Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Peggy’s back at work in like five days. When she comes home from her first day back, she tells Steve that they’d cocked it up so badly while she was gone that SHIELD is now a defunct organization and they’re going to have to start all over.

So while she’s working on that, he takes care of their new baby girl, Gloria. The first few days, he has a terrible time; he cries every time she cries, stands at her crib and watches her sleep for hours at a time, wrangles with his first diaper because he’s afraid if he pulls too hard he’ll hurt her.

She’s so tiny he can hold her in one hand. Most of her body fits on his palm, her head supported by his fingers. It’s kind of hilarious and really, really adorable, so he pulls out his cell phone and snaps several pictures. Reveling in technology, he sends it to everyone, except Peggy, because she’s busy and he can show her later.

After that it becomes a thing; nearly every hour he finds some new pose to send out, or accidentally snaps a shot of Gloria giving the camera the finger, or every time she opens her eyes and he gets to see that beautiful dark brown, just like her mother’s.

In a week, he’s sent almost four hundred pictures, and accrued several hundred more that he hasn’t sent out. JARVIS informs him that his phone won’t be able to store many more. And he realizes that his friends haven’t replied in a day or so.

He can’t bring himself to delete any of the pictures he’s taken, so he transfers them to his computer. He stops sending his friends everything, too.

Half an hour later his phone blings at him several times in a row.

Tony: whats sausage creature doing

Natasha: Everything okay? Haven’t gotten a picture in a bit.

Sam: dude what did you do, leave her on a park bench? pictures???

Clint: I need a new picture for my background

Bruce: HULK WANT PICTURES (Steve’s pretty sure Hulk didn’t send this, he hopes, Bruce has been getting better about joking really this is a joke right?)

Jane: Thor’s getting sad over here. Send help? Or pictures?

and

Tony: srsly sausage creature???/?? snapchat me smth is she napping is she pooping is she eating come on

He’s mid-reply when someone knocks on the apartment door. It’s Bucky, holding a really big knife, holy crap, and looking frantic. “What happened?” he asks, barging past Steve. “Where’s Gloria?”

“She’s fine,” Steve says. “She’s napping. In her room. Which is a knife-free zone.”

Bucky turns to him and glares, putting the knife—machete?—on the counter. “Where are my pictures?”

“Well—I stopped sending them. I thought you guys might be getting sick of them.” He follows as Bucky turns and walks away, heading to the baby’s room. “I didn’t even think you knew how to look at messages." His phone is going off again.

Natasha: Steve? Starting to freak me out here?

He types out a quick reply and sends it, including one of his more recent pictures, to placate her, because if he doesn’t she might just rappel down into Gloria’s bedroom and he just doesn’t need that kind of paperwork.

Bucky is standing over Gloria’s crib, looking intently into it. Steve comes to stand next to him, and for a few seconds they both just look at the sleeping baby.

Finally, Bucky reaches down with his metal arm and traces one of her very blond eyebrows as softly as he can. “I can see them. I just haven’t figured out how to reply,” he mutters. “Don’t stop sending them. I like them.”

"Of course you do,” Steve agrees. “You’re her godfather. It’s a requirement.”

“Exactly.”