The White Queen (S.Rogers)

chapter 20

Steve sat on his bed, staring out the window, watching the sky lighten with the impending sunrise. His phone was clutched in his hand, and he kept looking down at it, praying that a message or a call would come through.

But he knew nothing would be coming.

He hadn't left his spot on the bed, since the truth had really hit him.

He had lost them. He had lost Brooklyn. He had lost Juliana. And he had lost his last living connection to Bucky.

The morning had started out so wonderful. Juliana had woken him, complaining again about the coffee pot not being set. He had gotten up, gotten dressed, and followed her to the kitchen. After making the coffee pot ready, he had started breakfast.

Then he had gone to the bedroom to leave a cup of coffee on the bedside table for Brooklyn, only to find her awake. Staring at the messenger bag on her dresser, as if under some spell by what it contained.

Needing to pull her attention away, he had kissed her. A quick one, careful of how she would react after being so open the night before. The trust in her eyes, when he had pulled away...

He had informed her about breakfast, and left her to get ready to join Juliana and him. Juliana had been trying to tell him a story she was making up about a bird they had seen at the zoo the day before, and he had been chuckling and encouraging her imagination. He had finished eating and was laughing at Juliana when he heard something fall in the bedroom. Realizing that Brooklyn had been taking a long time joining them, he had decided he would make sure she was okay.

What he had found, was Brooklyn crying, clutching at a brown box in her lap. The paper it had come wrapped in was laying at her feet.

Her denial that she was okay when he questioned, was bad enough, but to pick up the paper, and find out that she had known that her father could contact her, when ever he wanted was worse.

Her acknowledgement that if Bucky had called her, told her to come to him, to leave New York, and that she would have gone without telling him, or giving him the choice to go with her, well, it hurt. It hurt a lot. He had thought that they were getting somewhere. She had admitted she was attracted to him, she enjoyed his kisses and his touches, she let him sleep next to her. She had let him be a part of her life, and her sister's life. She had introduced him to the Marinos, who she had admitted were important to her. At the party the night before, she had held his hand, kissed him in front of people, all the things that he knew a woman in a relationship did.

Everything had indicated that she was experiencing feelings towards him. Even how she had touched him the night before, the fact that she had asked him to stay, that she had gone through the trouble of buying him clothes so he could stay over, it all spoke of her being open to advancing their relationship.

But to hear that she would have walked away, without even batting an eye... That hurt.

Still, he had tried to explain how and why he wouldn't just let her go.

This had led to him making the biggest misstep since meeting her. Unknowingly, but he still did it. Steve knew he should have told her about his past with Peggy a while back. He should have been open about things, about his past. But Brooklyn had never asked. They had never discussed things like love, or past relationships, beyond her confession that she had never had one.

Her reaction to finding about the past relationship with Peggy had been... well it had been explosive. Her accusations about Peggy knowing about what Zola had been up to, in regards to Brooklyn, had been a shock. Her words had conjured a picture of the woman that didn't jive with the Peggy he had known during the War, or the one he still visited in the high end assisted living facility in D.C. Brooklyn's rage, in regards to Zola, was understanding. But she had to be wrong about Peggy. She must have misunderstood something, anything that Zola had said on the subject.