Walking After You, 3/6.
Title: Walking After You
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: Steve/Peggy, Wanda/Vision mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to other people, and I am just playing in their sandbox for fun. This is born of a text conversation with mynuet regarding the possibility of Peggy getting a version of the serum at some point in her colorful history. Civil War compliant (no, really!) because I was actually very pleased with characterizations in it, even if some of the plotting made me go O_o at times. I do reference things from season 3 of Agents of SHIELD as well as season 2 of Agent Carter, but I think it would still make sense if you haven't seen that. Part of chapter 1 inspired by this photo, because of course that's how they should be.
Summary: In the wake of the Sokovian Accords, the Avengers scramble to find a safe haven. That gets complicated when Nick Fury arrives, announcing that he found Peggy Carter. The real Peggy Carter.
Prior chapters:
One - Escape
Two - Misdirection And Discovery
Three - Becoming Again
Steve stayed with Peggy as she read about the husband she hadn't married, the children she hadn't had, the niece she was supposed to have been close to. She read the articles about her funeral, the reports within the intelligence agencies and the glowing praise for her leadership throughout the years. Steve didn't know how to explain the awkward almost-thing he had with Sharon, if only because she reminded him of Peggy. That was probably a poor foundation for a relationship, but Sharon had been a comforting presence for a reason.
Meeting with Nick Fury also was visibly disconcerting, but Peggy sat through it anyway and waved off the offer of a counselor of some kind. "I've weathered quite a few disasters in my time, Mr. Fury. I do believe I can survive this one as well."
He had smiled fondly at Peggy. "At least they didn't change your sparkling personality."
"Isn't that one of the best parts of me?" she threw back with an answering smile.
"For those of us that believe in you, yes. For Hydra and those kinds of people? Not at all," he said. The fondness in his tone was one that Steve had only previously heard with Natasha or Maria Hill.
There was a hitch in Peggy's breath when she went through the file on Bucky, easily translating the Russian. She remained silent until she had gone through it all, then heaved a sigh. "And it's been redacted, but there's still a considerable amount here."
"Natasha assured me that was the whole file."
"The whole file she got, perhaps, but it's hardly the whole of his history, as bad as this is. There are references to other files, to a notebook of some sort..." She tilted her head to the side as Steve blinked and sucked in a breath. "Should I not speak of it, Steve?" she asked gently, putting her hand on his arm.
"Knowing what I did about what was done is bad enough. Knowing that there could be more?" Steve shook his head and willed himself to be still and calm. Not that it ever worked, but he was willing to try. His thoughts were a jumble, and he couldn't seem to keep himself from picturing Bucky in that cryogenics chamber. He was calm now, but he had been used as nothing more than a tool, wiped clean and made to do whatever his handler wished.
Just thinking about it made him feel sick.
"Perhaps I should speak with Natasha?" she asked him, squeezing his arm. "Your friend looks as though he'd like to speak with you," she added, nodding toward the door.
Sam was there, and Steve found himself nodding even though he didn't want to leave Peggy's side. He'd lost everyone over and over again, but miraculously enough, she was back. Some part of him never wanted her out of his sight. He realized it was irrational and stupid, that T'Challa would never let anything happen in his kingdom.
"Nothing important," Sam offered, shrugging. "Just wanted to see if I could help with anything."
"Get Steve out of here," Peggy said briskly. "He hovers like a mother hen, and I'm hardly bed bound. I am quite capable of handling the horrors that Hydra had to dispense."
He flashed Peggy a bright grin and nodded. "Seems you've got a type," he whispered to Steve as he approached.
"Those with excellent hearing?" Peggy asked from the desk, reaching for another folder. Her smile told Sam and Steve that she didn't mind the statement at all.
"Brains," Sam replied simply. "Maybe 'cause you haven't got 'em," he teased, shaking his head at Steve. "C'mon, man. The lady is obviously done with you right now. You can come with me downtown. I'm meeting Wanda for lunch."
"Oh, I like you," Peggy declared in Sam's direction. "I can see you've certainly cared for Steve very well. Thank you."
"Someone has to," Sam replied with the same grin on his face. He gave Steve a playful nudge on the arm. "This fool certainly dives right in without thinking. Did he always jump out of planes without parachutes or keep fighting when he's all busted up and should be falling over?"
Peggy laughed. "He most certainly did. In the middle of being fired at, too."
"Some things never change," Sam said to Steve in a mocking admonishing tone. "Don't have Wanda do the same thing, now." He looked over at Peggy. "I'll have a proper sit down with you later, Miss Carter."
"Peggy's just fine, I assure you. Mr. Jarvis always used to call me Miss Carter, and it's just not the same," she told him, a wistful smile on her face.
