* * * Author's Notes * * *

I would like to take a moment to apologize for the extremely long wait for this chapter! My beta reader and I have both been very busy with real-life over the holiday season, but also I wanted to be sure that we took the extra time to make this chapter just right. A lot of time and research (yes, research!) went into writing this, and I feel that this is a very important part of the story. I hope that you all find that the wait was worth it!

As always, I would like to thank whimsymuse for all of their help, especially with this chapter. I am giving them co-author credit for this update since they helped outline and write some scenes within it :-)

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Steve was surprised at how alive the city of Washington, D.C. became in the days leading up to the nationally observed holiday of Memorial Day Monday. Tourists had flooded the area, and Dolan & Sons Antiques had been quite full throughout the weekend as a result. Liz had even kept the store open an extra hour late that Sunday night. Steve thought she looked tired as he walked with her up the stairs to the third floor that their apartments shared.

"Did you still want to come with Pops and me tomorrow?" Liz asked him as they turned a landing.

Steve smiled at her as they climbed, "I'd like that." He had actually been looking forward to joining Liz and Pops in their traditions since Liz first invited him earlier that week.

"Okay," Liz glanced at him with a tired smile and brushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, "I hope you don't mind getting up early. Pops wanted to be sure that we've caught the Metro by nine."

"I have no problem with that." Steve did not mind this at all. He slept on average about six hours a night at most and was an early riser as a result. Most mornings, he was awake and going out for a run before seven.

As they reached the top floor, Liz paused at her door and turned to him, "I don't mean to be lame," she started, "but I think I'm gonna turn in early before I pass out on my feet. Can we hold off on the movie?"

Liz had suggested earlier that day that they watch Superman ("the good ones, with Christopher Reeve!" Liz had felt the need to clarify) as tonight's choice for what had become their twice-weekly movie night. Steve was excited about this, mainly because he actually had a clue as to who Superman was. He remembered reading the first comics featuring the fictional hero way back when he was still a scrawny kid in art school, before the war. To be honest, Steve was surprised that Superman was still around and evidently quite popular.

"You get some sleep, " Steve encouraged, offering a small half-smile. Liz did look like she was on the brink of collapse.

"Okay. 'Night, Steve. See you in the morning," Liz said tiredly as she unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped inside.

"Goodnight, Liz," Steve gave one last smile as he watched Liz close her door.

* * *

The following morning, Steve woke promptly at six o'clock on the dot of his own accord. He had not found the need to use an alarm since his circadian rhythm seemed to be something by which the rest of the world should set their clocks. He went for his typical morning run several times around Monument Park, after which he grabbed a quick breakfast from the local deli before returning to his apartment to shower and get ready for the day out with the Dolans.

Pops had explicitly informed Steve the day before to dress his best for the occasion. Steve found that the best clothing in his closet included a plaid shirt in a neutral tone and brown slacks. He slipped on brown leather shoes and tucked in his shirt before fastening a matching brown leather belt around his waist. Steve parted and combed his hair neatly. He contemplated bringing his brown leather jacket but decided against it due to the seasonably warm weather that had flooded the city. Steve doubled back for his aviator sunglasses before leaving his apartment promptly at eight-thirty.

As Steve was locking the door to his apartment, he heard rustling and possibly mild cursing coming from the other side of Liz's door. He turned around just as Liz was exiting her apartment, hopping on one foot as she wrestled a shoe onto the other. Steve could not help but smile.

"Good morning," Steve greeted.

Liz jumped as if she did not expect anyone else to be in the hallway. She turned around from closing and locking her door to face Steve and smiled, "G'morning."

The Liz that now faced Steve was a Liz that he had never seen before. For one thing, she had on a small amount of makeup outlining her emerald eyes, and her lips had been painted a shade of red that reminded Steve of cherries. Her auburn hair had been left down and fell evenly about her shoulders, which were covered with capped sleeves that were attached to an American blue, A-line dress with a V-neckline. The dress had small white polka dots scattered evenly across it, and the skirt flared out slightly from Liz's waist down to the hem, which ended just above her knee; a familiar style that Steve remembered some women wearing in his time. Liz had traded in her black cross-body messenger bag for a small red purse that she clutched delicately with both hands in front of her. The shoes with which Liz had been struggling had a moderate heel and closed toes and were a shiny crimson color that matched the handbag.

