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Chapter Text

June, 1931
Hampstead, England

Wilma and I had received our battle equipment from the Gear boss. It consisted of a long-gun, a hand-gun, with a special case of ammunition constructed of inertron, which made the load weigh but a few ounces, and a short sword. This gear we strapped over each other's shoulders, on top of our jumping belts. In addition, we each received an ultrophone, and a light inertron blanket rolled into a cylinder about six inches long by two or three in diameter. This fabric was exceedingly thin and light, but it had considerable warmth, because of the mixture of inertron in its composition…**

“Margaret!”

The peace and quiet of the mild afternoon shattered with the peremptory shout of a single name across the stillness of the pleasant, rose-filled garden. The owner of said name cringed, burrowing further into her makeshift hiding place, ignoring the note of maternal command in the voice as she flipped a page in her magazine, hoping against hope that the voice would stop and she could finish the chapter before giving into its demands.

Unfortunately, fate stepped in and took a hand.

“You know, she’s going to find you eventually and it's only going to be worse for you.”

Obstinance and annoyance flared up in the tiny, ten-year-old as she peeked up from under the confines of her hidden fortress at the irritating voice just outside. “She wouldn’t if you didn’t stick your big nose into it.”

“I’m just saying,” Michael Carter shrugged with all the indifference and supposed wisdom of his fourteen years. Tall and gangly, his voice cracked with the long-suffering knowledge of an elder brother, sent to fetch his younger sister into tea, which was precisely what he was up to. “Besides, you don’t think that this hiding spot will precisely fool Mother, do you?”

“It fooled Father last week,” Peggy insisted, slipping back underneath it. In truth, it was little more than an old bit of oilskin fabric used to protect the gardening equipment behind the shed that she had spread over a stump and several crates to make it look as if there were things underneath it. She had erected it the very day she had come home from school and was planning to spend her all-too-fleeting summer under it, at least when she wasn’t running the heath not far away.

“At least Father let you think he was fooled.” Michael used that aggravating tone again, the one that said he was so superior because he was fourteen and knew adult things now. “He lets you get away with anything.”

“Not everything,” Peggy protested, knowing Michael was mostly right. “He sent me to bed without supper two days before you got home for the holidays.”

“Really,” Michael snorted, all dubiousness as he rounded her fortress to settle himself on the low, rocky garden fence. “What for this time?”

“Kicking the Andrews’ cat!”

Michael, caught strangely between being a man and being and adult, tried to scowl at her, but as he really wanted to laugh the end result only came out looking rather painfully comical. “Why would you do that?”

“Keeps leaving dead rats on the kitchen doorstep for Mrs. Jenkins and it gives her a fright, so I shooed it off.”

That finally did make him obviously laugh outright as he reached over to ruffle her dark hair. Peggy smirked and ducked, but alas, was not faster than her brother ,who had shot up several inches and seemed to have strings for arms. “Ge'off!”

“Peggy Carter, defender of old women and baby dolls,” Michael teased, even as she danced out of his clutches. “Don’t let Mother hear you using slang or it will be no supper tonight, either.”

“She probably sent you looking for me for tea, didn’t she?” It didn’t take much for her to guess that. After all, if Amanda Carter was screaming in the garden for her at this time of day, it was usually because she was having one of her fancy friends over for tea and wanted to parade Peggy off like a show dog. She’d be scrubbed within an inch of her life, shoved in a clean and appropriately ladylike dress, her dark hair brushed and banded back with a shining ribbon, and made to sit on the itchy, uncomfortable cushions of her mother’s sitting room, carefully sipping weak tea out of a china cup and told under the strictest terms to not spill on herself or there would be no cake for her. When compared to that, Peggy would take her chances with hiding under the oilskin and having no supper.

“She’s having Lady Manning over, which means your presence is required.” Michael flipped back the corner of the tarp, unmercifully. “You know how the old bat is, she is going to want to eye you up and down and tell Mother all your imperfections.”

Peggy rolled her eyes in utter disgust. “Why does Mother even have her for tea if she’s so horrible?”

“Because she’s a lady and she wants to impress her.”

“She’s only called ‘lady’ because her husband is a knight, and not even a real knight. Papa said he got knighted for making widgets, but Mother insists it was because he gave a lot of money for the war veterans home. Whatever, none of it is a good reason to be made a knight. Bet he has never even picked up a sword or shield.”

“Neither have you,” he reminded her, which she didn’t think was very fair, seeing as she was a child and no one used swords and shields anymore. Instead, he reached for the book in her rather grubby hands, his long, gangly arms snagging it before she could yank it out of his reach.

“Hey!” She scrambled for it, but he dug a shoulder in, holding her off as he examined the tattered cover.

“Adventure Stories?” He snorted as he studied the bright, yellow cover with its flying man on it, flipping it open with a dubious grin. “Dad been getting you those American magazines again?”

“Don’t tell Mother,” Peggy hissed, trying to reach around Michael to grab at it and failing. “Last time she caught me she took all of them and had Mrs. Jenkins burn them in the rubbish!”

“Pity, that,” Michael sympathized. “What’s this story? ‘Armageddon: 2419’? What is it this time, the end of the world?”

“I would have thought the title was a dead give away, stupid,” she snorted, throwing herself at him helplessly. “Give it back!”

“How do I know it’s worthy reading material for a young girl your age?”

“It isn’t, that’s the point!”

He laughed, flipping the pages. “Buck Rogers, huh? What sort of name is Buck?”

“His real name is Anthony.” Peggy wasn’t sure how that explained the name “Buck”, but “Anthony” at least sounded a tad more dignified. “And he’s a former soldier and he wakes up in the future in Pennsylvania where everything is ruled by the Chinese, but they have this mad technology that allows them to fly and do all sorts of other things.”

“Imagine if they had suits that let you fly in the future,” Michael mused, flipping to the front cover picture. “A long way off from your knights in shining armor.”

“It’s still an adventure story! Besides, Buck Rogers is rather like a knight, just in the future. He uses his wits and his skills as a soldier to help protect people and save them from what threatens them. But in this future, the women don’t need as much saving, they are warriors too and can fight on their own, thank you very much!”

“Sounds like your ideal,” he teased, continuing to flip through the pages.

The sarcasm in his voice made her frown. “You don’t think I can?”

“Oh, I know you will, Peg!” He spoke with the sort of assurance one might give over the sun rising in the morning or that summer would come every year. “Remember! You and me on adventures to the Amazon or Madagascar, hacking through the jungles of India to find ancient treasure.”

“And save the people from evil sorcerers and kings,” Peggy reminded him. That was a crucial part of the story, after all.

“That too.” He laughed, tossing her back her magazine and using the distraction to succeed in tousling her hair this time. “You and me, brat, off to save England and the empire, eh?”

“Or the world,” she grinned, smoothing out the creases in her now well-worn, pulpy magazine. “You think when you are done with school and all, we can do it? Become adventurers?”

“I’ll be in school a while, you know.” Michael was at Harrow now, their father and uncle's old haunt, and then it would be off to Oxford as was expected. “Maybe by then you’ll be all grown up and not want to go adventuring and fighting evil sorcerers and saving people!”

“I will not!” Peggy quelled at the very idea of ever being that grown up. “I’ll be done with school when you are and we can go out together.”

“Mother won’t think it very lady-like.”

“Hang what she thinks,” Peggy muttered, darkly. “I shan't ever become a respectable lady with garden parties and social teas. And what about you? Are Mother and Papa going to make a boring old barrister out of you someday?”

“I don’t know about that.” Michael was set for the law, that’s what Mother told everyone. Right now, he didn’t argue with her, how could he? Like Peggy, they were at their parents’ mercy for the moment. “Perhaps when we are done with school and free we can go out, travel the world, have mad adventures...just you and me!”

“I like that idea,” Peggy hummed, leaning her dark head against Michael’s shoulder companionably. That Michael could be a monster sometimes was the nature of him being her elder brother, but sometimes he was rather sweet and understanding. “What kind of hero do you want to be?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, picking at a bit of wood mulch to toss across the grass. “Maybe something like St. George or King Arthur, defending England against anyone who dares to attack her. What about you?”

Peggy studied the front of her now much battered magazine. “Maybe something like Wilma Darling in this story. I’d be a woman who learned to fight on her own and could do what it takes to keep the world safe and fight with other people who believe like that. I don’t know, it’s a nice dream, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he agreed, reaching up to tweak a strand of hair, causing her to yelp.

“Margaret? Michael? Where are you two?” Amanda Carter’s voice rang in the garden with the angry force of a field general, betokening horrible things if they didn’t present themselves immediately for duty. Peggy groaned.

“Come on, then, she’s not going to let us get away with just hiding away, now matter how much we may wish it.” Michael stood up, brushing off his trousers before reaching a hand to pluck Peggy up behind him. She tossed her beloved Buck Rogers magazine into her makeshift tent, better to hide it from Mother, before following behind. “Besides, you need to go get primped and pressed to be presentable for company.”

“Blast company,” Peggy snorted, her mind still on her fantastical story. “If I had a flying jetpack I wouldn’t have to be here for tea!”

“And I would get all your portion of cake, which is fine by me!”

“I’d like to see you try,” Peggy crowed, racing ahead of him to her glaring mother, submitting herself to the despair and dismay that went with it, deciding that even if she couldn’t be a knight in shining armor today, lemon cake at least was a temporary balm to her soul. How was little Margaret Carter to know on that June day in 1931 that within two decades she would, like her much adored Anthony Rogers, end up going to a future where men had flying suits, strange floating cities could wage war in the skies, and invaders would threaten everything she loved.

She would not have been surprised by the fact that she was working with one of the few groups who could stop it.

**(The opening paragraph is taken from "Armageddon: 2419" by Philip Francis Noland, which first appeared in Amazing Stories, of August, 1928. This passages is cited from Project Gutenberg on May 23, 2021: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32530/32530-h/32530-h.htm)

Chapter Text

Six months ago, the world had changed forever.

To Peggy Carter the world had changed more times than she could count. When she was only eighteen everything had plummeted into another world war, the second within a generation, sweeping up her entire family and herself with it. The next six years sent her careening from a school girl pulling pranks oh her headmaster, to a code breaker using her keen intellect and skills at recognizing patterns as Bletchley Park, to a spy, first the SOE, then the SSR in America, working side-by-side the likes of Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark. It was how she had met the singular force of nature known as Steve Rogers, how she had been pulled into the orbit of the Howling Commandos. She had fought alongside Captain America and his men, and had earned their respect. But then Steve Rogers gave his life to save the world, and he had taken her own broken heart with him, or so it seemed at first.

But the war ended, and the world shifted again, leaving ruin and chaos in its wake. London, like so much of Europe, was in tatters, a place left in shambles, and no place for a woman of Peggy’s talents. She had taken the offer to go to New York and work, to join the SSR as an investigative agent, despite the ridicule and dismissiveness she knew was coming. Peggy couldn’t say her time in the SSR was good or even easy, frankly she had been resented at nearly every corner. The only ones who hadn’t were Howard Stark, of course, and his faithful butler, Edwin Jarvis, Colonel Phillips, as well as Howling Commandos...and of course, Daniel Sousa, a man she thought she could perhaps build a life with. It was this core group she had turned to when it came time to build SHIELD. For two years, Peggy had bent her energies to the project, had just gotten it off the ground to allow it to soar on its own and then the world turned upside down yet again, all because one day a man with a time travel device arrived and told Peggy that the future needed her.

At the time, Peggy had thought Scott Lang crazy, and in fairness, who wouldn’t? Time machines and aliens, someone named Thanos and half of the population of the entire universe wiped from existence? It all sounded so insane and fantastical, and yet, Scott Lang had told Peggy several key pieces of information...that a group named the Avengers could stop it all, if she came forward with him and managed to keep Howard’s son and Steve Rogers from breaking it all apart. Peggy, recklessly and impetuously agreed to come forward, reasoning to herself that the world and the Avengers would need her. Arriving alone two years before she had planned, she had once again figured out this new world, the new challenges of a life so different than everything she knew before, finding those points of familiarity with it.

She had upended and shifted her life so many times, with every new challenge or calamity, that it seemed only a matter of course adjusting to this new world. She found that despite it all, she still had family - the family of her brother, once believed dead, but whose children and grandchildren now served as Peggy’s connection to this world. She had a place at SHIELD, the agency she had helped to found so long ago. Though she no longer ran the agency, she was responsible for one of the key parts of it, the Avengers, the organization of gifted people who could use their unique talents to help protect Earth, whether they be a god like Thor of Asgard, or the victim of a science experiment, like Dr. Bruce Banner, or particularly deadly and capable operatives, like Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff, the maddening genius of Howard’s son, Tony Stark, or the steady, strategic leadership of Steve. They all played a key role, supported by the likes of Dr. Jane Foster and Dr. Betty Ross. The Avengers were Peggy’s life now, the new focus and goal of her work.

She had picked up and put her life back together again so many times, and each time someone stronger, smarter, more capable came out of the other side. Now, as she sat in a room full of distant monitors, the faces of men and women whom she did not know staring down at her, she pulled herself to her full height as she perched on the edge of her chair, meeting the many-eyed gaze of the World Security Council, unflinching.

“The world is asking pertinent questions,” Peggy tossed to the collective group, particularly to the cool-faced woman who sat as spokeswoman for the council on this meeting. Councilwoman Hawley met Peggy’s disapproving air with unflinching pragmatism, much as she had this entire meeting. “President Ellis has openly threatened to bring up the question before a Joint Session of the UN, and I can’t give him a good reason as to why he shouldn’t. SHIELD launched a nuclear warhead on a sovereign nation at a critical moment when the Avengers were about to handle the situation and stop it, and if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Tony Stark - who might have died in the attempt, I might add - the city of New York and much of the northeastern seaboard of the United States would be devastated right now.”

“A call was made in the moment,” Councilwoman Hawley retorted, firmly and authoritatively, in the same clipped, British public-education tones that Peggy herself had, which was why it hardly phased her.

“It was a horrible call and you all know it now.” Peggy eyed the members on the call. Not all of them had been on the video conference that horrible day earlier in the spring. Peggy could pick out a handful of faces that were, no more. The media was calling it the Battle of New York, a stark name for a horrific moment, and yet it could have gone so much worse. SHIELD had not walked away from that day looking particularly heroic.

Which was why Peggy was here, chastising them all.

“There are many on Capitol Hill right now who are questioning whether or not the United States intelligence apparatus should still continue to keep supporting SHIELD.” She let her gaze slip to Alexander Pierce, the lone other human being in this room. “There are a lot of angry senators and congressmen, many of whom want answers as to why SHIELD, an agency that is supposed to be answering to the United Nations, can work with such carte blanche, and I am telling you that they will want answers as to why.”

Pierce sat with an elbow resting on the arm of his chair, slouched down in thought as he rested his chin on his right knuckles, index finger framing one sun-wrinkled cheek. He was thinking, calculating, ever the careful politician. He nodded, glancing to Hawley and the council on the bevy of monitors. “Carter isn’t wrong. I will call President Ellis and speak with him. I’ll even offer to chat with the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, maybe get the CIA, NSA and FBI heads in there. I can smooth things over, but I will have to give them something for it.”

Hawley pursed her lips in a way that reminded Peggy very much of the sorts of ladies her mother used to have over for tea. “You want Gideon?”

“Malick is the one who called the order,” Pierce replied, equitably, not looking happy with it, but not all together displeased. “Worse, he had the council override Director Fury’s orders and ignored Director Carter’s advice. The Avengers had the situation nearly under control, and if it weren’t for Stark we’d be having a whole other conversation. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here as I’d have been blown up myself.”

His wry smile met the stern faces of the council on the monitors. Clearly, none of them appreciated gallows humor. It hardly seem to bother Pierce, who sat up, pushing himself up from his large, leather seat, away from the table. “Malick has been a liability for a long time. He was against the Avenger Initiative from the beginning, and his stalling tactics nearly cost us what turned out to be our most valuable resource and line of defense.”

“It wasn’t as if we knew that at the time,” Hawley counted, hotly, her mouth turning even more to prunes and prisms. “The entire idea was mad from the beginning. Super heroes? A team of people who can by themselves endanger a city and all of its occupants?”

“As you can see, Councilwoman, that while the city of New York sustained material damage, the populace was evacuated to reduce as many civilian casualties as possible,” Peggy shot back, lifting her chin as she did. “And I would like to note that my team worked closely with the Mayor of New York and his office to manage that extraordinary feat. Evacuating lower Manhattan is no easy task.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” Pierce offered as he strolled behind where Peggy sat. “The Avengers Initiative was never the problem in all of this. It was unorthodox, yes, but it was supposed to be part of a system that worked together. When the other pieces failed, they were our last line of defense. Like it or not, the Avengers did what had to be done and are here to stay. Had the council not been so resistant to it, they could have been even more prepared.”

Peggy glanced around the faces of the council members. She had never met any of them in person, but a few she had seen on other meetings. Some seemed to agree with herself and Pierce, others were more neutral, giving nothing away. Only Hawley still seemed staunchly against it. She intrigued Peggy in her vehemence on the subject. Was it really a fear of the Avengers? A dislike of people with their abilities? Maybe it was just a point of pride after all of this, the sting of being on the losing side of the argument?

“Be that as it may,” Councilwoman Hawley said, pushing the conversation along, ”the Avengers Initiative isn’t what we were here to discuss. Director Carter, do you think that Secretary Pierce’s suggestion regarding Councilman Malick would suffice to appease the United States government?”

“I think it would go a long way to assuring them that the World Security Council and SHIELD can and will be on the same page in the future,” Peggy agreed, though she doubted something as simple as removing one blowhard from the council was going to ease tensions or smooth the feathers of the US intelligence and military establishment. “As for rebuilding trust, that will take more than removing Malick from the roster.”

“I believe I can discuss that with them,” Pierce cut in, assuringly. “Matt Ellis and I are old friends, pledged the same fraternity, though...I have a few years on him.”

His self-deprecating smile encompassed the monitors and the people on them, some who smiled back, others who at least appreciated Pierce’s efforts to cut the tension. He could play to a room, that much was clear. It was an impressive skill set, especially in dealing with the fractions and quarrelsome lot that composed the World Security Council. He had a deft hand and he displayed it as he paced back to his chair with the sort of humble aura of a well-worn statesman

“My suggestion to all of you is to let me handle the politics here.” Pierce’s worn, affable gaze lingered longest on Hawley. “The decisions this body made crossed a lot of lines and you don’t fix that in a day. SHIELD is meant to be a global protection body and this council overstepped that mandate and nearly cost a lot of lives. You all will have some explaining to do to your own home governments, I am sure.”

More than a few of the members shifted in their seats. Even Councilwoman Hawley looked discomfited. Perhaps she had been having those conversations with Downing Street already. Peggy felt it probably would do the old hag good, but kept her expression as even as she could manage.

“If there is nothing else?” Pierce glanced around the council members, most who shook their heads. Hawley murmured a "no" so cold it was a wonder her monitor didn’t freeze.

“Wonderful! I will give my report of my meetings as soon as I can.” With that, Pierce made his goodbyes, flicking a few keys on the keyboard at the table, the screens flicking off at once, turning black enough to reflect the site of New York, and specifically Stark Tower, in the distance.

“Well, they managed to fuck that up!” Pierce didn’t mince words as he threw himself into the leather chair again, rubbing lightly at his graying temples under what had been strawberry blonde hair. “God almighty, how the hell they managed that…”

“I was there,” Peggy reminded Pierce, quietly, remembering all too well the awful moment six months before. “Fury refused the order, Malick forced the issue. You know in the investigation, the SHIELD officer responsible for executing the order said it was Councilwoman Hawley who did it.”

“I know, but Malick was the easier target.” Pierce rolled his head against the leather seat, regarding Peggy evenly. “She threw him under the bus so fast, they hadn’t even started clean up on the site before she was turning on him. I think once it became clear that you and Nick were right and the Avengers had handled the situation, she realized just how much egg she had on her face and knew Malick was an easy pawn to take all the blame.”

As disgusting as Peggy found it, she couldn’t say that Hawley didn’t have a point. “Rats fleeing the sinking ship and all that. Do they even realize the situation that SHIELD and the World Security Council is even sitting in right now? I had the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff screaming at me two weeks ago about protocols and procedures and rules of engagement. I didn’t point out to him I was in fact fighting wars before he was even a spark in his father’s eye. I believe that would have just made it all too awkward.”

“A bit,” Pierce agreed, chuckling. “The thing is the World Security Council will never admit that they were wrong or just how wrong they were.”

Peggy sighed, unsure as to whether she wanted to laugh or scream. “Is this what SHIELD has become, then? A bunch of politicians busy trying to save their own arses while they watch the world burn?”

For his part, Pierce seemed sympathetic. “Not precisely what you and Howard had envisioned, hmm?”

“Not at all.” She pushed back from the table, turning her own leather chair to face the Secretary of the World Security Council. For all that he was physically older, he was technically younger than Peggy by fifteen years. He’d barely become a teenager when she and Howard had founded the organization he now sat as head of.

“You know, the real impetus for SHIELD was born because of this sort of mindset.” Peggy frowned at the now blank screens, a wall of dark glass, black and empty. “We had grown up in the aftermath of the first world war, when national interests overrode common sense and thousands of young men died marching to the drum of national pride, only to watch it happen all over again with the second world war. The idea had been that if we could take the weapons out of the hands of those placing nation before global existence, we could prevent those things from happening again. Now, I have to wonder if that wasn’t a rather huge mistake.”

“I don’t know,” Pierce drawled, regarding her from the depths of his chair. “You missed out on all the middle part where the two most powerful nations in the world still growled at each other and threatened annihilation while SHIELD stood in the middle, trying to keep them apart.”

“I suppose I did.” Peggy frowned, picking up a pen to twiddle briefly against her notepad. “The world has changed since then, too, a few different times. Now we are facing much larger threats, ones that require deftness and agility to handle. You can’t just point a bomb at everything and call it good.”

“I don’t disagree. A new kind of threat requires a new kind of weapon to handle it. The Avengers handled Loki well enough.”

Peggy snorted, conceding the point while acknowledging it had been a near thing. “The World Security Council will continue to fight that as much as they can, to put hampers and oversights on the team. They can’t work that way.”

He frowned at her, a mild scowl in his weathered face. “Are you suggesting that the Avengers not be under SHIELD’s control?”

“Not quite,"Peggy hedged, carefully. "After all, I’ve been insisting to the President, US Senate, and their military that SHIELD is still important and that the Avengers need to continue to be under SHIELD’s purview to have international oversight. We can’t bloody well let the United States have sole control over them or anyone else.”

She paused, considering. She had a gambit, one six months in the making that she had been holding in her pocket with the hopes that the timing would be right to present it to the World Security Council. Given their mood of late - feeling attacked and penned in by a rightfully outraged United States - she had refrained. But if there was ever a time, now was it.

“There is an idea that I have been working on with Tony Stark,” she pressed, reaching for her briefcase. “Fury knows of it, and I will say he is no fan of it, but he recognizes it may come down to this. I said I would run it by you and the Security Council.”

She pulled out a neatly collated file, put together by someone at Stark Industries and emblazoned with its logo on the front. With it she had what everyone called a thumb drive, a ridiculous name for a bit of technology she found fascinating, able to store files on its digital memory. She passed both over the dark varnished oak table to Pierce. He reached for them curiously, slipping on his glasses with his other hand as he read the label on the front. “A collaboration with Stark Industries?”

“It’s an idea,” she replied, leaning against the table as he scanned quickly through the prospectus in the front. “We both know the World Security Council is never going to agree to fully fund the Avengers, not at the levels we are proposing here. To make them a team, to give them what they need, they will need a lot of money and a singular focus. Stark is willing to do that.”

“Gets out of making weapons and instead being the weapon?” Pierce arched a grizzled eyebrow over her thick rimmed glasses.

“For Stark that is a positive step, he now cares about who has control of the weapons and where they get pointed.” There had been a time in Stark’s life when he hadn’t. “He will foot a large portion of the bill and in exchange SHIELD will maintain oversight on objectives and work directly with the Avengers in terms of intelligence and security threats. You have to admit this solves one of the biggest problems we had six months ago. If the Avengers have a space to themselves, a facility and a team dedicated to seeing that they are prepared, this makes them more able to handle the threats that come our way.”

Pierce was listening as he continued to scan, nodding as he pulled on his chin thoughtfully. He was long moments before answering, meeting Peggy’s eye. “You aren’t wrong, neither of you are, but I’ll have to think on it, maybe float it by some of the council members who aren’t pissed as hell right now. Honestly, most of them will likely hate it.”

“Which is why Fury said I should come to you first.” She shot him a dry smirk. “I wasn’t ever precisely a political creature, though I was a very talented spy. Perhaps, had I stayed and not come to the future, I might have been more capable in handling politicians with conflicting interests. But you have straddled both the worlds of global intelligence and politics. If you approve of our plans you are the only one who could convince the World Security Council to consider it.”

“Such confidence!” He snorted, slightly, chuckling. “But you aren’t wrong. I can keep this, I assume?”

Peggy nodded, relieved he would consider it. Fury had been confident he would, but after the last scene with Hawley and the World Security Council, she hadn’t been sure. “Of course, we are happy to answer questions as you have them.”

“Stark’s team is fairly thorough, but if I have them, I will ask.” He pushed himself up from his seat, gathering papers and files to tuck into his own briefcase, including the file she had just given him. “I hear he is much like Howard in that he thinks so big he has to hire people to think of the details and minutia for him, and he doesn’t settle for second best.”

“No, that he doesn’t.” Peggy thought of the inimitable Pepper Potts. As Pierce gathered his things she rose herself, tucking away what little she had out as she considered the bank of screens. “Do they understand, do you think, just how much the world has changed since that day?”

Pierce paused, looking at her mildly. “Since aliens made themself readily apparent for all the world to see?”

Peggy nodded. “This isn’t just a matter of shooting them before they can get us. There are whole civilizations out there, people...I know that SHIELD was aware of it, I’ve spoken to Maria Rambeau at SWORD. The Avengers are needed, yes, but not everything out there is a threat. Do they have a plan for what steps we as a planet will even take? Can even take?”

Pierce looked as if he hadn’t even considered the question himself. “I mean...the idea that aliens are real was something most of them became aware of the minutes they joined this council. But thinking of other civilizations much beyond that, I don’t know if they have. Why? Is Thor offering some sort of alliance with Asgard?”

“No,” Peggy assured him. “Well, not outside of his own personal protection. He will be here on Earth more often, I believe, but I think that will just be on his own and not at the behest of King Odin.”

“You do know how strange it is to hear you speak about Odin as a foreign dignitary we need to have diplomatic arrangements with.”

“Not nearly as strange as being caught in a battle with an alien army because of an Asgardian family quarrel. That they are the gods from legend is strange, yes, but they are real and here, and they aren’t the only ones in the universe, or so Director Rambeau has told me.”

Pierce mulled that for a long moment. “You know, when I was a kid, the biggest thing I had to wrap my head around was the idea of a super soldier with a shield. Who knew I would be seriously talking about how to approach alien peoples about mutual security interests?”

“If it makes you feel any better I am in the same exact place you are. I still remember when Limburg was the greatest feat of air travel out there, and now Tony Stark can do that in a metal suit.” If she had told her younger self that years ago when she was little more than a skinned-knee hellion hiding from her mother in the back garden, Peggy doubted she would have ever believed it. “Thank goodness I am adaptable.”

“Which is why you heading up the Avengers is what we need.” Pierce made to leave, waiting to walk with Peggy out of the council meeting room. “Nick can’t give them the full attention they need. You can. I know this is why you found yourself in this time, but I have to say it, we didn’t know we needed you on this initiative, and as it turns out, we do. Without you, the Avengers would be a side project and ignored, left to their own devices.”

Peggy shuddered to think what would happen had this been left for Fury alone to manage, particularly the very different personalities of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. “I will do my best to keep them together.”

“See that you do.” He held a hand out to her for a perfunctory farewell shake before patting his suitcase. “I’ll read this over the weekend and tell you what I think.”

“Thank you.” She watched Pierce go, already pulling out his phone as he checked messages, an assistant gliding in from the lounge area, reviewing other business with him as he bustled to what Peggy guessed was to a flight to DC and the main SHIELD headquarters there.

As for herself…

She glanced out of the large glass windows that made up the curtain wall of the UN compound. On one side was the East River, Queens and Roosevelt Island, but on the other, mere blocks away, stood the edifice that was Stark Tower. Like most of the buildings in the area, it was currently surrounded by construction cranes, replacing glass on the outside. All of the letters that had once made up the name “Stark” on the outside were now removed, they had been destroyed in the Chitauri invasion. What was going to go up in their place now remained a mystery.

“I suppose I should go bother him,” Peggy murmured, more to herself, as she looped a thumb around the strap over her shoulder.

Chapter Text

The area around Grand Central Station was still a construction nightmare even six months on. Nearly every building down Park Avenues along the corridor that ran up to Stark Tower had been ravaged by Chitauri weaponry and National Guard artillery, the battle having raged in the streets where civilians normally lived, worked, and wandered. It had taken weeks to simply remove the debris from the streets, and some areas, like Grand Central, wouldn’t be open for months still.

Stark Tower, surprisingly wasn’t one of them. Despite the fact that it had been the central focus of the attack by the Asgardian God of Mischief, Loki, the damage to the building itself was relatively minor, nearly all of it confined to the upper most floors, while the lower floors still carried on the day-to-day business of Stark Industries in New York. Peggy side-stepped one busy office worker with an SI badge on managing a tray of steaming, frothy looking coffees as she stepped in through the door, waving her SHIELD credentials at the security guard on duty. He nodded with the briefest of recognizing smiles, Director Peggy Carter of SHIELD being a familiar enough sight on the premises in the last six months that not even the receptionist blinked as Peggy sailed by to the banks of elevators and called the one that lead to the floors under the heaviest construction upstairs.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jarvis,” Peggy said crisply as she stepped in, the dust of construction materials evident on the carpet of the lift carriage.

“Good afternoon, Miss Carter.” Stark’s artificial intelligence was his ever smooth, polite self, as he was with most everyone who addressed him. But with Peggy - truly, with anyone that the AI had gotten to know well, especially his creator, Stark - there was always a certain warmth in the AI’s generated voices. “How was your meeting with the World Security Council?”

“Tedious, as expected. How is Mr. Stark today?”

There was the slightest hint of hesitation as the AI seemed to consider. “He’s...testy today.”

The AI’s word choice left Peggy arching one delicate eyebrow curiously towards the ceiling. “Testy?”

“I believe you’ll see when you speak to him. He has spent most of it in the lab with Dr. Banner.”

“Well, that’s good I suppose. It gives him something to focus on.”

Whether because he was dubious on Peggy’s statement or because the lift car had come to a stop, JARVIS didn’t choose to comment as the doors opened onto one of the Research and Development floors. Stark Industries main facilities were actually in Los Angeles, in a large, sprawling complex near the heart of the city’s aerospace industry. But it was the main production facility for the company and not well suited for the sort of smaller projects and speculative research that happened in the Stark Tower labs. These were the type of things that were pushing the edge of the technological future, or so Peggy had been told, things that might one day turn into future projects for the company. Their intellicrops had first been researched here, as had much of their robotic work and pieces of their telecommunications software, all before being approved and farmed out to one of SI’s many labs and facilities across the world. But it was one area of the lab that was special and sacred, and that was the part Peggy made her way to at the moment - the part that Tony Stark had claimed as his own.

Peggy couldn’t figure out if it was out of respect by the other scientists and engineers on staff there or just simply self-preservation that kept most everyone out of Tony Stark’s way. For a certainty, it wasn’t his only lab, as he had one in his Malibu home that was his truly favorite lair, but this one was his home away from home. She was unsurprised to see him inside of it as she peeked through the glass windows, hunched in a chair as he studied whatever simulation was dancing across his computer monitor, a finger running along one cheek as the rest of his fingers propped up his chin. He was deep in thought, oblivious to the quietly working Bruce Banner in his own corner, typing away as he glanced over the top of his eyeglasses at whatever he was working on.

“Deep in thought, gentlemen?” Peggy broke the silence softly, but she might as well have dropped an entire tray of flasks in the quiet, causing them both to jump. Stark in particular looked as if she fired off a gun as they both turned to her with identical looks of wide-eyed shock.

“Jesus, Peggy, could you, I don’t know, bother to knock?” Stark was irritable as he clutched the arc reactor in his chest dramatically.

“I could but I figured the security doors and Mr. Jarvis’ announcement would have heralded my coming.” She snorted, wandering to a lab table to deposit her briefcase and handbag, taking off her old-fashioned red Stetson hat - she indulged given the crisp, autumn day outside - and setting it on top. “What has got the pair of you so in depth into your research that I could have dropped a bomb in here and neither of you would have noticed?”

Stark flinched but said nothing as he stood and stretched, clearly having been sitting there a while. “Just...some armor upgrades, trying out some different things.”

“The usual,” Banner shrugged, offering her a somewhat apologetic half-smile. “I may pick your brain later, actually. Tony ran across some of his father’s old notes, Betty and I are cross-referencing them against Erskine’s work and the notes that the army had on the serum. Maybe you can help us parse through some of Erksine’s stuff.”

“Whatever I can do to help,” Peggy offered, with all the reassurance she could muster for Banner’s quest to find a solution for the Jekyll and Hyde like existence he currently lived in. “Was Jane able to connect with you? She said something about some strange readings she was getting on some of her equipment.”

“Yeah, took a look at that this morning. SWORD seemed to think that everything was within normal levels, no alien invasions or cosmic crisis, but you know, am keeping an eye on it.” Banner waved a mild hand to a bank of monitors to his left. “I mean, considering last time someone decided to do something funky in the sky it ended up with a battle in the streets downstairs, I figure it’s an Avengers thing that we keep an eye on it.”

“Yeah, well, guarding the Earth and all that,” Stark cut in, jumping on Banner’s words with an impatience that surprised both Peggy and Banner. “Anyway, weren’t you off meeting with the World Suckage Council or some such?”

His puerile insult effectively shifted the subject as Peggy nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I just got out of a meeting with them. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of finger pointing, no accountability, and they are throwing Gideon Malick under for it, though frankly he wasn’t alone in the decision. SHIELD’s credibility with the global intelligence and military network is on a knife’s edge and they think that they can get away with simply tossing off the loudest member and that will somehow make it all better.”

“In fairness, he was a dick,” Stark offered by way of a silver lining. “I mean, he hated the Avengers in the first place.”

Banner frowned into middle-space with a bemused smirk. “Wasn’t he the one who likened me to an uncontrolled beast who should be put down and then buried in a vault under the ocean?”

“How would even you even put a vault under the ocean,” Stark followed up, quizzically. “And if you were dead, why would you need a vault?”

“I don’t know, maybe to make a lab experiment out of me?”

“That’s what he’s got Blonsky for, right?”

“Who is technically not his to play with, he’s the US Army’s,” Peggy interjected before the pair could go down that rabbit hole too much further. “My bigger point is that there is a bigger issue with the World Security Council and their decision to override Fury’s order. I’ve had everyone from the President to some senator from Kentucky screaming at me in the last few months, meanwhile the council is still unwilling to fund and fully support the Avengers Initiative.”

Both men exchanged a glance, but it was Stark who shrugged, carefully avoiding Peggy’s gaze as he picked up some random tool on his desk to twiddle with, a nervous habit of his she had noticed. “So...what does this mean for our plans? Did you bring up the proposal?”

“Not to the council, no, they were far more concerned with making nice with the country that is their biggest supporter rather than managing the very thing that saved this planet from almost certain doom.” Sarcasm dripped off her words, her feelings on the council clear. “I did pass the file on to Alexander Pierce, however, who is going to look at it.”

“And you trust this Alexander Pierce to give us due consideration and not try to railroad us into SHIELD’s personal, super-powered monkey squad?” Banner, ever dubious of authority figures for obvious reasons, had been vocal on his doubts about SHIELD’s continued oversight of the Avengers.

“I don’t know if trust is the right word, but Fury believes in Alexander Pierce, as much as Fury believes in anyone, I suppose. Besides, he stands outside of the Council in many ways and while he’s subject to their authority, he has a lot of sway and influence to get things done. Besides, he’s the one who has to cover for them with all of the US intelligence and military brass, after that, they will owe him for pulling their fat out of the fire.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Stark agreed, readily...very readily for him. “I mean, I don’t trust Fury further than I can throw him, but I trust his judgement far more than a group of people who fired a nuclear missile at my ass.”

With that he threw himself away from his monitor, restless once more, wandering across his lab to a kitchen in the corner, perusing a small refrigerator of drinks. “Either of you want anything? Energy drink, soda, canned iced tea? I know that’s right up your alley, Aunt Peggy.”

She snorted, recognizing he was deliberately trying to tease her. “Why you drink such an abomination, I will never know.”

“It’s not so bad. I like the green tea ones,” Bruce offered, mildly, nodding as Stark held one up. “So what is the deal for now, boss? Continue working as we are?”

“For now.” That was the question, wasn’t it? What did the Avengers do when the world wasn’t in dire crises? “I imagine once our role is more finalized with SHIELD and the UN we will have more specific tasks that they will ask us to fulfill. Till then, continue our good work?”

“Well, some of our good work,” Stark snorted, passing Peggy a bottled water, which she took gratefully. “What is it that your soldier boy is up to again?”

“Steve’s working with Agent Romanoff,” Peggy replied, knowing full well Stark was aware of it. She didn’t miss the mild disapproval that flickered for a moment. “In fact I will be offline for most of the weekend. I’m heading down to Washington DC tomorrow to help move him into his new apartment and to visit my family while down there.”

“You just got him back and you are kicking him out already?” Stark was clearly far more interested in discussing her love life than the Avengers, perking up like a gossiping old woman at the idea. “What, trouble in paradise? Does he leave his socks all over the place? Does he lock himself away in his mancave and ignore you for days on end.”

“I think you are confusing Steve Rogers for yourself,” Peggy shot back tartly, earning a snort from Bruce across the lab.

“She’s not lying,” he shrugged at Stark’s vaguely injured and highly insulted glare, smirking. “I mean, just seeing you and Pepper, that is.”

“This coming from the man who literally ran away from his fiancée because of his anger issues.” Stark’s comeback was prompt and barbed, making even Peggy wince. Thankfully, Bruce was better tempered than Peggy was, as he cracked open his can of tea and pulled from it, ignoring Stark’s burst of petulance.

Cutting into the charged atmosphere, Peggy decided to return to the subject at hand. “Anyway, no, I’m not ‘kicking him out.’ We discussed it. This is a new world for both of us, but him especially. I’ve had two years to adapt, to learn the layout as it were and catch up on my skills. Steve hasn’t. He needs training to catch up. What’s more, Romanoff is without a partner at the moment, Barton is on leave and will be for some time yet. Working with the SHIELD STRIKE teams will give him some experience in modern hand-to-hand and tactical techniques and allow him to gain knowledge and insight into the modern geo-political landscape. Besides, he doesn’t have an issue with working with spies.”

She meant the last piece to refer to her, of course, but it only made Stark roll his eyes. “Yeah, because Captain America is well-known for being a man who works well in gray areas. Tell me again how much espionage he did during the war?”

Stark was determined to snipe at everything today, wasn’t he? Peggy narrowed her gaze. “Is there a reason you are being so contradictory today?”

He looked as if it was the first time anyone had ever accused him of that. “I’ve been perfectly pleasant all day till just now, thank you.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Peggy could see Banner arch an eyebrow over his glasses, a silent challenge to Stark’s assessment of his behavior. She swallowed an internal sigh. Stark had been increasingly more...touchy? Perhaps disconnected was a better word. She had noted it more and more, a certain harsh undercurrent to his snappy comebacks and his sarcastic observations, a propensity to use his cutting sense of humor to put distance between himself and others. He’d always had that habit, at least from what Pepper Potts and James Rhodes had told her, but it was particularly nasty at the moment. Certainly, it was getting worse. And if he thought she couldn’t see the dark circles under his eyes or the way he looked as if he hadn’t seen a proper minute of downtime in months, then he was an idiot.

Now was not the time to poke the bear, however. “Anyway, he will be working with Natasha and he will have a place down there for now. It will be good for him, allow him some space to wrap his head around the new world he’s in, give him some time to sift through his own thoughts. He’s barely had a moment for that since he woke up.”

“And how do you really feel about his, Margaret Carter,” Stark persisted, dark eyes gleaming with equal parts curiosity and worry. “You okay with him being down there alone?”

They had discussed it a great deal, she and Steve, before he had agreed to anything. “I think so. After all, our relationship has survived seven decades with him in the ice. What’s a couple of hundred miles in this modern world? A train ride away, less time on a plane, During the war we were entire continents away at times. Besides, isn’t that the way of modern relationships, the ability to be long distance as needed. How often are you in Malibu when Pepper is out here and vice versa, and you still are managing to make a go of it.”

She felt more than saw Bruce’s subtle reaction again, though Stark seemed oblivious to it as he frowned in a non-committal sort of way. “Yeah, I mean...we are. Just, you know, we get so busy we lose track of days, have to schedule one another, which is sad in that sort of stuck up, corporate, white-priveleged elite sort of way. Maybe I should just retire!”

He gave his last pronouncement with the air of wishful thinking, like someone who just wished to go to Mars or visit Neverland. It was a bit ridiculous, even to Peggy. In all the many years she had known Starks they weren’t exactly prone to just walking away and leading quiet lives. “And do what?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, sipping from his ridiculously named energy drink. “Pepper keeps carrying on about owning a farm, or at least a house with enough land so she can get into organic gardening. Grow...I don’t know, tomatoes and pumpkins or something. She could work from home most days, I could putter, lead a quiet, simple life.”

“And what is simply for a man who is one of the richest in the world,” Bruce asked, quietly. After all, he was a man who had been forced to give up everything. He knew a thing or two about simple.

“A day when I don’t have to worry that someone is going to do something to cause the end of the world?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Peggy mused, perhaps a bit sarcastically, unfairly so. After all, for the likes of Tony and Bruce, born at the tail end of a war they neither remembered well, their entire childhood and young adulthood had been one long era of peace punctuated by only small incursions of military actions. For Peggy, it felt as if her entire life had been drawn out through one conflict after another.

“Yeah,” Stark drawled, softly, something fleeting for a moment in his dark gaze, disappearing with a shrug and a warning look. “Anyway, all that to say that doing the long distance thing won’t be easy for either of you.”

“No one said it was.” Frankly, Peggy rather dreaded it. For the better part of the last year she had Steve Rogers back and all to herself, with no war, no missions, no conflicts to separate them. It was...rather perfect. Still, as her mother used to say, distance could make the heart fonder. They had already been through so much, what was New York to Washington DC?

“You know that look on your face right now is downright disgusting and I felt you really needed to know that.”

Peggy glared at Stark’s impudent grin.

“He’s right, you know,” Bruce called, good-naturedly. “I mean you two moon at each other when you standing right in front of each other, the fact you do it when he isn’t around…”

“Hey, Bruce, you ever hear the old Captain America radio shows, with the nurse, Betty Carver?”

If looks could kill, Stark arc reactor would have failed in his chest. “Don’t you dare! I am not that...insipid.”

“What, you don’t even bat your lashes a little?”

Peggy resisted the urge to throw a metal tray at him. “I’m leaving. Call me if you need anything. I’ll see you both next week. Maybe one of you will have learned some manners.”

“If my mother coudn’t manage it, I’m a lost cause,” Stark called out to Peggy’s retreating back, delighting in it, frankly. Peggy silently blessed the memory of Maria Stark. Peggy had known both Starks now. One Stark at a time was hard enough to handle. Two would have been madness. especially one who was being deliberately agitating and cutting…

Quietly, she pulled out her phone, sending a message to Banner to keep her informed on Stark’s behavior. She waited till it went through before she stepped towards the elevator banks, one opening for her automatically, clearly the ever efficient handiwork of JARVIS.

“Mr. Jarvis,” she intoned as she stepped inside. “Has Mr. Stark been more...distant of late?”

The AI was quiet for a long moment. “Mr. Stark has been going through a period of lack of sleep. I believe his dreams trouble him. Insomnia is not uncommon with him, but he is spending a good deal of time in his lab developing new and different suits.”

Peggy frowned at that news. “Does Pepper know about this?”

“I am programmed to give information on Mr. Stark when asked, not to volunteer it.”

“She’s yet to ask.” She sighed. Should she say something to her? “If you could, Mr. Jarvis, keep an eye on him for me. If it gets to be alarming, let me know. I can speak with Pepper.”

“I will do my best within my protocols, Miss Carter.”

“Thank you,” Peggy murmured as the doors opened once again. The world had changed in the last six months...and not all of it was for the better.

Chapter Text

“You know, for a guy who has been dead for nearly seventy years, you have a lot of stuff!”

Steve Rogers pointedly ignored the dry wit of Natasha Romanoff and only grunted as he manhandled the armchair into the door with the sort of ease that left the attending professional movers awed and startled. One of them even clapped. Peggy, standing in the shelter of her niece, Sharon Carter’s apartment doorway, only shook her head with a fond roll of her eyes, watching the love of her life stubbornly refuse all assistance in carrying the chair to precisely where he wanted inside of his new apartment, the first he had since his bachelor pad with Bucky Barnes decades ago.

“Did they get that ugly chair in?” Sharon passed her a coffee mug, sipping briefly from her own.

“It’s not so bad,” Peggy defended mildly, having helped to pick out the chair and feeling somewhat nettled by her niece’s criticism of it. “Besides, Steve likes it!”

“This is the man with firmly mid-century taste.” This coming from a woman currently dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt for some musical group that Peggy, still new to the popular culture of the twenty-first century, was unaware of.

“One could say my tastes are that as well, though I suppose I can’t say I have any one style I like. After all, I hardly decorated the place I have now, that was all SHIELD.” Peggy had been given her high-end, sophisticated, highly technological Manhattan flat had been given to her by SHIELD, the nicest in the building full of agents who lived and worked in the city, or who at least used it for a home base when passing through. While she enjoyed her own home a great deal and had grown rather comfortable with it, it wasn’t one she had picked out, decorated, or had made into her own.

Sharon bobbed her head, her blonde ponytail swinging. “SHIELD does have good taste. I’m jealous of your apartment.”

“I think that was mostly Cassandra. She was the one in charge of those things at the time, and she took me to the place.” Peggy thought of her right hand, Cassandra Kam, the person who kept her sane most days. She had met the young agent on one of her first days in this new time, tasked by Maria Hill to help Peggy acclimate in this new world. She’d made fast friends with the young woman as she learned the ropes and eventually stole Cassandra to work with her on the Avengers. Peggy didn’t know how she could have made it through the last two-and-a-half years without the pragmatic, sensible, efficient Cassandra there to help.

“Is she still basking in that post-engagement glow?” Sharon grinned, waggling her own naked left hand by way of emphasis.

“Honestly she will kill someone with that diamond the way she flings her hand about. She nearly caught Julio’s eye with it the other day.” Peggy was teasing, of course. She couldn’t have been more thrilled that Cassandra had finally officially decided to marry her long-time partner, David. It was a decision that was not wholly unexpected, but was delightful nonetheless. “She’s happy, and I’m happy for her.”

“And you and Steve aren’t…” Sharon’s arched eyebrow finished off the question she had left dangling in the air.

“He’s still adjusting to this world,” Peggy protested, mildly, despite her cheeks flushing with her answer. “After all, cellular phones are still rather new to him.”

“And he’s partnering with Romanoff?” She eyed the pair working in the other apartment. Tall and serum enhanced Steve was easily managing the heavy chair that required two of the movers to get it up the stairs, Romanoff following with the cushions, chattily offering him advice on windows with optimal sunlight and eye lines to see what was coming at you.

Peggy shrugged. “I think it will be good for him. She’s more of this generation, so are you. I certainly am not. The two of us trying to piece together how to maneuver this strange future of yours is rather like the blind leading the blind. At least with him working with Natasha, and you down the hall, he won’t be so alone.”

Sharon was quiet for a long moment beside her. “You’re worried.”

Peggy masked the truth of her niece’s statement behind a chuckle. “Of course I am! After all, I dragged him into all this.”

“Is it that, or is it that you just got him back and you really are terrified that the minute you don’t have eyes on him he will disappear into a puff of smoke?”

If Peggy had any doubt about Sharon’s Carter pedigree, which at this point she didn’t, her on-the-nose observation fully underscored it. “You didn’t have to be that accurate.”

“Sorry, didn’t realize you were still in the denial stage of your anxiety.” Sharon was hardly apologetic. “Honestly, the man fought Nazis, HYDRA and aliens, and you think a few spies are going to terrify him?”

“No,” Peggy admitted, wishing things like anxiety had any rhyme or reason. “I just...worry.”

“I know.” Her niece nudged her shoulder gently with her own. “But hey, Mom and Dad are thrilled you will be down more often, though in fairness I think Dad is more excited about Steve. In his seventies and he still worships his childhood action hero. It’s kind of cute.”

“Don’t you have a DVD collection of a TV show based off me?”

Sharon was hardly ashamed of that fact. “I didn’t say I wasn’t a hypocrite, only that Dad was cute. He and Steve can go and be old fogies together!”

Peggy had to admit, the image of her nephew, Harrison, bending Steve’s ear as they discussed things the younger generations couldn’t care less about was rather amusing. “Your father has to despair of you.”

“Sometimes,” she admitted, grinning broadly. It stopped short, however, as she seemed to mull something for the briefest of moments. “If you got a minute, I was wondering if I could have you take a look at something for me.”

Peggy eyed the activity of men carrying boxes of newly purchased housewares and furniture into the apartment. Steve, true to his nature, could be heard marshaling the efforts like they were the Commandos out in the field. She doubted she would be missed. “What do you have?”

Sharon motioned her to follow into her apartment. It was a cozy place, one that Peggy had been to many times, simple in its decor, but no different than any other apartment belonging to a young, female working professional in Washington DC. It was still a far cry from the sort of boarding rooms that women like Sharon would have been expected to live in the 1940s, the time period Peggy had come up through the ranks. Sharon’s entire apartment took up the space of three rooms at the Griffith, which was just as well. Peggy knew about the secret compartments her niece had put into her ceiling, closets, and her spare bedroom containing extra weapons, supplies, and all the tools an operative for SHIELD would need in a pinch. Sharon was, when it was all said and done, still a spy.

“Let me pull it up.” Sharon waved to her soft, pillow covered couch. Peggy settled with easy familiarity as Sharon grabbed her encrypted laptop from off her work area, bringing it over the coffee table and turning on her television to project the images.

“I’ve been working on a case,” she began, pulling up files and images, blowing them up large enough for Peggy to see. They were explosion sites, horrific blast zones littered with charred and twisted metal and broken, blasted concrete, whole buildings crumbling as if hit by bombs. Peggy blinked at the images in horrified curiosity. One appeared to be a random building somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia. Another was clearly a US military facility. A third was in a more lush, tropical area, perhaps Africa, perhaps South America, perhaps Southeast Asia. All of them looked as if a small localized bomb of magnificent capacity had gone off.

“Terrorists,” she asked, more conversationally than with any certainty.

“Looks like it,” Sharon replied, pulling up dossiers on her computer. “Three separate bombs, three different targets, all the same explosion signature.”

“What type of bomb,” Peggy asked, scanning through the descriptions briefly, stricken by the results.

“That is unknown. The explosions are destructive, very destructive, but relatively self-contained. It has the sort of power we have seen in nuclear bomb sites, and yet it only seems as big as a standard terrorist explosive. And here is where it gets creepy…”

She highlighted a passage of one report from a US military facility. Peggy squinted as she read it, trying to make sense of it.

“What do they mean that the explosive used is unidentifiable?”

“Just that,” Sharon replied, her frown returning. “Now you see why I asked you in. The US Army has run it through every protocol and have found nothing. Whatever it is causing these explosions, it isn’t something that anyone has seen before.”

The idea of an agent in the hands of an unknown terrorist with the capability to unleash it in this way was utterly terrifying. “Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

“For the initial one, at first, no. It was in Afghanistan, out at a base there, and frankly it could have been anyone. It wasn’t till the second one, at a place in the Philippines, that the name of the Mandarin started popping up in connection with both it and the first one. This last one was at a facility in Texas, and in less than three days intelligence chatter already attributed it to him. Now, it’s becoming a thing.”

Peggy would own she didn’t quite have all the nuances of the current global political situation, not like Sharon would, but she did understand enough to know the basic contours of what appeared to be an ongoing political and cultural conflict, the fall out of the Cold War and decades of Western policy in countries big and small. “Who is the Mandarin?”

“You remember the Ten Rings, right? The group who kidnapped Stark?”

Peggy remembered well. “Barton dug into them in Afghanistan. He seemed confident they were one of several local groups all vying to fill the power vacuum in the area.”

Sharon nodded, setting aside her laptop on her coffee table and leaning into the cushions of her couch. “He wasn’t wrong, but the Ten Rings are more complex than that. They are more of a terrorism collective, if you will, part network, part franchise, almost. People can tap into the organization and get training, recruit followers, get assistance and funding, and then create their own cells where they wish. The one in Afghanistan was one such, but there are others. We only know of a few cells, most are way deeper underground. The Mandarin is the name of the man who supposedly controls all of them.”

“Supposedly?” Peggy quirked an eyebrow, intrigued. “Who is he?”

“We don’t know much. He was a myth and legend, really, before this. When he turned up, he was still more a mystery figure than anything substantive. The only way he even came up through chatter was almost through a viral campaign on known deep web sites used by organizations like the Ten Rings. Even then it’s even odds if this man is real or if this is just part of a marketing strategy on the Ten Rings part.”

“Terrorists marketing themselves?”

Sharon snorted. “Everyone does now, even terrorism. Anyway, this got kicked around and landed on my desk. No one else has ideas, so, I thought I’d check it out.”

“Really,” Peggy eyed the television screen and the dossiers on it, briefly. “And you just...happened to want to ask me about it?”

“Well, you were here, and you have a brain for investigating things…”

Peggy could sense her nice hedging. “You said no one identified the explosive material used.”

Sharon at least had enough grace to look somewhat guilty. “Yeah…”

“You suspect it is Stark’s?”

Sharon held up a defensive hand at Peggy’s stormy expression. “I’m not saying it is, but it is odd that the very organization that kidnapped him, tortured him, and then tried to force him into making weapons for them would then turn around and develop a weapon no one understands.”

“He isn’t making weapons now.”

“No, but he was making them for a long time and Obadiah Stane was selling them to the Ten Rings for a long time. I am just wondering if it was possible his company developed something that got out, maybe something he doesn’t remember or that he didn’t know about.”

“Sharon…” Peggy’s sigh was long and pained.

“Give me some credit, Peggy, I wouldn’t have jumped to this out of nowhere!”

She was right, of course she was, it was a logical conclusion to leap to. Sharon had no way of knowing just now touchy of a subject that was, especially with Stark’s most recent snappish behavior. “You know how he feels about these things.”

“I know, but it’s a part of his past. Everyone has to reckon with theirs.”

She wasn’t wrong. “You and I both know that isn’t Stark’s style.”

Sharon shrugged. “Who else can I ask?”

The obvious answer hit Peggy about the same time as Natasha Romanoff’s booted toe hit the front of Sharon’s door. “Hey, hiding in here to avoid Steve Roger’s strategic planning meeting on where to put the coffee table or just avoiding having to put together Ikea flat packs of furniture?”

“Yes,” Sharon responded, unapologetic and grinning at Romanoff's eye roll and smirk.

Peggy frowned thoughtfully at the petite, red-haired woman. She knew Stark Industries almost better than Pepper Potts did, having spied on the company for a year while SHIELD investigated who had kidnapped Stark and why. “Come in for a second and close the door.”

Romanoff didn’t even hesitate as she did so, brushing off dust onto her dark jeans as she wandered down the small hallway to the living area where they sat. She glanced briefly at Sharon’s screen, scanning it quickly, nodding to herself. “You got the Mandarin case?”

“We were just discussing it,” Sharon replied, casting a speculative gaze at the other operative. “Any ideas?”

Natasha shrugged a shoulder under the loose dark-green jumper she wore. “We know so little about the group. Their name keeps popping up in Central and East Asia, but nothing definitive. Am a bit surprised that anyone of them is stepping up in public, they tend to keep a lower profile for the most part, don’t like advertising.”

It was a fair point. Peggy, who was out of practice in the world of espionage in this day and age, had to concur. Sharon nodded, taking note, before jumping to the real question they had at hand for Romanoff. “The signature of the bombs, we can’t tell the explosive used. No one can identify it. Given Stark’s history with the Ten Rings, do you know of anything his company might have been working on that got into their hands? Maybe something that Stane was selling under the table to them?”

Romanoff considered, her expression still in the way she had as she parsed through whatever mental data she was sifting through. “No, not that I ran across. Stark tends to run towards high tech over quick and dirty in terms of weapons, and nothing he ever built was as powerful or compact as that. He was building for armies, not terrorists, though admittedly sometimes those are one and the same thing. Whatever those bombs are would be too small stakes for that and I don’t think anyone in his company was developing anything like it before Stark shut it all down.”

“Well, that answers that question.” Sharon looked at Peggy apologetically. “I had to ask, you know. Cover every base.”

“I know.” Still, Peggy rather wished she didn’t. “If it’s all right by you, I think I will avoid mentioning it to Tony. I don’t really relish the idea of arguing with him over it.”

“Understood,” Sharon looked to Romanoff hopefully. “Any further insight you might have with any of this?”

“Only that it’s weird.” Not the most eloquent Romanoff had ever been, but she apparently didn’t have much more to add. “I mean, think about it, most of the time when a bomb like this goes off it's meant to cause maximum damage and instill maximum fear in a populace. There is a reason suicide bombers chose tourist spots or places with restaurants and shops, they are high traffic areas that will get people’s attention. Out of the way army bases don’t seem big enough.”

“Duly noted.” Sharon scribbled a note to herself. “Seriously, I should have you helping me out on this. We only got it because the CIA was stumped and and someone at the White House had it kicked it over to SHIELD.”

“The CIA being stumped sounds about on par for the situation,” Romanoff snorted without heat, but clearly unimpressed with American intelligence. “Anything like this that pops up, they immediate start assuming it is terrorists and start turning over every rock and tree in Central Asia.”

“And you don’t think it is?”

“Could be, but you don’t have enough information yet to determine that.”

Peggy sensed what was unspoken. “We don’t really have the luxury of allowing it to continue long enough to see a pattern.”

“No,” agreed Romanoff. “Anyway, I’d help if I could, but I’m on Captain America training duty.” This she said with a cheery smirk in Peggy’s direction. “I can’t wait to take him to the Farm and see how that blows his mind.”

Peggy had a feeling that Steve wouldn’t be the only one whose mind would be blown. Very few people knew just how the serum had enhanced his reflexes, mental acuity, and overall speed, and that was alongside the strategic and tactical thinking that had been his gift before the serum. “I have a feeling he might just surprise everyone when it is all said and done.”

“Likely,” Romanoff agreed, glancing in the direction of Steve’s apartment down the hall. “We should probably get in there and see what he’s up to before he manages to turn a group of movers into a tactical team.”

Peggy could sense a gentle prod when it was given. “I was rather hoping he’d convince them to put some of the furniture together.”

“He might. Actually, not the worst plan in the world.” Romanoff snorted, leading the way out of Sharon’s place. “Few things are as anger inducing as figuring out why you have ten screws for one step of a project and there are only six holes.”

“Spoken like someone who has had to put together furniture,” Sharon sympathized, trailing behind Peggy.

“I am not saying I have, but I am saying that I have a handler who nearly lost an eye over it once.”

It spoke to Peggy’s life experience that Romanoff’s matter-of-fact statement barely earned an eyebrow raise of shock or disapproval. “Well, let’s try not to pull knives on each other while doing this?”

“I can promise nothing,” Sharon whispered behind her as they made their way into Steve’s apartment.

Chapter Text

Of all the many things that changed in the world that Peggy knew - and that was a great many things - there were a few things that remained the same. Unfortunately, one of those things happened to be the average US Senator. Then, as now, Peggy found them rather annoying, loud, and bombastic, particularly the Honorable Randall Peters of Kentucky, who was currently grilling her in front of the entire subcommittee on the nature of Thor Odinsson.

“So you just...what...let this so-called ‘god of thunder’ go with a powerful artifact that had been in SHIELD’s lockers for seventy years?”

Peggy ignored the twinge of a throb behind her left eye and the deep desire she had to punch the sneering disbelief off his face. She chose to answer simply. “Yes.”