"Peggy," Sam repeated with a nod. "We'll be back in a bit, talk more. I know this dude can be overwhelming without really meaning to be."
She laughed, expression softening, and then sank back into her chair when they left. She looked through the files in front of her again, sure she was being watched by someone. It could have been Nick Fury again, it could have been another of Steve's friends, it could have been the king himself or one of his emissaries. Her fingers ghosted over the script in her own file, the markers in her blood that were assumed to be artifactual to the freezing process. She wasn't stupid, she had a very good idea what Howard might have actually been doing with his tests. It hadn't occurred to her at the time, and he probably thought he had failed in his attempt to put the super soldier serum into her bloodstream. Perhaps that was why he kept up his experiments, until that batch of serum that had been in the trunk of his car the night he was killed.
Her clone had been a Hydra plant, and likely would have encouraged Howard to do such a thing, and would have let others know about it. Or maybe her clone was innocent, and there were plenty of other Hydra informants by that time. Maybe that was why the clone had developed dementia; too many implanted code words, too many memory overlays, too many times her clone might have been erased and tampered with.
It hurt her head to think about it, and there was an ache deep in her chest. She bowed her head over the files, shutting her eyes tight against the tears that wanted to come.
Once upon a time, she had made her peace with grief, with feeling as though she had let down Steve and his memory. She had let her emotions loose, she had tried to move on and build a life without him, even as his ghost followed her.
Now she had to do the same for all of those she had left behind without meaning to.
A gentle knock at the door startled her out of her reverie. A petite redhead stood there, dressed in a tank top, jeans and canvas sneakers. "Hello," Peggy said, tone brisk as if her emotions weren't running rampant. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."
"Natasha Romanoff," the redhead replied.
"Ah. The one that procured a great many files. They're redacted, of course."
"I thought Steve would have it translated. I'm not sure if he bothered, though." Natasha came in and sat beside Peggy at the desk, right where Steve had been. "He'd been through a lot, and I didn't want to make it worse."
"You knew more than you told him," Peggy guessed.
Natasha's smile was sad. "It was out there for him to find if he wanted to. I didn't want him to. I didn't want him more hurt than he already was. No one ever gave him time to process anything when they thawed him out of the ice. They treated him like an unstoppable legend, a hero. Not a man." She shrugged and looked back at the file. "That was the first one I received."
"And the rest?"
"Stolen, anyway. It was a mess when SHIELD fell."
Her voice was so tired and sad, and Peggy's heart went out to her. Steve had mentioned Natasha, mostly in passing, but with a fondness that was impossible to miss. "I'm sure a clean slate was needed. Hydra is an infestation that has to be eradicated."
"They've destroyed a lot of things, and continue to," Natasha agreed. "There are too many secrets, even with trying to put things out in the open."
"You're too young to be so... resigned," Peggy commented.
"I was never a child. Not really, not how it counts for most people." There was a raw and aching expression that led Peggy to grasp her hand tightly and squeeze. "I belonged nowhere, so I could be anywhere. I was trained to become anyone I needed to be. But then that means there isn't much to me. There's too much for me to make up, no matter how hard I try to balance the scales. Maybe it can never be made right."
"You can be anyone you need to be?" Peggy echoed, a chill down her spine. Her eyes drifted down to Natasha's wrists, but there were no scars there. "Were you handcuffed to the bed?" she asked, voice hushed.
Natasha blinked. "What do you know about the Red Room?"
"There was an operative I met years ago," Peggy said slowly. "She said the same thing. She could be anyone she wanted to be. The training she had in Russia included children's films with subliminal messages. The girls were handcuffed to beds, trained to kill even as they looked far too innocent to do it."
"When I escaped the Red Room, I burned it to the ground. But I have no illusions about it being the only one. I haven't found any others, though."
Peggy sighed. "I suppose I clearly still have a role to play in this era, then." She shot Natasha a rueful smile. "I don't do well with sitting still and peacetime, I'm afraid. It grows quite boring. I find I have a taste for adventure."
Returning her rueful smile, Natasha nodded. "Then it's a good thing that Nick found you. There's a lot going on in the world right now. Plenty of opportunity for adventure."
"And as a recently dead woman, no one would expect me to go looking for it."
Natasha smiled at her, a small but genuine one. "Let's see what we can do."
