Second Chance || thatfirstavenger & dancingagent
thatfirstavenger
"Oh, and Agent Carter?" Howard asked. Peggy did not like the smugness blaring through the phone.
"Dear God, Howard. Call me Peggy already."
"Okay, Peggy. While you're on your way out of there, could you pick up the file on the Super Soldier project?" he asked. Why the bloody hell would he be bringing that up again? Peggy glanced down at the picture of Steve, sickly, thin, tiny, and tried not to grip it too hard.
"Why, Howard? It's a deactivated program."
"Not anymore it isn't. At this moment, Captain Steven Grant Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, is thawing out in my lab. He's alive. Second floor, third door on the right outside of the elevator. He's in recovery currently, not conscious yet, but expected to be a-okay as soon as he regains consciousness."
"I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance."
"All right." She paused. His choice. Being on the recieving end of her previous advice hurt a lot more than giving it. "A week next Saturday at The Stork Club."
"You've got it." Do I? So many things rushed through her head--of all the chances she had to admit her feelings to him, to take that chance, to just spring for it and take the risk--
"Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood?" Tears cracked through her voice. The absolution in his broke her heart.
"You know, I still don't know how to dance." You don't know how much I wanted to teach you, Steve.
"I'll show you how. Just be there." Let me get Howard! Please!
"We'll have the band play something slow. I'd hate to step on your--" Static. Radio static. Little did she know it'd haunt her nightmares.
"Steve? Steve?" And she cried. Because she didn't know what else to do.
"Steve?"
The last time she'd rode in a car even remotely as fast as she was going now, she was unknowingly telling Steve goodbye. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
He's alive. God, what kind of miracle had Erskine laced that serum with? How had he survived that kind of fall, that kind of crash? She'd heard the radio static-there'd been nothing. The silence, in her head, had been his life ending.
And now he was alive.
What could she say to him? What words could possibly explain to him what kind of life she'd lived in for the past three years? The war ended and Howard had been forever changed after the atomic bomb. She returned to "regular" spy work for the SSR and unknowingly become a secretary for people who did their jobs far less competently than she could have.
How was she supposed to explain how much she had missed what she never had? Or receiving the copy of his dog tags and the flag in his honor? How could words accurately express any of that? She had worn his tags for weeks before locking them away with his picture, unable to bear feeling the cool metal or seeing his face any longer. The flag was underneath her bed, collecting dust.
She'd shoved his loss away as best as she could and forced herself to get on with her life. And he had been alive the entire time.
"Agent Carter," she affirmed to the guard, bypassing through to his lab. She cleared security with hasty steps, following his directions.
Howard was waiting outside Steve's door for her.
"My, my, words must really work miracles. He woke up fifteen minutes after I called you," he mused with a smirk that Peggy couldn't decide if she wanted to congratulate or slap.
"Why didn't you tell me you found him?" she asked, eyeing the door carefully, heart thundering behind her ears.
"Didn't want to reignite a dream when the red, white, and blue ice block I had found could have been just that--ice. When I knew he was alive, and was going to stay that way, I called," he replied matter-of-factly. Peggy took the answer for what it was.
"Go on, Agent Carter. He's not going to bite you," he laughed, adjusting his suspenders before walking away.
With a deep breath, Peggy turned the doorknob. There was a nurse monitoring him, taking vital signs. He wasn't in his uniform anymore, something she appreciated. She wanted to see Steve and not the Captain, who was truly in front of her, alive as the heart in her chest.
"Steve?"
