with the way her day was unfolding Peggy didn't trust anything stronger than tea, so she ordered that. Her eyes remained on Barnes, so filled with gentle compassion for him and his losses.

Aside from things fading they had not lost cohesion, for that was the effect of Steve Rogers. The man might be gone but he was never forgotten. Shortly after things had started to look hopeless in the search for Steve, the war was ending and she had been recalled to the S.S.R. and shoved into her niche. She'd allowed herself in those days to be maudlin and melancholy. It ended when Howard, of all people damnable Stark was the one who gently lifted her chin and asked her what Steve would have wanted her to do. He would have wanted her to go on, to go on for him and for every soldier who wasn't coming back and those who lost so much when they did.

Peggy had no choice but to go on, to find a way to be stronger because he might be gone but the weight of that mantel was left behind for all their shoulders to carry. She was not about to disappoint him again.

"You're from seventy years in the future." She listened but now began to wonder about the poor man's mental state. "Frozen? I don't understand."