***
King T'Challa was wary at first of this woman that Hydra had encased in a glass tube; he'd seen what their other frozen citizen was capable of doing. He saw all of the video of her interactions with Steve, Nick, Sam and Natasha; though he had gone through all of the information that had been leaked to the internet, the folders Nick had brought and whatever his own scientists had been able to determine, it was still surprising to see for himself. Most of the old SSR files weren't digitized, so there was no way to get his hands on that, and Director Coulson of the new SHIELD wasn't very obliging about sharing the archived documents. T'Challa could understand that he was chasing down some kind of new threat, though surely there were other junior agents that could be tasked with the job as busy work.
He stood in front of the cryogenic chamber holding Bucky Barnes. The fear in the other man's eyes had been a palpable thing when T'Challa thought back to their fights. He had been fueled by the need for vengeance, and Bucky had been motivated purely by survival. He had been turned into a tool for other people to use, a victim under the hands of cruel and devious people that never saw him as a man. Bucky had been a blunt instrument, nameless and faceless, a ghost in the intelligence community, nothing more than a threat to gain leverage for an organization that should have died decades ago.
Lifting his hand to the glass, T'Challa took in the resigned but peaceful expression on Bucky's face. He chose cryogenic sleep over the risk of harming others, another sign that the man beneath the Hydra trigger words was a good one. Steve Rogers wouldn't have risked his life, reputation and friends for anything less.
"Do you think he knows we're here?" Natasha asked quietly, coming into the room behind him. "Or is it that he sleeps, and eventually will think this is all a dream?"
"I'm surprised you made it past my guards," T'Challa answered instead.
She smiled mirthlessly, and came closer to him. She was still an arm's length away from him, away from the cryogenic tube. "I'm a different kind of ghost around here."
Ah, yes. So she had heard the cutting whispers and rumors in the plaza, that ghosts were coming into the kingdom to take over jobs and undermine their authority. None openly discriminated against his guests, but it was likely a near thing.
"To answer your question," T'Challa replied, turning to face her directly, "this is very much like sleep. The monitoring includes EEG, and brain activity matches sleep."
Her expression softened fractionally. "Good. It would be a different kind of horror for him to be aware of every moment, to live through it all and feel helpless."
"You feel mercy for a killer?" he asked, surprise marking his expression. "When you felt that all should have oversight and punishment?"
Natasha looked at him with her neutral but grave expression. "Punishment is only worthwhile when you can learn something from it. If you can't derive a lesson from it, when you're not capable of changing your course of action, it's not punishment anymore. It's torture. It's hurting someone so that you don't have to."
"You speak from experience?"
Though her lips quirked at him, her eyes were sad. "The world is aware of that experience."
T'Challa wasn't going to admit that he had devoured her publicly available files after meeting her at the Accords signing, that he had noticed the gaps and redacted information that hadn't been released. She might have dumped SHIELD's secrets, but they weren't all of them, and they weren't the highest level ones. It had been a calculated move, obviously, and one that had kept the hounds at bay for a time.
"Are you atoning for your sins, then?" T'Challa asked quietly.
"We all are. We're flawed," Natasha replied. "Liars and killers in the service of liars and killers," she said. There was the air of an in joke he didn't understand, but he didn't press the issue. "All we can do is try our best, to go the straight path, to make up for any evil we've done and hope that it's enough, that it wipes out the red."
Something shifted in T'Challa's mind, and he recalled the discussion that Natasha had with Peggy earlier, of cruelties merely hinted at. "Have you been able to make up for it?"
"Some," Natasha replied softly.
"And for Mr. Barnes here..."
"We were weapons to be used once. I managed to take control of myself. I hope he can do the same someday."
"Mr. Fury thinks it's possible, with the psychologists and different files he found."
"For Bucky's sake, I hope it works," she murmured. "And for Steve's. He'll be devastated if it doesn't, and even more determined to think this is all his fault."
"Whose fault do you think it is?"
Natasha sighed heavily, her expression drawn. "There's too many to blame easily. There was Zola, who experimented on him in the first place. There were those that took a damaged, nearly dead body and transformed it into something they could use. The ones that put the triggers in his head in the first place. The ones that used him without any kind of regard to who he was or should have been..."
"You should work with him when we wake him," T'Challa decided. He wasn't amused by her surprise the way he thought he would be. Instead, this entire situation made him tired and cheerless. How many lives were ruined over the course of history? How many more would be caught in the cycle of vengeance and be destroyed by it?
"Wake him? But the-"
"I had my own agents on the lookout for the missing data we needed." At her silence, he smiled mirthlessly. "Outside of Wakanda, we are simply dark skinned immigrants. In the United States especially, we are seen for the color of our skin. The prejudice is different in Europe, in different parts of Africa. So we aren't seen. And no one monitors what they say around the help. So our agents easily tracked down where Zemo sent the information he found."
