Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2941 on Fordway was a house not out of place among its neighbours. A huge chestnut tree, the oldest on the street, shadowed the front porch, and the south facing backyard was neatly maintained, the patio bleached by the sun and a swing set ageing near the fence. 

Henry Matthews and his wife moved into 2941 in January 1951, and there they had lived ever since. Their three children grew up happy, and loved. The eldest and youngest still lived close enough to enjoy Sunday dinner regularly, and the middle one - Jane on all her official documents, Trouble to everybody who knew her better than a handshake and a smile - visited twice a year at most, but she made up for it with magazines and postcards from all across the globe on her travels. It was a good house, with strong walls and thick licks of paint. 

In January 1991, exactly forty years after they first moved in, Henry finally retired for the second time at the respectable age of seventy-two. He had tried once before, to little success. He celebrated by giving his son and three grandsons all his ties, and what few went unclaimed, he burned in the firepit himself in a ritual that earned him the title Oldest Hoodlum in Washington DC from his wife.

“Just you wait until you retire, you'll be burning your lipsticks right here,” Henry retorted, and his wife laughed over the plumes of smoke cutting the frosty air between them.

It was a funny joke for many reasons, but most of all, because Henry knew his wife was not going to retire for some time yet. Peggy Carter Matthews was going to die with her boots on, or so everybody who knew her said, and that was that. 

Standing with her arms folded in the scant snow, still wearing her nylons, with a fluffy bathrobe over her work dress, Peggy smiled proudly at him, and Henry felt the swell of youthful affection and awe he first felt when they met, almost fifty years ago. 

“I'm going inside to get us some tea,” Peggy said, and scampered over the grass and patio like a young pup. She'd pulled her hair back into a plait, the way Jane kept her hair as a teenager, and it made Henry smile. He missed their troublemaker daughter, too. She'd missed Christmas for the first time in a while, and her letters had been less frequent of late, but longer and longer every time. It reminded Henry all too much of Peggy, over the years, when her work would weigh her down, and in her absence she would leave longer and longer notes, on the fridge and tucked into his briefcase and hidden in the folds of books for him to find. Full of love and apologies cloaked in everyday musings to conceal her longing.

Henry watched the fire chomp on his old ties, and held his hands over the flames. They were old man’s hands, now. He hadn't really noticed, but the fuzzy hairs and rubbery creases were very prominent. His skin was looser around his knuckles, and his nails looked different. He couldn't say how. It felt, suddenly, as if he could no longer make bold claims about knowing anything like the back of his hand anymore; he wasn't certain he could pick these hands out of a line up. They were an old man’s hands and he was - seventy-two, he thought, with a long sigh. He was seventy-two. It didn't matter that burning his ties was making him feel like a rebellious teenager tossing his schoolbooks at the end of the year, or that one laugh from Peggy was enough to make the years fall away from his worries and his joints. He was an old man. 

The shadows of the garden were tucked very close, despite the firepit and the light from the backdoor spilling out. Henry glanced around, wondering what was taking Peggy so long. The chill was winning out against the fire, and now she'd mentioned tea, the thought was tugging at him. Perhaps he could convince her to sneak a nip of brandy into their mugs, like they'd do on a stolen Saturday night when the kids were young, and could entertain themselves happily, and they could pretend to be the only two people in the universe for a while.

Henry marched back inside, stamping the snow and damp from his shoes onto the entry mat that led straight into the kitchen. The kettle was whistling on the cooker, and Henry swore loudly, hurrying to pull it off the gas heat. The water sloshed inside, and he poured it into the mugs laying out ready, without teabags in them.

“Peg! Damnit,” he shouted, and then muttered. She could be so easily distracted sometimes. He would tease her about it sometimes, was this what she was like at work? He dropped two strainers into their cups, using the nice tea leaves Peggy had pulled out but not measured. They were on the last of the box Jane brought from India, last year. The aromatic sting of the scent filled the room, and Henry ached for missing his daughter, and shouted for Peggy again. 

No answer.

Frowning, Henry trudged to the living room

It was empty, but he could hear Peggy out in the hallway, speaking in a low, soothing voice. Henry paused in the middle of the room, listening intently, as she murmured gently:

“-do about it, my darling. I know. I know. Look. Do you want to come here and - no, that's not what I said at all, Tony. You know it isn't.”

Henry huffed, and returned to the kitchen with an itch of anger under his skin. It was with increasing fervour that Tony Stark had been calling, lately, and while Peggy had been admirable in her patience and glad to offer her well of wisdom, Henry was growing tired of it. The boy was a reckless, selfish little twerp, and Peggy was too forgiving by half. 

He swirled his tea strainer in his cup, and Peggy’s, and watched the firepit flicker outside through the window, casting dancing stretches of light across the lawn, the shadows of the trees twisting in the dark. There was a time he felt for the boy, but after the last time he came knocking on their door, Henry wasn’t so sure he wanted him so comfortable coming around anymore. He had been loud, and abrasive, and downright mean even as Peggy made up a fresh bed in their son's old room. She’d locked herself in her office afterwards, for almost two hours while the little asshole slept off his binge, and no amount of coaxing could get her to fess up what it was he’d said that upset her so much.

To hell with it, Henry thought, and he grabbed the brandy from the liquor shelf himself. He dropped a splash into each mug, stirring it in, and took a test sip, before adding a bit more. As he put the bottle back, clinking it between the long-lasting gin and the rapidly depleted whisky, his eyes caught on the photograph on the mantelpiece end. It was from Bethan’s thirtieth, a few years ago. God, three kids over thirty, he really was old. 

Bethan was holding up her cake just high enough to show off her pregnant belly, with her big brother and sister on either side kissing her cheeks as she laughed. Henry picked it up to look closer, remembering the raucous chaos that soon followed that photograph being taken. Her water breaking early, Jane on the phone for the ambulance and Christopher holding his littlest sister’s hand. He’d been so proud of them all that day, how brave Bethan was, how focused Jane was, how gentle Christopher had been in the face of his sister and brother-in-law’s panic.

“That’s my favourite.”

Henry jumped a little, surprised to hear Peggy’s voice so close behind him. He turned, photo still in hand, to look at her. She was smiling at his hands.

“Mine, too,” Henry replied. He looked down again at his three children’s faces. Christopher already had speckles of grey in his beard and at his temples, and Jane had borrowed her mother’s lipstick because she’d forgotten to pack any of her own. He didn’t want to ask about the phone call - and he didn’t have to. Peggy always volunteered the information, no matter how much he didn’t want it.

“Tony and Howard have had another fight.”

“Uh-hum,” Henry replied, as noncommittal as he could make it sound. He returned the photo to its place of pride on the mantelpiece, and led the way to the kitchen. He handed Peg her tea, and she took a sip, narrowing her eyes at the taste of brandy but saying nothing. 

“He’s so much like his father, and he can’t see it. All the things that he thinks make him so different from Howard are actually just-”

“It’s not up to you to fix whatever’s broken between them, Peggy,” Henry interrupted shortly. He couldn’t quite keep his voice level as he said it - the repetition of well-worn sentences left his words frayed and thorny at the edges. 

“I’m not trying to fix anything, but he’s my godson, I can’t just-”

“What did he want this time, hmm?” Henry asked. Peggy breathed heavily through her nose, and leaned back against the worktop, cradling her steaming tea. “To stay over? For you to call Howard? To call Maria? You’ve done more than enough, Peggy, but he is taking advantage-”

“He’s hurting, Henry.”

“And?” Henry scoffed. He put his tea down too hard, and it splashed a bit over the worktop. They both looked at it, waiting for it to clean itself up. Henry tried to level his breathing, but he was so sick of this roundabout. “He’s passing on his hurt to everybody around him. He needs to get himself together, stop pushing everyone else underwater to keep himself up. You are his godmother, Peg, but you can’t be his crutch.”

Peggy pursed her lips and drank her tea. Henry looked at her hands around her mug. They were old hands, too. He thought maybe not quite so old as his own, but they looked different to the hands he held as he got down on one knee, to kiss her knuckles, and offer her a lifetime to share. He wondered if Peggy ever got surprised at the sight of her own hands, too. He watched the light glint off her wedding band and engagement ring. 

“I don’t want to be his crutch,” Peggy said, eventually. She sounded abruptly choked, and there was a shine in her eyes that made Henry’s gut twist. “I don’t…” she looked around for the words that eluded her. “But I can’t give up on him. I can’t do it, Henry. He - he deserves to have somebody believe in him. I believe in him.”

About two months before their wedding, Henry stepped out for a cigarette one night, to get some solitude from a party, and found himself in the unexpected presence of Howard Stark. He had met Howard many times by then, but they had not shared many conversations, and even fewer one on one. Howard was a boisterous, oxygen-consuming flame at the centre of whatever room he was in, and Henry thought he was likeable enough, but he never really understood what a lot of the rest of the world seemed to see in the man.

Howard held open his cigarette case, and shared his matches, and for a moment they smoked together in silence, looking up at the night sky.

“You’re lucky, you know,” Howard said, after a while. “You’re about to marry the most loyal person I’ve ever met.” He grinned, a little sly at first, but then the showmanship slipped away like rainwater sliding down a window. What was left was incredibly sincere, and almost shy. “It surprises people, because they think Peggy Carter’s a hardass, but her love’s an infinite resource. If I could bottle it, I think I could power New York. Maybe all of America.”

And she loves you, was the unspoken ending that Howard smothered with his cigarette smoke. Henry had been surprised, in a way, because there hadn’t been any kind of jealousy in his tone, though it had occurred to him more than once that maybe Howard had a thing for Peggy. Howard had just been honest, and maybe a little bit sad. 

Henry knew then it was true, and he knew it now. Forty-two years of marriage, and Peggy’s love was still a well that didn’t run dry. Not for Henry, not for their children, not for her work. And not for the Stark family, either. Infinite love, it sounded ever so romantic, but Henry knew better nowadays it was a taxing thing to bear. To keep on loving, sometimes. Taxing for Peggy to carry it, taxing for Henry to watch it.

“Believe in him to do what, Peggy?” he asked, as he picked up a towel and dropped it into the pool of his spilled tea to soak. He rubbed his mug dry and then took a sip of the leftovers.

Peggy gritted her teeth, and folded her lips around her first few replies.

“To be better than everybody else thinks he is,” she said, eventually.

Henry sighed. He didn’t want to have this fight. It wasn’t going to matter what he said, just like it didn’t matter that it seemed all too clear to him that not even Tony Stark thought he was better than the world’s expectations. Twenty years old, he was already a cynical thing, resigned to his lowest bar. 

“OK,” he said. “OK. But he’s not going to thank you for it, Peggy.”

“If I did anything with the expectation I’d be thanked for it, I would never have left Bletchley.”

Henry smiled, and waved her off as she grinned at him, and neither the wrinkles around her eyes nor the silver in her hair could stop her from looking positively girlish then. Henry loved her, and he told her as much, wrapping his arms around her to kiss her, the taste of brandy and tea strong on her lips.

“Happy retirement, darling,” Peggy whispered when they broke apart, lifting her tea up between them to drink. “Promise you won’t try remodelling the house again, like last time.”

Henry knocked her forehead with his at her teasing.

“I will swear no such oath,” he warned her. “Christopher’s stopping by next weekend to help me look at the bathroom tiles.”

Peggy rolled her eyes, but it was fond, full of that infinite love. 

“Couldn’t you get into reading, or golf or something?”

Henry stifled her suggestions with another kiss, and her laugh broke out over his teeth, making him laugh, too. The troubled lines of her brow were smoothing out, the anxieties that came with every phone call from Tony lessening over time, as they always did. 

“Let's burn some of my old shirts, too,” he suggested. 

“Miles and Olivia will complain again,” Peggy insisted, and glanced to the left side of the house, as if they might see their neighbours through the walls, scowling at them.

“Pssh, let ‘em,” Henry shrugged. “They've been old since they were twenty-five. Live a little. You make fresh tea, I'll go get that ugly green one that's been sitting in my closet for thirty years.”

“My mother gave you that shirt,” Peggy said knowingly, but her impression of being scandalised was ruined slightly by her smile. She'd hated that shirt for years, too. Despite her words she began to refill the kettle, and Henry watched her for a moment, feeling dazzled. Forty years in this house, two all-over remodels, three kids, one small fire that got candles banned from the kids’ rooms for a decade. Two dogs, one rabbit, six fish. They'd lived a full life here already, and the end wasn't in sight.

“Hey.”

Henry blinked, and saw Peggy standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking at him. She smiled her familiar crimson smile. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Henry replied. He headed upstairs, to fetch the green shirt Peg’s mother gave him thirty years ago, and he hasn't worn since; full of her love, and his own.

Chapter Text

Thawing.

Fingertips first. Cold, tingling shooting feelings in the skin, in the bones. Fingertips and toes. Wrists. Ankles. Face.

Face cold face burning face burning with the freeze so cold it's hot it's scorching cold.

The tremors in the extremities. 

Organs last. Bones and organs, micro fractures. Lungs expand like burst balloons. The fuck are balloons. 

Lungs and stomach last. Thigh muscles. Femurs. 

Crack crack crack. 

Left the windows open again. The frost got in fucking pigeons on the cabinet no not cute not fucking cute at all gonna get in trouble gonna get into it gonna get-

Sweat pours salty in the eyes and mouth. Clogged breaths. 

“First contact.”

A pair of hands on the right arm. A pair of hands on the left arm. Feet too numb to take the weight. Knees buckle and ankles drag.

“Moving.” 

Rough floor. Like tarmac. The clack of loaded guns. Blood in the ears. Blink. Eyelashes stuck together like glue. Blink. Grey film of sleep - no time to sleep. Wakey wakey.

Get the feet underneath but the weight buckles them again. Drop.

“Fuck!”

Somebody's in trouble. Shoulders click. Micro fractures healing. Organs are cold. Femurs like ice blocks covered in muscle.

Twisted torso, tangled legs. 

“Up, up, up.”

Seated. Leather, under bare skin. Spine stiff. Hips all the way back.

“Longing.”

Blink. Blink. Left the fucking window again who's been smoking who's been sneaking out who's been double-crossing me you little-

“Rusted. Furnace.”

Face sweaty. Skin tacky. Blink. Pale silhouettes in fluorescent light.

“Daybreak. Seventeen. Benign.”

Rubber stamp in the mouth. The tongue wedged down. Teeth. Teeth in gums. Teeth aching.

“Nine. Homecoming.”

Face covered, the hum of mechanics, of gears grinding, of electricity. Construction outside in full force again, they've been recruiting think they'll pay for a little dumb fucker think they'll take a punch drunk piece of nothing? Can't afford a dentist again so soon fuck it.

“One. Freight car.”

Lever cranks like a levy breaking. Every muscle short-circuits and the micro fractures like chasms in the bones. 

Every joint snaps every nerve shatters every thought vanishes.

Screams like a train on icy tracks.

Cold heat scorching burning burying in nothing there's nothing there's shrieking there’s-

“Soldier?”

Ten men.

Two exits.

Eight guns.

One vent shaft - blocked. Dead rat decomposing behind the grate. Maybe two.

The leader is talking. Answer succinct and truthful.

“Ready to comply.”

Chapter Text

Used to be that Howard Stark couldn’t go two days without getting grease under his fingernails. They hadn’t seemed like the good days, at the time. It had been a struggle, a dirty fight, slow-healing scars of one war, the build up to another. One minute tinkering with futuristic visions for an expo and the next, building planes and the bombs they carried, putting them together and pulling them apart, and those futuristic visions became nothing more than: there has to be a future, there has to be, there can’t just be this.

Those days were long over. Now Howard didn't put anything together, or pull it apart. He didn't even staple his own reports. Elena did that, and she uncapped his pen for him, handed it over and took it back once he’d scribbled his illegible name, and then Howard would get back to reading whatever other reports were piled on his desk. He was lucky if a pen broke and he got ink on his palms anymore.

Never happened, of course. His secretary was too good at her job to hand him broken pens.

Elena stood at the corner of his desk, waiting politely for him to finish up. 

“Should I add a wax seal to make it official?” Howard asked as he flicked the last flourish at the bottom of another letter to another President, or partner,, or lawyer What did it even matter anymore? 

Elena’s dark pink mouth twitched as she scooped the papers back up and plucked the pen out of his hand.

“I think the Prime Minister of the UK would enjoy that,” she agreed, recapping the fountain pen. “Maybe we could get you a quill, too?”

“Peacock feather?”

“I'll see what I can do, sir,” Elena replied with an indulgent smile, and did a faint little curtsy to complete the joke. Howard waved her off, and turned back to his computer screen. Before his eyes could find his place in the calculations, however, his office door swung back open again. 

Elena stepped inside, sliding the door shut behind her. She was flushed in the cheeks suddenly, and her mouth was agape.

“Miss Eider, what's wrong?” Howard asked, standing up out of his chair and striding around the desk to approach her. She looked spooked.

“The man - from the Security Council. He's outside, he'd like to see you.”

Curiosity and irritation collided in Howard’s chest, and he frowned, putting a hand on his administrator’s shoulder and coaxing her from the door. She still had all the papers in her arms, cradled against her chest.

“The Secretary?” It wasn't like Lionel to make unscheduled visits.

Elena shook her head.

“No the - the other one. The Undersecretary.”

Howard let out a less than professional huff of annoyance, his shoulders dropping. Alex Pierce was turning into a nuisance. Howard wasn't yet sure what he was going to do about the man, or what exactly he even could do, but the temptation lingered like a bad taste in the back of his throat with every meeting they exchanged. 

“I see,” he said, and rubbed his jaw, thinking. “Alright, I'll take an early lunch, Miss Eider. Cancel my appointments, Mr Pierce and I can squabble over some wonton soup instead of here. No need for him to be snooping around SI like a sniffer dog.”

Elena gave a weak smile that faltered.

“But sir,” she said, eyes widening. “The PhD candidates, should I reschedule them?”

Damn, he had been putting those off too long. He was running out of interns that were more than three months away from completing their doctorates. If he didn't replenish the herds soon, he'd be down a lot of lab work.

“Any of them particularly interesting today?” 

Elena shrugged.

“Schreiber has the thesis on kinaesthetic renewable energy you liked. There was also Fleet and Banner who both had queries on cellular regeneration and biotechnology.”

“Reschedule Schreiber, bin the rest. We don't want to oversubscribe on microbiology. Saves you an extra sorry letter or two down the line.”

“Thank you, sir,” Elena replied. She looked relieved, though he doubted it had anything to do with sending disappointing letters to PhD candidates about their failed internship applications. He gestured to his sunshine cabinet.

“Get yourself a drink, Miss Eider. Take a breath. Those letters will keep. I'll be back in an hour or so.”

Elena nodded, and made her way to the drinks cabinet in the corner, where he kept the good booze. She knew her way around, and the shorter time he kept Alex Pierce waiting, the better. Howard grabbed his coat off the hanger beside the door, checked his pocket for his keys and his wallet, then stepped out of the office with a beaming grin.

“Undersecretary Pierce!” he announced, closing his office door carefully behind himself with a decisive snap. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

He gripped Pierce’s hand tight, and shook firmly. His voice was probably a little thick on the sarcasm, but he didn’t much care. Pierce wasn’t the first nosy Undersecretary of the WSC Howard had encountered, and he wouldn’t be the last. They were always interested in poking around SI, and Howard didn’t entirely discourage it. If they were poking around under his purview, then they weren’t doing it behind his back at least.

“Mr Stark,” Pierce replied, matching his grin.

Alexander Pierce had a particular diplomatic charm to him, the likes of which Howard was used to gauging in politicians. He also had an occasional temper, which had flared just a little too close to the surface last time he’d been in these offices, and while Elena had insisted she didn’t want to make a fuss, she had been nonetheless cagier than usual about visitors the past few months.

Howard trusted Elena’s instincts, perhaps relied on them a little too much at times. She was an excellent judge of character, and if she felt spooked by Undersecretary Pierce, Howard wasn’t going to ignore that.

“I was on my way out to lunch, care to join me? There’s a place on the corner - Park’s. Bit of a maverick with his spices, but my gut’s been very happy with me since I started frequenting.”

Pierce narrows his eyes a little, casting his eyes to the closed door behind Howard.

“I was actually hoping we might discuss some upcoming contract renewals, I understand you met with Colonel Spall and Lieutenant-General Fishman last week, but in our conference call-”

“Alex,” Howard sighed, slinging on his coat. “It is not for the purview of the WSC that I make contracts with the US military. They are not subject to your oversight, if my board signs off on them then that is all that matters.”

Pierce twitched at the dismissal, and the use of his name, and Howard continued with the same disaffected air of a man who hadn’t the faintest clue the depths of the consequences of his words. He’d enjoyed being somewhat underestimated by most of the WSC for some time, and he had no interest in overplaying his hand now.

Not to mention, Pierce was inordinately foolish to make such wild claims as to know who in the airforce Howard had been meeting with. He may as well have come in carrying a placard saying we’ve been spying on you!

“We can talk about the contracts over wonton soup,” Howard offered. “But I’m not doing it here.”

There was a pause as they stood in the middle of the waiting room, Elena’s desk looking pointedly empty. Pierce looked torn between insisting and playing nice, and Howard wondered who had sent him. It wasn’t like Lionel, the WSC’s Secretary, to make such a song and dance as to send someone in person, let alone someone as high up as Pierce. But if Pierce was acting outside of Lionel’s orders - well. It was a gutsy move, Howard would give him that.

“Very well,” Pierce replied. “I can do lunch.”

He fixed his jacket, and gestured for Howard to lead the way. It almost felt as if, faced with defeat, Pierce was willing to try pretend this was his idea all along. Howard did his best not to smirk, and led the way out of the office to the elevator.

He knocked the button for the ground floor with his knuckle, and let the silence marinate them both. He knew Pierce’s type. It wouldn’t take long for-

“I hope your family are doing well.”

Howard did smirk a little, that time. He kept his eyes on the elevator doors, and nodded.

“Yes, very well, thank you. My son turns twenty-one soon.”

“Twenty-one?” Pierce remarked, sounding very surprised for someone who’s obviously been poring over a dossier of Howard’s life for days on end, trying to find any weak joints in the machine of SI. “My daughter’s about to turn twelve. She seems to think she’s about to turn twenty-one, though.”

“Funny age,” Howard agrees, and they share a shallow, fatherly laugh. “Enjoy it while it lasts, you’ll stop being dad soon, and start being that annoying guy who won’t go away.”

Pierce hummed. “Oh, I think I might already be there. They do grow up fast.”

Howard grinned, and didn’t let it falter. He caught himself off guard, sometimes, how easily the lies came flying out of his mouth. How naturally he cracked jokes about fatherhood, and empty nests. As if he and Tony had enjoyed five civil minutes together in - God, too long. It had been too long.

The elevator doors trundled open, and Howard gestured for Pierce to lead the way out.

On their way past reception, he caught sight of a young woman sitting on a sofa, reading a magazine as she waited, half hidden by a large vase of flowers. Howard had seen her before, following three paces behind Peggy on her way through the French Embassy for a meeting. 

The SHIELD agent tilted her head, and didn't look up at Howard as he passed. But once they were through security, he looked back around, under the guise of saying goodbye to the guard, and saw she had left the sofa, the magazine replaced neatly on the table. He couldn't see where she'd gone, but he felt the prickle of a following presence as he left the building, stepping out into the grizzly chill of the early afternoon.

“It's just down here,” he said, pointing to the Chinese restaurant on the corner. Beside him, Pierce seemed utterly at ease, not a hint to suggest he thought he was being followed.

Across the street, Howard saw the young woman standing at a bus stop, touching up her make up with a compact mirror. He felt a knot loosen in his chest. It was as close to feeling Peggy’s eyes on him as he could imagine, without her there.

Chapter Text

It was the first time Natalia was allowed to attend a Display, and she was determined not to let anybody mess it up for her. The older girls were excited, thrumming with a collective held breath, as if they were all standing in a line at the edge of cold water, trying to figure out who was going to jump in first.

Breakfast was a muffled affair, nobody clinking their spoons against their bowls too loudly, rows of heads folded over food and feet tucked around chair legs to keep from tapping. Natalia glanced up through her hair to her left, and saw Zoya was moving the same spoonful of oats up and down, up and down, not eating it. She was on Display first that morning, and the usually brash teen was now sullen and anxious. 

A foot connected with her own, and Natalia blinked, looking across the table to Yelena. Her big blue eyes looked almost purple. Her missing front tooth seemed more obvious today, the new one coming in was inflamed and sore looking when she smiled, which she was doing now at Natalia. Yelena was eager, and Natalia grinned back. She was resolved to be eager, too.

After breakfast they filed out together, and a voice somewhere above Natalia’s head let out a cackle of laughter, then a ragged cloth was shoved into her face by a hand reaching from behind her.

“Umf!” Natalia cried, grabbing the wrist of her attacker and shoving the stained rags out of her mouth.

“For your tears, little babies!” the older girls hissed and jeered, and Natalia threw the cloth back at the closest girl, Raya, a mean-faced fourteen year old, who sneered at her: “Don’t be sick!”

Natalia huffed, but a small hand clasped her fingers, tugging her along.

“Don’t!” Yelena whispered. “If you say anything, Madame will think we are not old enough. We must rise.”

Natalia gritted her teeth and grumbled under her breath, but did as her friend bade her. 

The large gymnasium was well a lit building, with hard floors and a high rising set of steps, which all the girls filed along in their class rows. Natalia took her place on the lowest step, between Yelena and Galina, and tucked her hands behind her back, shaking strands of hair out of her face. On the main floor, Zoya stood at the edge of the wide dais that had been erected, her eyes fixed on the wall behind her audience.

In the centre of the dais was a grate, like a drain.

“Girls!” Madame B. announced, settling the very quiet murmurs of anticipation that echoed loudly in the cavernous room. “We are here to celebrate Zoya, Avelina and Raisa, with Displays of their remarkable qualities. We are proud of them, and one day, we will be proud of you, too.”

Madame B. had eyes that roamed so quickly, yet so intensely, Natalia was certain she looked at every individual face in the room in turn. She was a vicious and beautiful woman, and she moved with a very particular grace that made her footsteps stand out when she would walk, boldly and loudly, through the corridors during lessons. Every class knew when Madame B. was approaching.

Natalia did not know if she loved Madame B., or was frightened of her. It was a very large feeling, certainly, that engulfed her body whenever Madame B. was near. It sucked up all the air from her lungs and it filled her belly like a pouch of coins.

Zoya was taking her place on the dais, and her instructor, Miss K., was stepping up, too.

Natalia felt a fluttering in her lungs, and her toes flexed back and forth inside her shoes. 

There was a knife in Madame K.’s left hand, glinting wickedly. Zoya slipped out of her shoes and placed them neatly on the side.

“Disarm me,” Madame K. ordered brusquely. 

Zoya charged.

Elation and terror filled Natalia as she watched the proceedings. Zoya was indeed remarkable. Fast like a whip, like a viper striking, one moment she was aiming to tackle Madame K. head on and the next she had slid around in a rapid coil, taking the instructor’s legs out. They grappled ferociously, limbs impossible to follow at their speed, and in no time at all Natalia had completely lost track of the knife. It seemed to be nowhere, and in both of their possessions at once. 

She was breathless with exhilaration, the pounding breaths of Zoya’s exertion and the thud of Madame K.’s feet on the floor, and she felt a prodding disappointment when after several gut-wrenching minutes, Zoya sprang back away from her instructor to her feet, holding aloft the blade in her hand to show her sisters.

The rows of girls behind Natalia shrieked, in almost perfect unison, just once: “ZOYA!”

There was no applause, no further cheering, but Zoya’s entire face was alight as if someone was pointing a torch at her, as if the entire room was shrieking and clapping. Her breaths were still coming out in gasps, sweat sticking her hair to her cheeks. There was a gasp from the crowd, then another. Madame K. was frowning at Zoya from behind her, making no move to congratulate her charge.

Zoya brought the knife down from her high grip, and it caught the light, glinting red.

Natalia bit the inside of her cheek, her eyes stinging but unable to blink, as Zoya twisted, and drops of dark blood trickled in a splatter onto the dais.

“Wha-” Zoya said, and looked down at the knife, only just realising it was not clean. Her eyes widened, horrified, and she looked up at Madame B., and her impassive face. Zoya wobbled, her legs buckling as a dark stain began to spread over her long shirt. One knee hit the floor and someone in the crowd hissed.

“No!” Zoya cried, struggling to get back up. “I can stand!” she shouted, despite all evidence to the contrary. The tears of victory in her eyes were beginning to fall. “I can stand!” she begged again, as her weight shifted, and she nearly fell a second time.

Natalia folded one hand inside the other behind her back, and squeezed very hard, until her knuckles began to hurt. 

If Zoya couldn’t remain standing, then she would be disposed of. That was the rule.

Zoya lifted her victory knife again, high above her head. The gasping of her breaths sounded more like sobs.

“You must return the knife to its proper place, Zoya,” Madame B. said dispassionately. Natalia glanced over at the empty case for it, on the other side of the platform. It was a long way, Zoya couldn’t possibly make it.

But Zoya did not seem to care. She slid one foot through the pool of her blood, then the other, dragging a smear of crimson with her bare feet. She held the knife in both hands, presented out before her like an offering, her cries stifled by her gritted, gurning teeth. Madame K. did not even move to let her pass, watching with a menacing scrutiny as Zoya was forced to divert her path, taking four precious extra steps to get around her instructor, on her path to the knife’s casing.

Natalia felt her eyes sting, and she bit her mouth harder, angry at her body’s betrayal, forcing herself not to look away. If she so much as glanced at her shoes, somebody would notice. She had to watch. She just had to watch, and not be sick. 

Zoya slipped, and the same knee hit the floor a second time, this time much louder, and as she cried out in pain the knife tumbled from her grip. Lightning fast she dove forward, so as not to let it touch the ground, landing flat on her belly and grabbing the knife tightly with both hands in alarm.

Her left hand had grabbed the handle, but her right had clenched around the blade.

Zoya’s roar was pitiful, echoing in the gymnasium, bouncing back to her. Her feet, soaked in her own blood, kicked like a child in a tantrum.

“No!” she screamed again, pushing herself up, but it was slow, and awkward. She hadn’t let go of the knife, even as blood seeped out from between her fingers and over her forearm. “I can stand! I can stand!” she insisted on her knees, as tears rolled down her bright red cheeks.

Madame K. looked over at Madame B., who nodded once. Madame K. walked over to the swaying girl, and Zoya tried to pull away, yanking the knife out of reach but it was no good. Bloodloss and panic had already taken her. She was still breathing, but she was already dead.

The knife sliced out of her grip and into Madame K.’s with treacherous ease. Madame K. took hold of her hair, pulling her head back to expose her bare throat, and then cut it, deep and fast. Zoya’s ragdoll body collapsed where Madame K. allowed it to, already wiping the blade on her sleeve.

Madame B. gestured to two of the guards standing on the outskirts of the room. They picked up Zoya easily, one had her legs, the other her arms, while her head lolled uselessly, the deep split on her throat gaping wide like a lolling second mouth. The blood that poured out of her in spurts and pools was dark. There was so much of it.

Natalia wanted to look at Yelena beside her, to see what she was thinking. She didn’t dare. 

Somewhere down to the right side of the viewing bank there was a retching sound, followed by a splatter and a rippling hiss of scornful laughter. It wasn’t close enough for Natalia to smell it, but even just the sound was met with a sympathetic whirling feeling in her gut. She wasn’t going to give the older girls the satisfaction. Not as Zoya was carried away, not as the dais was splashed with buckets of water that fizzled red and brown into the centre drain, not as her abandoned shoes were picked up and carried out, too.

Not as Avelina took Zoya’s place with cool impassivity, as if her predecessor had not just fought, failed and died in a matter of minutes.

Pain filled Natalia’s mouth, followed by a raw taste on her tongue. She’d drawn blood from the inside of her cheek.

From behind her, she heard another girl’s voice, pressed suddenly close to her ear.

“The first one always dies. They plan it like that. A weak one then two strong. If you get picked first, it’s because they know you’ll fail.”

Natalia had no idea if she was lying.

Chapter Text

Rhodey knew it was a bad idea to opt for being the polite, charming guest. He'd been Tony Stark's friend long enough to know that once you got caught up in the Stark Party Charm-athon, you were stuck for at least an hour making awkward smiling small talk with men insistent on sharing their own war stories as their wives stared over their champagne flutes, commenting on how they loved a man in uniform.

By the time Rhodey had extricated himself, Tony had vanished into the depths of the party.

It was a gloriously sunny day, and the extended gardens had been set up with two large marquees, the back of the house opened up like a treasure chest for guests to freely come and go, and it was open season on the bars. No expense spared, as usual.

Rhodey recognised maybe a fifth of the people present. He wondered if Tony even knew half, despite it being his birthday party.

There was a burst of tittering laughter from behind him, and Rhodey glanced around to see Lieutenant-General Fishman and his wife, surrounded by a throng of interest as Fishman told his best Nixon story. The last time Rhodey had heard it had been at this very house, two New Years parties ago.

The Starks' Hampton home was familiar enough that Rhodey knew where to start looking for the wayward birthday boy. He slid easily through the guests, catching Mrs Stark’s eye as she held a dainty canapé in one hand and shepherded a crowd away from the edge of a tinkling water feature with the other. She flashed him a knowing smirk, and he grinned at her.

There was no sense in Mrs Stark worrying about her son already, barely two hours in. Rhodey could take charge of keeping Tony in check for now.

In his distraction, his foot caught on the edge of the cobblestone path and he tripped, stumbling with a yelp. Before he could hit the dirt and cause a scene, however, a tight hand grabbed his arm, yanking him up.

“Careful now,” a woman's voice said. “Everybody here is far too drunk already to drive you to a hospital.”

Rhodey laughed, looking down at his feet momentarily embarrassed, then up at his saviour. It was one of Peggy Matthews’ daughters. She had dark hair that was pinned in elegant curls, laughing green eyes, and she was wearing a white playsuit that shone shockingly bright in the sunshine.

“Thanks,” Rhodey said, feeling warm around the cheeks. “Beth-Anne, is it?”

“Bethan,” the woman corrected. “And you're the famous Staff Sergeant Rhodes, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Rhodey is fine,” he replied. God, she was pretty. He was also very certain she was here with her husband and children. Was she the one that used to babysit Tony?

“Rhodey,” Bethan repeated, sounding amused. “Looking for the birthday boy?”

“Just uh,” Rhodey tried to think fast, distracted by the woman's smile. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and she had the same warm manner as her father. None of the rather ferocious authority of her mother, who Rhodey would gladly admit he was still quite intimidated by.

“It's alright, I was his babysitter for a while, I know exactly how much trouble he can get into,” Bethan said.

Rhodey didn't have a kind way of asking if she had to pat him down for drugs when he was five, too, so he just smiled amiably at her and agreed Tony was still an expert in being where he wasn't supposed to be. 

“Well, babysitter’s off duty,” he said, “So I'll go find him before the cake candles get lit.”

He followed this with a truly humiliating little bow that made Bethan laugh, and he decided to pretend that was the point, and did it a second time, his ears and cheeks burning. Then he turned on his heel, nearly braining himself on the path a second time in his haste, and hurried all the way up to the house.

There were fewer people inside. The back of the house was full of sunshine beaming in through the open bay windows and doors. The caterers had taken over the kitchens, and one of them squawked loudly when Rhodey entered.

“Sir, guests are not permitted-”

“It's alright, he's one of Tony’s,” the Chef said with a glance over his shoulder. Rhodey wasn't sure he liked being labelled one of Tony’s by the Stark family chef, but he decided now wasn't the time to fight it. Whatever got him quickly out from the crowd before someone else could ask him about his medals. He nodded his thanks and beelined for the back door that led to the private suites. 

He was met with a rush of cooler air and darkness as he went through, and when he shut the door behind himself, quiet fell like a spell. Cut off from the outer world, it was impossible to guess there was a party of more than a hundred people outside the walls.

Rhodey made his way quickly through the house. He knew the layout - moreover, he knew the most likely places he’d find the missing man of the hour. It was on route to his third guess that he finally heard it. Raised voices, muffled by a heavy dark oak door that led to the east sunroom.

“-known better than to expect anything else. For God’s sake, Tony, your mother has spent weeks organising this and the least you can do is show a little gratitude-”

“Gratitude? For a party full of your friends I didn’t even ask for? Give me a break-”

“You are twenty-one years old now, you cannot keep-”

Rhodey’s heart sank as he came to a halt outside the door, torn between loyal intervention and respectful ignorance. He should turn back. Nothing good had ever come of trying to weasel Tony out of his dad’s bad books before, and it would probably be better if he-

Too goddamn late.

The door was wrenched open, and backlit by a wash of golden beams from the skylights above was a dazzled, startled Tony. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils blown to hell, and his mouth hung open like a parched dog as he stared at Rhodey, as if trying to place him in his memories. 

“Ahh, James, very good,” Howard said, and Rhodey violently and silently combatted the urge to duck his head as Howard appeared at Tony’s shoulder, which he gripped viciously tight, his pasty expression the colour and consistency of cement. “Try get the birthday boy here to drink a glass of water or five, would you? He is making his thank you speech at three-thirty. I will do my utmost to keep his guests entertained in the meantime.”

Tony rolled his eyes so far they seemed to vanish into his skull, as Howard elegantly muscled his way out of the room without so much as a glance at his son, already brushing his suit down.

“God, Tony,” Rhodey said, but Tony let out a loud wailing scoff of frustration as he waltzed back into the room, dropping down onto a chaise-longue with a distinctly hard-done-by air.

“Can you not? For like, five seconds,” Tony groaned, the backs of his hands digging into his eye sockets as he swung his legs up over the arm of the chair.

“I’m not anything,” Rhoday insisted, yanking the coffee table over and sitting on its corner while decidedly not thinking about how much it probably cost. “But would it kill you to play nice for an afternoon? I mean, you’re out of here when, tomorrow?”

“Tonight,” Tony mumbled into his hands. “Got a plane pre-booked and everything.”

Ah, well, at least that explained Howard’s shirty attitude. After all, it had been a while since he’d acted shocked about the drugs, which were quite visibly pounding through his son’s system right now. Rhodey felt a bubbling of annoyance in his chest, making it hard to concentrate. The problem was, he didn’t quite know who the annoyance was aimed at.

“Alright, well let’s just get through the afternoon, OK? Drink some juice, eat some crab, smile for your mom. Come on, Tony. It’s just one day.”

Damp, dark brown eyes peeked out from under the shields of his hands, and he looked so fucking young it made Rhodey want to scream. It was an insult, sometimes, looking at Tony and remembering this was pretty much how old Rhodey was when they met each other. Like everyone else, Rhodey spent the first few years knowing Tony letting his asshole nature and innate intelligence bely his frightening, naive age. 

Not anymore, though. He knew better now, knew where to look, to see the vulnerable pieces of Tony his spiteful attitude so expertly concealed.

“Come on, get up, Tony,” Rhodey said, and he took Tony by the wrist, ignoring his flinching and blustering in favour of dragging him back to his feet. Tony swayed, but remained standing with obstinate and obvious dislike. “What time’s your plane?”

Tony jerked his head.

“Eight. Nine. Ten.”

Rhodey counted to ten all by himself, and didn’t lose his temper.

“Alright, well, you’re here until six at least, so we’re gonna get you some water, some canapes, your mom is gonna be thrilled, your dad is gonna be vaguely pleasant, and - hey, Jesus, Tony? Tony!”

As he spoke, Tony’s swaying got a lot looser, and eventually he tipped forwards on the balls of his feet, until his face was planted into Rhodey’s chest. Rhodey’s arms wrapped around him instinctively to keep him from falling over, but it was awkward and clumsy, and the panic yanking through him evaporated any vague sense of relief he might have felt at Tony feeling at least trusting enough to initiate maybe the fifth hug of their entire friendship. 

“Ok, ok,” he said quietly, stroking his flat hand very cautiously up and down Tony’s back.

He was wearing a nice suit, though it wasn’t quite so well pressed as it was probably supposed to look, and his face was clammy where it was pressed to Rhodey’s throat. His breaths were erratic, his arms loose at his sides, and Rhodey shuffled them stiffly over to the chaise-longue, and sat them down. Tony barely stirred the entire time, but as Rhodey carefully touched the back of his head, he sniffled.

"Talk to me, Tony," Rhodey said gently.

This wasn't the usual state of affairs. Rhodey had been ready for a combative Tony, or a manic Tony, or a dismissive Tony. He hadn't been prepared for a crying Tony.

He smoothed Tony's hair down at the back of his neck, and waited him out for a few minutes.

Eventually, Tony pulled back, regaining his touch allergy with the flip of a switch and scooting away across the seat. He scrubbed his face angrily, huffing.

"M'fine," he insisted, and Rhodey didn't slap him upside the head through sheer force of will.

"I thought he didn't get to you anymore," he said, and then winced as Tony frowned. That was a stupid thing to say. Howard was his dad, of course he still got to Tony. Jesus, had Rhodey been falling for Tony's antics the same as all the other schmucks? He thought he knew better than them by now. "He's just -"

But the platitudes stuck in Rhodey's throat, and he couldn't force out whatever word for what Howard might be. Worried. Concerned. Upset. Afraid.

He'd never once seen evidence of actual violence between the father and son, but Rhodey was starting to wonder if maybe that was a meaningless thing, when whatever was between them still got Tony in this kind of state. Perhaps not physically striking his kid wasn't as much of a sign of Howard's goodness as Rhodey had convinced himself of in the past.

As his sentence died on his lips, Tony looked up at him with a wry expression, as if reading his thoughts perfectly.

"Yeah, he's just," Tony agreed, and glanced over his shoulder out of the window. There was a view of the long driveway from here, gleaming cars and two more people walking up towards the house, dressed to the nines and probably complete strangers. "Jane's driving me to the airport later. She's getting the same flight as me. I thought that would at least be something, but he seems even madder for it."

Rhodey can't remember which one Jane is, and by the look on his face Tony must guess it, because he adds:

"Godmother's older daughter. She's a journalist, just got back from Somalia. She's flying out to London with me before she goes to - wherever, I don't know. Somewhere in Europe that's about to break out in civil war over something."

Tony couldn't possibly be so naive about why his father would get sensitive over him flying out on the day of his twenty-first birthday with a member of his godmother's family, rather than staying with his own for a while. The Starks had always been close knit about their family disagreements, but Rhodey heard enough from Tony's perspective to know more than once Howard had suggested Tony go try convince Peggy Matthews to adopt him and be done with it, if he hated being a Stark so much.

It seemed fruitless to point this out. Tony was raw all over already, and Rhodey needed him sober enough and cheerful enough to give a speech in less than a couple of hours. So instead he just hummed, and asked: "You all packed?"

Tony nodded. He looked a touch calmer. Rhodey reached out and straightened the collar of his shirt, then encouraged him to his feet.

"Wash your face," Rhodey suggested, nudging him towards the en-suite. "We'll get you something from the kitchens. I need you to protect me from making a fool of myself in front of pretty women."

Tony snorted, heading towards the bathroom and leaving the door open as he ran the taps.

"There's no stopping that," he warned through the doorway, splashing his cheeks with water and grumbling.

"No, seriously Tony," Rhodey warned. "I bowed at Bethan Matthews just now."

Tony cackled, pulling a towel from a rail to rub his face and hands and neck.

"Bethan Willis, for starters," he corrected. "You know she's married, right?"

"Yes, Tony," Rhodey groaned, just thrilled to know if nothing else, his mild humiliation was enough to cheer the birthday boy up. "I am extremely aware she's married. And extremely aware she's the most beautiful person I have probably ever met."

"Hot for babysitter," Tony joked, tossing the towel on the counter and fixing his cufflinks. He was still swaying a little, but he looked better. "Nice."

Rhodey scowled, and began ushering him towards the door.

"Don't even start. I'll get Fishman to tell you his Nixon story as a birthday treat."

Tony gave an exaggerated shudder, rolling his eyes. "I would rather eat glass than hear that one again. You know my mom can recite it word for word? She did it at Christmas once. She's suggested making it a new party game: Fishman vs Nixon, remixed. She did Shakespeare."

Rhodey grinned, slinging an arm over Tony's shoulder as they made their way down the stairs.

"I love your mom," he admitted very easily, because it was the truth. Maria was fantastic, and a lot more fun than she liked to let on most of the time. Tony's eyes were a bit brighter as he nodded in agreement.

"You think Edgar will make us drunken omelettes since it's my birthday?" he asked.

Rhodey slapped his shoulder.

"You think Edgar will stop calling me Tony's whenever he's talking about me? Not even Tony's friend, you know. He absolutely despises me."

Tony cackled.

"Oh my god, like you're my goldfish?"

"Exactly like I'm your goldfish."

"I mean, he does hate you. You sent back his eggs."

The memory of this came back with ringing clarity, and Rhodey scoffed in outrage.

"I asked for less runny eggs one time!" he insisted. "Five years ago!"

"He's got a steel trap memory and is 99% pride," Tony replied with a shrug. "I'll see what I can do, but you should start by complimenting his eggs."

Before Rhodey could respond at how very much he did not want to compliment Edgar's eggs, Tony kicked the door to the kitchens open and waltzed inside with a hoot of laughter and a clap of his hands, shouting, "Eddie! My man! What's a birthday Prince gotta do around here to get a drunken omelette?"

The door swung shut behind him, blocking out the noise, and Rhodey paused for a moment, glancing around where he stood in the central foyer that was the axis of the house. Back up the stairs they'd come from was dark and silent, but when he looked to the right, he saw two people through an open door.

Howard was holding a sheet of paper and staring down at it with grave intensity, while in front of him Peggy Matthews had her arms crossed and was watching him. After a beat her gaze slid over, and she caught Rhodey's eye. He froze, alarmed to be noticed, but she simply reached out with one hand and flicked the door shut without a word.

Rhodey stood for a moment, filled with curiosity.

From inside the kitchen there was the clatter of pans and the chef calling Tony a lot of names that nobody else would dare, followed by Tony's most nuisance-like laughter. Rhodey took a deep breath, banishing the curiosity from his thoughts, and marched into the kitchen to confront Edgar.

He still wasn't going to compliment the eggs.

Chapter Text

By the time they got there, the blood staining the back porch was cold and probably never getting out of the painted beams. Nick felt the two Federal agents side-eying him, but didn't bother giving them the satisfaction of looking over. The two police officers who first responded to the 911 were hovering anxiously in the yard, clearly expecting some kind of blowout between the two agencies over jurisdiction but Nick wasn't worried. It was no toss-up, this was SHIELD territory.

The dead guy was lying on his side, the hole in his throat ragged and gaping. He'd probably not even felt it, dead before his body hit the decking. It was a remarkable shot.

Nick looked up towards the north-east, where the shot must have come from. By the looks of the staining, the body hadn't been moved, so where he fell was as good a clue as they were going to get. There was hedging and beyond it a huge labernum tree that would have done jack shit to conceal anyone perched in it. Leo Merton, may he rest in peace, would have had to have been a goddamn moron not to see a sniper the second he walked out his back door.

As Nick circled the blood pool, he saw Coulson in his periphery taking the other side of the body, and making the same connection as him between the body angle and the labernum tree.

"Nobody's that stupid," Coulson said.

"Not even the NSA," Nick replied.

Coulson raised his brow, pointing at Leo Merton lying twisted on the veranda floor between them. This guy? His bewildered expression said, and Nick nodded sharply. Coulson blew a whistle between his teeth and put his hands on his hips, twisting around to check for any more bullet holes but there were none to be found. It had been a one shot kill, straight through the base of Leopold Merton's neck. 

"Holy hell," Coulson muttered. "What are we doing about the Feds?"

"I already called it in," Nick replied. "Someone will be along to collect them and bring them back to their playpen soon."

Coulson snorted, glancing over.

"They look pissed?" Nick asked as he turned on his heel, trying to judge the distance between the body and the beech row behind the labernum. Visibility for the sniper would have been shit, but they'd have been more hidden at least if that was their station. 

"Uh-huh," Coulson said. "Maybe it was a closer struggle than we think. The entry wound is huge. Could have been a close-up shot."

Nick grunted, feeling doubtful.

"No powder-burns," he said. "But maybe."

There was the creak of the back door opening, and a woman came striding out wearing paramedic gear. 

"Agent Searle," Nick said with a grin tickling the corner of his mouth despite himself. "Why are you cos-playing as a civilian paramedic? Did you forget your uniform or something?"

Searle narrowed her eyes with a bullish snort through her nose.

"They want this one kept as hushed as possible, if we can keep the neighbours thinking it's some sort of terrible accident all the better."

"Not with the song and dance those two klutzes made coming over here," Coulson said with a jerk of his head at the Feds. "We'll be lucky if this doesn't make the evening news now."

Searle rolled up her dark green sleeves and crouched down near Merton's face, tilting her head to inspect the fatal wound. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, she touched the very edge of the entry point. 

"We were just discussing if this could have been a point-blank shot," Nick said, moving around to stand over the body and block Searle from the FBI Agents' gaze. "But we couldn't see any powder."

"There isn't any," Searle said confidently. "This wasn't a bullet."

Nick looked over to Coulson, whose eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open for a moment before they both crouched quickly at Leo Merton's torso, watching Searle tug very gently at the skin of the dead man's neck to expose the wound further.

"See this tearing?" Searle said, indicating the odd shredding around the hole in the throat. "This isn't from something going in. It's from something being pulled out. A barbed projectile of some kind. If it didn't sound completely insane, I'd say this guy was killed with an arrow."

Now that Searle had pointed it out, it seemed completely obvious. The wound was far too large for even a high calibre bullet, and the way the blood was splattered outwards was unlike any bullet wound Nick had ever seen. Searle reached around and lifted Merton's head, revealing the other side of his neck - an exit wound with the exact opposite kind of shredding at the skin, like something had been yanked inwards.

An exit wound, and no bullet hole in the wood or the wall of the house.

"What kind of psycho," Coulson muttered, but Nick stood back up quickly, his thoughts coming quickly now as a new idea came to mind. If Searle was right, then that would mean…

"What is it?" Searle asked, as Nick stood directly in front of Leo Merton, facing north-east towards the labernum in the neighbouring garden. The wind was gentle, pulling him in a loose, southerly direction. He followed its angle a little, tilting around on his heel just a touch. 

Two gardens over there was a huge, thick oak tree that probably cast a shadow across the entire garden it stood in. A sniper with a rifle would barely be able to see Merton through his scope at that angle, let alone shoot a bullet that clean. But something with greater flexibility, shot by someone who knew how to use the wind to their advantage just right?

"Oh my god," he murmured. He felt Coulson come to stand beside him, and follow his line of vision to the oak tree.

"Jesus," Coulson said, obviously coming to the same conclusion. 

"Call Supervisor Adams in analytics," Nick ordered, his mind racing. "Let's see if we've got any more unsolved arrow killings in the past year."

Chapter Text

Tony came to suddenly, and was instantly aware of three things: his mouth and throat were parched, the girl from last night was no longer taking up most of the bed, and somebody was hitting the door so hard they were in danger of breaking their knuckles.

He smacked his lips and stared bleary-eyed around the room. It was in a particularly terrible state, even by his low standards. Most of the things on the chest of drawers had been knocked over, the chair in the corner was completely submerged under a mountain of clothes, and his aim apparently wasn't all it was cracked up to be last night, because there were two condoms lying several feet away from the trash can, and another on the desk that he was quite certain had been there for a few days now. 

Tony flipped his pillow and planted his face into the cooler side, stretching out his limbs. The knocking was still going on - maybe it was the girl from last night, trying to get back in. He grunted and turned his head, trying to ignore it.

Eventually, it stopped, and Tony sighed gratefully, ready to drift back into merciful unconsciousness.

A few minutes later, there was a very faint scrabbling sound.

Was somebody trying to pick the lock? Tony frowned. Well, if they managed, they weren't going to find much to rob him of. He and the girl - Katie? Casey? Caitlyn? - almost certainly finished the coke last night, as well as something she promised was ecstasy but now he wasn't so sure. If the burglar at the door did get in and found something in this hovel worth taking, they were welcome to it. Call it a finders prize for digging through this dump.

The door opened, and a voice rang out through the apartment:

"Tony! Tony!"

Not a burglar then. Tony grunted again, his hands sliding up under the pillow to hug it to his face and block out the light and sound spilling in as his bedroom door burst open. His entire body ached. 

"Tony," the woman's voice said, far too loud for his tender state. 

Then the sheets were whipped off him and Tony groaned.

"M'naked," he warned too late.

"Like I give a rat's ass," Jane Matthews snapped. Tony peered over his shoulder.

She was standing in his bedroom, actually standing in his bedroom, and looking around with blatant disgust, her dark plait coming loose around her face and her lipstick smudged at one corner. She had a bag slung over her shoulder, like she'd just walked off the plane and come straight here.

She probably had. Guilt coiled around Tony's spine and his stomach clenched. Fuck her, he didn't ask her to come. He didn't want her here. He put his face back in the pillow.

"Tony," Jane said firmly. "Get up, now."

Tony ignored her easily. She had absolutely nothing on some of the hellions that had tried to move him before, he wasn't afraid of Jane Matthews. She could look at his bare ass all day as far as he was concerned. There was the sound of movement, and clattering. She was picking things up, shuffling them around.

He didn't bother checking to see if she'd picked up the condoms.

"Tony, you have a flight in five hours. If I have to buy another ticket for myself and walk you the entire way to the church at the other end, you are going to this funeral."

There was a light breeze of papers being dropped beside him, and Tony opened his eyes just enough to see the plane ticket next to his pillow. He shut them again, and elbowed the ticket off his mattress onto the floor, rolling around.

"Tony!" Jane shouted. She sounded close to tears now, and Tony gritted his teeth. "I have just gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to come here. You are going to get up, and get dressed, and get on that fucking plane."

Tony laughed, the noise scraping painfully out of his throat as he rolled back over to stare through gummy lashes up at her. She was throwing things in an open suitcase she'd pulled from somewhere, maybe under his bed. There was little to sense to her choices - dirty things and clean things all piled into the case, shoved into tight balls under her quick hands.

"I'm sure my dad will reimburse you for your trouble," he drawled. "Go away, Janie."

Something hit him in the head - a sweater, and he tossed it back to the floor to glare at the woman standing at the bottom of his bed. Her eyes were ablaze now. He'd never noticed how much she and her sister looked alike, but they really were almost like twins; they both had Aunt Peggy's nose, and mouth, and chin.

He was suddenly a bit more aware of how completely naked he actually was, but he stared her out without flinching anyway. She was the intruder here. If she didn't want to see something, she could leave. 

"Tony," she said, her voice shaky as she clasped her hands together in front of her like a prayer. "I know this is hard, OK? I know this is scary. But Edwin Jarvis loved you very much, and if you do not get on this plane-"

Tony let out a long, throat-shredding cackle and pushed himself up to sitting, yanking one of his pillows over his lap and clenching it hard in his fists. A violent, throttling feeling was taking up his entire chest. He could barely breathe around it.

"Edwin Jarvis was paid to pretend to give a shit about me, to make up for how my parents give no shits about me," he snarled. "He'll be dead whether I'm there or not, and he'll get buried whether I'm there or not. This whole facade," he waved his hand at her, as if he might scrub her out entirely with his fist, "is pointless."

With that, he reached down for the blue sheet she had so unceremoniously yanked off him when she arrived, pulled it back over himself, and dropped back down into the bed.

"How dare you!" Jane shouted, and Tony clenched his eyes shut, his head throbbing and his stomach twisting in knots as she stalked around to the side of the bed. He could smell her perfume and her deodorant, and he folded his nose into his pillow, until there was only stale sweat and beer. "If you really think that Tony Stark, you did not know Edwin Jarvis at all. He loved you, we love you, you selfish bastard. Now get up, because I promise, if you are not at that funeral tomorrow, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life."

Tony opened his eyes, and saw her teary green eyes, and her smudged lipstick, and the laughter lines creased at her edges. Was she forty yet? He couldn't remember. There had been a big birthday party, and he had been too high to remember the words to the birthday song, and Aunt Peggy had looked at him kind of like how Jane was looking at him now. So full of delusions, so full of all this naivety that if they just loved him hard enough, he might turn into a completely different person.

He rolled over away from her, and as her quick hands grabbed at his arm he swung around with force and shoved her away, his fists flying, and as the corner of his knuckle connected with something warm and bruisable she slipped back with a yelp. Her hands flew out, reaching to catch herself on the corner of the headboard but her hands grasped air and she fell back onto the floor with a loud thump, her head smacking on the wall behind her with a groan. For a moment, there was just silence. 

Tony watched in horror as she touched the back of her head gingerly, bringing her fingers around to check for blood. Then she pushed herself slowly to her feet. She stood over him with a cold look, one he'd never seen before.

Actually, that wasn't quite right. He'd just never seen it on her face before, or on any of the Matthews family faces. It was far more reminiscent of his father across the dinner table, as his patience wore thin, and Tony felt something settle over him like a bed of calm. Finally, he thought. Finally, here it is.

Jane looked around the room, her jaw tight and her lips pursed. She swallowed several times, and when she opened her mouth her chin wobbled and she closed it again. She nodded once, like she also finally understood, and Tony felt a tremor of fear. Through the throbbing headache and the nausea he saw before him, stretching like a road into the horizon, that rest of his life Jane was warning him about. 

It was so very empty, and so very long.

"OK," she said, very calmly. "Fine. Have it your way."

She hitched her bag back up onto her shoulder, stalked around the bed and picked up the plane ticket he'd shoved to the floor. She placed it delicately on top of the open suitcase at the bottom of his bed, and looked back at him with clear, cool eyes.

There was a red mark on the middle of her cheek, where he'd punched her. He stared at it hard, in disbelief.

"My father's right about you," she said, with faint defeat and more resolve than Tony had ever felt about anything. "You are not content just to drown alone. You are determined to take as many people down with you as you can. Maybe you shouldn't go to the funeral, Tony. You can dishonour his memory well enough from here."

With that, she walked out, closing the bedroom door quietly behind her. That terrible relief swelled like a wave, crashing over everything.

Tony lay back on his bed, his head swimming. His throat and mouth were still parched, and his apartment was blissfully quiet. He turned his head to peer through the half-open blinds. It looked like late morning; the skies were patchy with clouds, but there was lots of blue outside. 

He reached over and pulled open his bedside cabinet drawer, rooting around for a few minutes. There were some condom packets, pens and a book, and a miraculous little crinkled bag, which had a fingernail of white powder along the bottom of it. He dropped it on the side, and curled back over to the cool side of the pillow, and very quickly, he slipped back to sleep.

Chapter Text

1  9  9  1  .  0  8  .  0  6

OPERATION LAMETH

[report update] [] Asset deployed from HQ CHARONNE address ** —----- ****** ** to SURESNES 0500HRS local time.    Check-in at 1300HRS local time confirmed with mission success.    Asset evac non-emergency protocol deployed 1303HRS local time.   Mission outcome ******* ******* expected more than 24HRS from mission success time.                 []          Asset confirmed multiple weapons utilised - execution covered.    Chosen culprits on track to be apprehended on foot at the border of SWITZERLAND for French extradition.     ******* on standby confirmed        Target SHAPOUR BAKHTIAR confirmed dead.            One additional casualty confirmed.       Asset containment confirmed 2100HRS local time. []

Chapter Text

"There you are, you little fucker. Clint. Clint! Will you get the fuck down before someone sees you? The last thing we need is someone calling the cops."

Barney sounded angry, but that was nothing new, and it had been a long time since Clint was afraid of his big brother being mad at him. He tucked his knees closer to his chest, hugging them with his elbows, and stared out across the dark football field. The school mascot was a shark, and pictures of it were plastered all over the bleachers - a dumb mascot for a football team in Clint's opinion, but what did he know? He'd never been to high school, and even though he would have been starting soon in another life, he was never going to high school. 

This seemed like a pretty good one, odd animal choices aside. The roof he was sitting on had graffiti along the rim, and it was littered with beer cans and cigarette butts. Students probably snuck up here all the time, goofing off during and after school. Maybe if he stayed long enough, some of them would find him here.

If only Barney would go away first.

There was a growl of frustration, followed by the loud clattering of footsteps on the metal staircase. With a groan of effort, Barney heaved himself over the wall and landed on the roof too. He was cross, and his fists were clenched as he marched over and grabbed Clint by the collar, yanking him up.

"Ge'the fuck off me!" Clint snarled, kicking his brother's legs out from beneath him and twisting away.

"You're coming with me now," Barney snapped, grabbing at Clint and slapping away his legs as they tussled.

"I'm not!" Clint yelled.

"Shut up!" Barney yelled even louder, and they rolled over the hard roof, bashing their elbows and their heads in their struggle. "Clint - fuck Clint, stop it!"

Clint kicked Barney hard in the stomach with both feet and Barney tumbled back, groaning loudly and keeling over. Clint flinched, surprised by his own strength, and scrambled away as Barney rolled over to his hands and knees and dry heaved a few times, slow to catch his breath. He was big nowadays, muscular and thickset. He looked more like their dad than he ever did, and Clint watched him warily.

Barney waved one hand, as if in surrender, and stayed on his knees.

"Jesus, scrappy shit," he muttered with a short laugh that Clint couldn't quite join in with. His heart was pounding painfully. He pushed himself back on his ass, all the way until he felt the lip of the roof against his back. Then he tucked his knees back up to his chest and hugged them tight again.

Barney sat back on his heels, eyes narrow with confusion.

"What the hell's gotten into you?" he asked. "You weren't at clean up tonight, and you skipped practise with Duqesne today. Chisholm's pissed, and he was taking it out on me all day, you little asshole."

Clint turned his head, staring back out at the football field. He didn't care. He didn't care. 

"Hey, Clint," Barney said, his voice a touch softer, which only made Clint's shoulders hunch higher. He refused to look back at his brother, refused to be taken in by it. "Tell me what's going on."

Clint shivered, despite the damp heat of the night. His t-shirt was clinging to him, and his hair felt sweaty and dirty. He'd felt dirty for months now. It was inescapable. He rubbed his mouth on his jeans. The knees in them were almost completely threadbare. He'd need to find some new ones soon. 

Maybe the school had a lost and found in their office, like that one he broke into a few months ago. Although, this seemed like the kind of school that had better security than some of the others he'd seen over the years.

"Clint," Barney said, his voice harder. Clint ground his teeth.

"I don't want to go back," he said. He tried to sound determined, to sound resolved, but it came out so small and he felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment, especially when Barney laughed.

"What do you mean?" Barney asked with a hard, mean scowl. "You've never had it so fucking good, you brat. I am so goddamn sick of cleaning up after you, and taking care of you. Everywhere we go, there's something the matter."

"You can go back, Barney!" Clint hisses. "I'm not asking you to stay with me. But I'm not going back."

Barney laughed again, louder and crueller. 

"Yeah, sure. What are you gonna do, sit here until school starts in the morning and just see if you can sit in the back of the classes without being noticed? Even if you could, do you think they wouldn't figure you out in a heartbeat? You think they wouldn't sniff you out the second you picked up a fucking book and held it upside down, you dumb shit?"

Clint flinched, pushing his mouth into his knees and glaring at the football field. He didn't want to give Barney a moment of victory, but his eyes were burning and if he blinked he was pretty sure he'd start crying. He swallowed the lump in his throat several times but it wouldn't budge.

"I hate you," he whispered silently into his jeans. 

Barney didn't hear him, of course, too busy laughing at the idea of his little brother going to school with all the fancy town kids.

"You are ungrateful, and selfish, and I can't believe you would try do this to me," Barney snarled. "You've been a miserable cunt for months now and I'm sick of it. I have tried playing nice with you, but enough is enough. Now come on-"

"No, Barney!" Clint screamed, as Barney charged over and took hold of his wrists. Clint struggled, trying to worm out of his brother's grip as he kicked and squirmed but this time Barney was ready. He was bigger, and he was stronger, and he held fast, and Clint's choices were to be pulled towards the staircase or drag himself over the edge of the roof and kill them both hitting the ground below.

His legs burned scraping over the concrete, and Barney yanked him along in strong heaves as he made his way to the metal fire escape. 

"Enough!" Barney roared, and with a final pull he swung Clint around.

For one weightless moment Clint's legs flew out from beneath him, and it seemed like Barney had tossed him right off the roof. Then his head smacked the metal railing so hard he saw stars, and his body went limp with shock hitting the top step. Pain tore through him, nausea rising through him violently. 

The hands around his wrists let go suddenly, and Clint slumped to the floor with a sickening groan. He curled up in a ball, half on the top step and half on the roof, and tucked his head into his arms as his whole body swam with the throbbing pain.

"Clint, Clint," Barney was saying, sounding panicked now, as if through a hundred feet of water. His hands patted Clint down as he trembled. "Clint, I'm sorry. Oh God. Clint? Talk to me. Clint, you're ok. Come on, you're ok, you're ok…"

But the words were smothered by a ringing pain, everything was drowning, and slowly Clint placed his hands over his ears. One side of his head felt wet and hot - was it his blood or his shit for brains he couldn't tell,  could smell ash and metal and vomit and the pain, the pain -  he flinched as a hand touched his scalp. The hand withdrew immediately.

He could still hear Barney's voice, but it was all wrong - the words were lumped together and merging like different coloured paints all slowly bleeding into each other, and he couldn't figure out anything more than the dizzying pain in his skull. His breaths were painful, his chest was hurting - he was crying, he realised, but he couldn't really hear it. Great heaving sobs were scratching his throat and exhausting his chest. He felt sick.

He cracked open his eyes and could barely see Barney through the tears. He looked ghostly pale, and his mouth was moving fast.

Clint tried to focus on his face, but he couldn't. He clenched his eyes shut and curled back into a ball, racked with sobs.

Barney was right, he was ungrateful, he was selfish. He'd dragged Barney away from every home they ever had, and it wasn't Barney's fault that the circus was the worst of them all. He should have stayed at the boys' home in Denver, or the Jennett house before that, or the orphanage before that. The hunger didn't seem so bad anymore, the older boys' fists or Mr Jennett's shed didn't seem so terrible compared to Buck Chisholm's proud leer as he yanked that arrow out of that man's throat as his body twitched and died, the way he promised it was all going to be fine as long as Clint's arrows flew true.

Hunger and fists and dark sheds, anything was better than this. He could have taken it, any of it, if it would have meant he never, ever, ever had to point an arrow at a human being again.

Hands were pulling at his waist, running over his head, the drowning vowels of Barney's voice were like a distant siren as Clint cried and trembled, and he felt his body being dragged slowly over the metal lip of the stairs. His hips were bashed on the steps, and his legs got caught on the rails. He was dizzy, and he was pretty sure he was going to vomit soon, if he hadn't already.

He could feel Barney's hands, carrying him. Footsteps thudding like a heartbeat, and the heat of his chest stifling.  He curled up tight, in his big brother's arms.

There was nowhere else to go.

Chapter Text

Shuffling her weight and smoothing out her skirt with one hand, Maria Stark rang the doorbell of 2941 Fordway Road once. The wind was carrying a brisk chill with it, and the trees lining the street were all manner of colours, some still clinging to shades of green, others entirely red and orange, and a few already half bare, their leaves covering the lawns, raked into neat piles or scattered over the driveway.

After a moment, there was the turn of the bolt, and the door opened to reveal Henry, who looked surprised.

"Maria," he said, then after a beat he smiled. "Come on in, how are you?"

He swung the door open and ushered her inside, taking her coat and scarf and hanging them on the wall before gesturing her into the living room. It was very toasty inside, and Maria held up her wrapped tray in both hands.

"Cannoli, from Sylvia's," she said, and Henry grinned enthusiastically. "No matter how old I get, I'll never shake my mother's words about showing up empty handed."

"Well, you know we'll never refuse anything from Sylvia's," Henry replied, taking the tray and peeling back the foil. "Coffee? I'll plate some of these up. Peg's out of town, I'm afraid."

"I'd love some, thanks," Maria said, following Henry into the kitchen. He offered her one of the bar stools at the wall counter, and Maria slid onto it, crossing her legs and trying not to jiggle one nervously as Henry put the coffee maker on and started rooting around for a plate.

Maria had always liked the Matthews' kitchen, every iteration of it over the years. The three young children making a mess and fighting over whose turn it was to do the dishes because none of them wanted to; the three grown children making a mess and fighting over whose turn it was to do the dishes because they all wanted to.

Right at that counter, where Henry was sliding a few too many cannoli onto a plate and then licking the sugar from his finger and thumb, Christopher had patiently taught Tony all about the proper way to carve a leg of lamb. Tony had gazed up at Christopher with those big, adoring brown eyes of his. He always thought the Matthews' boy hung the moon when he was young.

Maria's heart ached, and she tried to smooth over her expression into a smile as Henry placed the plate on the counter and handed her a cup of coffee, hopping onto a stool of his own with a groan.

"Getting too old for these," he grumbled with a grin as he patted his stool, and Maria chuckled.

"Getting too old for these," she replied, picking up a cannoli and holding it up in a toast.

"Nonsense," Henry scoffed, taking one for himself and tapping it with hers in cheers. "The point of getting old is to eat and drink and make other people fetch your paper for you."

Maria laughed, and bit into the sweet treat, the burst of pistachio cream transporting her immediately back to her summers with her grandmother in Sardinia. As she sipped her coffee, which had precisely the perfect amount of creamer in it, she was reminded of just how often she had come here over the years, on occasions such as this. It hadn't even occurred to her not to knock at Fordway Road.

"Howard at a meeting in DC?" Henry assumed, and Maria blushed.

"You must be sick of me using your home like a pitstop every time he's in town on business."

Henry frowned, a little bemused, and put his half-bitten cannoli down, rubbing the sugar from his hands.

"Maria," he said, very softly. "We love that you always stop by here. I wouldn't want you going anywhere else."

His warm affection was so genuine, the slight admonishment in his tone for thinking otherwise so true, that Maria was startled by her own sudden urge to reach out and embrace him. There was nobody, she thought, in all the world who quite understood the world she inhabited like Henry Matthews. They were like two sides of the very same coin.

"What's wrong?" he asked, shuffling back on his seat a bit. "You seem troubled."

Maria felt her smile wobble, and shook her head for a moment to dispel the quaking in her throat. She took another sip of her coffee. There was sugar under her thumbnail.

"Oh, I'm not sure," she said, which felt like a lie, so she corrected herself. "At least, I'm not sure how to say it. Howard was supposed to be delegating some of his business travel to his team but he's been overseeing more projects this year than ever, and - well, you know what it's like."

She paused, sneaking a glance at Henry, who was nodding with an understanding smile.

"I think you're the only one who knows what it's like," she admitted, clutching her coffee between both palms and holding it close to her chest. "My sisters certainly don't understand it, when I've tried to tell them before. I don't always understand it myself. And God knows, Tony doesn't."

Her heart beat faster, just thinking of her son across the Atlantic. He hadn't returned her phone calls in weeks. She'd had to call the Dean of his College just to make sure he was still attending his classes. 

He was, thank God; one minor blessing she could count on.

"Have you tried talking to Howard?" Henry asked softly. "You know he doesn't ever want to worry you."

Maria laughed, feeling helplessly lost, and placed her cup down before she could drop it.

"Has Peggy ever slowed down, because you were worried about her?" she asked, perhaps a little cruelly, and Henry didn't exactly flinch, but he did look away, across the kitchen towards the cabinets. "I'm sorry," Maria said. "I don't mean… I don't know what I mean. Don't you ever get tired of it?"

Henry looked back at her, his pale green eyes terribly gentle as he cradled his coffee in his lap and looked at her thoughtfully.

"Of what?" he asked carefully.

Maria searched for the words across the kitchen, and in her coffee cup, and between her empty hands, but found herself entirely lacking a decent answer.

"The - the endlessness of it," she said, exasperated. "The fact that your wife lives two separate lives, and they will never, ever merge completely. She'll never be one whole person."

For a moment Henry stared at her as if he didn't know what she was talking about. But then a smile broke over his face, and he laughed, a trill of a sound that was heartfelt, right from his gut, and Maria felt herself falter, as if she had got something terribly wrong - her assumptions about Peggy, or her assumptions about how similar she and Henry were, she wasn't sure.

After tipping his head back and smiling at the ceiling, Henry looked at her and reached over to take her hand, squeezing it tight. He was warm, and very gentle.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not laughing at you I just - I forget, sometimes, that it's a strange thing. I'm so used to it. But you're right. Here she's Peggy Matthews. Out there she's Peggy Carter. And I know she likes being both. I know she likes separating it; it makes it easier I think. I'm under no illusions, Maria. She's Director Carter first, and Mrs Matthews second. That's how it is. I knew that when I married her.”

Maria was always thrown off, the rare occasion she would hear somebody refer to Peggy Carter. By the time she married Howard, Peggy and Henry had been together for many years. They had already had Christopher by the time Maria met them. 

“She wasn't the Director when you married her though, was she?” Maria asked, suddenly unsure of herself.

Henry smiled fondly, a wistful look passing over his face.

“No, but she planned to be. She told me," he explained. He even chuckled as he said: "The first time I asked her to marry me, she said no, because she was going to be Director Carter one day. Took her a while to believe I still wanted to marry her, knowing that.”

For a moment Maria couldn't possibly imagine such a thing, but the more she thought on it, the more obvious it was. If she could picture anybody refusing to marry Henry Matthews, nigh on one of the loveliest gentlemen she'd ever met, for the sake of her own name, it was Peggy.

Henry picked up his cannoli again and finished it in one bite, smiling indulgently at her, like they were children sneaking sweets out of a pot while the adults weren't looking. It was rare to hear Henry talk about Peggy in relation to her work, and Maria was struck by how proud he obviously was of her.

It wasn't that she wasn't proud of Howard, of course she was proud of Howard. The things he had accomplished, both before and since they got together, were extraordinary. She couldn't be prouder of him, of anyone. Only, she couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, despite the fact Howard was CEO of a private company and Peggy was the Director of a secretive intelligence agency, Peggy somehow managed to share more of herself with Henry than Howard did with her.

It seemed absurd, suddenly, and instead of feeling reassured by Henry's words Maria felt oddly lonely. 

Henry took her hand again, very briefly.

"Maria?" he asked, and Maria felt awfully small as she replied:

"You've never…you both never had any, any trouble then?"

For a moment Henry looked confused, then he winced a bit, and shuffled in his seat.

"Oh," he said, his voice a touch flatter. He looked across the kitchen again, as if weighing his words, before giving a sigh and raising his eyebrows. "Yes, of course we have. We even…" he looked conflicted, glancing at Maria warily before softening his expression, his shoulders relaxing. "We talked about divorce, once."

"Divorce?" Maria asked, and despite having been the one to ask the question she felt surprised. In all their years as friends, she'd never had an inkling that Peggy and Henry were going through that kind of trouble. "Really?"

Henry nodded, his mouth downturned, and he rotated his coffee cup in his hands slowly.

"It was a long time ago. Twenty years or more. Peggy was going through - well, an awful time at work, and the kids were getting older, they were beginning to comprehend the mother they'd idolised their whole childhood was doing things they were never going to know about, or understand. She and Jane had a lot of fights; Jane was getting into trouble at the Vietnam protests, and she accused - well, she accused Peggy of a lot of things, and Peggy said a lot of unkind things, too."

Maria knew, of all the children, Jane was the most hot-headed. 

"Quickest to walk, quickest to talk," Peggy said of her once. "She's been wriggling out of our grasp since birth."

Henry sighed, and shook his head, dispelling the bad memories.

"Peggy and I talked a lot, in those days, about what was most important to us. To our family. She was ready to let her arguments with Jane split us right down the middle and I told her she had to find a way to reconcile it, all the things she did for work, in herself, or I would have to put our children first. Jane was standing up for what she believed in, which was exactly what we'd raised her to do. 

"Of course, I also told Jane if she ever called her mother any of those awful names again she wouldn't be allowed back under my roof, too. Still. She was the kid, and Peggy had forgotten that somewhere along the way. But we figured things out."

Maria wondered if she could have done more, over the years, where Howard and Tony were concerned. If she had maybe had Henry's strength, taken a stand properly when things started to get raw and blistered between her husband and her son… Perhaps it was because Tony was an only child. Perhaps it was because, after so many struggles, she had him so late. Or perhaps it was just her. Was this her fault? Had she missed some vital clue that Henry hadn't?

"Hey now, it's alright," Henry said, reaching out to rub her shoulder, and Maria felt her breath hitch. "Oh, it's OK now. I know. I know. They'll come around, I promise."

Henry slid off his seat, and pulled Maria to her feet to give her hug, which she returned gladly. It was rather strange, hugging a man who wasn't Howard. When was the last time she'd done that? Hugging her father, probably, when he still had the strength to in the nursing home. Hugging Henry felt more like hugging one her sisters, or even strangely like hugging Tony. Warm, devoted safety encompassed them, and she felt understood in her very bones.

"I don't know what to do about them," she mumbled into his sweater, and Henry squeezed her tight.

"You're doing fine," he told her, rocking her a little as she trembled. "You can't force it. You can't. It's not the same, you've not - you've not done anything wrong. You hear me? Tony loves you, and he knows you love him. They'll find their way back to each other. I'm sure of it."

She had been right to come here, she was always right to come here. This was a house of understanding, and she was grateful for it. When she pulled back, Henry let her go easily, and gave her a little nudge on the chin with his knuckle, which she'd seen him do to his daughters and his son so many times. Hell, she'd seen him do it to Tony once or twice, even.

"You're alright, Maria," he promised, and picked up her coffee. "You should stay for dinner. Have Howard come over. It's just me all by myself, and I'm far more likely to cook some proper food if it's for more than one."

Maria smiled, and watched him make her a fresh coffee. She felt like a smidge of weight had been lifted, just by being seen, for the first time in a while.

"Call Howard, wherever he is," Henry told her. "Leave him a message. Bethan might be stopping by later, she loves showing up unannounced when she knows Peg isn't around. She doesn't trust me not to burn the place down."

Maria nodded, delicately wiping under her eyes.

"Thank you, Henry," she said.

"Anytime," he replied, and waved her off towards the phone with a smile.

Chapter Text

-sharp scratch now don’t wait-

-here, I’m sorry, I’m not, I didn’t-

-rears back strikes forward don’t come back without don’t go without don’t just keep your head down and-

-else like this one you can’t save them all you can’t pull out their veins and put them back can’t-

“Grandpa?”

-hold still fucking hold the fuck-

“Grandpa, wake up.”

-wait just a wait just a-

“Grandpa!”

The crashing sound collided with a boy’s voice reaching a new, frightened pitch, and Isaiah woke up breathless and heaving in his bed. He sat up, his body heavy and aching like anchors strapped to both arms, and his head pounding like a concussion thirty years old. 

Sweat dripped down his spine as he pushed himself up. His sheets were soaked, and in the dark he could see a hole in the wall. 

No, not the wall. A hole in the wardrobe. The wood was splintered, a gaping mouth, and shame curled inside Isaiah’s gut as he looked over at the doorway. Eli stood with his hands clutching the doorframe, his little body trembling. Isaiah swallowed several times and reached over unsteadily for the glass of water on his bedside table, only to realise it was gone. That must’ve been what smashed.

What he must have thrown at the wardrobe.

“Eli,” Isaiah croaked, looking at his grandson, whose big eyes were full of worry and love. “M’sorry. Grandpa’s sorry.”

“You were sleeping,” Eli said, his shoulders hunched up near his ears.

“Yeah, I was having - bad dreams,” Isaiah agreed. Slowly, he shifted himself around to put his feet on the floor. A thin rug over hardwood. Grounding, familiar. Not the dirt of war, not the cement of prison. A woven rug with an ugly pattern that Faith liked so much, and he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. “I’m sorry I scared you, Eli.”

“Wasn’t scared,” the boy insisted, puffing out his chest. His shoulders were still shaking. If it was true, Isaiah would be worried. But it wasn’t. It was a lie, and that simply broke his heart. Kids shouldn’t be scared of their grandpas. It wasn’t right.

Isaiah rubbed the sweat from his face, the startings of a beard prickly under his palms. He needed a shave. He needed water. Getting to his feet, he stretched out his limbs one by one slowly. Age was far from catching up with him. He knew he looked about a regular age to be Eli’s father, and he certainly wasn’t feeling too old. But the years were still heavy burdens, and sometimes he wondered if just thinking his age would be enough to make his joints grow stiff.

From the doorway, Eli watched without saying anything. Isaiah hated how quiet the boy could be, when he woke from nightmares. During daylight hours, Elijah was a relentless, excitable kid. Zooming around the house making airplane noises and chattering with his many, many imaginary friends, Isaiah always knew where he was by the sound of his voice. It was only at night, woken by his grandfather screaming, that the boy would get a shadowy look over his smiling face, that he’d stand there, like a little rabbit with his frightened ears flat against his head, trying not to run away.

Glass shards and water sparkled in spiky pools at the foot of the wardrobe, where the projectile had shattered on impact. Isaiah sighed at it, and slowly walked to the door with his hands outstretched, ready to shepherd Eli back to bed.

Eli waited until his hands made contact with his shoulders before moving, and churning emotion filled Isaiah, warm and painful. This kid - this kid. Brave, beautiful boy.

“Come on, Grandpa’s OK. Let’s get you to bed.”

Eli’s shoulders felt tiny, brittle under Isaiah’s hands. He was always careful with the boy, never more so than after a nightmare, when his own strength felt monstrous, when his blood circulating his body seemed to hum like an electric current and his muscles felt thick and mean around his bones. For over twenty years, it didn’t matter the cracks that would form in the walls under his hands, how loud his voice would ring or how angry his eyes would burn. For over twenty years, it didn’t matter at all, none of it.

But seeing his grandson flinch, quietlike, and stare up at him with those dark, trusting eyes? Isaiah had to be careful. He wanted to be careful.

He’d missed his chance, with Isaac. He wasn’t going to miss it with Elijah, to be a loving guardian. A protective one. A shield between him and the world out there.

Through the house Elijah scampered, unafraid with his grandfather at his back, and Isaiah tried not to imagine shapes in the looming shadows. There was nothing there. Just old furniture, patchy wallpaper, windows in need of a clean. He scooped Elijah up under the armpits and the boy squealed with glee, kicking out his legs all the way across the room until Isaiah dropped him into the puddle of pillows on his bed. He bounced, the mattress squeaking, and Isaiah fussed with the covers getting him back inside it.

“You go to sleep again, little man,” Isaiah said, stroking his grandson’s face with a big, careful hand.

Eli curled around his beloved teddy bear, Edds, and hid his face in the bear’s fuzzy tummy.

“G’nigh!” Eli sighed, tiredness already taking hold, and he wriggled as Isaiah stroked his head, smiling until his dimples showed.

Isaiah kept up the pace of his stroking, slow and almost-heavy, all the way until Eli’s breathing evened out. Only then, his knees pretending to creak with an arthritis that wasn’t there, did Isaiah get back up to his feet and retreat slowly out of the room. He left the door open an inch, in case the boy woke up, and trodded lightly on his tiptoes down the stairs.

He didn’t bother turning the lights on. A streetlight spilling in from the kitchen window was more than enough for him to see by. He poured himself a fresh glass of water from the sink, drinking it down in long gulps, and immediately downed a second glass, too. He pulled a towel from a drawer, and took it upstairs to deal with the mess in his own room, stopping briefly at Eli’s door to listen to his breathing.

The glass he’d thrown in his sleep had punched right through the wardrobe door, leaving shattered pieces on the floor and most of the water soaking into the wood. Inside the wardrobe, tiny flakes of glass clung to one of Faith’s long dresses - a peach one, a favourite for church. There was a tiny hole in the hem when Isaiah pulled a glassy tooth from it, and guilt bit at his heart. 

