"We need to talk."
The four words slipped from my mouth as I collapsed into an upholstered arm chair and I had to force myself not to visibly cringe as they did.
"I feel like you're about to break up with me."
Nat who had been stretched out on the nearest couch, pulled herself back into an upright position, tucking her legs under herself and giving me a curious look.
I've always hated clichés. Or maybe hate isn't the right word exactly. It's not that I hate the idea of a cliché, it's more that I'm terrified of becoming one.
I've read the books and I've seen the movies where the main character falls for the one person that they are supposed to hate more than anything. My eyes absorbed every word as Elizabeth Bennet began to realize she had been too proud to admit she had fallen in love with Mr. Darcy. I had watched Belle become stricken with an alarmingly fast case of Stockholm Syndrome as she attached her heart to her beastly captor.
I wouldn't have believed any of these quick turns between such contrasting emotions to be possible if I hadn't been standing on the precipice of one of these very turns myself.
The past few days had done nothing to clear the worries and confusions surrounding the man who seemed to have a hold over my every thought. We'd completed two more training sessions in which I had continued to fail in learning the same move that I had been unable to complete in the sessions before. He was becoming increasingly confused by my inability to stick the landing. Sure this move was more ambitious than the other things he had taught me, but I normally picked new things up fairly quickly. In large part this was due to the fact that I could no longer concentrate in his presence. Well, that wasn't totally accurate because even when I wasn't with him I couldn't focus. He had become an annoyingly consistent and overwhelming presence in my mind, following me constantly everywhere I went like a shadow.
In the time since he had seen my father's angered texts, the number of our softer and even affectionate interactions had increased exponentially. It seemed like he just couldn't stop touching me, that he was restless and jumpy when I wasn't right there in front of him where he could feel me. Those blue eyes, which had once seemed cold and abrasive were now familiar and welcoming, the gaze that he fixed me with holding a touch of care and even fondness. I never used to see that when he looked at me before. All I remembered from those stares were annoyance, even dislike. What bothered me most was that I couldn't remember when that had changed. When had the icy expression melted? When had looking back into his eyes started to feel like taking my first breath of fresh air after years of being submerged under the dark and freezing depths of the coldest waters?
Those were important questions, questions I would probably never find the answers to, but they weren't the questions I really needed to be answering anyway. What I truly needed to know, was why being with Steve made me feel so safe, so untouchable, when the two people who knew him better than anyone had warned me that I was anything but safe with Steve.
Nat seemed to pick up on the confused trepidation that inhabited my current mental state because her curious gaze had morphed into one of concern.
"Are you alright?"
I sighed, placing my elbows on my knees and letting my head fall into my hands.
"I'm in over my head." I admitted, shaking my head back and forth. "This whole Steve thing is really beginning to mess with me."
Nat didn't say anything, she just waited patiently for me to find the courage to say what I'd been denying to myself for who knows how long.
"I made you a promise, in the coffee shop. I told you if I started to see things heading in a bad direction with Steve that I'd end it."
My breath rattled, the words coming out of my shakily.
"And I can see it." I confessed. "I can see this heading in a bad direction but I just- I can't... I don't think I could even get myself to end it anymore, even if I wanted to. I think- I think I'm starting to..."
I felt like a coward, not even being capable of saying the truth of how deeply Steve had made a mark on me. Lifting my head to look up at Nat, I saw the reflection of what I had become on her face and in her posture. Hopeless. Defeated.
"You have feelings for him?" She asked, her eyes serious and troubled.
I couldn't get myself to speak the words into existence, as if saying them out loud would make my already present and growing feelings towards Steve more real than they already were. But that's exactly what they were. Real. They were so real that when I had tried to force myself to remember why I had ever hated him in the first place, absolutely nothing came to mind. I had even resorted to reading over the list I had written, collecting every grievance, every word spoken that had once made my my blood boil. And I felt nothing. Now that I was through that stage and on the other side, none of it seemed so bad. It should have been, but it just wasn't.
In my silence, Nat gathered the truth. She let out a huffed breath, sinking backwards onto the couch.
"I'm sorry." I apologized, hoping the sincerity of it was evident in the tone of my voice. Before I could stop myself I had begun to full-on ramble.
"You warned me this would happen and I didn't listen. I messed up. You knew it, and Sam knew it and I ignored it and now things have gone to far. I mean what I am supposed to do? What the hell am I supposed to do now? I can't-"
"Okay, calm down honey." Nat interrupted what would have probably been an hour long monologue describing every way in which I had managed to fuck up my life even more. "It's not a crime to have feelings for someone. You haven't done anything wrong."
She moved her hand and started to pat the space on the couch next to her. I got up from the armchair, moving over to the sofa and sitting sideways so that I could face her.
"It's just that I'm so confused. Things between us have changed. He's acting different and I'm acting different." I explained. "But he's always been so clear about the rules of our arrangement. I'm not allowed to ask anything of his past or expect anything from his future."
Nat went to respond before her mouth snapped shut, apparently changing her mind about how she had wanted to reply to this statement. There was something hidden in her expression, some thought she had tucked away, unwilling to share.
"When we were upstate with Clint's family, Steve told me he wasn't a guy who did feelings but that when he was around me he wanted to be a guy who did." I added. "I never thought I would reciprocate that, but now I think I understand what he was getting at."
"But I don't think you really do." Nat replied. "I mean maybe in your own way you understand what it's like to both want and not want to have feelings for someone, but not in the way Steve does."
She bit her lip for a moment, appraising me.