"He asked to be kept on ice. He felt that he was too dangerous to be woken up-"
"There are resources enough to put that to the test."
Breath whistling in through her teeth, Natasha leaned back a little. "I hope it's not a mistake."
T'Challa fixed her with a mirthless smile. "So do I."
***
"I think I may be of use," Peggy told T'Challa without preamble as soon as she was seated in his conference room. She had requested an audience, and the dora milaje had been amused and impressed by the quiet confidence. Some had remarked that she acted as if she was a member of the dora milaje herself, which T'Challa understood to be the praise it was.
"In what way?" he asked her, gesturing for a servant to begin pouring tea.
Peggy smiled graciously at the young man and thanked him, then waited for T'Challa to raise his cup before raising hers to take a sip. "I'm a dead woman, after all," she said pointedly after she wet her lips with the tea. She couldn't help but smile at the blink the servant made, even though he obviously was supposed to be invisible. "Quite all right, dear man. But the news reports state that I am dead. Possibly we can forge papers and say I am my own granddaughter or some rot like that, it doesn't matter. But this is a world in utter shambles, and it must be put to rights. I cannot sit back if I may help in some capacity."
Oh yes, T'Challa could see why the dora milaje had been impressed by her attitude.
"It is quite a shock to realize that you're presumed dead."
Letting out a small breath, Peggy nodded and put down her cup. "It is a shock, yes. One of many I've had in my lifetime, and I'm sure that there will be more." She held up a hand when T'Challa was about to say something. "I don't need to know the science, if you think I'm not ready for it, this isn't about that. Greater minds than mine can puzzle that out. It wasn't where I was most useful in the past. I was a codebreaker. I took command in covert operations. I investigated where others would look blindly at me and see just a woman and not the mind I possess. It was especially the case in peacetime. There must be a role I may play now."
"I disagree in your assessment," T'Challa began, nearly smiling when she began to have an affronted expression. "I think you can understand the science very well."
"Could I?" she asked, blinking in surprise. "Very well, tell me of the science involved in my miraculous resurrection and recovery."
"Howard Stark gave you a version of the super soldier serum," T'Challa said, and took a sip of his tea while Peggy digested that piece of information. "I have samples of blood from you, Steve Rogers and James Barnes. There are several markers that are the same."
"The freezing process?"
"No," T'Challa disagreed. "I had others at the medical college independently study the same samples, and they came to the same conclusion."
Peggy was very still, and looked at him evenly. "Which is that Howard gave me an untested concoction meant to be similar to Erskine's serum, which could not have been, because there were no samples left, no vita rays involved-"
"Similar to the version that Steve Rogers was given in how it function, not in how it was made or administered," T'Challa said smoothly. "What we know of the aging process regards something called telomeres at the ends of genes. They're caps to protect the genes from degrading, so to speak; damage in any way shortens them, and cuts down the number of replications that can be made. Once the telomere is too short, the cell either stops dividing or undergoes apoptosis, or planned cell death."
Peggy gave him a wan smile. "You're doing quite well explaining this, Your Highness. I don't know why you worried I wouldn't understand."
"Shorter telomeres in current research is indicated in cancers, and in response to stress or poor lifestyle choices. Stress shortens the telomeres, and that includes things like mental disorders, hormones, any damage to a person's DNA." T'Challa paused, then gently inclined his head in her direction. "What this serum in your blood is to return the telomere lengths to their optimum. It essentially delays and reverses the aging process. This is what would allow you to heal, to be in peak physical condition, to have fast reflexes, and to refrain from getting ill."
A hand on her stomach, Peggy took in a deep breath. "Oh dear."
"There's more," he said gently.
Her eyes flew to his, startled and with a trace of fear. "Of course there is." She nodded briskly, clearly bracing herself for it. "There's more. Tell me what it is."
"You likely never knew what happened, because it seems to be something that only activates upon a death." There was compassion in his tone and gaze as he related this last piece of relevant information; he wouldn't have relegated it to a researcher, even the lead, because Peggy at least knew T'Challa. She wouldn't have known any of the doctors on the research team, and might not have trusted them.
The distress in her gaze wasn't for herself, however. "Steve died? When we were testing the serum?" She swallowed painfully and looked down, shaking her head. "Oh, my darling. Why did he never say anything?" she murmured. But immediately afterward, she gave a bitter huff of mirthless laughter. "Because I was about to stop the experiment. I wouldn't hurt him. So of course he said it was fine. We were killing him, and he let us."
"I don't think he knew," T'Challa offered, leaning forward to get her attention. "It's not the death, exactly. I think the serum interacts with adrenaline, and the amounts of which needed for this to work are released in the panic of an approaching death. Obviously, we wouldn't know for sure unless we tested the theory."