There were shiny slivers in some of her shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe, too. Far too tiny for Isaiah to pick up, only big enough to mock him as he let the towel soak up the excess water, then used it as a bag to carry the palmful of broken glass. Picking up each piece in turn, he tried to piece together bits of his dream as small as the shards between his fingers, trying to understand what had led to such a rare outburst. It had been a while since he couldn’t wake himself up.

The cell - the holding one, he thought. The first place he’d been taken to, and told to wait. 

He should have known better, he always thought. He could have smashed his way out of that first cell, and if he’d had any inkling of what his second cell looked like, he would have done so. He’d have kicked his way out and headed straight for the hills, would have taken his chances with the monster in the mountains.

He wondered if it was still there - that thing, that looked like a man but wasn’t, taking out every lethal that came within spitting distance. 

No, he told himself, no. He couldn’t have - wouldn’t have and besides. Who would be here, with Eli? He couldn’t afford to look back, to regret. 

With the glass collected, he tucked the towel around it in four folds, and carried it back downstairs, out the back to the trash cans. Late nights in Baltimore were never silent, but the neighbourhood was relatively quiet. He could hear cars, somewhere further out, two or three streets away. The neighbours across the street were watching TV. Two yards down, a cat was yowling at a stuck flap in the door, pawing it.

Just as the broken glass hit the bottom of the can, jangling like coins, Isaiah felt a chill crawl over his spine.

He spun around, staring out at the gloom of the garden. The lopsided shrubbery along the fence at the end. The washing line sagging. The laburnum tree shivering, casting odd shadows in the half-light. There were hardly any stars, and the moon was little more than a slice of white in the sky.

Isaiah peered into each shadow, half-expecting to see a face staring back at him. But there was nothing.

He walked backwards towards his house, still watching the darkness where it was most impenetrable. He reached behind himself, grasping the handle, and backed up inside without turning around. 

He slammed the door shut, locking it twice, and then ducked to his kitchen window to look out through the netted curtains, but he couldn’t see anything. The only sign of something out there was the gooseflesh over his skin, and his own heart, thumping painfully in his mouth.

With one final look at the emptiness of his yard, Isaiah ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and pressed his face to the gap in Eli’s bedroom doorway. The boy was still sleeping, his little face peaceful and slack, half-obscured by his teddy bear. Isaiah tried to force his heart rate down, breathing in deeply through his nose and out through his mouth until his lungs hurt. He crouched, then knelt, then lay down outside his grandson’s bedroom door. 

The floor was hard underneath him, but it was hardly the worst thing this wretched body of his had endured. He listened to Eli’s breathing, and watched him with eyes wide open, and tried to put aside the prickle of worry like spiders crawling over him in waves. Slowly, the feeling passed. The panic settled, until it was as steady and gentle as Elijah’s sleep. Isaiah let the calm wash over him, and thought of Faith, her steadfast love. She would tell him not to be so darn paranoid, to go to bed, to get some real rest.

He stayed awake all night, anyway.

Just in case.

Chapter Text

Agent Luisa Manfrin had never been to POLARIS House before. She was only a Level Two SHIELD Agent, and typically only Triples and above were sent to the primary locations. This was not a typical day, though. 

She sat in the shotgun seat, while Level Five Agent Alvarez drove at precisely the speed limit. She had claimed to have never visited POLARIS either, but Luisa had not seen her study a map or receive any directions. She hadn't even faltered to read road names.

Fordway Road was a long, beautiful street. The kind of street Luisa had visited in her teenage years, making money teaching piano to richer kids barely five years younger than her. The gardens were long, every detached house its own colour and shape, a collage of style and taste, each one elegant even in the looming shadows of midnight. 

She checked her watch: 23.46. It had been thirty-eight minutes since the call came in. 

“You remember the protocol phrase?” Alvarez asked. The car slowed very slightly the closer they got.

“Yes,” Luisa replied. Alvarez nodded, without asking her to repeat it back to her. Luisa couldn't help the fluttering of pride in her chest at being trusted with such an enormous task. 

When it transpired that Agent Alvarez had requested her, Luisa had foolishly stammered: But I'm Level Two! 

It hadn't mattered, though. The task at hand, the events that had transpired that evening, superseded everything else. Alvarez wanted Luisa Manfrin, regardless of her clearance level. She had signed six forms in quick succession, been rubber stamped with temporary clearance awaiting further designation, and that had been that.

When she asked why, Alvarez's response was pleasing, but maddening.

“You're clean.”

Luisa didn't fully know the extent of what clean meant, but she knew she was. She was clean, she was trustworthy. She was determined to prove Alvarez right. The car came to a halt outside yet another beautiful house. The number 2941 was nailed onto the face of it, in brassy numbers. 

Luisa gave her superior a nod, and stepped out of the car. The air was frosty, but the ground was dry. She walked to the front door without turning back, her eyes searching her periphery as best as she could but the street was quiet.

This was a safe neighbourhood, a friendly one. The inhabitants probably all knew each other. Maybe their kids played together in their backyards. It seemed like the kind of street that took turns hosting Christmas.

Many of them had festive lights in their trees and draped over their facades. In the front garden to the left, two plastic snowmen squatted in the middle of the lawn.

Luisa knocked hard on 2941 Fordway three times, then rang the bell twice. 

She held her breath for three seconds, then rang once more.

For a moment there was silence. Her heart thudded in her throat, abruptly nervous. She'd never met the Director before. What if she stuttered? What if she messed up?

On the other side of the door, someone knocked three times. Deliberate, slow knocks. Testing. 

Luisa licked her lips, careful not to loudly clear her throat first for fear of misunderstanding, and said:

“Polaris Protocol Charlie Foxtrot Unicorn Foxtrot Six. Agent Luisa Manfrin for Director Margaret Carter.”

Then she knocked three times.

There was a pause, just long enough for Luisa to worry she'd gotten something wrong. Then the sliding of a lock opening, and a second one. The door opened and a woman appeared.

Luisa had never seen Director Carter up close. In fact, she'd only seen her twice in her life, once from across a huge atrium and once out in a training field. She was far more accustomed to the old service photos from SSR, which inevitably did the rounds with new recruits. The famous snapshot of Agent Peggy Carter and Captain America a brave uncredited war photographer managed to steal, and the formal, military-style portrait taken some time after the war.

In both, she was a woman in her twenties. Luisa hadn't realised, but she'd internalised that image somewhere down the line. She was taken aback by the woman before her. Director Carter was oddly soft looking, her dark grey hair highlighted with streaks of silver, drawn back into a twist that was folded around her neck and tucked into a plum dressing gown. Her face was a little wrinkled, a lifetime of frowning and laughing in the creases around her eyes and mouth, with rosy, girlish cheeks still flushed, as if rouged.

Her right arm was half pulled behind her, holding her gun.

Her quick, dark brown eyes darted over Luisa, and with a succinct nod she gestured her inside, snapping the door shut behind her.

“It’s Rudy!” Director Carter shouted towards the empty stairs. There was no sign of her husband, who the message was clearly for as reassurance, nor was there the tread of footsteps on the landing. “This way,” the Director said brusquely, and led Luisa into the living room.

Luisa followed, her eyes slowly adjusting to the pitch dark of the house. The Director didn’t turn a lamp on. The outline of a large Christmas tree sat in the corner of the room. There was barely any light to see by, and Luisa focused on the slice of Director Carter’s face she could see: lashes brushing cheek, the corner of a mouth, a tuft of silvery hair.

“Report, Agent,” Director Carter said, as soon as the living room door swang shut.

“Director,” Luisa said, trying to inject even half the authority of Carter’s crisp consonants. “At twenty-three-oh-eight hours, an emergency call reached SHIELD HQ, from the car phone of Howard Stark. It was Mrs Stark. She was injured. The car had crashed. She told the Agent on the line they had been attacked.”

Director Carter didn’t say a word. She didn’t so much as twitch, and Luisa, who had anticipated a pause for some sort of reaction, hurried to finish.

“Medevac was immediately dispatched - they were on route to the Pentagon. It happened less than four miles outside New York City.”

“Was Howard alive?” The question was biting, and urgent.

“Mrs Stark didn’t say, and she was falling unconscious. We expect to hear from Medevac within the next ten minutes.”

“The package?” Carter asked.

This stumped Luisa. She didn’t know anything about a package. Were the Starks picking one up, or dropping one off? Apparently her silence was telling enough, because Director Carter stuffed her gun into her dressing gown pocket and said:

“Never mind. What’s your clearance, Manfrin?”

“Level Two, ma’am. I have been granted a temporary Level Three.”

Luisa had never heard of a junior agent being upgraded in duty upon request, but clearly Director Carter wasn't surprised by this. Her mouth did something undecided, not quite a smile. It was hard to tell in the low light.

“Who requested you?”

“Agent Alvarez,” Luisa replied. “She’s waiting in the car. We are supposed to escort-”

“Very good. Follow me, Agent Manfrin.”

With that, Director Carter stalked back out of the room, and Luisa followed hot on her heels. Carter marched directly up the stairs. Luisa tried her best not to glance at the photos on the walls - smiling children, holiday snapshots, formal school portraits. She felt embarrassed, like she was prying into something sacred. She supposed she was, in a way. At the top of the landing, the Director made directly for an open door at the end of the railing.

“Wait right here,” she said. And louder: “Henry, your bag.” Then she entered the master bedroom, and a light turned on. 

Luisa waited, watching the slit of light spilling onto the floor. She could hear a man grumbling, and Director Carter’s piercing English accent smothering her husband’s words. It was a matter of less than two minutes before Director Carter appeared on the landing, wearing a shirt and slacks, pumps, and a cardigan. She was carrying a leather travel bag, and followed by a tall man with iron grey hair curling over his forehead and thick-rimmed glasses, wearing a flannel shirt and creased trousers. He was also carrying a bag, which was slung over his shoulder, weighing his gait lopsidedly.

“After you, Agent Manfrin,” Director Carter said candidly, tucking her hair behind her ears, and Luisa nodded.

“Ma’am,” she said, and promptly led back down the stairs.

The scene outside the house was unchanged. The sleepy neighbourhood continued its nightly slumber, none the wiser, and Alvarez stared out of the driver’s seat, her austere face obscured behind the dark glass, but Luisa could feel her gaze. Director Carter locked the house, and told her husband in a tight, low voice Luisa was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear:

“Howard and Maria have been attacked - we don’t know yet, but SHIELD protocol has kicked in. It can’t be a coincidence. We’ll have to lock down at HQ, let them sweep the area in case the incident isn’t isolated.”

Luisa gestured for Director Carter and her husband down their garden path, following with eyes on their surroundings all the way to the car. A prickling worry was starting to take over the initial thrill of fear that came with hearing about Mrs Stark’s phone call. She opened the door for Director Carter, then on the other side for her husband, before taking her seat in the front.

Agent Alvarez was already speaking rapidly through the open partition to the backseats:

 “-their way, I was told you would prefer to allocate the area sweep yourself. Agent Nicholas Fury is on standby.”

“Yes, Nick will do fine,” Director Carter interjected. “Who has eyes on Anthony Stark?”

“We’re in the process of locating him, ma’am.”

From the backseat, the Director’s husband snorted indelicately. Director Carter ignored him.

“I want ANDROMEDA cleared out,” Director Carter said, and Agent Alvarez made a sound. Luisa frowned, glancing over at her superior, and back at their Director. She hadn’t even heard of Andromeda. Was it a safehouse?

Alvarez shot a glare at her wing mirror.

“Does the World Security Council know about the attack yet?” Carter asked.

“No, ma’am, we’re awaiting your orders.”

“Good. We keep this between us. Alvarez, take us to HQ first, we can make some noise about a threat of unknown origin. Let it slip to a few variables. Then I want you to take Manfrin and a team of your choice to ANDROMEDA. I want you and Nick tag-teaming this. Extremely few people were aware of the Starks’ movements this evening. We have a leak inside SHIELD, and you are going to help plug it.”

Luisa felt her heart thudding in her chest, but she pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on the road, watching for any anomalies. The roads were clear, as quiet as to be expected, so at odds with the cutting anger that Director Carter’s voice was riddled with. It was easy to see how this woman became the Director of SHIELD. 

Luisa felt like she was still reeling. A leak, inside SHIELD? How could Carter know already, without even having all the facts yet? She wondered if it had anything to do with the mysterious package the Director mentioned.

The drive to HQ felt twice as long as the first journey, the silence tight with impatience. When they reached the checkpoint, the usual guards were accompanied by a tall man, his imposing stature made even more so by the heavy tac gear he was wearing. Luisa had never been a member of Agent Fury’s team, the unchallenged STRIKE Foxtrot, but he cut a familiar and striking figure from around SHIELD. 

Alvarez came to a halt at the post, rolling down her window, while Carter opened her door. The guard did his usual check, and while Alvarez confirmed name and rank, Director Carter actually shuffled over to the middle seat, to let Fury slide into the car, too. 

He shut the door, just as the barrier to the car park lifted, and Alvarez started the car again. It was only once they were inside SHIELD’s limits that anybody spoke.

“Both Starks are confirmed alive,” Fury said. “Both were unconscious when Medevac arrived. She was still in the front passenger seat. He had been dragged out of the car. Neither appear to be in critical danger, but both sustained significant head trauma.”

“Do we have any indication of an assassin or team?” Carter asked.

“Trail's as cold as winter,” Fury replied. 

It was an odd phrase, one that meant little to Luisa beyond noticing the colour of the description, but Alvarez glanced in the rear view mirror when he said it. Her lips were pursed.

“I see,” Carter replied. “Your team sweep POLARIS. Henry, you should stay in my office for now. Agent Fury will send two agents with you to stand guard. Alvarez and Manfrin have their orders. I'll be heading directly to the infirmary for the Starks’ intake.”

There was a pause, then:

“Confirm my office phone is secure, please. Then Henry can make some calls. We were supposed to pick up our daughter from the airport tomorrow but she can't stay with us, now.”

Carter’s husband didn't say anything at this, and Luisa had no excuse to turn around and catch a glimpse of his face. She wondered if he was used to this, how many times he'd been uprooted and manoeuvred because of his wife’s dangerous work.

In all honesty, Luisa had been rather surprised to learn Director Carter had a husband at all, let alone children. It seemed entirely incompatible. Or perhaps the routinely circulated rumours of her affair with Captain America eclipsed the idea of her having any kind of normal life, with a regular husband, in a regular house. Luisa doubted she was ever a regular mother.

Alvarez drove them all the way to the secure entrance that led to the private elevators. It was dead in the parking bays, rows of armoured engines and not a hint of the frantic activation she had been called into less than an hour ago. Headquarters had been cleared out, like a house ready for decontamination.

Once the car engine was turned off, there was a beat of anticipatory silence, then Carter spoke again.

"Have any field agents been pulled yet?"

Luisa thought she saw Fury and Alvarez lock eyes in the rear view mirror.

"No, Ma'am," Alvarez replied.

"Pen," Carter said.

Luisa glanced over her shoulder, and saw Fury extract a ballpoint from seemingly nowhere, which Carter took and immediately began scribbling into a slim notebook.

"Pinter was in Berlin two days ago - he should still be within reach."

She ripped out a page of her notebook and handed it to Fury, who folded it twice without looking and slipped it into a vest pocket with a nod.

"You want to leave the bed empty?" he asked.

Alvarez tilted her torso to look into the backseat as well. Carter looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head.

"Varga and Mason are both reasonably up to speed. Send one of them to cover, but don't wait for a handover. I want Pinter back in the country within twelve hours."

Luisa glanced at Alvarez, but there was nothing to glean from her flat expression. Whoever Pinter was, he wasn't a familiar name, and while Luisa was quite sure she knew less than a quarter of the names of SHIELD's Agents and employees in total, it struck a chord in her.

"And the rest?" Alvarez asked.

Carter's sharp eyes flicked to her, dark wells of determination. There was something ruthless about her, then. Something that was probably what made her a good Director, and a good Agent before that.

"We'll have to wait and see," she replied coolly.

Beside her, her husband was looking out of the car window, for all the world as if he couldn't hear them speaking, and Luisa wondered how often he had been privy to a conversation he should not have heard, or if this was the first time. Nobody had anything to say in the wake of Carter's dreadful statement.

They exited the car, and Luisa saw Carter squeeze her husband's arm. He gave no outward sign of noticing, simply allowing the steer towards the elevators with absent complacency.

Carter stepped inside the elevator, keeping her husband by her side, and Fury followed. Luisa stayed at Alvarez's shoulder, watching as they stood like three mannequins, the doors sliding shut, and then they were gone. After five seconds, Alvarez let out a little sigh.

“Good job, Manfrin,” she said. 

“Thank you, Agent Alvarez.”

“Do you know what ANDROMEDA is?”

“No, Agent.”

