Steve was always quieter than most, Peggy knows, but the quiet he carries with him now is different - heavier, the product of loss, and grief almost past bearing, and too many fights, and trauma that he should not have tried to carry alone - should not have had to carry alone. She knows as well that it was partly his own doing - he had told her everything when he had first appeared at her door, exhausted and heartsick and time traveling from 2018 - but it does not make her love him less. She understands all too well the impulse to take everything on her own shoulders; it is a trait they have always shared. They also are best at sharing their burdens with one another, which is one of many reasons she loves Steve beyond reason.

Now, months after he came back to her, dancing in his arms in their own living room, there is comfort in the silence. The grief, the pain they had both endured was not gone - but it was shared, carried together, and made easier by love.