Chapter Text
Perhaps Peggy could have tolerated the cold and wet more if it weren’t for the fact that their leader trudged through the muck and mire of October in eastern France as if they were in a fine, spring rain. He wandered along while behind him most of his unit trailed, shivering, exhausted, and grumpy, and every one eyed his dark blue helmet as if they wanted to take a shot at it with the nearest rock they could find.
“I know Cap’s got the serum, but I think he forgets the rest of us need warmth and sleep.” Morita beside her was looking decidedly murderous as off to his left, Jones nodded, dark head hanging low between his shoulders. Only Barnes managed to keep up with their erstwhile captain and Peggy wondered if that was more out of a lifetime of habit than anything else.
“I’ll see if I can say something.” She gave the flagging soldier’s arm an encouraging squeeze as she pushed ahead, trying to catch up to Steve’s now impossibly long strides, heartily wishing for half a moment that he was still shorter than she was and struggling to catch up.
“Captain!” Her clipped tone rang in the trees, causing both Steve and Bucky to turn around as she clambered up on the top of the ridge they had just scaled like gazelles.
“Agent Carter,” he greeted without even a hint of breathlessness, something she found somewhat annoying as she gasped her way to him.
“Not to seem like a weak and frail woman, but I think the men under your command could use with a bit of a rest. They’ve been marching since before light and it’s nearly sundown.”
“She’s right, Steve, you’ve been pushing hard. That new body of yours forgets the other mortals who are struggling to keep up with you.” Barnes eyed the men at the bottom of the ridge, all fatigued as they bent over, leaning on their knees or against trees, ready to drop where they stood. “How about we bunk down around here for the night?”
For his part, Steve looked somewhat sheepish as he nodded at his best friend, watching as the other man went back down the hill to see to the commandos. He remained, scanning the land around them from their vantage point. “It’s sure pretty around here.”
Peggy glanced around the tree tops, the leaves all having changed with the colder temperatures. “I suppose I haven’t given it much thought.”
“You probably have forests like this all over England.”
“Not as much anymore, but yes, we do have some.” She shoved her freezing hands further into her jacket pocket, scanning the horizon with the eyes of Steve Rogers. “I don’t suppose they have this in Brooklyn?”
“Maybe once, but nah, not when I was growing up. You’d be lucky if you got a tree in a yard, and that’s if you had one of those. All you got was a sea of brick buildings and wooden tenements. Camp Lehigh was the first time I even saw a real forest that wasn’t Central Park.”
Peggy smiled at the memory of who he had been, the scrawny, sensitive man who seemed all but forgotten now, but still lay there just beneath the surface. Certainly, she saw it come out in his art, in the scribbles and doodles he made in the notebook he faithfully carried, the visual memory of their many missions. She wondered, briefly, what that artist’s eye saw from the top of the ridge, in the swaying tops of browned trees, damp and bedraggled, just as she was.
As if fate was having a go at her, the clouds above, which had been dark gray and oppressive all afternoon, parted suddenly, as a shaft of golden sunlight filtered through across the valley, over the treetops, setting the forest below afire. It shimmered as a gust of wind stirred the branches, shaking off raindrops like spangles, stirring the entire woods like a living thing, an ocean of orange and red, rustling like waves on a shore. For a moment, just a moment, it was achingly beautiful, a fairy story come to life. Peggy held her breath and watched as the clouds passed by. By the next moment, the sun was obscured again, and the sea of flame had disappeared, replaced by the drab banality of the forest. She had to wonder what a boy from Brooklyn who had only ever seen dingy red brick and gray clapboard towering overhead all of his life had to say about a sight like that.
“You can’t say you see that every day.” Steve beside her sounded awed, his voice a low, reverential rumble.
“No, you can’t.” Peggy smiled up at him, realizing that even she couldn’t say that. “Maybe, years from now, when we look back at all this horror and mess, this can be something we can point to and say ‘That was truly beautiful.'”
A soft smile flickered over Steve’s face. “Yeah...one of the things at least.”
Peggy liked to pretend she didn’t see the pointed expression in his blue eyes, but that didn’t stop the blush that rose to color her cheeks.
Later that evening, the men settled, huddled in tiny tents and sleeping bags against the cold, she observed Steve on first watch, sitting in the glow of firelight, frantically sketching in his notebook, as if he were trying to imprint it with the memory of that day. Peggy smiled to herself as she crawled into her own sleeping bag, drifting off, watching the gleam of firelight and dreaming of a sea of living flame, red leaves dancing in golden sunlight, and Steve’s expression of abject awe.