In Your Eyes // Steve Rogers

55

In the interior of a plane was where time decided to send me. I was dropped from the ceiling. I wasn't able to stand before the plane suddenly forced the nose down, sending my feet sliding across the floor. I slammed into the back of a chair. 

One look over Steve's shoulder, to the white landscape ahead, told me exactly where I was. My heart sank immediately.  

"Peggy... I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance," he said softly. 

"Don't know that you should say that," I panted, struggling to stand against the momentum. "Rain checks have a history of not going too well with you."

"Steve?"

"It's you," he breathed. 

"Is there someone there with you? Steve?"

Steve's fingers reached for the radio. He hesitated, especially when Peggy continued to hopelessly whisper his name. He shook his head. He shut the radio off. 

I lowered my lips by his ear. "I'm here, okay? I'm not leaving you."

Time travel and it's rules were entirely foreign to my mind, though I was intelligent enough to know that I needed to push past my heavy heart. It wasn't my place to tell him that his upcoming actions weren't going to end Hydra. 

"I know you're scared. I know this is the last thing you want to do, but it's necessary. You know that. Find comfort in that, or in the fact that you're going to be saving cities full of people by crashing this plane. This is something I wish didn't have to happen," I whispered to him. 

"But it has to?" asked Steve timidly. He sighed when he felt my nod against his cheek. 

"It has to. This is where your whole life changes," I chuckled. "It's the moment where you'll never turn the thermostat under seventy-eight degrees ever again." 

Steve shook his head. "I'm going to survive this?" 

I winced. "I probably wasn't supposed to tell you that." 

"Are you an angel?"

"Seems like it, doesn't it?" I muttered. "Look, I don't know why I'm here, or why I've turned up in the past. I couldn't tell you in the slightest why our lives are so intertwined--"

"I'm damn glad they are," he whispered. He spoke fast when he noticed how close we were to the ice. "If we're going to do this, I have to ask one thing: your name."

"I'm sorry. I can't do that just yet," I mumbled. 

"I'll never know you."

"You'll see me again."

"How are you so sure? How do you know I'm going to survive this?" asked Steve worriedly.

I sniffled. "The world needs Captain America."

Steve's voice calmed significantly. Softly, he whispered, "Why are you here?"

Less than a few hundred feet remained until the plane was set to crash. Steve did well to hide the fear in his voice; he failed to hide the trembling in his hands. In the reflection of the panel, I watched his eyes slam shut. He was preparing for the pain of the collision. 

I inhaled a shaky breath. I rounded the chair. As a precaution, I placed my hand over his eyes, and I connected our lips. My kiss brought his tenseness to vanish. I felt his eyelashes flutter against the palm of my hand. He wanted to see me, know me. But Steve was going to have to settle for knowing the feeling of only my lips. 

"Because I love you," I told him. 

Then, I buried my face into his neck, bracing myself for the impact that would never come.