What Is And What Never Shall Be

On one of the good days, those days that are now few and far between, Peggy asks the nurse to apply some of her red lipstick and look for the red shawl in the same color. She has kept both out of sentimentality, but now she is glad for it. They put a CD with her favorite songs in the stereo, songs he will remember and she sometimes remembers as well.
And then she sits and waits for Steve to arrive. It is in that moment that she wonders if there had been other days like this and if she had just forgotten about it. She brushes it off, she is too old for dwelling.

And then Peggy hears Steve's voice as he is greeting one of the nurses outside her door. She straightens her back as much as she can and prepares herself for the look on his face. It's surprise at first, when he is half inside the door and half outside, and when he grasps the entirety of the situation, it turns into a quiver of his chin. Before it can transform into something worse, she steels her voice and says, "I believe you owe me a dance, Captain."

She watches as the right corner of his mouth tucks into a shy lopsided smile.

Steve refuses to let her get up, but she tells him in no uncertain terms that she has fought and won more wars than he had, and who is he to give her orders. He helps her up and it does hurt, but she doesn't let it show. And then it is a negotiation because he is simultaneously afraid to let her fall and to crush her, and she rests a hand on his arm to ground him.
When the next songs starts, they start to dance. It is not so much dancing as it is swaying to the soft notes of a long gone past. Steve's eyes are glued to the floor in fear he may step on her toes and break her old brittle bones. Peggy just looks up at him.

Sometimes she can almost see it, like a memory in the corner of her eyes, in the back of her mind, how it could have been if they had been more courageous. How they would have smiled and whirled around and clutched close. And she has lost so many memories but this image stayed close to her. And then it is hard to remember what is and what shall never be.



Nobody can tell me this has not happened. I refuse to believe it. Peggy is so headstrong, and kudos to Hayley for bringing her to life like that, and Peggy Carter would not have let Steve get away a second time without a dance.
Yes, yes, dementia, but the way they portrayed it in The Winter Soldier, she would have had better and worse phases still (my grandma had them for years). This happened, end of story.

PS3, Bamboo Tablet, 30hrs
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately.