(Listen to The Rest of Our Lives By: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, while you read this one. This song is beautiful and really gives another level of emotion to this one shot. This was the only song I listened to as I wrote this one!)

Her hand felt fragile as it rested weakly inside Steve Rogers' much stronger one. Thin and nearly weightless, as though a sheet of paper that he could easily crush in the fist of his hand. Yet he held her hand with a tender strength, and never feared that his muscle would hurt her. Because how could he? It wasn't in him, even with the power that ran through him more than the average man, he could never hurt the person who's hand he held now. Steve would much rather take on whatever pain could plague her, than watch her suffer it herself. 

And in the slightest fraction of a way, he felt as though he already had. 

Draped in pale pink sheets, and a quilt that she carried with her since her childhood, she slept soundly. Her soft breaths echoing in the small and warm bedroom, and Steve watched the way her eyelashes still flickered with each moment of sleep. Her dreams still very much alive behind her closed lids, and he could only vaguely begin to imagine what kind of images were running wild in that head of hers. She looked ever so peaceful in her sleep, and it frightened Steve. All the troubles and fears that had etched their way onto her face, blending with the wrinkles on her now paler skin, had now faded as she dreamt serenely. Her youth seemed to glow as she slumbered, the age that had manifested itself in many different ways over the years, seeming to suddenly melt away. Leaving behind a woman who's beauty and youthful light hadn't changed. But it wasn't just in sleep that Steve saw the young woman he had met all those years ago, he still saw her every day when she looked at him. 

"I can feel you staring, you know."

Her voice was slower now, weighed down but nonetheless singsong melodic as the first time Steve had ever heard it. And with every word she spoke, no matter if it was a scolding towards their rambunctious grandchildren or a loving compliment towards him, it made Steve smile to hear it. The sound never growing old in his ears.

"I can't help myself sometimes." Steve replied softly with a warm smile, watching as her eyes slowly opened. She glanced around the room, her untouched green eyes bouncing from one corner to another. As if to remind herself of where she rested. 

"I don't know what it is you could possibly be staring at." She said with humor in her mellowed yet lovely voice. 

Steve couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle, "Not even the slightest idea?"

"Not a clue." She responded instantly, her smile mirroring his own. 

And it were those smiles, the ones that looked faded and worn against her chapped lips, that still made his heart swell with warmth. They were the reason, he told her time after time, for the lines that appeared in the creases of her eyes. She blamed age for the marring of her once beautiful skin, but Steve was convinced her lines and wrinkles came from all of the laughter and happiness she experienced over the years. They were magical to Steve; for they seemed to be a scrapbook of memories forever carried with her. She viewed them as a burden, but he saw them as a look into the past. For some of the lines, he swore he could name the exact date she got them. 

"I was staring at you," Steve told her lovingly. "I always have. And I don't think it's possible to train my eyes not to now."

Her eyes were a deep evergreen shade, and just as the very first time he looked into them, they sparkled like sunlight coming through the branches. And even as her vision blurred, their stunning sparkle had been left untouched. 

"I can't begin to imagine why." 

She never could see it... her breathtaking beauty. All she was capable of seeing when she looked into the hand mirror Steve would hold up for her, was the grey hair that cascaded down her shoulders in loose and brittle curls. Or the way her skin had loosened over the years, and crinkled like an over used plastic water bottle. She saw the way her body shrunk as the years continued to creep up on her, and the way she looked like a cripple beside her still youthful looking husband. A man older than her, yet looked like a boy who could've been her child. 

But for Steve Rogers, when he looked at the woman before him who he called his precious wife, he couldn't see any of the flaws she saw. He only saw a woman in which he loved. 

When he looked at her loose tendrils of silvery white hair, he saw the way she wore it on their wedding day. In long curls down her back, pinned back by a sparkling white barrette. With beautiful snowflakes from their winter wedding mixing into the brunette strands. When he looked at the way her skin had lost it's natural tight and youthful hold, he saw nothing but a flawless face being released from the confines of the makeup she wore for years. She never needed the cosmetics in which she painted her face with. The way her body shrunk, like all the women in her family had, only made it easier to hold her petite frame as they slept at night. 

And although on some level, it did sting when Steve would look into the mirror with his wife at his side, and see a woman who was growing older... something he could never do, he still didn't view it the way she did. He saw a woman who had managed to live a full life. One that she could look back at now, and be proud of. The memories she had made, the children she had raised, the love she had shared with not only him but with the world... it was a life anyone would envy. And all Steve ever wanted for his wife, was for her to be happy. And he hoped the life she had lived did that for her.

"You're exactly the same." Steve told her as a warm smile stretched itself across his face. 

