29 August 2019 - It Wasn't Only Peggy
Title: It Wasn't Only Peggy
Author: Beriaearwen
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Captain America: The First Avenger (MCU)
Characters: Joyce, Steve, Buffy, Natasha
Rating: Suitable for people over 13
Word Count: 2213
Disclaimer: The characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to Mutant Enemy, etc. The characters of Captain America belong to Marvel, etc. All are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Who knew gift wrap for a wedding present could be so hard to find? Needless to say, that ate into my writing time, so a little sketchy tonight.
WARNING: Totally mucked about with timelines, canon, etc. It's fanic. Please roll with it.
Summary: He wondered if anyone ever suspected his pining wasn't just for the past or for Peggy.
It Wasn't Only Peggy
By Beriaearwen
Joyce stared at her daughter's empty room and felt her heart break. She hadn't really meant it. No mother wanted her daughter to be in danger, but she hadn't really meant for Buffy to not come back.
She would call Giles again, see if Buffy had contacted him yet. She knew her daughter. Buffy had run, just like she had in LA. And Joyce knew that eventually Buffy would come back, but there was a major difference now. Now Joyce knew about the supernatural. Now she couldn't turn a blind eye to the danger her daughter was in everyday. Now she wouldn't let her daughter be alone to face that and she'd already delayed a month.
Moving from the doorway to Buffy's room, she headed to her own and reached for an old cigar box she kept hidden in the back. There were items in there she had always intended to share with Buffy when the time was right, but that time hadn't come yet. But she should have known that there was neer realy a right time. Now neither of them would have it broken to them gently.
Opening the box, she looked at the slip of paper she'd put in there two years ago. She'd had a friend find it out for her when things started to go bad with Hank. Taking a deep breath she stood and headed for the phone.
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Staring out the airplane window, Steve worked to keep himself calm and wait. He knew he had to be calm when he started this mission and right now, 24 hour later, his thoughts were still a jumble.
After he found out he was in the future, Fury had no choice but to start to educate him about what he'd missed. He'd been shocked to discover how much he didn't know and how much he needed to learn before he could be of help to anyone. He also had to figure out how he could help.
There had been a few intense weeks of training at SHIELD to get somewhat up to date with the modern world, then one of his handlers suggested getting him out into the world in a more controlled environment. They decided to send him to college. That way he could learn skills he needed to be an asset to SHIELD and learn how to interact in the modern world.
The first semester had been interesting, terrifying and eye-opening, but he got through it and had actually done quite well.
The second semester had been …
He'd signed up for a drawing class. He'd always enjoyed the activity and found it relaxing. It was also something familiar that hadn't changed drastically in the years he'd been frozen.
He noticed her the first day of class. He noticed her noticing him about a week later, but wasn't sure what to do about it, at least not in this modern world with rules he didn't understand. Two weeks later they bumped into each other and ended up talking. It lead to coffee and dates and so much more.
She was staying for the Summer semester and he lived in the city, so they continued their relationship and at some point he knew what he wanted. He had never thought there'd be another woman that would affect him, intrigue him and thrill him like Peggy, but Joyce did and he started thinking about weddings and forever. They talked about her moving in next semester since she spent most of her free time and most nights there anyway.
Then, five weeks into the Summer semester, Fury called. They needed him.
He understood duty and explained to Joyce that he had a job. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep in touch, but it shouldn't take more than six weeks.
It had taken six months.
By the time he returned, Joyce had gone. He found out that at the end of the Summer semester, she'd married a man named Hank Summers and moved to Los Angeles.
His heart still hadn't recovered nearly eighteen years later.
He wondered if anyone ever suspected his pining wasn't just for the past or for Peggy. He could admit to Peggy because, as dear as she was to him, she was the past. He'd never told anyone about Joyce, though, he suspected Fury knew. He also suspected Fury knew what Joyce had told him in her phone call last night. After all, the man had the plane tickets and rental car information waiting for him.
Joyce had left because she was pregnant and no one would tell her anything about him. Of course, he knew for a while on that cursed mission, he'd been captured and presumed dead, but he'd gotten out of that.