Alvarez gave her a scrutinising look. She always had an intimidating, forceful air about her, did Alvarez. For all Fury used his stature to his advantage, Alvarez was short and soft featured, but she radiated frightening competence.

Luisa was a little in awe.

“It's a bunker, out in New Jersey,” Alvarez explained. She still hadn't made a move, glancing between Luisa and the closed elevator doors. “It has everything. Medical facilities. An armoury. Dormitory. Prison cells.”

“And Director Carter wants us to clear it? Do you think she knows who the assassin is?”

Alvarez cocked a thin eyebrow. She had a scar in it, Luisa realised. One that looked like it was once a piercing. The thought of Alvarez, a rebellious punk teenager twenty-five or so years ago, tickled her.

“Guess we'll find out,” she replied, which was certainly not everything she knew. Luisa wanted to ask more, but if Alvarez wasn't giving it voluntarily, there was no way she could be appealed to with further peppering.

Luisa nodded.

“Do you know who else you want in your team?” she asked instead.

“You can opt out, if you want.”

The offer felt sudden and bruising, like a rifle recoil. Luisa frowned, and tried to make sense of the suggestion. Alvarez requested her. Why would she try to sideline her now?

“I don't…” she couldn't formulate the question, too tangled by her rising emotion. Her fluttering pride felt like it had a boot print on it.

“ANDROMEDA serves a very specific function for SHIELD,” Alvarez said delicately. Her dark brown eyes bored into Luisa’s, and she seemed to see everything. “You might see some things there you'd rather not know.”

Understanding sparked, a little hostile and fiery, in Luisa.

“I know about the interrogation chambers, Agent Alvarez. I worked on the Wisniewski case.”

“Knowing isn't the same,” Alvarez said, and the sharpness of her tone was almost unkind. For a moment, Luisa was struck. She wanted to bite back harder, but something stirred in Alvarez's gaze. A fear, almost. A protectiveness.

Of herself, or of Luisa? It was hard to tell. Perhaps it was protectiveness of SHIELD. 

“If we find the assassin, I can't assure you that you'll be comfortable with what happens next.”

And maybe she was right. Luisa was under no illusions that she had thrived in a largely sheltered career so far, she had stared down the avenue that led to wet work and decided it wasn't for her, and Alvarez knew that. Perhaps she had a point.

“Director Carter included me in her orders,” Luisa reminded Alvarez stubbornly. If Peggy Carter thought she was up for the task, Luisa couldn't turn it down. Alvarez twisted her mouth around sour words she didn't say. “I can do this, Alvarez.”

There was one more long look of appraisal, and Luisa tried not to puff out her chest like she was on a school picture day, but she must have done something because Alvarez smirked.

“OK,” she said. “Fine. Come on, we need to drive to the Chambers. We can wrangle Silversen and Ojode on the way.” 

Luisa felt that thrill of glee again. Alvarez trusted her, and so did Director Carter, and maybe Agent Fury, too. She was in a team with Silversen, and Ojode, heavy hitters amongst the SHIELD rankings. She clambered back in the car, and tried not to look too excited. It was a sombre cause for such a stroke of luck, after all.

Alvarez started the engine, her hands on the wheel at ten and two, drumming her thumbs and frowning at the reach of the car's headlights. 

“What is it?” Luisa asked.

Alvarez blinked twice, and bit the side of her lip, worrying at the skin. 

“I hoped we didn't have to worry about moles and leaks and traitors anymore,” she said quietly. 

Luisa hadn't been at SHIELD in the scourge of the late seventies, but the scars of its legacy, carving out name after name, chipping away at the integrity of SHIELD’s foundations with every flush of another spy inside spy territory, were still visible among the older Agents who had been there. She didn't know what to say, and so she stayed quiet.

Alvarez started driving back towards the exit. 

At the gate, the guard, Sibbald, chuckled a little.

“You just can't make up your mind, can you?” he asked.

“I’m an indecisive creature,” Alvarez said with a sly, fake grin, shrugging. 

“Very good. On your way,” Sibbald replied, tapping the car even as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes. 

The road was just as quiet as before, even when Alvarez turned right, heading closer into the centre of DC. The lights of the city blinked and shone, inviting and lively. 

It was when they were waiting at a red light, six blocks away from the Chambers, where they would be able to reach out to off duty agents without being overseen, that Alvarez said, in the same quiet voice as her disappointment at the prospect of a new mole hunt:

“Fury thinks it's the Winter Soldier.”

Luisa’s head whipped to the side, to stare at Alvarez's face. That couldn't be.

“He's not real,” she said, firmly, and Alvarez laughed. It was a pained, aching sound. 

“Yes he is,” she replied. She was so certain, and so afraid. It was evident in the coarse tremor of her voice. “He killed my partner, fourteen years ago.”

“How do you know?” Luisa asked. Of course, she had to. She couldn't believe it. Alvarez just shook her head.

“We're gonna get him, this time,” is all she said. “We're gonna end him.”

It was impossible to disbelieve her. She was so assured of their future success, and full to the brim with anger. She shook with it as she drove, and Luisa believed her. She wanted it, too. For Alvarez, and for Alvarez's old partner, and for the Starks, and the other people rumoured to have been buried by a ghost.

“We'll get him this time,” Luisa agreed.

For the first time in her life, she understood the bloodlust that burned in those words. She wondered if Director Carter felt it, too.

Chapter Text

It was fifty-one years to the day since Peggy Carter opened a telegram from the British military declaring her brother deceased. There’d been a backlog of declarations that delayed the news, and unofficial channels were a lot quicker to send out lists of the dead. She’d already known for three days by the time the army told her.

It was still the 21st that stuck with her though. A fitting anniversary, all darkness and solemnity. The longest night, stretched out like the long hands of mother grief and father time to grasp her. She spent that solstice alone, nursing the wounds of loss, determined she would see it through unaided. Her brother was gone, and nobody could change that. 

She hadn't called her sister-in-law, or her parents, or her aunt and uncle even though they were barely half an hour away. She had borne the grief the way she thought she was supposed to: with courage and solitude. She was of Bletchley stock, and she knew how to soldier on whether the army would give her an officer's title or not.

Fifty-one years later, Peggy could only look back on her younger self with pity. What a sorrowful, foolish girl she had been, then. How changed she was - by that loss, and all the countless losses that came after.

She stood outside the door of her friend’s hospital room, the medicinal tang of antiseptic in her nostrils, taking long steadying breaths. The past five days had been a hurricane blur, pockmarked with vivid, seismic moments of clarity as bright as a migraine to recall. She looked down the corridor - empty, eerily so. Then she entered.

Howard was as hard to look at as ever, laid out amidst machines and IV bags, his face swollen, amorphous and bruised. 

What kind of assassin would use a crowbar or a bat? Dr Andrews had asked, once Howard had been stabilised. Once they’d drugged him to sleep, silencing anymore of the inflammatory babbling he’d spouted upon waking.

In the corner of the room, sitting uncomfortably, was Agent Silversen.

“Any changes?” Peggy asked. Silversen shook his head, his lean face pinched. Alvarez had been irritated to release him to babysitting duties, but Peggy couldn’t risk it. The fewer who heard anything Howard might say in his confused state, the better. “Have you seen Tony?”

Silversen’s eyes flicked to the far wall and back.

“The nurses set him up a cot in Mrs Stark’s room. He refused to leave her side.”

Peggy expected as much. It was probably for the best, and she told Silversen as much.

“Better Maria’s room than Howard’s, and it will be easier to keep tabs on him here. I’ve sent word to Colonel Spall in Glendale. He’s agreed to give Staff Sergeant James Rhodes five days of leave. Rhodes will probably arrive tomorrow.”

Silversen inclined his head.

“Quite the token of trust,” he commented. It was impertinent, and from plenty of other agents Peggy wouldn’t tolerate it. But Silversen was right - and he was a remarkable agent himself. He had earned himself an opinion on things that didn’t concern him.

“Having Rhodes here will alleviate most of the risk of sending you out on a mission to chase down Stark Junior. If anything, this is a favour for you, Silversen.”

Silversen smiled, and his eyebrows furrowed in a crease of outright sadness. He didn’t say what was on his mind this time, and Peggy was grateful. 

She didn’t enjoy treating Tony like a problem to be managed. She had in fact baulked at similar behaviour from Howard, dealing with his son with the same level of respect he’d afford a misbehaving dog at best. But Tony adored his mother, still, with all the youthful love he had not displayed for his father in a long time. Peggy couldn’t be sure seeing Maria laid up in a hospital bed wouldn’t make him reckless - and it was just too dangerous to allow recklessness right now. 

She refused to have Howard and Maria wake up, only to discover they’d lost something infinitely more precious to them than their own lives. 

There was a knock at the door, which opened immediately to reveal a tired looking Agent Manfrin. Her dark auburn hair was scraped back into a tight bun, and she smelled of oil and more than one kind of antiperspirant. 

“Director Carter, your car is here.”

“Thank you, Manfrin,” Peggy replied. 

With a final glance at Howard and a murmured goodbye for Silversen, Peggy followed the agent out and down the corridor. She smothered the urge to poke her head into Maria’s room as she passed it, clenching her fists to stop the urge to run her fingers through Tony’s hair; to kiss his forehead and make him promises she frankly wasn’t confident could be kept.

Agent Manfrin said nothing as they made their way down to the car park. 

Peggy indulged herself, for a moment, in the fantasy that they would get in the car and drive to Bethesda instead. She could go straight to Christopher’s house, see her dear son and his wife Sofia, the kids. See Henry for the first time in three days. See Jane for the first time in months. 

Oh, how a part of her wanted to.

Two agents waved them into the main parking lot, but Peggy didn’t acknowledge them, wrestling her aching heart back into its box. She had a job to do. 

Agent Manfrin clambered into the driver’s seat. Peggy got into the front passenger and was met with alarm.

“Uh - Director, I don’t think -”

“Just drive, Agent Manfrin. If anybody was trying to kill me in a SHIELD car, they’d shoot the back windows out first anyway.”

Agent Manfrin did not look completely sold on this. However, Agent Manfrin was young, and only a Level Two. She had accumulated neither the good will nor the rude courage to argue with her Director. So she started the car and began the drive back to Fordway Road.

It was a busy night. Much busier on the roads than the night Agent Manfrin knocked on her door, five days ago. It was a Saturday, and the prime night for final Christmas parties before people vacated the city for family homes and snowier pastures. Lights blinked and frost glittered over everything, the world was so very full of joy, and Peggy felt apart from it entirely.

What’s the point in saving the world if you’re not going to be part of it, too? Henry asked her, once. Peggy had recoiled from him mid-argument, stung by the accusation. She thought she was part of it, most of her life.

Right now, that couldn’t feel further from the truth.

Peggy looked at Agent Manfrin, who was carefully not glancing over at her, though she obviously wanted to.

“Would you like to share what’s on your mind, Agent?” Peggy asked. Manfrin’s face twitched, perhaps worried at being caught out. Despite everything, Peggy smiled. “It’s alright,” she reassured. “You can’t possibly offend me. And Alvarez has already vouched for your discretion.”

Manfrin’s eyes darted to Peggy’s and back again.

“This seems like a very big risk for the Director of SHIELD to take,” she said, slowly.

“This is risky for all of us,” Peggy agreed, “But most of my biggest risks have paid off handsomely. We stand substantially more to gain than to lose here.”

“I’d call losing Peggy Carter to an international assassin pretty substantial.”

Manfrin’s expression dropped, the colour draining from her cheeks at her own words, but before she could apologise, Peggy felt a giddy, choked bubble of laughter rise through her. She tilted her head back and let it out, her throat and eyes scratchy and dry. It was flattering to be viewed as so indispensable. Flattering, and incorrect.

If there was one thing she’d learned, it was how woefully dispensable all life was.

The car turned onto Fordway Road, and Manfrin immediately slowed to a crawl, coming to a stop at the side of the street at least ten houses too early. She was blushing, probably from embarrassment at her outburst.

“You have a line to Alvarez?” Peggy asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

There was a beat, then a man appeared, walking towards the car. Peggy took her cue, and stepped out onto the icy ground. Nick Fury looked even more tired than Manfrin, and Peggy wondered with a twinge of old vanity just how exhausted she must look, too. She hadn’t glanced at a mirror in at least twenty-four hours.

Nick held out a vest.

“Oh please,” she scoffed.

“I must insist, Director,” Nick said sternly. He even pulled back his jacket to prove he was wearing one, too. “If this goes south, I’d like to prove to Oversight I took at least the basic precautions to keep us all alive.”

Peggy clipped the bullet-proof vest over her shirt, putting her blazer back on top of it. She brushed her hands over her trousers, her fingers cold. There was a bite of pre-snow in the air, the clouds thick.

“Any changes?” she asked, as she adjusted her clothes. The street was frighteningly dead; Christmas lights on the house facades haunting and garish in the quiet. They’d cleared the road well. 

“Just the heat signature fluctuations,” Nick replied, next handing Peggy a gun. She checked the magazine automatically.

“How long now?”

“Coming on five hours.”

“Your people are in position?”

“Medical on standby with Beta. Pinter’s leading. Varga, Coulson and Baker on the ground. No snipers, as requested.”

The final point was curtly spoken, his disgruntlement clear. They walked side by side towards 2941, and Peggy felt her heartrate kick up traitorously with every step. This was her home, she kept thinking, over and over. If she could prevent it from becoming a warzone, she had to. For Henry, for the blessed forty-one years they’d spent here. This was the childhood home of all three of her children, the place her grandchildren knew as well as their own homes. This was a place she had fought hard to preserve. 

She would keep fighting.

Nick fell behind her as they walked silently up the driveway, and when she opened the front door they were greeted by a stern man in his thirties. Coulson, she recognised from his file. She’d never interacted with him personally, but she knew Nick was the one to bring him in. That was enough for her.

They were silent until they reached the dimly lit living room. The Christmas tree in the corner looked horribly sad, the pine cones underneath lonely without any presents, and guilt washed over Peggy like a sheet of rain.

The other two agents, Varga and Baker, were waiting for them.

“Scramblers active,” Nick said, once the door was closed. Peggy understood the permission for what it was, and surveyed the agents critically.

“I trust the assignment is clear,” she told them. “We bring the target in alive if at all possible. Non-lethal options are the priority. Yes, Baker?”

Agent Issie Baker looked shocked at being called upon, but Peggy had caught the twitch of her eyebrow. This was not the time to gloss over anything.

“Why is it so important he’s brought in alive, Director?” she asked.

Peggy looked over at Nick for a moment, his cross expression and the undercurrent of fear that was so obvious in his eyes; Peggy didn’t know how everybody couldn’t see it. She knew he wanted to ask, too. She knew they all did. They were SHIELD Agents, experienced ones at that. They had every right to want the man out there strung up from a gibbet, or worse.

She should lie, she thought. It was in their best interests to be fed as many lies as they could stomach. But this was her last chance to tell the truth, and telling them too much now was surely better than being blindsided later.

“Because if the target is the Winter Soldier, he has answers we need. Assassins rarely pick their own targets. We need to know if he’s been working for one organisation, or many.”

Not a lie, per se. The Agents nodded, accepting her answer. It was an obvious one. Her throat was dry, and she caught out of the corner of her eye the photograph of Christopher, Bethan and Jane on Bethan’s thirtieth birthday, sitting idly on the mantelpiece. Young and happy and trusting, all three of them. Trusting and loving, because Peggy Carter wanted to save the world and be part of it. She got her cake and she ate it, too.

The Agents were ready to move, satisfied with her answer, and when Peggy didn’t move, Baker cocked her head, curious.

“Director?” she asked.

Peggy could still feel Howard’s broken hand in hers as he’d grasped her, delirious post-surgery mania hitching his voice, the concussion slurring his words. She gripped her gun tighter.

“The second reason is that Howard Stark woke up from surgery two days ago, and gave us a name.”

All four Agents froze, their heads whipping up to her in such tight unison it should have been comical. Peggy’s stomach churned. She could feel Nick’s eyes burning into the side of her face. Even he seemed young, all of a sudden. Or perhaps Peggy was just finally, finally feeling her age.

“It may have been post-concussion confusion, we can’t be certain. But there is a chance that the Winter Soldier was once known as Lieutenant James Barnes, of the SSR Howling Commandos.”

There was a pause, as the notion sank in; as the implications rippled over their expressions like a disturbed lake. Then Varga cleared his throat.

“I uh. I thought he was a Sergeant?”

“That was just the comics,” Coulson replied, sounding choked. 

Peggy nodded. He was right of course, although not many people remembered that. The mythology of the Howling Commandos was absolute within months of the comics hitting the shelves back in 1944. 

“How-” Varga added, but Peggy interrupted, because they didn’t have time to debate it. She’d barely had time to think it.

“We don't know,” she said firmly. “Our priority, if it is indeed the Soldier out there in my back garden right now, is containment. If we can bring him in alive, we do it.”

“Director Carter,” Nick said, his voice heavily laden with caution. “I strongly advise you stay inside while we assess the situation.”