"You look..." Steve began before he could stop himself, then suddenly panicked as he felt blood rushing to his face as he searched for the right word, Beautiful? No— Gorgeous? No— He felt his heart begin to beat faster.

"Patriotic?" Liz offered, looking down at her coordinated American flag-colored attire with a nervous smile as she brushed her hair behind one ear.

"Lovely," Steve smiled.

"Thanks," Liz looked at him, and Steve relaxed to see that she approved of his choice of word. Her cheeks looked pinker than usual. Steve was not sure if that was rouge or if she was blushing, though he decided that he liked it either way.

"You clean up pretty well yourself," Liz added, "Ready to go?"

Steve nodded, and they made their way down the stairwell to meet Pops.

Steve followed Liz as she let herself into Pops' apartment on the ground floor, where she found him in the kitchen.

"'Morning, Pops," Steve watched Liz kiss her grandfather on the cheek as he stood in the entryway by the front door.

"Good morning, Sunshine!" Pops beamed at her, "You look absolutely beautiful! Doesn't she, Steve?"

Steve thought that he caught Liz rolling her eyes at Pops. Steve felt blood rushing to his face again as a nervous smile took over, "Yes, sir. Lovely," was all he managed to get out in response.

After Pops had attempted to force-feed everyone a quick breakfast, the three of them were on their way. The Metro grew crowded as they went further south down the Red Line towards central Washington, D.C., and even more so after they transferred to the Blue Line at Metro Center on their way west to Arlington. Arlington National Cemetery had its own stop, but there was still a ways to walk from the station to the main entrance.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day. It was sunny, with a few white and fluffy clouds scattered across the blue sky. A light breeze persisted, which helped to abate the increasing temperature of the morning. There were many other people heading in the same direction.

As they approached the main entrance to the grounds, they were greeted by children handing out roses. It took Steve a moment to realize that they were groups of boy and girl scouts. A boy who must have been about the same age as the Schaefer twins that lived in their apartment building ran up to Liz, holding out a red rose.

"Would you like to leave a flower, Miss?" The boy scout smiled excitedly.

Steve watched Liz's red lips turn into a smile before she responded, "I would love to. Thank you!" Liz accepted the rose as the boy's cheeks reddened. He ran back to his troop when the red started to reach his ears.

"That one is going to be trouble with the ladies when he gets older!" Pops quipped as they followed the river of people flowing toward shuttle buses.

"Where are we going?" Steve asked Liz while they waited for the next available shuttle. Pops was in a pleasant conversation in front of them with someone he seemed to know.

"There's an amphitheater on the far side of the cemetery where the ceremony is gonna be," Liz explained, her green eyes squinting slightly in the sun, "President Ellis will say a few words."

"The President? Really?" Steve was surprised. He had not realized that this event would be that important.

"Yep. He speaks here every year," Liz said as the next shuttle pulled up to them.

They boarded the shuttle. Pops and his friend claimed the front row behind the driver and continued chatting boisterously. Steve followed Liz to the middle of the bus, where she found an empty window seat. Steve squeezed in next to her with a bit of effort, his broad shoulders bumping into Liz as he settled. "Sorry," he apologized quickly, trying to give Liz a bit more room in the narrow row.

"No big deal," Liz looked like she was holding in a snarky comment with a slight smirk playing at her lips. Steve found a comfortable position that gave his knees some distance from the seat in front of him, with one leg residing in the aisle to his side. Liz's small shoulder rested against Steve's bicep as the shuttle began to move forward. The seats were narrow, leaving hardly any room for personal space, though Liz did not seem to mind. She smiled at Steve as they rode for a few moments in comfortable silence, enjoying the breeze from the open windows as he looked out of them. Green hills adorned with shining white headstones rolled by in every direction. Liz pointed out prominent memorials that Steve had never heard of as they went passed, but he was used to that sort of thing by now.

