unbeknownst to steve rogers, when he went into the ice, he left behind a daughter with peggy carter. ten-year-old alexandra carter disappeared off the face of the earth in 1956, kidnapped by hydra in an attempt to replicate the super serum with her...
"Of course," Peggy told him, so Steve came in and sat down in the chair beside her. "Are you sure it's you?"
He laughed.
"Pretty sure." He folded his hands and looked at the ground. What the hell did he say now?
"It's been so long, Steve." Peggy shook her head. "So, so long."
Steve glanced at the table beside the bed. It was covered in photos of kids, adults, and what looked like Peggy's wedding photo. He nodded at them.
"Is all of this your family?"
As if she would have pictures of someone else's family on her nightstand, Steve realized as he said it. Smooth.
"Yes." Peggy smiled, fixing her own gaze on the photos. She looked so content, and she deserved to be. She had all of that, she founded S.H.I.E.L.D.𑁋she had lived.
"You should be proud of yourself, Peggy."
"Mm. I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours." Peggy's eyes turned sad. She coughed. "There's something I have to tell you."
"What is it?"
She reached over and grabbed an un-framed black and white photo of a young girl. The photo was clearly many decades old, so it was poor quality to begin with and worn from years of being handled, but Steve could make out freckles and light eyes. The girl's face reminded him of his mother, for some reason. Peggy handed it to him, and he accepted it, confused. He wondered if he'd caught her when she wasn't lucid.
"Who's this?" he asked.
"Her name is Alexandra. December eleventh, nineteen-forty-five." She hesitated, realizing there was no point in mincing words. She was, in fact, perfectly lucid, or as lucid as her brain could possibly manage. "She's yours. Was, I suppose."
Like a cartoon character, Steve turned to stone. He couldn't move. His mind couldn't move fast enough to process this.
Jesus Christ. A kid. His kid. He knew there was no way this wasn't real, because he remembered the date it would have happened vividly (very vividly), it added up, and even in a crappy black and white photo, this kid uncannily resembled his family.
Needless to say, this was not what Steve expected when he came to visit.
What really troubled him about this was that he didn't know how to feel. In a "normal" situation—the "I have a kid I didn't know about, and now she's thirteen" situation—at least the path was moderately clear: step the hell up and do your best to repair things. In this situation, everything was inexplicably complicated. How did Steve walk up to someone in their late sixties and try to fix it?
Then he processed those last three words.
"Was?" he asked. Peggy looked away from him and toyed with her blanket.
"She disappeared. One night, in nineteen-fifty-five, she left a friend's house, and she never made it home." She felt herself tearing up; no matter how much time passed, how much time she spent trying to come to terms with it, the pain never went away. "No one saw anything or had any idea what happened. There was no evidence, and we never...we never found a body. She was gone without a trace." Peggy shook her head. "She was only ten."
Her son, Michael, never gave up. After almost sixty years, he kept hoping, believing, that his sister was still alive somewhere. Peggy wished she could have hope too, but if she did, it would break her heart even more. Knowing she missed all of that time would kill her faster than age would, and she was fully aware that she wasn't exactly far from age getting the better from her for good. She doubted it was random either. From the moment Alexandra was born, she had a target on her back. She herself was of no use to anyone, not as a small child, but that blood in her veins was enough to start a war if someone found out. Peggy suspected that was exactly what happened: someone used Alexandra to their advantage and tossed her away like trash. It killed her, but it was a possibility she'd been aware of since the start.
"I'm so sorry," Steve said, feeling his throat constrict. His heart hurt for her, it hurt for Alexandra, and, selfishly, it hurt for himself too. He missed his daughter's life, and there was no way he could ever attempt to make up for lost time. He couldn't even meet her.
"I'm sorry for you too. She was a lot like you. I think you would have liked her a lot."
"I would have liked to meet her."
Steve wringed his hands out in his lap. He watched as the expression on Peggy's face changed suddenly. She looked like she was just seeing him for the first time, as if he hadn't been sitting there for five minutes.
"Steve?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"You're alive!" Peggy's eyes teared up. "You...you came, you came back."
"Yeah, Peggy." Steve gave her a sad smile. Seeing her like this broke him, not that he would ever let anyone know.
"It's been so long." She shook her head, about to cry. "So long."
Steve leaned closer.
"Well, I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance."
He kept his smile on, doing his best to pretend he didn't feel like he lost two people in one day.
★★★
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This concludes part one. Before continuing this book, read Always Okay. I'll be putting part two of this book up soon.