“An alien being from off this world who you knew for only a few hours, who was the adopted brother of the man leading the attack against us, and you just gave him an item that can…” He paused, looking through his glasses to a sheaf of papers on his desk. Peggy suspected they were there mostly for show. “Open portals between two different areas in space?”

“I presume you did read the entire report on Thor Odinsson, correct?”

The senator frowned, lifting a shoulder diffidently. “I did.”

Peggy only barely managed not to roll her eyes. “Then you know that Mr. Odinsson can wield lightning right out of a clear blue sky. He nearly destroyed huge swaths of the Black Forest when confronted by Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. His ancestors were considered gods by many in Northern Europe and for good reason, and his adopted brother nearly succeeded in conquering the Earth, and you think I was going to argue with a man whose father could call up an army to follow up on the job if I didn’t give them back their magic space box?”

There were titters of laughter from the other collected senators and few other attendees in the gallery. After all, when put that way, it did sound rather ridiculous, but Senator Peters was not precisely one who seemed to ever mind sounding like an idiot, something Peggy supposed the find people of Kentucky must like, seeing as they were the ones who sent him there. His mild irritation was quickly covered by a condescending chuckle as he pulled off his glasses, using them to wave lazily at Peggy behind her microphone.

“I like you, Director Carter, you’re funny.” He chuffed a brief laugh, gamely going with the laughter at his expense, choosing his next words. “But I would like to point out that that space box, as you call it, cost a lot of lives once. That space box was found and utilized by one of the more evil organizations this world has ever seen, people who followed a madman who gave a lot of credence to those gods on Asgard and felt that made them a superior race because of it. A lot of good men died trying to get that box away from the Nazis, Hitler and HYDRA, and now you’ve given it all back to the very gods they thought made them better than everyone else.’

Uncomfortable silence fell across the committee changers. Several of Senator Peters senatorial counterparts suddenly became rather uncomfortable, one or two staring at him rather askance. One of his compatriots from Iowa leaned in, but he waved him off, his beady eyes meeting Peggy’s in challenge. It didn’t take her long to realize that this was, as it always was with men like Randall Peters, a show of power and dominance, a means to show his party colleagues and the voters back home how he was tough on issues such as national security. How better to show off than to back the Director of the Avengers under SHIELD into a corner, to paint her as being incompetent and unable to protect global interests, let alone national ones. All the better that she was a woman and British by birth, all to underscore both her incapability in the job and her own foreignness, both in terms of geography and time.

“I am well aware of what the Tesseract cost, Mr. Senator,” she replied, evenly and coolly, despite the aching anger that swelled at the very memory. “Better than you, I suspect. I remember the men who died, blasted into nothingness by the very weapons that Johann Schmidt created with the Tesseract. While I can’t say I am an expert on Asgardian history, I can at least say that of what little I know of them, they at least never used the Tesseract to create weapons of mass destruction. I can’t say the same for Earth.”

“You mean SHIELD,” he qualified, trying once more to gain the upper hand.

“SHIELD, the SSR, the US Army.” She eyed several other senators who started at that. “You all are smart men and women, you know what was done in the past. If the Tesseract had stayed here, how long would it have taken for one of the many powers to try and come for it, to make weapons of their own? My guess, not long at all, a year, maybe. A weapon like that needed to be somewhere out of our hands, out of temptation. And while I’m sure that you, Senator Peters, would have the moral fortitude not to try and use it in harmful ways, can you say the same about everyone you know in the halls of power? How about just on this subcommittee?”

Her comments hit home. A few more senators squirmed, uncomfortably, at the allegations Peggy laid down. Some were incensed, some were more honest about it, frowning speculatively. Only Peters seemed amused, leaning forward to his thin microphone.

“So you say, Director, but I’m curious to hear what someone like Steve Rogers would have to say about it. After all, he sacrificed everything in order to keep that cube out of the hands of HYDRA. Don’t you think Captain America should get a say?”

Peggy resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at this utter childishness. “I don’t know, Senator, but I could ask him when I go home after this. I am sure he’s riveted to the proceedings of this sub-committee hearing.” Peggy just did manage not to smile, cheekily, at the senator as another low rumble of chuckles sounded again. “Though, I think he was spending the afternoon alphabetizing his book collection…”

A gavel sounded, the chairwoman of the committee, a senator from Colorado named Sullivan, snapped the meeting to order. “The committee would like to thank Director Carter for coming in, once again, to meet with us, and we recognize that you have taken time out of your schedule to see us. We will adjourn for the day.”

With another crack the meeting dispersed as Peggy gathered things and ignored the pointed glare from Senator Peters, who hulked in his seat like a vulture, clearly trying to make her feel ill at ease. He was by far not the first man to do so and would likely not be the last, and she took rare pleasure treating it with the sort of indifference it deserved, knowing it would only irk him more. Instead, she shot brief smiles to the various staffers and others who helped man the chamber, thanking her for coming in, as she made her way to the lobby beyond. She hadn’t planned on being up on the Hill that day, instead hoping to spend it with Steve, organizing and unpacking, to make what would otherwise be a spartan space more...well, them, she supposed. It would be their second home, outside of her apartment in New York, which was sleek and modern and reflected more the sentiments of the designer who had decorated it than Peggy’s own. In truth, she wasn’t sure she even had an aesthetic, seeing as she had had no permanent home of her own since she left to join the SOE...since the day she thought that Michael died and her world changed forever. Now, however…well, Peggy wouldn’t call it a home, not yet at least, but it was a start.

The thrill of building anything of the sort with Steve Rogers, after all these years, after losing him for so long, still made her giddy despite herself. Certainly, the circumstances were far different than either of them had expected. Poor Steve had not known what to make of it all when Peggy told him, rather emphatically, that in this modern age men and women lived together for quite some time without being married, and she didn’t see why they should rush it just yet, not while things were as mad as they were in the immediate weeks after New York. It had been the opening gambit of what would prove to be an awkward, but centering conversation on the state of things with them. They were both so bad about simply stating what they wanted, dancing around the topic in fear of upsetting the other, that it had been a good place to start, to lay their feelings and hopes on the table between each other.

For Steve’s part, he had been honest with her about his trepidations about this modern world and the place he had in it. If he were to take back up the shield, he needed to understand it far more than he did. That would mean, most likely, taking a formal position with SHIELD, in taking all the same steps Peggy had when she arrived in the future. That would necessitate the move to Washington DC to be closer to the main SHIELD headquarters and to the training facilities nearby. It would be the first time in his life, outside of his time in the active military, that he would have ever lived in a place outside of New York City. It was a huge step and terrified him all the more because Peggy’s own focus, the Avengers, were for now based out of New York. He had just gotten the girl of his dreams, finally, and he was somewhat loath to let that go.

For Peggy her feelings had not been dissimilar. For so long she had missed him, had fought so hard to find him, and the idea of him moving away so soon after getting him back seemed unfair. And yet, this was 2012, not 1942. They had the luxury of all manner of travel to go between New York and Washington at any time they wished. Communications were so advanced that she could literally see his face with the telephone she carried in her purse. Distance was not as far as it once had been so long ago. After all, this would only be temporary, allowing Steve to find his place in this new world, at least till Barton came back from this sabbatical. They could use this time to reconnect as Steve and Peggy, to figure out who they were as people now, and what they wanted out of a future together. They could learn how to live with one another; Steve with his habitual neatness born out of a nurse for a mother and years of the army, Peggy with her particularity about where things did and did not go. Most of all, they could learn how to be together, bickering and laughing, busy and lazy, learning how they drove each other crazy and how they made each other be better people. And once Barton was back and the Avengers were more fully off the ground as an entity...then they could see what steps they would take next. Until that day…

“Did you hear about the latest attack?” Someone over her shoulder, a woman, was not being precisely quiet. In the marble halls of the United States Capitol building, voices could carry, and this one was just enough that it started Peggy out of her daydream.

“I got the notice while I was in the subcommittee hearing with Carter.” A man, the voice of the director of the National Security Agency, Peggy realized. His name was Jake Nance, a man she’d gotten to know over the weeks and months since New York, tall and gangly, whose thin frame reminded her of Steve before the serum. Well into his forties, he had a deep, dolorous sort of tone that she could pick out of a crowd.

The woman remained a mystery, however, somewhere behind Peggy, likely trailing five to ten steps behind her and completely oblivious to Peggy in front of them. “I found out when we got out. They are saying it is another explosion, like the others. They are fairly certain it is the Mandarin.”

That caught Peggy’s attention. The case Sharon had been working on. Curious, she pulled out her phone, scrolling through various messages, including one from Steve asking what she would like for dinner, pretending to be preoccupied as she carefully measured her steps to stay just in front of the pair behind her, while carefully maneuvering around senate pages and office staff making their way down the hallway.

“Has he claimed it as one of his,” Nance asked, quietly curious.

“Not yet, but the hallmarks seem to be the same.” The woman sounded slightly exasperated. “This is the tenth one now, and we aren’t going to be able to contain it for much longer.”

Tenth? Peggy frowned, pretending to be fascinated with an email Cassandra had sent her on some minor request from Stark. When Sharon had gone over the particulars of the Mandarin case the other day, she had mentioned only three attacks. Did she know about the others? Why hadn’t that particularity been shared with SHIELD?

“I don’t think you should have been containing it in the first place,” Nance replied, dryly, to the woman. “The fact is that we’ve been telling you all for years that this isn’t your garden-variety fundamentalist militant hanging out in a cave in Afghanistan. You all have been treating him like that and now he’s upping the ante on everyone.”

“Well, now he really has,” the woman muttered. “This one was outside of London, near a distribution center for MST Pharmaceuticals. They are contracted with the UN and a variety of charities, providing vaccines and other medications for distribution in various economically challenged areas, including Central Asia.”

“Were they the target?”

“Scotland Yard and the Home Office over there are still investigating, so no word to us, yet. Not sure if they will reach out to us at all. I got word that the whole thing has been booted over to SHIELD over our heads.”

Well, that at least answered the question of who the woman was affiliated with. The CIA had been the ones with the case before it was passed to Sharon, or so she was told.

“On whose orders,” Nance snapped, hotly.

“Not mine. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Not mine, either.”

Peggy could almost feel them both glaring at the back of her head. She prayed she looked as oblivious as she was trying to be, tapping away on the glass of her phone.

“Whatever the case, London is probably going to want SHIELD in it anyway. We’ve not been on good terms with them for a while. This way they can claim they got a neutral party involved.”

There was a sigh from Nance. Good, bad, or otherwise, Peggy couldn’t tell. She had a feeling she was going to be sucked into this discussion in the next minute, whether she liked it or not.

“Let me talk to her,” Nance said, softly. Peggy could surmise who the ‘her’ was, her fingers tightening on her phone. “Perhaps, emphasize shared interest…”

The woman responded, a lot less softly than Nance did. “I have people pissed on my end. We had dibs on him after his other attacks. The fact they are getting involved…”

“I know, just...let me see what she says.”

“All right! Let me know.”

Footsteps, the clunking sound of chunky women’s heels, veered off down a hallway as Peggy cut her eyes to see a woman, short and somewhat thicker with middle-age, her hair a dyed blonde, marching away from where she was making a point to stop and delete items off her list of things Steve still needed in his apartment and looking rather intensely focused while doing it. She only paused to look up when Nance was standing several feet in front of her.

“You don’t have to pretend you didn’t hear us behind you.” His smirk on his thin face was knowing. “Linda has a voice that carries a bit much for a woman who works in the CIA.”

“I’m surprised that the Director of the NSA would be so blatant about it.” Peggy made a show of closing out of her list, as if she were sending an email, then slid her phone into her purse. “Either you didn’t think it was important enough to have a private conversation or you wanted me to hear it.”

He didn’t look interested in confirming either, simply shrugging, holding on to the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder. “Let me walk you out.”

Peggy agreed. “We are doing one of those political ‘walk and talks’ I see on the television shows?”

“I wish my job was nearly that glamorous.”

“You and me both.” She fell into step beside him as they made their way through the building towards the exit Peggy had entered in at.

“Sorry that Peters was being such a hard ass in there,” he said, companionably. “He’s an idiot, but he’s an idiot with clout and he keeps using it to make life difficult.”

Peggy only shrugged, now long used to the vagaries of the American political system and the various senators and members of congress using their positions to pick petty arguments in order to please constituents. “I suppose trying to explain away an alien god to the good people of Kentucky is a bit challenging.”

“No offense, but explaining away Thor to anyone on Earth is a bit challenging.” Nance chuckled, briefly, the sort you had when you wanted to shift the conversation to something less friendly. “The truth is Thor isn’t the reason people are worried over here. Your Avengers are formidable, not going to lie, and there are more than a few people worried about them, but there are just as many, more even, that would say they are necessary to have for the threats out there. That’s not what has got people worried.”

It didn’t take Peggy longer than a second to get at what Nance was pointing to. “I understand that there are many upset with SHIELD right now. I’ve already addressed it to the World Security Council and Secretary Pierce…”

“Who is going to do what? Go chat with President Ellis? Make some phone calls and smooth it all over?”

Peggy paused, schooling her features against Nance’s astute observations. “Director Nance, I can assure you that the World Security Council takes this seriously.”

“I’m sure they do, which is why they are sending Pierce in. He’s the big guns, the man with a megawatt smile and a resume a mile long. People respect him around here.”

“Is there a reason why they shouldn’t,” Peggy asked, bluntly, curious as to where the NSA Director was going with all of this.

The man shrugged broad, thin shoulders briefly, making her think very much of Steve before he took the serum. “I am only saying that Senator Peters isn’t the only one nervous.”

She stared up at him for long moments, mulling over what he said and what he wasn’t saying. “Are they nervous about the way the World Security Council handled the situation in New York, the fact that SHIELD is the one in control of the Avengers, or that the Mandarin case is now being investigated by them as well?”

“Yes,” he replied, seemingly to all of it. “It’s no secret that the intelligence agencies have all long had beef with one another. Everyone gets upset the minute they feel jurisdictions have been crossed and people have stepped into sacred territory. SHIELD has been the biggest bully on the block for a while now and people don’t like it.”

“I think that was the idea, Mr. Nance. SHIELD was always supposed to be outside of the pettiness of a single nation’s goals or directives.”

“Which was perhaps great at the close of World War II, but we are now sixty-five years on and things change. SHIELD is fairly powerful now and carries a big stick and feel they can lord it over everyone else no matter who they are or their own interests. They are already the biggest intelligence agency. They have their own tactical military units, a whole army of their own that they deploy, and helicarriers they can send anywhere in the world by air or by sea. That alone makes them a military force more formidable than any one country. Now they have their own personal team of superheroes as well, ones who just managed to stave off an alien invasion from another planet. If that isn’t terrifying, I don’t know what is. Thaddeus Ross is screaming to anyone who will listen that SHIELD has too much firepower and can’t be trusted.”

Peggy only just did manage not to openly roll her eyes. “Thaddeus Ross is also likely jealous he doesn’t have the toys himself. He has made no secret in how badly he wants them and is mad he can’t have them.

“It’s not just him, there are a lot of people who are scared of SHIELD right now, feel they are overreaching their hand and involving themselves where they are not wanted.”

“Like this Mandarin case?”

Nance simply smiled. They had made it outside to the crisp autumn afternoon. The trees that lined the way towards the National Mall were a riot of colors, reds, oranges, and golds, fire against a deep blue sky. She would much rather be enjoying that sight than having this conversation.

“If the Mandarin attacked on British soil, the Prime Minister is well within his rights to call SHIELD directly to investigate the case,” she offered, knowing he was well aware of that.

“Yes, but it crosses into US interests. I’m assuming you’ve heard something of the case?”

“I happen to know the person assigned to it, yes. I know that his previous targets have been American interests.”

“And now he’s branching out. The fear is that he’s escalating because he’s not been getting the attention he wants. We kept the others quiet. They were all smaller situations, relatively easy to contain, none on US soil. The latest one is clearly less so. The worry is that this is only going to get bigger and worse, for all of us.”

“So what do you want, Director Nance?” She might as well cut to the chase.

“For you to get SHIELD to work with our teams, to keep us in the loop.”

Peggy could only chuckle, mildly. “Once upon a time, my name could have been linked to the title of ‘Director of SHIELD’, but now I am focused on the Avengers. I’m not involved in field operations.”

“But you do have Fury’s ear, don’t you?” Nance wasn’t an idiot. One didn’t get in his position if they were. “I get it, SHIELD is trying to keep the peace, but this is personal for the US. If we don’t get him contained, people’s lives are at stake.”

“And you don’t think SHIELD is capable of keeping Americans alive?”

Nance’s paused, his expression carefully neutral, though a whole play of things was evident if you looked at the subtle way his mouth tightened, the way his eyes flickered from the steps they stood on to the shine of the crowds of tourists and workers. He clearly didn’t trust a lot of aspects of SHIELD, and yet, he was talking to her. He trusted Peggy at least.

“Let’s just say that SHIELD has done a lot of dirty things over the past few decades, a lot of things that were questionable and they called it peacekeeping.”

Peggy couldn’t help the flare of defense for the organization she founded. “And the US intelligence agencies have not?”

“They have. You can’t be in this business and not be dirty in some way. But you know, I hear things. Other people do too. And when you hear those things and then know that SHIELD can call upon Tony Stark and his suit, or some alien God of Thunder, or a raging monster who can destroy things, people get worried. SHIELD was founded with good intentions, but that was decades ago. Now, they aren’t that different from the rest of us.”

His words hit Peggy harder than she had expected, leaving her mute in the face of his matter-of-fact cynicism. There had always been interagency rivalry, of course, even during the war the SSR and SOE had feuded, and afterwards the SSR had been forced to fight with the FBI till it was subsumed into SHIELD. That sort of jurisdictional nitpicking had long been a part of the game. But the idea that now the agency she, Howard, and Phillips had worked so hard to put together would be outright attacked in the halls of government, all for having bigger toys than the US military intelligence personnel, left her angered and mildly disillusioned.

“I came to you in good faith, Carter,” Nance continued, voice quiet in the bustle around them. “As a friend, really.”

Peggy knew that wasn’t totally true. “It’s not because I was conveniently standing ten feet ahead of you in the hallway?”

If he was embarrassed for being caught out, he didn’t show it. “Convenience doesn’t take away from my intentions. People respect you, a lot of people as a matter of fact.”

That earned an honest snort out of her. “Mmm, I can tell by Senator Peter’s glaring at me like some sort of gargoyle all through that hearing.”

Nance rolled his eyes. “Peters is a pandering idiot who represents a base that is still stuck in the back hills of Appalachia and doesn’t realize how crazy the world has become. The rest of us know, and we also know you and what you sacrificed to be here. Your name has respect attached to it. And there is more than a few of people who feel you could be the breath of fresh air that SHIELD needs, the one who could maybe remind them of their roots.”

Peggy could only blink long moments at him, processing what he was saying. “I believe you overestimate the role I play in SHIELD now. I am just in charge of the Avengers, nothing else.”

“That doesn’t mean that your word as a founder doesn’t carry weight there. Just...think about it.”

With that, Nance gave her a short nod of farewell before turning to lope down the steps, hands shoved into the pockets of his trench coat. She watched him go, unsettled by the conversation itself, considering what he was suggesting and the greater issue at hand. That the US intelligence community was upset with SHIELD at the moment went without saying. That they feared the agency was a bit surprising to her. And she found it interesting that of all the things they could be caught up on at the moment, the Mandarin case would be the one they would be approaching her about jurisdictional lines.

“Ten instances...not three,” she murmured to herself, moving down the steps once again. Interesting that there were more cases than even Sharon knew about. With determined steps she headed down to the bottom, already planning to call a cab and make her way to the Triskelion for a chat.

Chapter Text

Sharon was already on her phone at her desk, her computer monitor streaming two live feeds of the situation in London when Peggy tracked her down half-an-hour later. Many on Sharon’s level were in fact watching the events play out, but only Sharon was in the apparent thick of it. She met Peggy’s eye as she came to her cubicle, nodding and waving to an empty desk nearby.

“Right...the news hasn’t released any casualty numbers. There was a night shift on duty, but no word how close they were to the blast. Yeah...well, Scotland Yard is on the scene along with MI5, they will feed back to our office there. Yeah….as soon as I can. Thanks.”

With a sigh, she hung up her phone, turning to Peggy with a sad smile. “So, this is my day. How was yours?”

“Frustrating, but perhaps not in the same way yours has been.” She nodded to the news feed. “Whereabouts did they hit?”

“South London, mostly an industrial area, thankfully, so minimizes the people hit, but still enough. It’s the middle of the night there, so it was completely unexpected.” She frowned at the coverage for a long moment. “They hit a pharmaceutical place fairly badly and managed to get a shipping company, but reports are still coming in on damage.”

Peggy nodded, watching as flames poured out of a building with a glowing sign saying only MST. “Why the pharmaceutical company?”

“We don’t know yet,” Sharon replied, flipping through notes. “Could just be a coincidence or a mistake. There is a dockyard nearby that might have been a target.”

“I heard that MST Pharmaceuticals has a contract with the UN, doing work abroad in poor nations.” Peggy considered the conversation she had overheard. “I don’t know if that’s important or not, but the CIA is clearly not happy this case got bumped over to you.”

Sharon blinked up at her in mild surprise, startled at Peggy’s pronouncement. “How did you hear that?”

“I was just up at the Capital, and there is some woman over at Langley named Linda who has a whisper that carries in marble halls. How she is working for an intelligence agency, I don’t know.”

After a beat, Sharon shook her head, running her fingers through her hair. “I wish I could say I was surprised by either the fact that someone at the CIA was indiscreet or that you happened to ferret it out. Did they not see you standing there?”

“Worse, they knew I was and did it anyway.” Peggy couldn’t say she thought much of this Linda, however, Jake Nance was playing his own game. “I chatted with the NSA Director over it, though. He had a lot to say about SHIELD in general.”

“I bet he did. People are pretty pissed at us over there, but considering we did fire a nuke on a civilian population without any warning that it was an option, I sort of get the worry and resentment.”

“He was more worried about SHIELD having the Avengers.”

“Why? What does he think SHIELD would do with them?”

“I don’t know,” Peggy admitted, frowning softly, playing through the conversation. “There seems to be a general fear that SHIELD is somehow the biggest bullies on the block. They have the weapons, the armies, and now the Avengers, and only the UN to oversee them. I suppose that has them spooked.”

“This coming from a man who works for the government of the most powerful nation in the world, with the biggest army and arsenal in the world?” Sharon’s rather unladylike snort conveyed her feelings rather eloquently. “Honestly, they seem more upset that we came in and pissed in their yard.”

Peggy lifted a shoulder. “I suppose, he certainly sounded that way about this Mandarin case. He asked if you would consider working with some of his people on this.”

She suspected Sharon wouldn’t like that, and it was confirmed when her niece’s dark eyes flashed in annoyance. “Honestly? The CIA sat on this case for months and didn’t make any hay out of it. Now it’s suddenly an issue?”

“Did you know that there were more than just the three attacks you told me about?”

That caught Sharon short. “They only told me about those ones. How many?”

“Ten, my guess is the others are likely military, who won’t confess it, or are involved in some way that the CIA wants to cover it up.”

“Shit!” She tossed her pen viciously against her desk. The plastic bounced up and off her desk, rolling to the floor beyond her feet. “I thought there were missing pieces, but they insisted that was what they had. Why are they playing politics with this?”

“I don’t know.” Peggy wished she did, if nothing else to give Sharon a leg up. This was her first big case by herself as an operative, her first chance to shine, and she was being handicapped going out of the gate. Having been in that position a time or two herself, Peggy hated to see it for her.

She leaned down to snatch the pen angrily from the carpet, glaring at no one in particular. “We are dealing with a terrorist who is escalating and they want to play games of who gets to do what first?”

“I am only reporting what Director Nance discussed with me.” If there was one thing she could say hadn’t changed, it was the petty games of politics and intrigue that surrounded these sorts of things. She had witnessed it with the Whitney Frost case, and it still held true now. “I suppose that if you want more information on the others you perhaps should reach out to them.”

Sharon did not seem thrilled with that. “They will want to play political hardball with this and make life difficult.”

“I suppose they will, but as you say, if this is true, this Mandarin is escalating and people will start dying soon. You may not have a choice.”

“I know.” Sharon’s anger and disappointment were palatable. She tapped the pen lightly against her desk, shaking her head in annoyance. “You know, when Dad used to tell me all those stories about you, he made it all sound so glamorous. I spend most of my time trying to figure out which political minefield to step into or not. I suppose it’s not as cool as television and movies like to portray it as.”

“No,” Peggy admitted with a dry chuckle. “Certainly not like your Agent Knight television show.”

Sharon snorted, laughing outright. “Well, not all of us can be the cool, sexy secret agent, I suppose.

“I don’t think even I was that that way, whatever Angie and Howard concocted on that script.” Peggy had seen the show and found it mildly amusing and somewhat embarrassing, with none of it being true. “The truth is that very little of my work was glamorous. I had to deal with the same jurisdictional games you are, the same resistance, the same petty infighting, worse even because I had the added layer of working with men who had no desire to work with me.”

Sharon knew this, of course, but in the frustration of the moment often it was hard to remember that. She smiled, softly, a hint of admiration in her dark eyes. “How did you ever manage?”

“One could arguably say I didn’t. I left for the future where at least I’m only berated for not doing what some senator from Kentucky wanted, not because I’m a woman in a man’s world.”

“But you put up with it far longer than I would.” Sharon seemed convinced of this fact. Peggy somehow felt that her niece was made of sterner stuff than she was giving herself credit for.

“I don’t know, when you are living in it, breathing it, it’s your entire system and the only thing you’ve ever known, perhaps you are...I don’t know if patient is the right word, but I suppose I had grown rather expectant of it. It was there, I was fighting against it, but I knew it was the game and I knew what to expect and how to push against that. It would be difficult, I think, to not be used to that and then have to fight against it.”

“Don’t be fooled, we still do awful things to little girls.” Sharon frowned sadly for a long moment. “Little boys too, I suppose, but that’s a whole other discussion on gender and society we can have for another day, and has nothing to do with this.”

She turned back to her monitor, a reporter for British Broadcasting was now on screen, their voice silent for the moment, save the running text of the captioning on the bottom. “I’m heading out for the London office tonight. I’m hoping the team there is able to get more out of MI5 than I was out of the CIA. They are on the ground now, so who knows, maybe.”

Her mention of the London office and the team there brought a soft grin of reminiscence to Peggy’s face, a memory of a time that felt like only a minute ago to her, but in actuality was decades ago, the players now all mostly dead and gone. “The London office was the first non-American SHIELD office ever founded, you know.”

“By you, Fred Wells, and Grandpa, as I remember.” Sharon knew her history. “As I recall it was in response to all the Darkmoor business?”

“Yes.” Peggy’s memory wilted, slightly. It was all far more complicated than that, a moment that had shaken Peggy’s family and her own understanding of why she was walking the path that she was on. “In any case, I suppose it will be a sort of homecoming for you, then, going back there.”

“Something like that. I haven’t been back to England since Grandpa died, so this will be a first, but it won’t precisely be much of a vacation, not with this hanging overhead. No sight-seeing for me.”

“I haven’t seen it at all since then.” Despite being in the future now for over two years, Peggy had yet to make it back to her ancestral homeland. It was one of the ghosts of her past she was most pained to visit, the one wound she couldn’t bring herself to prod. “Admittedly, I haven’t precisely had a reason to.”

Sharon seemed to understand. “Well, the old house is there, you know, the old place in Hampstead. It was left to Dad and Maggie when Grandpa died and they just never got around to selling it, which considering the prices you can fetch there is a pity, but they are a whole ocean away. Besides, they tend to use it as a vacation home.”

There was some comfort in knowing her family’s old home was still intact and in the Carter family’s hands, more so than Peggy would have expected. She hadn’t lived there since she had left to join the SOE and hadn’t seen it since the business with Michael. She wondered, vaguely, if her mother’s old rose bushes were still there, grown and thriving nearly a century on. What had become of her father’s study, his shelves of law books and stacks of unorganized papers, all dusty and smelling of her father’s perpetual pipe smoke? If she were to visit, would she still find Michael’s tin soldiers buried in the garden or the old adventure magazines her father had always brought home for her to read. Did the ghost of who she had once been still wander her old home in Hampstead? What would that Peggy, the girl who had run around her garden pretending to be a knight and space warrior think of the woman who sat here now, thousands of miles and nine decades away, in a future that seemed fantastical to her then.

“You should go one of these days,” Sharon cut into her reminiscing, oblivious to the many feelings swirling within Peggy at the very idea of it. “Take Steve with you. He’s not been back there since the war. London now will blow your minds.”

“I’m sure.” When she had left the city she had grown up in had been ravaged by war and destruction, swathes of it bombed out of existence. Much of the country had been like that, and it had taken decades for it to recover. “Perhaps after he’s had some time to adjust more we can. It would be nice, I think.”

“You keep speaking as if he is completely overwhelmed by everything here and now. He seems to be adjusting all right.”

To be fair, Sharon was right, Steve was adapting at a rapid raid, faster than even Peggy had expected. Already he was technology savvy enough to manage the various household appliances that came with his new flat, even if he steadfastly insisted he preferred to have an old-fashioned style turntable to listen to music on over the surround sound system run off his phone that Stark had suggested he install. Steve’s adaptation to the modern world was happening far more quickly than Peggy’s had, if she were honest with herself.

“With him starting his new role here at SHIELD, partnering with Romanoff, it’s not a good time to drag him off to reminisce about old times and places long gone.” Perhaps that would be an excuse that was more palatable to her niece. “Let him get his feet under him with Romanoff and then maybe we can talk.”

Sharon narrowed her eyes at Peggy’s explanation, but didn’t argue with it. “You know, there is no such thing as ghosts, really.”

Peggy knew what she meant, but decided to tease her just the same. “You and I work in intelligence and espionage, we both know there are ghosts.”

“Not those type,” Sharon snorted, but it made her laugh and seemed to put her in a better mood. “Anyway, I need to get back to this and then get home and pack. I’ll let you know how things are going while I’m over there.”

“Please do.” Despite the fact she was not involved in the case and had no business being on it, Peggy found herself intrigued all the same. “And if there is any help I can give…”

“I’ll make sure to call you.” Sharon waved her off reassuringly. “When are you heading back to New York?”

“In a couple of days, they are setting up some new labs at Stark Tower for the ‘Avengers area’ as Stark is calling it. Betty Ross will be in town to help and I told Banner I would check in.”

“Where’s Stark at?”

“He headed back to Malibu.” It felt that Stark was everywhere at once, bouncing between New York and his home on the Pacific coast. And he had lectured her about long distance relationships. “He said something about the workers giving him hives, which we all know is him being over-dramatic and rather awful. I think he is hiding out there for now until things quiet down at the tower enough for him to come back.”

“Must be nice to be rich and snooty enough to hide from construction noise in a palatial mansion overlooking the ocean. Anyway, have fun up there. I’m sure you’ll be back in days to moon over Steve again.”

“I don’t moon,” Peggy retorted, despite the flush that rose to her cheeks that said she knew perfectly well Sharon’s teasing was true.

“Please! Being in the room with the pair of you gives me diabetes,” Sharon kidded, with the good-natured ribbing of family. “The only one worse about it all than you is Steve. He would never make it as a spy, he wears his heart too much on his sleeve.”

“That much is true,’ Peggy laughed, rising from her borrowed office chair. “He never has been particularly good at lying, I am afraid.”

“Well, a good thing here, as he’s smitten with you.” Sharon paused, sweetly thoughtful. “It’s nice, though, seeing you two happy with each other. Not all of us meet our soul mate, fewer of us get to spend our forever with them. We may give you two crap, but it’s still nice to see.”

It was a sort of earnestness she wasn’t expecting out of Sharon in the moment. “Thank you.” Unsure of what else she could say, she instead chose to grab her things, hauling her briefcase strap over her shoulder. “On that note, I should perhaps find my soldier and see what chaos he has wrought in his flat while I was away.”

“You are so certain that he has,” Sharon laughed, waggling her fingers as if to shoo her away. “I’ll let you know how London goes.”

Peggy left Sharon to her work,

Chapter Text

“I dare you to put that in your mouth!”

It was a test of wills. Had it been anyone else making the challenge to Steve Rogers, Peggy was fairly certain they would have lost, as no one was more stubborn than him...no one. But she had learned his bull headed ways, had experience, and knew how to work around it like few others. She was just as single-minded as he, just as focused, and also refused to yield. Besides, she knew Captain America’s weakness. If she were to tilt her chin down just so and stare up at him through her lashes, her dark eyes wide and full of mischievous challenge, he would do it just to prove a point.

“Peggy,” he groaned, frowning down at the plate between them. “You do know it’s raw.”

“That’s the point! Don’t tell me you never had a raw oyster!”

Steve looked decidedly green at the idea. “With the sort of constitution I had when you met me, you think I ate anything raw?”

“I’ve never known you to be a coward,” she pushed, ignoring his quiet, pleading expression.

“Coward? I eat that and I’m sick all night!”

“You’re a super soldier, my love, you don’t get food poisoning. Besides, you ate stranger things than raw fish during the war.”

Steve still eyed the two pieces of fat, pink salmon sashimi on the plate as if she’d asked him to swallow raw plutonium. “You know when you said that trying sushi would be an adventure…”

“Do it or I will mock you mercilessly the whole way home.”

That did the trick. Looking as if she had asked him to fall on a grenade again, he moved his hand, lightning quick, plucking one of the pieces up with the bamboo chopsticks between his fingers, plopping it in the dish of soy sauce in front of Peggy so fast that it splashed across the table, and then shoved the whole thing in his mouth before she could even gasp in impish delight. He screwed his eyes shut as he chewed, wrinkling his nose, ignoring Peggy’s peels of laughter at his very earnest expense. If the other diners in the very elegant sushi restaurant thought it strange or were bothered by their antics, they were polite enough not to say anything. Peggy clapped softly as Steve swallowed, triumphantly holding up his chopsticks, glaring at her in mock affront.

“That was…” He paused, swiping his tongue around his mouth, seeming to weigh the experience as he wobbled his head, considering. “Not as bad as it could have been, I admit it.”

“See! I did tell you it was better than you would expect!” Peggy wiped at the corners of her eyes, still giggling as she regarded the mess they had made on the table. “You always have to make everything so dramatic!”

“Well, because it makes you laugh.” He grinned, unapologetic, politely using one of the linen napkins to wipe up the spilled brown sauce from off the table. “Also, it’s raw fish!”

“And you just ate it. I’m rather proud of you!”

He chuckled, a challenge in his eye as he jerked his chin at her. “And how long did it take Sharon to convince you to try that?”

“A lot longer, I assure you, but she wasn’t as persistent as I was, or maybe you are braver than me.” Peggy had to admit that she had been rather skittish on the idea of sushi and sashimi, some of Sharon’s favorite food, and had held off as long as she could before shame and peer pressure from the likes of her friends Juan and Julio had forced Peggy to cave. “I have to admit, it’s grown on me. It’s one of those things that when you just hear it, the principle of it, it sounds utterly disgusting, and then you try it and it’s really not nearly as horrible as you’ve made it out to be in your mind.”

“Not so different from lox at a Jewish deli, I suppose.” He snagged the second piece with playful sneakiness, making much less of a mess as he neatly plucked it up and ate it, with a look as if he was analyzing every morsel of it. “It’s fatty. I suppose, that helps.”

“I’ve yet to graduate much beyond some of the basic fish, but I do like the rolls. Those are always safe.” They had already tried those, which Steve had inhaled without too much complaint. Peggy eyed his long, dexterous fingers as they set down the chopsticks that came with their meal with a certain envy. “It’s really not fair you managed those as quickly as you did. I was a perfect idiot with chopsticks for months.”

“Of all the things that you could complain about the serum giving me and that’s the one you choose?” He leaned back against the cushion of their booth, tapping his fingers on the table between them. Without hesitation, Peggy reached across to lace her fingers in his.

“I approve of most of the rest of them,” she said, pointedly, pleased at the bashful smile and flush that spread over his high cheeks. Judging from the way his thumb had snuck in to caress the inside of her palm between their joined hands, she didn’t think he minded overmuch either.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?”

“Early! I’m catching one of the first flights back up. I think Cassandra is wondering if I will ever come back home.”

“I wish you weren’t,” he admitted, honestly, despite the fact they both knew that she would, that this would be the new fact of life of their relationship for now. “I’ve been spoiled having you here, around, all the time. No...missions, no orders from Phillips, no HYDRA or Nazis to chase, just the two of us and all the time in the world.”

“You have been spoiled,” she admitted, though, in fairness, she had been too. All the time in the world for the two of them to just be Steve and Peggy, not Captain America and Agent Carter. In all the other madness of the last six months, that quiet had been a blessing in disguise, the space to breathe, to adjust, for Steve to find his bearings and for them both to discover who they were now and how to move forward. Now they would be separated again, not by a war, this time, nor by ice and loss, just by their work and a few hundred miles. What was a few hundred miles compared to decades?

“Let’s pay up and go for a walk!” She broke her spiral of morose thoughts. She wanted to think of something cheerful and happy, not the gloom of their coming parting. “There is a coffee house just down the block here, they will have warm things to drink. Let’s grab something and wander on the mall a bit!”

They waived down the waitress and handled the bill - Steve paying with a credit card because he felt much more modern doing it, he admitted proudly - and wrapped themselves up in their light coats to wander into the chill of evening. He followed Peggy’s lead as she pulled him to the shop in question, a quaint establishment that looked locally owned, smelling of coffee grounds and steamed milk. She ordered them both steaming cups of spiced cider, fairly wiggling in delight as she took her paper cup in hand, the scent of mulling spices - cinnamon and clove, mostly - redolent as she wrapped her fingers around the still too hot to drink liquid. Steve stared at her as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or choke.

“What!” She prodded his shin with the tip of one indignant, booted foot.

“You,” he gave her a slightly star-struck grin, eyes the color of a summer sky sparkling with delight. “You just did a dance like a toddler.”

“It’s spiced cider!” She pronounced that as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“It smells great,” he admitted, still bemused. “I just don’t think I’ve done a dance over it.”

“You didn’t ever dance over much, did you?”

“Not till I met someone to dance with, no," he admitted, slipping a hand to her free one, tugging her out of the door and into the night again.

The lights were on over the National Mall, the monuments scattered across the expanse of sere grass, glowing reverently in the night. They strolled past the various buildings and memorials, arm-in-arm, smiling at other couples and groups out in the crisp air. One comfortable looking couple ahead of them walked their dog, a lovely golden retriever, chatting to one another and wandering along, while in the distance a group of young people shouted and laughed over some game they were playing among themselves, cellular phones out, shining in the twilight.

“We should get a dog,” Steve murmured out of nowhere, eyeing the beautiful canine ahead with a sort of boyish longing that said it was one of those long cherished and private dreams he had, likely from his boyhood long ago in Brooklyn.

“You never had one, I am guessing.” Reading Steve was often like a book, and the longing turned to wistfulness and that slightly unfocused look he had whenever he recalled his old neighborhood and childhood days.

“There were always the local mongrels we’d find, feed scraps to, but none that were ours. Bucky and his sister managed to keep a little terrier hanging about their place for a while, but then he got spooked one day and ran off. Never saw him again.” He said it with the sort of adult wisdom that said the dog likely came to some sort of sad end. “The both of us are so busy now, though, maybe it would be wiser to wait.”

He had a point. “Perhaps, when things with the Avengers settle down and once Barton’s back on with Romanoff, we can think about it. Find a place in Brooklyn to settle down, get a dog.”

“You say that as if you plan on sticking around, Carter.”

Every so often, if she closed her eyes, she could swear that it was just the two of them alone in that moment, in their old headquarters in London after some planning meeting. The way his soft, Brooklyn-roughened baritone would break, just a little, with his dry humor, his gaze sharp and filled with more emotions than Peggy could name. Just like then, she pulled an answering, crooked smile, her gaze coy as she lifted a shoulder playfully.

“I don’t know, Captain Rogers, I did come through all of time just to find you in the ice. I would hate to think I did that just to give you to Romanoff and have her set you at things to run at.”

“Ahh, well, it’s what I know,” he replied, though there was something rueful as he said it. “Getting out there, picking up the shield, trying to help people, do something good in the world. It is a purpose, at least.”

“It is,” she agreed, sipping from her still piping hot drink, sweet and spicy all at once. “But you could have other purposes, you know. I’d support you in anything.”

They’d had this discussion before, several times, as a matter-of-fact, over the months since he was awakened. But this had been the one he had landed on. Perhaps, in a world that was so new and strange, holding on to something that was familiar to him as a soldier was what he needed and she couldn’t begrudge him that. Half the reason she took up the Avengers from Fury was for the very same purpose, something familiar to ground herself in a new world.

“Well, I can get to know Romanoff better, see if I can crack that hard exterior of hers.”

“Good luck,” Peggy saluted him with her apple cider. “It took me two years to get Romanoff as warmed up to me as she is now.” In truth, Peggy wasn’t even sure why it was the former KGB assassin turned SHIELD operative ever truly disliked her or even warmed up to her. Romanoff was a mystery, and considering her line of work, Peggy imagined she preferred it that way.

“I don’t know, she gets on well with Sharon,” he observed, lightly. “I heard them discussing some case she is working on.”

“Mmm, yeah, a terrorism case, some man who calls himself the Mandarin. He is tied to that bombing in London yesterday.”

“I saw that.” For the briefest of moments his tone shifted from Steve, the man she loved, to Captain Rogers, the man she worked with. “Serious damage, people hurt, but no fatalities, thankfully. They have a beat on who this guy is?”

“Outside of the fact that he is the same man who heads up the organization that kidnapped Tony Stark, no.” She had yet to talk to Stark about it. Part of her didn’t want to. The Mandarin hadn’t been the one to personally kidnap him, and besides, he had so much on his plate of late. Reliving the trauma that had put an arc reactor in his chest and nearly killed him in the middle of an Afghani desert, far away from home, was not something she suspected he wanted to do.

“So that is where Sharon headed, then?” She had stopped by Steve’s place long enough to pass him her spare key and ask him to water her plants, a task that Steve had taken with all the gravity of babysitting a child.

“London, yes, she’s going to head up the SHIELD team investigating it. It’s a big deal for her, her first major case by herself.” Peggy couldn’t help but be proud of her, in fact. She had been tempted on many occasions to bring Sharon into the Avengers fold, mostly for selfish reasons, but had resisted. Her niece had wanted to make her own way in SHIELD, not riding on family coattails, but as herself. Peggy had chosen to respect that and let her do so.

“She’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Peggy said, more as a reassurance to herself. “She is good, very good. And besides, she hasn’t been back to our motherland in a while.”

Steve was a long moment, pulling at his own cider, before speaking. “You haven’t been home in a while, either. What, two years since you’ve been here?”

“Mmm,” she confirmed on a hum, somewhat uncomfortably. “It’s been more like over three years now since I was back in England, I suppose. Hard to believe it has been so long.

It had been the last time she had seen her parents and brother alive. She tried not to think of it overmuch, honestly, one couldn’t when one had picked up and started over as many times as she had, but when she did, the ache of it was knife sharp, a reminder of the life she had left behind to step into the future. She hadn’t thought twice about it at the time, with her hastily written letter, scrawled as Scott Lang had lolled, bored, on her sofa. She tried to pack a lifetime’s worth of feelings into a few scratched lines to be sent by post. She would never know how they felt about it, not really. All she had were Sharon’s stories.

“You know, you never told me the story of how your supposedly dead brother ended up alive and well and a father in all of this.”

Peggy glanced up at Steve’s quietly expectant expression. She supposed she hadn’t. Months ago, when he first woke up, she had promised him she would, and between aliens and invasions and the Avengers, she just hadn’t. Perhaps she had been avoiding discussing it, if she admitted it to herself. It wasn’t a time she looked back on with particular fondness.

“I was working on a case in Los Angeles,” she began, at least deciding to start at the beginning. “Do you remember the actress, Whitney Frost?”

“I do,” Steve intoned with the sort of diplomacy he would use around particularly prickly politicians. “I remember her rather fondly.”

“I bet you do,” she snorted, at least secure enough in his feelings for her that she could laugh about both his admiration and his caution in admitting it. “Most of the men I knew were in love with her.”

“Bucky and I may have seen a few of her movies,” he admitted, only slightly abashed. “How was she involved in a case you were on?”

“Well, as it turns out, she was more than a pretty face. She was a genius who was meddling with quantum energies, except she played with something she couldn’t control. She unleashed it into the world with predictable consequences, and long story short, it was the end of her career and we saved the world from exploding.”

It was of course much more involved than that, painfully so for the Jarvises, but it was the gist of the situation. Still it was just strange enough for Steve to pause with his cup halfway to his mouth. “That story took a few turns I hadn’t expected it to.”

“I will tell you that whole story some other time,” she promised, pushing on. “The case drew a lot of attention from the FBI. This was at a point when things were shifting after the war, jurisdictions were being redrawn, people were feeling threatened. There was a man over there, named Masters, who was making political hay over all this. He went to the New York section chief, Jack Thompson, who was my superior, and gave him a file he said was my war record. Because of my work on Project: Rebirth, as well as a few choice other things I was up to, my files were classified. That was all anyone knew. So when Thompson got a classified file with the name "Carter, M." on it, he assumed it was mine, except, it couldn’t have been mine. The few things he did mention I know I had nothing to do with. Unfortunately, I never did get a chance to see it or defend myself because as we were wrapping up the Whitney Frost case, Thompson was shot and nearly killed by someone who took the file.”

It had been a near thing with Thompson, honestly, and that he survived at all was perhaps a testament to the strength he never thought he possessed. He had lived, though, and would go on to join SHIELD eventually before she had chosen to jump to an unknown future. Unlike Daniel, who had disappeared without a trace, Thompson had gone on to a distinguished career in SHIELD, retiring and passing away many years after he had nearly died in a Los Angeles hotel room.

“Since the file was supposedly about me, I made the call to look into it, against orders, mind you.” Phillips had told her to stay put while they figured it out, sidelining her as the LAPD had asked uncomfortable questions on her involvement. “Of course, we all know that I wasn’t going to sit quietly by, and Howard was more than willing to go with me to London to get to the bottom of it. The file had been illegally obtained from the old SOE files, all of which were supposed to be destroyed when it was shut down after the war. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only M. Carter working for the SOE.”

“Michael,” Steve uttered, tracking along. “So this Masters guy gets your brother’s file and passes it off as you to Jack Thompson, got it. So what was in the file that was so dangerous they had to nearly kill this Thompson for it?”

“Several things, actually, but specifically it was the illegal weapons experiments being done by the British government during the war on enemy civilian populations.” Her voice grew cold and tight at that. Even now, she still burned with the silent rage of knowledge of what had been done, the atrocities committed by her own country during the war. “The program was called Darkmoor, housed in a facility in the north. The whole purpose was to create the sorts of weapons that could challenge what Johann Schmidt was creating with the Tesseract. The things they were doing...what they did…whole villages in German occupied France were gone. Towns just across the Rhine, ones filled with just farmers and villagers...and those were just the test subjects.”

She shivered even now, remembering it. Steve’s arm, warm and solid through hers, held her steady as she hugged it tightly, gulping at the warmth of her cider and wishing it made her forget the truth of what the project had done.

“They said it was in the name of Britain, of winning the war, of bringing peace.” She sighed, shaking her head. “The things we do sometimes and say we do it to bring peace. I have to wonder if these things don’t turn us further into monsters.”

Bless Steve and his ever-present and constant strength. “We all did horrible things during that way, every one of us.”

“Not like this,” she sighed. “Michael had been recruited to work in one of the squads. It was so top secret they had to fake his death so that we would think he was gone. He...thought he was doing something good for the war, I suppose. He was told that he was doing something heroic for king and country. In the end…”

She supposed she would never know with any certainty how Michael reconciled any of it.

“Of course, his supposed death meant he couldn’t return to his old life after the war. He settled near Darkmoor, married a lovely woman, Moira, and had young Harry and Maggie. I don’t know if I would have ever known he was alive if it weren’t for Masters and that file. Well...needless to say, once I did discover what happened, things got out. There was a scandal, of course. The man who ran the facility, Lord Haldane, was forced to shut it down. He didn’t see jail that I know of, though there was talk of some sort of military inquest into it all. I had to use what influence I could pull between Howard, Phillips, and everyone else to keep Michael as much out of it as possible. It was complicated. I just remember feeling so angry, so betrayed and hurt, not just that he lied to all of us, but about the whole thing. The idea of what they did, of what they were doing, of knowing that as much as we held ourselves up as being somehow better than everyone, the good guys, the heroes in this war with our righteous cause, we were no better in some ways than Hitler or HYDRA. And we justified it all because it was war.”

The truth was, as horrified as she had been, there were many - Howard included, if she were honest - who hadn’t been nearly as upset about Darkmoor and its experiments as she had. If anything, the larger concern was the scandal it had caused, the embarrassment, and the many apologies that had to be made afterwards. Peggy couldn’t imagine any sort of apology could make up for lost lives, homes, and ways of life.

For long moments they walked. Peggy turned up the color of her coat against the cold wind blowing off the Potomac River, chilling her. What had been a sweet, happy evening together had suddenly turned dark and cold, the air damp and biting. It felt full of regrets and recriminations from long ago.

“As part of an agreement with the military and His Majesty's government, a deal was brokered in which Michael would provide as much information as he could regarding the Darkmoor Project. In exchange, he would be remanded to SSR custody, later SHIELD custody, with the plan that as long as he played ball with the SSR he would be able to eventually be a free man. Darkmoor was the inciting event in the creation of SHIELD, the scandal of it all was the leverage we needed to get all the major members of the UN to sign on board. SHIELD subsumed the SSR and with it Michael. He was part of the creation of the London office, along with Fred Wells, who was its first chief. He was, as far as I knew before I left, well behaved.”

She trailed off, sadly, picking through the threads of her own complex feelings on all of it, the hurt and the betrayal of what he did. Even now, years later, the anger she felt and the sense of loss still felt heavy in her chest, despite the fact that her brother - her once beloved brother - was now really dead and gone, lost to her forever.

“You know, the worst thing of all of it was that he was my hero. He always had been, even when we were small children. From the moment I could pick up a wooden sword I was trailing after him in the garden, trying to horn in on his adventures. He always used to tease me horribly, take my sword away and make me work to get it back, but he’d give it eventually. He always said that working for things like that would make me stronger, teach me not to give up no matter how hard things got. He never belittled me for doing it or thought I couldn’t just because I was a girl. If anything, Michael believed I could do anything, should try to be something other than a silly school girl or a vapid debutante. We always talked about how we would go on adventures together, me and him, off to find treasure or some ancient lost city, just like in the adventure pulps. It was always going to be the two of us, out changing the world, fighting bad guys and living a life of danger. And then...he died, or at least I thought he did. And I left everything; Fred, my family, my wedding, and joined the SOE because he told me to, because he thought I could. I became what I am now because of him, and then I found out that he was living a lie...that it was all a lie. He lied to me, he lied to Mother and Father, he let them think he was dead and gone. They had grandchildren they didn’t even know about! As for me...I don’t know, I couldn’t quite bring myself to talk to him or discuss it, to hash it out or come to any conclusion about it. I left him in London for Fred to deal with, gave the excuse of important business in America. I promised him I would talk, eventually, but...a year later and Scott Lang showed up and I was off to the future to find you and figure out the Avengers.”

For long, still moments they walked, now facing the US Capitol Building, the white stone shining in the cold darkness. Steve beside her pondered for long moments. She could tell he was processing, that line had formed between his brows, the one that always formed when he was concerned or deep in thought. By now, she suspected he was rather used to having a great deal of mad information thrown at him. How he could process it all with any sort of grace still somewhat awed her.

“So you never got to hash it out with him,” he finally asked, quietly.

“No,” she admitted with equal parts regret and sadness. “I never did. I suppose I couldn’t allow myself enough time to think of that.”

He nodded, stopping in the middle of the walk along the side of the reflecting pool. Without a word, he turned to her, unlinking his arm from hers in order to pull her close. Peggy went, willingly, wrapping her own free arm around his middle, burying her face in the cold of his jacket. It smelled of leather, of sandalwood, and of him. She wished she could bottle that scent to take with her back to New York, and she was struck anew with a pang of their coming separation.

“I can’t imagine how difficult that all was,” he sighed into her hair, softly kissing the top of her head. “And how hurt you had to be when you found out. I don’t know what I would do if I were in the same place as you.”

Peggy chuffed, not sure she did anything particularly heroic in any of it. “Thank you. It was...well a while ago, now. And besides, Michael is gone for real now. I couldn’t have that conversation even if I wanted to.”

“I know.” He pulled back, enough so he could reach up and tip her chin up just enough for him to bend and kiss her, softly, chaste compared to most of their kisses now that they were together as a couple. It still left Peggy breathless and weak. She wondered if it would ever stop being that way and vaguely hoped it wouldn’t.

“I love you, you know.” He said it as a matter-of-fact, like he would discuss the weather or baseball. Still, it thrilled her and made her grin like a mad person.

“I know,” she laughed, her spirits lifting almost immediately, returning some of the charm of the evening. “You better, I did come through time to find you.”

“And I am glad that you did.” He took her arm once more, tucking her chilled fingers in the crook of his arm as they began to meander once again. The casual walkers that had been out earlier had thinned somewhat. The crowd of teenagers had settled to chat among themselves, no longer shouting and shrieking. The couple with the golden retriever had long since moved on. They were by themselves now, not that Peggy was worried. The mall was usually safe enough of an evening, and it wasn’t as if she and Steve weren’t highly trained soldiers without the ability to defend themselves. But there was something nice about being tucked up against his side, safe and protected, knowing he was there and real, supporting her even with an old, regretful hurt.

They were most of the way through the mall and back towards the way they had come before Steve brought up the most obvious question. “Does Sharon know about any of this? About her grandfather?”

“Most of it,” Peggy admitted, though the two of them had only ever discussed it in the most cursory of ways. “I know Harry knows of it. I suppose Maggie does, and I am guessing their spouses. Sharon knows the most because she has SHIELD clearance and because it obviously came up. I try not to discuss it at the family dinner table when I’m there.”

“Understandable,” Steve agreed. “Do you ever wish you could go back then? Just to talk to him? Clear the air, maybe tell him how you feel?”

Peggy’s chest ached at the thought. “Just about every time I think of it. There are...a lot of dangling relationships I left back there, Steve, people I wish I could have had a chance to speak to once before I came forward in time; Howard, Edwin and Anna, my parents, Daniel. I didn’t. I can’t keep looking backwards, though, if I do I will just get mired there, unable to move. I’ve never been that sort of person anyway. I regret that we never got to clear the air, that I never tried to. But it is done, and I suppose I will have to move forward.”

It was after all what she was good at - moving forward and starting over.

He said nothing, only squeezed her arm as they continued to walk towards where his motorcycle was parked. He glanced at her, silently asking her the question of if she was ready to head out of the cold. She nodded, tossing the remains of her drink into the nearest trash as he dug in his pocket for his keys.

“Take me home, captain,” she sighed, physically and mentally weary. “And maybe make me forget regrets and things left unsaid for a while.”

He knew very good and well what she meant by that statement, but his all too guileless look was filled with the devil’s own mischief as he swung a leg over the Harley. “Well, I mean, I know of a good Whitney Frost movie we could put on and maybe forget for a bit.”

“Mmmm, not as good as spending what is left of our last evening together making love in that lovely, large bed that you put together.” She put her hands on his shoulders as she crawled behind him, leaning in to murmur in his ear. “After all, I will be gone for a whole week and I will need something to remember you by!”

She loved the nervous and flustered swallow that she still could illicit out of him. “Well...I think we could maybe manage something.”

“I thought that would be better than Whitney Frost,” she purred, snuggling close to him as he turned on the engine.

“Whitney who? I don’t know of this person you are speaking of!”

“Good answer, soldier,” she chuckled as he pushed off the curb, back to his new apartment, where he absolutely lived up to his promise.

Chapter Text

“I was wondering if you would ever come home or if you would just simply stay in the Triskelion and never leave Steve’s side ever again.”

Peggy met Cassandra Kam’s dry cheerful observation with a somewhat abashed smile. “The thought might have crossed my mind, I won’t lie, but at the end of the day there is work here to be done. Besides, I would only be a distraction.”

“I think that soldier could use a distraction or two.” Cassandra was looking over seven documents all at once on her tablet as she stood in the lobby of Stark Tower, keeping an eagle eye on the workers carrying boxes and crates inside to the service elevators. “How is he taking this whole modern, long-distance relationship plan you two have got going on.”

“Better than I am, frankly.” Even though they had parted at this apartment that morning with sweet kisses promises of phone calls later, it felt strange, knowing he was now no longer in New York. Years of longing for him, believing him dead, of searching for him in the ice and she was now reduced to being no better than some of the girls she knew in the 1940s, pining for their far-away sweethearts. “Romanoff will keep him busy. He has a lot to catch up on.”

“And what will keep you busy,” Cassandra’s dark gaze slipped to Peggy’s. “I mean, outside of picking fights with senators and the intelligence community?”

“This, obviously,” Peggy waved a hand at the workers coming in and out. “Where are we at with it?”

Cassandra flipped her pad around. “We got workers on the main floor doing the final installs of flooring, fixtures, and cabinets, things like that. The electrical and wiring took a bit, especially as the building is tied to the arc reactor and not the main power grid, so there was some accounting for that. JARVIS was a big help there.”

“He tends to be,” Peggy smiled, reviewing Cassandra’s meticulous notes. “Are Banner and Ross up in the labs?”

“Yeah, overseeing the non-Stark areas of everything. Also, I guess they are working on some sort of not-so-secret, secret project regarding the serum and Bruce, but I haven’t asked too many questions. They just keep bantering about it while I happen to be standing there, and they sound super smart, making me question my life choices.”

Peggy chuckled. “You are super smart else I wouldn’t have brought you on board. Who else would keep all of this running for me?”

“You do have JARVIS. He’s fond of you,” Cassandra quipped, but she was still pleased with the compliment. “But I do get the picture.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Part of why we are here is you, after all.” Honestly, if it weren’t for Cassandra’s steadfast friendship and level head in Peggy's first years here, she wasn’t sure she’d have ever learned to navigate this strange world she often found herself in. “By the way, how was your long weekend with your fiance?”

The tables were turned on Cassandra, who now blushed, absently fiddling with the large ring on her left hand with her thumb. “Good! Wonderful! Wedding planning is stressful, but...yeah, nice have some us time before I have to deal with the madness of our families and all of this. Honestly, I’m tempted to just drag him to a judge and have it all done with now so as not to deal with it all.”

“My mother planned most of mine,’ Peggy recalled, thinking back to her own wedding that never happened. “I merely voiced my opinion on what I did and didn’t like. I had no patience for it, and besides, there was a war going on and the idea of managing all of that with rationing and what not was a nightmare. She was better suited to it. I remember the dress was perhaps the only thing I did care about, but then that’s more because I always did like pretty clothes.”

“Not going to lie, that is the one part I am looking forward to.” She paused, studying Peggy quizzically for a moment. “You know, I keep forgetting there was anyone else before Steve for you, that you had a whole past and life before you were Peggy Carter, founder of SHIELD, this legend who sort of happened into our lives.”

Funny...Peggy sometimes forgot that, too.

“I did! I had a whole life growing up; mother, father, brother. Had things gone differently, I wouldn’t have ended up here, but I suppose we could all say that.”

“Hmmm,” Cassandra nodded, absently, eyeing one of the workers trying to fit a crate twice the size of the large, open glass doors in through them. “Hey, be careful! What are you doing with that? You trying to take out a window?”

Peggy chuckled, watching as Cassandra unleashed on the unsuspecting worker, her Brooklyn accent coming out thickly as she did. Moving towards the regular passenger elevators, Peggy pressed the call button, stepping inside as her friend’s voice rang out from the lobby.

“Agent Kam is in fine voice today, don’t you think, Miss Carter?” JARVIS, the ever present AI, was clearly fond of Cassandra, judging from the hint of amusement in his voice.

“She is a woman who knows what she is about, that I will say.” That was part of why Peggy got on so well with her. “Things going well upstairs.”

“So far, though I fear that Dr. Banner is nervous that Mr. Stark isn’t here with so much fine equipment being installed. Dr. Ross has him well in hand, however. I have been monitoring his vital signs and giving them both regular updates.”

“Thank you! And Mr. Stark…”

“Is currently busy in his lab in Malibu as we speak, reviewing his latest plans for a new suit.”

He seemed to always be working on a new one. Peggy glanced at her watch. “It’s only just nine in the morning here, that would make it just six in California. How long has he been at this?”