After they had exited the bus, Steve, Liz, and Pops made their way through a security checkpoint, after which Pops ran off with a small group of fellow veterans around his age (or "the usual suspects and troublemakers!" as Liz had introduced them to Steve).

"We've still got time before the ceremony starts. Would you like to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?" Liz asked Steve as she turned to him.

"I would love to, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is," Steve admitted. Another thing that he had grown used to lately was confessing his ignorance. He was grateful and glad that Liz always seemed happy to enlighten him. Steve followed her through the throng of people milling around the outside of the gleaming white marble amphitheater, many of which were military service members in their dress uniforms.

Liz explained as they walked, "Well, it's really the resting place of multiple unknown soldiers. One from each of the country's worst wars to honor them all: both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam," Steve watched Liz's eyes squint in the sunlight that made her auburn hair look almost ginger and her skin glow a shade of alabaster, "Not a lot of people realize that because of the one large tomb," Liz added.

As they rounded to the rear side of the amphitheater, they found a stone pavilion where there stood a tomb so large that Steve could easily tell it was a few feet taller than him. Many people were looking on from behind a cordon at a solitary, pristinely decorated soldier patrolling back and forth between them and the monolith on a long black mat. The tomb itself stood at the edge of a pavilion overlooking a grassy lawn with views of the city beyond. On the side of the tomb facing the rear stone steps of the amphitheater and the crowd, Steve could read the engraved words:

HERE RESTS IN

HONORED GLORY

AN AMERICAN

SOLDIER

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

All of a sudden, Steve felt a hand wrapping in his and looked down to see that Liz had taken it as they began squeezing through the thickening crowd towards what could have been considered center stage. Steve instinctively squeezed Liz's fingers tighter when he started to feel them pull away, but they were gone just as suddenly. He fought the urge to reach for them again.

"The bigger the crowd, the closer it is to the Changing of the Guard," Liz whispered to Steve. The sea of people around them was just as quiet, "They stand watch twenty-four hours a day, and train for months to earn that honor. Every move is deliberate and must be perfectly timed. You can set your clock by them."

Liz opened the small red handbag that she carried and took out her smartphone. Steve watched as she lit up the screen on the device to see the time, "The changing should begin any second."

As if on cue, Steve heard the sound of a timed march from his right. He watched with great respect as the ceremony commenced for precisely the next eight minutes (and not a second more or less). The entire ceremony was a majestic display of discipline requiring a strict knowledge of procedure as well as complete control of personal movement and coordination among all of the guards involved. Steve was impressed and quickly developed a deep admiration for the soldiers in front of him for their dedication. It reminded him of the soldier ideal that Steve had so desperately wanted to emulate when Doctor Erskine had found him; the soldier that Steve was so proud to have become. The soldier that I used to be... Steve corrected his internal thoughts, At so high a cost, was it worth it?

He looked at Liz, who was watching the display intently. The rose that she had been given at the entrance held close to her chest delicately. Steve thought about the smaller ways he had tried to help the people he had grown to care about in this modern age. Billy and Emma with bullies at school, Pops with the store and his restorations, and Liz with reminding her to take a break and eat once in a while... They all had given him something more valuable than he could ever repay: the feeling of welcome and home and family he had not had since he was a young boy; the chance of a normal life Steve never knew he wanted until he thought it was too late; a hope that he could do the one thing he had been battling since he awoke— just carry on.

When the Changing of the Guard had completed, the crowd began to disperse as a new soldier began his patrol on the black mat in front of the tomb.

"Do they really stand guard twenty-four hours a day?" Steve asked Liz quietly as they remained watching, genuinely interested.

She nodded, "Ever since some time in the thirties, I think. I don't remember the exact date," Steve watched as a smile played at her ruby lips like she was trying to fight it, "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night..."