Her laugh was weak, but she still mustered up the strength to chuckle breathlessly at his words. "I highly doubt that."

Steve shook his head softly, his smile still there to stay. "I'm serious."

"You haven't changed. Not one bit from the day we met." Steve expressed to her, and squeezed her fragile hand gently. "You're still that bold girl who asked a complete stranger, one who was visibly uncomfortable in some downtown bar, if he'd like to get out of there and get some fresh air with her."

"You still know all of my secrets, just as you knew exactly who I was that fateful night. Captain America, a man chiseled out of the ice seventy years later. And you never batted an eye at the truth. You're still that woman. You don't look at me any differently than you look at anyone else. You make me feel as though I'm the same, completely normal like everyone else."

Steve moved the chair he sat in, closer to her. Never once letting go of her hand as he spoke softly. "You're still that woman I fell in love with. Whose beauty and kindness and compassion towards others stole my heart. You're still the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, even if it's not possible."

Steve reaches his empty right hand out slowly, as he spots a single tear rolling down the side of his wife's face. Brushing his thumb across the warm and salty tear, he takes it away before it even has a chance to burn a trail down her porcelain shaded skin.

"When I tell you, that you haven't changed at all, I mean it. I don't care if your hair color is different now, or that you think your skin doesn't bounce back like it used to. You're still the person you were back then, and I don't think that'll ever change."

He watched as she struggled to breathe through the tears, that had lodged themselves in the back of her throat. And as each tear made it's way down her rippled skin, he flicked them away, before they even had a chance to dry. 

"How is it," She breathed softly. "that I managed to get so lucky? What on Earth did I do to deserve a man like you Steve Rogers?"

Steve smiled through the burn of his own tears that began to press against his throat, and he leaned forward. Resting his elbows on the mattress, still never releasing his grip on her slightly trembling hand. But his right raised away from wiping away her tears, and brushed her curls out of her face tenderly. 

"If that's true," Steve whispered, staring adoringly down at his fading wife. "then I can hardly imagine, what I must've done to be worthy of getting to spend all of these years with you."

Although he did his best, Steve couldn't stop his voice from cracking as he spoke softly. He thought he could conceal the emotion rising inside of him, but it was in this moment that it cracked through the surface. 

And just as Steve had done for her, he watches breathlessly as she reaches her hand up slowly. Towards his face, until her thin and bony yet still undeniably soft hand presses gently against his cheek. And in one swift motion, brushes away the tear that had begun to fall from his own watering eye. 

Her hand was cold against his skin, and he could feel as it took every bit of strength left in her nimble body to keep it there. But he soaked in the feel of her touch against him, memorizing every feather like touch of her fingertips against his warm flesh. 

"Steve," She spoke suddenly, her voice shaking slightly as he watched another tear roll down her cheek.

"Yes love?" He hummed softly, still holding her hand tightly in his own. But also reaching his other hand up slowly, and pressing it against her's that still laid still against his face. 

Her eyelids fluttered shut for a moment, and he felt his heart skip a bit before they opened a second or two later. "Thank you."

Those two words were so soft they barely graced the air of the room, but somehow Steve still managed to hear them. With all of their meaning and all of her conviction still intact. He wanted to ask her what it was she was thanking him for, because if anything, it should've been him thanking her. But as Steve gazed lovingly down at his beautiful wife, he knew she said all that she needed to say. She had thanked him for everything... in those two words. She managed to put years worth of memories and miracles into those two tiny words. Her last words ever spoken were to thank Steve... for everything he had given to her. Everything he had done for her. But above all, she thanked him for loving her. Back then... and now. She used her final two words to thank him for loving her despite the knowledge that one day, time would tear them apart. 

And as tears burned their way down Steve's face, he leaned forward to press his warm lips to her cool forehead. His eyes shutting tightly as he squeezed her hand that still rested limp inside his own. He should've thanked her. He should've thanked her every day he woke to her beautiful face, for making this life of his truly mean something again. But as he kissed her now lifeless being one last time, he knew the only way he could truly thank her, was to keep his promise that he had made to her years ago. 

"I vow to love you," Steve pulled away from her, and looked down at her body that lay unnervingly still. But he didn't see a woman passed, he saw the only woman he would ever love. 

"I vow to love you more tomorrow than I do today. I vow to love you through all the twists and turns life is bound to throw our way. I vow to love you until my last dying breath."

I love you. Steve thought as he finally let go of her hand, resting it gently down against the blanket. Today... tomorrow... and forever.

"I vow to love you for the rest of my life."

A/N: Sobbing!!!😭😭I absolutely love how this one turned out, and I can only hope that you all love it just as much!!❤ This may be one of my favorite things I have ever written!