“Most of the night,” confirmed JARVIS, “though at least he did sleep a few hours between 10 PM when Miss Potts went to bed and 2 AM when he awoke. He has been having frequent nightmares.”

Peggy pursed her lips in concern, nodding. “Perhaps if this keeps up we should let Miss Potts know.”

The AI was circumspect on that for a brief moment. “To do so would of course tip our hand that I am monitoring and reporting on him, which I don’t think would be very welcome.”

“True, but it is better to let her know than keep it from her, don’t you think?” Peggy did not know Pepper Potts well outside of a few social engagements with Stark, but she had come to admire the woman who had not only won Stark’s heart, but who ran his company. It was clear that she adored him and that she was protective of him. Had the tables been turned, if it were someone else watching over Steve, say Romanoff, and she had noticed something concerning, she would hope that she would come to talk to Peggy about it.

“I can’t help but agree,” JARVIS affirmed as the doors opened. “I will make sure to keep a regular log for Miss Potts' records should she ask.”

“Thank you,” Peggy murmured, stepping into the organized chaos of the main labs of the floor. Unlike Stark’s personal labs, which were done and exclusive only to him and Bruce Banner, this area was what Stark had envisioned for the larger Avengers team. Workers were tinkering in various corners in hard hats and t-shirts, chattering with each other as they discussed various problems. Dust and wires covered the concrete subfloor as Peggy picked her way through the various dangers in her expensive, but sturdy black and white pumps, making her way to the far end of the floor. There in the middle of all of this stood Bruce Banner and Betty Ross, the former looking desperately as if he wanted to be let loose with a screwdriver at something, the latter chatting with a worker, looking slightly overwhelmed.”

“How are you both handling this,” Peggy asked, cautiously, sensing that Bruce would rather be anywhere but in this chaos.

“Oh, you know, it’s just another relaxing day in the office.” Banner’s sardonic smile was actually rather charming and made Peggy laugh. “I don’t know why Tony thought this would be a good idea.”

“You got this,” Betty assured him, eyeing the entire scene with a look reminiscent of her father. “Things are going apace. We had a minor issue with some chemical hoods that weren’t compliant with the spaces they were meant for, but I think it will all work out. Hopefully they will be done by the end of the week.”

“The bigger issue will be the computer integrations,” Banner murmured, toeing some cabling at his feet. “We will be working on that once things are installed. I got a team of Tony’s best guys coming in and will be handling that myself with them once the chaos dies down.”

“And what’s the ETA on everything?” Peggy eyed the organized chaos curiously.

Banner shrugged under under his oxford shirt, hands stuffed in his pockets, perfectly neat and yet still giving off something of the air of the absent-minded professor. “Next week at the latest. We in a rush?”

“No, just hoping to get started planning for expanding our situation further. I’m hoping to hear from Secretary Pierce soon and if he and Fury are in agreement, we can start officially expanding the Avengers broader team.” She nodded in satisfaction at it all. It had sounded like a crazy plan when Stark had suggested it months ago, partnering with him to fund the Avengers under SHIELD’s aegis. Now, it was looking more and more like a reality. It had something of the thrill of the old days founding SHIELD with Howard and Chester Phillips, the unknown challenge of it and how to make something good and useful and viable, something that would last and make real change in this world. Something...that was perhaps a bit more manageable and small scale than SHIELD had become, she thought, with cheerful rue.

“Jane is going to be impressed when she gets back state side,” Betty observed, arms crossed over her floral printed blouse. “She can have a real office now and not just that ratty, beat-up RV.”

“My old ratty, beat up RV,” Banner shot back, archly, the slightly wounded, betrayed expression on his face saying that there was a story there.

“Well...you weren’t here to use it. Besides, she needed it.”

There was a shared look, one that spoke of years of conversations, arguments, and differences of opinion on the matter of this...RV...that they spoke of. Peggy never forgot that Betty Ross and Bruce Banner had been a couple for years, engaged to be married, but she often never thought about it until moments like this between them, when whole conversations happened without words. She wondered if this was the sort of look she and Steve shared that everyone else always tended to complain about.

She cleared her throat, pointedly, but politely. “So...Jane?”

They both snapped out of it, shaking themselves, briefly. It was Betty who recovered as Bruce shrugged his shoulders, the blush on his skin blessedly pink rather than green. “Right, Jane...she’s still going to be over there for a few months at least. Something about strange readings and anomalies.”

“Temporal anomalies and time dilations.” Banner clearly understood what Foster was talking about. “That far north it could be anything, the influence of the poles, the ozone layer…”

“Anything to be concerned about?” Frankly, the last time these sorts of strange terms had been dropped by Banner a space god had used a shiny box to open a portal over the very building they were standing in. Peggy rather hoped they wouldn’t have a repeat of such a thing.

“Not from what her data shows, but she’s keeping an eye on it. I told her to give us a shout out if it got...well, you know, weird.”

“Any weirder than the rest of our lives,” Betty asked with a hint of worried speculation.

“Well...I mean...it could be, in theory.” Banner shrugged, lackadaisical. Perhaps when one turned into a giant, green titan one could afford to be nonchalant about such things.

A crash behind Peggy made them all flinch as Banner’s eyes went wide over Peggy’s shoulder. “Hey, let me help you with that before someone gets hurt!”

Peggy was half afraid to look. She winced as Banner moved over to help pick up the corner of something heavy and covered in cardboard, surprisingly more at ease in all of this madness than she would have expected.

“He doesn’t rattle easily, you know.”

Peggy turned to face Betty, who met her guilty surprise frankly. Peggy found herself flushing, a bit sorry that her thoughts were that obvious.

“I just...wonder is all.”

“And worry?”

Peggy shrugged, nodding. “That too. There is a lot of...drama around the Avengers right now.”

“I know,” Betty nodded, shifting to move away from the madness for the moment, leading Peggy out of the main lab and towards a quieter area. “At least my father isn’t involved in any of it this time.”

Peggy winced again. “How is your father doing?”

“Better...slowly.” While her shrug was diffident, there was exasperation and true worry underlining her otherwise cool tone. “He’s half convinced his doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about and keeps trying to go out on jogs only to get exhausted and dragged home by his assistant. I’ve thought about hiring a private nurse just to keep him locked down till he gets better, but he’d slip out just to spite me.”

In truth, Peggy couldn’t tell if Betty meant that as joking or not. It was well known the animosity between Betty and her father, General Thaddeus Ross. Peggy could understand why, the man had in many ways done much to destroy the life and happiness of Bruce Banner, and by extension, his own daughter, all in the pursuit of the holy grail of weapons manufacturing - the recreation of Abraham Erskine’s super soldier serum. Now years later, he was reaping the consequences of that decision, his only daughter was estranged from him and at a point when he could have used her by his side. Peggy had heard through Stark that Ross had suffered a massive heart attack while out golfing with friends. One surgery later, a triple bypass to work around the blockages to his heart, and he was on the road to recovery, but it would be a slow one. While Betty had dropped everything to be with her father through his surgery and part of his recovery, she still wasn’t ready to forgive him for everything with Bruce. Peggy wasn’t certain she ever would be.

“Well, I hope he recovers quickly.”

“Mmmm,” Betty slipped into a seat at one of the installed lab tables. “I mean, I hope he does, if nothing else so I won’t have to worry about him doing something he shouldn’t, but I don’t know. He’s talking about retiring from the Army. It’s the most serious I’ve heard him discuss it.”

That shocked Peggy. “And do what?”

Betty shrugged, clearly as perplexed by the idea as Peggy was. “He doesn’t know. Maybe take up consulting somewhere, private sector work. Or he could do what all old generals do, go into politics and make other men go fight in wars.”

That seemed the habit of old generals in America - ride off into the sunset and into a career into a career in politics. “And what will happen to his pet projects?”

“You mean the serum?” Betty pursed her lips. “He swears to me that the Army isn’t touching it anymore, but I can’t ever be sure. Seventy-years since Steve Rogers and they all keep chasing that brass ring.”

“It’s a fool’s errand.” Frankly, as far as Peggy was concerned, they had one good soldier and that was enough. But then again, it didn’t stop them from turning Bruce into what he became, had it?

“Speaking of the serum and regeneration,” Betty switched gears with a curious expression. “Cassandra mentioned Sharon is on the London bombing case. Do you know how she’s coming with that?”

“She just started. I haven’t spoken to her since she left, so no. I try not to interfere with her work.” Peggy lifted a helpless shoulder. “I feel it would be bad form to pull rank and stick my nose into her case. Why?”

“Was just curious. The company that got hit, MST Pharmaceutical is one I was familiar with in doing our research for the Army. They have done some pretty advanced work in regeneration and human healing. Not the serum, certainly, though I think it may have started out that way years ago, but they abandoned it in favor of something smaller than that, basic wound care and reconstruction work. They do other research, as a matter of fact. Their basic philosophy has been less on creating a drug to throw at an illness and more at working to improve the lives of people, to cut down on the health problems in the first place. They’ve been trying to branch out into doing philanthropic work, mostly in third world countries without adequate healthcare.”

Before the explosion days ago, Peggy had never heard of the company and certainly hadn’t looked that deeply into it. From the sound of it, Betty at least admired them. “They sound as if they are doing good work.”

“Trying to, at least.” Betty smiled, wobbling her head in uncertainty, her dark ponytail swinging with it. “I mean it’s never perfect, and they are just one company, but it is certainly better than a lot of pharmaceutical companies are doing. They’ve gotten some push back for it, people afraid that their philanthropic work is really a front for them to test their products on the poor before putting it out to mass market consumption, but I’ve seen very little evidence of it. But...just saying that a guy like the Mandarin, if he is what the news reports say he is, he may not need much of a reason to blame them for some imagined slight.”

“Perhaps,” Peggy murmured, frowning. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that. No one ever acted in violence without some reason or cause, even if it wasn’t a reason people couldn’t easily understand. Certainly, a man with an agenda hitting key Western targets wouldn’t do it without a purpose, even if that purpose, for the moment, was obscure to all of them. “You said they worked on regeneration, correct?”

“Well, they did years ago when Bruce and I were first starting our research. I don’t know where they are at with it now, if they continued or left off of it.”

“And you think they started with the serum?”

Her dark, elegant brows knit together. “I mean, sure, it’s the first place I would look if I were looking into cellular regeneration would be Erskine’s formula, at least to start. Why?”

A dreadful, awful feeling hit Peggy then, an idea of at least why the target might have been the company...perhaps even the bases as well. “A man who has contacts around the world and who had the ability to work with Obadiah Stane for years getting illegal weapons from Stark Industries, and you don’t think he wouldn’t be interested in a version of the serum or something like it to sell on the black market, or worse, use on his own men?”

The idea of that made Betty’s blanche white in the harsh light of the lab. “The serum is...difficult...delicate. You do it wrong and it could have horrific consequences.”

“I know,” she replied, knew perhaps better than Betty. She still remembered Johann Schmidt all too well. Even long ago, they had all long discussed the ethics of what they were doing, even the idea of putting Steve in the chamber in the first place. But the thought was there, that this might be some of what the Mandarin was after. A bomb was a convenient distraction, after all. Have everyone pay attention to that while you snuck someone into a base or into a company and look into their files to find what you are looking for.

“You think that’s what is happening here?”

“I’m a former spy, I can’t help but think that.” Was it an angle Sharon would consider? “I need discuss this with Sharon. If the serum is the target, then that makes this part of the Avengers concern, in my opinion.”

“Do you think Sharon will agree with that?”

Honestly…probably not. “If nothing else, we can work together on it, perhaps pool our expertise. If it is Erskine’s old notes they are after, no one knows them better than you and me.” Truth be told, it was as flimsy of an excuse as Peggy had ever seen, but the idea that it could be that, could even be possibly connected to that made her more nervous than she could say. “I mean...she will likely understand.”

Peggy hoped she would.

“So I’m guessing this means you are heading to London?”

Peggy blinked back at the other woman, mildly. “I suppose this does.”

She had a sneaking suspicion neither Cassandra nor Steve would be happy to hear that news.

Chapter Text

Peggy supposed the saying was true...you couldn’t ever go home again. She knew she couldn’t, she had prepared herself for it, but nothing, really, could prepare one for stepping onto the native soil for the first time in years...decades...and realize that it wasn’t the home that you remembered. When she first arrived in the twenty-first century in New York nearly three years before, she had the profound sense of living in a bizarre sort of déjà vu, of walking through a world she both recognized and did not, where buildings from the 1940s blended into towers of glass and steel, the city taller and more glittering that her memory said it should be. But that had been New York, a city that was forever on the move, forever changing how it looked. London was...well, London; stolid, reliable, a bit old-fashioned and stodgy, but...home.

The city she found in 2012 was in some ways that...in a lot of ways it wasn’t.

Even before Peggy had left for America, she knew that it would never quite be the same in the old city ever again. The Nazis had rather seen to that, destroying whole neighborhoods, homes, and lives. She had caught up on the long process of rebuilding, the ways in which the city worked to renew its neighborhoods, to return London into a glorious capital once more. Some initiatives, like always, were more successful than others. Still, the moment she had caught sight of the tall, glittering towers of glass lining the banks of the Thames, not to mention the large, thin hoop of a wheel incongruously turning around and around, Peggy realized that whatever had happened between 1948 and 2012, she couldn’t she had expected this. Even the London Bridge was different. The old bridge, the one she had grown up with all of her life, had been torn down sometime decades ago and replaced by a new, larger, broader one to accommodate the increased traffic in and out of the main heart of the greater metro area. The one she knew, whose length she had trudged across many times during her war years, was now mostly in Arizona as part of some resort town there. It boggled the mind to think of it. Standing tall over this new construction, however, was a single, crystal tower, like an arrow in the sky.

“That there’s your destination, the Shard,” the cabbie rumbled, a large, rumpled, middle aged sort that had long been associated with cabs in London - one of the few things that also hadn’t changed in her time away. “What the locals are calling it, leastaways. Just finished up a few months ago.”

Peggy blinked at it with eyes as wide as saucers. Obviously, in New York, she was used to such things. She lived in an apartment building that was tall enough to see New Jersey from her own balcony. But in London, such a thing felt incongruous, strange, out of place. “Just opened, you say?”

“Right,” he confirmed, more of a noise than a true word. “Surprised anyone is heading there. I heard no one has moved in yet.”

“One group has,” Peggy responded, with no more information than that. How common the knowledge of SHIELD offices having moved into the building was, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to advertise it. “Have you been inside?”

“Nah, not open yet. They say when it is you can go all the way to the top and look out all over the city. Why anyone would do that, I can’t imagine. Make me feel green, it would.”

“I don’t know, I live in New York,” Peggy said, cheerful in her reassurance. “It’s not so bad.”

“Maybe so, but New Yorkers are a strange breed who like the dangerous living. I watch the telly and see that. I’ll stick to my cab and the streets on the ground. Don’t need to be looking down on anyone.”

Her grin spread from ear-to-ear as he said it, the familiar cadence, the very English sensibility. “I’ve missed home.”

“Been away for a while, then?”

Peggy sighed, long and soft as she leaned back into the seat. “Longer than you can possibly know.”

He dropped her off near the front doors of the glittering construction of steel and glass. Peggy stepped out, eyeing the entire area with wondering eyes. This was not how she remembered this area at all. While parts of it looked familiar, vaguely, others were absolutely new. Big, boxy buildings of concrete and glass stood nearby, none as tall as the shining point standing above her. She could understand why it had its name, it looked like a shard of crystal had somehow landed bottom down on the earth.

Inside the building it was stark white and just as dazzling. The cabbie hadn’t been lying, the building had finished only months before and the crew that manned the lobby was skeletal at best, but Peggy moved to the long reception area, well used to this sort of set up from New York.

“Hello,” she greeted, pulling out her badge. “I’m here to see the new offices upstairs.”

The young woman sitting at the desk took one look at Peggy’s badge and frowned. “I’m sorry, Director Carter...I suppose you are here to speak with Mr. Blevin?”

Peggy had no idea who this Blevin was, but she went with it. “He’s not expecting me, but I was in town and wished to see the new offices.”

The woman didn’t seem particularly bothered by that. “Let me see if there is someone available to escort you.”

Smartly she tapped on her keyboard as an earpiece lit up in her ear. She had a distant look as she waited, perking up when someone on the other end answered. “Hello, Miss Sterling? Yes, this is Jessica downstairs, I have a Director Margaret Carter here? She says she wished to see Mr. Blevins. She has a proper badge and everything. Right…I’ll just sign her in then.”

Tapping her ear, the woman then reached for a clipboard, filling out one of the spaces with Peggy’s badge information. She passed it over the counter to Peggy. “If you would sign in, please, Mr. Blevin’s assistant will be down to let you up.”

“Of course.” In her neat, looping, old-fashioned handwriting she signed her name, passing it back to the woman as she took back her SHIELD badge and accepted a visitor’s tag to clip onto her now rather rumpled suit coat, creased from her long flight across the ocean. No sooner than she had done so than an lift opened and a woman marched across, looking flustered as she eyed Peggy up and down rather as if she had seen a ghost.

“It’s you!” Her wide, hazel eyes looked as if they were about to fall out of her thin face. She looked to be older than Peggy, with short, stylish hair and gold hoops offsetting her practical office wear, but the stricken, awed look on her face would have been hysterical if Peggy hadn’t been trying to be as professional as she could be.

“I do believe so...or it was when I got off the plane this morning.”

“The Peggy Carter?” The woman grinned, reaching out a manicured hand to take Peggy’s. “I mean, I’ve seen your picture loads, but might I say it’s rather amazing to see you alive and in the flesh. Cathy Sterling, I assistant to Chief Blevins of the London Office. It’s a surprise to have you here!”

“It’s rather unplanned,” Peggy admitted, flushing at the now curious gaze of the two women behind the long, white counter. “I was hoping to catch Agent Sharon Carter, I was told she was in this office working on her case.”

“Ahh, yes!” With an eager nod, the woman gently took Peggy’s elbow to lead her towards the elevator, clearly not wanting to say too much in the open. Still, even as she walked, there was a nervous energy to her. “I do believe she’s in a meeting with Scotland Yard and MI5 at the moment, but till then I can take you up. How was your flight?”

“Long,” Peggy admitted. As much as she would have preferred to take a quinjet to London and damn Hill’s complaints on expense, she wasn’t precisely going for Avengers business...well, rather tangentially she was. Besides, she wasn’t exactly Nick Fury, able to command SHIELD transport whenever she needed. So a commercial flight was purchased, though she had splurged on a first class ticket. Seeing the regular seats behind her on the flight, Peggy was rather glad she had. “It was a spur of the moment sort of decision.”

The woman nodded, clearly uninterested in asking any further questions than that. “I have to say, Director, it is a pleasure meeting you. You are a legend here, of course, but when we heard you had reappeared after all these years, well...it was quite the surprise.”

Peggy raised a delicate eyebrow, unsure of what to say. She never was in moments like these, which happened less frequently now at days, but were still no less uncomfortable. “Ummm...thank you.”

“Of course, the Avengers caused quite the stir as well.” Miss Sterling continued to prattle as the lift carried them to the 26th floor. “I am just hoping we never need them here in Britain. I imagine they are still cleaning up in New York.”

“Yes, the reconstruction continues.” Something about the woman’s flippant attitude, the way she carried on as if the battle had been a television show or a scene from a film rubbed Peggy rather wrong. To people who lived so far away from it all, the battle that occurred in the New York skies must feel distant and unreal, like it happened to someone else. To her and the people who lived there, it had been a terrifying moment, one in which millions of lives and the fate of the whole planet had hung in the balance.

“Imagine...aliens being real? If one popped up in my back garden I don’t know what I would do!”

The lift doors opened as Peggy stepped out with the assistant into what passed for a lobby to the SHIELD offices within the Shard. The other woman placed her hand against a pad by the closed doors, the sensors turning green as the doors opened, allowing her and Peggy to walk inside. The floor was still sparsely filled. The London office was in the process of relocating, and here and there, Peggy could see evidence of continued painting and building, not unlike what was going on at Stark Tower with the new Avengers facility. The main administrative area, however, was up and running, furnished and looking immaculate. Miss Sterling was busy showing off the place, waving hands towards the various areas as she described them.

“Here is of course Chief Blevins’ office. He will want to catch you at some point, you know, but currently he is in the meeting with Agent Carter. Oh, and of course, we have the Wall of Honor set up already.”

Peggy blinked at a space near the most open, visible part of the main area. There was a list of names, agents who had served with distinction or who had fallen in the line of duty from the London office. Blessedly, no pictures adorned it, Peggy wasn’t forced to look at her own face, but she did see her name along with Howard’s and Phillip’s at the top of the display. Not far behind was the name of Fred Wells, the first chief of this office and her former fiance. Alongside it was another name.

“You have Michael’s name here?” Surprised, she raised a finger to the imprinted plate, metal layered with bronze, her brother’s name set alongside his title and the dates of his service.

“Oh, yes!” The other woman was pleased to confirm that, not aware of the history Michael had in this office or even why he had even first been there. “Of course, he did serve longer in New York, but he was a founding agent in this office, and I believe that Chief Braddock when he was the head here had his name added. I understand he was related to you?”

“My elder brother,” Peggy said, turning crisply. “Agent Carter’s grandfather, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh! She hadn’t mentioned that!” Miss Sterling apparently was making a mental note of it. Peggy swallowed the desire to cringe. Sharon rarely advertised it, though it was far from secret. She wouldn’t thank Peggy if the assistant made a thing out of it.

The doors to a large conference room opened abruptly as people began to mill outside. Judging from the snippets of conversation between the men and women coming out, they were part of the team on the Mandarin case. Just inside the doors, Peggy could see Sharon in discussion with someone else as a man, tall, balding, and somewhat grizzled, marched out, a portfolio folder in hand as he gave Peggy a brief once over and shot Miss Sterling an inquisitive look.

“Chief Blevins,” the assistant practically gasped, as if he wasn’t standing five feet in front of her asking silent questions. “A bit of a surprise! I’d like to introduce Director Margaret Carter.”

Why she had to be so formal, Peggy didn’t know, but she went with it as she held her right hand out to the man. “Peggy Carter is just fine. I rarely stand on ceremony.”

Even if she didn’t, the man’s wiry eyebrows rose, bright eyes flickering between Peggy, the assistant, and the wall behind them both. “That Peggy Carter, then?”

Peggy flushed, nodding. “Well, yes, it seems so. It’s not precisely a secret that I arrived back here, at least not among SHIELD circles. I don’t try and hide it, but I don’t advertise it either.”

“Good, because it sounds barmy no matter how you say it, but here you are.” He had a hint of the rougher side of town about him. This Blevins was no public school, Oxbridge educated toff, and somehow that made him more respectable to Peggy. “What brings you into town, then? Avengers business?”

Peggy shook her head, only slightly nettled at the fact she had been so pigeon-holed. “In part, though not exactly. I’m here in regards to the Mandarin case that Agent Carter is working on.”

“What about it?”

Peggy glanced inside to where Sharon was still chatting with several others. “I’m interested in the pharmaceutical company and they work they are doing. I think it might give some direction.”

“MST? They are clean as a whistle. No one is even sure why anyone would bomb them.” His gaze sharpened and cut curiously at her. “Why do you think it?”

“A hunch, really.” Peggy shrugged, smiling breezily, one that gave nothing away. She knew it would irk him and she was right. His scowl flickered to the conference room.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to talk to the other Carter then. I’ll have you know that after that business in New York some in the Home Office weren’t too keen on sending up a case like this to SHIELD and we’re under pressure here to work it out in a way that satisfies the government without blowing up a city. They will have little patience with alien gods and Tony Stark and another of his ridiculous suits, you hear.”

“I am here by myself, aren’t I?” Peggy’s arch expression only met with the granite scowl of the London office chief. “I understand that this case has a lot of people on edge and there is pressure to figure it out. Not to make light of the seriousness of this case, as it is quite serious, but it is not at the level of the Avengers involvement in it.”

She couldn’t tell if his dark scowl said he agreed or disagreed with her assessment. “Go on, then. Let Miss Sterling know if you need anything.”

He marched off, already on to other matters as Peggy loosed a breath, watching the man as he consulted with his wide-eyed assistant. She couldn’t fault him for his gruff frankness, honestly, it was well appreciated in a world of double-speak and hidden meanings. He was a man here to do a job and ensure his office ran well, and likely had not been terribly happy with the antics of the World Security Council in New York either. Still, she felt she didn’t particularly want to get on the bad side of him and wandered, rather more meekly, to the conference room.

“Get me video from that if you can,” she heard Sharon say to what Peggy presumed was another SHIELD agent busy tapping on his phone. Her presence at the door gained her niece’s attention, as she blinked in confused surprise at Peggy’s small wave.

“Yeah, by the end of the day if you can, Paul. I’d appreciate it.” With a rather flustered nod, she dismissed the other agent, who gathered his things and wandered past Peggy with quiet pardons. Peggy waited till he was gone to meet Sharon’s confusion with a sheepish smile.

“What are you doing here?” There was a shrewd glint in her niece’s eye. She wasn’t an idiot and likely already suspected that Peggy was here for her case.

“Had something come up,” Peggy shrugged, setting her own case against a chair in the room. “And I suspect that our interests align somewhat on your case.”

“Our interests align?” Predictably, Sharon didn’t sound thrilled with that. “On a terrorism case that has utterly nothing to do with space gods and magic portal boxes?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the Avengers, per se,” Peggy hedged, knowing she had very little reason to butt into any of this and treading a thin line with Sharon’s good graces. “But it might have a lot to do with one of my old projects.”

Sharon’s expression was skeptical. “Which one?”

“Project: Rebirth.”

That hadn’t been an angle Sharon had expected, nor did Peggy think anyone would think to look for it. “Erskine’s work? How?”

“The pharmaceutical company that got hit, I mentioned it to Betty Ross. She knew of it from her work with Banner, said they had done some work in cellular regeneration and healing and at some point had studied the formula. She insists that isn’t what they are up to now, but...what if they are? Or perhaps they used the formula as a springboard for other research based off of it, perhaps innocent research, that someone is trying to get their hands on.”

“The serum?” Sharon’s arched expression was dubious, but not dismissive. “You came all the way here to London to chase after a supposition you could have sent me in an email?”

When she put it that way…

Peggy lifted her chin, a tad mutinous. “What if it is the serum?”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but did that mean you had to show up here in the middle of my case to inject yourself in it?”

She had suspected it would come down to that for Sharon. Somewhat guiltily, she shrugged a shoulder, stubbornness overriding reason at the moment. “I was following up on a lead that very much interests me and my work.”

“It’s a speculation at best and now you’ve arrived here in all of your Peggy Carter glory to stick yourself in the middle of this,” Sharon snapped, crossing her arms in annoyance in a pose that Peggy recognized as one she used and didn’t precisely like being directed back at herself.

“In all my glory? Whatever are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend your name doesn’t still have cache in SHIELD. Between you and grandpa, I’ve spent years trying to work around both to be taken seriously as an agent. This case, this Mandarin, is my first big chance to prove that I have chops all on my own, and to do it myself. Now my legendary aunt shows up because of super soldiers and any credibility I have as point on this investigation is now undermined by you standing here.”

Sharon’s irritated outburst took Peggy by surprise. “I’m not here to take over your case, you know. I have a very specific interest that just happens to dovetail with your case.”

Sharon’s dark eyebrows rose nearly to her blonde hair, with a patented Carter dubiousness. Peggy shifted from foot-to-foot, feeling as if she were ten-years-old again in her mother’s garden, being told off for being covered in mud again. In truth, Peggy hadn’t given the entire thing much thought. She had focused on the serum angle of everything and how that related to Sharon’s case. That Sharon might be upset had passed, fleetingly, through her thoughts, but had never been a concern. To see her angry now underscored that Peggy had, with her usual straightforward focus, bulldozed herself into the situation without even asking Sharon how she would feel about it.

“I concede the point,” Peggy admitted, quietly, thinking of Miss Sterling’s reaction and imagining how that would have to be difficult for Sharon. How does one maintain the leadership in this situation when your aunt is the one that everyone keeps looking to, even if she was only tangentially related to the case? “I apologize for just barging in here. It occurs to me that I perhaps could have simply made a phone call or sent an email with my concerns and perhaps followed up on my own without inviting myself here to inject myself in the middle of everything.”

“Yes,” Sharon replied simply, her frown deepening before finally softening. “I mean, I get it, you are you, and you are focused and dedicated, I get it. I’ve seen you work. But...you aren’t the one-woman show anymore, Agent Peggy Carter, out against all the other men in the SSR, trying to make a name for yourself, trying to be seen and taken seriously. You’re a founder of SHIELD, you’re the director for the Avengers, you are stopping aliens and saving planets. You’re dating Captain America and are best friends with Iron Man. That is...a very larger than life position to be in. And I’m just trying to make my bones doing what you did, to show I can live up to your and Grandpa’s rather large footsteps.”

Peggy couldn’t help but chuckle, softly, at the very idea of that. “Neither Michael nor I could ever claim to be perfect. Your grandfather was involved in one of the largest scandals in British security history, and I disappeared without a trace a year later leaving everything behind, making everyone else responsible for it. If there are a pair of idiots out there, that would be me and my brother.”

“I don’t know,” Sharon temporized with a soft smile. “Having known you both, I would say you both have some redeeming qualities.”

“Is bossiness a redeeming quality,” Peggy wondered aloud, half jokingly.

“Must be as I think that is half the reason Steve is in love with you.” Sharon uncrossed her arms with a sigh, shoving her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “And I won’t deny that I could use someone outside of the box on the case. Not that I’m not working with the best of the best in counter-terrorism here, but you are rather outside of all this, maybe you will see something I don’t. Besides, as I recall on the Stark case, you and I make a pretty good team when we work together.”

“That we do,” Peggy agreed, fondly thinking back to their time searching for the then missing Tony Stark. “And you said it yourself, I needed a chance to visit the old homestead.”

“Your room is available at the house,” Sharon nodded, slowly, a speculative expression on her face. “I’m willing for you to consult and in exchange maybe we can dig into this serum theory of yours?”

She was, after all, home. And Peggy hadn’t been there in a long, long time.

“Deal,” she agreed without hesitation.

Chapter Text

“I’m guessing that it looks a bit different than you last remember?”

Sharon’s statement was so underrated as to be laughable.

Hampstead had always been a rather nicer part of town, perhaps tending to posh, Peggy supposed. Now as they drove past gorgeous old Georgian and Victorian buildings turned out for a high end clientele and quaint shops selling the sort of things Peggy saw in the nicer parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Washington DC, it hit her just how...what was the term they used now at days?

“Boujee,” Sharon filled in for her, unknowingly, staring out the window at a fine home goods store before turning to Peggy with a knowing smirk. “It’s very boujee now.”

“And boujee is?”

“A reference to bourgeoisie, so materially well off upper middle class I suppose, though without the airs and graces of the upper class.”

“I don’t know about that,” Peggy mused, watching two women in well made coats wrap scarves around their well-colored hair before venturing into the autumn chill. “I seem to recall enough airs and graces around here when I was a child.”

Sharon only chuckled as they continued their ride in silence.

In truth, the Hampstead of the 1920s and 30s was somehow more...quaint than this, or at least Peggy remembered it so. Perhaps it was the golden haze of a childhood long gone, of a time before the war, when everything seemed so much easier and safer. It had seemed much less glamorous then, less like it belonged in the Hamptons rather than London. To be sure, it had always been a pocket of elegance as far back as she could remember, but then it had just felt secure rather than meticulously guarded from outside urban sprawl. It had felt like...well...home.

“Right up here,” Sharon called to their SHIELD driver, tapping his shoulder and pointing to the right, up a gated drive. The grey, granite fence stood tall in front of the property that Peggy had called home as a girl, the old iron gate now replaced with something modern and automated, powered by Sharon’s phone. Just beyond it, she could see the granite and white-trimmed windows, the achingly familiar sight of the house she had never thought to see again.

“Told you it was still here,” Sharon murmured beside her.

Peggy said nothing. The car pulled into the drive slowly, up the short length to the house. The front, despite being brown and lifeless now, still looked the same; neat and well-kept, the flame colored trees above still holding on to the last remnants of their summer beauty, those few leaves to have escaped raked up and taken away. The house itself looked as if it hadn’t aged a day in decades, not since that moment in 1947 when she left it to return to America, never to come back...until now, at least.

“Hey,” Sharon called, touching her arm gently, pulling her out of her quiet reverie. “We’re here. Let’s get inside. We can discuss next moves, okay?”

Peggy nodded, rather dumbly, muttering a thank you to their driver as she climbed out of the vehicle, grabbing her suitcase and briefcase as she followed Sharon to the front door, rocked with a thousand memories all at once. There were the lovely roses her mother had tended, planted at the house by Peggy’s grandmother nearly a century and a half ago. There was the tall oak tree that Michael had dared her to climb and she had gotten trapped in and couldn’t get down. Just overhead was the window to her own bedroom, overlooking the drive, where she had stood in her wedding dress as her entire world had come crumbling down around her.

“Crazy, right?” Sharon fiddled with something on her phone briefly before pulling keys out of her bag. “I am not going to lie, I do enjoy coming here. It’s been a while. I’d forgotten how much I loved this place.”

Peggy mutely nodded as Sharon unlocked the front door and stepped inside, lights flickering on as she did. For Peggy, it was as if she had put on that infernal time device of Scott Lang's once again, stepping through a door and going back into her own past. Now, despite her modern, smart suit and the more sleek, less bothersome style to her hair, she felt as if she had returned to an era decades past, to a time before Peggy Carter was a founder or director of anything, when she had just been a normal girl with dreams of something more and not a hero or some ridiculous legend.

It felt...strange.

“Welcome home,” Sharon grinned, taking off her scarf as she unbuttoned her wool pea coat, eyes rolling as if to encompass the whole, large place. “It’s had some upgrades and modifications. Grandmother did some work here right after your parents died, and then I think Aunt Maggie came over and did some more when Grandmother passed away. The kitchen and the baths are totally refurbished, obviously, and Grandpa took over the study, but some rooms haven’t changed that much.”

Peggy only nodded as she noticed the wallpaper in the foyer that her mother had been fond of was now gone, replaced with plainly painted walls. The effect wasn’t horrible, just...different. A mirror hung there now, over a side table and by a row of hooks, now greeted Peggy, her face incongruous in it. She belonged here, and yet, like the rest of the house she looked...different.

“Come see some of what they have done!” Sharon hung her coat on one of the hooks, urging Peggy to do the same, leaving her bags in the foyer as she pulled Peggy by the hand through to the sitting room. Much like the foyer, it too had been stripped of wallpaper and was left with lightly painted walls in a soft blue-gray, the heavy furniture her mother had preferred now replaced with more modern chairs and couches. Over the fireplace a very twenty-first century flat screen television hung. It all had the effect of modern coziness and yet it was all so very…

“Strange,” Peggy muttered, half a whisper, half a statement of confusion. “This is all so...odd!”

Sharon laughed in understanding, though she couldn’t possibly really understand Peggy’s dilemma. “Well, it has been updated. Hopefully you like it.”

Peggy could only shrug. “I mean...it’s pleasant, but it’s odd to know this room where I spent so many torturous hours sitting in skirts and longing to climb the tree outside looks so...homey.”

In truth, she had never spent much time in this room as a girl. This had been the domain of her mother, used only for guests and never for her and Michael’s rough-housing. This now looked like a place for children.

“This is just one room of the place!” Sharon led the way into the dining room, then to the kitchen, gutted and replaced with all modern appliances. Peggy stared at the granite countertops and stainless steel and though that their cook, Mrs. Jenkins, would have fainted to see her well-cleaned and tidy kitchen so shiny and spotless. She likely would never have cooked in it. No sooner than Peggy had wrapped her head around that marvel, Sharon led her to another room. Bit-by-bit, Peggy relearned the corners of her childhood home. Like everything else in her life since she stepped forward through time it was all so very bitter sweet, the deja vu of knowing this place intimately and yet finding it looking new, strange, and different.

She was home and yet...it wasn’t to any home that she remembered.

“I figure you could have your old room, if you want. I took the main room, I suppose your parents room.” Sharon turned on the lights upstairs, modern fixtures on the walls and ceiling glowing a soft yellow. She finally stopped for a breath, perhaps realizing she had dragged Peggy from pillar to post without really allowing her time to process. “I could...you know, let you have time to settle and get comfortable. I can start dinner. I had shopped just for me, but if you don’t mind pasta…”

“That’s fine,” Peggy assured her, finding her bag and shouldering her briefcase. “I’m happy with whatever.” In truth, as hungry as she was, she was also exhausted...and now very much surrounded by ghosts. “I’ll go...I don’t know, freshen up and take a look around. Maybe after we can crack open the MST files.”

“Okay.” With a reassuring hand on Peggy’s shoulder, Sharon wandered back towards the kitchens. Peggy watched her go before turning to take the ancient stairs up to the second floor. Muscle memory guided her as she turned up the carpeted steps and to the room that overlooked the front of the house...the room that had been hers as a girl. It too had changed. Peggy supposed that was to be expected. She hadn’t lived in this place since 1940 and had only visited infrequently in the years after. At some point, whether it was Michael’s wife, Moira, or her daughter, Maggie, someone had redone the furniture to something more modern and less heavy than the bedroom set that Peggy had known. That caused something of a pang as she thought of it. It had been a gift to her on her seventeenth birthday, a sign that she was a young lady now, capable of making her own decisions in taste and style. The old bedstead, the tall dresser with its curving lines, even the long, oval mirror she had been standing before as she and her mother had fitted her wedding dress that long ago, fateful day, all were gone. She hadn’t expected that knowledge to hurt as much as it did. The house was far too old for closets, but there was a wardrobe in the corner where her mirror once stood. Quickly, she stashed her suitcase inside, deciding to leave the room before any other regrets came to haunt her.

She hit the bottom of the stairs again, bounding down in the familiar, skipping gate she had as a girl, her fingers gliding over the well-loved and darkened varnish of the oak bannister. She hit the bottom as she always had, with a bit of a hop, as ingrained in her as breathing. She paused at the door there, the familiar old oaken panel that led to her father’s study. Sharon had skipped over that in her perusal of the house. Peggy hadn’t thought of it, but now she stood there, her heart in her throat. This had been once her favorite place in their entire home, the domain of her father. Unlike Amanda, with her manners and primness, and her upper middle-class pretensions of manners, Harrison Carter had been more salt-of-the-earth, a good-hearted and wise man who was the perfect balance to his more decorous wife. Her mother said he had been different once, more worried about the opinions of others and his presentation in society, but after the war and his brother’s death he had changed. For Peggy, she had only ever known her Dad, the man who loved to putter in the garden in shirt sleeves and dig out stumps and rocks, who would tramp through a countryside in gumboots and old jumpers, who smoked his pipe like a chimney stack within the confines of his study, and who would complain loudly if any piece of paper were lifted from its space because his mess of an office was completely “organized” in the way he could find things. Peggy had adored him for it.

But he was gone now...they both were, her prickly, but caring mother and her gentle, wise father. They had been for some time. The fact that she left the past without so much as saying goodbye hit her full force once again, tears stinging her eyes as she reached her hands to turn the cold, old doorknob and peek inside. With a flick of the switch by the door the lights came on. She hadn’t known what to expect, thought logic told her that of course, decades after her father’s death, all of it would be different. It was true, it was changed. Harrison Carter had been in law all of his life, spending much of it as a judge. His office had always been full to bursting with legal briefs and journals, piled helter skelter across the various surfaces of the space. Most all of that was gone, now, thrown out or tucked away somewhere. But the rest of the space, from the shelves filled with neatly ordered and well-loved law books, to the roll-top secretary desk he had used since he was a young lawyer, to the comfy old chaise lounge in the corner all remained. Only the chair at the desk had changed to something newer. If Peggy closed her eyes and breathed, she could still smell the pipe tobacco her father preferred, the scent of it and the old papers that used to gather like a fire trap in here. It made her heart ache to think of it.

They were gone and only she remained. And that right then hurt more than words could say.

The door to the office creaked on old hinges, Sharon’s voice filtering through Peggy’s pained quiet. “Hey, dinner is on. I see you found the office.”

“Yeah,” Peggy whispered, tears lacing her voice. “You know, this was my favorite place in this entire house when I was a girl.”

“I thought as much.” Sharon leaned against the doorjamb, her arms crossing as she looked it over. “It kind of does scream Grandpa Harrison.”

“Mmmm,” Peggy conceded with a soft, wobbling smile. “He really was the best father. Michael and I would hide out here rather a lot. Unfortunately for us, Mother always knew to come find us here. Still, he’d cover for us when he could.”

“Grandpa said he used to read all of the law books as a boy, just to see if he understood them.” Sharon eyed the wall of them, still meticulously placed on the shelves. “He said your father would let him do it, then answer all his questions on how things worked and why.”

“It’s how Michael learned Latin, that is for sure.” Peggy chuckled, shaking her head. “I didn’t have the patience for that when I was young. I was out in the back garden saving maidens and killing dragons. I didn’t have the patience for a lot of things, it seems.”

Sharon wisely did not comment on that. “If you want, while we wait on water to boil, we could get started.”

It was her niece’s gentle tug to pull her out of her morose thoughts. Peggy accepted it, turning from the room to follow Sharon out. Gently, she turned out the lights and closed the door, leaving the whisper of her father’s tobacco smoke behind her.

The kitchen felt over bright now, remodeled as it was. In Peggy’s mind it was still an egg shell color, not too harsh, not too yellow, a pleasant warm tone with something sepia to it. Now it was bright surfaces of gray, black, and white, with the silver of the modern appliances. In truth, it frankly didn’t look that different than the kitchen in her flat in New York, and yet it felt garish to her as she settled at an island that had been installed where once a broad table had been. She’d eaten many a meal at that table and had snuck many a sweet from it as well. The current island was clean, neat, and antiseptic.

“The wifi is up, so we should be able to connect.” Sharon pulled out her own tablet, her papers and notes scattered about, clearly ready to dig into Peggy’s angle on her cae. “So of course with the explosion we did research on the MST just to see what links they might have to any of this.”

“And,” Peggy asked, pulling out her own things as she did.

“Not a whole lot, frankly. The company is clean as a whistle. For once it looks like a pharmaceutical company who is actually trying to do something good in this world. They’ve created a whole foundation to work on global health issues in developing areas. Nothing about them screams a front for nefarious research or a reason for a terrorist organization to hit them, unless they are simply striking out at them because they are western and it’s purely ideological, which seems...well, to be honest, seems very basic and not anything like the Mandarin’s other targets.”

Peggy nodded, frowning. “Did you find out anything about his other targets, the ones the CIA didn’t tell you about?”

Sharon rolled her eyes, scowling at the reminder of that. “Yeah, had to put a call into the head of the CIA’s terrorism unit over here, a guy ironically named Ross. I don’t think he’s related to those Rosses, but he’s a character all on his own. Likes to think he’s a bit of a hard ass, but honestly, reading between the lines, the CIA had no more idea on those others than the ones they did tell me about. They are all random; places in the Middle East, Central Asia, one in Madripoor, with no rhyme or reason. The London one is the first truly high profile one and most public. CCTV didn’t catch much from the scene.”

As she spoke she pulled up video footage on her tablet, passing it over to Peggy. It was grainy, black and white, and not particularly useful for much else beyond seeing movement in what looked to be some sort of yard filled with the metal shipping containers popular in the modern era. She tapped the glass to start the film footage.

“You can see there in a minute that there appears to be a man walking through the yard, about ten minutes before the explosion happens, and he ducks behind a far stack of containers. A few minutes later, another man comes to meet him. The second man leaves, wanders off, and moments later everything is incinerated.”

Indeed, Peggy studied the poor quality film as a man in a large overcoat and a baseball cap wandered behind the stacks of metal, followed by someone else, bald, in black leather. What was exchanged or what they did was a mystery, hidden as they were, but the bald man left. Minutes later, the image exploded into whiteness, before the screen blackened, with only the white letters “end of digital recording” floating on the darkness.

Peggy pursed her lips, setting down Sharon’s tablet as she rose to tend to a now boiling pot of water on the hob. “What was in the shipping containers?”

“Not much.” Sharon put pasta in the water, stirring as she checked on a separate pan of what Peggy guessed was reheating sauce. “The containers actually didn’t belong to MST Pharmaceutical, but to a neighboring facility that is a fulfillment warehouse for a grocery store chain. MST Pharmaceuticals just happens to have a processing facility right there, close enough to the property line that when the explosion happened, they got hit. The camera footage was off their servers.

“So you think it is what...a coincidence?”

“Well, that was the running theory I had till you showed up with super soldier serum.” Sharon cast Peggy a pointed look, wandering to the refrigerator to pull out salad greens and other vegetables. “Honestly, it looks much more like MST was just a building near to where an explosion happened, no more, no less.”

“Except why would a terrorist hit a fulfillment center for a grocery store chain?” That made no more sense in Peggy’s mind.

“MI5 things it was an attempt to try and disrupt food supply lines in Britain and cause panic. It’s not a great theory, but it isn’t a horrible one, and if I wanted to really sow terror in a populace, I’d hit them where they were most vulnerable and least expecting it.”

Peggy had to credit Sharon and her team, they weren’t wrong with that. “Having lived through one terror in this city, I can’t argue with that logic. Still, it is strange that they would target something as random as a fulfillment warehouse when it happens to be next to a facility for a company known to have at least done some preliminary work on the serum.”

Sharon considered, opening the plastic clamshell of greens to dump into a large bowl. “So, what, they set off an explosion to cause a distraction?”

“It is a convenient diversion, you must admit. Set off the device, cause enough chaos and destruction to both clear the building and have everyone focused on that, while you send people in to gain access to the data that you want. You could be in and out without anyone being the wiser.”

“You’ve been hanging around Romanoff too much.”

Peggy snorted. “I’ll have you know that it was actually a tactic that the Howling Commandos and I used, several times over. Dernier would pick a target that was calculated to cause just enough destruction to get attention, but not enough to put serious lives in danger or cause structural damage. It worked...mostly.”

“Mostly?” Sharon looked up from her dicing of vegetables, curious.

“Inevitably someone noticed and the boys had to see some fighting. But this wasn’t a war, this was people going about their day, no one would think to look for operatives trying to steal research.”

“I’ll grant you it is a possibility.” Sharon scooped up what looked to be tomatoes and cucumbers to toss into the bowl with the greens. “And I get it, a terrorist with access to Erskine’s research is a terrifying thing on multiple levels. But are you sure that MST even has that sort of research?”

“No,” Peggy admitted, once again the haste with which she rushed into this endeavor coming to smack her squarely in the face. “Betty was the one who even suggested it.”

“I suppose, then, we better see if they even will admit to it. They’ve been highly cooperative up to this point, but then again, they thought it was just a random terrorist attack. I’m not sure how that cooperation will hold up when we ask them point blank if they’ve managed to get their hands on Abraham Erskine’s notes and what they are using them for.”

“Who do you have over there that you can ask?”

“There is an executive vice president I’ve been talking to, a Deepa Mathews. She’s made herself available to me, so I can see if we can get in there tomorrow.”

“And will she even answer us honestly?” Peggy had seen enough of Stark’s company to know the sort of protective mindset that came with such corporations.

“I guess we won’t know till we ask.” Sharon turned to pull the pasta from the flames, pouring it into a colander neatly. It was a simple meal, really, pasta, salad, quick and painless, and yet it was a skill Peggy herself never had mastered.

Sharon had noticed her eyeing the stove absently. “I know this isn’t Angie’s bolognese sauce, I get it, nothing can beat that I’m afraid. Hopefully canned sauce from Italy will do.”

“I’m not complaining,” Peggy protested, lightly, acknowledging nothing would be her friend’s recipe. “I know...I invited myself into this. And for what it is worth, I am sorry I inserted myself in without even asking you.”

“You know I’m not punishing you by making you eat canned pasta sauce for doing it, but...thank you. For what it is worth, I hope this turns into something. Maybe it will be the lead I need to catch him before things get worse.”

“Maybe,” Peggy replied, hoping it would, before things escalated. “I’m curious, if MST does have Erskine’s notes, how did they get them? And what were they doing with them?”

“It could all be innocent? Maybe they worked with them and realized whatever they wanted to do they couldn’t, or the serum wasn’t the answer for it.”

“Perhaps.”

With the sort of matter-of-fact, down-to-earth attitude her mother had, Sharon pushed aside all of those concerns. “Dinner is ready. We can worry about who knows what later.”

Peggy did as her niece ordered. “Since it’s your case, I’ll follow your lead.”

“I’ll hold you to that if you decide to pull rank on me,” Sharon teased, handing Peggy a plate.

Peggy had a feeling she was about to learn a lesson on her own impetuousness.

Chapter Text

She lay awake that night, in her childhood room, seeing ghosts. Peggy had no one to blame, really, outside of herself. As she tossed and turned she lay with her eyes closed, hearing the voice of her family; her mother as she stood by Peggy’s mirror, adjusting her veil, murmuring how proud she was of her, her father surreptitiously whispering to her that he had picked her up another adventure magazine, Michael as he woke her in the middle of the night to watch falling stars streak across the night sky in the garden. Finally, well into the small hours of the night, she fell into an exhausted oblivion, images of her long ago childhood flickering in and out of her dreams, like bits of cellulose film, cut and pasted together in disjointed ways, played back to her with no rhyme or reason except to remind her what she had left behind. At least she slept.

There was, however, at least one other person who would also be upset at her decision to pick up and fly to London, one who called her after what felt like only minutes after falling asleep.

“Unfh, what?” Peggy muttered, growling, somehow managing the phone glowing in the pre-dawn light.

“Wondered if I would wake you up.” Steve’s rumbling voice on the other end was deceptively light and apologetic, well practice and perfectly executed. She knew him well enough to recognize that was a polite cover. He wasn't happy.

“You got my message then?”

“I admit to being a rather old man in a new century and that I’m still learning this technology, but I eventually saw the text message that said ‘Off to London to follow a lead. Will let you know what I find. Will miss this weekend.’”

Peggy winced. “You said you would be out at the Farm this week, training. I didn’t know what you and Romanoff were up to.”

“Clearly not what you are up to? What’s your lead?”

Peggy sighed, rolling over on the bed. It wasn’t the same one she had when she had lived in this house, instead, it was a more modern one, made of foam and feeling impossibly soft. “Sharon’s case, the pharmaceutical company, Betty Ross mentioned that it was involved in some work which may be tied back to Erskine’s formula.”

Steve loosed a long breath, floating over the line. “You think these attacks are tied to that?”

“I don’t know...maybe.” Laying in the pre-dawn, staring at the quickly silvering sky, she now had to wonder why it was she rushed off like a madwoman to pursue this. “It was marked enough for me to assume it wasn’t a coincidence.”

Steve was silent for a long moment on the other end of the line. Peggy could see him in her mind’s eye, considering, weighing words, always so careful in what he said until he wasn’t. “There were other attacks, right? Did any of them tie to this company?”

“No, but they are tied to military targets. Considering it was Betty Ross who gave me the lead, and knowing her father’s work and the history the army had with the serum, you can hardly blame me for making assumptions.”

“Perhaps not blame you, but maybe caution you. It’s a leap in logic to go from an off handed comment from Betty to you taking off to fly to London in a mad dash.”

Peggy cringed, knowing he was right and hating to admit it. “I’m saying that it’s a possibility for why the attack happened, not that it’s a surefire explanation for it.”

“And I’m gently pointing out that you jumped to several different conclusions all at once. So...what’s that about?”

For several long moments she stared at the ceiling, the weight of Steve's words sinking in. She didn’t think it hit her till he put it that way that it was about anything...except perhaps it was.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, softly, but honestly. “I don’t...I know, it sounds mad, but when you think about it…”

“I’m not saying your theory is wrong or that it isn’t a cause for concern, I just wouldn’t necessarily board a plane for it.”

“You boarded a plane to stop Johann Schmidt.”

“You know, Romanoff accuses me of deflecting things I don't like to talk about. She may be right. It's me, Peg. You know you can talk to me.”

It was an old habit with Steve, one she had always appreciated about him, his solid persistence with her as she sorted through any myriad of feelings she didn’t want to look at too closely. That had been his way during the war too. Somehow it had always worked, getting her out of her own head.

“Perhaps I heard Erskine’s formula and a terrorist in a sentence and panicked.” She admitted that freely enough. “That was always one of the biggest fears, you know, that the formula would fall in wrong hands, HYDRA's mostly.”

“I threw myself in the East River to stop that, remember?”

She did, rather well, considering the death of Erskine himself and how much that had hurt. “We aren’t dealing with Nazis or HYDRA now, though, but global politics that are far more complicated than they ever were in our day. That formula out there with the sort of enemies they have now could be catastrophic, not to mention the fact that the only person it ever worked on without something horrific happening was you. If it is done wrong…”

“I remember what Erskine said...an evil man will be worse.”

They had been lucky with Steve. He was a good man, impossibly good. She doubted those who really wanted that serum would have the high standards that Erskine did, and that was what frightened her.

“This man, this Mandarin, when he kidnapped Tony, it was so he could build the Mandarin a weapons system with which he could rule Asia. Whatever bomb he is using is so intense, it is like a small nuclear device going off. So far we’ve been lucky, he’s not hit civilian targets. Next time, maybe not as much. And now he may be going for Erskine’s serum, and if that is the case…”

“Peggy...HYDRA is gone!”

His words were so incongruous as to catch her short, enough to notice the panic in her voice, the stutter in her own heartbeat. Where had that sense of awful dread come from?

“I know,” she replied, trying to be matter-of-fact and sounding very small and somewhat frightened instead. “I know they are.”

“You sure?”

“I know, Steve, I was there when we caught the last one of them.” Still, his comments touched something horribly fearful within her. “It isn’t about HYDRA or Hitler, neither of those things?”

Steve’s silence on the other end of the line was eloquent.

“You think it is?”

“I don’t know anything about Freud or psychology,” Steve replied, hedging his bets.

“No, but you did have an opinion enough to share.”

She could almost see him wince. “I’m merely saying that, as someone who lived through that war as well and who fought by your side through a good deal of it, I know what it’s like to see those shadows in every corner. And I’m not saying that this Mandarin is the exact same thing, but there is no way we could go through what we did and not come out the other side without being terrified of that happening all over again.”

It wasn’t even an angle to any of this that she had considered. “You know, after the war, it felt like...like things like HYDRA would never stop. We just had put them down and then we found out about Leviathan and the Red Room. Then there was that foolish Council of Nine and Whitney Frost. That was followed by Haldane and Darkmoor. Every time I turn around there is another one, another group...and now this.”

“Peggy!” His voice was whisper soft on the other end, cracking achingly across an ocean. “Honey, it’s not your job to fix every group that pops up like this.”

“Steve, this Mandarin person isn’t a new thing. They’ve known about him at least since Stark was captured. It’s only now that he’s begun attacking direct targets that they care. Meanwhile, what has he gotten his hands on that he could use against the world. They’ve done this before, and yet…”

“It’s not your job, Peggy.” The man she knew and loved shifted, slightly, to the man who once had led men into battle. As if on instinct, she paused in what she now recognized was her slightly panicked babbling, his calm, firm tone giving her something firm to hold onto in a swirl of fear and anxiety that had lain beneath the surface, tipped and triggered by...what exactly?

“I suppose there will always be someone, won’t there?”

Her voice sounded so small as she said it.

“HYDRA’s gone, Peggy. Let other people focus on other fights for now. I think the Avengers is big enough for us for the moment.”

He was right. Still, she had made this much of a fool of herself, she may as well see something through here. “Let me at least go meet with this connection Sharon has at the pharmaceutical company. Perhaps she can answer questions satisfactorily and I can go back home knowing I made a giant fool of myself, but at least a bit wiser. Then I will turn the whole super soldier serum business over to Betty where it belongs.”

She sighed, rubbing her eyes as she gazed at the pearly skies outside. “Meanwhile, I’ll...wrestle with my own ghosts here in Hampstead. We are staying at the house.”

“How is it?” There was a wealth of quiet empathy in Steve’s question.

“Sad,” she admitted, glancing around the changed room of her childhood. “Strange, it’s all so different now. They've changed it over the years, modernized it. I took anything I wanted with me long ago, so I’m not worried about things missing or gone, but still...I keep turning a corner expecting to find my father’s moth-eaten cardigan or my mother’s flowers. It’s like a strange juxtaposition in my head. I remember it one way, I see it another, like ghosts hanging about just beyond where I can see them.”

“That’s how Brooklyn feels. We blinked and life moved on without us.”

Some things you leave behind...and some things, apparently, you take with you.

“It’s after midnight for you, I should let you sleep.”

“I’m a super soldier, I can live on no sleep.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, the gentle teasing. “Still, you have training in the morning. Besides, I should wrap this up quickly and leave Sharon to it. Then I will make my way home and back to wrangling with senators and the World Security Council and all of that idiocy.”

A part of her - a large part of her, if she admitted it - would much rather stay to see this all out rather than deal with the politics waiting for her at home. But Steve was right, her reasons for coming were her own and not pertinent to Sharon’s investigation.

“I love you,” he declared on the other end of the line, his words filled with the same earnest honesty of feeling he always had. Peggy didn’t think she would ever get tired of hearing it.

“I love you, too. I’ll let you know when I get back. Go to sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am. Goodnight!”

“Night, darling.”

The phone went silent as Peggy stared at it in her hand. Was she really chasing after ghosts here? Was this really just the knee-jerk reaction of someone who had fought against too many different shadowy figures for too long. Was she inserting herself into this just because she didn’t know how not to? She sighed, setting it on the end table, pulling herself out of her bed to wander to the window. It was gray outside, the sky still lightening, slowly. She moved the silky softness of the sheer curtains to stare down below. Once, long ago, soldiers had driven up to their door to give her parents the horrible news of Michael’s death. Her mother had fainted at it, broken at the idea of her eldest, her precious son, dead across the ocean in France. It had been a day that had changed Peggy’s life forever.

It had also been a lie.

This was all far too complicated for such an early morning.

Without much more thought, she dressed quickly in athletic wear, warm for the chill she knew she would find outdoors. She crept quietly through her old home, knowing Sharon would still be sleeping. Stepping lightly down the stairs, she managed to avoid the old, familiar squeaking step out of habit, lightly moving through the house and out the door, her footsteps already off at a run before she even thought about it. In the pre-dawn coldness she raced, her steps light, like she hadn’t run in the area since she was a little girl, her breath coming out in puffs of silvery clouds as she pushed her athletic shoes down the pavement. The heath was not so far away from the house, and it took her only minutes to find it, the ground sere, the grass blasted brown and frosted with overnight condensation. She ran along the footpaths cut through the swaths of field, her eyes trained forward, pretending, at least for the span of an hour or so, that she was still a little girl, that this was 1932 instead of 2012, and that she still lived in this place. That her father was still puttering around his library, with its tumbles of papers. That her mother was still working in her garden in her house dress, her apron and gloves as she dug and pruned, humming to herself. That Mrs. Jenkins still puttered about the kitchen seeing to their tea, slipping she and Michael biscuits and shooing them out the door to keep them out from under foot. That her brother was still the hero she remembered him being.

She huffed, gasping, as she made it back into the house, going through the kitchen door around the back. By this point, Sharon was up, already brewing coffee, half an eye on her tablet, the other on her toast, before glancing up at Peggy’s reddened cheeks and heaving chest.

“You’re up earlier than I thought.”

Peggy nodded, moving to find a glass for water before answering. “Steve called. I’m afraid I left him a rather terse explanation of things.”

“Ahh.” Sharon passed her a cup. “I got a response from my contact over at MST Pharmaceuticals. She’s got time at 11 AM to meet with us if you are up for it.”

“Yeah,” Peggy sipped from her cup, letting the steam warm the chilled skin of her face. “Listen...my interest is far more the super soldiers and less the Mandarin business. I don’t want to step on your toes in this case. Once we’ve spoken to Ms. Mathews and see what they have to say on that I am happy to pack my bags and take my investigation back to New York. I can leave you to work on this Mandarin and if I find anything pertinent to your work I can let you know.”

Sharon arched an eyebrow over her egg-in-a-hole, pausing with a bit of fried bread and egg in her mouth, pondering Peggy’s statement, before chewing for a quiet moment. Peggy decided to busy herself with her coffee and perhaps contemplate toast as her niece studied her with an inscrutable gaze.

“Where did that come from,” she finally asked, setting aside her knife and fork.

Peggy shrugged, pulling out bread, butter and marmalade for toast. “It occurred to me that perhaps I’ve been perhaps chasing ghosts of my past without it considering that the fight can be someone else’s too.”

A line formed between Sharon’s brows, her mouth puckering as she pulled it to one side, pursed in consideration. “You sure on that?”