"I'm pretty sure that's the post office," Steve fought the urge to chuckle as his gaze lingered on the upturned corners of Liz's smile. He could tell that Liz was in one of her silly moods, where almost anything seemed funny. She covered her mouth with her hand as she stifled a giggle. Steve lost himself for a moment looking at her, really looking at her and reflecting on their relationship. It was a rare thing for Steve to feel so at ease with someone. Especially someone so beautiful... The rogue thought came over him as Liz's emerald eyes met his, Maybe it could be worth it... Before he finished thinking it, a twinge of guilt settled in the pit of Steve's stomach. He closed his eyes briefly and saw an image of Peggy waiting for him alone at what he imagined as The Stork Club back in 1945 as he turned away from Liz.

"I think we should find Pops and grab a seat inside," Liz whispered, trying to regain her composure, "before we get yelled at by the guard for being disrespectful. They've been known to do that." If Liz had noticed Steve's sudden tense moment, she did not show it.

* * *

Close to an hour later, after the memorial service within the amphitheater for all of the Nation's fallen soldiers had completed, Steve, Liz, and Pops exited another shuttle bus in a section of field close to the main entrance of the cemetery where they had entered that morning. Pops had informed Steve at the close of the service that he had wanted to make a brief visit to their family members that had been laid to rest there. It was a short walk from the shuttle stop to where the Dolan family headstone stood under partial shade from a large oak tree with high branches that stood nearby. The sun shone through them and lit the ground with patches of gold.

Steve stood back slightly, reading the family stone's epitaphs as Pops and Liz quietly paid their respects. There were two rows of three epitaphs. On the first row in the center was what Steve assumed to be Pop's place, denoting him as head of the family. The date of his passing intentionally left blank:

JOHN DOLAN

FIRST LIEUTENANT

UNITED STATES ARMY

MARCH 17, 1928 –

The space to the right was blank, but to the left, there was an inscription for Liz's Gran, as Steve had heard Liz refer to her:

MY BELOVED WIFE

ROSE ENGEL DOLAN

JUNE 3, 1930 – AUGUST 19, 2011

Loving Mother & Grandmother

On the second row, all three spaces had been inscribed. Steve paid special attention to these, as they told a story of the tragedies that the Dolan family had endured. The family seemed to have been plagued with untimely deaths, an unfortunately common experience Steve shared with Pops and Liz. From left to right, their epitaphs read as follows:

OUR SON

PATRICK DOLAN

OCTOBER 23, 1965 – DECEMBER 9, 1973

While he lives cherished in our

memories, he is never far away.

Steve had heard Pops mention Patrick only once during an afternoon spent in the Dolan's shop. It was a comical story about how Patrick and his older brother had jokingly locked their father in a wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek. Pops had gone on to tell that Patrick had passed away at a young age after battling a muscle-deteriorating disease for almost a year, to which Steve had expressed his deepest sympathies. Pops had decided to change the name of their store from Dolan's Antiques to Dolan & Sons Antiques as a small way to honor Patrick at that time.

OUR SON

JOHN DOLAN, JR.

TECHNICAL SERGEANT

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

APRIL 7, 1961 – FEBRUARY 25, 1991

GULF WAR

Beloved Father & Husband

Steve knew this to be Liz's father from stories he had heard from Pops. Steve had heard Liz speak of him very seldomly. He knew that her father had died when she was very young and that she knew him mostly through the stories that had been told to her by Pops and Gran. John had died serving his country shortly before he had planned to return home for good.

HIS BELOVED WIFE

PAMELA ROBINS DOLAN

SEPTEMBER 22, 1962 – JANUARY 4, 1987

Those we love remain with us,

for love itself lives on.

Liz's mother, Pamela, had passed away shortly after childbirth the same day Liz had been born. Pamela had no living family when she had married John, but the Dolans had taken her in as their own. Pops and Gran had not gotten to know Pamela as well as they wished that they could have before she passed away due to complications during labor. Pops claimed it was a miracle that Liz survived the ordeal. As a result, there was very little that Liz's grandparents had been able to tell her about the mother that she never knew.

