PERHAPS THE WAR'S NOT OVER; PERHAPS WE STILL NEED TO FIGHT

PERHAPS THERE ARE MORE BATTLES TO OVERCOME

BUT TODAY, WE WILL CELEBRATE

"It's not easy losing someone you love. You know that as much as I do."

Her palms are damp and she rubs them against her jeans for the fiftieth time, not once taking her attention away from Daniel Souza, who looks the way he did ten years ago with the addition of the lines on his face and the frailness in his figure.

She hasn't seen him or spoken to him since he took the kids and moved away from the city. Last she had heard of them, they had relocated to Florida. Tony, however, had kept tabs on them, monitoring their financial status and keeping tabs on their health.

Liz got Daniel Souza's current address from her brother months ago, when she had made the decision to stop wearing her repressor permanently. She found herself at his door today, at six in the morning, getting ushered into his comfortable looking living room filled with medals and framed photos hanging off the wall.

She sits in the blue armchair across from his and her palms are damp so she rubs them against her jeans for the fiftieth time, not once taking her attention away from Daniel Souza, who looks the way he did ten years ago with the addition of the lines on his face and the frailness in his figure.

She listens to his words with the kind of concentration she puts into her surgeries.

"It was hard, I'll admit, looking at you after Peggy died."

She nods, simply listening, waiting for him to finish before she blows this out of proportion and makes her own conclusions. God knows she got herself into enough messes doing that.

"Never once blamed you Elizabeth. We all played our part in the mess that was you and your powers but I know that there was nothing you could have done about that lightning bolt at the time."

She's here, not only to make peace with her past, but also to figure out her future. She's here because this started with her, Peggy Carter and Daniel Souza, and she needs her closure. She needs to move past this, be assured of her forgiveness so that she can start forgiving herself.

She speaks for the first time since she asked the question of 'Do you blame me?'

"I wish you didn't hide how she died from everyone."

Souza shrugs his shoulders, "Maybe you do. Nothing you say would make me regret the choice I made. The world is cruel Elizabeth, the people in it are sharks. They would have locked you up and made you into some kind of lab rat. Peggy would have had my head suppose she was alive."

In hindsight, she should have had this conversation long after she had recovered from the events of Sokovia and not a mere day later. She feels the beginning of a migraine and looks up at the dream catcher hung on the ceiling.

Daniel Souza pulls his chair closer to her, "I was there; the day your dad created the repressor. I knew what it did and I didn't do anything. I knew it was wrong but it wasn't my place to interfere; your Aunt Peggy thought the same and it was her deepest regret. It is mine as well."

He looks at her, remembering the last time he saw her; red eyes and tear-stained cheek and the kind of guilt unsuitable for a girl so young. Daniel's glad to see that the woman sitting in front of him today, however war-torn and battle-weary, resembles the little girl who brought life into a room; a little girl who he had loved so deeply that her place in his heart never ceased to exist.

"You look good Elizabeth."

She ducks down at the compliment, "Thanks..." She doesn't know if she's allowed to call him uncle anymore. Doesn't know if she lost that privilege because of a tragedy no one blames her for, or the number of years that have separated them.

"One of my favourite things in the world is to rub it to my peers during Bingo night that my nephew is Iron Man and my niece is Infinity. If anything is greater, it's telling the neighbourhood that my nephew is Tony Stark and my niece is Elizabeth Stark."

She smiles at him, biting her lips in order to keep the tears at bay, "I know you don't blame me but I am sorry. I didn't do it, but the lightning bolt was mine and I took her away from you. I should have never taken the repressor off."

Souza shrugs, "We all made our mistakes."

The conversations lull after that. The air is cleared and the pressure in her chest has decreased. But it doesn't change the fact that they haven't spoken in years and there are ramifications to the separation.

Liz gets up from the armchair, "I'll get out of your hair, I guess."