“Yeah!” Peggy shrugged, sorting out slices of bread and the toaster, not quite meeting her niece’s curious gaze. “After all, like you said, you deserve an opportunity to prove yourself, and you don’t need your great-aunt and her reputation getting in the way of that.”

“You do know I love working with you and think we make a good team.”

“I know.” Peggy pushed the lever down on the toaster, managing a smile at Sharon. “But I have to ask myself why I felt the need to inject myself into all of this. As was pointed out to me, the Avengers are my focus now…and I can’t keep fighting HYDRA forever.”

Sharon processed that for long moments as Peggy waited for her browning toast. It was after it popped up, as Peggy dressed it with marmalade, that Sharon spoke again. “How about this, we go speak to Mathews, see what she has to say. You stick around a day or two, the two of us can dig into this super soldier angle. If it turns out to be useful, then I get a bit of added insight into what the Mandarin is up to and you get a bit of added insight into who is doing what with that serum. If it doesn’t turn out useful, all we’ve lost is a couple of days digging at a dead end, no more, no less. You can go back to New York and the Avengers and that mess, I stay here and work on the Mandarin. Does that sound reasonable?”

It did, as a matter-of-fact. “I think we can make this work.”

Sharon nodded, firmly. “See, compromise! Besides, I’d hate for you to fly all the way over here to not get what you came here for.”

Peggy shrugged, frowning at the gray countertop, so out of place in her memories of this kitchen. “I don’t know, you kept saying I needed to come home. Maybe you were right. I needed to face this at some point.”

With that, they finished their respective breakfasts in relative silence.

Chapter Text

It was starting to become an old refrain.

“This was nothing more than the old West India dockyards when I was young.” Peggy stared at cluster of glittering buildings on the Isle of Dogs. She had been there once or twice with her father on jaunts into the city, but it had looked nothing like this in her own memory.

“I don’t much about it, honestly.” Sharon glanced around the space, a large, tree-lined plaza paved in stone under the watchful gaze of tall, rectangular towers. “I meant, other than it is here. Canary Wharf is one the major financial centers outside of those found in the city of London, that is.”

Just when Peggy thought she was used to the idea of living in the future, there were moments like this when she realized she was still very much in Wonderland. “If I were a woman from ancient Britain, or even from Tudor London, I wonder what I would make of this place?”

“You are a woman from the 1940s.” Sharon’s grin was pointed. “What do you make of it?”

Peggy hardly needed to consider that, meeting her niece’s smile with her own. “It’s brilliant!”

It was at that. London looked like a modern city, and there was something energizing and exciting in that. For all that she mourned what was lost, Peggy had lived abroad for all of her adult life and had seen the endless possibilities. To know that there was a part of that even in staid, traditional, hidebound London was thrilling and comforting, a reminder to her that life seemed to always figure out a way to keep going, to move forward...much like Peggy herself.

The corporate headquarters of MST Pharmaceuticals was located in one of the tall buildings of Canada Square. Sharon took the lead as they made their way to where the offices lay, politely asking for Miss Deepa Mathews, flashing her badge as she did. Peggy belatedly showed hers, but hung behind purposely, allowing Sharon the space to operate. As Sharon had the foresight to set an appointment, they were shown right into elegantly appointed offices that overlooked the Thames and the greater London area itself, spread about them like a blanket of buildings, warehouses and ribbons of asphalt.

“Agent Carter?” A woman greeted Sharon, rounding a simple metal and wood desk to take her outstretched hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you in person. I am so happy that SHIELD is taking this case seriously.”

“As seriously as they take every other case, I can assure you, Miss Mathews,” Sharon managed with pointed politeness, turning towards where Peggy waited. “This is Director Peggy Carter, also with SHIELD. She is here assisting with this investigation.”

“Also Carter?” The woman blinked between them, curiously. “Any relation?”

Peggy flicked a glance towards Sharon, who shrugged it off with a smile. “Cousins who happened to go into the same career path, though Director Carter here has much more on her plate. She heads up the Avengers Initiative for SHIELD.”

“Really?” The other woman’s eyes went wide at that as she studied Peggy for the briefest of moments. To be fair, Peggy was doing much of the same. Deepa Mathew was lovely woman of South Asian descent, Peggy guessed, though from her tone and way of speaking she was educated, if not born, in England, clearly in better schools. Her poise and manner said she had a certain polish expected to one in her position, one that came from the high end sort of establishments that Peggy herself recalled very well. Her pant suit was elegant and expensive, as was her understated jewelry, and her dark, shining hair was piled in a practical and elegant chignon on the back of her head. She had the overall effect of making Peggy, in her suit-case rumpled suit, feeling slightly shabby.

Peggy picked up the threads of the conversation smoothly. “Yes, as a matter of fact. That is part of why I am here working with Agent Carter. It turns out a line of investigation I am looking into happens to intersect somewhat with this case. We aren’t sure if it is a lead or not.”

Miss Mathews arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow in curiosity, waving to a couch overlooking the view outside of her window. “Please, have a seat. Could I get you both water? Tea?”

“No thank you,” Sharon replied and Peggy echoed. They waited as the other woman settled herself into an armchair facing them, crossing her legs at the knee, wrapping well-manicured fingers around her top knee.

“As you can imagine, this has been upsetting for the whole MST family,” Mathews began, dark eyes filled with worry and concern. “We are not a company that is used to such overt attacks. This was unexpected and sudden. As I said when you interviewed me, Agent Carter, it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to attack one of our facilities.”

“We are still investigating why or even if MST was targeted,” Sharon explained, glancing towards Peggy, briefly. “We are searching through every possible lead, I can assure you, and in doing so we’ve come across something we wished to know more about.”

The other woman inclined her head in brief agreement. “If I can share it with you I will do my best.”

Peggy for one didn’t miss the careful turn of phrase, but Sharon pressed on, continuing. “It’s my understanding that MST Pharmaceutical does a great deal of high end and experimental research, correct?”

“Yes,” Mathews responded, promptly. “Like every other pharmaceutical company we are always looking for answers to healthcare problems in the world, whether it be searching for new drugs for cancer treatment, or AIDS research, or finding new ways to improve the nutrition and diet of underserved populations in the world. That is one of our main missions and has been since our founding.”

Sharon nodded, pulling out her phone as she tapped out notes quickly, her thumbs flying over the glass of the device. “Without sharing any proprietary information or research, is there anything that MST is working on currently that would be considered interesting, promising, or even threatening to anyone outside of the company?”

At that, the other woman laughed, shrugging her shoulders under her suit jacket. “That could be any of hundreds of different projects that are currently under way or slated to be in the near future. The pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive, Agent Carter, and always has been. We are all vying to have the next big, medical breakthrough first, and then it’s a race to get approval in various countries and to get our products to market. Just like in the technology industry there are always those who would wish to either hamper production or get a jump on it, and MST is always fending off such efforts.”

“Has there been anyone of late who has been frustrated in their efforts?”

Mathews thought, carefully, shaking her head. “I’d have to consult with our own internal security team, I am sure there likely is. I don’t know how that escalated from corporate espionage to international terrorism?”

“Again, we are merely searching for every possible angle,” Sharon assured her, smoothly, sliding her gaze over to Peggy, passing her the ball, as it were, to begin her own line of questioning.

“Miss Mathews, I am led to understand that MST has done a great deal of work with regeneration and human cellular repair in some of its research, is that correct?”

“Yes,” she blinked, considering Peggy’s question. “Particularly five to ten years ago we were one of the leaders in the field, with several top researchers working for us: Max Werner, Helen Cho, Mohan Rao, all here working on several different projects. Several of them have moved on to their own groups and research.”

“Did any of that work include research into Dr. Abraham Erskine’s formula?”

If she knew what Peggy was talking about, she didn’t know it by that name. “I’m sorry, is he a well-known scientist in America?”

That pained Peggy somewhat, considering the kindly old man she had known. He should be better known that that, considering what he had been trying to do with his serum. If nothing else, he should have been better known for making Steve who he was. “Dr. Erskine was research scientists in the 1930s and 40s, specializing in working on a human growth serum. His goal was much like MST’s, to help sickly and underserved populations and improve the overall health of the public. As it turned out, however, it instead was the key piece in creating super soldiers.”

She knew the minute she mentioned “super soldier” that Mathews would understand. “Like Captain America?”

“Exactly,” Peggy nodded. “The formula itself works on the principles of cellular regeneration. It would make sense that anyone who is interested in that field would be basing some of their research off of his work.”

“If there were, Director, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that, not just for confidentiality reasons, but because I simply don’t know. Our research teams have shifted over the years, and that particular team no longer is a primary focus. I can say that at no time has MST ever claimed to have recreated that serum, nor has there been any interest in doing so. Our company’s interest, in fact our entire ethos, has been to help humanity, not to create weapons or further wars.”

Peggy wasn’t certain that this woman meant any insult by her words. After all, her sentiment wasn’t particularly a bad one. Peggy wished that there were fewer wars and more peace herself. But still, it stung somewhat, knowing that underscoring that was the truth that the serum, whatever Erskine’s original intention with it had been, had been turned into a weapon in the form of Steve. She wasn’t wrong, and that was why Peggy was so concerned in the first place, the fear that this serum would be given to those who weren’t Steve Rogers, to people who could be easily turned into something much, much worse and unleashed on the world.

“We understand that your commitment to humanitarian efforts is central to your business model,” Sharon assured the other woman, smoothly stepping in. “But as I said, we are covering all our basis. You can understand why there would be some concern in the matter of the serum and super soldiers. It is a valuable commodity to people like this Mandarin, the ability to create an army of men and women with superhuman abilities. If MST was working on something like this, you can see why the Mandarin might target you.”

It was not an angle that Mathews had clearly considered, given the expression on her face. “I...suppose so, yes, you are right, but I can assure you that it is not something that we have or are currently working on. Why this Mandarin figure would believe we did, I don’t know. Perhaps it is a misunderstanding, given our previous work.”

“Or it could be as simple as there is something else you are working on that he is interested in, something mundane but valuable,” Sharon conceded, gently. “Perhaps if you could connect with your research teams and do an inventory of what is being worked on and what is being produced in the facility that was targeted, that might give us more of an idea of what someone like him might be interested in.”

“I mean, I could,” assured Mathews, looking slightly baffled by all of this. “But that facility specializes primarily in medications, the standard types that have been approved for market. Nothing there would be any of our high research projects, just...medicine.”

“And maybe that is what he wants, medications to take and control and sell to the highest bidder in some market desperate for it. We won’t know till we get a better idea of the scope of what he could have accessed there.” Sharon slipped her phone into her pocket once more. “Until then, please let us know if you run across any information that might be helpful in our investigation. And of course, we will keep you informed on any further developments as we are able.”

With that the rather brief and not particularly enlightening interview was over. Peggy waited till they were well into the lobby of the building before saying anything about it. “Do you honestly believe she would be candid on any research their company is doing? It’s her job to not be.”

“In fairness, no, I didn’t expect her to spill the beans on any research they had done that might draw the Mandarin’s attention, which is why I may have done a quick and dirty hack into their system while we were sitting there.” Beaming, Sharon pulled out her phone, holding it up and waiving it in front of Peggy’s face. “Your old friend, Agent Burk, has been working on an app based off the same technology Tony Stark used to hack into the SHIELD servers. I decided to give it a try.”

Peggy blinked as they stepped into the misty, gray sunshine outside, wrapping her scarf around her neck. “Turning Stark’s technology against him?”

“Nothing that advanced, believe me, I don't know if there is a computer hacker alive who can get into Stark's system. But if Stark’s tech can hack into the servers on the Chimera, then we can use it do a bit of remote hacking on advanced servers ourselves. Besides, Burk asked Stark if he could use it, because he is polite. I guess Stark told him to have a ball with it. I asked him for a prototype of his design.” She waited till they were well across the square before she pulled up what files she could on the SHIELD designed phone. “MST really needs to work on its network security and encryption.”

Even after all this time and her relative ease now with computers and mass communication, Peggy still only vaguely understood that. “I am guessing you were able to get inside?”

“More easily than I should have just sitting in her office, connecting into the guest wifi network protocols.” Sharon ran a thumb up the screen, glancing through information. “We will have to tear through some of this later to see if anything is useful, but so far on the surface nothing strange is popping up. MST Pharmaceuticals, a division of Mys-Tech Corporation, a chemical company based here in London.”

“Mys-Tech?” Peggy snorted at the name and the implied pun in it. “A strange name for a chemical corporation. You would think it would be named something entirely different.

“Maybe it has something to do with the founders’ names or some product they first created years ago that they decided to name the entire company for. Sillier things have happened.” For several long moments Sharon continued to scroll through what Peggy presumed was reams of data on her screen. “So far they seem legitimate too. Mostly known for chemical research in consumer products; plastics, cleaning supplies, fabrics, medicine...any one of those divisions might be something that would interest the likes of an international terrorist.”

Peggy frowned in mild frustration at it all. “Are they known for anything specific?”

“I mean...it’s hard to say! Half of the things they make would be useful to them. Chemicals for bombs and warfare, sure, the medication, maybe any number of products or patents they could get their hands on to recreate. No weapons, this isn’t Stark Industries, but still…”

She trailed off, vaguely, mouth pursing as she stared at her screen, cocking her head in that way that said something had popped up in her perusal. “Well isn’t that interesting!”

“What?”

“Mys-Tech is tied to the Darkmoor Research Facility in Northern England.”

The words hit Peggy like a punch in the gut, leaving her momentarily breathless and stunned. When she found her words again, they were breathless and disbelieving. “That’s not possible. Darkmoor was shut down seventy years ago. I shut it down.”

Sharon paused, quietly turning the screen to where Peggy could see it. “That’s what it says here. You may have shut down the secret government weapons research, sure, but the facility is still in use. It’s been turned into a lab for research on alternative energy, has been for decades.”

Peggy stared at the words in black and white on Sharon’s phone, but didn’t read them. She knew exactly who would think to reopen the facility for such a purpose. “Howard’s doing, then?”

Sharon shrugged, apologetic, as she flipped the phone back around. “Maybe initially, it doesn’t say.” She scrolled more, scanning the data. “There is a head of the conglomerate...Sio...buh...han?”

Her nose wrinkled in that way that said she didn’t know how to pronounce whatever she was reading. She showed it to Peggy instead.

“Shuh-von, I think, at least that is how I recall Siobhan being pronounced.” Peggy paused on the woman’s last name. “Siobhan Haldane...she must be related to Ranulph Haldane. He headed up Darkmoor when your grandfather was working for it.”

Pieces fell into place for both of them. It took Sharon only a breath to understand where Peggy’s mind was already going. “You think she’s kept up the family business in the background?”

“Or at least has changed it enough that it would appear innocuous on the surface.” Finally, the break they both needed to make sense of this. “Perhaps Darkmoor and its research isn’t as dead as we once believed.”

Sharon stared at Peggy, already connecting this to her case, to possibilities and ideas. “If that’s true, then I want a word with Miss Haldane.”

“A trip up north to Darkmoor, then?”

Sharon nodded, shooting Peggy a dry smile. “Steve is going to be less than happy that you are prolonging your trip.”

“Not really,” Peggy assured her, knowing he would be far more concerned with her digging into forgotten corners of her past. “He knows of it, or at least I told him of it. He would understand.”

Sharon didn’t look as if she were as certain of that as Peggy was.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, they didn’t need to race to the north of England at all. They just simply needed to crash a party.

“I feel slightly bad horning in on a banquet to honor someone who has worked hard to improve the health and lives of children caught in the crossfire of war,” Sharon admitted, tucking a strand of golden hair behind her ear.

“I am less interested in her good deeds and more interested in what she has been doing to get the funds she pours into these charities,” Peggy replied, perhaps with a touch of asperity. They had both dressed to blend in for the occasion without seeming too ostentatious. Sharon had gone for a simple black dress she had packed with her on the off chance she had needed it, a sign of her clear training in modern covert tactics. Peggy had lacked that foresight when hopping a plane, and as most of her things had been removed from her family's house long ago, she’d gone a brief shopping excursion, following in Sharon’s suit. The knee-length dress was neither flashy or daring, sleeveless and square cut at the neckline, clinging to Peggy’s more curvaceous figure. It was lovely, but practical, and still old-fashioned enough to please Peggy’s sensibilities and while blending in with the sort of crowd who would be at a function such as this without them wondering what decade she had stepped out of. Besides, she could fit her fire arm underneath it.

“Just because she’s Ranulph Haldane’s daughter doesn’t necessarily mean she is up to anything,” Sharon reminded her with a hint of warning. “After all, the Darkmoor incident was seventy years ago. I don’t know that she was even alive for it.”

“As you said, we have to cover every base,” Peggy responded, evasively, unwilling to confront the nagging voice in her head that was pointedly reminding her that her niece was right. “Perhaps when she is confronted she will clear it all up for us rather handily.”

“You say that as if you expect her to lie through her teeth about it.”

“I expect nothing.”

Peggy wasn’t particularly sure, but she thought she heard a whispered “bullshit” under Sharon’s rather obvious cough.

The event was being held at a posh hotel along the Thames, a newer construction that looked like any of the thousands anywhere else in the world. Despite the signage for the event, the place had little in security and even less in people manning the door, a fault on the hotel staff and event organizers, really. It was fairly simple for herself and Sharon to slip in, looking as they did, like every other person sitting in the room.

“Should we split up and see if we can find her in all of this,” Sharon leaned in to whisper, glancing around the space to a sea of round tables and well-dressed people.

Peggy glanced about, then up at the stage, where someone was making introductions at the podium. “I don’t think we have to. Look!”

She nodded towards the tall, elegant woman coming up to the podium, shaking hands with the tuxedoed man who introduced her. She was beautiful, no older than her early 60s, with auburn hair that had turned darker with age but had not yet gone white. Her gown of dark greens and golds shimmered in the stage lights as she began to speak.

“Thank you to the committee for this honor tonight! It wasn’t sought out, nor was it petitioned for, but I am so grateful for it on behalf of my team, all the amazing people I work with at the foundation, and the beautiful children who I’ve had the privilege to get to know and help over the years…”

“Come on,” Sharon nudged Peggy, quietly, pointing out a space on the right hand side of the staging area where everyone coming off the stage would have to descend. “We can speak to her there.”

Peggy followed as Siobhan Haldane continued to speak, her voice a soft, cultured lilt as she described the work she was being honored for. In truth, judging from that alone, Peggy would assume she was a kindly, good-hearted, wealthy woman who wanted to do right in the world and help those whom the global community had tended to forget. And, as she reminded herself, rather grudgingly, she didn’t know if Siobhan Haldane wasn’t exactly that. Still, Peggy had met her fair share of those who spoke of saving the world while at the same time hoping to control it, rule it, or subjugate it.

The woman on the stage held up her plaque gratefully before the audience. “Thank you so much for this honor.”

With polite applause, the audience clapped as Haldane smiled and nodded, thanked her presenter again and various people on the stage, then made her way carefully down the darkened steps, holding up the skirts of her dress as she balanced on her heels, plaque in hand. Seeing the opportunity, Sharon dove in, ever helpful, to give the woman a hand down.

“Thank you,” she smiled, bright even in the dim light. “I perhaps shouldn't have worm these shoes on this. Heaven knows what sort of header I could have taken!”

“Glad to be of help,” Sharon nodded, her free hand already snaking to pull out her badge from the dangling, spangled purse over her shoulder. “I actually was hoping to catch you, Miss Haldane. I’m Agent Sharon Carter with SHIELD. I hate to interrupt your event, but I’m hoping to ask you a few questions.”

Haldane blinked, wide, dark green eyes taking in first Sharon, then Peggy glowering at her. “SHIELD? As in the spy agency?”

“More or less,” Sharon smiled, the same sort of smile Coulson used to have when trying to describe SHIELD to anyone. “It is in regards to the bombing last week. Do you have a few minutes?”

Still stunned, she nodded, gripping her award as Sharon led her around the back of the staging area, out towards where the kitchens and the servicing areas obviously were. Peggy followed behind, sweeping the area filled with servers, technical staff, and others, all staring at the three, well-dressed women wandering through, all the while she had her hand against her thigh where her own weapon rested. Experience had taught her not to be too careful where such questioning was concerned.

“Here is fine,” Sharon waved towards a hallway off the kitchens, one that led to the inner parts of the hotel again. There was a smaller hall off-shooting from it, leading to doors marked “service entrance”. At the moment, no one was there.

“I must say, I’m rather surprised at all this cloak and dagger business,” Haldane murmured, something amused glittering in her dark gray eyes. “It wasn’t precisely how I saw this evening going.”

“I know, and I do apologize, but you were in town for this and we wanted to catch you while you were. You spend a lot of time up at your estates as I understand.” Sharon played it smoothly, while Peggy stood watch, gaze flickering towards all the major entrances and exits along the way.

“I suppose I do. May I ask what it is you wish to speak about?”

“In the course of the investigation of why MST was targeted by our bombing suspect, we have reason to believe that he was after something the company is doing. Given your position, we thought we would ask the source.”

“My position,” she drawled, looking even more puzzled than before. “As chairwoman of the board of Mys-Tech?”

“Who else would know all the pieces of what is going on?”

That comment earned a throaty chuckle out of the older woman. “My dear Agent Carter, I don’t know how many Fortune 500 companies you have been around, but I can assure you that the chair of the board of any company has exactly the least amount of knowledge of what is going on, primarily because no one wants to tell him or her what sort of illegal or upsetting thing they may or may not be up to. I could not possibly know every single project being worked on across the myriad of companies under the Mys-Tech banner.”

“Are you saying you don’t know even the ones potentially of interest to someone like this so-called Mandarin?”

A small line formed between the woman’s brows, the only sign she was perturbed at all. “I am saying that nothing I know about is designed, initially, to harm anyone. My interests, personally, are humanitarian ones, the only bottom line I care about is the one that allows me to continue that work, not for profit or wealth.”

Sharon let her gaze flicker to the fine dress, and the understated, but clearly expensive, jewelry without saying a word. The furrow on the other woman’s brow deepened.

“Have I given SHIELD a cause to doubt me?”

Before Sharon could answer, Peggy cut in, coldly, with a single word. “Darkmoor.”

Those two syllables had their intended effect. Haldane’s expression shifted into a troubled one, her gaze cutting over to Peggy in mild wonder. “My estate?”

“No,” Peggy said simply, meeting the other woman’s confusion directly. “The research facility your father once ran on the estate.”

Peggy had to credit Siobhan Haldane, her poise was unshakable. Still, even she couldn’t mask the flicker of awareness, sadness, and anger at that bit of her own history. “So you know about that?”

“SHIELD isn’t precisely unaware of it,” Peggy pressed, rather ruthlessly, her voice hard. “After all, Darkmoor was the reason SHIELD even exists.”

If Haldane was surprised by that ,or even upset, she didn’t show it. Rather, she dropped her eyes, long lashes sweeping her cheeks. “I am well aware of my family’s past and the trouble it caused. I’m not sure what that has to do with this Mandarin character?”

“Neither are we,” Sharon admitted, candidly, shooting Peggy a look that told her not to press. “The truth is, Miss Haldane, that this Mandarin isn’t specifically out for MST Pharmaceuticals or Mys-Tech, he’s hit a lot of targets, and we are looking for a pattern. We are following a lead and we are looking to see if you can help. Honestly, SHIELD is only interested in finding and stopping this man before he does anything else and hurts more people in the process.”

That seemed to get through the other woman’s cool, collected demeanor. She straightened, lifting her chin as she regarded them both. “The dingy hallway of a service entrance at a hotel is hardly the place to be having this sort of conversation, is it? I propose this; both of you come up to Darkmoor as my guests this weekend. I am having a group of people coming up for the usual shooting party, mostly other board members and those tied to Mys-Tech. You are welcome to come and speak with myself or them and see if they provide you with any further information. I would have you stay at the house, but I’m afraid with the party, we are rather full up, but I will make provisions for you at the inn in the village. It’s rather cozy and quaint, and I believe it would suit you both just fine.”

Frankly, it sounded like a horrible idea to Peggy, but Sharon was the one running point and Peggy could see her considering it. “Will your guests make themselves available?”

“I will let them know that representatives from SHIELD will be there to speak with them on the recent business and urge them to share any information they may have that might help your investigation. As for myself, as you will see, I am an open book.”

Peggy glared at Sharon, but her niece ignored her. “Then we will be happy to see you this weekend.”

The other woman nodded, clutching her plaque to her side. “Very good. Am I free to return to my table and the banquet honoring me, then?”

Sharon debated before inclining her head, gesturing at Peggy who moved aside to let Haldane move back through. The other woman slipped by, regal and graceful, pausing only once she was past Peggy to study her, thoughtfully. “I don’t believe I got your name. I would want to know it to inform the inn who to expect.”

“Margaret Carter,” she replied, stiffly. “Director Peggy Carter, if you must tell them.”

Haldane’s gray gaze flickered from Peggy to Sharon and back, but she simply nodded. “Well, then, I will let Irene know to expect you both. She’s a rather charming lady and lays out a rather fine breakfast, if I do say so. I’m sure you both will enjoy your stay there. I look forward to seeing you both this weekend. If you will excuse me.”

She turned on her heel as she walked back down the hall and towards her banquet once again. Peggy watched her go, her fingers tapping in agitation against the holster on her thigh.

“Well, that didn’t go as well as I wanted, but not as bad either.” Sharon was more circumspect about it all. “I always wanted to be invited to a proper English house party. It’s all so very Agatha Christie.”

Peggy snorted, rolling her eyes. “A weekend with the extravagantly rich shooting birds is a lot less posh than you would think it is.”

“You may have grown up around it, but I was raised in boring, suburban America where the height of fashion was going to the neighbors' house for dinner and hoping you didn’t embarrass your parents. A house party is only something you saw on Masterpiece Theater.”

Peggy wasn’t even sure what that was, but nodded more to acknowledge Sharon’s delight, despite her own misgivings. “How do you know we didn’t walk into her own plan for avoiding telling us the truth?

“I don’t,” Sharon acknowledged, much less concerned than Peggy. “But I also don’t think that she is being dishonest here, and I think her inviting us up to Darkmoor, to see for ourselves, is her trying to prove to us that she has nothing to hide. Face it, Peggy, that was all decades ago. I doubt with all the eyes that were on Ranulph Haldane in the 1940s and 50s that he would dare to try and revive all of that in secret or that it would survive to this day without someone noticing.”

Peggy wasn’t as certain of that as her niece. “People have a way of forgetting things. My parents lived through one horrific war only to have their children fight in the next one. People become stupid and foolish when things like national pride are on the line.”

Sharon didn’t look convinced, but didn’t argue either. “Fine, I will concede that people are stupid. For now, let’s plan to do as she asks, go to Darkmoor and check things out, and see if it turns up anything at all for us. If it doesn’t, then we are back at the drawing board without loosing too much time and effort and we cross Haldane, Mys-Tech and MST Pharmaceuticals off our list in the Mandarin investigation.”

“And the question of if they have been researching the serum?” That was what Peggy’s primary worry was at.

“On that...I don’t know. You will have to figure out how to pick that fight. Maybe Betty will have some insight. Frankly, with the US Army having Erskine’s notes on the serum, I wouldn’t be surprised that they farmed that out to several researchers and companies in the hopes of getting it recreated. You may be trying to swat at flies with a butterfly net.”

Sharon wasn’t wrong. Peggy sighed. “I suppose we are going north to Darkmoor after all.”

Chapter Text

“You know I always thought that the whole quaint, British village trope you see on all those television shows was just a shtick until Dad made us take a train up to Scotland.” Sharon had her nose practically pressed to the glass of the train speeding up out of London and across the country towards the northern York moors. They had boarded the first one leaving the city that morning, bleary eyed and still not quite used to the five hour shift in time. Tea and coffee had revived their spirits, and Peggy sat watching the quickly passing trees, villages, and fields, memories of long ago excursions flickering by as they did.

“I didn’t see the country - the true countryside, that is - until I was in the SOE. We trained at various estates. It was the first time I really saw life outside of the city.” It hadn’t occurred to Peggy till then just how pampered and protected a life she had led in Hampstead, in the quiet and idyllic home her parents had created together. “I still had it better than most of the boys, though. The only ones among them who had ever seen a cow were Falsworth and Morita, the former as he spent time in the country, the latter because his parents had a farm in California. I don’t believe that Steve, Barnes, or Dugan had seen a tree outside of a park ever in their life.”

“I don’t suppose there would have been a lot of opportunity where they lived?”

“No,” Peggy conceded, remembering her first impressions of New York in general and Brooklyn in particular. “I remember thinking that it seemed impossible for that many people and all of those buildings to occupy such a small space. But then I suppose London was like that as well.”

“Makes you think of how good the Carters had it,” Sharon pointed out, leaning back into her seat, facing Peggy across a table between the two of them holding only their bottles of water and empty paper cups from their chosen forms of caffeine. “I mean, wasn’t our family descended from nobility or some such?”

“A minor baron, nothing terribly exciting, I’m afraid, two-and-a-half centuries ago. Our line came from the second son who made his fortune in the military in India, or something like that, and that is what set the family up for generations of soldiers, lawyers, and doctors, all very respectable but never looking above our station.” Peggy found herself mimicking her mother’s airs and graces and laughed, softly. “My mother’s family were mostly in the clergy, if you can believe it, though a few took up positions at Oxford and Cambridge. I’m afraid all the excitement and adventure comes through the Carter side of things. It never failed that every generation or so there would be one or two of us who would run off to join the army, or the navy, or get caught up in some expedition somewhere. I suppose it was my mother’s own cursed luck that gave her two of us.”

“And then me as well” Sharon seemed delighted that in her own way she was carrying on a fine family tradition. “Of course, when you and Steve get married and have kids they will be doubly cursed. Imagine what Grandmother Amanda would say then.”

Ignoring the fact that Peggy was far from some blushing prude on the matters of sex and intimacy, the idea of marriage and children still seemed so strange, like a hope of a dream, much like a relationship between her and Steve had felt during the war. She found herself flushing, softly, as she smiled, thinking the idea didn’t sound nearly so unpleasant as it would have once upon a time, long ago. “Mmm, my mother would likely have laughed mockingly and told me I deserved everything I got, before spoiling them rotten, like she did your father and aunt.”

“True, but they were relatively well-behaved, or at least that’s the story they told me.”

“And you believe that?”

“No,” Sharon snorted, tapping her nails against her water bottle. “Still, I heard stories about her from the pair of them. She sounded kind, but very proper.”

Peggy considered that against her own memories of her mother. “She was complicated. She was quite loving, in her own way. She was never demonstrative, but she never stinted on affection. But she did grow up in a very different time, with very different understandings of life and the way it operated. Having a son who wanted to fight for his country and be a hero was one thing, she’d already sent one sweetheart to war and lost him. That was something she understood. But her daughter...that was something different. She never had those sort of dreams, not really, and it seemed odd to her that I did. And when she finally accepted I wanted a life beyond garden parties and raising children she was terrified of what the world would do to a woman like me, how I would be treated, if I would spend it alone and unwanted. It didn’t help that I lived so far away. She was half-convinced I would be murdered in my bed.”

“She didn’t know about the gun you keep in the bedside drawer?”

“She didn’t know about the gun.” Peggy snorted. “She loved me in her way, and I loved her. And I miss her. I miss all of them, really.”

Sharon studied her for long, quiet moments, searchingly. “Even Michael?”

Her niece had cleverly led her around to this. Peggy had said little of her brother at all in all of this, despite the fact that his presence clung to everything having to do with Darkmoor and her last visit to her ancestral home. Despite it having been years, the pain of it still tugged at her, a half-healed wound she never had quite allowed to fully recover.

“I miss your grandfather, yes.” Her words were careful and she knew it. She also knew full well that Sharon would not simply allow that to lay between them.

“But you haven’t forgiven him yet?”

“He’s dead and gone for real now, Sharon. What is the point?”

“The point is less for him and more for you, letting go of the past and moving forward.”

“I did move forward, quite literally, as you recall. I just did it by several decades.”

“You know what I mean,” she retorted, quietly. “You keep throwing yourself at things, and in things, and through things, all the time moving, and you never really stop and reflect or deal with the things that you are running from, things you never finished.”

Sharon’s argument was starting to sound eerily like Steve’s from the other morning. “The world seems determined to force me through some sort of therapy I didn’t ask for,” she grumbled, sourly, distracting herself with her bottle of water rather petulantly.

With that they fell into an uneasy and reluctant silence for long minutes. Peggy glared mutinously at her bottle of water, as if it had somehow insulted her in all of this. Sharon took the opportunity to check her phone, thumbing the screen, before sighing and slipping it into her pocket once again. Out of the corner of her eye, Peggy could see Sharon watching her, looking for a new in to approach through Peggy’s wall of stubbornness.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk about your brother, could you at least tell me more about Darkmoor.”

That wasn’t a means of attack that Peggy expected. “I thought you had read the files.”

“I did, when I first joined SHIELD. They didn’t want to blind side me. But that was years ago and what wasn’t redacted was rather cut and dry. Grandpa was gone, I couldn’t discuss it with him. You were there, though. So…”

Peggy sighed, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, not any more happy with this line of conversation than the last. “I doubt anything I would have to say is much different than what you read.”

“Fair,” Sharon agreed, shrugging as she crossed her arms over herself. “But, if we are going to be at the estate and discussing this, I’d really like to know more than what SHIELD let me see.”

She had a point, one Peggy couldn’t really refute. Internally, she swore, loudly. Externally, she pulled herself up, setting her bottle down again on the table. “During the war it became quite evident rather quickly that one of the biggest threats we would have from the German side was HYDRA. We knew so little of them then, only that they were Hitler’s secret science division, that they were led by Johann Schmidt who had for years been postulating his theories about science and magic. Half of the scientific community thought him mad, the other half thought that even in his madness, there was likely some merit to what he was speaking of. Before the Americans joined the war effort, there was really only Britain and its empire and the few allies we had in the fight. We were rather alone here trying to fend off the Third Reich. There were some in the SOE who felt that, mad or not, if Hitler had HYDRA, that we would need something to match them.”

“Wouldn’t that be breaking, I don’t know, some treaty somewhere? I mean, obviously Germany was doing it, but then again, I think we can safely establish that Germany were not the good guys in this scenario.”

“Can we assume anyone is a good guy in a war,” Peggy opined. “After all, we all end up with dirt on our hands when everything is said and done. But you are right, in an ideal world there are ethics to this. But I suppose it was hard to see that when you are standing alone in a war knowing that there are two madmen with strange weapons pointed at you. This is where Lord Ranulph Haldane becomes involved. He was the loudest voice suggesting that we should fight fire with fire. He was a scientist himself and had been doing research in his own laboratory at his estate of Darkmoor. He wasn’t well-known, but he was respected. Even Howard called him a genius, which for Howard was a compliment of highest praise. Haldane managed to use his connections to influence the right people within Churchill’s government to give him funding enough to expand his research, to essentially create his own facility and projects for the war effort, all under extreme secrecy. He was given all the resources he could want and left primarily to his own devices, working exclusively with the SOE. I am not even sure that Downing Street was fully aware of what he was doing up there.”

Sharon eyed her with equal parts rue and doubt, clearly having trouble buying into the idea of someone having that much complete autonomy, especially during a war. “How could no one be paying any attention to him or what he was doing?”

“The Haldanes are an old family, ancient by most standards. They’ve held their lands for centuries, which means that they have wealth and influence. This was still the good old days of gentlemen meeting together in their supper clubs over port and cigars, making agreements with one another to manage world affairs without ever officially putting down anything in writing. My guess is that agreements were made and the SOE never really asked too many questions about why...and it is through the SOE that Michael became involved.”

Whether she liked it or not, Sharon had gotten to the heart of what she wanted to know about, the truth of her grandfather’s involvement in the Darkmoor affair. Peggy couldn’t decide if she wanted to be angry with her niece or congratulate her for her cunning and cleverness. “I didn’t know that your grandfather had joined the SOE, none of us did. At the time I was was working at Bletchley Park and planning on marrying Fred Wells, so I admit I wasn’t paying the closest attention. As far as any of us knew he was a part of the regular army, fighting on the front lines. That was where he was supposed to be when we got news that he had died.”

Even now, knowing the truth, the moment still ached within her, no less for knowing he had lived a full life and died years before she reappeared again.

“What we didn’t know and what I only found out later was that he had been had picked by Haldane for his new secret project. He was putting together a team of operatives to send out as his own personal spies in Europe to look for the very same items Johann Schmidt himself was trying to capture. Most of them were mythical or mystical in nature, many of them only known through vague legend and accidental archaeological discovery. Haldane argued, much like Schmidt did, that there was power to be found in some of these. If tapped right, they would prove to be a powerful force in the war. Michael was one of the first members of his new team. He called them his Warheads, a not particularly flattering name, but one that hid their true purpose well enough to throw off HYDRA or anyone else who looked too closely. Their purpose was to use any means necessary to get to these items first, before HYDRA or anyone else could.”

Whatever Sharon thought of her grandfather’s activities, she hid it well. “Did they find anything, then?”

“Oh, yes, they did. How much of it was real and how much of it was fantasy, I don’t know. A few things worked. Knowing now what we do of Asgard, I wonder if it wasn’t bits of their technology left behind, or perhaps some other strange alien race. Whatever the case, things were found, weapons were developed...and tried. And that was what was in the file that was given to Jack Thompson. Haldane sent several of his teams out with some of his new weapons, using technology they little understood and had no right to be playing with. What they did…”

Peggy trailed off. She had read the reports, seen the photographs. She frankly didn’t think she could unsee it, like so many other things about the war. Whole villages had been wiped out, non-combative men, women, and children, attacked in the dead of night, slaughtered with weaponry that terrified even Howard Stark. Not even he could figure out how Haldane was getting the sort of power he was managing without something like the Tesseract.

“Haldane of course had carte blanche to do as he wished, so he was able to cover up most of the worst of it all under a sweeping policy of national security. It certainly didn’t stop him. If anything, the war, Schmidt, HYDRA all convinced him that his cause and his purpose was even more worthwhile. He felt the need to ensure the protection of the kingdom and its empire against all threats that could be posed against it. His efforts continued well after the war ended and the SOE dissolved, all carried on under the banner of national security and mutual understanding. The truth was that few people really understood what was happening at Darkmoor. They knew that Haldane was doing research, but they didn’t know about his private operatives that he had trained to send out, the secret weapons research, or the fact that it was largely funded by the British government at a time when they were struggling to feed people and rebuild the country. It likely would have remained that way, had a very foolish clerk in a general’s office not tried to make some extra money on the side. Your grandfather’s file would never have gotten out and into Thompson’s hands, nearly getting him killed in the process. Had that not happened...things might have gone very differently.”

For long moments silence reigned between the pair of them. Peggy found herself staring at the browned countryside, the flaming trees rolling across the fields. Sharon quietly toyed with her bottle, lost in thought for several miles. When she spoke again, it was with the careful worry of someone who knew she was asking a dangerous question and wasn’t so sure she wanted the answer.

“What about Grandpa? What role did he play in all of this.”

Peggy hadn’t wanted to answer that question, but she waited for it all the same. “He was involved with one of the Warhead units, one that had been stationed in Alsace-Lorraine, just on the French side of the Rhine. They were testing a new, top-secret artillery weapon, they called it ‘Hellfire’. It was just that. There was a town on the German side of the river, important only in that it was a strategic crossing point for German forces into occupied France. Most of the people living there were rural townfolk, no different in some respects than most you would see here. It was the first place they tried the weapon out. It burned down everything and everyone in it in minutes. Michael said it was how he always imagined the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah went up, in a flash of red light. No one survived.”

Peggy almost pitied her niece's sharp intake of break, the pained lines forming around her dark eyes. For Sharon, who had only ever known the kindly man from her childhood, the idea that he had involved himself in something like this had to be hard to hear. “He willingly did that?”

“Led the expedition,” Peggy nodded, solemnly. “In his defense, and it is perhaps the only one I have for him, many soldiers and operatives were asked to do many horrific things during the war, not just German ones. It’s not like Steve or I didn’t kill people in what we did.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t kill civilians, did you?” Sharon’s voice was soft, but there were hard, hurt edges in her tone.

“No,” Peggy admitted. “And to that, your grandfather didn’t last long testing Haldane’s weapons. He was injured in the field shortly after that, broke his leg in three places. That was where he got his limp. He spent the rest of the war at Darkmoor as a data analyst, reviewing the intelligence coming in from the other operatives. Ironic that Michael was stuck behind a desk. He had run away from practicing the law to join the army. But I think what he saw over there, what he was a part of...changed him. He would have had to been a monster for it not to change him. The man I found at Darkmoor was not the brother I thought had died years before. He had seen things, done things, and wanted nothing more than to hide, to settle down with your grandmother and their children, to try and forget it all and lie to himself that by sifting through intelligence he was still keeping Britain safe and not furthering Haldane’s efforts to protect his home against all those he deemed different or dangerous. I think by the time Howard and I wandered up to Darkmoor, Michael had half-convinced himself he was doing nothing wrong by continuing to work for Haldane and Darkmoor, that continuing to create weapons of mass destruction to threaten places like the USSR and Eastern Europe was just what needed to be done to keep all of us safe.”

Peggy admitted that had been the hardest pill to swallow. All of her life, her brother had been her hero, the person who she had looked up to and wanted to become. He had been the one who had believed in her the most. He’d been brave, understanding, and stalwart...and also somewhat reckless, pushy, and a bit of a pompous, condescending ass as well. She had worshipped the ground he had walked on and had loved him for it. Everything she had tried to be, tried to become, had been out of her perception of who her brother had been, the man she thought he was. When she found out that wasn’t Michael at all, it had left her questioning everything about him, about her ideals, her foolish, schoolgirl fantasies...everything about herself. If Michael was not the golden child she had thought him to be, then what did that say about her, who had tried to emulate him?

“How did you convince him otherwise,” Sharon whispered, sadly. How it must to hurt to hear this about Michael.

“In truth, I think Michael always knew, deep down.” Peggy shrugged, remembering their argument and the things they had said to one another. “I think he knew and wanted out, but by that point he’d married Moira. Harry was a very little boy, Maggie just a baby. They were his entire life and I think he was afraid of Haldane, of what he might do if he tried to protest or leave. I don’t know, perhaps I got through to him. It was a hard pill to swallow, I suppose, being shamed by your baby sister. In the end he was the one who stood up and helped us expose what was happening. Once it all came out...well, the government was quick to want answers and just as quick to want to shut it down. It did not look good to their allies in the war that they were running secret experiments with advanced weapons, much like HYDRA, and not telling their friends about it. Not that America wasn’t doing the same, I know they were, but they hadn’t been caught out doing it. What was worse was Haldane’s politics. It was, as they say now at days, not a good look that he was blatantly fascist, even if he was Britain first. Still, Haldane had powerful supporters in the government, ones who frankly didn’t disagree with him. He was essentially asked to retire, quietly, from the public eye and the government took over his research facility, taking all the records of what he had done. Most of that ended up with SHIELD, eventually.”

“And what about the people who worked for Haldane, the ones burning whole villages down to the ground with advanced weaponry?”

Peggy knew Sharon was asking about men like her grandfather. “Each case was reviewed by a group of former Allied military judges. Most were treated lightly, especially those who were in research or analytics. They were offered other positions in the military or intelligence with the caveat that they couldn’t step a toe out of line. The most egregious cases of cruelty towards civilian populations were put on trial. Of those, most were forced to do some sort of jail sentence. Because your grandfather had seen many sides of Haldane’s operation, I convinced the British army to keep him as an advisor and analyst with the plan of bringing him onboard SHIELD once it was up and running. I am surprised I even got that much out of them, but the general in charge also happened to be one who had a run in with Howard years before, so a deal was struck.”

That part was familiar at least to Sharon, or at least it was a part of the story she knew about. Still, she asked the one question Peggy hadn’t wanted to look too much into. “If you were against what he did, why did you work so hard to protect him?”

“I don’t know that I protected him,” Peggy shot back, nettled by Sharon’s words and the stinging truth in them. “He still was under SHIELD’s jurisdiction. He wasn’t allowed to do anything in his life without someone reviewing it. I imagine he couldn’t even move to America without it going through layers of review.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than jail time in some prison.”

“Fair,” Peggy conceded, twisting her fingers together on the table top. “I didn’t know what to do, honestly, not at the time. There was Moira and the children, of course. I didn’t want Young Harry and Maggie to grow up without their father, for Moira to have to raise them without her husband. I knew the scandal would kill my parents. Mother had already had to survive Michael’s death. To know that he lived only to have it all dragged across the press...I don’t know what she would have done. Dad would have been stoic about it, stood by his son to hell and back again, but I suppose there was a part of me that couldn’t do it to them. They had been through so much. Michael had made his choices, whether I agreed with them or not, but there were other innocent people caught up in it. I gave him a second chance, more for them, I think, than anything else. And I suppose it wasn’t a horrible decision, in the end. You came out of it, your siblings, your cousins. Our family survived.”

Sharon smiled wanly. “I suppose they aren’t so bad, the siblings and cousins.”

“No,” Peggy agreed.

“You didn’t really talk to him much after that, though. Grandpa, I mean.”

“No,” Peggy admitted. “I didn’t.”

How could she quantify the wealth of hurt she had felt, the betrayal, the anger, the disappointment in him?

“You have to understand how much I looked up to him...how much he had meant to me. He was my champion. When everyone told me to stop being foolish and act the lady, he stood up for me. I thought he knew me better than anyone. He certainly seemed to. When I wanted to get married to Fred and do what my mother wanted me to do, he saw something different in me. When it all came out, I had to ask myself not only who Michael really was and what he stood for, but what I did as well. What had I become? Who did I want to be? What did I want to stand up for? Everything I believed about him was in question...and I suppose I never could figure out how to face it, to face him. Perhaps, I could have, eventually, but then Scott Lang arrived. The rest of it you know.”

What else could she say?

“He never spoke of it, you know.” Sharon admitted. “He spoke of you, of course. You were some mythic figure, a hero, but he never spoke about the war, or Darkmoor, or any of it. Dad always felt he was sorry. He said that Grandpa always wondered if you didn’t disappear in part because of what happened?”

“No,” Peggy assured her, fervently. “No, that had little to do with it. It was all just a confluence of events that night. I suppose, if anything, that can be laid more at the feet of my own impulsiveness and hard-headedness than anything. I am sorry if he believed otherwise.”

Sharon shrugged. “I don’t know, he didn’t discuss it with me, but then again, perhaps you both could say you were guilty of the same crime of impulsive decisions with far-ranging consequences. You thought you were doing something right. So did he, I suppose, even if it didn’t look that way in hindsight.”

Peggy wasn’t as sure she personally could equate the two. “Perhaps.”

Neither said much more after that as their train lumbered along to York.

Chapter Text

If one didn’t know that secret government experiments using various magical items and unsavory practices had once been happening just miles away, one would be forgiven for finding the town of Darkmoor charming, even quaint. Certainly, Sharon thought so as they came along the main road that led to the center of the town itself.

“It’s so darling,” Sharon already had her phone out, snapping pictures as their rental vehicle rolled along the now asphalt road that formed the heart of the community. “You know, not once in all of these years have Dad or Maggie been back here, not with us. Dad described it, though. He said it looks like something straight out of a BBC murder mystery or something.”

“Or something,” Peggy admitted, her eyes on the road as she slowly rolled past the town's market, butcher and chemist’s shop. To anyone else who was wandering through Darkmoor as they trekked across the Yorkshire moors, they too would have perhaps found the community of some 5,000 people “quaint”. It was the picturesque sort of place that tourists would want to stop at, filled with charmingly simple cottages that had been refitted over the years with the modern amenities that people looked for now at days, and had the air of a place in which time hadn’t had much to do with anything in over a century or two.

“Here we are,” Peggy finally muttered, pulling their rental sedan into a spot in front of a quaint, clapboard house, lovely and inviting and still an inn after all of these years. Peggy parked the car and paused, staring up at it as if pulling the memory from a fever dream. Seventy years ago she had stayed here with Howard Stark, under the guise of being his latest, young fling, much to Michael’s chagrin. It had been a front of course, as the pair had been there to investigate Haldane. The place hadn’t changed once, it seemed, since 1947.

Sharon was already gathering her things, pulling out overnight bags from the backseat of the vehicle. “Siobhan Haldane’s assistant sent me a message confirming our stay here. We are to ask for an Irene, I guess.”

Peggy only nodded, climbing out of the car to get a better look at the place. It had a few more nods to modern amenities than it had in the lean, after-war period of 1947. A small satellite dish stood on a corner of the roof, like some sort of high-tech bird-of-prey, and she could see modern electrical lines feeding into the side. Clearly the house was still tended with love and care, and as Peggy took her bag from Sharon, she followed, eyes wide as she tried to calculate all the changes that had occurred from one decade to another.

A bell rang at the door when they entered, walking into a comfortable sitting room filled with squashy, modern furniture, a television flickering silently in the corner. A woman, perhaps in her early 50s, sat at a desk on one side of the room, smiling benignly at them, eyes owlish behind thick glasses. “Hullo! Are you the guests her ladyship called down about?”

Sharon blinked at Peggy once in surprise before turning a smile on the woman. “Are you Irene?”

“I am,” the woman beamed, a broad smile on her round face. She was kindly looking, short, round, soft and inviting. “I own and run the Darkmoor Inn. Not a fancy name, but then again, we don’t stand on frills and ceremony here. Now, which one of you is Miss Sharon Carter and which one is Miss Margaret Carter?”

Peggy noted the lack of titles as Sharon pressed forward, holding up her hand. “I’m Sharon, thank you.”

“If you’d sign,” the woman indicated a guest book in front of her, holding a key on a chain out to Sharon. “I have you the single bedroom on the second floor, to your left, end of the hall. Lovely room, just had it redone a year or so ago, hopefully you like it. It does get the direct sunlight in the morning, just so you know, so if that sort of thing bothers you…”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Sharon assured her, glancing to Peggy, a hint of a laugh trying desperately to peek through.

“You’ll find we won’t need much,” Peggy assured the proprietress, signing quickly, her name a black scrawl on the paper as Irene the Landlady handed her another key, attached to a ring to a plastic card with the number 7 on it. “And you don’t have to call me Margaret, I go by Peggy.”

Irene’s warm smile broadened at that. “Well, you never can tell, now at days, what people want to be called. Darkmoor may be out of the way, not fancy like York or London, but I’m not so behind as to not respect how people wish to be called.” She uttered that with the quiet dignity of one who wished to appear worldly to outsiders who they felt were far more so. She eyed Sharon specifically. “You’re American, then?”

Sharon looked vaguely startled, clearing her throat as she again tried to swallow a laugh. “Um, yeah! Born and grew up in northern Virginia, outside of Washington DC.”

That was certainly interesting to Irene as she rounded her desk. “Your father in government, then?”

“Um...no. He’s a professor at a university there, American University.”

“American University? They have one named for the country?”

“Errr...yes.” Sharon was bemused. Peggy herself had to stifle a giggle. Irene was one of the blessed sort of people one found in most any village anywhere in the world who loved gossip and discovering tidbits of anyone new who wandered in. Peggy found herself wondering if she were related to the last proprietress of this establishment, a woman named Miss Mary, who had been of a similar disposition and nature, and who had been utterly scandalized by Howard.

“I’ve never been to America,” Irene admitted, leading the way to a set of broad stairs set into one end of the sitting room, carpeted down the middle, but shining oak on either side. “My youngest took a trip there with school about ten years ago, went to New York on some sort of cultural exchange. Said it was so big there, but everyone seemed friendly. Is it really as dangerous as it looks on the telly?”

“Depends on where you are and what you are doing,” Sharon admitted, vaguely, at a loss as to what to do with Irene the Landlady.

“And what about you,” Irene’s kindly and curious gaze turned to fall on Peggy. “You sound more English.”

“I am,” she admitted with a bright smile. “Hampstead, London.”

“London! Well, I’ve been there a time or two. My sister and her husband lived just outside of the city for years. I never understood why she liked it, always so crowded, but she stood by it. Was always carrying on about shops and plays. I told her ‘Terry, if you like paying twice again what you should for a small plate of underdone, peeled veg and a bit of steak, then by all means, waste your money on it!’”

Peggy bit her lip, hard, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice.

“So, you are...local?”

“More local than some, less than most,” she shrugged, topping the stairs and waiting for the pair of them, directing them towards the left and a pair of rooms at the end. “My husband’s family has had this place since the 19th century, and when I married him we took it over.”

Her laughter finally starting to subside, Peggy now glanced at the woman with curiosity. “Your husband is related to the Miss Mary who ran this establishment some seventy years ago?”

Peggy saw her mistake as the words tumbled out of her, catching Irene by surprise. “That he is! That was his great aunt. A lovely woman, doted on him. She left him this place when she died. How did you know about her?”

Peggy scrambled, looking for a convenient half-truth to throw at her, but Sharon ably stepped in, thinking faster than Peggy did in the moment. “My father! You see, my father and his sister were born here in Darkmoor. They were here only as very small children. They moved away when they were young, but they talked about it a lot.”

“Your father, you say?” Irene perked up at this. “The professor?”

“Yes,” Sharon flickered a pointed gaze at Peggy, urging her to go along. “Harrison Carter is his name. His sister was also named Margaret. Their mother was from around these parts herself, Moira Douglas.”

Irene latched onto this bit of gossip happily. “Carter...Douglas...I don’t know if I heard of Carters around here, but mind you I didn’t move to the village proper till I married my Bill. There is still a Douglas or two about. Maybe you are related?”

“Maybe,” Sharon offered, vaguely, stopping in front of a room that had a placard that said “6” on the front, holding up her key. “Well, this is it! Anything we should know?”

“Oh, yes, meals are included. Lunch is at 12:30 in the dining room, if you want. You have your own bath, so no worries about sharing. The televisions get all the channels, and there are cards in there with the password to the WiFi connection. My eldest grandson helped me get that all set up.” Irene beamed with pride at how modern she was, leaning in conspiratorially. “He said that it was important for business that I be up-to-date and modern with all my amenities. I know, people come to expect that sort of thing now.”

“Brilliant,” Sharon assured her, holding up her key. “We will just settle in, now.”

“Of course! Ring me if you need anything.”

They both waited till the kindly woman moved to the stairs before unlocking their doors and going inside. The room she had been assigned this time was smaller than the one she had when masquerading as Howard’s love interest the last time. Still, it was cozy and comfortable, the furniture and furnishings all done in modern styles, with a soft, downy duvet on the bed and white, fluffy towels in the bath. For all of Irene’s chattiness, she clearly had an eye for what would sell an inn in the middle of nowhere to the sort of posh city-types who would take weekend trips to a place like Darkmoor to hike the heather-covered heath and take photographs of sheep.

“I’m just saying, if we weren’t on a case I would stay here just on a vacation.” Sharon had popped her head around the door. “Dad always said that Darkmoor was lovely, but he never came back here, not even on family vacations.”

Considering the scandal, Peggy couldn’t blame him. “Sometimes, the only thing you can do is move forward.”

Sharon eyed her, speculatively, but said nothing else.

“When will we be meeting with Siobhan Haldane?” Peggy decided to cut to the heart of the matter.

Sharon leaned against the door jam, watching as Peggy pulled out toiletries and her most immediate things she wanted. “She is entertaining her guests today but said she would make herself available for lunch tomorrow. Till then, we have a whole day to ourselves exploring.”

Peggy had a feeling she knew what her niece’s preference would be. “I suppose there are those who work at the new Darkmoor facility who live here now. I imagine several might be interesting to talk to.”

“If nothing else to see how things have changed and if they are really up to alternative energy. And short of that, how many other locals working around here do you think might be chatty enough to drop something about what Darkmoor is up to? We’ve known this Irene for fifteen minutes and she’s ready to delve into state secrets.”

All of which were very fair points. “I would think, though, after a while the locals would start to notice that a couple of women from the outside were asking some fairly pointed questions about Darkmoor and what it was up to. We need to run this carefully without showing our hand. We are two tourists, here to hike the moors and learning a bit about the area.”

“I think I have that covered.” Sharon assured her. “Do you have anything that screams both ‘weekend warrior’ and ‘fun and flirty’?”

Peggy stared at Sharon as if she had just started speaking a foreign language out of the blue. “I beg your pardon?”

“We need to appear like two girls on a weekend out to get away from the city and maybe hook up for fun!”

“In Darkmoor?” Peggy couldn’t imagine that anyone in Darkmoor would know what to do with someone like that, let alone someone like that wanting to flirt and carouse in Darkmoor.

“Well, it’s a stretch, but it’s the best I got in a pinch,” Sharon argued, moving to Peggy’s bag and rifling through the clothing she brought, which wasn’t much. “I am sure they have one or two that come through here, and let's be honest, most everyone who lives here either makes a living off of sheep herding or working at the research facility, ergo, things are a bit boring. A couple of lovely women come into town, chat and want to have a good time, they pay a lot more attention then.”

It was one of the oldest plays in the book, as it were, a trick of spycraft that people had been using since time-out-of-mind. There was a reason for that. It might be old, but it was good and effective. “I may have...something. I hadn’t precisely planned for flirting at some village pub in Yorkshire.”

“I have a few things you might be able to borrow.” Sharon eyed Peggy critically. “We can glam up your look, make a big show of doing selfies and chatting about crazy weekends and flirt with anything alive and see what happens.”

It wasn’t the first time Peggy had done this. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be her last. “Just...don’t tell Steve what we did, or...at least just let me be the one to tell Steve first?”

Sharon only chuckled with a hint of evil. “If he gets pictures, I will deny everything.”

“You really are Michael’s grandchild,” Peggy groused, throwing a hairbrush in Sharon’s general direction. Sharon side-stepped it with the ease of her SHIELD training, impish laughter sounding from across the hallway.

This was how they found themselves that evening in one of the local establishments, posing for pictures on Sharon’s phone, mugging like schoolgirls on a holiday. Sharon had done her research first, checking in with Irene, their landlady, to find the nightlife in town, zeroing in on the ones that the younger set, particularly those who worked at the research facility, would have frequented. There weren't many. Darkmoor was just large enough to sport a few places for the young to find entertainment, but nothing as flashy as a big city. What they had ranged from what Irene termed as a “dance club” to the standard pub that catered to a younger set, and they made plans to wander through them, Sharon laughingly calling it a pub crawl as Peggy tried to figure out what a young person in this era would wear for a night on the town. To be fair, in the nearly three years she had been in the future she had yet to go out that much, save for dinners with her small circle of friends. The idea of "casual glamour" for tramping through bars and pubs was something she was at a loss for.

“You look amazing,” Sharon assured her as they walked up to the first place Irene suggested, already milling with a younger crowd, a loud noise they called music thumping from somewhere.

Peggy eyed the silky, green top under her more serviceable, warm jacket, and said nothing. The fact that the top itself was little more than a camisole that did little to cover what it needed to had her glaring at her niece, who insisted she keep it on. This coupled with the denim that was practically painted on to her legs left her feeling practically exposed in public. For once, she almost agreed with her mother on the state of her dress. “I rather wish I had something more on.”

“Stop fussing about it. You are a sophisticated city girl here on a weekend hiking trip with your cousin from America. Our family grew up in the area, and we thought it would be fun to see where they came from and get a bit of quaint British culture. You lived in London, put took an executive position in New York. I work for a research group in DC, which frees me up to ask around about Darkmoor and what they are up to - professional interest, after all.”

They had cooked up their cover while dressing for the evening, pulled out of half-truths and whole cloth, the sort of story you wanted when engaging in this work. Just enough of it was real so as not to fumble it, but the story was fuzzy enough at the edges that no one could trace it with any absolute certainty. Working the story through mentally, she found herself falling into the old habits of her spy days, falling into her character with a practice ease that she always did manage when going undercover.

“If I am so sophisticated, then, this place is a bit boring, don’t you think?” She eyed the pub they wandered up to balefully, the windows in its old-fashioned facade shaking with whatever music was being played. Her gaze flickered across the various faces, particularly male, in the crowd. “And the selection is hardly the best.”

Sharon blinked at her with lashes thick with mascara, looking as if she wanted to swallow her tongue. She played along, however, easily falling into step into their act. “Just come on and try it! I know it’s not New York, but other places in the world can be cool, too. Besides, you never know what you might find here!”

