It wasn't until a third of the way through that Steve realized exactly which of his plane rides Dick had experienced, but he doesn't cut him off. If it felt as real to Dick as Steve's latest memories felt to him — well, for that, Steve was sorry. It was difficult for him, even now, to maintain a type of composure that signaled "nothing is happening" to their fellow breakfast crew.

This wasn't a battlefield and he wasn't a spy. In the end, he looked down into his food, and just appreciated the memory of Peggy's voice one more time.

But when the recounting is over, the Captain realizes that the boy never got to experience the ending, so he fills it in. "No one died during that plane crash." He eats another spoonful of mush, and manages to give Dick a convincing smile afterwards. "I woke up seventy years later. It was too late to make it to the dance, but I got to see Peggy one last time."

But that was a whole other story. Now it was his turn to tell Dick what he'd seen.

"I had a dream last night. Multiple actually." There was a feeling of nostalgia that was difficult to hide. They'd felt so real. "I was talking to a therapist about being a hero." He tells about each of the dreams in sequence: what he (or Dick, really) had said about Batman, going through a training routine and then being invited to play basketball, all the way to the flashbacks within his memories of the trapeze.

None of it was easy.