(Chapter 39)Captains and Ships

Steve Rogers felt like a ghost. Peggy was alive. He could go talk to her whenever he wanted. He'd walked into enemy fire a hundred times. He'd downed a plane in the Arctic. So why couldn't he go see her? What was stopping him? He was just a memory for her, a story she told her nieces and nephews. She'd gotten married and done a fine job with SHIELD by all accounts. She'd had a whole life and all he'd had was an ice water bath.

He hadn't been back long, just a month or so. They'd put him in a cabin in the woods with something called the internet and a screen that pumped films into the room. But he didn't have much to him on that front - He was just out here, detoxing.

Someone knocked on the door and Steve Rogers straightened up. He was a legend now. Captain America, the great symbol of America's nobility of spirit. He didn't want people to see him like this - Didn't want them to be let down. Steve walked over and opened it.

"Natasha," he said, waving her in. She was beautiful, her hair was red at the moment, and she was carrying a folder with her.

"Guess you haven't seen the news," Natasha said, looking at the teevee screen. It was gathering a bit of dust.

"I, uh, was enjoying the quiet."

"Told Clint we shouldn't put you in a place like this. Got you contemplating. your own shadow."

"It's not too bad, the weather's nice, I can go for a run, think."

"Don't have to give anybody autographs?" Natasha said with a turn of her head as she flicked on the teevee with that little black wand.

"That too," Steve grinned sheepishly.

"Look, I get it. My line of work, attention is a problem. But paying attention, that's important. Come on, Grandpa, let's have a look at the news, give you a glimpse of my future. This son of a bitch slipped it right past us."

"This a mission?"

"Probably not, we've got the guy responsible in interrogation, but it's mostly above board. He'll have to pay some fines, but he can afford to. Plus, we don't put guys who can do this sort of thing away permanently."

"What's this sort of thing?"

Natasha clicked on a glowing icon and toggled into the Thoth screen. There was a picture, a picture Steve was still getting used to, of the Earth taken from outer space. The future wasn't all bad, Steve thought, as she clicked play. "People who can make the world a whole lot bigger."

—

I felt the thrum of my ship beneath me, the design of the core was stable. I had performed this jump a dozen times with drones. From a safety perspective, it might be better to send someone else, but that would be illegal in a way I couldn't pay off with fines.

This had been my plan in general, but Pierce's in particulars. I needed to publicize it wide enough, without SHIELD's intentional permission, that we got the response I needed. I was broadcasting onto the Thoth monitors world over.

I turned on my screen and began to broadcast to the custom buoy I had designed to carry communiques.

—

"Fellow citizens of Earth," the lean looking man said, his handsome face tinged with the beginning of frown lines and gray hair. "You may not know, but my name is Michael Gideon Trent, and I am about to be the first human being to exit our solar system."

"The solar system? I thought we hadn't even made it to Mars?" Steve had been a bit disappointed when he discovered that Mars had been a barren rock and not the romantic world it was in the pulps, if he was being honest.

Natasha shrugged, "You knew Stark, you've seen what these geniuses can do up close. He has a gift. Just wish he hadn't blown it wide open like this."

"Blown it wide open?"

"I just wish that we'd had the chance to think before he made it public like this."

There was a secondary viewpoint on the screen now, a vision of the outside of the cockpit, hovering over the pale blue earth from a significant distance.

"As I depart from our mother world's warmth," Trent began, pressing a button on his console.

Then there was a lurching, blurring of lights, a stretching effect, and the ship coughed out over a new planet, a brown one, whirled with red light and littered with drifting stones. If Steve was being honest, Trent looked a little sick on the viewpoint.

—

I took a moment to look on the world I had discovered with my own eyes. I had left Earth. I had left the cradle of our world, I had left it all behind. I had done what no human, except Captain Marvel insofar as she counted, had ever done.

I'd like to say the first thing I said was my speech, but the first thing I actually said was, "Guh." Hyperspace travel is a nasty thing.

I took a moment to breathe it in, to feel the moment wash over me, and then I finished my speech, "I leave behind the childish squabbles of earth. Let us live now, together, in peace and unity, as the children of one mother."

There was a long silence and then I said, "If I might take this moment to do something a little bit more personal and a little bit more intimate, I know that I've just made the world bigger for everyone. But there's someone whose made my world bigger than I thought possible. Her name's Andromeda Albertson and I'd love to face this broad new future with her. Andromeda, will you marry me?"

—

Steve smiled, "That's nice."

"Bit flashy," Natasha said with a shrug, but Steve didn't believe it.

"Did she say yes?"

"She will, probably, but she's under interrogation. Works for us, claims she had no idea."

"Do you think that's true?"

"I think it doesn't matter," Natasha said. "We're not gonna fire his fiancé, even if it was technically illegal and she was under obligation to report."

"Innocent until proven guilty, I guess," Steve said uncomfortably. Truth be told, he didn't think it was appropriate that Ms. Albertson was getting special favors based on who her boyfriend was, but it also didn't make sense to fire her if they didn't know she'd done anything wrong. So it all balanced out in the end. "Why're you here?"

"That's the big news for you, Captain America," Natasha said, handing him the folder under her arm. "He wants you to lead the next mission."