The thought she might be pregnant never crossed his mind. They had been careful, but after second semester, she'd been taking antibiotics for an infection and the condom had broken...
Buffy.
She'd named their daughter Buffy.
Steve reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out the paper from the dossier Fury prepared for him. The paper had a small picture of his daughter. It was as unflattering as any school picture had been since he was in school, but he could see Joyce, see himself in her and see that her eyes were the same color as his mother's.
He was assimilating the information in the file about his daughter, his amazing daughter. She hadn't gotten any of the apparent effects of the serum, but had definitely gotten her height, or lack thereof, from him. Then there was her calling as the Slayer. He hadn't known about Slayers, but he had known about the supernatural. He never admitted it to anyone, but he felt fairly certain there was a supernatural aspect to his experience with the serum and that was why purely scientific methods would never work to recreate it.
Life as a Slayer was horrible and one he would never have wished on anyone, but he saw a lot of himself in his daughter - her determination, her stubbornness, her willingness to fight even when everything was against her.
“Are you going to keep staring at the picture?” Natasha asked from her seat beside him.
Steve looked over at her. “I just found out I have a daughter who does amazing things. I'm trying not to focus on the anger of not knowing about her for seventeen years, of not getting to know her, meet her or be part of her life for the entirety of her life. I'm also trying not to panic over the through of her alone in the world, hurting emotionally if not physically.”
Natasha nodded. “Have you decided where we'll start looking?”
“I was thinking Los Angeles.”
“Makes sense. She was from there. She won't be anywhere she knew, though.”
“No. You don't hide where people see you, you hide where no one does.”
A nod was his response. “Have you looked over the map and local information yet?”
Steve winced. He hadn't, he'd been too busy dealing with this upheaval in his life, with this change in it.
“Look it over and figure out where we'll start,” she said, before reclining her chair and closing her eyes.
Steve sighed. She was right.
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
“I found her,” Natasha informed him, slipping into the seat on the other side of the booth.
“Where?”
“She's working at a place called Helen's Kitchen. But there's something else going on around there. I ran into multiple people who were wandering around saying they were no one. They didn't seem to know anything else.”
“That's odd, but we can look into it after we speak with Buffy.”
Natasha snorted. “She's your daughter. She's probably already working on it.”
Steve offered a half-smile at the statement, not sure how he felt about it.
They missed Buffy at the blood bank, but managed to find out she was headed to the Family Home teen shelter.
When they arrived, they spotted more of her handiwork in the two unconscious men on the floor who Steve and Nat quickly secured before they cautiously moved forward. There was another room behind the main one which seemed to have a pool of some sort in the middle of it.
Cautiously, they scanned the room and moved forward. There was no one else in the room and there were no other rooms leading off of it.
There was what looked to be the top of a ladder on one side of the pool, but it was most definitely not filled with water.
Steve looked at Natasha. “Looks like the only option is in.”
Natasha made a face but nodded in agreement. “I'll forgo ladies first on this one,” she offered.
“Gee, thanks,” Steve replied sarcastically earning a small smirk from his partner.
Moving to the ladder, he began climbing down.
He reached the bottom with Natasha just a few seconds behind him.
Silently they made their way through the tunnels. They ran across a patrol of some sort and took them out quickly, ensuring they wouldn't be able to raise an alarm.
They reached the end of a corridor and peered around the corner. It showed a large cavern with what could only be slave labor mining in horrid circumstances.
There was a line of teens standing in a row with one of the captors pacing in front of them.
“What is your name?” he demanded of one teen. When the teen answered, he was struck and informed he was no one.
This continued with each teen claiming to be no one until they reached a person in the middle.
Steve gasped as he realized it was Buffy. Natasha reached over and squeezed his arm.
“Who are you?” the slaver asked.
“I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And you are?” she retorted in a cheerfully chipper voice. Then she moved.
Steve and Natasha watched for a few minutes to judge the fight before leaving their position and joining in the fray.
Among the three experienced fighters, it didn't take long to make their way through the kidnappers and shoo those who were still able to form independent thoughts out of the cavern and back through the pool.
Buffy, Steve and Natasha were the last ones through the pool, Steve just barely making it through before the pool blocked over and the black liquid disappeared.
