Safe and Sound

Come Here, Stupid

She woke to the sound of FRIDAY gently calling her to inform her that her dad was home. He'd rushed out and Pepper had told FRIDAY to wake Peggy up when he came back since she had to go to the board meeting alone, again. She had never been good in the morning, she needed to wake up on her own terms otherwise her entire day would just be a mass mix of small failures and irritation. Peggy groaned and swung her legs over the edge of her queen sized bed and grabbed her hoodie from the floor, sliding it on and stumbling out of the room and down the stairs. She smiled when she saw her dad, he walked straight up to her and pulled her into a hug. She accepted it willingly, but pushed him away the second she saw Steve come in.

"What's that doing here?" She asked, her voice harsh and angry. She saw what he did to her dad and she didn't want him in a position where he could do that again. She and Steve used to be really close, she'd play something for him on the nights he would wake up screaming. She would celebrate all of the old holidays with him as well, they even went dancing at one point. For his birthday she had taken him to a 40s dance, the good thing about this generation was that you could find almost anything you want. When Steve heard her voice and the hurt and betrayal underneath it, he flinched. He understood that he messed up and he knew that Tony wouldn't exactly treat him the same again, but the one thing he didn't think of was how angry Peggy would be. Tony jumped right to his defence, trying to get his daughter up to speed on what had happened.

"Princess, listen to me. I didn't want to have to bring him back here, but I couldn't leave him where he was. He was a drunken, high mess when I found him and if he'd been there for another day, we'd all be standing in a field in black suits. That's not me, baby, that's not my style. I'm not that man." Tony explained as he pulled his daughter to the side. Steve leant against the wall, feeling quite dizzy as he completely blacked out on the conversation between the two Starks, he couldn't really concentrate on anything, he could hardly see. Something was wrong and he knew it, but he wasn't about to say anything. He probably deserved this. This was God's punishment for him. He'd hurt the ones he loved, now it was his turn to feel pain.

The conversation went on for another five minutes and Steve sure did miss a lot because the next thing he heard was Peggy telling her dad that she'd go get her medical box and put on a pot of coffee. She no longer sounded bitter, just a bit angry. Tony made his way over to Steve and helped him back up off of the wall. "Come on." He mumbled, helping him to the kitchen where Peggy was getting her stuff ready. "You sit there, big guy." After all this, Tony was still treating Steve in the kindest way he's ever been treated. He knew for sure that Bucky wouldn't do this. Bucky would kick his ass and scream at him until he turned blue, but that was just Bucky's way of expressing his caring side. Tony being this nice to Steve only made him feel worse. He hated it. He didn't deserve it. He wanted it to stop, he wanted Tony to punch him in the face or kick him out in the streets or even leave him to die where he found him. He didn't want Tony to forgive him, it only made him feel the guilt and the pain more. He didn't understand why this was happening or why Tony was acting so nice towards him. "You got this, Pegs? I'm going to go get the Captains room ready." Tony piped up cheerfully as he patted Steve's shoulder.

"DON'T call me that." Steve snapped, looking down at his tightly clasped hands, his jaw clenched, making both Tony and Peggy flinch at the tone in his voice. "I don't deserve it." He let himself go and let a few tears slip down his face. Tony went to step forward to comfort him but Peggy stopped him, she pushed him away a little while bit, with her hip as she moved around the side to get to Steve. She whispered a small 'go' before getting to work on Steve. Tony left the room, but couldn't take his mind off of what had just been said. He couldn't help but think it was his fault, because of what he had said, two years ago on the last day he ever saw his friend. Peggy sighed as she started to clean out Steve's wounds, she knew how important he was to her dad. She had almost slapped him when he yelled about not deserving to be called Captain.

"If you had the chance to end it all, would you?" she spoke up as she pressed the cloth gently into his arm, causing him to whimper a little in pain. He looked up at her, confused.

"What?" He asked, still slightly irritated from when Tony called him 'Captain'. Peggy could see how lowly he actually thought of himself now, after all 'Captain America' won him his best girl and lost him two of his dearest friends.

"Would you actually end it if the chance came around? Knowing that my father would miss you like crazy? Would you say goodbye to everything and everyone you know, just because you're in pain?" Her voice was quiet now, more childlike, but at the same time full of pain. It almost sounded like she was speaking from experience. It shocked him, a lot. He would never have thought about all these things if he had decided to kill himself. The only thing that stopped him was Tony. Hearing Peggy say that he would miss him changed his whole attitude. "How do you think people would remember you? As the great Captain? Or the man that broke the law to save an assassin? Do you think people would talk? Would they know why you did it or have you hidden the way you feel so well that they stay confused as to why the great symbol of America and patriotism decided to kill himself?"

"Okay." Steve mumble, signifying that he'd heard enough and didn't want to talk about it anymore. He knew that he'd made a mistake and didn't need the one person he never though would say something like this to tell him that he screwed up.

"How would you do it?" She carried on, completely ignoring his comment. "Would you swallow a bunch of pills? No wait, the super serum would stop that, straight up. What about hanging yourself? Now that just depends on whether you can find some place high enough to hang yourself from. Okay, how about, launching yourself off a buildi – never mind, super serum to the rescue again. That rules out drowning and suffocating....which leaves slicing the hell out of yourself until you bleed to death." He flinched at the harshness of her words, each word felt like a bullet hitting his chest. This girl had no mercy when she was mad, she would say and do anything to get someone to see that what they did was wrong or stupid. "Would you be prepared to do that, Steve? Would you let people find you like that? Lying on the floor, skin cut open, body pale and drained. Would you let my father see you like that? Would you let me see you like that?" He let his head drop to the table once she was done cleaning up his arms. He knew that she was only doing this for his sake, but he wanted her to stop. He knew he messed up, but he couldn't do anything about it now.

"Can you stop? Please?" He asked her as he sat back up. She looked at his face and saw the tears in his eyes and knew that he had learned his lesson for today. She nodded, tears welling up in her own eyes as she pulled him into a tight hug.

"Come here, stupid."