Steve could empathize with the Dolan's better than many. His own father, Joseph, had died during World War I before Steve had been born. His mother, Sarah, had passed away when he was a teenager, and Steve had never felt more alone than in the weeks after her funeral. Bucky had become his family then and was like a brother. Steve was as close to him as any of Bucky's biological siblings, if not closer.

Steve watched as Liz gently laid the rose that she still carried on the top of the stone.

"A rose for my Rose and my beloved family," Pops mused, a sad smile on his face. Liz looked over to him with a similar expression. Silently, she placed a kiss on the tips of her fingers and touched them to where her father's name was engraved upon the stone.

Pops and Liz then turned back to Steve and started walking out of the clearing. Pops was already ahead of them, as he usually was, when Liz's heel sank into a soft patch of ground. Steve was close enough to catch her hand before she could stumble too far.

"This is why I never wear heels," Steve heard Liz grumble under her breath. Liz forcefully moved her leg in the hopes of reclaiming her heel from the soft earth, but to no avail. The movement only caused her to rip her foot from the crimson shoe and nearly sent her toppling over. Once again, Steve saved her from herself.

"These stupid shoes," Liz began to curse as she leaned down and tried to tear the now stained shoe from its trap among the dirt, "— never wearing these again —"

"Liz," Steve tried with no success.

"Lizzie," he said again with no response other than muttered cursing and a seemingly misplaced sniffle for the beautiful weather.

"Elizabeth," Steve tried in a more demanding manner. Finally catching her attention, he set his hand on her upper arm, "Are you okay?"

Liz opened her mouth, obviously ready to make a sharp rebuttal at the use of her full name, before turning away. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and she cast her eyes out toward the horizon. Her green eyes held the sun's glare as they became increasingly pink in hue. Steve looked at Liz only to see her lip gently quivering, wondering how long she had been holding in her emotions. Steve bent down to the forgotten shoe still resting in the dirt. Kneeling, he picked it up and gently slipped it around her toes, then over her heel. Seeing that Liz was quickly trying to wipe away a falling tear from her cheek, Steve rose from the manicured lawn. He reached for Liz's petite hand, gave it a gentle squeeze, and began to lead her toward the front entrance.

Steve clung to Liz's hand in a way that was more than just physical touch. The raw pain that Liz had just displayed— Steve knew that feeling. He gripped her hand to keep his own composure. He held her hand in his to anchor them both. Steve felt needed to a degree in which he fundamentally craved. He felt like a hero— and he wanted to feel the way he felt in that moment for the rest of his life.

In the midst of his rumination, Liz tugged him to a stop. Steve turned to look at her as she rasped, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get so— I'm usually better at— at handling things, on my own... I'm just—"

Steve silently swallowed Liz's petite frame in his arms. The first comforting words that came to mind were the ones that he had heard from Bucky after Steve's mother's funeral, "The thing is, you don't have to..." he said softly, "And there's nothing to apologize for."

Steve nestled into Liz's auburn hair. Its faint aroma of apples speaking to his senses. Liz backed out of his embrace but was still close enough for Steve to have the courage to reach for her hand yet again. He looked her in the eyes and nodded a silent affirmation of comfort. Liz smiled, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. Steve gave a soft smile in return.

The moment was interrupted by Pops calling in the distance, his lead gaining, "Catch up, lovebirds!" To which Steve felt heat build in his face as he turned to look at Pops down the roadway.

Liz looked shocked at Pop's comment. She started hurrying toward him as she called back, "Slow down, Pops!"

"What's the matter, Sunshine? Can't keep up with an old man and his walking stick?" Pops teased, brandishing his cane in the air. Steve tried not to laugh next to Liz.

"It's these shoes!" Liz grumbled.

* * * Author's Notes * * *

Really hope that you enjoyed this chapter! This and the next chapter are very pivotal for character development. After that, the real fun begins ;-)

Votes and comments are always appreciated. I love hearing your feedback! It lets me know that I'm doing something right.

Thanks for reading!

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