Looking between the two adults, Buffy's brow wrinkled. “No offense, 'cause I really appreciate the help, but how did the two of you wind up down there? You don't quite meet the age profile.”
“You left the door wide open by removing the guards,” Natasha offered.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks, by the way. I'm Buffy. You look familiar,” she said, indicating Steve. “But you I don't think I know from anywhere.”
Natasha gave Steve a very meaning full look and dragged herself to her feet. “I'll let Steve there handle that one and see about getting some help with these people. Most of them will need assistance to readjust.” So saying, she pulled a cell phone out and wandered away.
Buffy turned curious eyes to the man who, though he didn't look that much older than her, was looking at her in a familiar way, and awe and wonder way, the same way... the same way parents look at their newborn kids.
“Buffy. Um. I want you to know, I didn't know myself until about forty-eight hours ago when Joyce told me, but,” Steve took a deep breath, “my name is Steve Rogers and I'm your biological father.”
Though her only outward reaction was to blink, internally, Buffy felt as if her entire world had just been pulled out, turned upside down and put back in the wrong way around. She had suspected from some of what she overheard during her parent's fighting that Hank wasn't her father, but to have it confirmed was... she didn't even have words for it. “Uh...”
Steve reached out slowly and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know it's a lot to take in. I'm still working on it. But I've missed out on seventeen years of your life and I'd rather not miss out on any more.”
Buffy felt a connection the second he rested his hand on her shoulder. It was the same sort of connection she felt with Joyce and had never felt with Hank, it seemed to calm and settle something inside her. “There's... there's a lot you don't know.”
Steve smiled at her. “I know that. But I also know about the Slayer. And there are a few things I'll need to tell you about too.”
“Like how you're stronger and faster than a non-slayer should be?”
“Yeah, that and a few other things that may be... disconcerting.”
Buffy was silent for a few seconds thinking it over. “I think I'd like that,” she admitted. “After we get out of here and I get a shower. Mines are not the cleanest of places,” she complained, rising to her feet.
Steve laughed. “No. No they aren't.” He placed his hand on her shoulder once more and they headed out into the night.
End
Author: Beriaearwen
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Captain America: The First Avenger (MCU)
Characters: Joyce, Steve, Buffy, Natasha
Rating: Suitable for people over 13
Word Count: 2213
Disclaimer: The characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to Mutant Enemy, etc. The characters of Captain America belong to Marvel, etc. All are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Who knew gift wrap for a wedding present could be so hard to find? Needless to say, that ate into my writing time, so a little sketchy tonight.
WARNING: Totally mucked about with timelines, canon, etc. It's fanic. Please roll with it.
Summary: He wondered if anyone ever suspected his pining wasn't just for the past or for Peggy.
It Wasn't Only Peggy
By Beriaearwen
Joyce stared at her daughter's empty room and felt her heart break. She hadn't really meant it. No mother wanted her daughter to be in danger, but she hadn't really meant for Buffy to not come back.
She would call Giles again, see if Buffy had contacted him yet. She knew her daughter. Buffy had run, just like she had in LA. And Joyce knew that eventually Buffy would come back, but there was a major difference now. Now Joyce knew about the supernatural. Now she couldn't turn a blind eye to the danger her daughter was in everyday. Now she wouldn't let her daughter be alone to face that and she'd already delayed a month.
Moving from the doorway to Buffy's room, she headed to her own and reached for an old cigar box she kept hidden in the back. There were items in there she had always intended to share with Buffy when the time was right, but that time hadn't come yet. But she should have known that there was neer realy a right time. Now neither of them would have it broken to them gently.
Opening the box, she looked at the slip of paper she'd put in there two years ago. She'd had a friend find it out for her when things started to go bad with Hank. Taking a deep breath she stood and headed for the phone.
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Staring out the airplane window, Steve worked to keep himself calm and wait. He knew he had to be calm when he started this mission and right now, 24 hour later, his thoughts were still a jumble.
After he found out he was in the future, Fury had no choice but to start to educate him about what he'd missed. He'd been shocked to discover how much he didn't know and how much he needed to learn before he could be of help to anyone. He also had to figure out how he could help.