“I am sure you do, Agent Fury,” Peggy replied. Nick’s eyes were wide with outright concern now. It was obvious he thought her compromised, and perhaps she was. It had been almost forty-seven years since she denied authorisation to conduct a search for Lieutenant Barnes’ body. If tonight that decision brought her full circle - well. 

She’d never once been accused of cowardice, and she felt certain to stay inside now would be exactly that.

Peggy tucked the loose strands of her hair behind her ears, and took out her gun again. 

“Agents,” she cued, and gestured for Nick to take the lead, which he did, taking point to the locked back door, and silently signalling for them to follow as he unlocked it, and a burst of cold air whispered into the house. 

“Take it easy,” Nick said, and then stepped out into the dark.

Peggy's heart was in her throat as she followed him. The looming trees were massive, shadow on shadow, almost no stars peeking through the clouds. Even the moon was hiding her face. Thick frosty grass crunched under their feet, and Peggy stepped closer in line with Nick as they walked steadily forwards. 

She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear someone at the other end of the yard. His breaths were laboured, shockingly loud and so uneven, big gulps of air followed by withheld silence, like diving for pearls.

She tried to make out any kind of shape in the gloom, but the meagre light from nearby windows wasn't strong enough. 

“It's alright,” she said, loudly and calmly, and thought suddenly of their old dog, Morrison, getting stuck in the brambles; coaxing him peacefully as he howled and twitched. Her throat was tight, her stomach quivering. “We know you're there. Come forward.”

Nick held his hand up to halt the other two, and they did. Peggy took an extra step, so she was in front, and was sure Nick was angry but she didn't look away to check. There was a shape, low and unnatural, stooping at a height she didn’t recognise from the branches of the trees. It was him, it had to be. 

“Come forward,” she said again.

Another thick, heaving breath. Another plunge of silence.

“He's got a weapon,” Coulson said, and Peggy saw it too. Something caught the light, glinting silvery, dark metal of some kind.

“Drop your weapon!” Nick ordered, his gun raised coming into view, stepping to catch up with Peggy. “Drop the weapon, now.”

“It's alright,” Peggy said.

The shadow moved closer.

“Drop! The! Weapon!” Nick shouted.

The figure of the man dropped to his knees, and the metal weapon stayed very still, and Peggy’s straining eyes finally saw it. She heard Coulson’s gasp of realisation.

“It's his arm,” she said. “It's not a weapon. Nick.”

“I see it,” Nick replied, his voice tightly corded, and he regripped his gun, lowering it only a fraction.  

“I have tranquillisers at the ready,” Baker warned, somewhere to Peggy’s left. 

“Give us some more light, Coulson,” Peggy said.

There was a pause, and then a click, and a torchlight hit the grass somewhere out to the right, away from everyone. He brought it across slowly, letting the spill drift, and the left arm attached to the man caught most of it. It moved - bionic, heavy, terrifying. This was him - this was really him, the Winter Soldier. After all this time.

He was heavily built, broad across both shoulders, strong looking, if not for the shivers racking him. The man’s hair was long and dark, covering his downturned face. 

“Ком–дир.” 

The word was muffled, slurred almost, lost in another sucking breath. Russian-sounding. The voice that spoke it was unrecognisable, and Peggy felt the doubt and fear of the past two days cresting over her. She fought to keep her head above the surface of it, and stared at the man’s crown.

She didn’t imagine a boy, young and frightened and angry, she didn’t imagine a kid she never, ever should have lied for, should have sent him home, should have-

“Командир те-га.”

“Commander,” Peggy realised aloud. “Commander and… something else.”

“Varga?” Nick prompted.

“It's hard to tell,” Varga replied, very quietly. 

“Repeat yourself, Soldier,” Peggy said firmly, and was rewarded first with another diver’s breath, and then the same two words again, clearer this time. The effort in his voice was audible. He swayed on his knees.

“Truck,” Varga said. “It's - it's truck, I think? Or - or.”

“Speak up, Agent,” Nick hissed, and Varga cleared his throat quietly.

“Or cart,” he said, under his breath, and Peggy tasted blood in the back of her mouth.

“Is he trying to say Carter?” Nick breathed, and Peggy felt his eyes find her. For the first time, Howard's concussed, raging ramble suddenly sounded horribly, horrifyingly believable. As if the idea floating anchorless and rudderless through her thoughts for two days had suddenly taken new, uncompromising weight.

Iss-the kid, Barn, Barr, he saw me, iss-him, the kid's here, tell Ste'e, you godda tell'im 'bout Bucky the kid's alive-

“I'm here,” Peggy said, deliberate with her consonants. The bowed head tilted a bit to the left. A shiver ran through the man's body. “Commander Carter is here.”

“Asset malfunction,” the Soldier said, his English heavily accented. His entire body was lilting to the left now. 

“What is malfunctioning?” Peggy asked. She took a step closer, as Coulson brought the beam of the torchlight to just in front of the man’s knees, sinking into the frozen grass and soaked through.

“Asset malfunction,” he repeated. He raised his right arm, the one that wasn't made of metal. His palm and knuckles were bloody and shredded, but he made a circular pulling sign with it. Then he did it again.

“Pretty sure that's not ASL,” Coulson said.

“Russian Sign Language?” Peggy asked.

“I'm not sure,” Varga said. The chill was starting to bite into Peggy's fingers, and she was sure it could only be more unpleasant for the man kneeling in the frost. She took another step.

“Careful,” Fury said needlessly. 

Peggy lowered her gun. There was an unpleasant thought sitting on the tip of her tongue. She twitched a signal to Coulson, who brought the torch up to the crown of the man's head where it was bowed over. 

“What asset? His weapon?” Baker speculated.

“Maybe it’s the arm,” Varga suggested. 

A second thought occurred to Peggy, then. One she didn’t like at all.

“Asset malfunction,” the words hit the dirt again. He was trembling lightly all over, but it wasn’t with the cold. It was from the effort of staying upright. Peggy licked her lips, and straightened her spine. She steeled herself, mustered the courage she'd never struggled so hard to find before and ordered:

“Look at me, Asset.”

The Winter Soldier looked up, and the face of Bucky Barnes stared up at her, ashy pale and soaked with sweat. 

“My God,” she heard Coulson whisper.

Bucky Barnes’ eyes were always a cutting shade of blue, but unlike forty-eight years ago, the first time Peggy saw them, the eyes staring at her were hard and cold as stone. There was not a hint of life in them, not in any part of his slack face. There was dark blood coating the inside of his mouth, open just enough to let those haggard breaths in and out, and ligature marks around his temples and cheekbones. A thick dark scar cut into the bridge of his nose, and there were two more to match on the peak of each cheek, like someone had tried to score a line through his face.

Peggy took a deep breath, the icy winter air cracking in her throat. Decades of roots had wrapped around her calves, tying her to the ground where she stood. In a bomb gutted pub in London, she had called it the dignity of his choice.

She hadn't even really believed it then. A waste is what it was, and always had been. Boys dying far from home over forces too great for them to imagine. Evil too insidious and desperation too widespread. Bucky Barnes dying was just another tally on an unfathomable list of lives too innumerable to try counting, and that was tragic, it was, but this -

Peggy felt her face, pinched with grief and cold, twist. She felt Nick’s eyes on her.

“Report, Soldier,” she said, in the same commanding voice.

“Asset malfunction. Mission failed.” 

Did it sound like him? She thought. Not at all, not even a little. A heavy accent more familiar with Russian vowels. An empty, flat monotone. He lifted his right arm and made the circular motion again. Before he could complete a second circle, however, his body convulsed, and he fell to his hands as black, bloody vomit spilled into the frost.

“Pinter,” Nick said, “Dispatch medical unit to POLARIS. Beta Strike presence required. Amber alert.”

Peggy couldn’t hear Agent Pinter’s answer on the comms. Her mind was racing, back and forth from decades ago to minutes.

The urge to drop down closer to the man coughing out his lungs into the dirt was overwhelming, and she stepped back before she could succumb to it. She couldn’t be stupid, not now. He was wearing the face of a boy she failed but it was meaningless. It had to be. This was the Winter Soldier, she reminded herself of her own words to her Agents back in the house.

First and foremost, this was the assassin who put Howard and Maria in the hospital. Who put dozens more in the ground.

She couldn’t fail them now, not any of them. 

Bucky Barnes choked and coughed, his weight sinking on shaking arms, tremors running through him head to foot. He tried to push himself back up into his knees, but he listed to the left, as if the weight of the metal arm was dragging him down. It looked heavy - it sounded heavy. 

“Командир,” he said again. His right arm made a feeble attempt at the circle movement. Then another, more familiar one. His hand tapped his chin, and pulled away, clumsy and shaking. And again, circle, then chin. Sweat trickled down his face, and he did it three times, each time getting less precise, and Peggy's jaw flashed with pain as she bit down hard.

“That's thank you,” Baker said, “Isn't it?”

“Beta and medical t-minus one minute,” Nick reported.

“He's saying thank you,” Baker said again, her gun still tight in her hands, but Peggy shook her head.

“No, he's saying please,” she corrected, watching the long sweep of his arm coming down. Dark, dead blood smeared over his mouth as he started to drop further to the left. He was going to collapse, and they were just going to watch it happen, and Peggy’s gut was iron, her lungs steel. “He's begging.”

“For what?” Varga asked, but there was no answer from anyone. It was impossible to guess.

Bucky Barnes’ eyes, cutting blue and hard as stone, didn’t even close when he finally keeled over. One leg kicked out, and Coulson and Varga surged forwards a step, but Peggy stayed very still, and so did Fury and Baker. Barnes’ gaze lost focus, slumped on the floor, and his body shook like a sapling in a storm. 

“Approach!” Nick shouted, suddenly, and Peggy flinched as suddenly voices and footsteps broke out behind them. “Director Carter, you need to step back. Tranquillisers at the ready, people.”

Three figures in tac gear strode past, surrounding the man on the floor, and as Bucky Barnes disappeared behind a wall of SHIELD Agents, Peggy felt something loose in her chest. A determination she'd lost grip of, rattling around untethered. Fury said something else she didn’t hear, and then Varga and Coulson were at her shoulders.

“We can follow the transport,” Coulson said. “If you'd like to oversee-”

“He's not going anywhere without me,” Peggy replied sharply. Coulson's eyes widened, and he nodded, looking to the house and back. He followed her closer to the house, and Varga pulled away two feet, keeping eyes on the hive of activity.

“We'll keep agents stationed here, in case anyone comes looking.”

God, if Henry had come back too soon - she couldn’t think about it. Peggy shook her arms out and nodded.

“Very good. Thank you, Agent Coulson.”

“On three!” one of the new agents on scene shouted, and Peggy bit the tip of her tongue and didn’t watch. She was not sure if she could still hear Barnes’ breathing, or if the memory was simply clinging to her senses with cruel accuracy. Tears burned in her eyes, as the torchlights flashed around her beloved garden, boots tearing up the bloody soil, and she finally, indulgently and punishingly, thought of Steve Rogers. 

Steve. Regret and hatred and yearning filled her, like a sea cave in high tide. A dizzy, frightening anger swam through her and she reached up, grabbing Coulson’s shoulder. He didn’t move, just let her catch her breath.

Steve, she thought, uselessly.

She didn’t try to imagine what he'd do, or what he'd say, or what he'd think. How the fuck would she know?

It had been forty-six years since she last spoke to him. Almost forty-seven. He had drowned in the Arctic and she had let him, because it was what he wanted. 

She had given him the dignity of his choice, no matter how fucking selfish she thought he was for it.

Behind her, the assassin wearing Bucky Barnes’ face was being buckled into a stretcher. Her cheeks stung suddenly, cold air on tear tracks, and she wiped them away hastily. Coulson stood between her and the rest of SHIELD like a wall of compassion. They were going to need a lot more where that came from, she thought to herself with cynical despair.

She looked at the man, his stoic expression and soft eyes as he watched the proceedings. 

That was just the comics, he'd said before she could, in the voice of someone who truly cared. 

“He lied on his enlistment form, you know,” Peggy said, in a moment of madness that seized her like an iron fist. It had been locked at the back of her throat for so long. Coulson turned his head, and stared at her with a flat mouth, a crease in the middle of his forehead. His breath came out of his nose visible in the chilly air, like a dragon patiently waiting.

Peggy swallowed the thorns that had bloodied her tongue for almost fifty years. Laughed, bitter and nettly. What did it matter anymore? The only person she’d ever been protecting was herself.

“He was sixteen when he signed up. When I found out, I should have sent him home, but. I just gave him new papers. Let him stay ”

Made him a Lieutenant to boot, just to make it harder for the brass to question her - because she was clever, because she was arrogant, because she was so, so, selfish. There were so many worse things she'd done in her life. The things she'd done, and ordered, and enacted - unforgivable, some of it. But in the aftermath, this felt terrible; when the rest of the Commandos had come back, a hollow victory of a prisoner in their custody, and Dugan said through gritted teeth: The kid is dead.

She had heard him later, crying. Sobbing. He'd loved Barnes like the son he never had. She had simply closed the door and never breathed a word, not even at Dugan's funeral six years later.

The swarm of Agents at the other end of the garden split momentarily, and she caught sight of the menacing metal arm glinting in the torchlight. She looked at Coulson, those curious warm eyes, those understanding eyes. 

All those history books crying tragedy, because James Barnes died five days before his twenty-second birthday, when really it would have been his nineteenth.

She was the one who let him stay. 

She almost told Henry, once. Back in the early days, when the wounds of war felt fresh, and it hadn’t mattered that they'd won, new wars were breaking out to replace the scars of central Europe. He had caught her looking at a photograph of all of them, those blazing How lies she publicly respected and privately adored, and when he pointed out the baby-faced sniper with his rifle clutched in both hands, she had wanted to laugh, and scream, and say, You have no idea, no clue, not one of you knows.

But she had been too heartbroken, and too furious, and she never admitted to anything, because what was the point? 

Coulson didn’t say anything at first. Nick stared at them across the garden, and waved Varga to his side, just as Agent Pinter appeared, his dark blue eyes momentarily finding hers, one of them still bruised and swollen from his hasty abscondment from Berlin, and he nodded solemnly before turning away. Peggy let the grief swallow her, just enough, and placed a hand over her face, her eyes clenched shut. 

Asset malfunction, she thought, and felt sick.

“The marks on his temples,” Coulson said. “They're electrical burns. He's been electrocuted recently.”

Peggy nodded. She'd seen that, too. 

“They'll load him into the transport soon. We should get to the car,” Coulson suggested. 

Peggy dropped her hand, and cleared her face. She forced the clouds to pass, and let the guilt and grief drain from her. It was no use to her here. She led him back into the house, suddenly an alien refuge she felt cut off from, like she was walking through a painting. The picture of the kids on Bethan’s birthday seemed to follow her with their eyes, accusing her. The presentless Christmas tree sat forlorn, waiting. 

Out the front door and closer than where she first parked, Agent Manfrin was standing next to her vehicle, her eyes on their surroundings. The driveway was suddenly alive with activity. At the sight of them, Manfrin snapped to attention. She clambered into the driver’s seat while Coulson followed around to the front without a word, and it was more privacy than Peggy deserved. Nick always found the best people. 

She watched as the Winter Soldier was loaded into the back of the nearest medical transport, disguised as a regular ambulance like there was any chance of keeping this a secret from the neighbours, and Nick followed behind with Varga and Baker. Pinter was taking over POLARIS. Peggy gave the house a glance.

She thought about Howard's dazed, bruised face. His hands snagging at her as she stood by his bedside, stricken, livid, aggrieved. 

Iss-the kid, Barn, Barr, he saw me, iss-him, the kid's here, tell Ste'e, you godda tell'im 'bout Bucky the kid's alive -

Her heart thudded fast in her chest, and she got into the backseat.

“Follow the transport to ANDROMEDA,” she said. “I want eyes on them the entire time. Is Nick in the vehicle with them?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Coulson replied.

“Alvarez is on standby at ANDROMEDA,” Manfrin confirmed.

“Thank you, Agents,” Peggy replied, and said no more.

The cars pulled out onto Fordway, speeding away from 2941, the dark of night swallowing up the peace that had been intruded upon, and it all felt less, somehow. Five decades fighting for peace, clawing at it, and chasing it, and demanding it at every turn. She'd done so much, not all of it good, why did it feel like it had been building to this? To the ghost of a boy she failed, collapsing in her back garden. Coughing up blood, and begging her for something she didn’t know. He didn't remember her. He didn't know what he was saying, all he could come up with was тележка. He didn't know her, but he knew to look for her.

Electrocuted, dehydrated, vomiting blood. And whatever was left of James Barnes came begging for her.

She pressed her forehead against the car window, and watched the city spin by, unrelenting. 

Asset malfunction, she thought again, and again, and again.

She thought about Nick telling the Winter Soldier to drop the weapon, and the Winter Soldier falling to his knees. 

It was going to be a long night, and it was only the beginning.