The truth was that they didn’t find much. The first spot was smokey and hazy and absolutely did cater to a younger crowd, but they were the sort there for drinking as much as they could and being rather obnoxious about it. Peggy went with it gamely for forty-five minutes, till the pounding music threatened to give her a headache. The next one they ventured to was more a dance club - well at least what modern young people would call one of those - which was just as loud, but less obnoxious in the sense that more people were concerned with flailing their bodies to what passed for music in this place. Still, Sharon enjoyed herself on the floor while Peggy stood by, nursing a drink that was far too sweet and pink, eyeing a cluster of people, two of whom wore what looked to be Darkmoor lanyards and badges. They seemed about as thrilled with this venue as Peggy felt with it.

Sharon made her way back to the standing table where Peggy waited, playing with her drink. “Having fun?”

“Do you call that dancing or an exercise,” Peggy teased, noting just how sweaty Sharon looked after a set of writhing to what could loosely be called a beat, Peggy supposed.

“Sometimes, there isn’t much of a difference between the two. I need to introduce you to Zumba.” Sharon took Peggy’s drink, sipping it, before wrinkling her nose in mild disgust. “Too sweet.”

“And too pink,” Peggy practically shouted over the music. She cocked her head in the direction of the table. “First hit of the evening, though not sure how long they will stay.”

“Maybe we can follow,” Sharon shrugged, pushing back a lock of sweat damp hair.

“Anywhere but here would be nice.” She cast a look of asperity on the room in general. Sharon laughed at her.

“I know it’s the character, but I can’t help but feeling that you really don’t like this place.”

Peggy lifted her bare shoulder lazily. After all, the best way to sell a cover was to have some truth in it. “I prefer music that is perhaps a less pounding through your skull.”

“Sorry it’s not Glenn Miller,” Sharon laughed, half-an-eye on the group across from them. “I think they are on the move.”

Indeed, the group was gathering coats and finishing drinks, making for the exit. She and Sharon did the same, surreptitiously gathering things while casting vaguely bored looks towards the floor of people, waiting several heartbeats of time before following at a leisurely pace behind the group. After the stuffy closeness inside, the cold, crispness outside was bracing to Peggy’s flushed cheeks.

“Did you spot the two with the lanyards,” Peggy inquired, nodding towards the group ahead of them moving down the street to a more sedentary establishment.

“There are three more I think who had them. I’m guessing a group of workmates out for drinks on a Friday night.” Sharon paused long enough to make a show of taking a picture of herself on her phone, both to give space between them and the group and to hide the fact that they were tailing them. “I doubt they will notice that we followed.”

“Good,” Peggy admitted, as she was already beginning to regret their undercover choices for the night. Her head pounded and she rather wished she could be someplace quiet for a pint and silence to think. To her relief, the group seemed to be desiring the same. They found a normal pub, one with a more family friendly clientele, sedate and cheerful inside.

“That’s more like it,” she heard herself saying as she held the door open for Sharon and ignored her quiet laughter at Peggy’s expense.

“Is this where I start in on the old person jokes?”

“Hush,” Peggy admonished, more due to Sharon’s teasing than their mission. After all, the group they were tailing had settled companionably with another smaller group, all of whom looked familiar with each other, chattering and ordering pints and food. Sharon pointed out a nearby table to settle out, close enough to listen, not so close as to be rude. Peggy nodded as she unwound her scarf, slipping off her warm coat, still disgruntled Sharon had not allowed her to wear something at least warmer.

A server wandered up, a cheerful young woman who seemed unbothered by the rather overdone state of she and Sharon’s looks. “Hello, ladies, what will you have?”

“Whatever is warmest,” Peggy muttered.

“Maybe some porter and...I don’t know...stew? Chips?”

“How about a bit of both,” the woman suggested, cheerfully. “I can go put that in, if you like?”

They murmured their thanks as Peggy made a show of looking over the interior of the pub as an excuse to keep an eye on the group. They looked chummy enough, but certainly not the close familiarity of kith and kin. Sharon’s guess was likely correct, work friends who spent a great deal of time together, meeting for food and drinks.

“Any ideas on how to worm our way into their conversation,” Sharon queried, busying herself with scrolling photos on her phone that she was in no way looking at.

“Mmmm, outside of just introducing ourselves and asking for tourist tips, no.” Peggy wasn’t even sure what to ask. What did tourists do in Darkmoor? “Perhaps follow some of the ladies to the loo when they go?”

“That’s a thought,” Sharon considered. “And I’m sure someone over there smokes. I feel like everyone does over here. Maybe when one of them steps out for a cigarette?”

Peggy, surprisingly, had never picked up the habit, despite it being near ubiquitous in her day. “I can at least fake it. I did it in the past.”

“Or we could just buy them a round of drinks and insert ourselves. I doubt they will be suspicious if we just buy them alcohol.”

“Fair, I’ve yet to meet anyone who turned down free beer, especially not from beautiful women.”

No sooner had the words left her lips than one of the pack conveniently rose, wandering to the bar, jeered on by the others. It seemed he had been elected to stand a round for the, and so he wandered with a sheepish smile to the bar, laughing at his compatriots who teased him before turning back to their own conversations.

“That might be the ticket,” Peggy muttered, rising even before Sharon could get a word in edgewise. For all the years she had been an investigator, an administrator, and a leader, at the end of the day Peggy had been trained to be a spy, and she felt her old mantle fall on her as she sauntered to the worn, darkly-stained bar where the man chatted up the bar keep behind it. She decided it was best to play at being bubbly, sweet, attractive, but unaware of it, the sort of girl that seemed to appeal to the quiet introvert that Peggy found most technician types were...well, most save Tony Stark. A confident, sex-kitten would only frighten them, a cool intellectual would be intimidating, but a friendly girl-next-door would draw one out of their shell. And so, as she wandered up to the bar, she affected her best, blushing smile.

The gent wasn’t horrible to look at, she supposed, in an assessing sort of way. He was tall, broad shouldered, and somewhat gangly, but still doughy in the way of someone who spent much of their time at a lab. His dark hair was shaggy and mussed, and over his comfy looking, dark-blue jumper his lanyard read “G. Sears” with a blurry photograph of him. He didn’t notice her at first as he glanced towards some sort of news program on the television, mute at the moment, tapping his credit card on the varnished wooden top. But he eventually caught Peggy’s eye...or, she should say, caught her décolletage in that ridiculous top before his eyes skittered up to her face.

“Errr...um...hi?” His pale face turned bright pink faster than Steve’s ever did.

“Hello,” she flashed a friendly smile, not too knowing, not too familiar. She glanced at the bar keep at the end, gathering a pitcher and glasses. “A full night, then?”

“Oh, you know, just out with the mates, enjoying the weekend.” He shrugged, tapping his plastic card in a fast staccato, eyes flickering between the bar keep and Peggy as she stood, arms crossed on the bar top, leaning in. “How about you?”

“Oh, well, somewhat the same.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder to where Sharon sat, watching with half an eye over her phone. “My cousin and I over there are in town for the weekend. Bit of a girls’ trip.”

“Cousin?” He glanced back towards Sharon. She noticed and smiled, waving at him, all blonde good looks. “You two are in Darkmoor for a weekend?”

“Well, hiking and seeing the sites.” Peggy raised a shoulder, sharing a conspiratorial grin. “She’s American and had never seen so much as a sheep before. Honestly, she thinks it’s Hound of the Baskervilles up here. I might have dared her into it. We’ve been enjoying ourselves, though.”

“Nothing to see up here, I’m afraid, unless you like sheep.”

“Not particularly, no.” This poor fellow wasn’t much of a conversationalist. “Was a bit surprised to see a town of this size up here, though. You all do all right. A few nice restaurants, a dance club, a regular nightlife.”

The fellow, whose eyes were drooping dangerously back down to her chest propped on her hands on the bar, nodded. “Yeah…suppose! It’s the research facility I am guessing!”

He held up his name card on its nylon string. Peggy made a deal of looking at it. “Darkmoor Research? Some government lab, then?”

“Something like that. Mostly researching energy, ways we can power things without destroying the planet, things like that.”

“What, like Tony Stark?” She thought she might as well drop his name in here. Surprisingly, it had an effect she wasn’t expecting.

“Tony Stark? Please!” The fellow sneered, turning fully to her now, the beer and the barkeep forgotten in the moment. “Everyone hears alternate energy and they think of some poncing prat in a flying suit who is out there playing at being a superhero. He could be doing anything with his so-called new element and he’s showing off and proclaiming he’s a genius. He didn’t even invent the arc reactor, you know! The idea was out there long before Stark ever came up with it, or even his father. He just figured out how to make it small. And don’t get me started on that new element he says he made. Like...who just makes new elements? Bet he didn’t even make it himself? Like as not some group of poor sods in a lab somewhere in one of his facilities came up with it, found out his company had first dibs on anything they discovered, and then he just claimed he figured it out himself!”

Well...she apparently had hit a nerve.

“Errr…” It was the most inarticulate thing Peggy had uttered in her life, but it seemed to fit not only the character she was playing, but Peggy’s own real, shocked response.

The man clearly realized just how passionate he was getting with a perfect stranger over a rather innocuous question. “Wow...that...just got heated for a moment.”

“It rather did,” Peggy agreed, straightening.

The man busied himself with spinning his card on the bar top instead. “Sorry, just...had worked for three years on a miniaturized power source. Not an arc reactor, mind, no one had even thought like that, but one that would give greater energy than your standard battery, and was just hitting on something when Stark announced all of his thing. You know, three years of my life, down the drain. I suppose it will be good for laptop batteries, though.”

Peggy knew something of the competitive nature of science and technology. She hadn’t expected this sort of raw reaction, however, dropping Stark’s name. “Well, look at it this way, you didn’t have to be...kidnapped to make your battery.”

“Fair point,” he acknowledged, his gaze sliding back to her. “I’m sorry, I sort of melted down on you like that. Normally, I’m a perfectly rational man, I assure you.”

Peggy had a feeling that, despite his social awkwardness, he likely was. “No, I mean, I’d be upset if my life’s work got upstaged by a flashy billionaire, too, I suppose.”

He clearly had decided to make amends, holding out a hand to her. “Names Gareth, by the way. What’s yours?”

“Peggy!” She took his proffered handshake, not bothering to think of a cover name, knowing it wouldn’t be hard to do the leg work to find her at the inn. “Nice to meet you, Gareth.”

The barkeep returned with his beer and glasses on a tray, oblivious to the conversation they had just been having. “That should get you lot going, at least.”

“Thanks,” Gareth said, passing over his card in exchange for his tray. He glanced at Peggy, apologetically. “Guess I better get back with this, but whatever this lady would like, put it on my tab.”

The barkeep cheerfully shrugged as Peggy rushed to protest. “Oh, you don’t have to do that!”

“No, I unleashed all of my insecurities on you. The very least I can buy you and your cousin is a drink.”

He was being rather sweet about it. “All right,” she agreed. “But only if we can come and say hello, then. After all, we are here for the weekend, might as well make friends along the way.”

“Sure,” he grinned, clearly pleased by that. “The more, the merrier, right?”

He really was awkward. Not as bad as Steve when she first met him, but still not much improved. “Right, we will meet you there?”

Gareth stood for a long moment with his tray, grinning. “Yeah...err...see you there.”

She watched him go before turning to the barkeep’s expectant look. “We are fine, thanks. Does that lot come in often?”

The burly man shrugged beefy shoulders under his shirt. “Every weekend or so, regulars from the science lab who come here to unwind. They are a good sort, honestly.”

That spoke well for their chances of finding out what they could. “Thanks.”

She turned on her heel once more, wandering past where the group sat. She could feel Gareth’s eyes on her as she went, eventually sliding into her table with Sharon. She waited, already expectant.

“Well, Gareth over there has given us an invitation to chat up the group, if we want. He also has some particular feelings on Tony Stark and arc reactor technology. I am guessing at least this part of what they are up to is legitimate.”

Sharon turned in a gesture of overt surreptitiousness, glancing at the table and meeting Gareth’s shy gaze before pointedly turning back again. “He’s cute in that nerdy sort of way.”

“Hmmm,” Peggy shrugged, noncommittally. “Poor man nearly fumbled all over himself up there. I think he will be amenable to a pretty face and chatting up someone new.”

“I bet.” Sharon’s smirk was pure mischief. “You always did go for shy, nerdy types.”

Peggy snorted, unable to refute the assertion, but thinking that Steve Rogers was a million miles from this poor Gareth Sears. “I will be happier if we can pinpoint the work they are doing at the facility.”

“Dinner first,” Sharon insisted, as their order was making its way over to them. “Then, let’s see what the night brings us.”

Peggy agreed, though not without a hint of a pang as she thought of Steve, back home, and how she could have been at this moment on a train to see him, to discuss his week with him and all the things that he was learning. Instead, she was in Yorkshire...chatting up Gareth.

“Hopefully, it is worth it.” she replied, considering her life choices.

Chapter Text

The next morning arrived, slightly bleary eyed, but none the worse for wear.

“How are you holding up?” Sharon faced the bright light of the day with the sort of resolute constitution of a Carter, stiff upper lip and all. They had perhaps overdone it just a touch the night before.

“Well enough, all things considered.” Peggy sipped out her black coffee in the inn's rather charming dining room, munching on toast. “Yourself?”

“Hmm, it’s been a minute since I’ve had that much to drink, but I think I held it together.” Sharon grasped her own coffee like a lifeline. In truth, she had kept it together rather well, considering the amount of beer their group of Darkmoor employees had put away. Like most operatives, Sharon had been trained in how to pace things, but everyone had limits. “I wonder if that Gareth guy got home okay?”

“He was rather off his face, I will give that to you.” Gareth, the sweet, if gormless, computer engineer had spent much of the evening chatting Peggy up, clearly interested in who he thought was a charming tourist up for the weekend, finding courage to talk to her at the bottom of his glass. He had been rather pleasant, and it had made her feel slightly guilty to lead the poor fellow on.

Still, he had given her quite a bit of information on Darkmoor, their research, what he was working on, and just what they got up to at the facility still in operation on the grounds of the estate. Sadly, not a bit of it led them any closer to anything, save that Siobhan Haldane seemed to be honest so far - Darkmoor was exploring alternative energy sources. All of it, actually, was rather interesting, if Peggy were honest with herself, and she had made a note to tell Stark about it when she returned. She had a feeling he and Lady Siobhan had a lot of ideas in common. It was a pity that she was suspicious of the woman and the research her companies were up to.

“You seemed to do alright with that gang.” Sharon turned Peggy’s attention back to the events of the night before.

Peggy could only laugh. “That is practice, I must admit, and that only came from many embarrassing nights with Michael and his friends. I used to drink most of them under the table. Served me in good stead when I became an operative. I used to run a racket with Bucky Barnes during the war hustling soldiers at drinking games. He would split the winnings with me.”

“Nice,” Sharon laughed, helping herself to toast. “Glad to know my great-aunt knows how to fleece GI’s out of their money.”

“Not information, though, or at least not much.” Peggy made a face, vaguely, at her own breakfast. “So far, Lady Siobhan seems like she is on the up-and-up.”

“My end of the table were project managers, people working on big initiatives for the next few years. It was much the same with them. No military contracts, nothing having to do with weapons development or super soldier serum, no space lasers.” Sharon reached for the jam, frowning in contemplation. “Honestly, most of it isn’t bad stuff. Sustainable sources of energy, how to get it into marginalized areas, the sort of stuff that would turn Stark on. I can see why someone like this Mandarin might be interested in a lot of this sort of thing, but none of it seems nefarious and none of it has anything to do with what they are doing with MST Pharmaceuticals.”

Peggy didn’t see how it added up either. “Maybe we are thinking too big picture.”

Sharon didn’t look as convinced. “Or maybe we are thinking too connectively. After all, not everything has to be related to everything else. Sure, Siobhan Haldane happens to be the CEO of the conglomerate which happens to be tied to Darkmoor Research, MST Pharmaceuticals, and crazy, British fascists who tried to use dark magics to fight their enemies, but does that mean that they are tied to one another? Does it mean that was what this Mandarin was after? Does it even have anything to do with Erskine’s serum, or super soldiers, or anything else?”

It was an angle Peggy admittedly hadn’t thought of. She had been rather focused on the singular notion of this all being tied neatly together, that this Mandarin had targeted the pharmaceutical company because he wanted something nefarious that Haldane’s group was working on, something involving the serum. That she didn’t have much to support that hadn’t seemed to matter as much as pieces began to unwind involving Haldane, Darkmoor, and her own past.

“You think that we are on a wild goose chase,” she asked, honestly, glancing over the rim of her cup at her niece.

Sharon shrugged as she munched thoughtfully on her toast and strawberry jam. “I think that we picked up what we thought were clues and looked them over and maybe they aren’t the clues we were looking for. I mean, sure, it was worth a look, but I have a feeling that when we talk to Haldane today she isn’t going to tell us anything more than what we already know.”

Peggy never did like admitting defeat. “Let’s at least talk to her and see what she says. I hate to think we did all of this for no reason at all.”

“I’m here for the country manor house,” Sharon teased, glancing out of the window to the street outside. “And to see the village where my father was born. That’s kind of cool.”

A car arrived for them from the manor at eleven, a simple SUV, without fuss or ornamentation. The driver, named Greg, one of the workers at the house, greeted them affably, chatting with them breezily on the short drive outside of the village to the large, Darkmoor estate.

“How old is it,” Sharon asked, openly friendly and talkative, though Peggy could see she was fishing for any information the gregarious, middle-aged fellow could give her.

“Oh, the estate itself is ancient! Folks around these parts say that the Haldane’s have held it since King Arthur himself ruled.” He laughed, a knowing chuckle that said he thought the story was rubbish himself, but found it too amusing not to share. “Don’t know about Merlin and Arthur, but I do know that this family has been here since before the Normans. But the house itself isn’t that old, only a couple of centuries. The castle that was on the property burned down and they tore most of it down to make the manor.”

Sharon pretended to pout at the very idea. “I was hoping to see an old castle! Out here on the moors it would be so romantic!”

Peggy just did manage not to snort, pretending to be very interested in a herd of sheep on the other side of the fencing.

Greg, their driver, only grinned. “Ah, well, I hate to disappoint you. The research lab is where the castle used to be, all fancy and modern. Only ancient thing the land has anymore is the old stone circle!”

“Stone circle?” That did get a spark of curiosity out of Sharon. “Like a henge?”

“Not like a henge, it is one. Been a part of the land since before the Haldane’s had it. I suppose it got used in pagan rituals or what not, but now at days it’s just a tourist attraction. When her ladyship is away in the summer she lets people tour the house and grounds, and so people like to go there in midsummer, things like that.”

Sharon eyed Peggy, who shrugged. She had seen the stone circle with Howard decades ago, and while Howard with his American reverence and awe at all things older than a skyscraper had been loudly impressed, she had frankly found it all too...disquieting. Peggy was not a superstitious person by nature, but she had seen things both in this world and from out of this world, and something had not settled right with her about the place. Perhaps it was her own prejudice against Lord Ranulph Haldane and the work he had been doing that was talking.

All of that said, the manor house was a different story altogether.

It crept on one, if you weren’t expecting it. Around a bend and a copse of trees along the fencerows, it appeared in the distance, an Italianate confection of honeyed stone. It looked just as it had in 1947, and indeed as it had since the house was built early in the 1700s, a bit of Tuscan Italy scooped out and plopped on the Yorkshire moors. It was a lovely house, all that said, with baroque artistic flourishes and a manicured lawn that seemed to stretch for miles.

“Wow,” Sharon breathed as they came up the drive, past well manicured lombardy poplars, turned golden at this time of year, up to a circular drive that ran in front of the main portico of the house. “It looks like a palace.”

“I don’t know if it’s that fancy, miss, but it is quite grand,” Greg the driver agreed. He pulled their vehicle to a stop, and blessedly didn’t seem so eager to stand on ceremony as to try and help them out. It wouldn’t have done him any good in any case, as Sharon was already out of her door, eyeing the Roman-style carvings high above them, as Peggy stepped out, giving the whole place a once over again. The last time she had been here it had been with a contingency of British officers. That had been long ago. Just how much had Darkmoor - and the Haldanes for that matter - changed?

To Peggy’s surprise it wasn’t a member of the servant staff, but Siobhan Haldane herself who came to greet them. “Hello, Carters! Welcome to Darkmoor!”

The other woman was the picture of modern country elegance, a far cry from the sort of dress and manner that Peggy had grown up with in the period between the two wars. A woman of Siobhan Haldane’s status would not have been caught out in the denim she wore, paired with a thick cable knit sweater. Her auburn hair was caught up elegantly, and by the way she moved you would have thought she was dressed for tea with the royal family. By comparison, Peggy felt rather overdressed in her far more business-like suit.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again Miss...I mean Lady Haldane,” Sharon stumbled, uncharacteristically, holding out a hand to the woman. “Darkmoor is lovely.”

“It is a rather nice old pile, isn’t it?” She glanced up at the honey-colored stone. “I always thought they would rename it when the manor house was built, seeing as it’s not particularly dark, but I suppose that was the name of the castle and lands, so they were stuck with it, I suppose. Director, lovely to see you.”

Peggy took the woman’s well-manicured hand. “Your ladyship.”

“Enough with that." She waved that away almost immediately. “I never did like the title. You can call me Siobhan as everyone else does. Come along, my hunting party is out and about this morning looking for something to shoot, so we have the house to ourselves. I can give you a tour.”

It wasn’t what they were there for, but Sharon agreed, at least appeasing the woman as they wandered through the house that made Peggy’s childhood home look shabby and well-worn by comparison. The entire place was filled with rooms and rooms of the sort of glittering splendor of a bygone age in Britain, when they had once held an empire that afforded them the wealth and ability to prolong the romance of country manor living. Here were the relics of a long ago age, when lords and ladies still could escape to such large mansions, away from the heat and smoke of the city, where the better set would hunt, wine, and dine and live magical lives far removed from the rest of the everyday citizens. Peggy’s mother had always admired people who lived such lives. In truth, while Peggy didn’t resent them, she just never found much use for it. What good was it to sit about, learning French and piano, if all that was ever expected of you was to look pretty and pour a good cup of tea?

“The man who drove us up here said the Haldane’s have held this land for centuries,” Sharon broached as they wandered through a formal sitting room. Up on the wall hung a portrait of an ancient lord of the land, another Ranulph Haldane, dark and imposing, watching them as they stood there, as if judging them for their modern ways and poor manners.

“Since before the Norman Conquest, or so I’ve been told. The story goes that the Haldane’s actually descend from Roman legionnaires stationed at Hadrian’s Wall, but I think that’s the sort of legend someone invented to make us sound far more important than we actually were. Still, there has been a Haldane on this spot for well over a thousand years.”

Her smile became somewhat bittersweet with that. “Pity, then, I should be the last. Feels rather like I am letting them all down. A thousand years of overseeing this place and protecting its people and I will be it. But, I suppose there isn’t a need for it anymore. That sort of thing is all well and truly gone. The old life of the provincial lord of the manor has been done for nearly a hundred years. There’s only a few of us hold outs left, clinging on to it for the last bits of the old world. I suppose it’s time to let it die, though. Things change, and children don’t have to do things the same way that their parents did, right?”

Her gaze flickered to Peggy then, inquisitive. It was a bit unnerving. “No, I don’t suppose they do.”

“Hmm, in any case, my father didn’t precisely leave a legacy I was keen on carrying on, so it’s perhaps good I let the old ways go with me. In any case, let me show you the formal dining room!”

For the next hour they wandered, Sharon occasionally attempting to ask pointed questions on Darkmoor, Lord Ranulph's work, and the research facility, all of which were skillfully evaded by Siobhan, who gave polite, patented answers as she turned their attention to the fine portrait hanging over the fireplace, or the well-manicured lawn that had initially been designed by Capability Brown, only to have it all turned over by the next generation who preferred to continue the Italian romantic theme. Sharon listened, polite and attentive, attempting to find small chinks in which to lob her next attack.

Peggy, who cared little for such things, waited patiently, even as the great house tour made her want to gouge her own eyes out.

“I am sure I’ve bored you both to tears with the descriptions of silk wall hanging and 19th century crystal,” Haldane finally offered, apologetically, but clearly not sorry, as she led them to a glass covered conservatory, snug and warm from the cold elements of the outside. “The least I can offer you is lunch while we discuss why you are really here.”

“The attack on MST Pharmaceuticals and why one of your companies might have been targeted.” Sharon cut to the chase, clearly tired of being skillfully maneuvered around this whole time.

“You said you had a lead you were following in regards to the company and this Mandarin.” She settled into a padded chair, covered in a floral print, sitting before a set table with lovely, if plain, china on a coppery, fall-colored table cloth. Peggy and Sharon did the same, as a server came to set plates of food before them. “By the way, I had the chef prepare something simple. I couldn’t tell you what it is in French, but it is nothing more fancy than roasted venison and vegetables, all from the estate.”

Sharon, who had been preparing to continue her line of questioning, paused, her mouth open in the act of forming words. Panicked, dark eyes flickered to Peggy, who was caught short by whatever was upsetting her.

“Err...venison? Like...deer?”

“Yes,” Siobhan responded, her own questions flickering briefly. “We raise a herd here on the property, it’s one of the money-making venture on the estate. It helps us keep going. This one isn’t hunted, those are strictly controlled.”

“I...just haven’t had it before,” Sharon admitted, gamely prodding it with a fork. Peggy resisted the urge to do what Mrs. Jenkins had when she was a child and admonish her to try it, she would like it.

“What Agent Carter was getting at,” Peggy continued on Sharon’s behalf, trying desperately to finally push this conversation into happening, “is that we believe the Mandarin was after research that was being done by MST Pharmaceutical.”

The other woman nodded as the servant poured red wine and water for each of them, thanking him before sending him away, unobtrusively. She waited till he was gone before speaking. “MST is involved in a great deal of research, as is everyone working under the various companies and banners we are under. As I am sure you both discovered while chatting up scientists from the the research facility, I have nothing to hide.”

So she clearly had heard about their escapades the night before. “Alternative energy sources, that is what you do at the Darkmoor facility now?”

“Mostly, though I do believe they are also experimenting with other things, such as global warming and environmental protection and rescue. You’ll find, Director Carter, that most of the companies and facilities under the Mys-Tech banner are all doing different things, but with the same purpose, to help as many people as possible and leave this world slightly better than how we found it. Haldane Financial group works with small businesses and individuals in developing countries to allow them to build up sustainability and secure businesses ventures that benefit their lives and their communities. We are currently funding a joint venture with an online platform to start sharing stories from people who never get a voice in media. And as for MST Pharmaceutical, their entire goal has been to improve the lives of others through medical research and making as much healthcare possible available for those who need it most, either through preventative care, medication, or funding doctors and hospitals. Everything this company is committed to is to do good in this world, not to destroy it or cause terror.”

Her last words rang with a sort of quiet righteousness, the only hint in their entire visit of the noblewoman beneath the friendly, genteel facade. And yet, her father had displayed the same sort of behavior once, the same certainty in his cause. Despite Haldane’s assurances, Sharon pressed on.

“No one is saying that MST itself is doing anything particular or directly nefarious. That said, by your own admission, research is happening, some of which may seem innocent in nature on its surface, but which might hold an interest to someone like this Mandarin. Is there anything that comes to mind that you know of?”

The woman paused, considering, holding one of her silver forks over her untouched plate of food. After several long moments she shook her head, setting aside her unused utensil. “There are any number of projects that they are working on at any given point in time. It could be anything. Is there any evidence of a break in or tampering?”

“Not so far,” Sharon conceded. “But it could simply be because the plan didn’t work out, or because they used a method that wasn’t particularly obvious.”

“What about Abraham Erskine’s serum?”

To her surprise, the woman looked politely confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“Super soldier serum,” Sharon provided by way of explanation. “It’s what made Captain America into what he is.”

Confusion, understanding, and surprise all played across Siobhan’s face, all of which looked dishearteningly genuine. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. I know of Captain America, I believe. He is one of those Avengers that saved New York, isn’t he?”

She wouldn’t have been alive during the war to remember Steve Rogers, Peggy supposed, and she really shouldn’t hold it against her that she didn’t recall that. Still, it grated, somewhat, that she wouldn’t know Steve’s sacrifice immediately. “He is a hero on many levels, the least of which is for taking that serum. Many have tried to recreate it over the years, with mixed results. That said, you could see why a man like the Mandarin would be interested in it.”

From the grim setting of Siobhan’s expression, she could. “I see. Yes, of course that would be dangerous and worrisome, but surely you don’t believe we were doing anything to warrant that sort of interest.”

“MST was doing advanced work on regeneration and regrowth. The company even admitted as much.”

“I am sure they did, but if they had made any breakthroughs using this serum, certainly I don’t know about it and we haven’t announced that to anyone. Believe me, it is the type of thing we normally would announce as investors like to hear that.”

“And you don’t know of any work in regards to it?” Sharon was the one who spoke up with a small frown.

“Not personally, though that isn’t to say it wasn’t done. One of my guests is president of MST, Sir Kyle Donohue. I’m sure he would be more than able to answer your more pertinent questions on what they were doing with that research or if it ties to your serum, but I am sure I don’t know.”

Peggy had a feeling that was a lie. Somehow, she suspected that Siobhan Haldane knew everything happening under the auspices of her company. Whether she understood it or paid attention was a different matter. Still, she sensed that the woman was being honest in part. Perhaps she truly didn’t know.

They fell into a silent truce as they finished their meal, Sharon making small talk about the research facility, which clearly was a pride and joy for the other woman, and they work they were doing. Peggy listened, but made no comment, finding little actual fault in their work. Still, she couldn’t help but think of the things that had once been done at that place, the lives taken because of it, and the ways they were all justified. It had been for the good of people back then, too. Hadn’t that been what Ranulph Haldane had expressed? They were simply trying to protect Britain, to stop the threat of groups like HYDRA and Leviathan. The ends had justified the means.

Their lunch came to an end, blessedly. As the hunting party had yet to return, and there seemed little reason to take up any more time. Sharon smiled, apologetically, asking for the ladies' room.

“The closest one is down the hallway again, to your left. If you can’t find it one of the staff can help get you there.”

Sharon nodded, briefly meeting Peggy’s eye before slipping out with her handbag. Peggy watched her go before turning to their hostess with the most polite smile her mother had trained into her.

Siobhan Haldane was clearly not buying it. “You don’t like me overmuch, do you, Director Carter?”

Peggy was surprised by that, but managed to hide her response as she pulled out a diplomatic answer. “I can’t say I know you enough to form that opinion, Lady Siobhan.”

“You don’t have to know someone to dislike them, I think we all have seen enough of the world to know that is how it works.”

She wasn’t wrong. “I am not here to pass judgement on you one way or the other.”

“No, you are here to know if we are doing something nefarious with this serum of which you are so concerned about.” Haldane seemed rather nonplussed by it all. “You are rather protective of it.”

“Yes,” Peggy agreed, seeing no reason to lie. “I’ve seen what people will do to get it. I’ve also seen what happens when people try to recreate it and do so badly.”

“A fair point,” Haldane acknowledged. “But I’m not here to profit off of war or other people’s misery. I hope that your visit this weekend has shown you that.”

“From what I have seen so far, yes.” Peggy stepped carefully as she spoke.

“But you don’t believe that completely, do you?”

“I find that in my line of work it is best to never take anything at face value.”

Haldane’s calm facade flickered a moment with a hint of sadness. “As much as I wish you would, I understand why you don’t.”

“Do you?” Peggy highly doubted she understood the full reason as to why.

“I do. After all, I am my father’s daughter, I do know exactly what he did.” A certain heavy weariness fell about the woman, like a mantle, weighing down the elegant pride she seemed to always carry herself with. “And I know just what he threatened to do with all of his work. How could I not be? I didn’t just inherit his lands and estates, you know, but all the other baggage as well. That’s rather how it works, though, isn’t it? We don’t just have to live with our own choices, we are also forced to live with the decisions of those who went before us, the ones we loved and looked up to.”

Peggy thought of Michael, of his decisions, and the ramifications they had for Peggy, for his son, for Sharon. “It must have been difficult for you then, as a child, living with the knowledge of the scandal and the legacy of it.”

“Not at first, but eventually, yes, when I was old enough to understand what had happened. I was a late-in-life child for him, you see. My parents had me after it had all come out and my father had ‘retired to a private life’ as they said. When I knew him as a girl, he wouldn’t talk about it, never discussed it. Mother wouldn’t ever let it be brought up in my presence. I only learned about it in school later. Some girls taunted me with it and I looked it up. That was a lovely letter home.”

She chuckled, darkly, sipping from her wine, quietly thoughtful, lost for a moment in her own memories. “My parents sent for me and we hashed it all out that weekend. Even nearly twenty years later he was declaring his innocence, the misunderstanding of it all, how he was right in what he did. I don’t know that he ever said he was sorry for it, that he ever publicly apologized. I remember being so angry with him over it. In truth, I don’t know what I was the more angry about, the fact that he did it or the fact that he wasn’t sorry. Perhaps I was actually really the most angry that my father, this man I had looked up to and adored, was in fact a monster who had happily and willingly killed innocent people whose only crime had been to live on the wrong side of a war line. Of course, this was during the sixties and it was all about peace and not war then, and you can well imagine where my father fell in that argument. He accused the school of filling my head with liberal, hippy idealism. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong. After that argument, however, the two of us never really spoke again, not while he was alive. I went back to school and then to university, arranged it so I didn’t have to be near him much on holidays or breaks. He died just before I finished university.”

Her matter-of-fact statement might have just as well have been about the weather as discussing the breach with her own father. It hit Peggy, that familiarity of a hurt and disappointment so profound that you had to put distance between you and it else it would threaten to swallow you. Whether she liked it or not, a small part of her could relate to Siobhan Haldane.

“Once I inherited the titles, lands, and most of Mys-Tech, I made a decision to do something he didn’t, to make a good choice and stand up for all lives, not just some. I recreated the Darkmoor Research Facility, this time with an eye to doing something good with the world. They reached out to the foremost scientists, looking for the biggest questions the world was facing and asking how they could begin fixing them. We formed MST to address healthcare disparities. I’ve spent my lifetime devoting myself to this work, to trying to fix the wrongs my father created, that so many others like him created, to leave a different legacy behind. I hoped that by doing so the name of Darkmoor would be remembered for something better than a scandal and the murder of innocents.”

Her sad words, quietly spoken, might as well have been shouted at Peggy. In her own mind she replayed that argument with Michael, her angry words, and Michael’s own, defeated, small voice. I thought I was doing something heroic, Peggy! I thought I was winning a war. Didn’t you think that with Captain America?

“I suppose so many of them thought they were doing the right thing,” Peggy finally murmured, an anger she didn’t really think about easing somewhat inside of her. “It was a war, they were just trying to survive, to defeat someone they saw as a threat, to do whatever it took. That meant a lot of dirt on a lot of hands, and many people allowing their fear to rule them in the end. Perhaps your father was no different?”

“Perhaps.” It didn’t seem to mollify her.

She knew her next question would be treading dangerous territory, but Peggy found herself asking it all the same. “You said you never spoke to him again. Did you never clear the air, then?”

“No,” she said, simply, without anger, only with a trace of regret. “Perhaps I should have. Mother said I should, but I never could bring myself to do it. I was young and prideful too, and I thought I knew better than he did. Maybe I thought I had time. In our youth, we always think we do. He had a heart attack one day. He was quite old by then. There was nothing anyone could do.”

Sharon appeared at the doorway to the conservatory once more, eyeing Peggy. “We better get back.”

“I’ll have the driver sent for,” Siobhan assured them, rising in one motion from the table, her polite facade returning. “Perhaps, if you wish to speak with my party before you return we can arrange for you to do so before they leave?”

“We will keep in touch,” Sharon assured her as she left to see to having the vehicle ready. She waited till the other woman was gone before she spoke. “It took me ten minutes to find that bathroom. How does anyone live in a place like this?”

“It was done back in those days.” Peggy was infinitely glad this had never been her destiny.

“Did you learn anything interesting while I was gone?”

“Only that I think I might have grossly misjudged Siobhan Haldane,” Peggy muttered, already feeling guilt clawing at her uncomfortably. “And maybe your grandfather as well.”

That hadn’t been where Sharon had expected Peggy to go with the conversation. “About Darkmoor?”

“Not about Darkmoor, no, but other things.” She rose from the elegant table and her half-eaten meal. “Come along, I’ll explain more when we get back to town.”

Chapter Text

“I feel like we have come to a dead end.”

Sharon wasn’t wrong. Peggy felt they had come to one as well.

“I have to apologize,” she admitted, lying across the bed in Sharon’s room, notes, case files, and Sharon’s laptop between them. “I feel I’m the one who even dug this hole we have found ourselves down in.”

Sharon didn’t look as if she would argue. “Yeah, but I’m the one who went along with it. Truth be told, I was sort of glad you did stick your foot in it. My first big case, a big assignment, and I was grasping at straws. None of this makes any sense. Maybe I was hoping you would come in with some insight, your legendary sixth sense, and blow it open.”

“Nothing about my sense is legendary, I’m afraid, outside of the stories your grandfather and Howard told. Memory and reminiscence tends to make strange bedfellows with facts.” Peggy sighed, thinking of Siobhan Haldane and their conversation. “I grossly misjudged...a lot of things in this. Steve was right, I fear, I was chasing my own outsized memories, those old demons and fears. I saw Darkmoor and the name Haldane and assumed the worst, because I was already assuming the worst with the Mandarin.”

“We all have our demons,” Sharon said, leaning back into the soft pile of pillows behind her.

“You don’t,” Peggy replied, sounding highly envious even to her own ears. “Since the day I arrived in this mad world, you have handled it all with a stride I don’t know if I could possibly possess. You have accepted time travel, and long-lost relatives showing up after decades, and the Avengers and all of the rest of it without assuming the worst. You accepted me without assuming I was part of some shadowy conspiracy to undermine...whatever. What would I undermine?”

“The World Security Council and their determination to scuttle the Avengers Initiative,” Sharon offered.

“I would undermine that, yes, but I think they do a rather brilliant job on their own.”

“That they do,” Sharon admitted, chuckling. “And as for demons...like you said, we all have them, even me.”

At that, she fell silent, clearly in no further mood to discuss the situation. Peggy let it be, glancing instead, pointedly, at her watch. “It is past Irene’s appointed dinner hour downstairs, I am afraid, and lunch was a while ago. How about going back to that pub we found, get a spot of something to eat.”

“Sounds good,” Sharon agreed, readily, rising from the bed and the cluster of papers there. “Though, maybe not in the outfits from last night.”

“No,” Peggy agreed, heartily, rising to gather her own things. Tiredly, they wandered back to the pub they had visited the night before, filled with quiet chatter, and several fellows sitting at the bar watching the match on the television. Whether it was live or not, Peggy didn’t know. It all was warm and cheery, something of a balm given her mood.

They ordered and were waiting on their food when a large group wandered in, looking decidedly out of place in the comfortable environment. That they had been out and about during the day was clear, given their clothing, the serviceable wool and drab jackets, designed for blending in with the washed out colors of nature in autumn. The group of ten, mostly men save for three women, all chattered loudly and amiably as they settled in a more private, open area in the back, away from the main room and guests there.

“You think it is the group from the manor, then?” Sharon had eyed the party with the same calculating eye as Peggy.

“Not many other places a group that large out hunting would be.” Peggy studied the look of those she could see. They were companionable enough, though she supposed a day out on the moors would do that. “Do you happen to have a photographs of any of the shareholders or heads of any of the Mys-Tech companies?”

“Already on it,” Sharon assured her, holding her phone up towards the group, surreptitiously. For several long moments, she studied it mildly. “Facial recognition is coming through on several of them. We got at least one board member and several different executives. The tall, balding one standing by the fireplace, he’s the head of MST Pharmaceuticals, Kyle Donahue. Lady Siobhan referenced him.”

Peggy turned in her seat to zero in on him. He was dressed as most of them were, in long, warm woolen trousers and hiking boots, a thick, flannel shirt on under his more practical, drab jacket. Whatever was being said among them all, he laughed as a story was shared. It seemed a shame to break up the good time.

“Let me go and chat with him,” Peggy turned to Sharon. “I know the serum and what to ask for. If it all turns to nothing, then I promise, I will get on the first plane I can get back on Monday and head back to America, as meek as a kitten.”

Sharon arched one perfect eyebrow, but allowed it. “Let me know what you find out.”

Peggy rose, making her way to the table of Lady Siobhan’s guests. They seemed a pleasant lot, but all looked quizzically at her as she moved to Sir Kyle directly, offering him her most polite and formal smile. “Excuse me, Sir Kyle, my name is Peggy Carter. I work with SHIELD. I couldn’t help but notice you were here with your friends, and I was hoping I could pull you aside. It seems I have some need of your professional advice.”

She might as well have said an Asgardian had just landed in the middle of the room and she was asking Sir Kyle to fight them for all the effect it had on the table, including the slightly baffled Sir Kyle. He blinked large brown eyes at her before looking to the table, then back at her. “Errr, all right, if you wish.”

With appropriate excuses to the table and curious looks, Peggy led the man off to one of the empty booths nearby, waiting for the gentleman to settle himself. He was certainly befuddled, but pleasant as he clearly tried to make sense of her. “You said you were with SHIELD? Are you here regarding the bombing, then?”

“Yes and no,” she replied, evasively. “I am offering some insight into what happened, however, I head up the Avengers Initiative.”

“Avengers?” That perked up his interest. “They are the ones who saved New York! You work with them?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do. That is a part of why I’m interested in speaking with you.”

That left him even more surprised. “What in the world would I have to do with the Avengers?”

“You might be surprised,” Peggy murmured, sensing in the man a sort of delight that he would even be noticed by them. It made her think, with a small sense of sadness, of Phil Coulson. “I work with Dr. Elizabeth Ross. I don’t know that you’ve necessarily heard of her, but she’s heard of MST Pharmaceuticals and the research they’ve done on their regenerative work.”

“That’s right, some time ago, now. Five years ago we had a department working full tilt on it, cutting edge stuff, was one of the most exciting parts of our research. What brings it up?”

Peggy ignored his question for the moment. “It’s my understanding the department is no longer funded, correct?”

“Well, yes,” he admitted, slowly, rubbing the top of his bald head. “We had some restructuring of priorities, that sort of thing. We were asked to work on more practicalities and not maybes, so a lot of the projects were either cut or spun off into their own research groups working in affiliation with us. Helen Cho in Seoul is one of those, a few others. Why?”

“Were any of them working on any sort of advanced work on cellular regeneration in humans,” Peggy pressed.

Sir Kyle shrugged, vaguely caught off by her question. “I mean, in theory, they all were, but only some of them were successful. Even then, they were only successful in certain aspects, like skin cell regrowth, or the healing of damage from a singular wound, say from surgery, that sort of thing. We aren’t talking about something like…” He paused, waving a hand as if looking for something to complete his comparison.

“Like the Abraham Erskine’s serum?” Peggy dropped the one question she wanted to get at.

“Yes, well…” He paused, frowning vaguely at her. “Wait...Erskine’s serum. The super soldier serum?”

He knew what it was at least. “You do know why SHIELD would be interested if MST was trying to recreate that.”

Suddenly, the mood changed. His affability dimmed quite a bit, his expression turning stern. “Director Carter, if you are suggesting we are playing with recreating that…”

“Sir Kyle, I am not suggesting anything,” she quietly assured him, despite the cool formality she addressed him with. “This only came up because of the bombing. This Mandarin had no motive to attack your facility in London, and yet he did. Why? What is it that MST is working on that would be of interest to him?”

“Well, it’s certainly not Erskine’s formula,” he insisted, irritation edging his voice. “Every major government since World War II has tried to recreate that formula and everyone has failed horrifically. Much like that ridiculous Iron Man suit, it’s not reproducible. Frankly, people should stop trying.”

His response was intriguing. “I don’t disagree with you, Sir Kyle. The serum worked once and only once. That was good enough. Every time people tried to play with it since then, it’s gone badly. But you can see why SHIELD would be nervous. Imagine if the Mandarin did find out someone had been researching it, that someone might have a formula, even a potential one. He stages a terrorist attack to keep everyone distracted while sending an operative in to gain access to the MST files and see what he gets. If he isn’t using it to develop his own super soldier army, he’s certainly selling it to the highest bidder to get his own. And if you don’t think a man like this Mandarin wouldn’t do that, I would like to point out that the Iron Man suit exists because he captured Tony Stark in order to make him build weapons for him. Why wouldn’t he look for evidence of the super soldier serum.”

That caught Sir Kyle’s attention. “You know for certain that’s what he did?”

“It’s the most plausible theory,” Peggy hedged, knowing she was stretching that truth to its fullest, hoping he would buy it.

Whether he did or didn’t, he at least seemed willing to entertain the possibility. “I can assure you, Director Carter, MST wasn’t involved in the recreating of Erskine’s work.”

“So your work in human cellular regeneration was completely new work?”

“Some of it,” he replied, sighing, rather unhappily. “Though I suspect you wouldn’t be pushing this so hard if you didn’t already know we were, in fact, at least studying the serum enough to understand what Erskine was doing with it.”

And there they finally cut to the chase. “So you were trying to, what, recreate the effects?”

His frown deepened, clearly unhappy he was giving this much away. “More to understand what Erksine’s original work was. You know he wasn’t actually out to create super soldiers at all, but to help humans thrive, to heal wounds that wouldn’t fix themselves, to strengthen their systems. It was only after his work came to the attention of the larger scientific community, particularly Johann Schmidt, that anyone actually paid him any attention.”

“I know,” Peggy said, a trifle painfully. This man couldn’t possibly know her connection to Erskine, now long dead, or that she had been the one to save him from Schmidt's clutches.

“That was what interested us,” Sir Kyle admitted, frankly, leaning back against the padded back of their booth. “The hope was that we could recreate something, maybe several somethings to take into the field and help those who needed it most. Some of the experiments worked, some riffed off of Erskine’s ideas to do new and different things. None of them were super soldiers. Frankly, I believe it is the sort of work Erskine would approve of with his serum, something good and right being done in this world with his work, rather than…”

He trailed off, flushing as a hint of a guilty look crossed his face. “I apologize, if you are working with the Avengers, you know Steve Rogers, then.”

Peggy only just managed not to flush bright red at that. “Rather well, yes.”

“He strikes me as a very good man. I have to say, I was impressed with his leadership in New York. I don’t want to cast aspersions on someone I don’t know, and I don’t mean to, just that not every intention with that serum was good, and not every outcome was Captain Rogers.”

“That I am well aware of, Sir Kyle,” she agreed, wholeheartedly. “So how did you get a hold of Erskine’s formula for study?”

Here he rolled his eyes in mild disgust. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, seeing as you are SHIELD and it would only horrify you how easy it was.”

In fairness, she was afraid of that. “You might be surprised.”

He nodded, gamely, perhaps realizing how true that statement was. “When our research board agreed to the proposals made by the team, discreet inquiries were made into how at least some of his notes could be obtained. We thought that SHIELD held the proprietary claim on Erskine’s work, given that they claimed it all when the agency was formed. However, it was discovered that there was a source in the US willing to negotiate with us on the matter.”

Peggy felt her teeth grind almost on instinct at that. “It wouldn’t happen to be the US Army, would it?”

“No,” he said, much to Peggy’s stunned surprise. “As a matter of fact it was the CIA.”

She hadn’t expected that. “The CIA? Why them?”

“I don’t know for sure,” he admitted, holding his hands up. “They are the ones who approached us. Perhaps they are working with the Army, it’s hard telling with Americans. Whatever the case, they gave us the file of Erskine’s work and a sample from a human test subject, an old one from the looks of it.”

All the moisture in Peggy’s mouth dried up as she stared at the man for several long, uncomprehending seconds. It took her forever to find her words, anger, shock, and disbelief all mingled into a single word. “What?”

“They gave us a sample of blood from a human test subject. I don’t know who or where from, none of the particulars, and they weren’t keen on sharing.”

Howard had told her that he had the last vial. She had believed him. Peggy had poured Steve’s blood into the East River believing that was the end of it.

“How long ago was this?”

He frowned, pulling up the memories that obviously weren’t top of mind. “Uhhh...must have been seven, eight years ago now? Unfortunately, whatever sample they did give us was not particularly useful to us in the end. The traces of serum left were degrading at a fairly high rate, which is why we suspected the sample was old. Whatever the case, the American government offered us a great deal of money to look into it, which we took, saying only we would see what we could do. That money went to good research and helped to fund key programs. But we never were able to make anything of the sample and in the end our research went in different directions.”

If there was a silver lining in this, at least there was the knowledge that they never got far with it. “And you know the US government had this sample.”

“Well, I know that’s where it came from, and I’ve heard things through the grapevine.” He gave her a doleful look. “Considering who you have on that team of yours, I think you know some of it. The serum is something like the holy grail of medical research, everyone has had a crack at it since Erskine died, and the US has paid top dollar for it. Most of those projects didn’t get particularly far off the ground. Those that did had horrific consequences. MST isn’t interested in playing God, Director Carter. We are interested in saving lives, which sometimes is a rarity in this field, where making money is king. I’d like to think we have a bit more moral integrity than that.”

Peggy felt somewhat chastened by his words, all the while thinking it must be nice to stand on a moral high ground of helping the world when one is spending weekends hunting at a two-hundred-year-old manor house on a thousand-year-old estate. She reminded herself that she had interjected herself into this man’s weekend and that he didn’t have to talk to her or be as candid as he was. “What is MST Pharmaceutical to Darkmoor?”

“Tied only by the fact that Lady Siobhan oversees us both?” It clicked with her why she was asking. “MST is a wholly separate company from the research facility. I don’t even know if she was completely aware of the serum or that it was used for some of our work, particularly as we didn’t end up using it. I do know something of what her father did. I don’t think I could work where I do if I didn’t. But she’s not a horrible woman. She’s been left with a legacy that she wasn’t alive for and didn’t want, and tasked with doing something more with it, something better, to help the whole world. Whatever SHIELD might make of the Darkmoor affair or any of that, know she is one of those people out there in the world trying to make a difference with what she has.”

Sir Kyle’s quiet defense of Lady Siobhan was sincere and earnest...and left Peggy with loose ends. The one lead, this grand conspiracy she had built in her head of what was going on with the Mandarin bombing, MST Pharmaceutical, and Darkmoor began to unravel, as if someone had grabbed the end of a string and tugged. She sighed, staring at the well scrubbed table between them, realizing she had come all this way on what was amounting to nothing more than a wild goose chase.

“Thank you, Sir Kyle,” Peggy held out her hand across the table to him. He took it in his larger one, shaking it firmly.

“I hope I’ve been some use to you. It would be a relief to know why our company was targeted, if they were. And perhaps, under different circumstances, we can connect on other things. SHIELD is always sending forces as peacekeepers and to help in crises scenarios. Perhaps our foundations can work with them.”

Peggy nodded, knowing she wasn’t the one to organize that. “I’ll keep it in mind and let people at SHIELD know. Thank you.”

With that, they both rose, Sir Kyle to his party, and Peggy back to Sharon. Judging from the expression on Sharon’s face, she had already sussed out the outcome of the conversation.

“Nothing on the serum?” Food had come while Peggy was in conversation, and Sharon had already helped herself to a sausage roll and half of the chips.

“Worse, it seems that the American government has more samples of Steve’s blood than they let on.” Peggy glowered at their food, playing through every conversation she had with Howard on the matter. "How, I don't know, I thought they were all gone even by 1946."

"Maybe they found some squirreled away in a lab somewhere?" Sharon replied, looking as if she wished she could be more helpful. "Has MST been working on it?"

"Not in the way you might think. They've been trying to do something good with it for a change." Peggy toyed with a a butter knife on the table, listlessly. "And they haven't done that for years. Nothing really came of it. So, there is that theory down the drain."

She had dragged both of them back here for nothing.

"You tried," Sharon said, firmly, but looking as dispirited as Peggy felt. "We'll head back to London, follow different leads."

Peggy shook her head, slowly. "You will follow different leads. This is your case, I just horned myself in on it. I think it's more than time that I headed back to New York and returned to the work I actually do. Stop chasing the ghosts of my past all over the Yorkshire moors."

Sharon looked as if she wanted to say something to protest or reassure her, but instead simply nudged the plates of food in her direction. "Eat, then we will call it an early night."

It was a gesture that reminded Peggy very much of Sharon's mother. "A sausage roll won't fix everything."

"Mmmm, no, but neither will not eating, and you are grumpy when you haven't."

Sharon did know how to break her out of her own self-indulgent pity-parties. "I survived a war on rations, you know."

"How Steve put up with you, I will never know," she responded cheekily.

Chapter Text

They returned back to London the following day with no more information than they had before and even more questions.

Sharon busied herself with emails and case notes, occasionally talking to an operative on the phone on what they had found in the days while she was chasing false leads in the north. Peggy left her to it, feeling she had stuck her oar in enough into Sharon’s case. She mulled instead on the problem of the serum. There were samples of blood out there, ones with trace amounts of the serum that the US government was just giving away. Who else had them? Had anyone else been successful? How widely spread was this, and was anyone keeping track? She circled back on these again and again, the enormity of it leaving her somewhat panicked. How could she even start with this? Where did she even begin?

They arrived back in London in the evening, travel-weary and exhausted. Neither said much as they settled back into the old Carter house, filled with its ghosts. Sharon made food for which neither of them were particularly hungry, and both fell into their respective beds soon after. Peggy lay staring up at the ceiling of her room, recalling simpler days when she would dream of adventures here, of finding buried treasures and lost cities, of being a hero. What a pity that was not how life actually worked out. How did things get so much more complicated once she grew up?

She realized in the moments before sleep finally claimed her, that she very much missed Michael and wished that she could talk to him about all of this.

The next morning Sharon was back off to the office in the city while Peggy lazed about. She could have checked with everyone, she supposed. She had peeked at her own email long enough to see several from Cassandra, one from Banner, and another from Betty Ross. That one she noted given the questions of the serum she now faced, but hadn’t the energy to engage. She had only managed a brief text to Steve, hoping he would read it when he woke up, assuring him she was back from York and that she’d have much to tell him when she saw him next. It was all the energy she could find to deal with responsibilities, at least for the morning.

Instead, she found herself in her mother’s gardens. Everything was brown and dying with fall, but she found comfort in walking the same paths, of standing for a while under the same tree she climbed as a girl. She wandered to the back, where the garden shed was, and her old fortress she once had there, hidden among the tarps and tools that were kept behind. Those were all long gone, as was the shed, as a matter of fact, bringing a bittersweet sort of pang. She had spent so much of her life trying to escape and run away, to move forward and forget the disappointments of family and the hurt of dashed expectations. Now she wished she had been a bit more circumspect, had perhaps thought just a little bit before running off, had stopped to have those conversations.

She had made her choices, however, and the twenty-first century was where she was now at. Much like Buck Rogers from her old adventure magazines, she’d moved to the future and now was facing this new reality with its shadowy figures, international knots of intrigue, aliens, superheroes and the Avengers. But most of all, here...here she had Steve and a whole future with him. It wasn’t what they had planned, it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility in 1945, but it was their life now. She would, she realized, always regret the choices she made, and there would be a part of her that would always be hurt by the choices Michael had made. But it was what it was, and it was all in the past now. He figured out how to live with his decisions and move forward, to have a family, and to do better. Peggy now must follow her elder brother’s example.

She showered and packed, sending a follow up message to Steve that she planned to be on a flight that afternoon from London to New York and one to Cassandra saying much the same thing. With her things organized, she took one last look around the old place: the stairs with the still squeaky spot in it if you stepped on it wrong, the redone, modern kitchen that looked nothing like the neat and tidy domain of Mrs. Jenkins, her father’s old study that still smelled of his pipe tobacco and law books. Her home was different now, a home used by new generations, unfamiliar, but still...a part of her. Perhaps, when she and Steve both had more time, they could come back. She didn’t want to lose her own past as he had.

She was just preparing to lock up and call for a driver to take her to the airport when her phone rang in her hand, Sharon’s cheery smile lighting up the screen. Peggy flicked the phone on, holding it to her ear. “I was just going to let you know I packed up…”

“Change of plans,” Sharon cut in with direct curtness. “Couple of things. First, something doesn’t add up with that whole super soldier, serum, CIA angle. I don’t know, something about it all feels off.”

Peggy leaned on an arm of a sofa in what had been the sitting room. “Feels off how?”

“If the CIA knew that MST Pharmaceuticals had the serum and that they were targeted for this bombing, why did they give up the case so readily to SHIELD? Why not fight to keep it? This is the thing you wouldn’t want getting out there, that you are messing with the serum, and if that was a possibility, then why would they just let it go?”

“They also didn’t tell you about the other bombing sites, remember? I get the feeling the CIA barely knows where it’s own arse is half the time.”

“True,” Sharon admitted, as someone muttered something behind her, causing her to pull away from the phone briefly. When she came back, it was with a slightly harried tone. “Also, Darcy Lewis has been calling the office frantic for the last hour. She was with Jane Foster doing research into some anomaly...I couldn’t tell you half of the science shit she said...and she claims that Jane just disappeared, right in the middle of an industrial warehouse. I’ll give you three guesses as to where that warehouse is.”

Peggy didn’t need the three. “How close to MST Pharmaceutical’s facility?”

“Less than a mile. I’ve got a guy coming up to get you and bring you here. You may want to call Darcy and let her know the calvary is coming. She’s freaked out.”

“I’m on it,” Peggy assured her. Without even a goodbye, she clicked off the line, thumbing through the various contacts she had till she found a number for Darcy Lewis. The girl picked up in one ring.

“Oh my God, Director Carter, I didn’t know what to do, and I’m freaked, and Jane’s not here, and…”

“Darcy!” She cut across the girl’s frantic babbling. “What happened? Where are you?”

“South London, I think. I don’t know, this isn’t even a proper city that’s all one city. It’s like you took all the cities and smooshed them together and said ‘yay, London, done!’ We are south of the river, though, big industrial lot. Some old factory no one has been to in ages.”

Peggy smiled at Darcy’s description of London. It wasn’t wholly inaccurate. “SHIELD is sending a team out right now. I’m in town and heading to you. What were you and Dr. Foster doing?”

Darcy sucked in a shaky breath on the other end of the line. “We were following up on the readings she was getting on her equipment...well, the readings I was getting on her equipment. She had gone off to lunch with this Richard guy, seems nice, but not enough spine for Jane, I think. Anyway, I hunted her down and then we came here to follow up. The electrometers were going off the charts. We haven’t seen readings like this since New Mexico...well, I guess New York, but I wasn’t invited to that party.”

In her usual, rambling fashion, Darcy was leading Peggy around the point, but not to it. “What did you find there?”

“Well...nothing...at first, till we hit up these kids who were playing in this abandoned space. Then, it got really freaky. Gravity seemed to just stop being a thing. So did dimensional space. Basically, the fabric of reality is doing some kooky shit, and we didn’t know what was up, but Jane hit up something on the monitor and wandered off and that was over an hour ago. I don’t know what’s happened to her and I’m too afraid of going back in there to find out.”

This had not been how Peggy expected her day to go. “Right...well, stay where you are for now. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You let me know if anything about your situation changes of if you are in any danger.”

“I should be safe,” Darcy replied, somewhat reassuringly. “I’ve got Ian here with me!”

Peggy wondered if this was a person she was supposed to know. “Who?”

“Ian, he’s my intern!”

Peggy knew she would regret asking this. “But aren’t you Dr. Foster’s intern?”

“Yeah, and he gets paid worse than I do. But he helps out.”

Wonderful, Peggy sighed, considering that there were now two young people in an area of town that had recently just had a terrorist attack and had witnessed the disappearance of a prominent scientist. “Both of you stay where you are. If anything happens, you call me directly. I will be there as soon as I can.”

When she, Sharon, and the contingency of SHIELD operatives arrived on the scene an hour-and-a-half later, it was already chaos. For whatever reason Metropolitan police were on the scene, cars surrounding what looked like a group of derelict factories and a red vehicle with a rather befuddled looking young man leaning against it. The lot of them eyed the SHIELD SUVs suspiciously as Peggy and Sharon stepped out.

“Thank God!” From around one of the yellow and blue checkered vehicles the figure of Darcy Lewis dodged, her dark hair streaming out of a knit purple cap. “Look, sorry, I called them first and they got here faster. I tried telling them that SHIELD was on the way and that Jane sort of more or less works for you guys, but they weren’t biting.”

Peggy half absorbed what she rattled off, patting her on the shoulder as she looked to the officer who seemed to be in charge. He was at least the one looking the most grumpy with the arrival of half-a-dozen dark vehicles surrounding him. He glared particularly at Peggy, to whom Darcy had run first.

“Good afternoon, Constable,” Peggy greeted, holding out a hand. “I believe we are here about the same matter.”

“Here, what is all this,” he asked, glaring at the agents gathering in their SHIELD emblazoned jackets. “Who called you lot?”

