When they find Captain America buried in the ice, it's global news. Every station in every country is reporting it. But it's nothing more than old war-time photos plastered behind talking heads. There is nothing there that Peggy doesn't see in the photo album sitting on her dresser.

She's sitting in the nursing home, the first time she sees the report. But to her the pictures of the blonde man no longer stir any sort of feelings. Disease and old age have stolen her memories from her. Even if there is a small flicker of recognition, that this man is something more, it is gone before it even registers.

If she goes to her room a few hours later and starts flipping through that old photo album, she isn't really sure why.

It makes the news again, when Steve wakes up. Again there is this momentary flash of something greater, but again the disease wipes away any chance she had of remembering why.

For a few months the news is silent. Peggy wakes up each morning, stiff and sore like always, but there's something different in it. Something feels out of place but she can't think of what. It's the most frustrated she's been since she first starting losing her memory.

Peggy's certain that nothing is different; that each day is exactly as the last. Surely that framed photo of her and Howard and Colonel Phillips had always been sitting on her bedside table. Though, if she really struggled, she felt like maybe she could remember digging it out of the bottom of a dresser drawer and setting it up just a few days ago.

That small compass too. Surely that had always been sitting out with the lid flipped open, showing a picture of a lovely young woman taped to the inside. The woman looked somehow familiar, like she'd seen the face before. But she could never remember where. And whenever she tried, she forgot halfway through what it was that she was even trying to remember.

Those quiet months passed in silent struggle for Peggy, as suddenly she was faced with that lingering feeling that something in the world had changed. Something important. Something overwhelmingly personal. It wasn't even a fully formed thought in her mind, just a soft feeling of nostalgia that somehow felt new. But when everything feels new and every day is spent relearning, then nothing can be trusted.

Finally he's on the news again, this time as a part of the Avengers. He'd helped save New York. Peggy had been in her room when she had first heard the news of the attack. A nurse had reminded her halfway down the hall of what the commotion was about. Stepping into the lounge, Peggy pushes her way forward until she can see the tv clearly. At first it's just sweeping shots of charred buildings and bodies covered in white sheets. She'd asked a nurse once why those sort of images never fazed her, when everyone else seemed so upset. The nurse had told her that she'd lived through a war. A war Peggy couldn't remember beyond a faint feeling of finding something, only to lose it again.

Then they show the blonde man, the one from Peggy's photo album. He's bruised and bloody and his uniform is torn in places, but it is finally something she recognizes. Stars and stripes. A bright blue and red and white with that same circular shield. Best of all, as the camera zooms in, she can see those same eyes and that same weary smile.

Peggy's heart is lighter than she can ever remember. She wants to dance and sing, even as she is surrounded by a room full of people in shock and mourning. Because she knows this man, even if she can't think of his name. But there it is, flashing across the bottom of the screen: Captain America.

She turns to the nurse standing closest to her and whispers "We were going to go dancing together."

The nurse just smiles and nods, the same face she makes when Mr. Horner claims to be the King of France. And it makes Peggy furious, but... but she can't remember why. She turns to see a man on the tv lifting a red, white, and blue shield into place on his arm. But all she sees now is just another face, another person, another nameless thing she doesn't recognize.

A nurse leads her back to her room and she has to wipe away tears that she doesn't remember crying.