There had been a few intense weeks of training at SHIELD to get somewhat up to date with the modern world, then one of his handlers suggested getting him out into the world in a more controlled environment. They decided to send him to college. That way he could learn skills he needed to be an asset to SHIELD and learn how to interact in the modern world.
The first semester had been interesting, terrifying and eye-opening, but he got through it and had actually done quite well.
The second semester had been …
He'd signed up for a drawing class. He'd always enjoyed the activity and found it relaxing. It was also something familiar that hadn't changed drastically in the years he'd been frozen.
He noticed her the first day of class. He noticed her noticing him about a week later, but wasn't sure what to do about it, at least not in this modern world with rules he didn't understand. Two weeks later they bumped into each other and ended up talking. It lead to coffee and dates and so much more.
She was staying for the Summer semester and he lived in the city, so they continued their relationship and at some point he knew what he wanted. He had never thought there'd be another woman that would affect him, intrigue him and thrill him like Peggy, but Joyce did and he started thinking about weddings and forever. They talked about her moving in next semester since she spent most of her free time and most nights there anyway.
Then, five weeks into the Summer semester, Fury called. They needed him.
He understood duty and explained to Joyce that he had a job. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep in touch, but it shouldn't take more than six weeks.
It had taken six months.
By the time he returned, Joyce had gone. He found out that at the end of the Summer semester, she'd married a man named Hank Summers and moved to Los Angeles.
His heart still hadn't recovered nearly eighteen years later.
He wondered if anyone ever suspected his pining wasn't just for the past or for Peggy. He could admit to Peggy because, as dear as she was to him, she was the past. He'd never told anyone about Joyce, though, he suspected Fury knew. He also suspected Fury knew what Joyce had told him in her phone call last night. After all, the man had the plane tickets and rental car information waiting for him.
Joyce had left because she was pregnant and no one would tell her anything about him. Of course, he knew for a while on that cursed mission, he'd been captured and presumed dead, but he'd gotten out of that.
The thought she might be pregnant never crossed his mind. They had been careful, but after second semester, she'd been taking antibiotics for an infection and the condom had broken...
Buffy.
She'd named their daughter Buffy.
Steve reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out the paper from the dossier Fury prepared for him. The paper had a small picture of his daughter. It was as unflattering as any school picture had been since he was in school, but he could see Joyce, see himself in her and see that her eyes were the same color as his mother's.
He was assimilating the information in the file about his daughter, his amazing daughter. She hadn't gotten any of the apparent effects of the serum, but had definitely gotten her height, or lack thereof, from him. Then there was her calling as the Slayer. He hadn't known about Slayers, but he had known about the supernatural. He never admitted it to anyone, but he felt fairly certain there was a supernatural aspect to his experience with the serum and that was why purely scientific methods would never work to recreate it.
Life as a Slayer was horrible and one he would never have wished on anyone, but he saw a lot of himself in his daughter - her determination, her stubbornness, her willingness to fight even when everything was against her.
“Are you going to keep staring at the picture?” Natasha asked from her seat beside him.
Steve looked over at her. “I just found out I have a daughter who does amazing things. I'm trying not to focus on the anger of not knowing about her for seventeen years, of not getting to know her, meet her or be part of her life for the entirety of her life. I'm also trying not to panic over the through of her alone in the world, hurting emotionally if not physically.”
Natasha nodded. “Have you decided where we'll start looking?”
“I was thinking Los Angeles.”
“Makes sense. She was from there. She won't be anywhere she knew, though.”
“No. You don't hide where people see you, you hide where no one does.”
A nod was his response. “Have you looked over the map and local information yet?”
Steve winced. He hadn't, he'd been too busy dealing with this upheaval in his life, with this change in it.
“Look it over and figure out where we'll start,” she said, before reclining her chair and closing her eyes.
Steve sighed. She was right.
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
“I found her,” Natasha informed him, slipping into the seat on the other side of the booth.
“Where?”
“She's working at a place called Helen's Kitchen. But there's something else going on around there. I ran into multiple people who were wandering around saying they were no one. They didn't seem to know anything else.”
“That's odd, but we can look into it after we speak with Buffy.”
