KillSwitch ─ s. rogers ✓

seven

2014 (present day)

WHEN Steve Rogers woke up in 2012, he thought every piece of his old life was dead. His family and his best friend were gone before he even went under the ice, so that was already off the table. After sixty-seven years, he figured it was unlikely that anyone else he knew was left. Society had virtually moved on from Captain America. Every piece of technology he knew was either gone or unrecognizable, and every building he remembered had been replaced. It was like his entire past just dissolved into thin air.

Then he heard about Peggy. According to Nick Fury, Peggy Carter was still alive. In 2012, she was relatively sound, but by 2014, she was bound to a nursing home in D.C. and in and out of lucidity. Steve was devastated that he hadn't had a chance to get to her before the Alzheimer's did, but better late than never to see his best girl. Even if she couldn't remember him, he had to see her again.

After so much time, he knew Peggy would have changed, just like everything else. She'd lived a whole life, maybe got married, had some kids, or maybe she skipped all of that and devoted her life to something else. No matter what her life looked like, she had one. Nearly seven decades had passed since they had their moment between the file cabinets, since Steve promised her a dance. If she even remembered it at all, it was just a single memory buried by a thousand others. Steve had been coming to terms with this for two years now—since he came out of the ice—and he'd accepted it. He was happy for her, happy that she got to have a life, even if he wasn't in it. It would always sting that they never got their dance, but it was what it was.

Hands in his pockets, Steve stepped into the lobby of the nursing home Fury gave him the name of. He walked up to the desk, towering over the sitting receptionist. The woman looked up at him.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"I'm here to visit Peggy Carter. Margaret Carter."

"Alright. Can I see your I.D.?"

Steve pulled it out of his wallet and handed it to her. She examined it, and her eyes widened noticeably, but she said nothing about it. She gave it back wordlessly.

"Okay. So, I'm going to have you sign in here..." The girl slid a clipboard across the desk and tapped the paper on it with the end of her pen, "and I'll get you a visitor's badge. Do you know where you're going?"

"Uh, no." Steve filled out the paper and accepted the laminated badge she handed him.

"When you're done, you can just drop that badge off here and sign out." The woman pointed to her right, and Steve turned his head to look. "Miss Carter is in room B twenty-two. Go down that way and it'll be on your right."

"Thank you." He nodded at her and smiled. She smiled back.

"No problem."

Steve started down the hallway, keeping an eye on the numbers until he came to B22. The door was already open. He stopped dead in his tracks, rethinking his decision to come here. He didn't quite know why. It was suddenly terrifying.

But he was Captain goddamn America. If he was capable of crashing into ice to save lives, he could go into that room and talk to an old friend. Friend of sorts.

He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The woman before him sat in a hospital-style bed, her long, curly hair gray, her face wrinkled with age. She looked so different after all this time, but Steve still knew without a doubt that she was Peggy Carter.

Peggy stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Steve?" she asked him with wide eyes. "Is that really you?"

"It is." He nodded. "Can I come in?"