Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 16

This chapter is a turning point. It's time to say goodbye to the past and start looking forward. Thanks for reading, everyone!

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Chapter 16

Bernice stifled her tears and sang, not the usual Amazing Grace, which her cousin had sung moments before, but a wild, pagan ballad from the highlands of Scotland. The song was traditionally accompanied by bagpipes, but since none within the Miller clan knew anything about the peculiar instruments, Bernice sang a capella, with only a single note from a harmonica to start. It seemed absurd for a Jewish-American girl to sing a Scottish funeral song for her American-born grandmother who'd been raised in an English town near the Scottish border. But it was what Peggy wanted sung at her funeral and only Bernice had ever memorized enough Gaelic to pull it off.

Dh' iadh ceo nan stuc mu eudann Chuilinn,
Us sheinn 'bhean-shith a torman mulaid,
Gorm shuilean ciuin 'san Dun a sileadh,
O'n thriall thu uainn 's nach till thu tuille.

The banshee wails, and all of us weeping. Fitting music for how Bernice felt at the passing of her co-conspirator and confidant. Her voice broke at the last chorus and she was unable to go on.

"It's okay," Papa said, kissing her hair. "You tried. Grandma Peggy would be proud of you."

Bernice sank into her father's arms. She'd been closest of all the grandchildren to the matriarch of their family, but her first-generation aunt and uncles were devastated at her passing. The minister said a final prayer before giving the order to lower her coffin into the ground next to the grandfather Bernice had never met. It was a fancy coffin, far fancier than the one her grandmother had picked out. The undertaker claimed there had been a mix-up at the factory, but Bernice had her suspicions. Pepper Potts, herself, had signed the card attached to the enormous bouquet of flowers sent by Stark Industries.

One by one, her aunts and uncles, cousins and other family members threw a rose into the hole in the ground where Peggy was being laid to rest. They began to disperse.

"Do you want to catch a ride with us?" Papa asked. "We don't mind driving into the city."

"No," Bernice said. "I'll be fine. I'd like to hang around and draw the scenery. This place is very peaceful."

"All right, bubbala," Papa said. "We shall leave you to your peculiar musings."

Although Papa had never approved of her choosing art as a career, at least he'd stopped disapproving after she'd landed the job at Stark Industries. Although now what she did wasn't so much fine art as it was, well, engineering design. Helping engineers take that string of numbers locked up inside their heads and turn it into something non-geniuses like herself could wrap their brains around visually.

Green-Wood Cemetery had been set up like a park, with rolling hills, ancient trees, and enormous monuments to the people laid to rest. It was said it was the ambition of every New Yorker to live upon Fifth Avenue, take his airings in Central Park, and sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood Cemetery. Bernice circled the grounds, finally choosing to settle into the roots of an enormous purple beech. It was peaceful here. Grandma had cheerfully told her that once she'd been laid to rest, it would be easier for Bernice to visit whenever she needed to talk. Bernice intended to start that conversation right now. She pulled out her pencils and began to sketch, her sadness pouring out into the page and finding comfort in the down-swept branches of a weeping cherry, the peaceful expression upon an angel's face, and the lofty spires of the mausoleum which sat upon a distant hill like a Cinderella castle. She closed her eyes and leaned back into the trunk.

She must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes, she realized she was no longer alone. A figure kneeled beside the open grave, only flowers covering the coffin until the undertakers could get here with a bulldozer to fill the hole. He wore a uniform that had to be straight out of World War II, broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist and hips like some idealized propaganda poster of the perfect soldier. It took her a moment to realize it was Steve, wearing a vintage uniform. His grandfathers?

Steve had come to the wake wearing a suit, standing silently next to the fearsome-looking Mr. Fury with his black eye-patch, two bookends with unreadable expressions upon both of their faces. If Bernice hadn't known him, she might have mistaken his stone-faced expression as he'd woodenly walked through the line of family and paid his condolences as duty. The service at the gravesite had been for immediate family only, but she'd been surprised he hadn't come anyways. He'd been a frequent visitor at the nursing home, although Bernice had never figured out why. Grandma had been tight-lipped about her acquaintance with the man who'd taken down an alien invasion even as she'd encouraged Bernice to get to know him.

Bernice started to rise to her feet to speak with him but realized he wished to be alone. Much the way she wished to say goodbye by drawing the place her grandmother had been laid to rest. Settling back into the shadow of the beech tree, invisible against the sunny day, Bernice flipped to a fresh page and began to sketch.

She couldn't hear what Steve said as he bid her grandmother goodbye, distance and the wind carrying away his words, but by the shake of his body she realized he was crying. Her pencil captured the forlorn slope of his broad shoulders kneeled at the side of the grave, as though he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world. He took something out of his pocket, kissed it, and tossed it into the hole. She froze as he stood and looked uphill in her direction, but it was a dense shade cast by the ancient tree and he didn't see her sitting with her sketchbook. He stood at attention and saluted the grave, then walked away as though he were a soldier on a march.

Bernice waited until he was out of sight before walking down to see what Steve wished her grandmother to be buried with. If only he'd asked her family at the funeral home! They would have placed it into the coffin along with the other mementos children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren had placed into the casket to send Peggy off into the next world.

Amongst the flowers sat a tiny box. Was it something which had belonged to Steve's grandfather? Oh. That was why grandmother had been so excited when she'd first thought her old friend was still alive! What a dummy! The friend her grandmother had always spoken of when she'd encouraged Bernice to draw, not just the grandfather whose talents she'd inherited.

Grabbing the enormous bouquet of flowers so generously given by the thoughtful Pepper Potts, Bernice tossed it into the grave, on top of the tiny box she was certain contained a ring. She then plunked her rear-end back down into the roots of the enormous beech tree and waited until the gravediggers came to push the enormous pile of dirt into her grandmother's grave. For some reason, Bernice was certain her grandmother wished whatever was in the box to be buried along with all the other secrets she'd carried into the next world.

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Note: In addition to the version of MacCrimmon's Lament sung by Sheila Chandra via YouTube, you can also listen to my all-time -favorite- version of this song also sung by folk singer Rebsie Fairholm at lunatrick.bandcamp.com/track/maccrimmons-lament

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