Natasha snorted. “She's your daughter. She's probably already working on it.”
Steve offered a half-smile at the statement, not sure how he felt about it.
They missed Buffy at the blood bank, but managed to find out she was headed to the Family Home teen shelter.
When they arrived, they spotted more of her handiwork in the two unconscious men on the floor who Steve and Nat quickly secured before they cautiously moved forward. There was another room behind the main one which seemed to have a pool of some sort in the middle of it.
Cautiously, they scanned the room and moved forward. There was no one else in the room and there were no other rooms leading off of it.
There was what looked to be the top of a ladder on one side of the pool, but it was most definitely not filled with water.
Steve looked at Natasha. “Looks like the only option is in.”
Natasha made a face but nodded in agreement. “I'll forgo ladies first on this one,” she offered.
“Gee, thanks,” Steve replied sarcastically earning a small smirk from his partner.
Moving to the ladder, he began climbing down.
He reached the bottom with Natasha just a few seconds behind him.
Silently they made their way through the tunnels. They ran across a patrol of some sort and took them out quickly, ensuring they wouldn't be able to raise an alarm.
They reached the end of a corridor and peered around the corner. It showed a large cavern with what could only be slave labor mining in horrid circumstances.
There was a line of teens standing in a row with one of the captors pacing in front of them.
“What is your name?” he demanded of one teen. When the teen answered, he was struck and informed he was no one.
This continued with each teen claiming to be no one until they reached a person in the middle.
Steve gasped as he realized it was Buffy. Natasha reached over and squeezed his arm.
“Who are you?” the slaver asked.
“I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And you are?” she retorted in a cheerfully chipper voice. Then she moved.
Steve and Natasha watched for a few minutes to judge the fight before leaving their position and joining in the fray.
Among the three experienced fighters, it didn't take long to make their way through the kidnappers and shoo those who were still able to form independent thoughts out of the cavern and back through the pool.
Buffy, Steve and Natasha were the last ones through the pool, Steve just barely making it through before the pool blocked over and the black liquid disappeared.
Looking between the two adults, Buffy's brow wrinkled. “No offense, 'cause I really appreciate the help, but how did the two of you wind up down there? You don't quite meet the age profile.”
“You left the door wide open by removing the guards,” Natasha offered.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks, by the way. I'm Buffy. You look familiar,” she said, indicating Steve. “But you I don't think I know from anywhere.”
Natasha gave Steve a very meaning full look and dragged herself to her feet. “I'll let Steve there handle that one and see about getting some help with these people. Most of them will need assistance to readjust.” So saying, she pulled a cell phone out and wandered away.
Buffy turned curious eyes to the man who, though he didn't look that much older than her, was looking at her in a familiar way, and awe and wonder way, the same way... the same way parents look at their newborn kids.
“Buffy. Um. I want you to know, I didn't know myself until about forty-eight hours ago when Joyce told me, but,” Steve took a deep breath, “my name is Steve Rogers and I'm your biological father.”
Though her only outward reaction was to blink, internally, Buffy felt as if her entire world had just been pulled out, turned upside down and put back in the wrong way around. She had suspected from some of what she overheard during her parent's fighting that Hank wasn't her father, but to have it confirmed was... she didn't even have words for it. “Uh...”
Steve reached out slowly and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know it's a lot to take in. I'm still working on it. But I've missed out on seventeen years of your life and I'd rather not miss out on any more.”
Buffy felt a connection the second he rested his hand on her shoulder. It was the same sort of connection she felt with Joyce and had never felt with Hank, it seemed to calm and settle something inside her. “There's... there's a lot you don't know.”
Steve smiled at her. “I know that. But I also know about the Slayer. And there are a few things I'll need to tell you about too.”
“Like how you're stronger and faster than a non-slayer should be?”
“Yeah, that and a few other things that may be... disconcerting.”
Buffy was silent for a few seconds thinking it over. “I think I'd like that,” she admitted. “After we get out of here and I get a shower. Mines are not the cleanest of places,” she complained, rising to her feet.
Steve laughed. “No. No they aren't.” He placed his hand on her shoulder once more and they headed out into the night.
End