fill with tears as he meets her gaze. Her whole body is tense, braced as if for a blow. When Steve thought about what it might be like to see her again, he hadn’t thought about this.
—
They’re back at the ship too soon. Steve still doesn’t know what to do. He thinks Nat wouldn’t leave him alone; but she seems certain there’s no way for her to leave Vormir, and he’s out of the meager supplies he’d packed for the mission.
“I could come back,” he offers, feeling how hollow the suggestion is. “Or we could send someone else; Clint, or maybe Bucky. I’m sure Wanda would love to visit.”
Nat nods to the final stone, in the pouch of his utility belt. “The only reason you can even see me right now is that stone, Rogers.” She gives him a rueful smile. “Once you hand it over, that’s it.” She says it with her usual inflection, as though she were only talking about a parking ticket. But Steve feels like a hole has opened under his feet, after he’d only just found solid ground.
He settles his palm over the Soul stone and a little frisson of something pulses under his hand. “I guess that settles it. You’re stuck with me.” He can’t leave her to—to what? To fade away? To become nothing?
“Cap, now’s not the time to dig your heels in.” Nat shakes her head, her eyes sad but her smile still in place.
He sticks out his chin. “You tell me you’d leave me behind if the situation were reversed, Romanoff.”
“In a heartbeat.” Nat sets her jaw, and Steve can tell from the tic of a muscle by her ear that she’s angry with him, though her tone stays lightly teasing. “If I had a hot date to keep with my long-lost love and I knew you were a goner either way? Pfft. I’ve had harder times deciding what to eat for breakfast.”
Steve blinks slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She leans her elbow against the side of the ship and examines her nails. “Like I said, I don’t get how it works, but before you got here, I heard—something like an echo. It was you and a woman, talking about going to a different time.” Nat shoots him a look.
A memory: Peggy, lips painted red, in a blue dress he’s sure he never saw her wear. He spins her into his arms, holds her much closer than propriety dictates. “We could go home, Steve. Imagine it.” He digs his fingers into the silky material at her sides, feels it slide against her curves. Her mouth curls up in a smile, her brown eyes flash with open hunger. And then it’s gone, and his arms are empty, always empty.
He feels guilty, like he’s betrayed the team for even considering it. “The Ancient One suggested I could go to another timeline, before Peggy met her husband,” he confesses. “I thought about it. I imagined our whole lives together, what could have been.” He shrugs. “But that chance is gone.”
Nat studies him, her face unreadable.
“There’s work to be done, and the team is hurting,” he explains. “I’m needed.” He runs a hand through his sweaty hair, feels it stand on end as he rakes his fingers through. “There’s always more work.”
Nat snorts again and he furrows his brows together. She pushes off the side of the ship. “That’s a load of horseshit.” Arms crossed, she stares him down. “All you’ve been through with us, and you still think the world depends on you alone? You think there isn’t anyone else up to the task of being Captain America?”
He doesn’t respond. It’s not a denial, though, and she digs in. “You know my story, Steve. You know how hard I fought to break out of Red Room’s conditioning, how I struggled to find a way forward even with Clint’s help. The Avengers saved me. Being part of your team, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t think I’m overstepping to say it’s the best thing to happen to any of us.” Her eyes are clear and her voice is steady. She takes one step towards him, and then another, until she’s toe to toe with him. “And I would give it up like that—” she snaps her fingers— “if it meant I could start over for real. That’s why it’s a team—everyone picks up the slack. No one is in it alone.” She pulls him into a hug, quick like a cat, and kisses him hard on both cheeks.
When she steps back, she has the stone in her hand. It may as well be Steve’s heart. “Go get your girl, Steve,” she says, voice thick with tears. “You did right by me. You can go.”
Before he can respond, she’s vanished. A cold wind howls through the valley, and Steve stares blindly out at the alien landscape.
When he comes out of the shock, it could be hours later. He hardly knows what he’s doing, but he punches coordinates into the quantum bracelet on his wrist and, with a prayer he hasn’t said since the war on his lips, he presses the button. Nat’s right. Bucky’s right. He has to try.