Souza tilts his head in question, pressing the button that would inform the nurse taking care of him, "I'll see you soon?"

She smiles at the nurse who walks in with Daniel's medication and a glass of water before responding, "Ya, you will. I'll bring Tony too next time."

She leaves before she can cry when Daniel's parting words are, "She would have been very proud Elizabeth."

She thinks, as she walks out the door, that this might be one of the best things she's done for herself. She thinks that maybe, maybe, she can make her world better, one step at a time. Believes that she'll stop feeling guilty every time she uses her powers. Believes that she can learn to accept the lightning and flames as an extension of her. Believes that the world might let her be happier.

Believes it more when she opens the front door of Daniel Souza's house, identical to all the other houses in the neighbourhood and walks across his front lawn to where Steve Rogers patiently waits, leaning on his motorcycle and smiling at her as if he's seeing the sun for the first time.

She wishes she could blame the talk she had with her uncle or the fact that there aren't evil robots blowing things up but the reason why she walks right into his lips and cups his jaw as she kisses him is because he's there and he's gorgeous and God she's falling so hard for him.

The kiss ends slowly because Liz starts to smile halfway through and Steve thinks that it might be addicting the way he can feel her lips curve up. He pulls away and brushes her cheekbones lightly with his thumb.

"I'm going to guess it went well."

She looks at him for a long moment, long enough for him to presume that her one-track mind has gotten her preoccupied with something else but then she asks, "Do you remember what you told me in that lab, years ago before you left to fight the Chitauri?"

"You know Liz, if I was to have it my way, I'd take this thing and crush it between my palms so that you'd never have to wear it again."

By the look on his face, Liz knows he remembers so she, opening her purse, pulls out the small circular device that used to reside on her neck. She pulls out the device that, in some ways, changed her life completely, creating a chain of events that somehow led her to today.

She hands it over to the Captain. She and her brother have plans to destroy the twenty other replicas held safe in the lab with blowtorches and hammers and DUM-E, but she supposes she could give this one to Steve.

He looks at her, silently asking her if she's sure and she nods and shrugs, "I don't need it anymore. I'm not scared anymore."

She can't help it; the action has somehow engraved itself into her bones and she finds herself smirking up at the sky, at the 'he' that wants her dead when she hears the satisfactory breaking of glass and the ripping of wires as the repressor breaks into pieces under Steve Rogers' wrath.

The pieces fall onto the sidewalk and the flames that burn them to ashes are receded back into Liz's index finger.

"I still don't know where they go," Steve comments as he gets on the bike and waits for her to climb on.

Liz gets on and wraps her arms around his waist, "Did 342 experiments and tests on that. Still, haven't figured it out. I stopped trying."

"Wiser to accept the gifts that we are given and not question their origins, right?" Steve tells her as the bike slowly rumbles to life, recounting the words Thor had once told her.

She doesn't answer him because they are flying through the road and all sound is drowned out by the rumble of the engine and the roaring of the wind and she cannot do much besides rest her cheek on the Captain's back and watch as they zip across trees and buildings and life.

She asks him, after they go to the fair and he wins her several prizes because of course his shooting is impeccable and she pays the operator so that he'll stop the Ferris Wheel for a long moment when they're at the top. She asks him, after he takes her to a little dinner at the edge of town and she signs autographs and takes pictures and laughs and eats and steals his fries. She asks him as they sit on his leather jacket in a meadow of nothing but grass and small flowers, looking at the night sky,

"Does today count as a date?"

She's shocked to see his cheeks colour slightly in the darkness as he clears his throat and responds, "I was planning on taking you to the restaurant by the park. The fancy one with the steak and wine."

She knows he thinks that steak and red wine and fancy dining is what she wants. She knows he thinks that steak and red wine and fancy dining is what she expects for an acceptable first date.

She rests her head on his shoulders, still looking at the sky, "I think I like today better."

He presses his mouth to her hair and she can feel the smile there, "Okay, I'll keep that in mind for the next time."