"I know you and Steve have your rules. I know you said you didn't want to know about Steve's past, but I think we are past the point of pretending what you're doing with Steve is working, aren't we?" She asked. "You need clarity, and insight into Steve's past and learning why he is the way he is might give you that."
"I don't know..." I shook my head. "It feels wrong, like I'd be going behind his back."
Nat rolled her eyes.
"Technically you wouldn't even be breaking any rules. You aren't allowed to ask Steve about his past, he said nothing about you asking other people."
This line of thinking had me fixing my friend with a pointed look.
"I'm pretty sure that's implied. Steve doesn't want me knowing about his past, regardless of who is offering to tell me about it."
My reasoning was in part true. I definitely didn't like the idea of snooping around Steve's past without him knowing. But if I was being completely honest, I was terrified. Terrified that the information I would learn would make me want to end things with Steve. Terrified about what would happen if he found out whatever I had learned.
"Look." Nat sighed. "Things can't continue with you and Steve the way they have been. You can't just ignore your feelings and hope the problem goes away."
I stayed quiet, mulling over her words, knowing she was right and wishing that she wasn't.
"How about this. I won't tell you everything, just what you absolutely need to know."
I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to forget this conversation and find some other way to make my arrangement with Steve work. But I knew that there wasn't. If Steve wasn't going to tell me the things Nat so adamantly believed I needed to know, then I had to go elsewhere to learn the truth. Nat was right, things couldn't keep proceeding like they were. I was drowning under the weight of this arrangement and my growing feelings for Steve. At this point, I was willing to try anything to keep myself afloat.
I nod, taking a deep breath as I prepare myself for whatever Nat had to say. She exhaled with me, undoubtedly steadying herself as she tried to figure out how to tell me what I needed to know, without telling me too much.
"How much do you know about what happened to Steve during the war?" She asked.
"Just the basics." I replied. "He crashed the plane on purpose and the super soldier serum helped to keep him alive in the ice until S.H.I.E.L.D found him, decades later."
She nodded, as if my answer had pretty much been the one she was expecting.
"Steve was hand picked to be the first candidate of the trial serum created by a German scientist, Dr. Abraham Erskine. It was all apart of a project funded by the Strategic Scientific Reserve. The people who spearheaded that project went on to become the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. years later. One of them was Tony's father, Howard Stark, another was a special operations executive. Her name was Peggy Carter."
My mind began to buzz with the familiar name. Flashes of her photo on my computer screen morphed into flashes of her picture in Steve's compass, and the anger in his glare as I handed it back to him along with his jacket.
God, I'm such an idiot. How had I not put the pieces together?
"Steve- He... he fell for her, fast. From what I gather she fell for him just as quickly and just as hard."
Nat was eyeing my warily as she said this, clearly concerned about what kind of reaction I was going to have to this information.
"Steve was different before that day." She continued. "He wasn't as reserved, not nearly as closed off as he is now. He was hopeful and optimistic. He believed in the existence of soulmates."
At first, it was hard for me to picture this particular image of Steve, but as my mind began to wander it began to all make sense. If the care and concern he had showed me over the past few weeks was even the tiniest view into what Steve was like at his best, then whatever I had witnessed must have been only a fraction of what he was truly capable of. He wasn't just optimistic and hopeful, he was caring, empathetic, and giving. I had seen it all with my own eyes, only for brief moments, but I had seen it all the same. His heart bigger than he would ever let on, keeping his love and affections bottled inside because... because...
I struggled my way through Nat's words, through every interaction I had come to see and expect from Steve. It didn't take me long to put it together, and it only made me feel worse once I did.
Steve had closed himself off, blocking anyone from ever entering his heart not only because he had believed in the existence of soulmates, but because he had lost his.
"She was the last person he talked to before crashing that plane." Nat said, quietly. "When he woke up seventy-years later and realized he had lost his chance with her, well, you've seen how he is... what he's like now."
There were a number of things I might have been feeling in that moment. There were lots of ways in which this revelation about Steve's past could have impacted me in my present. In truth, all I wanted to do was cry.
I wanted to cry for her. The poor girl who had to listen as the love of her life crashed a plane into the ocean. I wanted to cry for him, the man who had woken up seventy years later to realize his soulmate had been forced to live her life without him.
I wanted to cry, to scream at the injustice of it all, but no tears came to my eyes and no sound came to my voice. Instead all of that sadness stayed bottled in the same place where Steve had unknowingly made a home for himself. It felt like I had built a damn around my heart, resurrecting giant walls around my weakest point to both protect and defend against my feelings for the man who had grabbed a hold of me. Then it broke, the walls caved in, emotion flowing through every part of me, shedding tears where my eyes couldn't.
"What happened to her, after Steve went in the ice?" I finally asked.
Nat's eyebrows furrowed, as if this hadn't been a question she was expecting.
"She married another man, they had kids too." She replied. "Now she's in a home, has pretty severe dementia. Steve goes to visit her every once in a while."
I exhaled, my lips buzzing slightly as I did. Leaning backwards, I laid myself out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. I hadn't known what to expect from Steve's past, but it hadn't been this. And there was still more, more secrets and explanations there that Nat hadn't divulged.
It's said that heroes don't get happy endings. Steve and Peggy were both heroes and the ending of their relationship certainly wasn't a happy one. But what about Peggy? She had married, she had a family. That wasn't a fact that you would ever let anyone take for granted. Had she found a way to be happy, even without Steve? And if that was true, if she had found happiness somewhere else, did that mean Steve could too?