“I did,” Darcy held up her hand, looking far from apologetic. “I mean, I told you, I panicked, and I called the first people I could think of! That was you! And then I realized that my boss does work for this super global intelligence and spy organization, so it could be construed as a thing, and maybe I should call her…”

The officer glowered at Darcy, who trailed off, shrugging. He turned his ire on Peggy, annoyed already at how all of this was turning. “This is a case of a missing person, which is in our jurisdiction.”

“Yes, but it is a case of a missing person who happens to work for the Avengers Initiative under SHIELD’s aegis, and at a site that is less than a mile from where a terrorist bomb went off just a week ago. You can perhaps understand why we have cause for concern.

Judging from the way his glare softened a hair, Peggy guessed he could. “You think they are tied?”

“We don’t know,” Sharon spoke up, finally placing herself into the situation. “We are here to figure that out, if your people want to work with us. We aren’t here to run roughshod on your jurisdiction.”

He didn’t look as if he believed that, but relented. “All right, then. We got here about an hour ago on a report, I presume from Miss Lewis here that a woman had gone missing. Beyond the bombing, this area is known for some rough activity, so we jumped on it.”

“There was nothing ‘rough’ going on here,” Darcy protested. “It was just a bunch of kids messing around! They figured out that there are wormholes randomly forming here and were playing with them.”

That had Peggy’s attention. “Wormholes?”

The constable and his partner shared a look that said they thought the whole explanation was madness.

“Wormholes,” the other constable muttered, half on a laugh. “You mean, like...science fiction?”

Darcy rolled her dark eyes behind her thick-framed glasses. “Yeah, science fiction, what the hell do you think opened up over New York, dummy?”

“Hey now,” the head constable cautioned as Peggy reached a warning hand to the irritated younger woman. “We don’t want to make the situation worse, now, do we miss?”

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Peggy returned, evenly, with a look that said both of them needed to heed their own advice and not antagonize things. “As to wormholes, they are real enough. Having seen one myself and the after effects, believe me, it’s less science fiction and more of a bigger problem unless we figure out why. Now, I believe that if this situation is what Miss Lewis says it is, then we will need to call SHIELD and…”

She got no further before Darcy beside her shrieked. “Jane!”

They turned to see Jane Foster wandering out of one of the buildings on the site, looking mildly confused by the fuss that she found parked just outside of the building.

“Where the hell were you?” Darcy continued to yell as she marched over.

The constable who seemed to have taken point looked to Peggy. “Is that your scientist?”

“That appears to be, yes.” No sooner had the confirmation left her mouth than the gray, overcast sky, which had been threatening all day, finally crackled with the rumble of distant thunder, as the heavens opened up over them. Yelps and squeals sounded as people jumped for cars and vehicles, or tried pulling up jackets over their heads. As if by magic, an agent slid up beside Peggy, holding an umbrella for her and Sharon to huddle under.

“Thanks,” Peggy offered, gratefully, as the agent ducked back into the rain and to the shelter of one of the SUVs. She glanced at Sharon huddled beside her. “Let’s go see what is going on.”

They came up on the two women bickering, Darcy trying to get a word in edgewise on Foster, who was ranting about research and opportunities and why her intern shouldn’t have called the authorities. Darcy finally had to shout down the other woman before she would listen.

“Jane, you were gone for five hours!”

That caught the scientist up short. “What?”

It took Peggy a moment to realize that while all of them were ducking under cover as best they could under the stinging, cold autumn rain pouring around them, Jane Foster was standing perfectly dry. Not even her long, chestnut hair was damp. Darcy in front of her was also as dry as a bone. In fact, even the pavement around then was relatively unscathed as puddles and streams of water ran down the broken pavement. Clearly, the scientist had noticed as well, as she looked all around them, drawing the attention of her intern.

“That’s weird,” Darcy murmured. However, something had caught Jane’s eye, and without a word, she simply passed whatever instrument she had in hand to Darcy, blindly, as she and her bubble of dryness moved away from the girl and towards…

“Is that...Thor?” Sharon was disbelieving beside Peggy.

Peggy was as surprised as Sharon, honestly. The last she had seen of the Asgardian prince had been earlier that year in Central Park, taking his no-account brother back to Asgard and justice. “Well, he is the only person I know who dresses in armor and a flowing red cape with any regularity, so I am guessing yes. Also, he is likely the cause of our sudden downpour.”

Poor Darcy, however, was now left in the middle of all of it. Peggy easily maneuvered them over to where the now slightly bedraggled intern stood, bringing her under the shelter of their umbrella as much as she could. “Here, it’s at least better than standing in the full wet.”

“Every time Prince Charming over there shows up, I’m chopped liver,” she mumbled, as they followed in Foster’s wake to where she and Thor were now having...well, their reunion, Peggy supposed. They were very clearly caught up in their conversation...or, more accurately, each other.

“Do you think we should go and maybe say hello?” Darcy asked, shivering slightly with the damp.

“I think that the last thing they care about is us saying hello to them,” Sharon offered, more than a bit amused.

“And who are you, again?” Darcy turned to frown quizzically at Sharon. It occurred to Peggy that the two hadn’t met.

“Agent Sharon Carter.” She held out her hand to Darcy. “I work with SHIELD as well, just a different division.”

“Carter?” Darcy arched an inquisitive eye at Peggy. “I assume related?”

“Her grandfather was my elder brother, so she’s my great-niece.”

Darcy digested that. “Is that ever not weird, cause you two could be sisters?”

“No,” admitted Sharon. “We usually just say we are cousins in the field.”

“Time travel is crazy,” Darcy admitted, as if this were a universal truth that everyone understood.

“Excuse me, is someone going to give us some answers?” The head constable who had been overseeing the incident cut in, looking expectantly at Peggy to fix this.

She sighed. “Yes, let's...we will just and grab Dr. Foster for you.”

She nudged Darcy forward, pointedly. She moved, albeit reluctantly, towards the couple who looked to be three seconds away from the sort of passionate embrace one saw in films. Peggy wasn't sure if they should be obnoxiously obvious, or if she should do the very British polite clearing of the throat to make their presence known.

“Honestly, she hasn’t seen him in six months and she’s already all over him?” Darcy sounded quietly disappointed.

“Aren’t they always this way together?” From the moment Peggy had met the pair they had the habit of always gazing at each other with the sort of dewey eyed affection that made one's teeth hurt.

Sharon beside her was more circumspect. “They remind me of you and Steve.”

Peggy was nearly affronted by that. “We aren’t that...bad.”

Sharon’s silent side eye was all the response she needed to make regarding her opinions on the matter.

“Jane,” Darcy broke from them, bounding up to the couple, his lips inches away from hers. “Hey!”

That was enough to cut the gravitational pull between Thor and Foster, who broke apart, Foster looking as if she’d much rather smack her assistant at the moment. Darcy was hardly sorry for it, looking to Thor instead. “Is this you?”

It must have just occurred to the god of thunder that he was causing the rain that was showering them at the moment. With a shrug, the downpour ceased, as if someone had turned off the tap to a shower head, the soft roar of the drops falling to earth turning into a deafening silence.

Foster was still not amused. “We’re kind of in the middle of something here,” she snapped at her intern.

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure we are getting arrested.”

It took Foster that long to turn, see Peggy and Sharon standing there and then beyond them the constables, looking rather put out by all of this.

“Errr...yeah...Peggy, hi!” She flushed, tucking a lock of dark hair behind one ear. “You didn’t need to come all the way out.”

“I was in town when Darcy called. I take it seriously when one of the people on my team vanishes.”

“Well, I didn’t vanish, really, just...things got weird.” She frowned. “Um...let me at least go explain to the police what happened, and then I will fill you in, because...yeah.”

She turned on her heels, marching to the waiting constable, who clearly wanted something to put into a report. Peggy had a feeling it would all sound mad when he wrote it up.

“Look at you,” Darcy muttered to Thor, poking him, lightly. “All muscly and everything! How is space?”

“Space is fine,” he assured her, blankly, bemused by her small talk. He turned instead to great Peggy with a broad smile and a small, courtly bow. “Lady Margaret, it’s good to see you!”

Peggy snorted at his charming pretense, shaking out her umbrella as she closed it. “Your highness, it is good seeing you!”

“Lady Margaret?” Sharon had missed out on Peggy’s adventures with the Asgardian prince and the name he had for her.

“It’s a long story,” Peggy assured her. “How are things in the Nine Realms since your brother was returned to Asgard?”

“Chaos,” he admitted, bluntly. “Loki’s damage had far reaching consequences. Without the Bifrost to get us across the universe, Asgard could not go about its duty overseeing the worlds under our protection, and people took advantage of that. The Bifrost has only just been repaired. I’ve spent much of my time just overseeing the various rebellions and invasions.”

“So...you have those in space?” Sharon blinked, clearly fascinated. “Invasions...rebellions?”

“Of course! Just like I am sure Midgard does. Not every planet has a SHIELD, or the Avengers. Speaking of them, how do they fair?”

“Well, for now,” Peggy assured him. “Stark has been rebuilding his tower, he’s fitting out the upper floors for the Avengers. I think we will be discussing moving our operations there as soon as he is done. You are very welcome to come there when you are done with affairs for your father.”

Thor nodded, in the vague sort of way that said he was only half listening, his eyes completely on Foster. “Yes, well I did tell Stark I’d visit again, and…”

Out of nowhere, the world exploded.

On instinct, Peggy ducked, covering Sharon beside her, who did the same. Thor grabbed Darcy, tucking her protectively in front of him as he turned his back to catch whatever was coming towards them. A flash of red energy shot out, knocking over the various members of the police and SHIELD, rocking vehicles and breaking the glass in their windows. In the middle of the chaos, Foster fell, knocked to the ground as she lay on the damp pavement, stunned.

“What in the hell,” Sharon gasped, but Thor was already up and running towards where Foster lay.

“Jane! Are you all right?” Thor bent to help the fazed Foster up, even as Peggy and Sharon trailed behind. Peggy could see the police reaction and knew this wasn’t going to end happily for anyone. One of them, clearly very shaken, approached Foster as if she were a wild animal.

“Put your hands on your head,” he ordered, a club at the ready.

“Stand down,” Peggy snapped at him, but he ignored her, as two of his fellows closed in with weapons. Silently, she looked to the SHIELD agents, several of whom already had weapons at the ready...though for whom and what wasn’t as clear.

“This woman is unwell,” Thor insisted, firmly, ignoring the tense nervousness all around him.

“She’s dangerous,” he insisted, hand shaking as he inched closer.

Thor’s scowl warned the poor man off. “So am I.”

That was the poor police constable's undoing. With a quivering voice, he spoke into the radio at his lapel. “Requesting armed assistance…”

“I said stand down,” Peggy repeated, angrily, stepping around Thor and Foster and up in front of the man. He glared back at her mutinously.

“SHIELD has no jurisdiction here.”

“I can get jurisdiction very quickly if you don’t do what I tell you,” she shot back, threateningly.

In the end, it was a moot point. The air around them became charged and Peggy could feel her hair lifting. She had a feeling she knew was coming, had seen the blinding light once before when Thor had disappeared with his ne’er-do-well brother. Still, it was enough to knock the constable back several feet, his hat flying off as Peggy winced, ducking against the raw energy she knew was generated from the portal that opened up behind her. When it disappeared, she turned, finding a smoldering, still glowing pattern burnt into the cracked and faded asphalt at their feet. Everyone stood, stunned, staring at the glowing swirls and whirls of what looked to be a Celtic or Scandinavian design, the light barely faded as first Sharon, then Darcy, stepped into the pattern, staring up into the flash of light that disappeared in the gray sky.

“Holy shit,” Darcy breathed, delighted, as she watched her friend and nominal boss get whisked away to another planet through a wormhole.

Everyone else was silent for a long, pregnant moment.

“Where did they go,” the constable who had threatened Foster gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper. The poor man looked as if he had seen one too many strange things with his day and he was not having it anymore.

“To Asgard, I’d imagine,” Peggy replied, pulling out her badge from her pocket. “Right, as of right now, this case is being taken over by SHIELD. You gentlemen and ladies can go on about your business now.”

“On what grounds,” the head of the lot snapped, gruffly, standing by his broken vehicle, nursing one of his shoulders.

“Whatever that explosion is related to a case that SHIELD is investigating.”

The man was having none of that. “She was trespassing on private property!”

“Are you really going to argue with an alien prince and an Avenger when he is about SHIELD business?” Peggy was bluffing, but she needed anything to shut him up and move this along. “You are done here. SHIELD is taking this over.”

“And who are you again, giving orders?”

Peggy resisted the urge to punch him. “Director Peggy Carter, I run the Avengers. Now, do I need to get on the phone with your supervisor?”

After several sullen moments of glaring at her, he shook his head. “Come on, all of you. You heard what she said, it isn’t our case anymore.”

He turned, giving orders to several of them as they got into their checkered cars, under the watchful eye of SHIELD. Peggy turned to Sharon. “Sorry to pull rank on you like that, but things were getting a bit heated.”

“No...no, you did good.” Sharon shook her head. “So...that explosion…”

“I don’t know if it’s tied to any of this at all, Sharon.” She turned to the stunned Darcy who was still eyeing everything with wide-eyed fascination. “That energy that just burst out of Dr. Foster…”

“She did not have that this morning when she woke up,” Darcy supplied, as if that was the answer Peggy was seeking. “I told you, she was gone for five hours. I don’t know where she went. If there are wormholes appearing here she could have gone somewhere else briefly and gotten infected with anything before coming back.”

“You think she would have noticed if something happened to her that gave her that sort of ability,” Sharon offered.

“You literally just saw a dude zap himself off this planet and you want to use logic and reason on space magic?” Darcy smirked, shaking her head. “I don’t know, she didn’t even notice that much time had passed. Wherever she was, there was likely a time dilation between here and there. Things are getting weird here and we don’t know why.”

Sharon gave Peggy a pointed look. “How long have they been weird here?”

“I don’t know...for a while, judging by how long those kids have been dropping bottles of soda through wormholes.”

“That bombing was last week,” Sharon pointed out. “And kids do tend to talk.”

It finally clicked with Darcy where Sharon was going. “That terrorist attack? You don’t think it’s tied to this?”

“We have no idea and we aren’t taking chances,” Peggy replied. “Sharon, I’ll let you gather your team and figure out logistics. Darcy, where is your...assistant?”

The younger woman cast a lazy hand out towards the red car with its windows blown out and the tall, rangy young man looking rather confused by everything happening around him. “That’s Ian. I think he has a last name, but I don’t remember it. Something having to do with a booth?”

Somehow, the fact that Darcy had a helper whose last name she didn’t know somehow didn’t feel as odd as it probably should have. One look at the boy and Peggy could pick up why Darcy likely hired him. “Right, get your friend, you are both coming with me.”

“But the car…”

“Will be fine here for now.” She hoped it would be at least. The police weren’t wrong, it was a rough neighborhood. “Given the anomalies and now that Thor is involved I’m calling in the team.”

It took Darcy less than a blink of an eye to figure out what that meant. “You are calling in the Avengers! Sweet! I’ll just...IAN!”

Her scream across the lot not only startled the agents huddled around Sharon, but caught the attention of the young man, who looked as if he were happy just to sit there until things calmed down, thank you very much.

“WE ARE GOING TO MEET THE AVENGERS, COME ON!”

Peggy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you have a place where we can get everyone together?”

“Errr…” Darcy thought about it for a moment. “Jane’s mom’s apartment is where we are staying for the moment. It’s nice, but not that big.”

“Fine, then I vote we go there first. You two get whatever things you need and we go back to the house Sharon and I have been staying in.” She figured her family home was big enough to get everyone in it without problem. She pulled her phone from her pocket, finding Cassandra’s number immediately. Given the time difference, she knew she would be up and already headed to the office.

Predictably, she answered on the first ring. “Hey, boss, got your flight back home yet?”

“Slight change of plans,” Peggy informed her. “I need you to get the team assembled and on the first flights over here. The others might need a bit to get here, but I need Banner over here as soon as possible. We’ve had something come up?”

“Having to do with the Mandarin case?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t. Frankly, every assumption Peggy had made in all of this had been wrong, and she was half afraid to make any more connections without further evidence. “It does have to do with Jane Foster, wormholes, and Thor. He’s been and gone again and took Foster with him and we have strange anomalies without any more explanation.”

“Okay, so none of that sounds good,” Cassandra muttered with the sort of matter-of-fact acceptance of “anomalies,” “wormholes,” and space gods that might have been concerning if it weren’t for their experiences. “I’ll see if I can get Banner on a flight to you as soon as possible and the others as soon as I can get them.”

“I’ll give you coordinates where you can have them land.” She had a feeling that there would be some people very bewildered by a quinjet or two landing in Hampstead.

“I’m on it,” Cassandra assured her, singing off as Peggy turned to Darcy and her hapless assistant.

“Well, you two will be coming with me. I need to know everything you have on these anomalies and what is going on.”

Darcy turned to Ian. “Go get the equipment we brought, all of it.”

The young fellow blinked, owlishly, between Darcy and Peggy. “But...the car.”

“Leave it! Just go get the stuff!”

He did as Darcy requested, shuffling off to gather whatever it was that they used. Peggy watched him go, feeling half sorry for him as he opened the back, pulling out a rucksack and several other strange items.

“Aren’t you going to help him?” Her gaze slid over to the girl who watched him with a critically expectant expression.

“Nah, that’s what I hired him for. No joke, I have my own work in Jane’s research now that I’m prepping for grad school. I’m the brains and he...he’s the, you know, muscle.”

Darcy’s smile became unfocused, slightly, seeming to confirm Peggy’s suspicions on why poor Ian was hired in the first place. She shook her head, snagging Darcy’s arm and pushing her towards the car. “All right, we will help him and speed this up, shall we. We haven’t got all day.”

Chapter Text

“I’ve tried Erik’s number ten times and he’s not picking up.” Darcy stared at her phone as if it had offended her. “I don’t know where the hell he is!”

She paced the length of the kitchen in Peggy’s childhood home, growing increasingly more frustrated with every unanswered call she made. “I called him, I called Jane’s cell phone hoping she would pick up. She didn’t, of course, but...I don’t know, why won’t anyone answer?”

Peggy didn’t want to be the one to bring up to the distraught girl that she highly doubted that Asgard had things like Earth based cellular phone service on their world. She watched her tap her phone on yet another number, wandering with the device up to her ear, chewing on a thumbnail in worry and frustration. Meanwhile, Ian, whose last name was Boothby, as Peggy discovered, was fiddling with the dials and gadgets on Foster’s homemade devices.

“Do you know what you are doing with those?” Peggy eyed him skeptically, unsure that she even knew what to do with the strange electronic objects that seemed to be like something out of Howard’s lab than anything manufactured.

“Errr….some of them.” He shrugged, fiddling with one widget that beeped ominously, flashing red. “Maybe not as much as I thought I did.”

Peggy had far too much experience with strange devices created by a mad engineer that no one else seemed to understand, and thus she didn’t trust it. “What qualifications do you have to be working with Dr. Foster again?”

The affable Ian shrugged, wobbling his head in an iffy manner that left Peggy even more concerned. “Ahh, well, I finished studies in computer engineering. Just graduated and was looking for a job. That’s how I found Jane and...you know, Darcy.”

The girl was ignoring the conversation, dialing yet another number in the search for the seemingly missing Erik Selvig.

“I was a third when I graduated though,” he admitted in a bit of a pained, sheepish whisper. “I told that to Darcy when she hired me, but she said that was fine, so I got the job. I haven’t really gotten to, you know, talk to Jane about it as I just met her.”

If Peggy had any misgivings before this adventure began, she had even more now. “Just met her when?”

“Just today!”

Peggy counted to ten and then turned to Darcy, as she was, strangely, the only thing in this room that didn’t sound mad at the moment. “Any luck?”

“No!” She threw herself into one of the kitchen chairs, the wood scraping against the tile floor with a squeak. “I’ve called his cell phone - his mobile, I guess, for everyone over here - his home phone, his office phone. I even tried calling the department at his college at Oxford, but whoever was manning the phone said they were making no comment and hung up on me, and I don’t know what that means, but he’s officially gone off the radar.”

“Have you spoken to him lately?”

“Not since the summer, right before the start of the semester.” Darcy shrugged, looking surprisingly grim, an expression Peggy wasn’t even aware she could have. “He was off, but, you know, having an alien trickster god and some glowing metal mind-control spear in your head tends to do things to you. He said he was seeing a psychiatrist and on meds, but...who knows.”

Peggy, admittedly, had not been keeping tabs on the doctor, and she felt a tug of guilt on that. She wondered if either Betty Ross or Bruce Banner had. “Well, the cavalry is on a quinjet and should be here soon, at least the science part of the team.”

“So you really meant it when you said you were bringing in the Avengers, then?” For all that this Ian was a grown man, or at least an adult young person in his early twenties, he looked as if he were a child being told their favorite movie hero was about to arrive.

“That is what I do, oversee them,” Peggy replied, trying very hard not to cast a wondering look at Darcy. “The minute Thor got involved it is a threat that I felt we needed the entire team on this.”

“So, like...Iron Man?”

“Yes,” Peggy drawled, now openly looking to Darcy.

Darcy was quick to pick up Peggy’s disquiet. “Yeah, Jane deals with some big time people, so, if you are working for her, you got to get used to all these famous people and not get star-struck.”

“But I don’t work for Jane, I work for you, technically,” Ian countered.

Darcy was too quick on her feet for that sort of logic. “Yeah, well I work for Jane and I can’t lose my head over famous people and neither can you.”

Technically, save for a brief glimpse of Steve on a video call, Darcy had met none of them either, having not been involved with the battle in New York, but Peggy decided she was not about to involve herself in what was already quickly becoming an absurd conversation. “What do we have on Jane’s data so far?”

Ian swiveled in his seat to the laptop at his side, reviewing what looked to be a series of screens with wave graphs on them. “Not that I know anything that is going on here, but whatever is happening, it’s getting worse.”

“Let me see,” Darcy rolled her eyes, throwing herself up and around to look at the data over his shoulder. “Well, he isn’t wrong. Whatever is going on over at that warehouse is getting worse and it's moving...or spreading. I’m not sure.”

“Wonderful,” Peggy sighed, thinking briefly that whatever was going on, it was all rather like a case of the blind-leading-the-blind. “Can we tell where it’s spreading to?”

“No,” Darcy admitted, clearly sensing Peggy’s frustration. “Perhaps if we mapped this over the greater London area, tried to triangulate where we are picking up anomalies and see if we can find a pattern...”

She took over the computer from Ian, fingers flying across the keyboard as she began inputting data in a way Peggy would never understand. Darcy, for all of her sarcastic personality, was not stupid. Poor Ian beside her stared in fascination as within minutes she had set up something to trace the various data they needed.

“Not so hard, just a basic algorithm.” She preened, pleased she had thought of it, lightly punching the dumbstruck Ian in the shoulder. “I mean, you helped with getting all this data online and everything. So, yay, teamwork!”

Peggy owned that she was a perfect idiot when it came to computers, but even she knew that poor Ian Boothby would likely not have made that logical leap on his own, not without Peggy’s prompting. “Yeah...teamwork!”

Overhead the house shook, briefly, causing all three of them to turn up quickly to stare at the ceiling.

“I believe the cavalry has indeed arrived,” Peggy intoned, somewhat relieved that at least they would have one person who would understand what was going on. She made her way down the hallway and to the foyer, out to the drive. Beyond the wall that formed the line of the property, she could see the reflected glow of the quinjet landing in the parkland beyond.

“They got here fast,” Darcy had trailed behind, along with Ian.

“Quinjets move fast,” Peggy replied by way of explanation, already making her way to the end of the drive. Across the way in a swath of grass sat the quinjet, like some incongruous bird-of-prey coming to squat on Hampstead. From down the gangplank came Bruce Banner and Betty Ross, each carrying large cases with them.

“I didn’t know if you had all the bells and whistles here,” Bruce called from the growing twilight, looking somewhat sheepish. “So I brought what I could.”

“They have wifi, so it’s not totally barbaric,” Darcy called, shrugging at Peggy’s rather acerbic look. “I know, I know, it’s your childhood home and ancestral seat or whatever, but you can never tell with these places.”

“Says the girl who just tried calling Asgard from her cell phone,” Peggy shot back, rather ruffled that her home would be equated with barbaric.

“I don’t know, Asgardians are high tech, they may have...something!”

Banner and Betty ambled across the road, along with Peggy’s frequent pilot, Jake Jameson, also carrying an additional crate of whatever it was Banner felt he needed.

“Welcome,” Peggy offered as she met the group, grabbing a dangling bag off of Banner’s shoulder before it slid to the pavement. “For now my home is your home, as it were. Let’s get you inside and set up.”

She could see the trio assessing the large, stately house. Unsurprisingly, it was Banner who spoke up first. “So, your family was nobility, then?”

“Hardly,” Peggy snorted, leading them inside. “Americans assume that everyone here is either a lord of the manor or some cheeky London Cockney cabbie without anything in between.”

“All of Bruce’s experience with England comes from costume dramas, so excuse his uncultured naïveté,” Betty teased, slipping past him to follow Peggy to the kitchen.

“I know a British professor or two,” Bruce protested, somewhat miffed. “Actually more than that, now that I think about it, thank you very much.”

“You can set that on the counter, Jake,” Peggy instructed as cases and bags were set down. “We have you lot here at least. How about the others?”

“Rogers and Romanoff are waiting on Stark and they will be on their way,” Jake assured her.

That Tony wasn’t coming directly in his suit caught her by surprise, but she let it pass. Banner already was looking over the collection of Foster’s devices, pulling out his glasses from his breast pocket. He stared at one of them much the same way Peggy did, as if it might zap him if he touched it, which didn’t bode well for his input into these proceedings. “What do we got?”

Darcy ducked in, hovering protectively over the gadgets and the computer set up there. “As you can see from Jane’s devices, there are weird gravitational readings, spatial extrusions…”

“I get it, reality is doing some funky things,” Banner nodded, settling down in the spot that Ian had been sitting in. The poor fellow looked a bit at a loss with the older scientist taking up the space. “Something about a warehouse?”

“It seemed rooted in a derelict factory south of the Thames,” Peggy confirmed, leaning against the counter. “It happens to be near where the bomb went off last week.”

“And you think they are related?” Banner asked that in a way that said he wasn’t convinced.

Peggy shifted, uncomfortably. “Given that we were standing there when Jane herself gave off an explosion of violent energy before Thor whisked her away, yes, I think they might be connected.”

“Correlation doesn’t always equal causality,” Banner replied, frowning at the laptop screen. “So you’re already tracking the anomalies as they are growing?”

“That was me,” Darcy pipped up, looking pleased with herself. “Well, Ian was running the data in, but I used it to build the algorithm, simple tracking one.”

“Not bad,” Banner nodded, pleased. “You are?”

“Darcy Lewis,” she held out her hand to him. “Jane’s intern.”

“Oh, yeah, she’s talked about you. Got potential, good with computers, bit of a smart ass.”

Darcy looked insulted for the briefest of seconds. “Ummm...a lot of a smart ass? Only a bit? It’s like she doesn’t even know me.”

Banner chuckled, pointing to one of the other chairs. “You know Jane’s stuff?”

“Yeah...mostly. I mean, I help her put it together, and I watch it, and sometimes she rattles information off at me, so I get the gist of what she’s doing with it.”

“Good, then sit here and tell me and maybe we can figure it out.” He glanced over at Ian. “What about you?”

“I….errr…” Ian stammered, clearing his throat. “I’m Ian...Boothby! I got hired by Darcy to be her...um...intern?”

Peggy smothered a snort as Banner tried to process that. “Wait...you're the intern’s intern?”

Ian looked positively miserable. “Errr..yes?”

“And what does that entail?”

“Mostly just driving us around and lifting things,” Darcy admitted, pulling up devices. “But he is handy with computers. He has a degree and everything!”

Banner glanced at Peggy, who only held her hands up, helplessly. “Right, well Ian, sit over there and help Darcy out. Maybe between the three of us we can figure out what is going on here.”

“Just try not to blow up my family’s house,” Peggy warned, preparing to leave them to their work, just as Sharon finally arrived, glancing at the new arrivals in mild surprise.

“So...party at our place, I am guessing?”

“Something like that.” Peggy waved towards the trio at the kitchen island. “Banner just got here and he’s in with Darcy and her intern working on Foster’s data. How was your end of things?”

“We took what readings we could, but I don’t know what good they will do you.” She held up a thumb drive and passed it over the counter to Banner. “It’s all SHIELD’s data. Some of it might mirror Foster’s, some of it not. I will say this, it’s weird shit.”

“SHIELD’s technical term,” Betty asked from where she was setting up some of Banner’s brought equipment.

“If it isn’t, it should be. Unfortunately, none of it really ties back to our case with the Mandarin. Outside of strange and unexplained explosions outside of buildings in the area, that’s all the connection we have.”

Peggy didn’t want to say it, but that may be all the connection there was. “Anything more from your team on the MST site?”

“Still running forensics on most of what we got. If it turns out to be garden variety explosives, then I don’t think that the two of them are linked.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Peggy sighed, realizing her own brand of craziness meant she had her own case to worry about, one that conveniently kept her out of Sharon’s. “I had no idea any of this would become this...mad.”

Sharon shrugged with a zen sort of acceptance. “Well, in fairness, I think I’ve just come to expect mad things happening all around you.”

Perhaps Sharon was right. Madness just seemed to find Peggy, whether she liked it or not.

Chapter Text

“Good news, bad news.” Banner greeted Peggy first thing in the morning with a cup of tea - surprisingly well brewed - and an apology. “The good news, we were able to compare the data Jane was picking up to what she had from New York. As far as we can tell, it’s not the Tesseract, but it is wormholes. They seem to be naturally occurring points in space that are forming between different areas and in random ways.”

“All right,” Peggy sipped her tea and tried to fortify herself. “What’s the bad news?”

Banner exhaled, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Well, this is very much not my area of expertise. We are able to track the anomalies, and I see that they are growing. Darcy has got a program running tracking all of them, but I’m not the guy who digs into this work. I mean, this is what Jane eats and breathes. She’s the one who understands this best.”

Peggy had a feeling he would say that. “Yes, well, Thor has whisked her away and we don’t know when they are coming back.”

“And things are going missing,” Darcy greeted them as she entered the room, tousle headed from a night kipping in one of the guest rooms. She put her phone on the counter between Peggy and Banner, an article headline screaming about a car going missing right in Croyden right in front of its owners eyes.

Banner thumbed up the glass, scanning the article. “Jesus, was anyone hurt?”

“No, they were lucky, they just had gotten back with their groceries. Turned around and the car literally vanished.” She pursed her lips in worry, glancing between them both. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it, kid.” Banner passed the phone back to her. “I mean...the only other person I know who really delves into this sort of stuff is Erik. We could maybe call…”

Peggy held up her hand, silently, but the words were already belting out of Darcy. “We’ve tried...like...a lot.”

They hadn’t explained that piece to Banner the night before.

“Like...what is a lot,” he frowned, concern clear.

“Like I’ve been calling him since yesterday afternoon, repeatedly, on all of his numbers. He isn’t answering.”

That had Banner’s attention. He and Selvig were friends of long standing, having once worked side-by-side at Culver University. When the Hulk had been prepared to destroy the monster that was Emil Blonsky in the middle of Harlem, it was Selvig who talked him down, assuring him Betty was all right. It made sense now that he would be worried when they couldn’t track down the scientist.

“Well, have you tracked down his apartment? He’s in Oxford right now, right? How far is that? Maybe he’s there, his phone off...or maybe in his lab…”

“I tried calling there, too, no dice,” Darcy assured him, softly. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I have a feeling I do!”

They turned to Betty, coming in from the back garden, her tablet in hand and a stricken look on her face. “It was on local news yesterday. Erik got arrested at Stonehenge yesterday.”

That had not been what any of them expected.

“For doing what?” Darcy recovered first, making a grab for Betty’s tablet.

“Running around like a naked lunatic for starters,” Betty replied, both bemused and worried. “He was streaking around the place with scientific equipment, insisting that something was going to happen. They didn’t give details, but it doesn’t look good.”

Darcy had tapped on the video, allowing it to play. On the screen poor Erik Selvig was being chased by police around several of the large stones, and judging from the largely blurred bit in the middle, was stark naked as he did it. The video froze on a rather unfortunate shot of the police catching and corralling Selvig, looking decidedly unhinged.

“What happened,” Banner muttered, shocked and alarmed at the state of his friend and colleague.

“Loki happened,” Darcy shot back, darkly, passing the tablet back to Betty with a determined grimace. “We can’t just leave him like this.”

“She’s right,” Betty readily agreed. “I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for all of this.:

Bruce snorted, shrugging helplessly. “For Erik running around buck naked around a national monument? Sure there is, he had a magic space stone in his head. That is enough to make anyone bonkers, worse when it is Loki who was wielding it. He’s insane all by himself and likely passed it on to Erik.”

“Maybe,” Betty conceded, firmly. “But that isn’t his fault. Do we know where he was taken to?”

It took them all a second to realize what she was implying, and Banner was the first to object. “Betty...look, if they have taken him in, it’s likely because they are worried for him. Don’t you think it’s best if we let the professionals handle their business?”

“Erik is one of your good friends. He was there for me when I thought I had lost you. Do you seriously think that I am just going to stand by while they label him as crazy because of what some alien god did to him?”

“I’d like to note he’s one of my good friends, too,” Darcy spoke up to the room in general, feeling perhaps a bit overlooked in all of this. “I mean, he was friends with Jane’s dad and did help mentor her, so I guess he’s sort of my mentor too.”

“Which is all well and good, but we don’t know what’s going on with him,” Banner insisted, gently. “I mean, speaking as a guy who constantly worries about how his mental state might manifest into, I don’t know, the destruction of cities, if there are people who can help Erik, maybe we should let them.”

“Yeah, and how well did all those efforts to try and catch you and sedate you work out,” Betty tossed back, crossing her arms to glare at him. Peggy thought she could see Banner physically flinch at that.

“That wasn’t the same,” he replied, calmly. “I am just saying, as a friend who cares for him, I want him to have help and be in the safest situation he can be in, that’s all.”

“But you said you needed him to understand this data,” Peggy countered, finally interjecting herself into all of this. They all turned to blink at her, perhaps having forgotten, momentarily, she was there. “Jane is on Asgard and we don’t have anyone else who can understand this. That’s what you said, correct?”

Banner could sense defeat on the horizon. “I did say that.”

“Well then,” Peggy turned to Darcy and Betty. “Let me connect with Sharon. We’ll find out where he’s being kept and perhaps stage an intervention.”

So it was two hours later Peggy, Darcy, Betty and Sharon found themselves outside of a police station in London, one attached to the facility where Erik was being held “for observation.”

“I still say we should have brought Ian. He could have said he was his nephew or something.” Darcy was still rather put out that her cunning plan had been nixed rather quickly by both Sharon and Peggy.

“First rule of any operation, keep it simple,” Sharon advised the obviously inexperienced Darcy as they climbed out of their SHIELD SUV. “We come in here with a hijinked story and it might invite people to ask questions.”

“And you don’t think SHIELD rolling into the place won’t make them ask questions? It’s not like people don’t know that Erik was involved in the business in New York. Now they will think SHIELD is covering something up.”

Darcy did have a point, but Peggy wasn’t particularly in the mood to put something more cunning together. “Let them think that. It is more important we get Selvig out and helping us.”

“For a bunch of spies, you don’t do this espionage stuff very much,” Darcy pouted, but relented.”

It was the sort of red-brick-and-concrete structure that the Victorians were fond of, very official and officious. Inside was grim and institutional, much like any place you would see in New York, with ugly yellow tile and fluorescent lights overhead. Peggy walked up the steps to the lobby, carrying herself with the sort of authority she once used on the training fields of Camp Lehigh.

“Excuse me,” she called to the officer behind the front desk. He was a bored looking young fellow, blonde haired and round faced, in a constables uniform, who gave Peggy a once over and a bored sort of expression as she walked up.

“Can I help you?” His polite, but unimpressed expression flickered from Peggy to the entourage of Sharon, Betty and Darcy in the back.

Peggy simply raised her badge, laying it on the counter in front of him. “I’m Director Peggy Carter with SHIELD. I am here to pick up one of my men from your custody, a Dr. Erik Selvig. I believed he was passed over to you from Wiltshire authorities yesterday?”

The man frowned, awkwardly, looked down at her badge, then back up at Peggy. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Does this look like a joke,” Peggy asked, simply, as beside her Sharon held up her badge as well. “I could speak to your watch supervisor, if needs be.”

The desk officer shook his head, sighing with the sort of depth of feeling that said he very much did not want any of this to get that complicated, and instead reached for his files. “No, no, just...let me get the paperwork.”

Peggy waited patiently as he flipped through files and pulled out papers, attaching them to a clipboard and passing it over to her. “If you could sign here for him. He was real worked up when they brought him in yesterday, but he seems to have calmed down a bit. Even managed to keep his clothes on.”

“He had an alien god in his head, so...yeah, you’ll have to excuse him,” Darcy called, in what Peggy imagined she thought was a helpful bit of knowledge to drop, but wasn’t.

“Right,” the officer drawled, slowly, eyeing Darcy as if she herself needed to be checked into the facility. “Let me have someone go fetch him from where he’s being held.”

Five minutes later Selvig appeared, led by another business-like officers. The poor scientist looked very disheveled and disoriented as he marched down the hallway. He was dressed, rather incongruously, in short pants and a cardigan, with socks and his sturdy shoes on his feet His expression was glassy-eyed and strung out, ragged in a way Peggy didn’t think she had ever seen the man.

“Erik,” Darcy exclaimed, rushing over to him to fuss over him, Betty close at her heels.

The officer at the desk began pulling out items, leaving them on the counter in front of Peggy. “One man’s leather wallet, brown.” He tapped the functional bit of leather, before placing beside it a key of rings. “One key ring, three keys.”

He then pulled out a giant plastic bag of pill bottles, of all shapes and sizes, all in the name of Erik Selvig. “Prescription medicine," he muttered in a manner that said he was trying not to be judgmental, but was anyway. "Various.”

He then bent down, pulling out from under his desk a bundle of heavy, metal rods, all attached to some sort of devices. He lay these on the top of the counter with a grunt. “And these.”

Peggy stared at the devices, as unsure of them as she was of Jane Foster’s home brewed machines. “Those?”

“Beats me what they are for,” the young man shrugged. “He was trying to stick them all over Stonehenge. I guess maybe they are for calibrating the moon, or the sun, or some equinox?”

“It’s October,” Peggy pointed out.

“Then ask your scientist what they are for, I have no idea.” The officer huffed, turning away.

Meanwhile, Selvig had wrapped Darcy in a hug, relieved to see her face. “How did you find me?”

“You were naked on TV,” Betty explained, shaking her head at him. “Which was not a thing I ever would have thought of you.”

“Betty,” he cried, letting go of Darcy, embracing Betty up as well. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting you out,” she said, pulling away from him with some effort. “Things are getting weird out there.”

“And sadly, you are the only man we have to get it all figured out,” Peggy added, drawing the addled man’s attention.

He blinked at seeing Peggy, true concern and a hint of fear flickering to life in his wife, pale eyes. “It doesn’t have to do with...he’s not back here again, is he?”

“Who,” Betty asked, laying a staying hand on him as Selvig appeared ready to bolt.

“You know who,” he spat back at her, cringing. “He’s not…”

“No,” Peggy assured the poor, frightened man as kindly as she could. “No, it isn’t about Loki, though it is about Thor.”

“Thor?” That seemed to reassure Selvig greatly. “What about him?”

“We aren’t sure, but Jane is with him. She was investigating anomalies, and something happened to her.”

“Is she all right?” That sobered up Selvig considerably. It was comforting to know that Jane’s well being was something he took seriously enough.

“We don’t know,” Darcy admitted. “Like, she was gone for five hours, she showed back up, then she exploded with this red energy, and then Thor whisked her off to Asgard and we haven’t heard from her since. But the anomalies are getting worse. I was up all nights, practically, with Dr. Banner. We are tracking it, but I’m an intern and I don’t know jack about any of this! I’m not paid enough to know any of this...I’m not paid, period!”

The devices on the officer’s desk began beeping ominously, causing Peggy to jump and the watch officer to stare at it as if it were a bomb. In fairness, they all stared at the things as if they might explode, all save Erik, who marched over and studied each of them.

“It’s happening, sooner than I had calculated.”

“Errr...what’s happening,” Peggy hazarded, half afraid to know the answer.

“The convergence,” he replied, matter-of-factly, as if that had any hope of making any sense. He turned to Darcy, eagerly. “These anomalies, what are they?”

“Errr...wormholes, mostly. Places where things are disappearing for no explainable reason, or disappearing and reappearing somewhere else.”

Selvig nodded to himself. “That sounds about right. Well, I suppose we need to get to work. If someone can help me with these.” He grabbed one of the devices off the desk, much to the officer's relief. Darcy and Betty swooped in to help with the other as it beeped, softly.

“You’ll want these,” Peggy snagged Selvig’s wallet and keys, before grabbing the giant bag of pills.

“Leave those,” Selvig ordered, nodding to the bag in Peggy’s fingers.

“But your medication…”

“Leave it,” he said, firmly, a small smile on his face. “Let me tell you, there is nothing more reassuring than realizing that the world is crazier than you are.”

From a certain point of view, Peggy supposed, that made sense.

“Come along,” he called as he led the way out of the building. “Take me to where Bruce is set up. We’ve got a lot of work to do!"

Chapter Text

“Why isn’t Selvig wearing any pants?”

Betty, who had been busy collating data for the trio of Selvig, Banner and Darcy, shrugged over the laptop she had set up, evidently past the point of being concerned by the quixotic behavior of her former colleague. “He says it helps him think.”

Peggy stared blankly at the man’s long, thin, paste white legs and felt only a deep well of pity for him. “What did Loki do to him?”

“I suppose this is why Barton is still on leave,” Betty observed. “What Loki did to them isn’t something you just shake off, I imagine.”

“No,” Peggy admitted, though she couldn’t say she understood.

“Speaking of, where are Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff and Tony Stark?”

“En route, they should be here within the hour.” Peggy had expected the sooner, but Stark was coming from the west coast of America and they had been delayed. “For now, it’s fine while the scientists work.”

“Don’t let Stark hear you say that,” Betty teased.

“Yeah, well, I am actually here to hopefully ask you for your expertise.”

The scientist looked intrigued. “On what?”

“The super soldier serum,” Peggy offered, quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the group working at the kitchen island, specifically Banner. “And just who is doing work on it?”

Betty arched a dark eyebrow, quizzically. “You found something?”

“Maybe,” Peggy hedged, jerking her head towards the back door and the garden beyond. “Come outside and chat.”

It was overcast and cool but relatively dry as they both moved outside. Betty took an appreciative look about her as they wandered to a bench that Peggy’s father had installed years ago, a place where he used to like to sit with her mother on summer evenings.

“It’s lovely out here,” she exclaimed, smiling. “Like a real yard, not just some patch of grass and some trees.”

“Thank you, it was the pride and joy of many a Carter bride for over a century. My mother was particularly fond of it. She spent a lot of her time out here when the weather was up for it. I did not inherit her green thumb, however, and since everyone lives in America now, they hire someone to keep it up.”

“That’s a lot of work to keep up a house no one lives in. Why don’t they sell it?”

Peggy shrugged. “It’s been in our family since the 18th century. I suppose they don’t want to give that up. But I believe that sooner or later it will likely be sold. The new generation are all Americans with very few ties to the old country. I don’t know, perhaps they can find something to do with it, donate it to someone, turn it into something useful.”

They settled on the iron of the bench, chilly even under layers of clothes as Peggy cut to the point. “I spoke to the head of MST Pharmaceutical about the serum. He admitted that they were interested in Erskine's formula and had asked around. He said that they received notes and a sample of blood from a test subject given the serum, but that it had broken down too much in the version they received. He claimed it was unstable and so they never ended up using it.”

For a moment, Betty’s expression turned inscrutable, like her father’s. Whether that was because she was thinking or because it had caught her out, Peggy couldn’t tell. For long moments, she was quiet before speaking. “Who gave it to them?”

“They CIA, so they claim, though we don’t know who the CIA got it from.”

“I have an idea,” she growled, softly, running a hand through her long, dark hair.

“Do you think your father was careless enough to hand out samples to everyone and hope something usable would turn up?”

Betty rolled her eyes. “My father has cronies in every corner of the military industrial complex. Name a department in the government and he’s gone golfing with someone in it. Honestly, if he was working with the CIA it would explain how he got away with funding the program Bruce and I were on and how it got away from Congressional oversight. Claim national security and hide it under layers of bureaucratic red tape and only the most tenacious senator would try to figure it out.”

That did make a certain level of sense. “Well then, my next question is where did he find that sample. I was told all of the blood they took from Steve was gone, used up seventy years ago. How did they find another sample?”

Betty shook her head, wonderingly. “It’s not Captain Rogers’ blood. It can’t be, there were no samples of it out there. I know, after Bruce’s incident I looked, hoping to find some and see if I could compare it to his.” She frowned, looking troubled. “That said, you know the reason they didn’t have any more samples of Rogers’ blood is because they used it all in making versions of the serum, right?”

“I had presumed as much, but Howard had said none of them were viable.”

“As far as he knew they never managed a viable version,” she returned, darkly. “Howard Stark may have been selling the Army weapons, but he wasn’t on the inside with them. The whole incident with Russian spy and his weapons vault made a lot of people at the Defense Department nervous.”

That Peggy remembered well enough. “So you're saying they did have a viable serum and lied to him and to SHIELD about it?”

Betty sighed, closing her eyes as she rubbed at the bridge of her nose fretfully. “It’s complicated, and I only know parts of it. I know that sometime after the war, they set up a program to test and create special weapons. It was supposed to be the continuation of the SSR’s research, things like Project: Rebirth. Captain Rogers was called Weapon I and was the first, successful creation of a super soldier. But, like you said, they used up all of his blood trying to isolate the serum. So they were left with only copies of Erskine and Howard Stark’s notes and the memories of the few other scientists who were in the room with them when they came up with it. They tried to piece together what they had and began trying to recreate what he did. The trouble was, Erskine deliberately didn’t keep exacting details of his notes, not after HYDRA, so everything they were doing was at best hypothetical guesswork. But they did what all scientists do when they are trying to figure out a new medication, they try a bit of this and a bit of that and run medical tests to see what works.”

A sick, horrified suspicion began to creep through Peggy as she thought through what Betty was telling her, of the things she had hinted at, and the fact that the CIA had given MST Pharmaceutical a human patient’s blood sample. “They experimented on living human beings.”

Betty nodded, her expression grim. “In fairness, Erskine hadn’t done a battery of simulations before trying his serum on Steve Rogers. He had no idea it would work with any certainty.”

“Yes, but he still ran non-human trials.”

“Well, I would like to think that some general in the army back then thought they could skip that step, but I fear it was much, much worse.” Her full mouth pursed into a hard line as she swallowed. “The Army decided to test these serums on an African American unit of soldiers. They were told they were getting a tetanus shot, standard protocol. They were then each broken into groups and given a different version of the serum that the Army had created based off Captain Roger's blood samples and then run through a modified Vita-Ray projector and told it was being used for germ sterilization. After their injection, they were each carefully monitored to see the effects. Of the original unit, half died within weeks. Of the other half, they lasted a few months. Many soldiers that lasted that long were actually deployed in the Korean War. But the serum caused biochemical issues: rapid and uncontrollable cellular mitosis, loss of mental acuity, emotional instability, mood swings, anger control issues….many of the things you see with Bruce, actually. With these patients, though, they had no stabilizing agent, the way Bruce does. I am guessing it was the poor quality of the serum they received and the Vita-Rays, it caused deformations and the body, especially the brain, wasn't able to keep up.”

She trailed off, then, glancing to the house where Banner was working beside Erik, Darcy, and Ian. For now, he was stable and calm, the brilliant scientist she loved. It took so little to change that.

“Of the men who received the serum in that unit," she continued, sadly. "Only one of them was successful. He was the only one to survive. The rest died, even the ones sent into action.”

Silence fell between them for a long time. For Peggy, the story...the truth of it was too horrible for words. The idea that Erskine’s work, the project that he had hoped would save the world, would be turned and twisted like that. After Johann Schmidt and all the horror that was born out of that, Erskine had been so careful about how his serum was made and who got it. To know that innocent, unknowing men had been given some poor substitute, condemned to die horribly while their own officers watched, left Peggy feeling cold and sick, rage turning her knuckles white.

“What happened to him,” she finally asked, softly, her voice surprised even, for all of the ire that raged within her.

“The one success?”

“He had a name, didn’t he,” Peggy bit out, more angry than she had intended.

“He did, I am sure, but I don’t know it, no one does. He was only ever referred to as ‘Weapon II’ in the record. They deployed him for a couple of missions in Korea, top secret. I never did get access to them. All I know was that afterwards he was arrested and held in prison for the rest of his life. He died sometime in the early 80s. The death certificate said he died of acute encephalitis, which was the catch-all term they used on most of the rest of the men that had died. They did no autopsies, so I don’t know with any certainty what the problem really was. The program was supposedly scraped after that, especially because the military was afraid that if it got out, there would be an outcry. After the Tuskegee Experiments got leaked in the 1970s, the classified all the information on the program so no one could find out. It was like they never even existed. I only found out because I used my father’s name and connections to blackmail people into giving it to me. That was after everything with Bruce.”

Some of Peggy’s raw rage faded, slightly, in the face of Betty’s sadness and frustration. “The samples your father was using for your work…”

“All came from this Weapon II,” Betty confirmed, nodding towards the window where they could see Bruce inside. “Reading the symptoms for the other subjects, the deformities they developed, the brain chemical imbalances, the uncontrollable rage, it all fits. Whatever the Army developed and gave those men is what we used on Bruce. If MST Pharmaceutical had an old sample from a human test subject, my guess is that it came from Weapon II as well. Whatever the case, it’s a good thing they didn’t use it, because it’s not stable. I don’t know how it worked or why it worked in that man, or why his symptoms didn’t appear till much later, but for whatever reason they did. He is dead now, and I suppose we will never know.”

A new sense of sadness mixed with the outrage Peggy already felt. So many lives ruined, all to try and recreate Steve Rogers, a man whose most special characteristics weren’t even given to him by Erskine’s serum. How did none of them see that?

“I am so sorry,” Peggy finally choked out, reaching her hand out for Betty’s slumped shoulder. “I am so sorry for how they lied to you and how your father treated you both.”

An unexpected tear streaked down Betty’s face, her expression crumpling for a second, before she gulped a deep breath and steadied herself. “I...thank you. You know, I have spent so long being angry with him for all of it, for what he did, for the lies he told, but you know, my father was just one of a long line of people who did it. I tried finding out more about those men, but I was lucky to get the information I did. No one wanted to talk about it. Somewhere out there they had families; wives, kids, parents, siblings, friends, none of them ever learned the truth. I think that is what makes me the angriest in all of this, all of the lies told because they were too ashamed to admit how wrong they were. At least with Bruce...with him, I know he’s alive. And so far, this time, he hasn’t run away again.”

Peggy nodded, slowly, watching Banner through the window. “You know...you do know the truth about what they did. You could tell someone, start an investigation.”

Betty hummed, sniffing softly. “I thought about it, especially when I first found out. I might, still, I don’t know. At the time, it took me so long to even get it, and I had to swear on my soul to keep it quiet just to get access. I suppose I was afraid that if I did, the doors would be shut to me, and any hope of getting anything to help Bruce at all would be lost.”

That unfortunately made sense, even if Peggy didn’t agree with it. “I understand why you’ve kept it secret, but those men...their families...they deserve to have their truth be told.”

“I know,” she replied, her voice cracked and watery. “And you’re right.”

“Maybe,” Peggy hedged, carefully, "once we handle this business here we can discuss it with Stark. He has contacts with the government. He may know the right people to address this to.”

Betty snorted, eyeing Peggy dubiously. “Tony Stark, the man who got rich off of doing this sort of thing, would agree to doing this?”

“He would if he knew the truth of what the government did. Besides, his father worked on this serum first, and as complicated of a relationship as Tony had with Howard, he does value his father’s legacy. I think he will be less than pleased to hear how it got used behind the scenes.”

Betty didn’t look as certain of that. “You clearly know him better than I do. I’ll trust you on that.”

Peggy would take that answer as her agreement. “Let me talk with him, then, see what he says.”

As if by divine miracle, the air overhead thrummed, the noise the Peggy now associated with modern jet planes. Both she and Betty turned up, looking towards the sky as in the distance overhead the distinctive blue lights of a quinjet could be seen heading their way. On instinct, Peggy’s heart gave a bit of a leap, a grin spreading across her face despite herself.

“Looks like the rest of the gang has finally arrived,” Betty said, smoothing her hands over her knees and standing. “I wonder how Stark is doing. Bruce has said…”

She trailed off with a worried expression, as if fearful she had spoken too much. Peggy had a feeling she already suspected what Betty was getting at.

“Bruce has said what?”

She shrugged, wringing her hands, slightly. “Bruce is just concerned is all. He mentioned Tony was keyed up, hyper focused on projects, a lot of avoidance, a lot of not sleeping.”

All of the things that Peggy had picked up on as well. “Anything Bruce could put his finger on.”

“He’s not a psychiatrist, not even close to a therapist, but with his own anger issues he’s hyper aware of everyone else’s emotional states. He’s worried is all. I mean, after what Stark has been through...what most everyone has on this team, I suppose...just...well, let’s be honest, Tony Stark hasn’t precisely been known for handling emotional stress in the most healthy of fashions.”

“No,” Peggy agreed, softly, standing herself from the bench, slightly stiff with cold. “Thanks for letting me know. Maybe I will bring that up to him, too.”

“Maybe it will be easier coming from you,” Betty offered, hopefully. “You two already have a relationship. He looks to you as family, I suppose.”

“I don’t know if it’s easier or worse coming from someone you see as family,” Peggy replied, making her way to the house as the quinjet came overhead, briefly, before moving to land beside the one that Betty and Bruce had arrived on. “Honestly, it’s sometimes worse when you realize someone you love sees you being weak.”

Betty’s soft, exhausted sigh spoke to the fathomless depths of her understanding on that subject.

Chapter Text

“You can’t be serious with this neo-pagan, New Age, hocus pocus?”

“In fairness, Tony, it’s about the best thing we got going for us.”

“Bruce, you have, what, ten Ph.D.s and you are buying this?”

“I’m sorry, Stark, I wasn’t aware your degree in engineering included any work in astrophysics.”

“Sorry, Selvig, but I didn’t need to waste the extra money on a degree that I didn’t need and clearly has cracked your brain. Convergence?”

“It wasn’t precisely your money you were wasting so much as your father’s.”

“Hey, MIT got a fancy new engineering building for it so they could do real science.”

Peggy took one look at the dining room, where Team Science had converged, and thought better about going in there. They had been bickering violently for twenty minutes, mostly Stark and Selvig, with Banner caught as the rather haphazard mediator. Peggy couldn’t say she understood half of it outside of a cosmic convergence, which after magic space cubes and time travel seemed about as likely as anything else in the universe.

Banner had taken up the argument, voice reasonable underneath the more raised tones of Stark and Selvig. “Seriously, Tony, after seeing Asgardians and their magic, you are doubting something like a converging event at this level?”

“It doesn’t make any sense! Physics doesn’t work like that!”

“That you know of,” Selvig hit back. “Many areas of physics work on a whole other level than we don’t even understand!”

“Says the man who was standing in his underwear when I walked in the door.”

Peggy turned heel and made her way to the back garden instead.

It was early in the evening but twilight was setting already over London, cold and pale. In the dim light, by where the garden shed once had been, she could see two figures sparing, meeting each other strike for strike. That Natasha Romanoff was formidable was well known to Peggy, she had watched the woman’s graceful and deadly style of fighting a few times. It was far more advanced, and more dangerous, than even the style Dottie Underwood had displayed, honed by more and different skills. Still, Steve seemed to be holding his own against her, if just barely.

“Faster,” Natasha pushed him, deftly striking, her hands moving with a dancer’s agility as they tried to find his weak points. Steve wasn’t as smooth as she was in fending her off...yet. He met every blow she tried, however, even as she increased the speed. He was not moving to strike back just yet, only to block and parry. His face was contorted in concentration as he did, studying her, learning her style. It was all still crude, but given another week, maybe two, he would at least be able to defend himself from one of Romanoff’s attacks. Then he would need to figure out how to get a hand on her. That was by far the trickier part.

“Come on,” Romanoff cajoled as she spun on one foot in the damp grass, her other leg already rising up to come at his head, an impossible reach for one as petite as she was. She could make it, of that, Peggy had no doubt. Steve stopped it easily enough, his left forearm coming up to block the attack, which only caused Romanoff to pull it back and finish the spin, landing to one knee in a crouch. Without skipping a beat, she lunged, fist cocked back, aiming for his unprotected upper inner thigh and the sort of maneuver that would knock him flat and breathless, but would teach him a lesson.

What happened next caught them all off guard, as Steve saw Romanoff’s attack and without even adjusting his stance, reached out a hand to Romanoff and slammed himself at her. In the blink of an eye he had Romanoff at the shoulder, nearly by the throat, pinned hard to the cold, damp ground, with an aggressiveness that shocked even Peggy. Steve had never quite been comfortable fighting women, even Peggy, who he knew was trained to do it. He held Romanoff pinned for a long moment, crouching over her, before she tapped his forearm, scowling, briefly, before he let her up.

“You were only supposed to block,” she groused, gasping as Steve scrambled up, with the serious mien had when he was hyper-focused, be it on a mission or whatever he was ruminating on in the moment. “You nearly took my arm off.”

“You are lucky I didn’t punch you in the face out of instinct.”

“Well, it’s a target, a vulnerable one, and it’s what anyone would do,” she shot back, standing slowly, rubbing her shoulder. “God, anyone tell you that you should play in the NFL?”

That finally shook him as he realized maybe he had pushed it a bit too far. “Sorry, just...instinct. You get in enough back alley brawls, you learn that maneuver quickly. Better to get that guy before he gets you.”

“Huh,” Romanoff exclaimed, studying Steve for a long moment in the waning light. “Well, duly noted, don’t go for the crotch. Besides, I doubt Carter would appreciate it if I succeeded.”

She glanced over her shoulder to where Peggy stood, giving her a cheeky smirk. “Hey, boss!”

“Well, if you had succeeded, I’d say it was nothing worse than what he deserved for not paying attention,” Peggy replied back, philosophically, trying to hide the teasing grin that was fighting against her more serious mien. “You’re getting better! Certainly you are faster than you were before the crash.”

Steve only grunted gratefully, wiping his forearm over his brow at Peggy’s praise. “Romanoff is a taskmaster.”

“You think I am bad, you should have seen my teachers,” she joked, breezily, despite the ominous implications of her words. “Anyway, it’s getting dark and cold, maybe we call it a night. Besides, I would murder someone for some proper fish and chips.”

Romanoff’s cool gaze flickered to Peggy as she pushed her own sweat soaked hair out of her eyes. She bent down to snag a thick hoodie off the ground, scooping it up gracefully before straightening. “I’m going to go shower up. Sharon somewhere around?”

“She’s on a phone call with the head of the CIA joint terrorist group over here. I think his name is Everett Ross? No relation to Betty or her father that she knows of.”

“Ahh, him. I know him. Bit of a jerk at first, but not a bad guy overall. I may go see if I can talk her into finding a chippy nearby, get food for the gang.” Unerringly, she glanced towards the house and the argument that was still brewing inside. “Might cool off some heads if we get food in them.”

“Agreed,” Peggy said as Romanoff bustled herself off inside of the house without further comment, noting that the other woman had rather neatly left her alone with Steve without awkwardness or comment. Peggy turned to him as he pulled from a bottle of water, nearly downing the entire thing in a go.

“So your training is going well,” she noted as he finished, nodding before swallowing with a gasp.

“There’s a lot to learn, but yeah, it’s going well. Who would have known hand-to-hand fighting would have gotten so advanced in just a few decades?”

“I don’t know if it’s advanced as it is now just more multinational, people incorporating different fighting styles, different ways of combat. I suppose when the world has spent the last century at war, they did get better at it.”

“That’s a depressing thought,” he observed, picking up his own jacket and slipping it on. “Here I thought we were fighting for peace.”

“I did too,” she admitted, softly, looking at the house. “Though, right now, I can’t even get Selvig and Stark to agree on what is going on.”

“Do they even know what is going on?”

