undercover in our overcoats
Title: undercover in our overcoats
Fandom: Marvel (MCU)
Rating/Pairings: PG-13. Peggy/Natasha.
Word Count: ~5100
Summary: Prague, 1968. Neither Agent Carter nor the Black Widow would have called it anything like love.
Notes: Written for lastwingedthing in the femslashex fic exchange, Nov. 2013. Title is from Richard Siken's Anyway. Yeah, okay, history is my kryptonite, among other things. Especially Cold-War-era history. In order of appearance in the story:
Her background here re: Department X's Red Room is left to the imagination--whether she was taken in by the Red Room at a very young age and trained (which I usually see in MCU-verse fics, a la Brubaker's recent 616 retcon in Winter Soldier), or whether she chose to enter the Red Room program of her own volition to serve her country (more along the lines of her original 616 background, where she survived the Battle of Stalingrad and had a life before the Red Room /whispers Name of the Rose by Marjorie Liu read itttt). And how much of it is due to Red Room brainwashing versus true sincere loyalty to her country... well, you choose. The serum she has is less like Captain America's, more like the 616 Infinity Formula where she ages slowly and heals just a tad more quickly.
Peggy: At the end of Agent Carter, it's implied that Peggy goes on to run SHIELD with Howard. To suit the purpose of this story--which required that she work extensively in the field, an unlikely duty for the co-head of SHIELD--I thought it would be plausible that Peggy's appointment might be blocked by higher-ups in SHIELD-member governments, who weren't comfortable with the idea. Thus, she would get shunted sideways into a top-ranking field agent role rather than given an open door to the highest level of decision-making (although I would like to think that Howard Stark, Dum Dum Dugan, etc. pushed for her promotion consistently enough that she became Director in her later years, given her lengthy track record).
Also, this is kind of how I imagine Peggy Carter used to dress up in her early years of fieldwork, and this is what she keeps on her desk as Director. Corn, y'all.
Fandom: Marvel (MCU)
Rating/Pairings: PG-13. Peggy/Natasha.
Word Count: ~5100
Summary: Prague, 1968. Neither Agent Carter nor the Black Widow would have called it anything like love.
Notes: Written for lastwingedthing in the femslashex fic exchange, Nov. 2013. Title is from Richard Siken's Anyway. Yeah, okay, history is my kryptonite, among other things. Especially Cold-War-era history. In order of appearance in the story:
- Hradec Králové is home to Charles University's Faculty of Medicine, with clinical instruction at the University Hospital. The pseudonym Masaryk is ganked from the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.
- Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in January 1968, and in the ensuing Prague Spring initiated some liberalization in the regime, aka "socialism with a human face." It ended in August, when the USSR sent military forces into the country.
- Uyghurs traditionally used given names, with surname use uncommon until the middle of the 20th century. From the 1930s and onward, some Uyghur intellectuals traveled to the Soviet Union to for their education; they were influenced by the New Culture movement and often adopted Russified surname suffixes, although this was not common among the rest of the population. (This was kind of a tiny nod to Asia before and after WWII, especially given the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s; the Uyghurs generally held little love for the Chinese government, but on the other hand some factions were displeased with others' assimilation into Russian society too. [Applicable also to the present-day situation in the Xinjiang region.] I really would've loved to expand the Cold War focus beyond Europe to other geographical areas, but it didn't quite work for the purpose of the story...)
- The hard-line Communist weekly Literární noviny was renamed Literární listy and became censor-free in February 1968, one of the more prominent entities taking advantage of increased freedom of the press.
- Peggy and Natasha's first meeting takes place very shortly before the East German uprising of 1953, which began on June 16.
- In the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, thousands of refugees crossed the border into Austria, many of whom were housed at Traiskirchen Camp near Vienna; the ICEM was one of many organizations working to relocate them, and both sides of the Cold War definitely tried milking the situation for as much intelligence as possible (both before emigration, a la Peggy and the Black Widow, and after emigration).
- Prague Castle is on one side of the Vltava River, Old Town on the other. (Smetana's orchestral composition Má vlast - Vltava is a work of beauty.)
- Jupiter missiles armed with nuclear warheads were deployed in 1961 in Italy (hosted by Gioia del Colle Air Base) and Turkey as a deterrent. It was in response to this that the USSR started contemplating having Soviet missiles in Cuba... (If you're interested in the general history of nuclear weapons handling, check out Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control.)
- Plzeňský Prazdroj, or Pilsner Urquell, is the original pilsner produced in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic).
- Peggy references Hungary (Oct.-Nov. 1956) and Poland (March 1968).
- The Black Widow said to Peggy, "That sounds like something out of a book," and she's not entirely wrong. Algernon Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine" states: Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; / But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May. I just really love this poem. And whether the catalyst is the agent betraying her country, or the country betraying its people... take your pick. (Frankly, SHIELD and its member countries don't get off scot-free either. What Masaryk says at the beginning of the story is not entirely different from what I imagine Natasha presumably says at the end.)
- In 1966, France withdrew from NATO forces, under de Gaulle’s presidency. I figure it's plausible to draw a parallel between that and France's participation in SHIELD (if any, really). Peggy and Natasha's Paris meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, colloquially called Quai d'Orsay re: its location, is vaguely set between 1966 and the story's 1968 occurrence.
Her background here re: Department X's Red Room is left to the imagination--whether she was taken in by the Red Room at a very young age and trained (which I usually see in MCU-verse fics, a la Brubaker's recent 616 retcon in Winter Soldier), or whether she chose to enter the Red Room program of her own volition to serve her country (more along the lines of her original 616 background, where she survived the Battle of Stalingrad and had a life before the Red Room /whispers Name of the Rose by Marjorie Liu read itttt). And how much of it is due to Red Room brainwashing versus true sincere loyalty to her country... well, you choose. The serum she has is less like Captain America's, more like the 616 Infinity Formula where she ages slowly and heals just a tad more quickly.
Peggy: At the end of Agent Carter, it's implied that Peggy goes on to run SHIELD with Howard. To suit the purpose of this story--which required that she work extensively in the field, an unlikely duty for the co-head of SHIELD--I thought it would be plausible that Peggy's appointment might be blocked by higher-ups in SHIELD-member governments, who weren't comfortable with the idea. Thus, she would get shunted sideways into a top-ranking field agent role rather than given an open door to the highest level of decision-making (although I would like to think that Howard Stark, Dum Dum Dugan, etc. pushed for her promotion consistently enough that she became Director in her later years, given her lengthy track record).
Also, this is kind of how I imagine Peggy Carter used to dress up in her early years of fieldwork, and this is what she keeps on her desk as Director. Corn, y'all.