Her chin rests on his shoulder as she looks up at him, and he wonders if it'll ever stop hitting him with the impact of a train of how beautiful she is. Her hair glows and her eyes are galaxies of blue and violet and navy and her lips are tinted bubblegum because of the cotton candy and everything about is just so perfect, he kisses her before she has time to speak.

This time, they're not in the middle of a battlefield or in the hallway of the Avengers Compound or in the middle of her uncle's neighbourhood. This time, it's just them and the stars and somehow, Liz finds herself on Steve's lap, tugging on his hair as his fingers brush the strip of skin exposed by the rise of her shirt and it drives her nuts so she pulls him closer, impossibly so.

They're falling back onto Steve's leather jacket and he's on top of her and she's got her legs wrapped around his waist and she's arching into him and making these sounds at the back of her throat and her hands are roaming the expanse of his back and he pulls away slightly, enough for her to whine in protest.

He takes her in, lips swollen and hair mussed as she lays on his jacket like some goddess, "We are not having sex for the first time on grass."

Her laughing overpowers the crickets and the sound of silence and he's content to just stare at her, tracing the crinkles around her eyes because he can touch her now and he doesn't think he can stop.

He gets to the tower and it takes twice the time it would usually take him due to the reduction of speed because Liz falls asleep on the ride back, cheek against his back and breaths coming out in even bursts.

He shakes her gently and wakes her up by kissing her forehead as she blinks back into reality. When they enter the communal area, they're greeted with whistles from Sam and Rhodey, Liz rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at them shrugging off her jacket, and telling them to help Pietro and Vision take down the decorations.

"You two need help in there?" She calls out to Natasha and Wanda who are cooking something up in the kitchen. The former looks like she's about to invite Liz in but Natasha shakes her head pleadingly.

"Oh please don't."

She walks into the kitchen regardless, sitting on the counter and grabbing a carrot from the cutting board in front of Wanda, the crunch resonating throughout the kitchen.

Conversation flows easily between the three of them despite them having very little in common. They laugh together as they converse about brothers; about Tony and Pietro and Clint. Liz finds herself helping Wanda chop vegetables for the pasta before Sam takes over and she and Pietro are tasked with dumping out the glasses of alcohol leftover from the party.

The elevator doors ding the arrival of Tony and Pepper; the former had picked his girlfriend up from the airport as she had been in Canada during the Ultron fiasco. The redhead smiles affectionately at the two Starks, now standing side by side,

"How is it that I leave for three days and you two manage to blow up a city?"

Tony jabs a finger into his sister's side and she pushes him in retaliation, "Wasn't me hon, Liz did all the blowing up."

"Ya, and I saved the world doing it."

Wanda walks into the now pristine living room, "Dinner's ready."

Steve and Thor drop a second table from the balcony where Liz and Wanda float it into the communal kitchen, pressing it against the original table so that there is space for everyone.

They wait for Clint who shows up ten minutes late with his wife and kids in tow. Seating themselves at the dinner table, Liz, in between her brother and her boyfriend, zones out the laughs and jokes to take a look at this family that she's made.

She takes a look at every single person, feeling the absence of the repressor in her neck and the power coursing through her veins and the fear that is no longer present and she smiles.

After a lifetime of tears and fear and sadness, she smiles.

She's happy. She's okay.

It's what she'll tell her brother later, in between breaking her repressors in the most creative way possible, watching them burn into crisps, or blow up into flames and she and Tony share a drink in the lab under the property that used to be their home. She'll tell him that she's happy.

She doesn't know that the 'he' that wants her dead is very much real.

Doesn't know that 'he' has a plan to wipe out half the universe.

Doesn't know that he has learned how to release the six entities that reside in each Infinity Stone.

Doesn't know that these entities are enough to kill the girl with lightning in her veins and fire in her blood.

She doesn't know.

So she smiles.