“Selvig thinks he does,” Peggy replied, wrapping arms around herself against the chill. A breeze picked up, rustling through the branches and what was left of the autumn leaves overhead. “He is calling it a converging event, an anomaly when celestial bodies are aligned together in a way that affects gravitational alignments and...something. I couldn’t quite follow after that. It’s all madness, I won’t lie, and Tony is right to call it out, but in a world where gods are showing up with magic boxes, is it any more strange than that?”

“No,” Steve admitted, readily. “But you have to admit that it’s strange enough that you can hardly blame Stark for thinking it’s all crazy.”

“I know,” she groaned, tipping her head back to stare briefly at the darkening sky. “And Selvig’s mental state of late isn’t helping his cause.”

“I don’t think Stark’s is either.”

Peggy turned her head sharply towards his worried expression. “You noticed that too?”

“Yeah,” he finished off his bottle of water before elaborating. “He was late getting to us, said he’d been in his lab caught up in development and had just missed the communications till Pepper had come and knocked on the door.”

“He does get rather caught up in his work,” Peggy offered, having seen both father and son do it.

“Which is true, except JARVIS said he’d informed him that Cassie called him several times and he ignored it.”

Peggy wasn’t sure what surprised her more, Stark ignoring a notification from Cassandra or Steve actually utilizing JARVIS as a follow up on Stark. “Did JARVIS say why?”

“Only that Stark was in the middle of one of his latest suit projects. He’s got a new one, by the way.”

“He’s an engineer, he’s by nature iterative. I’m sure he’s always tinkering with something new. And his last two suits were heavily damaged during the battle. I’m sure he’s got two or three more hiding away as back-ups.”

“Hmmm,” Steve hummed by way of response. “I don’t know, it’s been a lot, the last six months. We all cope in different ways. Perhaps it’s just him...processing, and he really just was too focused to really pay attention when Cassie called him.”

“Maybe,” Peggy murmured. It wasn’t as if such childish behavior had been Stark’s MO, but at least in the time she had known him his behavior had shifted away from that sort of careless thoughtlessness. It was upsetting to think of him slipping into old, bad habits, not when so much was riding on him now.

“So...how was your trip north?”

It took Peggy a minute to process his careful question, shifting topics underneath her. “It was...enlightening, I suppose, but unfruitful.” In all the madness of her return to London and Foster’s disappearance with Thor, she hadn’t given anymore thought to Siobhan Haldane or to Darkmoor. “There doesn’t seem to be a connection between Darkmoor’s suspect past and the current situation with MST Pharmaceutical outside of a confluence of events and several leaps of assumption on my part.”

That bit stung the most to admit, she realized. Steve had tried warning her, had worried she was chasing demons from the past, and yet she had done it anyway. The minute she heard the words “Darkmoor” and “serum” in a sentence, she had been convinced there was something there to be found.

“Hey, we all get it wrong from time-to-time,” he reminded her, gently, a long arm wrapping around her shoulders to gently pull her into his side. She went, willingly, a tense part of her loosening as she buried her face into his broad chest and his jacket, the comfort of having him near a balm to her feelings of regret. Steve said nothing as he held her, placing a soft kiss on the top of her head, standing like a pillar of strength, a force of nature unswayed by the shifting winds of change around him. For long moments they stood like this, Peggy relishing the rare moment to just not be put together...as Sharon would put it, to not be okay.

“You know the worst part,” Peggy mumbled, finally, pulling away from his warmth enough to speak. “It’s that Siobhane Haldane is, from everything I can tell, a good person, stuck with the legacy of someone else and their bad life decisions. She’s trying to do the best she can to move forward, and I was determined to assume the worst.”

Steve, as ever, was non-judgmental. “You had a lot tied up all of that, with your brother, with that case. At least you realized it before any open accusations were made.”

“You mean before I made a fool of myself?” Peggy could feel her cheeks flush with her own embarrassment. “You know, it never occurred to me just how strong and amazing Sharon is until I met Siobhane Haldane. To carry all of that baggage with her, the good and the bad, and still go into SHIELD and try to do what is right...or even Harry and Maggie. None of them allowed the shadows of their past to define them moving forward.”

“And you?” His voice was a soft rumble beneath her hands against his chest.

“Mmmm...I don’t know. I did name a global intelligence agency after you and your shield.”

His soft laughter broke some of the reflectiveness of the moment. “That you did.”

Peggy’s chuckle faded as she considered. “You’re were right, though. I have been chasing ghosts for so long, shadow agencies of one group after another trying to tear down everything. And perhaps that is why I injected myself into Sharon’s investigation, why I was so quick to seek the worst out of Siobhan Haldane. My world fell apart once thanks to the Nazis and HYDRA and it feels like every time I turn around there is some other new threat: Leviathan, now this Mandarin and the Ten Rings. What if this keeps going on forever?”

“Then we will do what we always do; stand together and fight.” He spoke with all of the earnest, sincere confidence that only Steve Rogers could ever muster. And like always, Peggy believed that he would do just that, and what was more, that he would win.

“How do you do that,” she smiled up at him in the growing twilight.

“What,” he wondered, perfectly aware of what she meant, but looking innocent all the same.

“Find the exact right words to reassure me when I’m feeling morose?”

His broad shoulders rose, briefly, in his jacket. “You do the same for me, you know. We are team, we have each other’s back. We always have.”

That much was true, they always had and they always would.

“I suppose,” he said, softly, “we better go in and get the rest of the team on the same page.”

“I suppose,” Peggy agreed, somewhat reluctantly, wishing to spend a few more quiet moments with just the two of them together. As luck would have it, Darcy Lewis had other things in mind.

“Peggy,” the girl yelled out of the door leading back to the house. “Jane and Thor are back!”

With that, her all-too-brief interlude was ended.

“About time,” Peggy called back, all business once more. She spun from the shelter of Steve’s arms, marching into the house, Steve right behind. “Perhaps we can finally start making sense of all of this.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean you are putting me on hold?” Peggy stared at the glowing screen of her phone as whoever she was speaking to on the other end did just that. She counted to ten as she looked across her father’s study to where Sharon was on the line with Maria Hill and SHIELD manning reinforcements.

“They put you on hold again?” Sharon had already witnessed Peggy being put go through this three times.

“A potential disaster the likes of which makes New York look small and petty is happening here in the next twelve hours and I’ve been bounced to three different departments and I’ve yet to speak to anyone in charge at the Home Office.”

Maria Hill, on the other end of Sharon’s speaker phone, gave an inelegant snort that eloquently expressed all that she felt about Peggy’s situation. Clearly, Hill wasn't surprised.

“Well, if it’s any reassurance,” Sharon offered. “Chief Blevins from the office here has already rallied the metro police to be onsite at Greenwich. He has some insider contacts as he used to work there. Can’t really help on the larger government level.”

“I can see who I can call, Peggy,” Hill offered from her end. “Even if I have to go through back channels.”

“You would think that telling them I am with SHIELD and head up the Avengers, that would be enough for people to listen.”

Hills pointed silence and Sharon’s uncertain, speculative look spoke volumes to their thoughts on the situation. Peggy exhaled in mild frustration, ignoring the all-too-familiar pricks to her pride from those who refused to listen to her over the years. She silently tapped the glass on the giant red button to end the call, looking to her niece.

“Hill if you have contacts get through to the British government to have all hands on deck in the morning. Warn them we are dealing with wormholes, not unlike what we saw in New York, and to proceed with caution. Sharon, if you and Cassie can coordinate with Chief Blevins here in London with SHIELD personnel. Foster and Selvig feel that they will be converging on the Old Royal Naval College.”

“University of Greenwich,” Sharon corrected her.

“Whatever, that's where it is happening. Hill, Cassandra can help you with particulars on this.”

“I already have her on board,” the other woman assured her. “I’ll make some calls and have Agent Kam work with SHIELD personnel to get them coordinated with Captain Rogers.”

“Perfect,” Peggy nodded, feeling something at least was being accomplished. “Give me an update in an hour.”

“Got it,” both women said, as Sharon returned to her phone call.

Peggy left her in the study, moving out to the greater part of the house. Since Jane Foster and Thor’s arrival back, the entire team had been a buzz of activity. Over dinner, fetched by Romanoff and Sharon, they had broken up into their groups. Selvig had outlined the basic schematics for his devices, which were supposed to reverse the gravitational polarities of...well, something. It made sense to Foster and Stark, who had finally stopped arguing the point and begun thinking through best approaches. Already he had taken Selvig’s basic design and modified it in key ways that left Selvig and Foster impressed and Darcy Lewis fascinated. At the moment, Stark and Banner were leading a small production line in the dining room, the scene of so many of Amanda Carter’s dinner parties, now strew with electronic bits and pieces, the smell of solder strong as Stark, Foster, Banner, Betty, Darcy and even Ian were busy putting together the delicate electronics, all under Stark’s command. They worked quickly, only broken by the mild banter between Stark and Darcy, who seemingly had become allies in all of this, unsurprising given their personalities.

At the kitchen island sat Steve, Romanoff and Selvig, reviewing the layout of the old Royal Naval College...the University of Greenwich, now, she reminded herself. They spoke in low voices as they laid out their plans, working out strategic plans on where to place the devices based off of Selvig’s own understanding and schemes. Already Peggy could see that Steve and Romanoff worked together as a good pair, which privately came as a relief. It was hard to see Steve working with someone else. Knowing that he had someone watching his back, someone who balanced him out on the team, much as Banner did with Stark, was something of a relief.

That left only one person on the team left unaccounted for, and Peggy hadn’t seen him since he and Foster had returned. Thor had absented himself from much of the proceedings after dinner, and even then had been quiet and withdrawn, an attitude that felt strange on the Asgardian prince. In the flurry of planning since, he had slipped off, and now Peggy found herself wandering house looking for him. As large and boisterous as he was, it was surprising how well he hid himself. She ultimately found him in the last place she would have expected to see him, her own mother’s sitting room.

It was quiet in there at the moment, with everyone else in the house busy elsewhere. A single lamp had been turned on, but for the most part the room was dim. The god of thunder sat in one of the oversized, squashy chairs, quiet, without even the flat-screened television on, though it occurred to Peggy that he likely didn’t have those on Asgard and that he, much like herself and Steve, would perhaps not necessarily think of that right away. He was lost in whatever private thoughts he had, a grim and brooding expression on his face, one Peggy hadn’t seen she’d seen out of the gregarious man. He looked the worse for wear, his face scratched and bleeding, a fading bruise lining one cheekbone, with the sort of thousand-yard-stare that Peggy knew all too well from so many soldiers who had seen too much loss in too short of a time.

“You don’t have to talk,” Peggy offered, quietly, as she slipped in, catching Thor’s attention. “But I did want to check in on you. Can I get you something?”

Thor blinked at her owlishly in the dim light. “Uhh...no, thank you, Lady Margaret. It’s kind of you to offer, but I will be fine. I’ve had much worse in my lifetime than this.”

There was a false cheerfulness under his brave words, one that said he was trying desperately to put a good face on it, but wasn’t quite managing. “You don’t have to keep calling me Lady Margaret, you know. It’s not a title I actually have, and it was never a title I ever aspired to.”

For a moment, his charming smile peeked out, lightening his face, his bright, blue eyes crinkling. “I know, Captain Rogers explained it to me, but Stark finds it amusing, I suppose, and in my world a woman of your stature would be referred to with such respect.”

“Which I am indeed honored by, but my friends call me Peggy, and after what we have been through, I would like to consider you a friend.”

That clearly made sense to him. He nodded affably. “All right, Peggy it is.”

“Good.” She perched herself on the edge of one of the couch cushions adjacent to him. “So...this Aether, that was the power inside of Jane, correct?”

He stared blankly for a second, as if pulling the information from far away. “Yes...at least that is what Father said.” He paused, thoughtfully. “He said it was one of a group of ancient relics from the dawn of our universe. The others he said were stones, while the Aether was fluid, shifting. It was part of the story of the dark elves, that much I remember.”

“Stones? Like...rocks?”

“No, like gemstones as I recall from the stories. But the Aether was different, it could take on any shape, because in the end it is what holds reality together, or something to that effect. It was a powerful object. Father said that Malekith used it in the dawn of time to undo the universe and return it to darkness. I suppose that’s what he is trying to do now.”

Another powerful relic that somehow found itself here on Earth. Peggy thought of Loki’s warning months before. “Did you ask your father about the Tesseract or Thanos?”

Again, he was silent for a long moment, lost in reverie. “Yes...briefly, I admit. I was rather caught up in some of the mess Loki left behind. Father didn’t know of him, and Loki isn’t…” He paused, pained. “Wasn’t speaking of it.

One didn’t need to be psychic to see how those words ached as he said him, but it only clicked with Peggy then how he said it and what it meant. He and Foster had said nothing of what happened, only that Malekith had attacked and that he now had the Aether and was planning to use it during this convergence. Now, by himself, Thor was left at loose ends, picking up the pieces of whatever occurred.

“Thor, what happened on Asgard?”

He shrugged, helplessly, in that way people had when they weren’t sure how they felt. “Oh, you know...Malekith attacked. He had been clever, sent in one of his own in a group of prisoners captured on Vanaheim. No one noticed. I suppose he knew the Aether was there, that it was active once more and traced it back to us...to Jane. The imposter raised up a rebellion in the dungeons and got out, lowered our defenses and allowed the Dark Elves to come in. He...then went looking for Jane, who was with my mother.”

Peggy listened, a sick, aching feeling creeping within her as Thor spoke, already suspecting where this story was going to go.

“Malekith got to the palace and found my mother and Jane together.” A brittle sort of smile twisted Thor’s agonized expression. “You know, my mother knew magic. She was raised by witches and was very powerful in her own right. She taught Loki everything he knew. She cast a spell to hide Jane and distract Malekith. We tried to get to her, but it was too late. I was just steps away...if I had been faster, maybe I might have stopped it. I rounded the corner just as they thrust the sword through. I hit Malekith with lightning, though! I think I took half of his face with it. He and his henchman got away, though. By that point, it was too late.”

Peggy watched the grieved man who sat, torn between his clear anguish and the need to make sense of any of this. His story left her shocked and saddened by the unforeseen change in events that had occurred in only the matter of a day. “Thor...I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t know if there is anything to say,” he replied, tiredly, shaking his head. “Malekith didn’t get Jane, but he threatened Asgard. My father, in his grief, decided that the only thing he could do was to use Jane as a means to draw Malekith and have him bring the fight to Asgard, to fight with every last man, to stop Malekith in his schemes. Asgard, whose defenses were already damaged, where the city was filled with people, innocents who would have been put at risk or killed in the conflict, and that’s if Malekith didn’t get his hands on the Aether and then used it to invade the Nine Realms. It would have meant the deaths of thousands, people who he was sworn to protect.”

He looked to Peggy, sadness etched in the exhaustion on his face. “I know my father loved my mother...deeply so. She was dear to him...dear to all of us. But I couldn’t allow that, not to our people. So, I defied him. I turned to the one other person outside of father I knew who loved our mother the best and who would want his own revenge in her death, and didn’t care how it got done.”

Peggy knew in a second who he meant and why he spoke as if he were justifying it to her. “You freed Loki, didn’t you?”

“He was the only one I knew who was cunning enough to think creatively for the solution and ruthless enough to do what had to be done. It was treason of the highest order, of course, but that or the deaths of all of the Einherjar and most of Asgard just to avenge Mother. She wouldn’t have wanted that.”

A soft, aching smile crept up his face, briefly. “Besides, she loved Loki beyond all measure and he loved her. I know he would do what it took to seek vengeance for her, without question. I could not trust my brother with much, but his rage and his pain at Mother's death, that I could trust. We created a plan, my friends and I. We got Loki out of prison, snuck Jane out of the palace, and found a way out of Asgard and to Svartálheim, the Dark Elves home. The plan was simple, Loki and I had pulled this trick a thousand times over in our youth. He used to enchant my hand to make it look as if it were cut off. Terrified our nurse every time, but it worked here. He’d do what he always does, try to earn Malekith’s trust, give him what he wanted, meanwhile I would wait for the opportunity to strike. We almost made it work, but...the Aether…I didn’t account for how strong it was or how Malekith had manipulated it. Father told me, but I didn’t listen. I blew it up into shards and thought that was the end of it, but Malekith...absorbed it, I suppose is the best description. Then he left his men to finish us off. Loki...he fought well...bravely. I hadn’t thought...I feared he hated me so much he would simply just allow them to kill me, but he didn’t. He died saving me...saving Jane.”

He fell silent then, lost in regret, anguish and loss.

Peggy could not say that she knew Thor more than just in a vague way, through their brief encounters when he was on Earth fighting some sort of threat. Unlike Steve or even Stark, she didn’t understand this strange, alien god, his life or personality. But what little she did know of him, it was clear that he was a man who had led something of a charmed existence; handsome, strong, brave, and perhaps a touch arrogant. Peggy doubted he had anything ever rock his life until he was banished to Earth. Now, in the space of a day, he had lost his mother and his brother, two pillars of his life. That was something that Peggy could understand very well indeed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gently, her heart breaking for him. “For what it is worth, I am so sorry.”

Thor, the god of thunder, a prince of another planet, a man who was mind-bogglingly strong and physically imposing, looked as if he might just cry at her words. “Thank you, La...Peggy. Thank you for your kind words.”

Peggy grasped for what else she could say to him. “I know...we both know what Loki did here. I know he was your brother and that it must have been difficult for you. Perhaps in the end there is some comfort in knowing that despite all of his protestations to the contrary, Loki did care for you after all.”

“I had hoped he did.” Thor's admission wavered as he said it, thick with emotion. “We were close as children, once. I mean, we always had our petty rivalries, as brothers do, but I truly loved him. Even when the truth of his parentage came out, I didn’t care. He was the companion of my youth, my brother. I thought that we would always be together, that he would be by my side. He was always the craftier one of the two of us, the smarter one, certainly. I always believed we could have made a truly great pair, bringing peace to the Nine Realms. But things changed. Maybe I was too...arrogant, caught up in myself and my glory. Maybe I didn’t listen enough to him or give enough heed when my mother said I should show more kindness to him or to bring him along in my battles. I don’t know. We grew apart, and then when I stormed off to Jotunheim and got banished, everything about his past came out. I wasn’t there, then, to know of how it happened. Mother told me some. Knowing their temperaments, I can guess that Loki was angry, hurt, suspicious and that Father was defending himself from the position that he, as the All-Father, knew what was best.”

There was a hint of annoyance in Thor’s words, tempered by his loss, the awareness of his own family’s faults and yet the pain of knowing where those faults ultimately led. “Loki lashed out, tried to prove to Father he was a worthy son, as if Father didn’t think him worthy already. In the end he made a bad job of it, nearly destroying so many lives in the process. That seems to be the constant theme with those two, I suppose. They are both so stubborn, so unwilling to yield to any opinion not their own that they sacrifice lives all to prove themselves superior and right. Neither of them can ever say they were wrong, ever apologize for anything they have done, and for what purpose? Loki might have been adopted, but he was more my father’s son than...than I am, apparently. If Father were truly wise, he’d be here right now, by my side, with the might of the Asgardian forces, stopping Malekith. Instead, we are hoping on the ingenuity of…”

He trailed off, thinking for a moment, heaving a watery chuckle that dropped an octave as it tumbled from his lips. “I suppose they are Earth’s mightiest heroes, at that. Perhaps they will do what even my grandfather couldn’t do and destroy Malekith for good.”

For all of their sakes, Peggy hoped they did. “Does your father even know Malekith is coming here?”

“I doubt so as he was planning on bringing them to Asgard. I don’t know if he’s followed the trail here yet, though, perhaps. He knows I have Jane and my surpassing love for the place. Perhaps he’s gone to Svartálheim to look for us. I can’t be sure.”

And with that, he fell into silence, morose and pained, broken only by the murmuring of others in different parts of the house. Peggy had always been vaguely aware of the drama of the Asgardian royal family. After New York and Loki’s failed attempt to conquer the planet it was hard not to be aware of some of it. Hearing how deeply it went somehow felt very human and rather relatable.

“You know, I grew up in this house,” Peggy offered by way of somewhat awkward conversation. “I mean, it’s my family’s home, the Carters' that is.”

Thor, roused from his own somber thoughts, blinked, briefly glancing around the room and out to the now darkened front garden. “It is nice, very green here.”

“Thank you,” she replied with a hint of a laugh. “My older brother and I grew up here. The pair of us were such good mates, despite the age difference. He was four years older, which I suppose by our human standards is ancient when we are children. He was smart, charming, and brilliant, and he believed in me. At a time when the world wanted to tell me no because I was a woman, he said I could be and do anything. Just like you, I thought that the two of us would be together forever, having adventures, being heroes. But then life happened and he made choices, ones that even now I struggle to understand.”

Unsurprisingly, Siobhane Haldane came to mind, and her history with her own father. All of their families joined together by the fact that they all had made decisions for one reason or the other, thinking that the choices was right, or good, or would make them a hero. Instead it only caused grief, pain and destruction. Peggy knew well the pain, hurt and disappointment that came with those decisions. She had felt it with Michael, Siobhan with her father, and now Thor with his family. They had all lost because of it.

“How did you make sense of it, then,” Thor asked, his deep voice a rumble in the quiet that had fallen between them.

“I didn’t, not for a long time. Maybe not till a day or two ago.” She considered the strange week she had been having. “My brother did something that ultimately hurt a great deal of people. He thought he was doing something good, that he was being a hero. In the end, he was only causing more pain. I was angry at him, so angry! I never got the chance to work things out with him, for various reasons. I know he changed, that he repented of his transgressions, that he became a different man, and yet I never got a chance to have that talk with him. I wish I had. I know you aren’t asking for it, but perhaps, if you allow for a friend to give you advice, if you can, learn to forgive your brother. What is done is done, and the past can’t be changed. Perhaps, given time, Loki might have changed, like my brother did. Perhaps he wouldn’t have. Who is to say? But holding on to the resentment of what he did serves no one, certainly not the dead. Let your brother’s memory rest in the good times you had together, not just the more difficult times later on. Remember that despite it all, you did love him and still do.”

He took her words in silently, pondering them for a while before responding. “And what of my father? He is not known to be a forgiving man, especially not when his authority is questioned.”

“As to that, perhaps be patient with him. Tell him the truth of why you did it. Grief does horrible things to a person, and your father is one whether he admits to it or not. He lost a wife and son, you lost a mother and brother. The only two who could possibly understand that loss is each other. Maybe forgive him for his short-sightedness in the moment. He is still your father and I am sure he loves you.”

“Maybe,” he replied, not sounding as certain. “You know, those are words I feel my mother would say to me, were she here.”

Peggy didn’t know Thor’s mother, but from the love in his voice and the admiration he clearly had for her, she must have been a great lady. “I’m honored to be so compared. I’m no queen, and my mother would have been the first to tell you I am no lady, but I do sometimes have the odd bit of wisdom, even if I just figured out much of this myself over the last few days.”

“The wisdom may be new, but it is well timed.” An echo of Thor’s sunny smile flickered to life, briefly, melting into a much more stern mien almost immediately. “Malekith will not be easy to destroy. Do you think this plan of Erik’s will work?”

Peggy honestly couldn’t be sure herself. “I don’t know if we have a better option. That said, we have most of the team here and a room full of the greatest minds on Earth working on this. I would say that if we succeed, your father will owe us greatly for it.”

“I don’t disagree with that. My father always did think highly of Midgard. I suspect, though he never will admit it, he’s as fond of it as I am.”

“Wish he were fond enough to take more action here when there is a threat.” Honestly, the hands-off way in which Odin, King of Asgard treated his so-called realm, it was small wonder that the people of Earth stopped worshipping him long ago.

“That I won’t deny.” Thor frowned back towards the door and the voices beyond. “I suppose I’ve hidden away from this planning long enough. I’ve brought the threat to your door, I should be the one helping to plan for it.”

“Steve is with Erik and Natasha in the kitchen right now discussing it.”

Now given a purpose, Thor moved to stand, Peggy guessed to make his way to where Steve and Selvig were working together.

“Thor,” Peggy called to him as he rose, tall and imposing in the dim light. “I am not saying you have to, but if you ever need, Steve might be someone to talk to about all of this. He’s been through the losses you’ve had, his mother and the man he called his brother. I suppose I am just saying that you aren’t alone in this. He is someone who would be happy to listen.”

For a moment, the poor man didn’t look like he knew what to say. Peggy knew one thing, however, he was clearly very touched.

“Thank you, Peggy, for your kindness. Perhaps, when all of this is done, I will speak with the captain, warrior to warrior, and seek his advice. He seems a good man.”

“He is,” Peggy assured him.

With that, Thor gave her a sort of courtly bow of his head and moved to find the others. Peggy remained in her mother’s sitting room for long moments, thinking of Michael, Ranulph Haldane, a Loki and all the mistakes that people made and the lies they told themselves when seeking right and glory.

Chapter Text

They all gathered: the science team, Steve and Romanoff, Sharon, even Jake Jameson, their pilot. They were all bleary eyed and somewhat haggard around the dining room cluttered in electrical components and several half-finished coffee mugs. The sun had just risen silvery gray outside, and judging from Darcy’s readouts the situation around Greenwich was becoming dangerous. They all stared at a map of the university there, spread among the detritus of the evening. Steve took the lead at the head of the table.

“We all know the situation. Selvig and Foster have pinpointed the anomaly that is creating these wormholes, zeroing in on the general vicinity of the university. Selvig, Foster and Stark have created these devices.”

Steve waved a hand at a pile of the strange, beeping electronics on poles laying across several dining room chairs and Peggy’s mother’s sideboard. She wasn’t particularly sure what they did, only that Selvig, Foster and Stark had long argued over them.

Stark took his cue from Steve, leaning lazily in one of the free chairs in the room, exhaustion evident on his pale face. “So the point of this exercise, as I understand it, Dr. Selvig and Dr. Foster, is that these things originally detected gravitational weak spots, basically places where reality was thin. This seems to be an indication of a wormhole, correct?”

“Yep,” Foster confirmed, not looking up from her cell phone.

“Right,” Stark continued, running a hand across his haggard face. “So the deal is this, each of these bad boys puts out enough of an electromagnetic signal to reverse the direction of the wormhole, essentially, with the idea that if something comes through, we can ultimately shoot it back. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s enough to keep us from being overwhelmed by whatever is on the other side.”

He paused, for a moment, shaking himself visibly, before he reached for his own phone, a sleek piece of glass without a body, far more advanced than nearly everyone else’s phone in the room. “The plan is that everyone on the ground who isn’t a direct fighter is going to be setting these babies up around the main campus area. They are all hard wired via satellite link to JARVIS on the other end. Say hello, J!”

“Good morning, everyone,” JARVIS’ smooth voice sounded particularly at home in that dining room, even if it was emanating from Stark’s phone. Peggy found herself smiling despite herself.

“JARVIS will be coordinating from the skies. You all have Darcy’s quick and dirty app on your phone, right?”

“The name of my future autobiography, by the way,” the girl preened, earning the barest winces from most of the group at her clear double entendre. Only Foster groaned audibly, while Selvig grimaced ,and poor Thor looked rather confused by it all. Only Stark found it amusing, holding up a hand for Darcy to slap, clearly appreciative of her joke.

“Give me some credit, I’ve been up all night,” she shrugged at everyone else, rubbing at purpled eyes under her thick glasses.

“I thought it was funny,” Ian whispered beside her.

“Anyway!” Stark spoke over the unfortunate Ian, shooting him a deadly side-eye. “You all have Darcy’s app on your phones. You press the big red button, whichever one of these devices you are standing near will be signaled, a wormhole off world is created. Be careful! You get caught in the signal, you get sucked into the wormhole. Best case scenario, it opens a block over from campus. Worst case scenario, you end up on another planet and we can’t get to you. If one of us sees you, we can open another wormhole, hopefully, to get you out, but no guarantees that will work, so it’s best not to end up somewhere that a...what’s the grotesque animal you mentioned last visit, Your Highness?”

The room all looked to Thor, the only member of royalty in the room. Thor, quiet through much of this, frowned briefly in thought. “Errr...a bilgesnipe?”

“Yeah, one of those! Best not to end up where one of them can eat you.”

With Stark’s warning ringing in their ears, Steve took back the reins of the conversation. “With that in mind, you are all broken up into teams. You each will have a spot on the campus you will be overseeing. You will get a device and you will be responsible for setting it up. All it takes is hammering it in the ground somewhere that it isn’t easy to knock over. The objective is to have these ready and to hold them off until this convergence event passes. How long do we have to keep them busy?”

Foster looked up from her phone, meeting Steve’s question. “About eight to nine minutes, long enough for the planets to shift their alignments. That will break the anomalies and things will return to normal. Then you can send Malekith and everyone back to Svartálheim or wherever the hell you want to send them.”

“I heard hell is a great place this time of year,” Romanoff quipped, dryly.

Steve waved over the various red dots on the map, pointing to each one by one. “Selvig and Foster, you are overseeing this operation, so you'll set up shop in the tower of Queen Mary Court. You will be our physical eyes and ears on the ground outside of JARVIS. Darcy and Ian, you two will be positioned in between Queen Mary Court and King William Court. Try to get your devices on the other side so we have full coverage.”

“We’re on it, Captain, sir!” Darcy sketched a small, jaunty salute. Ian beside her looked as if he was just stunned that Captain America actually deigned to speak with him. He managed a confirming nod at Steve’s patiently pointed look.

“Good! Bruce, you think you are good at handling this?”

Banner shrugged, not certain, but sort of helpless in the face of it. “If I’m not, then we are in a situation where you want the big guy out anyway, so either way, probably for the best I’m there.”

Steve looked to Betty, who nodded. “If he’s there, so am I.”

“Good, I’ll keep you two up top near Darcy and Ian. If things get nasty, and they might, we have the Hulk in the back pocket to keep them penned in. Foster, if it gets to that point, I need you and Betty coordinating to make sure that if he’s caught in a wormhole that we get him back, okay.”

“Got it,” they said in unison, looking at each other. Betty and Foster had long worked together, so there was no fear with those two coordinating.

“The rest of the devices downfield will be handled by Peggy, Sharon, Romanoff and myself.” He swept a finger down the map that covered the area between the two courts all the way down to the Thames. “Meanwhile, Jameson, I want you in the sky with Stark.”

Jake, who had only gotten sucked into this because he had piloted Bruce and Betty in, hardly seemed phased by Steve’s orders. He was a fully qualified SHIELD agent who had fought at the Battle of New York onboard the Chimera. He was rather used to this sort of madness by this point, Peggy surmised.

“You got it, Captain,” he assured easily from his perch next to Sharon, holding up his coffee mug in salute. Sharon leaned over to whisper something to him, but whatever it was, Peggy didn’t catch it.

“Stark is in charge of the air control, just like New York. I need you coordinating with the SHIELD and RAF forces that are showing up. Make sure they avoid whatever is open in the skies.”

Stark only nodded, face set in grim, hard lines. “Got it.”

“Thor,” Steve called on him last, the main part of the entire equation. “When Malekith shows up, you are his target. Pen him in as much as you can between these devices. Once we can get him near one, whoever is closest, punch it so JARVIS can activate the wormhole.”

“Like playing Whack-A-Mole on Coney Island,” Stark intoned, but without much humor.

“I would rather be playing Whack-A-Mole on Coney Island,” Steve jested, briefly. “Everyone clear on the particulars?”

They all nodded, even Ian, who was wide-eyed, but as determined as everyone else in the room. Poor fellow, he signed up as an unpaid intern’s unpaid intern, now he was suddenly an Avenger. If he survived this, Peggy decided, they would have to do something for him.

Steve straightened, glancing around the various faces in the room, resting finally on Peggy’s. Even from where she stood on the other side, she could see that same determination, the same resolve to do what was needed that he always had. That part of Steve never changed.

“This isn’t the first rodeo for most of us,” he said, his gaze landing on Darcy and Ian somewhat wryly, knowing it was for them. “We went through this six months ago. We did it then, we can do it now. You got your assignments. Watch out for each other’s backs. If you go down, let us know, we’ll help. We are a team, you don’t have to go this alone.”

Peggy wasn’t sure, but she suspected the last bit was for Stark. Even if it wasn’t, she could still see him flinch and grimace at that.

“Get your comm devices and suit up,” Steve ordered. “We’ll be heading out in twenty.”

Everyone moved then, gathering devices and moving to prepare to head out. Ian leaned towards Darcy and asked in a rather loud whisper what the captain meant when he said suit up. Peggy grimaced, wondering if it was wise bringing civilians into all of this. After all, they knew nothing of this...dark elf? Even saying it made Peggy wince with the vague absurdity of it. Despite the fact it sounded farcical, she knew it wasn’t and knew this Malekith was dangerous in the extreme. Putting Darcy and Ian in this was begging for them to be hurt, and yet, she also suspected that if she tried to keep them out, particularly Darcy, they would only end up in harm's way anyway.

Stark seemed to be reading her mind. “We bringing the intern and her boyfriend in on this mission?”

“Are you going to be the one to tell her no?”

Stark looked as if he would very much like to. “She might hack into JARVIS if I tried.”

Peggy only arched a pointed look at him.

“I’m just saying, she’s a civilian, so is the other kid. I mean, Foster and Ross are one thing, this isn’t their first time, but a couple of snot-nosed twenty-somethings who haven’t seen a bit of battle?”

“Is this the point when I point out to you that you are technically an untrained civilian who throws himself into conflict?”

Stark stopped, his expression pursing as he realized that she indeed had a point. “Touché, I will grant you I am neither a trained SHIELD operative or a trained soldier. Still, I at least have a suit. Those kids have nothing.”

“All we need them to do is get those devices in and watch from shelter, otherwise the heavy stuff will be handled by the rest of us.” Peggy didn’t want to admit she had the same misgivings as he did. “We will be fine, Tony.”

His frank expression back spoke volumes. “Maybe...maybe we get lucky today. I’m just saying it’s an awful risk to play anytime someone steps out there. They think they are indestructible until they realize that they aren’t.”

With that he quietly rose, gathering up tools and loose bits of equipment. Peggy watched him in silent thought. Stark wasn’t usually the type to worry about such things as, or at least hadn’t been. He had led a devil-may-care life up to this point, driving faster, flying higher, throwing himself at danger as if he were indestructible, so convinced that he could outwit and outmaneuver himself around death. Now he was suddenly concerned about that sort of thing?

Peggy left him to his clean up, pushing aside her worries for now. They would keep till after they had finished this...if they finished this, she reminded herself grimly. That possibility always hung there, much as she hated to think of it. It was with that somber reminder that she went upstairs to get ready.

Twenty minutes later they climbed aboard the quinjet piloted by Jake, taking off from the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Several dog walkers and morning joggers stopped to stare at them as they went, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the site, unaware of the very real danger that lay not far away.

“Where did we land with evacuating the campus and the surrounding area,” Peggy asked Sharon, both of them watching the people staring at them on the ground below.

“Classes were cancelled and students were advised to stay away from campus. The police and SHIELD have cordoned off the area and have removed residence to shelters. I’m not saying there won’t be stupid kids there with cell phones hoping to catch the Avengers, but at least there will be far fewer than there could be.”

That was something, at least. “They finally took us seriously?”

“Well, they took Hill seriously. All she had to do was mention ‘New York’ and ‘wormholes’ and people started taking her phone calls.” Sharon rolled her eyes, mildly, before settling into a worried frown. “Do you think this plan will work?”

Honestly, they weren’t precisely in a position for it not to work. “It’s better than anything else we have. Foster and Selvig know what they are talking about.”

Sharon nodded, gravely. It was several more moments before she spoke. “You know, I just came here on the case of a terrorist. I didn’t expect to be an Avenger saving the world.”

There was a hint of Sharon’s wry humor there. Peggy found herself smiling despite herself. “I don’t think any of us expect to find ourselves in these moments, but here we are, bloody heroes saving the world...again.”

“You're used to it at least.”

“What, after all those stories you heard growing up, now you aren’t eager to follow in my footsteps?”

“Somehow your adventures on Mars pale in comparison to your adventures with real aliens.” Sharon’s chuckle was edged with disbelief. “I don’t know, I suppose I’m more used to the cloak-and-dagger sort of adventures, being a bit more discreet in saving the world.”

“I don’t know,” Peggy said, nudging her niece gently. “I think that there are many ways to save the world, not all of them have to involve superpowers or a flying suit. That doesn’t make you any less of a hero.”

“Says the woman who traveled through time?”

“Yeah, well, outside of that I have no more power than you,” she reminded her. “I suppose if anything, this week has taught me that sometimes it’s just enough to choose to be different and do the right thing, no matter the sins or the failures of the past.”

Whatever worries Sharon might have felt, Peggy’s words clearly resonated. She nodded, determination bright in her dark eyes. “Yeah, I suppose that is what a hero does. You stand up and choose to do what is right.”

If Michael were alive today, Peggy thought, he would be ridiculously proud of his granddaughter.

“We’re coming up on Greenwich,” Jake Jameson spoke through the comm devices from the cockpit. “Where do you want me, Cap?”

“Find a good space to park long enough to unload everyone.” Steve looked around the cabin, seemingly filled shoulder to shoulder with people. “Everyone ready?”

All of them nodded, even poor Ian, bless him. The lad had more guts than all of them today. Here Peggy was bucking up her niece, a SHIELD operative. The boy was here and had never seen anything like any of this in his life!

The quinjet circled near a car park close to campus. It was blessedly empty, as the campus was evacuated. Peggy could see in the distance a ring of police and SHIELD vehicles, red lights flashing. The aircraft landed nearly in the middle of the empty space, setting down without a bump. The group disembarked, devices in hand, looking towards Steve for direction before heading off to their separate objectives.

“You got your locations. We are playing this all by ear, we don’t know how this Malekith will appear or what he will do, so be smart. If you aren’t a fighter, stay as much out of the way as possible, we don’t want anyone getting hurt. Stay on the comms, let us know when you are in trouble. Stark?”

From out of the craft came Stark’s voice. “Already on it!”

Without any warning, a red and gold streak tore out of the back of the quinjet, zipping high overhead. Darcy cursed, loudly, as she, Jane and Ian ducked. Steve frowned mildly but said nothing, instead looking back to the quinjet. “Jameson, I want you up there keeping eyes out.”

Through the comm devices, he gave an affirmative. “Yes, sir!”

“Thor?”

Thor looked to the skies. “I think it’s best to stay up high, but out of sight. Let Malekith think he is only dealing with the likes of you before I swoop in.”

Steve considered and nodded. “Let us know if you see anything. You got a comm device?”

Thor tapped his ear a bit warily and nodded.

“We’ll see you on the ground when this this guy arrives.”

With a firm nod, Thor moved far enough away to swing his hammer, the leather at its end spinning around his wrist as the air picked up around them. Like a shot, he was gone, up into the air behind Stark. Jake soon followed in the quinjet to hover high above them.

Steve turned to the rest. “Get your devices set up. Foster, let us know when you get a sign that things are getting hot.”

“Got it,” she nodded, grabbing Selvig’s arm. He nodded, looking to Betty, Bruce, Darcy and Ian. That half of the group left, making for the inner most part of the campus courtyard to set up between the King William and Queen Mary Courts. That left the lower part of the courtyard to Peggy, Steve, Sharon and Romanoff.

“So how we tackling this, Cap?” Romanoff had two devices under each arm, already ready to move at Steve’s command.

“You and I will take north, Sharon and Peggy south, one of these,” he hefted up one device easily, “towards the center of the courtyard along the outer edge, one to the towards the top and bottom. Once they are in place, move the hell out of the way.”

“Got it,” Sharon nodded, looking to Peggy. “You ready?”

Peggy couldn’t help the coy smile she sent Steve’s way. “See you on the other side of this.”

Just like in the old days, a hint of his boyish smile crept through, that all too familiar, intense gaze that he always had just for her in their missions in days of old.

“Gees, enough! We get it, you two couldn’t be more obvious if you tried,” Romanoff grumbled, nudging Steve with a foot at his shin, but without any malice or annoyance. “Save it for when we win!”

Steve chuckled, heading off with Romanoff towards the part of the campus closest to the Thames. Peggy turned to Sharon, who eyed her with a similar expression to Romanoff’s.

“Honestly, you are as bad as Foster and Thor,” she said firmly.

“Shut it,” Peggy shot back, rolling her eyes, her cheeks flushed in the damp and cold as she began stomping off to the middle of the main campus area, Sharon’s laughter ringing behind her.

Chapter Text

It was Stark who gave them the first warning it had begun.

“Guys!” His voice was an urgent warning on their comms. “There are big holes in the sky that are looking eerily familiar right now!”

Ignoring the note of panic in his voice, Peggy looked up to the slate gray, misty skies above to find herself staring at a whole filled with a perfectly lush, green and beautiful landscape somewhere.

“What is that,” she whispered, softly, transfixed at the sight of it.

“Probably a different world,” Foster replied with pointed frankness.

“We all set on the ground,” Steve demanded from his position just below Peggy on the courtyard.

“We’re all set up here,” Foster assured him. “You guys covered, Bruce?”

“Everyone is good here,” Bruce assured in his dry rumble.

“Carters, how about you?”

Peggy looked to Sharon across the courtyard. She signaled with her thumb up. “We are set up here, Captain,” Peggy assured him.

“Romanoff and I are go. Stark, Jameson, any sign?”

Stark was quiet on the comms. Peggy frowned, looking upwards in the sky to see if she could see him. There was no sign of his flashy red and gold armor, but she could see Jake in the quinjet in the distance, hovering past the towers where everyone else was camped.

“No aerial yet, Cap, but we got SHIELD and RAF forces alert and waiting at your signal.”

There was a beat of silence before Steve confirmed. “Copy that. Keep your eyes peeled and your…”

“Cap!” Romanoff’s voice was sharp, causing Peggy to turn up towards the river where she could see the petite form of Romanoff. She was pointing in the distance to something on the water, something...shimmering.

“What the hell,” Sharon whispered.

“You guys seeing this,” Steve asked, clearly not believing what he was seeing himself.

“It’s a Svartálfar warship,” Thor explained, his deep, rumbling voice dark on the devices in their ears. “It has cloaking technology that allows it to mask itself. It’s likely been here since before we arrived.”

“What’s he want,” Darcy asked, softly and more than a bit afraid.

“This is the convergence, ground zero for it,” Selvig popped in. “From here, all those portals will align and he can reach every one of those realms.”

“With the Aether in hand, he can change the reality of the Nine Realms to whatever he wants,” Thor added. “He can remove the light and leave the entire universe in darkness.”

As they spoke, the ship began to move.

“Uhhh, guys,” Romanoff called, already moving further upfield. “That thing is coming towards us and it is huge!”

The shimmer in front of them began to shiver and ripple. In the murky gray waters of the Thames, Peggy could see something cutting through the currents, the waters churning as above it, what looked like a floating skyscraper began to hover towards them.

“We’re on the move,” Steve yelped, as Peggy saw him running from the courtyard and towards the building behind him. She moved to do the same. It was just as well, as the giant tower had made it to the banks of the river, dragging through the earth, concrete and wrought iron, like a plow through a field. It continued up the courtyard of the university campus, tearing through brick, stone and sod, peeling up pavers in the ground as if they were strips of bark, crushing the large statue of King George II in its wake. Like a giant sailing ship cutting through the waves, it moved towards the center of campus, towering over them all, an alien construct of cold, black and silver metal, taller than any of the venerable Georgian buildings around it. It finally came to a stop, tall and terrible, just between the two towers of King William and Queen Mary, hulking above them. In its wake, a great, dark furrow of dark, rich earth lay like an open wound in what had once been pristine grass, brick and concrete.

“Everyone okay,” Steve barked? A chorus of assurances followed, as Peggy loosed a relieved breath.

“Peggy?” There was a slight edge as he snapped her name.

“Here, am fine, Captain. Just...not believing what I am seeing.”

“You and me both,” Banner muttered on his end of the line.

Steve ignored their banter. “You all know your jobs. Keep eyes out for anything moving towards you. Thor?”

“Malekith is moving down. I will go to meet him.” The Asgardian Prince spoke with the sort of threat that said that he had a debt that he very much wished to be paid against this creature. This Malekith had taken the life of his mother and his brother. Peggy hoped that vengeance wouldn’t blind him so much as to be ineffective.

“Keep him occupied while we handle the rest,” Steve ordered. “Stark?”

Again, there was radio silence on the other end. Heart in her throat, Peggy looked to the skies, wondering just what had happened to Tony. Above them, at various heights and in various places Peggy could see portals of all sizes appear, like little windows into other worlds. Had the stakes not been so dire, she would have found it beautiful, fascinating, to see an entire universe of people out there. Stark had warned them about opening wormholes, however, and was wary himself. He couldn’t have gone through one of those by accident, could he?

“Jameson, do you see Stark?”

There was a brief pause, Peggy imagined that Jake was looking for Stark’s familiar form in the quickly crowded skies. “I don’t see him. Maybe he’s having some sort of technical issues and his comms are down.”

Unusual for Tony Stark to have anything as simple as that happen to him. Steve took it in stride, easily maneuvering around the situation. “Jameson, have air forces waiting to take out that ship if necessary and any of its friends coming in with reinforcements. Be careful of those wormholes.”

“Got it,” Jake replied. From the direction where the quinjet hovered, Peggy could see the singular form and flowing red cape of Thor as he swooped into the upper courtyard.

“Eyes up, people,” Steve barked. Peggy had her phone in one hand, the app Darcy had created.. Around the leg of her serviceable trousers she had wrapped her thigh holster, uncaring as to how ridiculous it looked, as it was easier to get to her weapon, ready if she needed. She stood, wary, watching the proceedings carefully.

“Remember,” Steve cautioned them all. “We only have to keep them preoccupied for ten minutes. Thor will keep the main guy distracted, the rest of you, do what you can.”

The crackle of lightning in the air told them all that it had begun.

Peggy couldn’t precisely see what Thor was up to where he was at, but within seconds a body went flying through the air, knocking into one of the elegant columns of the Queen Mary building. It crumbled as whatever it is shot through several like a cannonball, as Mjölnir went flying back to its owner.

“Guys,” Betty called over the comms. “They are heading this way!”

Steve was already redirecting them. “Romanoff, Sharon, Peggy, we need to get up there and distract some of them away.”

“On it,” Peggy replied, breathlessly, at the same time as Sharon. From across the ruined lawn she could see the bright head of her niece making a break for the action further in. Peggy rushed to follow suit.

“Careful,” Foster yelped. “I’m giving these things a try!”

Even as Peggy came into view of what was happening behind the massive ship, she could see a group of them making their way to where Betty, Bruce, and the two interns were hiding, near the darkened and weather worn stone of one of the buildings. The creatures looked vaguely humanoid, with long, silvery hair plaited down their backs in intricate braids. Their silver armor was uniform, and as one turned to scan the courtyard she could see the plain, lifeless masks they wore, like the smooth, perfect face of a doll. It was frankly more than a bit terrifying.

“Jane,” Darcy yelped over the comms.

“Hang on,” she called back, as all of the sudden one of the devices closest to where Foster and Selvig were hiding lit up, blue bands of energy opening. In the blink of an eye, a quarter of the forces on the ground disappeared.

“It works,” Jane crowed, happily.

“How did you do that,” Darcy demanded.

“When the gravitational fields interact with weak spots between worlds, creating…”

“Enough with the physics lesson, Jane,” Banner cut in. “We got incoming.”

Someone must have hit something, as one of the other devices went off, taking with it another swath of the strange creatures...and, as it turned out, Banner, Betty, Ian and Darcy as well.

“Bloody hell,” Peggy swore, her heart in her throat.

“Sorry,” Foster yelped. “They’re fine, they’re...just a few blocks over. They are all on planet!”

The comms crackled, briefly, as Betty’s voice piped up breathless on the other end of the line. “We are good, though...maybe a bit more tense.”

Peggy bit her lip, fearing what that meant for Banner.

“Foster, we need to get them off planet, if possible!” Steve spoke over the comms, but he had come up behind Peggy, assessing the situation.

“I’m trying, but till the convergence hits its peak I have no control over that.”

“Then we need to keep them busy,” He muttered, glancing to where Thor was handling this Malekith. “I’m going to give him backup. Sharon, Romanoff, get over here with Peggy, do what you can to keep the rest penned in.”

Across the courtyard, Thor skid across the ground, dodging some magical, dark crimson substance, so thick it was almost black. Whatever it was, Peggy wasn’t sure she wanted Steve near it.

“Be safe,” she urged, feeling horribly as if this were that fortress in Austria all over again.

For a brief heartbeat of a moment, he seemed to understand, a soft look flickering, before it was gone again. “You got your orders, Carter.”

“Of course, Captain,” she replied, phone in hand. She watched as he ran off, before turning her attention to these so-called elves. A force of them were coming towards her, as she carefully took several steps back and thumbed the button on her phone. The closest device to her went off, as the invasion troops disappeared.

“I got some,” she called over the comms.

“Me too,” Romanoff yelped back, echoed by Sharon.

“Any idea where they are going?” Peggy looked up towards the skies. Even as she did, more portals began to appear, more openings into other worlds.

“I got some idea,” Darcy yelled. “They are coming after us!”

Peggy winced. “Where are you?”

“Other side of campus. Betty and Bruce split from us, she was afraid he might turn green and get violent.”

“Banner changing might not be the worst plan right now,” Peggy muttered, thumbing her phone as a group of five came charging across the lawn at her. “Foster, where are you at?”

“Painted Hall...gallery? I don’t know, the place with the fancy pictures in it.” She sounded breathless. “We got a crowd on our tail and we are making a run for it!”

“Who is closer to help cover Foster?”

“I’m on it,” Sharon replied. Peggy could see her across the courtyard moving towards where Foster and Selvig were at, just narrowly avoiding a ricochet off Steve’s shield as it bounced past her. For his part, Steve and Thor were penning in the strange alien leader, but at every point they got the advantage, Malekith would unleash the strange fluid. In frustration, Thor simply launched himself at him.

And then they both disappeared...into the ground.

Steve, who had caught his shield, stopped at the sudden vanishing of Thor and Malekith, staring at the spot, then up at the portals over the skies, then over to Peggy first, then Romanoff across the way. “What the…”

“They disappeared,” Romanoff murmured, incredulously. “I am not the only one who saw that, right?”

“No, I did too.” Peggy frowned, looking around. Already, the courtyard was a shambles. The stone columns were broken, brickwork and mortar lay everywhere, and that wasn’t accounting for the giant tower of a spaceship in the middle of all of it with the long trough of tilled sod, concrete and brickwork behind it.

“Captain Rogers, we got incoming,” Jake finally cut in. “RAF fighters coming in from the north. They are heading right for those wormholes.”

“Get them to move around. We don’t know where those go.”

“I’m trying,” Jake assured him, though it didn’t sound as if he was succeeding.

“Stark, come in,” Steve snapped, frustration and a hint of worry creeping in.

Overhead, Peggy could see no sign of Stark, but there were two fighter jets incoming, flying low over the city and towards the river. “Jake…”

Too late, the jets dove headlong into one of the wormholes, heedlessly, or perhaps just not aware from their altitude.

“Shit,” Jake swore, loudly. “Um...I’m scanning...maybe they will come back out somewhere close by?”

Steve squinted into the nearest portal, one of a lush, green planet somewhere, filled with thick forests and low mountains. “Keep everyone else out till we get this under control. We can’t risk another group of fighters getting taken out. If they can’t see it, they could all disappear and we won’t be able to get to them.”

“I’ll see what I can do!”

Blessedly, in the blink of an eye, the missing fighters appear again in a different part of the sky, as if they had skipped from one space to the other. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.

“Foster, we have things popping in and out of existence randomly now,” Steve barked.

“Yeah, the weak spots in the barriers of reality, the convergence is just creating random spots where you can travel from one world to another as all of reality begins to touch.”

This wasn’t precisely the sort of thing Peggy had expected to face when she had hopped a plane to London. “So, Thor, will he be able to make his way back?”

“Maybe,” she replied, before yelping, as Sharon could be heard urging her and Selvig to run.

It was just at that moment that at least one of the missing pair of Thor and Malekith made an appearance. Sadly, it wasn't the one that Peggy had been hoping for.

“Rogers,” Romanoff barked, pointing from her position on the other side of the courtyard to where the dark elf leader had tumbled, seemingly out of nowhere. He stood, shaken from wherever he had fallen from, but undeterred in his purpose. Malekith was a strange sight to behold, Peggy couldn’t deny that, with his silver-white hair and his skin darkened to nearly black, one side of it scarred and looking decidedly charred, as if he had been set under a broiler. His dark, gleaming eyes were unearthly, and they regarded Peggy, Steve and Romanoff with as much indifference as one would give to a bit of trash on the ground, as if they were hardly worth the trouble. He looked up to the skies, to the slowly aligning portals, all stacked high overhead.

“Do you think I should do the right thing and try to reason with him,” Steve asked, uncertain.

Romanoff from her end of the grounds whipped her head to stare at him. “Does he look like someone who can be reasoned with?”

“Yeah,” he conceded, softly. “I didn’t think so.”

“Can we take him out,” Peggy asked. They didn’t know where Thor was or why he hadn’t returned with the creature.

Malekith began to move. As he did, so did the wind.

“Banner, where you at?” Steve eyed the growing darkness warily.

The winds picked up precipitously, picking up dust and debris as they waited for his strained reply. “I...uh, we are maybe three blocks away?”

“You think you can bring the big fellow out?”

Banner was a long moment answering as a cyclone formed around Malekith, a cloud beginning to churn about him. “You sure you want that around any of this?”

“Rogers,” Romanoff practically screamed to be heard over the growing howl. “We can’t stand this wind strength!”

“Get the hell out of here,” he ordered, just as he grabbed Peggy’s arm. With the full force of his super soldier strength, he tossed her, without bothering to ask or even warn her, shoving her away from the force of Malekith’s own self-created storm, just as sparks of red glittered from somewhere, turning the entire thing into a hideous maelstrom with Malekith in its center. That was all the more Peggy saw before she went flying, sprawling into the stone of the nearest building, her cheek and jaw connecting painfully as she yelped. She stumbled, slumping to the ground, rolling over to see what was happening beyond.

In the skies above, one of the portals, the one of a lush, green land, had opened so wide, it looked as if it would swallow the whole of the campus. It hovered over the Svartálfar ship, standing erect in the middle of everything, the winds of Malekith’s making now spinning up its sides, swallowing it up. The creature was lost from view, now somewhere in the heart of it, as they all stood by, unclear as to what to do.

“We’re too late,” Foster muttered, as thin, gossamer strands of whatever substance Malekith was wielding began to twist off from the center of the vortex, reaching up through the sky to the various portals. The dim, weak sunlight caught in the autumn gray clouds gilded the scene in a sickly sepia as Peggy watched in fascination and vague horror.

“Foster...what can we do?”

“I don’t know...I don’t…” Her voice shook with uncertainty.

Out of nowhere, an all too familiar, animalistic roar sounded.

Peggy could see Steve turn to it. “Ross?”

Betty didn’t answer. Rather, the Hulk simply arrived, his roared displeasure announcing him across the damaged campus. Betty held on to his thick neck as if her life depended on it, her eyes squeezed shut, her face buried in his shoulder. The Hulk stopped only long enough for her to slide down his back and land to the ground shakily, turning to watch her as she did.

“You needed the big guy,” she gasped, half scared out of her wits. “Here he is!”

“I need Hulk through that cyclone and to Malekith!”

“Wait!” It was Thor’s voice on the comms now, loud and commanding. “Have him take me with him.”

Somehow, Thor had made it back. Peggy looked for him in the skies, but couldn't see him, though that didn't mean much when he could use his magic hammer to fly. Even still, she wasn't particularly convinced that Thor's request was a good idea. Hulk at his best was near unmanageable, listening really only to Betty or Steve, and only if he wanted to. As it was, he was already primed to rush into the madness. Surprisingly, however, he did wait at Betty’s urging, turning in the direction where Thor came sprinting from carrying four of the devices that Selvig and Stark had worked on under his mail-covered arms.

“My friend, think you can carry me through all that to get to Malekith?”

Hulk paused only long enough to look at the vortex with what Peggy could assume was a calculating gaze for the creature, before turning back to Thor with a pleased, nearly feral grin. Without warning, he wrapped a large, beefy green arm around Thor, snatching the god of thunder to his side as if he were a stuffed toy, and bounded happily across the boggy, wet grounds towards the giant, towering ship with its mass of dark, blood red and black substance crawling through the convergence. Without hesitation Hulk ran inside the cyclone, as both he and Thor were soon swallowed.

“Now what,” Steve asked, looking for Foster. As luck would have it, she, Selvig and Sharon all came from the same direction as Thor had come, all looking blown and breathless, but otherwise no worse for wear.

“I’m on it,” Foster responded, her eyes on her phone, gaze flickering from it towards the churning mass. “He’s inside with four of those devices. I am guessing he’s going to put them somewhere where I can activate them and move Malekith off planet.”

All they could do was stand and watch. Peggy picked herself up off the ground, rubbing her now bruised jaw, moving to climb across debris to where Steve stood, his gaze fixed on the swirl of crimson. She thought she could hear the Hulk howl, angrily from inside of it.

“I’ve got one,” Foster called, fiercely. Sure enough, when Peggy looked to her own phone in hand, one of the devices was signaling. Foster activated it as it soon disappeared off the screen. Another device followed, also activated by Foster, but still, the almost liquid, red energy coalesced and turned.

“Foster,” Steve asked, trepidation clear in his voice.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, worriedly “I don’t…”

“Look up there,” Sharon snapped. On instinct, they all looked up to the skies. Streaking overhead was a singular object, coming home to find its owner, crackling with all the lightening that Thor had at his command. It flew inside the red storm, lightening flashing through the red haze, as on her phone Peggy could see another device activate.

As suddenly as the cyclone had formed, it dropped, as the figure of Malekith shot backwards, pinned to the ship he had arrived in, impaled on one of the devices. Without hesitating, Foster hit the button as the menacing dark elf disappeared, taking his strange storm and a part of his towering ship with him.

And just like that, it was over. The winds died. Even the spinning, golden weather vane on the top of the dome of one of the towers finally slowed, stopping its frantic twirling. When the dust settled, Malekith was indeed gone, but Thor lay crumpled on the ground, his red cape covering his still figure. Sitting dazed on the ground beside him was the Hulk, hardly the worse for wear.

“Thor,” Foster unleashed a sharp cry, darting from out of the shelter of the court building she had been hiding in, picking her way around toppled stone columns and scattered debris.

“Jane,” Sharon hissed, rushing to move after her and hold her back from rushing the field. Sharon had good reason. A groan sounded from the Svartálfar ship as it began to teeter dangerously, settling and leaning towards the main part of campus. Foster's device may have sent Malekith somewhere, God knows where, but it also taken a portion of the ship's structure with it, and it now threatened to fall right where Thor now lay, quiescent and unmoving, which in and of itself was terrifying enough.

“Thor,” Foster wailed, trying to shake off Sharon's immoveable hold on her. That this alien god, who could wield lightening and take on the Hulk hand to hand was still unconscious on the ground was a terrifying thought, but one Peggy didn't have much of a chance to ponder. The structure at the bottom of the ship began to screech and buckle, as high above pieces of the ship began to shake off and fall, like rain, to the ground. The entire structure shivered as slowly it began to pitch itself forward, with none of them able to stop it. With his ridiculously fast reflexes, Steve grabbed Peggy and pulled her away, protectively, his shield up to cover them both as they hunkered next to one of the buildings. Peggy didn’t argue as she huddled close to him, feeling the ground tremble under them, fearing that the fall of the giant ship alone could send what was left of the portico tumbling onto their vibranium covered heads. Hidden as she was, Peggy could hear rather than see, Hulk’s defiant cry, drowning out the panicked voices shouting over the comms. And then…

“Stark,” Betty gasped, disbelieving. Shocked, Steve looked down to Peggy in utter surprise, the same as her own, as they both uncurled enough to peek over the protective barrier of his shield. Sure enough, the ship hovered at a broken angle in mid-air, held up by the sheer strength of Hulk on the ground, keeping it protectively off of Thor, but up on high, near the top, was Stark, his suit looking so minuscule next to it. The glare of blue-white light from his feet indicated that he was pushing against it with all of his power.

“Sorry for missing the party, guys! Had a massive malfunction with the new suit, had to do a reboot. JARVIS, you got full thrusters on, buddy?”

Whatever JARVIS’ answer, Peggy didn’t hear it. Frankly, she was too frightened, seeing the pair of them struggle with the massive ship, as it sank, further to earth, pulled towards the ground by gravity despite their best efforts. It threatened to crush Thor, Hulk, and the campus in a single go.

“See if we can push this over to the river,” Stark called. Peggy wasn’t sure Hulk still had the comm device in his ear, but he seemed to understand nonetheless, nodding his head as his fingers dug into metal and his bare feet sank into the soft ground. “Ready? Three...two...one!”

Together, they pushed and strained against an immovable object that didn’t seem to want to give. They could hear Stark’s shouts as he strained against it, Hulks roar from below, and for a horrific second, Peggy thought she may actually see the end of all of them as the ship sank inexorably on. And just when it threatened to overwhelm them…

It disappeared.

Stark went flying forward and up with the sheer force he was exerting, shooting off like a champagne cork into the sky before righting himself several hundred feet above them, narrowly avoiding one of the portals. Hulk was pushing so hard that when the ship was no longer there he pitched forward, planting face first into the soft mud, creating a new trench with the force he spent forward. He was buried up to his shoulders in the muck, something he didn’t seem to like overly much as he pulled himself out, screaming defiantly at the indignity of it all.

The ship was gone.

“Where did it go,” Steve muttered, pushing himself up and away from her as Peggy too straightened. Out from under the crumbling portico they looked up into the sky. The portals were all still there, but diminishing, as the scenes from other worlds slowly faded away. The drizzling, gray clouds of the morning were starting to make way to golden sunlight. Masonry and concrete were scattered about the mud of the courtyard, a deep furrow still scarred the landscape between them and the Thames, but the strange, alien ship and its leader were now gone.

“Thor,” Foster cried, finally pulling herself free from Sharon's stranglehold on her and rushing across the mud, throwing herself at Thor's prone body. By contrast, Betty was far more carefully moving towards a still agitated Hulk, speaking in low tones, as Stark hovered overhead, perhaps to swoop in and assist Betty if needed.

Carefully the others seemed to appear. Selvig made his own way gingerly through the mud to where Foster knelt over Thor, Sharon trailing behind. Romanoff kept an eye on Hulk, who seemed to be calming down somewhat and miraculously listening to Betty. Most relieving for Peggy, at least, was that from the far margin of the campus came Darcy and Ian, alive, breathless, and relieved to see everyone else there too...so relieved that Darcy grabbed the poor boy and kissed him on the spot, frantically.

Well...it was an understandable reaction, Peggy supposed, too happy to see them both well and unharmed to bother being anything but relieved.

“Everyone alive,” Steve asked, already making his way to where Thor still lay with Foster sprawled over his chest. He had managed to move his arms and twist his head, so it was clear he was still alive.

“Seems to be,” Peggy took a quick headcount, noting even Jake up in the quinjet above. “And it turns out we didn’t need the cavalry after all.”

“We got lucky,” Steve cautioned, despite his obvious relief.

They had gotten lucky, Peggy admitted, glancing up at Stark as he watched the Hulk slowly morph into Bruce once more. Even with a man down, they had managed to prevail.

Chapter Text

“One little phone call, Carter, that’s all I ask.”

Peggy shrugged, unbothered, at Nick Fury’s dark scowl. “Hill was well aware of what we were doing, and if you weren’t paying attention to what she was telling you, then that is hardly my problem, now is it?”

His expression only turned into colder annoyance. “The Avengers are still under SHIELD’s purview. I at least deserve to hear it from you when things are getting hot.”

He did have a complaint there, one that she could grant. “And I apologize we didn’t call you in directly, but you left the Avengers in my hands because you couldn’t be in all places at all times. There will be other times when I don’t call you directly. This may have been your own pet project, but it is much bigger than that now.”

Fury didn’t like hearing that, but he couldn’t tell Peggy she was wrong. “Duly noted,” he admitted, grudgingly, leaning back in one of the leather chairs in the conference room of the SHIELD offices in London. “Chief Blevins has given me his run down of the SHIELD response in conjunction with the Metropolitan police and the British government. Outside of a few fender benders and at least one small boat capsizing at the sight of a giant alien ship plowing into campus, there were surprisingly no fatalities. Blevins tells me the university will be shut down for an extended period for repair, however, likely will cost hundreds of millions of pounds.”

“Historic buildings in Britain don’t come cheap.” Peggy shuddered to think of the price. “The more important thing is that no one died that day, not on our world or anyone else’s. Thor states that initial reports say that only one area on a planet called Vanaheim was damaged, by RAF fighters accidentally releasing weapons on what turned out to be an abandoned storage shed and a field of crops. They made it back to Earth safely and no one on Vanaheim was injured.”

“Pardon me for saying I care less about Vanaheim than I do Earth, but for what it’s worth I’m glad no one was killed.”

Peggy politely stepped around that sentiment. “Thor also removed what I guess is a bilgesnipe that was running loose around Greenwich, something that had come through during the convergence event. Stark had wanted to keep it as a pet, but Thor convinced him that nowhere on Earth got cold enough for the poor thing.”

Fury blinked his one good eye, slowly, shaking his head. “You know, I didn’t even have a second thought about the sentence you just uttered. Like...I just took it at face value. That is how absurd our lives have gotten.”

“You are talking to a woman who time traveled to get here, directing a team with an alien, a man in a flying robot suit, a green giant, and a man who survived being buried in ice for seventy years. This is the second battle with aliens and wormholes we have fought in six months. I think I left the realm of understandable long ago.”

That only seemed to make Fury laugh, a chortling guffaw as he ran his hand over his dark, bald head. “Shit...what have we gotten ourselves into, Carter?”

“You were the one who said that this universe was far stranger than anything I could ever imagine. Clearly, you had some idea.”

“I did,” he admitted, ruefully.

A knock sounded at the conference room door and Amanda Sterling, the assistant to the Chief Blevins, peeked her head in carefully. “I apologize for interrupting Director Fury, Director Carter, but it appears that there is a Thor Odinsson here to see you both?”

Speaking of absurd…how did this woman not know who she was speaking about?

It was almost as if he couldn’t help himself. Fury stared incredulously at the unfortunate woman with his singular gaze. “Six-foot-five blonde guy with a metal hammer in his hand? Uses it to fly. Looks like he stepped off the cover of a trashy romance novel you see in the check out at a grocery store?”

Miss Sterling blushed, nodded slowly, confused by why Fury would be so dubious in the moment. “I mean, yes. He said he was here to meet with you both.”

Her response did not assuage Fury’s growing surprise at her seeming lack of awareness of who Thor was. “He is here to meet with us. He’s an Avenger. Prince Thor of Asgard, heir to the throne, has a brother who tried to take over the planet a few months back. Maybe you heard about that?”

The woman flushed. “Well...yes, but I hadn’t caught names and faces...but…”

“It’s all right, Miss Sterling.” Peggy shot Fury a firm glare, quelling his outraged disbelief. “Where is he at now?”

“He said he was going to meet with Dr. Banner in the labs. I showed him where to go. I hope that was all right.”

“That’s fine,” she assured the woman. “Thank you.”

Poor Miss Sterling slinked away, unsure what she had done to earn the reproof of Director Fury.

“How does she not know who Thor is?”

“Not everyone lives and breathes in the madness we do,” Peggy pointed out, rising from the conference table. “If he’s meeting with Bruce, he’s found something for us to look at.”

In the week since Malekith’s invasion of London. It was, of course, still being blasted across the news media as the discussion turned once more to outside threats and the Avengers. Peggy had ignored most of the direct discussion in the face of the very real problems on the ground. Swaths of the historic campus were destroyed. It would require years of repair. While destruction had been limited, particularly in comparison to New York and the wide destruction there, it didn’t mean that it didn’t exist. But the bigger issue had been with the British government itself, who felt rather put out that they hadn’t received wind of the invasion - never mind Peggy’s repeated efforts to speak to anyone in the Home Office and to get them to take her seriously. Once again, Fury and SHIELD were on the defensive with an individual government. At least this time SHIELD had a leg to stand on. Peggy left that argument to Fury, however, choosing not to make a bad political situation even worse.

The labs for the London SHIELD offices were located on the floor below the main office areas, smaller than the ones in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. They served Bruce Banner’s need just fine. He was already at one workstation, glasses on as he studied a clear computer monitor intently through his reading glasses. Behind him sat Steve and Natasha Romanoff, both huddled around a tablet shared between them. Across from Banner stood Betty and Stark, each frowning at the read out on the monitor on their own. Thor, looking weary and worn, hovered at the very end of the table, gravely.

“What do we have,” Peggy called, Fury on her heels as she marched into the lab space.

Thor looked up at her as she called out. “I went to Svartálheim to see what became of Malekith. He was dead, crushed by the very ship that Banner and Stark so thoughtfully stopped from crushing me.”

Banner, who had been Hulk at that moment, ducked his head in vague embarrassment. It was Stark who nodded, patting Thor on the shoulder. “Any time, big guy. Glad it was him that took the force of that, not you.”

Thor looked briefly touched by Stark's sentiment. “In any case, I found the Aether there. I contained it before anyone else could get it and brought it here for safe keeping.”

“Found it?” Peggy looked down at the lab table, where sat a rather unremarkable box of metal, a series of lights flashing intermittently. This differed from the screen above, where a dark crimson, viscous material writhed, shifting and oozing disturbingly.

“What is that,” she asked, frowning at the image as it swirled.

“That’s what we are trying to figure out,” Banner admitted, ruefully, glancing to Betty. She took up the lead, pulling up a tablet from behind her.

“Just on the quick scan we did before you and Director Fury got down here it looks like it’s an extremely volatile substance, shifting and changing its material state, at will and sometimes at once, made up of all manner of substances. I frankly can’t make a ton of sense out of it, honestly, but it looks like if there is an element out there in the universe, it has it there on the molecular level. So far, since we’ve been looking at it, it’s been primarily shifting from liquid to plasma state.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Fury intoned, frowning at the mesmerizingly churning liquid.

“Maybe,” Stark drawled, frowning in thought. “You said it’s called the Aether?”

Thor nodded. “That’s what my ancestors called it, at least.”

“Well, our ancestors said that aether is the stuff that fills in the spaces in reality, a sort of fifth element that holds it all together.” He approached the screen hovering over the box, frowning up at it. “It’s sort of like a lava lamp. Kind of soothing if you stare at it long enough.”

Banner shook her head, eyeing Stark skeptically. “Aether is just a myth, Tony, debunked along with alchemists and turning lead into gold.”

“Well, I thought elves were something you only saw in Tolkien films or on the walls of some teenage nerd-boy with a hard on for D&D, but here we are.” Stark’s dark eyes flickered to Thor. “You said this was the Elf King’s special weapon?”

“As I understood it, though, I fear the substance is more grim than that.”

As he spoke, he reached to a counter behind him, where he had placed his hammer. Alongside it was a large, beautifully gilded tome, the sort that looked so delicate and extravagant that Peggy didn’t think she had seen one outside of a church or museum on Earth, and even those were extremely rare. Gently, the large man picked it up, running a hand gently over its golden cover, a soft smile flickering as he turned to the table, placing it next to the container with the Aether inside.

“I asked my father about what the substance was and what guidance he could give. He didn’t have much, but he strangely directed me to a book of fairy tales we had in the library.”

Thor opened the opulent book, flipping pages of what looked to be finest parchment, all covered in vivid paints and striking gold. It was astonishingly beautiful, a priceless piece of art, seemingly hand painted and inscribed with what Peggy had to guess were the runic letters of Thor’s native language.

“That’s gorgeous,” Betty breathed. Even Stark, who had more priceless items in his possession than most anyone, was suitably impressed. Like a silent moth to a flame, Steve rose from his space behind Banner, moving over to the beautiful tome on the table. Of course he would notice. She could see his expression slacken somewhat in awe as he stared at it, reverently, his artist’s eye overwhelmed.

“My mother had it commissioned when I was born,” Thor admitted, his expression bittersweet. “I hadn’t looked at this in years. She used to read to us from it when we were small...to Loki and me.”

His expression pained for just a moment before it was gone. He had informed the others of Loki’s death, and while none were terribly sorry that he was no longer a threat, most everyone at least respected Thor enough to understand his grief, somewhat, even Stark. Still, he didn’t linger on it, as he carefully fingered through pages in the thick tome, coming to land on a page painted in the dramatic colors of the night sky, twilight blues, deep purples, and inky blacks, all swirling around clouds of pale pink and lavender gas, spangled across with twinkling, silver stars. Spinning around in a perfect circle were six brightly colored gemstones, vivid against the colors of space.

“Is the picture actually moving?” Stark was now enraptured.

“It does that. Magic is what my mother told me. I don’t know how it works otherwise.”

“What is it?” Steve hand twitched, itching to touch the shifting colors.

“It’s the story of a king’s folly,” Thor explained, his finger running along the runic letters on the other side. “As the story goes, there once was a mighty king who wished to bring perfect peace to the universe. He sought the wisest sages he knew, sorcerers with powerful magics, asking them how he could achieve this great feat. They told him that the only way to accomplish something so daring would be to go on a quest to gather six magic stones. Each of these stones was a powerful artifact, gifted with the ability to do one specific task, but brought together, they could grant the wielder the ability to change the universe however he wished. They warned the king that the stones were scattered across the universe and were difficult to find, but if he succeeded, then he could make peace. So, he called his greatest warriors to a banquet in the halls of Asgard and told them of his dream and set the quest to find these magic stones.”

“Magic stones?” It was Stark’s turn to look skeptical. “Seriously, what, are we talking like collector’s cards? Pokemon? Got to catch ‘em all?”

“Tony,” Banner chastised him.

“What, I mean you get to knock me on aether, but I can’t call out magic rocks?”

“Let him finish his story, Stark,” Peggy ordered. He at least acquiesced at her withering glare.

Thor, who had no idea what Stark’s reference was even to, picked up the threads of his tale. “Well, as the story went, or so my mother told it, the warriors set off to the corners of the Nine Realms, looking for these stones. It took them years, so many people nearly forgot, but one-by-one they brought back each stone, all but the last stone, which was never found. So, the king used the ones he had and found they each had magic properties. He thought that it would be enough for him to bring them all together, to forge a peace by his sheer force of will and the magic of these stones, but it didn’t work. Rather than bringing peace, the universe grew to hate him for it.”

Gently, Thor rubbed a corner of the velum with a wistful smile. “It was supposed to be a cautionary tale on a ruler’s pride and the folly of using weapons to force peace. Sadly, I don’t think it was a lesson I understood well as a child. I admit, I was always into the bits of the warriors having adventures looking for the stones. I hadn’t thought about the story in ages, not till Father brought it up. I thought it was all make believe, but they said that each of the stones has a magic property.”

He reached to tap the page with its slowly spinning circle of stones, the dark red one rising to the top. “In the story each of these is said to do something different. The red one was said to be as bright as a ruby and as dark as heart's blood. They said that with it one could change the composition of anything. You could turn water to stone, or wool or silk, or…”

“Lead into gold,” Stark provided, using Banner’s alchemist example, glancing at the scientist.

“Sure, I suppose,” Thor conceded. “I know nothing of the Aether, only what Father told me of Malekith, but he was using it to try and turn the entire universe from one of light to one of darkness. I was led to believe he had found some random stone and infused it with his energies, turned it into his weapon filled with dark magics, but what if that isn’t what happened. What if this was something he found, a...magic stone if you will, that he figured out how to use, long ago?”

“A magic stone?” Steve finally broke his gaze away from the gorgeous book, frowning at Thor incredulously.

Thor didn’t seem particularly phased by Steve’s disbelief. “It is like I told Jane, once, what you call science on your world is called magic on mine, they are one and the same. I am sure with enough looking at your computers you would figure out the properties that make it do the things it does.”

Betty shook her dark head, leaning a hip against their work table. “Steve, it sounds crazy, but I think he might be onto something. When you look at the composition of the stone, how it’s made and what it’s made of, it doesn’t make sense. It has literally a little bit of everything in it, all the things that make up the universe. And it can’t keep its own material shape, at least not for long. One minute it’s a gas, the next a liquid, sometimes it’s got bits of solids in there. What if that’s just how it operates.”

“You know how much that doesn’t make sense, right,” Banner pushed back, gently, less to call out her supposition, Peggy guessed, and more to be the voice on the opposing side.

“Yeah, it shouldn’t do that, but it is doing that, and we both see it with our own eyes.” She shoved the tablet in front of his skeptical face. “Besides, look at the gamma radiation levels. What do you see?”

Banner looked slightly green - in the ill sense, not the Hulk sense - at the mention of gamma radiation, but he looked. Whatever he saw caught his attention, as he frowned down at the screen. “It’s giving off that much radiation?”

“Yeah,” she replied, perhaps a bit smugly.

“How much is too much,” Stark wondered, backing off a step or two from the table.

“I mean, not enough to start freaking out, but the signature is the same as the one we got off of Loki’s scepter.”

“And the Tesseract,” Betty reminded him, turning to the book on the table, frowning down at its gold leaf pages, even if she was unable to read the words. “Does it say what any of the other stones do? Is there one that lets you make wormholes or control minds?”

“Actually,” Thor smiled brightly as he realized he had swayed one of the scientists. “There is, as a matter-of-fact. One of the stones allows the wielder to step from one place to another far away in the space of a breath. Another allows you to sway the hearts and minds of others.”

One-by-one he tapped the slowly turning stones on their enchanted page. “This one allows you the power to destroy or to build up. This one makes you the master of time. And this one, the most mysterious one, no one knows what it does. It’s the one no one ever found. It's said it is the most powerful one of all, and the most dangerous.”

They were insane for entertaining this. They were listening to fairy tales, stories from a children’s book, taking them in as if they were real. And yet...Peggy let her gaze slide sideways to Fury, who met it with his good eye. He was considering it too. Perhaps, like herself, he had seen too much to discount it outright. Hadn’t Loki said that Thanos was looking for something...something powerful? He had said half of what he was seeking was there on Earth.

“What do they call these stones, Thor,” she finally asked.

“Errr..the translation isn’t exact, but in English I believe you would say something like ‘eternal’ stones, or perhaps ‘infinity’ is more accurate. Infinity stones? ‘Always have been, always will be’ sort of idea.”

“I always wondered if you spoke English or if we just heard you in English,” Stark piped up at Thor’s impromptu translation.

“I speak most major Midgardian languages. Learned in the schoolroom. I don’t know dialects or anything, but I can manage in most places. Besides, several of your languages aren't terribly different from Asgardian...or maybe Asgardian isn’t different from your languages…”

Peggy nipped this conversation before it went terribly much further. “So they are...Infinity Stones?”

“I suppose we could call them that,” Thor agreed.

“And they are powerful,” she underscored, trying to make sure she had this story correct.

“Yes,” he nodded, waving to the box on the table. “Very much so. You saw what that one did. You saw what the Tesseract did. And you saw what Loki’s scepter did. It may sound like a story, but every fairy tale is rooted in some truth. What if these items are all just these magic stones?”

“And what if that is what Thanos is after,” Fury rumbled slowly beside Peggy, his expression inscrutable.

It hit her all at once...the memory of Scott Lang sitting with her at the automat, of him telling her about this person, Thanos, who managed to snap his fingers and half of the universe disappeared in an instant...of how the Avengers had failed to stop it. It wasn’t often in one's life that things fit so neatly, that they ever were granted such clarity of purpose. Perhaps she could argue she had it the day that she thought Michael had died and she left behind everything to join the SOE. That was nothing compared to now, as she stood between these Avengers, staring at the gunmetal slate-colored box and the gilded, shining book beside it and realized what this was all leading to.

“We need to make sure that we hide this,” she said, softly at first, resolve strengthening as she looked up to Steve’s similar expression. “We need to hide all of them. These are what Thanos is looking for. It’s like you said in the story, Thor, he wants to be able to wield all of them, to grant his wish.”

Romanoff, silent for much of the proceedings, finally spoke up from behind Banner. “What’s his wish?”

“To kill off half of the universe from what I understand.” Peggy only knew that, nothing more. “Scott Lang...or at least the version of him that I met...didn’t offer me more than that. I don’t know if he knew, frankly, only that half of the universe disappeared overnight.”

They all sat with that for long moments, the implications of what that would mean. Trillions of lives, most likely, billions just on Earth alone. Their families, friends, perhaps even half of them standing in this room. The idea left Peggy feeling sick. Losing Steve alone would crush her, not after getting him back again, but to lose any of them, this small group of people who had come together despite all odds. Peggy didn’t think she could bear it.

“Why only half?” Stark asked the obvious question.

“I don’t know.” Peggy hadn’t really thought to ask, really. “But I do know your brother, Thor, was working with Thanos. Loki said half of what Thanos was looking for was here. I think he meant the stones.”

Thor considered that. “I mean...it is possible. I know Father hid the Tesseract here, though I don’t know why and he’s never told me, save that it was safe here. Perhaps others have done the same. No offense to your planet, but in the greater scheme of the universe, it’s rather small and insignificant. Perhaps that is why it was chosen. Who would think to come here?”

“You know, that’s our home you are shit talking right in front of our faces,” Stark snorted, dryly, moving to stare down at the page at hand. “We know where the Tesseract and the scepter are, and now we have the box of weird, red sludge. So...where are the others?”

“Not on Earth, if Loki is to be believed,” Banner pointed out. “Which means they could be anywhere in an endless universe.”

“Which is a place I know something about,” Thor assured him. “I have ties and contacts out there. I can have them begin to search for them.”

“Yeah, but is it something we want to advertise we are looking for,” Steve replied, frowning, glancing back at Romanoff. “We need something a bit more discreet.”

Thor picked up Steve’s meaning readily, looking to her. “Do you have an idea on how to approach it?”

It had taken them all long enough to acknowledge her. Romanoff raised a shoulder, a small line between her brows marring her expression. “I mean, I don’t know what it looks like out there in the great, wide cosmos, but I do have a sense of how these things work. I got some tips and pointers I can give you. If you have people you can trust to execute it out there, I can help you hash out a plan to start looking.”

Surprisingly, Thor looked grateful for this. “Thank you, Natasha. My brother was the one who had this talent, and I will own I’m ill-equipped with the more subtle forms of information gathering. Any advice you have would be helpful.”

It was rare a spy ever was thanked for doing the dirty work they did. Peggy would know, and it pleased her to see Thor at least acknowledge the necessity of it, even if such subtlety wasn’t his style. “Finding the other half of the stones is one problem, the other is dealing with the ones we have. What do we do with this one?”

“Take it to Asgard,” Thor said almost immediately, with his usual assurance that Asgard was the safest and greatest place to keep anything in the universe. That earned a chorus of negative responses from the group, much to his surprise.

“Didn’t you say that Asgard was compromised when the Keebler Elves from hell attacked your planet,” Stark pointed out over the general denials. “Asgard’s defenses are down and you are still repairing them.”

“My father’s vault has its own security. Besides, we have the Tesseract there and I assured it’s safety already.”

“Which is perhaps all the more reason we shouldn’t keep this stone near it,” Steve pointed out. “Perhaps one of them is safe on Asgard, but two would be inviting trouble, and with your defenses down…”

Steve trailed off with a meaningful look, one Thor reluctantly nodded at. “I see your meaning. But we can’t keep it on Earth for the same reason. You have little in the way of defense and already have the scepter in your possession. That would draw as much attention.”

“It’s a fair point,” Banner offered, leaning against the lab table thoughtfully. “Got another place you can put it.”

Here, Thor faltered, considering. Whatever came to mind for him, he clearly didn’t like. “There is a man...not one I know personally, but one I’ve heard of through some less savory places in the galaxy, who likes to collect rare things, all manner of things. It is said he has rare samples of everything, art, armor, pieces of literature, space crafts, various species...people.”

“People?” Steve did not like hearing that.

Thor was obviously not thrilled with that either. “I did not say he was a good person, and he’s very powerful on top of that, and not precisely easy to find. He is outside of my father’s realms, but he could be someone who would be interested in taking the item and keeping it.”

No one in the room looked particularly thrilled by that option, but it was Fury who gave voice to the most immediate issue with it. “If he’s a man who likes collecting things, and the point of this entire magic stone business is collecting them all, do you really want to give a powerful item like this to that sort of person, knowing he will want to take all of them. We may be creating a bigger problem than we need to with this.”

On that score, Peggy felt Fury was right. “I hate to say it, Thor, I know our options are limited, but if it came down to a choice between a man who keeps people in a collection for his own amusement holding a powerful object that could reshape the universe, or between us and our ragtag planet with little defense, I would still say that the best hands for this are our own…at least for now. Perhaps, given some time, we can figure out a place and a way to protect it off our world.”

“Where was it kept before Jane stumbled on it,” Betty asked. “Could we put it back there?”

“I don’t know. My father knew, as he is the one who hid it, but...well, I don't believe my father will be speaking to me for a while.”

Thor grimaced, painfully, regarding the group. “I have...had a conversation with Odin, one that was not easy to have. My father has longed wished for me to be king, to take my place on his golden throne, but I feel after what has happened the last few months, seeing what became of my brother, the loss of Mother, knowing what has happened in the Nine Realms, especially on this planet, I can’t just sit idly by and watch it all fall apart. Being king is a hard business. It involves choices, ones that change you. I saw it in him. And...I think I like being a good man...a man who tries to do what is right for the realms, to help as many as I can. And to that end I’ve chosen not to take my father’s throne. Instead, I’ve chosen to be here, to stand and fight alongside all of you.”

He waved a hand to Banner first, then to Stark. “You two, when I was injured and unable to save myself, you thought of nothing but to throw yourselves before that ship and try to push it away from me! And you, Natasha! You look to be a delicate, fragile woman, but I have seen you best creatures twice my size without a second thought, and from what I understand you wit and intelligence are equal to your fighting.”

He turned to Steve standing beside him. “And you, Captain, I have heard tales from Darcy of your heroics. All of them agree you are one of the best of men, brave and true, someone I would gladly fight beside and call my leader.”

Finally, he turned his affable smile to Peggy. “And you, Peggy, you’ve never flinched at who I was or the strangeness I brought with me. You not only embraced it, but you embraced me and brought me into this, and I thank you for it. All of you, Selvig, Betty, Darcy...Jane,” he paused, lingering on her name fondly. “You all have accepted me for who I am, without expectations. And I hope that, if it is alright with you, that I can stay here among you and fight by your side.”

That...hadn’t precisely been the conversation they had been having. Peggy glanced to Fury, who looked back at her with the same confused, surprised look everyone else seemed to have. But it was Stark, blessedly, who cut through awkwardness with the ability only he ever seemed to have in these situations. He held out his hand for Thor to take, firmly clapping him on the shoulder. “Welcome, pal! You’ll love Earth, so many things to see and do here.”

“I am sure,” Thor assured him, the pair sounding every inch like an advertisement for a resort somewhere.

“Be that as it may,” Peggy brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “We were discussing where this...thing was being kept before Jane found it. I am guessing from your long speech that you are on the outs with your father and we won’t be able to put it back there.”

It clearly only just occurred to Thor how much he had veered the conversation off topic. “Errr...yes.”

“Well then, I suppose that settles that,” she threw her hands up, mildly, clasping them together. “The item stays here, then, for now.”

She turned to Fury, who already had a calculated expression on his face. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Was already thinking of one.” His single, dark eye glittered thoughtfully. “Item like this, we don’t want the knowledge of it getting out of this room. My suggestion, we keep it off the SHIELD files and reports. Leave off any mention of it.”

“Why,” Steve barked, frowning at the idea of simply lying about it.

“Because if it’s in a SHIELD file, then anyone will find it,” Romanoff explained, patiently. “It’s not just SHIELD agents who have access to those files. You put it down in black and white, people will find out and more than a few of them will start getting curious. Human nature being what it is, they think they can find it and maybe make something of it. Like Fury said, best to keep the knowledge of this between ourselves and bury it deep somewhere.”

“I got a place that fits that description,” Fury replied, nodding to the box. “I can stash it and no one will even know to find it there, save me.”

It hit Peggy, then, just how little she knew Fury. How many secrets did this man have, and who from? Did anyone know all of them?

“That works for this thing,” Steve acknowledged, cutting through Peggy’s train of thought. “But what about the scepter. SHIELD still has that.”

“Far as anyone knows, it’s just a bit of alien tech,” Romanoff reasoned, shrugging. “They don’t know about any magic space stones. It’s under lock and key with SHIELD. The minute we do anything strange or untoward with it, someone will notice and start asking uncomfortable questions. Best to leave it there for now, pretend it’s nothing big and simply keep an eye on it.”

It wasn’t a perfect idea, but Romanoff did have a point. The minute they acted unexpectedly about the scepter, people would wonder why. “It’s a temporary solution for both of them for now, at least. Do you believe the Tesseract will be safe enough on Asgard for now, Thor?”

He nodded gravely. “For now.”

“As imperfect of a plan as this all is, it is at least one.” She looked first to Steve, who she could see was mulling it over, and while unhappy with the flaws in what was presented, he seemed to concede it was a solution.

Stark, on the other hand, looked vaguely troubled. “This was the purpose the Avengers were founded for, to protect the Earth from threats no one else could. I suppose this is where we test our metal.”

She glanced up at Fury who nodded, darkly. “A lot is riding on this.”

“I know.” It was all she could say.

For long moments there was the weight of heavy silence, the knowledge of an uncertain threat that lay before them all.

“Well, with that cheery bit of news,” Stark finally broke the fragile quiet with the force of a ball-peen hammer to a sheet glass window. “Why don’t we say we break for lunch?”

They all shifted then, looking to one another, as if shaking off the heaviness of what they now realized lay before them. Only Peggy remained thoughtful as she watched Banner and Betty discussing their findings between them.

“Penny for your thoughts, Carter,” Fury asked quietly, beside her.

“Just...thinking about playing with things we don’t understand.” She shrugged, considering what she had just discovered about the Erskine’s serum and just who had access to it. “Do you really think we can keep something like these stones secret?”

Judging from Fury’s expression, he doubted that. “Not for long, but for long enough to think of a different solution. After all, what choice do we really have?”

He was right, they didn’t have one.

“Did you know the CIA has been experimenting with Abraham Erskine’s serum,” she asked, bluntly, shifting topics on him on purpose. “That they have been farming it out to pharmaceutical companies to try and see if they can recreate it?”

Fury at least had the grace not to deny it. “I know something of it.”

“And you didn’t stop it?”

He shrugged under his dark coat. “Not a lot I can say to the American intelligence community on the matter.”

“Except to remind them that all serum-related research is the property of SHIELD.”

“Like that actually stops them,” he shot back, seemingly amused she would think it would. “You dealt with General Ross, you know that didn’t work with him. If we complain, then they just take it underground. It’s that simple.”

Despite the cynicism of his response, he was right, they would just find ways to do it where no one would notice. She didn’t have to like it. “Did you know that the US Army had created a unit of super-soldiers sixty years ago?”

“I did,” he acknowledged, shortly and rather darkly. “That's one of those dirty little secrets the US Army doesn't want getting out there, so of course I know about it. And I know that the program failed. All the subjects are now dead.”

Peggy couldn’t tell if the idea of it outraged him at all or not. “The last subject, the one they called Weapon II, his blood is still out there. They are giving it to people to use, hopefully to recreate the serum. I don’t know if that is what this Mandarin was after or not, but the fact that it’s out there…”

“That genie is out of the bottle already, Carter,” Fury said, with weary firmness. “It was out of the bottle the minute that they took samples of Rogers’ blood. We can’t force it back in, we can just try to control the ones we know about and hope none of the rest are successful.”

Peggy hated that answer. “If we can’t control who has Steve’s blood, how in the hell can we protect a pair of magic space stones that some alien dictator wants to get his hands on to kill half of everyone?”

For a long moment, Fury seemed to ponder that, before chuffing lightly, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Carter, I’ll be honest. But somehow, we got to figure it out.”

Chapter Text

It was the unfortunate truth that after the sort of encounters the Avengers had, there was always the unpleasant task of picking up the pieces. The London authorities had already termed the incident at the university their version of the “Battle of New York,” and the British press were running rampant with speculation on why they had been singled out for an attack, what the presence of aliens meant for the security of the world, and of course, how exciting it was that the Avengers were there on British soil saving the world once again! If anything, it was the latter that took the predominant headlines, as the faces and names of the core group of Avengers were starting to become known. While Tony Stark was a famous figure, even to British readers, those of the others were not. It was only when Stark waggled a tabloid in front of her face that she had even really paid attention.

“What do you know of Captain America’s mysterious past?” Stark had practically shoved the splashy headline under her nose. “Hopping the trolleys in Brooklyn as a kid so he didn’t have to pay? Please say Rogers was canoodling with someone behind the bleachers in his youth. Was canoodling what they called it in the 30s?”

“Maybe you should ask him and not me.”

“Why not ask you? From what I understand, you and Rogers have canoodled quite a bit since his reappearance.”

Peggy swatted the paper away, absolutely refusing to have this discussion with Stark. “Why do people care about such things?”

Stark, well used to being in the limelight for all the right and wrong reasons, shrugged philosophically. “Makes us seem approachable, less like gods with super powers and more like normal people who just happen to fight alien threats.”

“You are just normal people who happen to fight alien threats.”

Stark snorted outright at that. “You said that with an absolutely straight face. I’m impressed.”

“I’m being serious.” She stood from her borrowed desk at the London SHIELD offices, where she had been hunkered down all morning managing the paperwork and many conversations involved with SHIELD and the British government over the University of Greenwich incident. This, sadly, was her job. Unlike Stark, who could preen for cameras and go home to his lab in Malibu, she as director was actually forced to deal with the messy aftermath of their work.

“I’m being serious, too,” Stark countered, airily. “I mean, this life is normal for you, I suppose, but…”

Peggy rolled her eyes at him, but couldn’t quite hide the hint of a smile that threatened to escape. “I admit to being rather inured to strange events happening in my close proximity, yes. I suppose you have a point, this all does get rather normal after a while.”

“Does it?” For a brief moment, the happy-go-lucky, joking facade of Tony Stark faded. Something else flickered in his dark eyes, his expression tightening for just a moment before he shrugged and turned his face away, looking towards the bright windows that overlooked London. “You know, this building, never did love it. I mean, I’m just an engineer, not an architect, but you know any building that could theoretically melt things on the ground because of the angle of the glass…”

Peggy took the bait on his change of subject, at least briefly. “How is the rebuilding in Malibu coming?”

“Done! House is as good as new. Took the opportunity to enlarge the lab downstairs, you know, expand it for my armory, I suppose you could call it. That’s what Pep is calling it anyway, but you know, I think she finds it all kind of hot.”

Somehow Peggy highly doubted that Pepper was as into Tony’s suits as he thought she was. “I will have to come out and see it.”

He seized on that idea happily enough, spinning back to her, eagerness manically alight in his expression. “You should! Get the whole gang out there; Bruce and Betty, Thor and Jane, maybe even Darcy and that kid she’s hooked up with...what’s his name, Llewyn?”

“Ian,” Peggy smirked, admitting to herself she was somewhat surprised she remembered the boy’s name.

“Yeah, get them all out there. You can bring Cap, Romanoff if you have to, we can make this a real party.”

It was tempting. “Maybe before the holidays we can do it. I have been meaning to see Angie again now that Steve is awake. She’s yet to meet him and is going to kill me for not bringing him by.”

“We should bring her to the house! I don’t know that she’s been out since Dad was alive, she can see what we’ve done with it.”

Peggy could already see the delight he took in this, almost giddy with it. It made her cautious. “Perhaps…”

“No, let’s make this happen. Maybe after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas. Pepper is talking about going out of town, and I thought…”

“That sounds good,” she cut him off as he whipped out his phone, already making a note to himself. “I mean, if you’re sure.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?" He didn't even looking up from whatever he was typing, his thumbs gliding across the single pane of glass.

“Just...I don’t know, you’ve had a lot on your plate. I know you were fixing up the house, then had to repair Stark Tower no sooner than you had it renovated the first time. Then everything with the Avengers...New York…”

She hadn’t been seeing things. She could see him visibly tense at the mention of New York.

“And now this,” she continued without a pause. “I know it’s a lot right now. If you want to put this off.”

“No,” he exclaimed, shortly, finishing his typing and sliding his phone into his breast pocket. “No, I want to do this. It is good team building, right? All that corporate stuff Pepper is throwing at me that I only half pay attention to.”

“It is,” she admitted, thinking it would be a good idea to have the Avengers get together to do something social without the weight of saving the world on their shoulders. “Thank you.”

He waved it off. “Least I could do after leaving everyone hanging out there.”

There was that tension once again, now accompanied by a hunch in his shoulders, a certain fear and anxiety that was not Stark's norm. Was that guilt or an attempt at self-preservation? Both? “I suppose it couldn’t be helped. Damndest moment to have your systems go down.”

“Yeah, well, new suit, hadn’t really tried it. Knew I was taking a gamble.”

Lying wasn’t particularly Stark’s style; he didn’t appreciate it in others, and while not particularly honest to a fault, he also didn’t tend to tell boldfaced lies. So Peggy was willing to accept that at least on some level he was telling the truth. Perhaps the suit was new, perhaps it was having more problems for not having been tested beforehand. That said, something about his body language screamed that wasn’t all of it.

“Perhaps it is for the best,” she shrugged, philosophically, patting him on the shoulder. “All those portals, they were hard to doge through, and we didn’t know how all of them worked. Those fighters…”

He pulled from her hand as if it were on fire, ducking out from under it as he turned, making a move to slide away and out of the door. “You know, the time! I promised Bruce I’d help ensure that red Infinity Sludge was stabilized so Fury could take it to his super secret vault in the center of the Earth or wherever he has it.”

He moved, blindly, refusing to look at her or at the door he was heading to. It meant that he slammed almost headlong into the woman entering into the doorway, stopping himself before he could bodily run into the stately woman. Peggy would have been impressed, had she not been concerned for all parties, namely the woman who started in shock and surprise.

“Lady Siobhan,” Peggy yelped, ready to dive in to steady her in her elegant heels. As it turned out, no assistance was necessary, as she grabbed a corner of the door frame easily enough.

Stark, shocked out of whatever panic that had driven him to nearly plowing through Siobhan Haldane, reached a quick hand to steady her as well. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there!”

“It’s quite alright,” she assured them both with a hint of a self-deprecating smile. “No harm done!”

Peggy was still British enough to be somewhat scandalized that a woman with some rank and title was nearly stomped on by a rich American, and immediately began to unexpectedly channel her mother. “Please, come, have a seat.”

“Thank you, but I’m perfectly fine.” She was at that, moving gracefully to the proffered seat as Peggy turned to Stark with a wide eyed, half stunned stare. For his part he grimaced, shamefaced, tugging fretfully at his right ear.

“Let me make introductions,” Peggy quickly smoothed over, waving towards where Stark stood, shrugging and effecting a half-wave. “This is…”

“Anthony Stark,” Siobhan cut in, all smiles as she extended a hand to the vaguely embarrassed Stark. “It’s hard not to know your face. It’s a pleasure to meet you, finally.”

Stark only nodded, pulling up a charming smile from somewhere, not even bothering to correct her on his first name. “And you are Lady Siobhan…”

“Haldane,” she supplied, as Stark did one of the most courtly little bows over her hand that Peggy had ever seen. She blinked, frankly more amazed by that little display than his near running over of the lady in the first place.

Siobhan Haldane was surprised as well, though there was a glimmer of amusement in her green eyes. “You are quite the charmer, Mr. Stark. You remind me of your father.”

If he was bothered by that, he didn’t show it. “I get that. I take it you knew him?”

“Only acquainted with him, really, and his work. We were interested in the arc reactor technology. We had tried to do something similar at Darkmoor but never could get it off the ground. We were in talks with him about working together on development, but they sadly never materialized and we never were able to pick it up again.”

It took Stark’s brilliant mind only a few seconds to put all the pieces together. “Darkmoor Research Facility...you oversee that.”

It was a statement, not a question. Siobhan smiled. “I do, among several other things.”

His expression shifted, calculating and thoughtful. “I admit, I am interested in a lot of your work, as is the new Stark Industries CEO, Virginia Potts. Tell me, how is your work on sustainable energy going of late.”

“Not as well as yours is.” She laughed, nodding to the faintly glowing light visible just underneath Stark’s shirt. “I have engineers who would kill to discuss that with you. Some of our initiatives overseas with my other companies have been begging for something like your miniaturized arc reactor, especially out in the field in places where energy is non-existent and they lack the infrastructure and support systems to get it. Your research could save a lot of lives, Mr. Stark, if you are interested in talking it over.”

He was interested, clearly so. “Well, we will have to chat more, my lady.” He glanced to where Peggy stood, sensing that this conversation wasn’t going to be about joint ventures into public health and assistance. “Perhaps, Lady Siobhan, you can get my contact information from Peggy. Please, feel free to reach out to me personally, or even to discuss with Miss Potts. She would love to speak with you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stark.” She watched, bemused as he nodded to both women before turning on his heel and walking out at a much more sedate pace than he had before.

“So that’s the famous Tony Stark.” Siobhan turned to Peggy, who had moved to settle behind her borrowed desk. “Is he half as brilliant as he thinks he is?”

“Unfortunately, yes, more so.” She would never deny Tony’s brilliance, or his hubris. “I didn’t know you knew his father.”

“Like I said, it was as a professional acquaintance. I was always sorry to hear how he had passed.”

“Yes,” Peggy murmured, quietly, unsure of what else to say about that. Howard’s loss rang differently for her than it did most others. She shifted focus. “I am surprised you came by today. I read in the papers you are donating a large amount to go to the repair of the University of Greenwich and help those whose livelihoods and education are affected by the closure. That is rather giving of you.”

“I’m hardly the only one donating behind the scenes. I'm just the only one they decided to announce that did it.” She shrugged a lazy shoulder under her elegantly cut dark wool coat, tucking a stray auburn curl behind her ear. “I would rather not have the fuss, but I suppose it does help the Foundation in the end. People see you out and about doing things, they are more prone to give you money.”

Her pointed observation made Peggy smile. “Still, it is good. What the Avengers do sometimes...what they have to do, it isn’t pretty, it’s often messy, and we try to have as little collateral damage as we can. Sometimes, you can’t help it.”

“Mmm…” Siobhan Haldane nodded, arching a thoughtful, ruddy eyebrow. “You know my father always said that war is messy and collateral damage is just the way of it. I suppose it shouldn’t have shocked me that he was committing war crimes in the name of king and country with an attitude like that.”

Peggy wasn’t sure she could be so flippant about all of it. “I take a very different view. War is always going to be hell, but that doesn’t mean you have to pull innocent lives into it. Saving the world means trying to save as many as you can. You will not be able to save everyone, but you have to try.”

The other woman nodded, thoughtfully regarding Peggy before glancing out the window, then around the room, as if taking it all in. “You know that SHIELD was founded in the aftermath of the Darkmoor incident, as a response to it, really. After the war it was agreed that no one country or government should have all the power to create weapons of protection...or destruction. Of course, we see how far that actually worked, but the idea was there. My father in many ways was no different than any other government leader or scientist at the time. One might argue, he wasn’t terribly different from Howard Stark, just on the other side of the moral divide. Many said the only thing keeping SHIELD honest in those early days, and by extension Howard Stark, was you, Director Carter.”

So...she had sussed it out after all. Not that Peggy had been hiding it, it was the worst kept secret at SHIELD, but Peggy hadn’t advertised it, not to Siobhan Haldane. Her mouth went dry as she tried to find words to meet the other woman’s placid smile.

“You don’t have to be ashamed or apologize." She waved it off with the same effortlessness she had waved off Stark. “It wasn’t hard to figure out. SHIELD doesn’t precisely hide who you are. Besides, your name and picture were in the papers when it happened. I thought it was just a coincidence at first that you looked so much like her, but it wasn’t hard to put the dots together. I just am curious how you got from then to here, sitting in this office, still looking as you did in the 1940s.

Peggy felt her jaw work, but no words formulated for long seconds. When they did, she felt slightly an idiot for it. “I...it’s a mad story. I’m here now, working with the Avengers.”

She could have told the other woman she followed a time traveling, shrinking man through a pocket between dimensions and she doubted it would have ruffled Siobhan Haldane. “So you are. And the Agent Carter who was with you, she is…”

“My niece! Uh...Sharon is my great-niece, actually. Her grandfather was Michael Carter, he worked there at Darkmoor.”

Something clicked for Siobhan then. “Ahhh...well, that explains a few things, I suppose. Does she know…”

“Yes,” Peggy stammered. “Yes, she knows. We had made the Darkmoor connection to MST Pharmaceuticals and…well…”

“You assumed that because my father was creating weapons of mass destruction and killing innocent people and calling it peace, that obviously there was something nefarious going on with MST Pharmaceutical and that was why it was being targeted. That part I understood perfectly well.”

Peggy flushed at her rehash, realizing just how badly she had misjudged all of this. “Lady Siobhan, I owe you an apology.”

“It’s just Siobhan, Director, and you really don’t. You were both doing your job. Like I told you earlier, I’ve come to accept my father and his past. I’m here to do good, not just throw money at repairing a university, but to make real progress. I wasn’t making any of that up. And I’m not here to get back at you personally or anyone.”

That Peggy did understand. But it didn’t explain why Siobhan Haldane was sitting here right not. “Why are you here, then?”

She sat silently for long moments, a thoughtful, troubled look on her face, as if debating on what to say...or how to say it. She started, stopped, looked at Peggy, and then finally spoke.

“I told you everyone has their dark secrets. You know my father’s. I know yours, for however dark it actually is. SHIELD has its secrets, too.”

It was an odd turn of phrase and it caught Peggy short. “I suppose, considering the world SHIELD does, it would have secrets.”

“It has secrets I’m not sure you are even aware of.” She reached for her purse, an elegant, designer number that she had sitting on the floor right by her feet. She pulled it to her lap, extracting from it a small, manila envelope. “Your recent investigation got me thinking. I reviewed some of my father’s files, some correspondence he had that didn’t make sense at the time, but in light of some of your inquiries might be given a new context. I’m not sure.”

She slid the envelope across the desk. Peggy reached across to take it, sliding it away from her to frown at it in her fingers. “What is in it?”

“I’ll let you read it. Perhaps you can do some digging into it yourself.”

With that, she closed her purse and stood, holding out a hand to Peggy. “I am afraid I have to get going, though. I only planned to stay for a minute. If you could, when you have a chance, please forward Mr. Stark’s information to my secretary so I can reach out to him. It would be a pleasure to have him working with us.”

“I will...do just that.” Jarred by her sudden change and departure, Peggy stood, taking the other woman’s hand. “Thank you...SIobhan.”

“You as well, Peggy Carter.” Her smile was brief, but bright. She turned on her designer heels and marched out of the office, as if Stark hadn’t nearly run her just minutes before. Peggy watched her go before holding up the envelope in her fingers, curiously.

What secrets did SHIELD have that Ranulph Haldane would have found?

Chapter Text

“The place is all yours, now!” Sharon set down her bags in the foyer, fully packed and ready for her return to Washington. “I think I have everything.”

Peggy watched her with a tinge of sadness. Most of the Avengers had already headed home, or at least to the places they were going to next. Thor had elected to go with Foster and her troupe back to her mother’s flat in the city, while Banner, Betty and Stark went back to New York together with Jake. That only left herself, Steve, Romanoff and Sharon, and the last two had decided to return back to Washington together.

“I was a bit surprised that you didn’t head out with the New York lot and Jake," she teased, having noticed the pair spending time together over the last week.

Sharon may be a trained operative, but she didn’t even bother being coy, only arching an eyebrow and pulling a mysterious smile. “You think you know so much!”

“I know the two of you got very chummy in the past few days. How long has that been going on?”

Sharon shrugged impishly. “Oh, since the Arctic at least.”

The Arctic? Peggy paused, calculating how long ago that was. “That was...last December.”

“Mmmm, yeah.”

Somehow, that left Peggy feeling a bit put out with her niece. “You two...up when we found Steve?”

“The Arctic is cold in the winter and we were on a glacier! We kept warm!”

Peggy was never particularly a prude, but even she found her jaw falling at Sharon’s playful words. “You better hope my mother isn’t haunting this house, as I think she just rolled over in her grave.”

Sharon’s snort echoed in the empty foyer. “I’m leaving you alone here with a man you are not married to and I’m the one who would shock and horrify her with my hook up?”

She had a point, but Peggy had liked teasing her all the same. “Yes, well...I’m in love with my chap.”

“I know.” Her ribbing softened as she sobered. “Besides, as much as I’d like to take the time, I got to get back. The team here is getting me data, and honestly, I’m at a dead end in London with this Mandarin case. The MST Pharmaceutical angle led us nowhere and now we are getting chatter he’s putting up videos again. They suspect he has a new target in mind.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know,” she admitted, running a worried hand through her hair. “They are guessing a military base, that seems to be a favorite target, that or a hospital, though after this it could be anything. I’m in communication with Everett Ross at the CIA here in Europe. He’s the only person there I seem to be able to get a straight answer out of for all of this, and he thinks that the super soldier theory probably doesn’t have much to do with the Mandarin. They likely hit MST Pharmaceutical for no other reason that it is a Western company who does a lot of charity work overseas. Targeting them makes a bold statement to the constituents the Mandarin wants to please, while at the same time riles up the West who will be offended that someone would hit a company doing nothing wrong. In the end, he’s caused a stir and outrage and that is what he wants.”

Peggy had a feeling it would all come down to that. “And so the whole super soldier angle, the fact that MST Pharmaceuticals had a form of the serum that the CIA gave them, that all was what, just a coincidence then?”

“I know, I know, I smell a rat in all of this, too. After all, this Everett Ross could just be covering up for his employer and feeding me a line of bullshit, but I don’t know, Peggy...what if all of this is just that...a coincidence?”

“Coincidences don’t happen like that!”

“We literally just watched multiple universes converge for no other reason than the stars just happen to move in the way that they do, and you don’t think that it could just be a coincidence?”

Sharon had a point, and logically, Peggy knew that. Of course things sometimes just happened for no reason. Not everything had to be part of a greater design or conspiracy, but that small piece of her pride that was already smarting from her earlier realizations of the conclusions she had jumped to hated. She hated to admit that in the end, it had all been her own folly, prejudice, and fears of what or who may lurk in the shadows.

“I just hate wasting my time and yours on a wild goose chase is all,” she finally managed to grumble, hugging her arms around her middle. “I hate thinking that in the end, we spent all this time chasing down Siobhan Haldane and tried to connect her to something nefarious that this Mandarin character wanted, and it was all a goose chase.”

“I don’t know if it was all a goose chase,” Sharon teased, lightly. “You looked fabulous in that outfit we went clubbing in. I have pictures.”

“Blimey,” Peggy chuffed, reaching up a hand to bury her face in. “I have done and worn worse, I suppose...but not by much. Still, I thought my instincts were right on this one. I dragged you across England to prove it, and I was wrong.”

That hadn’t been easy to admit to herself, let alone admit to her niece, a woman who had spent her childhood begging for stories of her long-lost great-aunt, imagining her in all sorts of mad adventures. Failing Sharon on her niece's first big case hurt more than she liked to think about.

“You know, I get that you're a legend to everyone, including me,” Sharon drawled, slowly, with mild amusement and much affection. “But you are still only human. Perhaps this just served to remind us both of that. I let myself get suckered into the idea of solving a case with my Aunt Peggy, which sounded fun...and truth be told, was fun!”

That did cut through Peggy’s moroseness a bit. “It was at that.”

“Besides, I got to go back and see where my family comes from, which was cool. I took some pictures for Dad and Maggie. Maybe when things calm down we can come back and go visit.” Sharon danced around the elephant in the room, that of Michael. “I don’t know, I think it was eye-opening for me in a way. Siobhan Haldane is a strong woman, there’s a lot to be admired. Makes me think of Dad and Maggie in new lights...and grandpa too. Everyone makes mistakes, Peggy, everyone fails. I think it’s how we pick ourselves back up and learn from those moments that matters in the end.”

They were common sense words, ones Peggy knew and understood well, but it hit her differently hearing them out loud from Sharon. It reminded her of that truth, centered her back in something familiar. “I accede to your wisdom in these matters.”

“Good, because I’m going to have to kick you off my case.”

Peggy laughed, throwing up her hands. “I’m well and truly off now. No more meddling, I promise.”

“Good,” Sharon nodded firmly, just as up the drive, Romanoff made her way through the growing twilight of the early, autumn evening.

“Ready to load up,” she asked, nodding to Sharon’s bags in the doorway.

“Yeah!” Sharon turned to Peggy, enveloping her in a tight hug. “You know, even if you failed in this case, you’re still my childhood hero, right?”

Peggy chuckled, but squeezed Sharon extra tightly before pulling away. “Well, you don’t make such a bad Avenger yourself. If you ever get bored with chasing down international terrorists, you know where I am at.”

“Oh, I am happy leaving the crazy aliens to you guys.” She picked up both of her bags, looking to Romanoff cheerfully. “Besides, you got Romanoff, she’s worth, like, twenty of me.”

“I don’t know about that, You’ve not seen her play poker,” Romanoff joked with a small smile.

“And on that note,” Sharon laughed, stepping out of the door as Romanoff moved out of the way to let her through and follow. Peggy stalled the other agent, however, catching her arm briefly before she made it away.

“Before you go,” Peggy murmured, quietly, just enough for only Romanoff to hear. “There is something I would like you to check out if you could.”

Romanoff’s green eyes widened just a fraction, the only hint that she was surprised at Peggy’s request. They had never been close, the two of them, but over the last two years they had managed a sort of camaraderie despite it all. It was the first time that Peggy had ever asked her to do anything personal for her, and she hoped that Romanoff understood it for what it was, a sign of trust in her.

Peggy had expected her to be suspicious and reply that it depended on what it was. Instead, Romanoff merely nodded, once. “What do you got?”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the folded manila envelope that Siobhan Haldane had handed her. “I was given this. It was found in the old files of Lord Ranulph Haldane. Does that name ring any bells?”

“British mad scientist who had a secret laboratory where he was doing research on dangerous and destructive weapons he planned to use against enemies of the United Kingdom, including and most especially the USSR?”

She had been KGB. She of course would likely know that. “That would be the one, yes. His daughter found this list and passed it on to me. She said we all have secrets, even SHIELD, and gave me this. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Arnim Zola’s name on it, but the rest I don’t know, and JARVIS has been locked out of the SHIELD files thanks to Tony’s meddling when he was onboard the Chimera. Once upon a time, I was a spy able to do these things on my own, but I fear that my new high profile status means I no longer enjoy the luxury of people ignoring me because I’m female and thus incompetent, so no more sneaking into the files room for me.”

Something fierce and angry lit Romanoff’s usually otherwise placed expression at Peggy's words. “You are the furthest thing from incompetent, you know.”

It was a rare show of defensiveness on her behalf from the otherwise reticent agent, and it caught Peggy slightly off guard. But it warmed her too. “I know that, just...there was a time in my career others didn’t, and I used it to my advantage. You know a thing or two about that, I suspect.”

Romanoff quietly studied her for a long moment, carefully, before jerking her chin. “Yeah, I do. So check the SHIELD files on this list, that’s all you want?”

“Well and anything you can find on them. I don’t know why Ranulph Haldane had the list or what he wanted with it. If Zola is on there, it could be as simple as a list of enemies, or a list of potential threats.”

“It’s worth a look.” Romanoff carefully tucked the envelope inside of her jacket pocket. “I assume you want to keep this between you and me?”

Peggy had to admit, she was surprised she even asked the question. “You mean you wouldn’t tell Fury if I asked you?”

“I’m Fury’s agent, not his slave,” she shot back, perhaps a bit pointedly. “I think the world of Fury, and he knows I’m loyal. But that doesn’t mean he owns me.”

Peggy couldn’t pretend she understood the first thing about the dynamics of the relationship between Romanoff, Fury, and Barton. Still, it was reassuring to hear her say that at least in this she was her own woman. “If you could, for now, till we understand more. If we find something that’s a threat, then we can tell Fury.”

That seemed to satisfy her. “I will see what I can do in our downtime, but after that, I can’t guarantee anything. Fury has a host of jobs he wants me and Rogers on, so…”

As if sensing he was being spoken about, Steve, too, came up the drive, having stowed his gear, including his shield, on board for the return to Washington. “I thought we had two weeks off, Romanoff? You already thinking about work?”

“Never ends for me,” she replied cheerfully, with the good-natured distance Romanoff managed with all of those she liked but wasn’t necessarily close to. She shifted into it so easily, it almost boggled Peggy’s mind. To say Romanoff had layers was an understatement. Still, while she hadn’t known Steve long enough to actually truly call him friend, she at least had some measure of trust for him, that much was clear. “How do you two plan to spend your two weeks of vacation time? Please tell me it isn’t finding all your old haunts from the war years, because that’s just depressing.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Steve drawled, shooting Peggy his crooked smile. “I wouldn’t mind seeing if that old pub is still there. Maybe they rebuilt after the war.”

Peggy actually felt her cheeks flush, despite herself. “It’s England, nothing ever goes away forever. If not that, I’m sure we can find another like it.”

Romanoff, caught between them, rolled her eyes. “Sharon has a point about you two.”

At least Steve was now the one to look abashed, shrugging. “Give us a bit of credit? We did lose seven decades together.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Romanoff smirked, waving it off.

“How about you,” Steve asked, changing the subject. “Finding a beach somewhere?”

“Maybe,” she shrugged, looking thoughtful. “Might just keep it relatively local. Might go on a road trip, somewhere...rural and Americana and find a B&B for just me, a good book, and a bottle of wine.”

The thing with Romanoff was that it sounded exactly what someone like her might do, and yet, it could just as well be a cover for something else she didn’t want to explain. For not the first time, Peggy wished she knew the other woman better. “Whatever you do, enjoy it.”

“Thanks.” She flashed a brief smirk before slowly making her way out of the open doorway and back down the path. “Got to head out. See you in a couple of weeks, Rogers. Carter, I’ll be in touch.”

And with that, she was gone, her boots crunching in the gravel drive, down back across the road to where the quinjet sat waiting. Peggy moved to stand beside Steve in the growing dark and cold, shivering slightly as she pulled her sweater around her. Without asking, Steve wrapped an arm around her shoulders to bring her closer to his warmth.

“So are we actually going to enjoy our time in London or are we going to solve another case you’ve dug up,” he teased, half seriously.

“I think I’m done with the Haldanes and Darkmoor for now,” she admitted, leaning into his shoulder. “Perhaps I was more chasing my own regrets and past than anything else.”

Here merely hummed by way of answer, a rumble Peggy felt through his chest. She had yet to say anything to him about what else she found, about the super soldier serum and the CIA, of how they had offered it to MST Pharmaceuticals to research, of the fact that there had been at least one other super soldier who had survived horrific experiments for decades before dying, unknown and unnamed, save for the moniker of Weapon II. She would tell him before they returned to America and their normal duties. For now, she had set Betty to the task of finding out what more she could on the matter in the hopes that they could start finding just how far-spread the data was and who was developing it. Peggy would eventually tell him all of these things, but not tonight.

“So what do you want to do with two weeks to ourselves in London?” Romanoff might have been teasing, but Peggy was not. Their time off was unplanned and welcomed, and she intended on using it.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe play the American tourist for once. Last time I was here, I was just another soldier in a war and London was a lot less fun.”

“This is true,” she admitted, grinning up at him. “We have the museums, of course, which I doubt I could get out of showing you. And there are all manner of new things that didn’t exist when I was young. We could discover some of that together.”

“We could,” he acquiesced, noncommittally, a hint of his Brooklyn roots peeking through. “Though...it occurs to me you never did bring me home to your parents’ house during the war.”

There was an implicit suggestion there, a very subtle one. Steve was never one to be as audacious as say Stark or as beguilingly open as Thor, but Peggy got the hint and arched a playful eyebrow up at him. “I didn’t, did I? But perhaps that was perhaps a certain gentleman had never gotten around to asking me to dance until he was about to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity and all that.”

“Well, I was an idiot, wasn’t I?”

“You were,” she confirmed, as in the distance, the quinjet whined to life. “But I still love you.”

“That’s good. I’m kind of crazy about you, myself.”

Over the wall that surrounded the front of the property, Peggy could see the quinjet carrying Romanoff and Sharon lift into the darkening evening sky, hovering over the heath. Somewhere, dogs barked, and a few children shouted in amazed joy at the sight. Peggy couldn’t help but smile at the blue-white light, as the jet moved straight upwards before turning in its direction and taking off, a streak of light into the west.

“We have the house all to ourselves, now,” Peggy pointed out, pulling away from him, but threading her fingers in his. “So what do we do with ourselves?”

There was one thing Steve wasn’t, and that was a fool. “Something tells me you already have ideas.”

“Points to you, Captain. Come inside, it’s getting cold out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, happily allowing her to drag him with her back into the warmth of her family home.