Peggy recoiled from him. "Absolutely not!"
"We are not intending or planning on such a thing, and those of us that have studied this serum and its markers are a very small and trusted few. Miss Carter, I tell you this not to alarm you, but to let you know that there is a reason for your appearance here. There is a reason you survived, and it's not a mistake."
"There are no mistakes, no coincidences," Peggy murmured, gaze turned inward.
"Precisely," T'Challa agreed with a nod.
Her posture slumped a little and she had a near helpless expression on her face. "So what does this mean for me, long term?"
"You age incredibly slowly, Miss Carter. Your body will be able to repair some of the damage done to it, healing quickly. Cuts, abrasions, broken bones and the like. Cancer is likely not one of the ills you will ever suffer. Nor the dementia that your clone had," he added thoughtfully. "It would take grievous injury to kill you, but you are still very much mortal. As are Captain Rogers and Mr. Barnes."
"All the more reason to be useful, I suppose," she told him, a faint smile on her lips. "The knowledge I possess might be outdated, but sometimes the old ways are best. Too few of the modern agents would be able to guess the old codes and drops."
T'Challa reached forward and touched the back of her hand. It was an informality that few ever received from him, and it made the servant gasp in surprise. Not knowing Wakanda or its customs, Peggy didn't realize the honor he had just bestowed upon her. Rumors would likely soon spread about the woman who could heal from ordinary wounds that the King treated as a respected equal.
She smiled at him, a sad one that didn't reach her eyes, and one that he suspected she often used when relaying terrible news to others. "Every king and country has need of intelligence, and I have need to be of use. So perhaps we may help each other."
He nodded gravely. "I do believe we can."
"Excellent. When do I start?"
***
Peggy found Steve looking out over the jungles of Wakanda, the statue of its protector looking over the valley. He didn't startle as she sidled up next to him, a hand sliding down his back before resting at his waist. Steve put an arm around her shoulders, holding her close as his breath hitched. "I thought I lost everything," he said quietly. "I had a nightmare. Wanda can induce them, bring on your greatest fear."
"And what was your fear?"
"That the war was over and there was no place for me," he said quietly. "What do I know of anything except fighting anymore? I can't stand down. I can't give you a simple dance or a house and two kids in the country. I can't give you peace."
His voice was so broken, so hurt. Peggy squeezed him tightly, her throat closing up in empathic agony. "Who said I wanted those things?"
The quiet words startled Steve. "We used to talk about after the war, of settling down-"
"Because that was what we were supposed to do. I had a time after the war before I was frozen," she pointed out. "I didn't do settling down very well. I was an Agent, I couldn't stay still. I couldn't stand down either."
Steve looked at her, lips quivering a little. "Who am I, if I'm not a soldier anymore?"
"And who am I, if I'm not a spy?"
"You're Peggy," he told her instantly, voice sure and firm.
"And you're Steve," she told him patiently. "And what we do is help each other, however we can. Maybe all they expected you to be was a fighter with a pretty face, someone to sell war bonds and dress up. But you were more than what they expected you to be. And goodness knows, they never saw past my sex. We're both more than what we were supposed to be. So be more than a soldier, and I'll be more than a spy."
"So who are those people going to be?" Steve asked, sounding as unsure as he had when Peggy had first met him.
She reached up and touched his chest. "We're going to do good, whatever it means in this time," she said firmly. "You have such heart, and it's broken. We'll mend it, and we'll do what we can in this awfully broken world. No one expects it of us."
"We'll be recognized," Steve said, shoulders slumping.
"Would we really? A man out of time and a younger version of a dead woman? With the tech that seems to be available, and the remnants of SHIELD out there, I think there is still a lot of good that we might do." She pulled him close and rested her head on his chest. His heart beat steadily beneath her ear, and oh, how good was it to hear again. "We can't sit idle, we're not that kind. I'm sure we'll make mistakes; this isn't our world, not really. But we get back up, we give it a try. If we hide too long, the evil wins."
"All evil needs is for good men to do nothing," Steve murmured, dropping his chin onto the top of her head.
"Exactly," Peggy said, nodding against his chest. Steve was warm and solid in her arms, and the longing she had tried to push away was finally fulfilled. She squeezed her eyes shut. There might have been the fantasy of a white wedding dress, flowers and a church. But the woman that had wanted such things was long gone.
This woman was practical, and would take what she could get.
Pulling back, she grinned up at him. "Marry me, Steve."
He sputtered, the darling innocent, and she couldn't help but laugh at his shock. "Are you telling me that you wouldn't have proposed if you made it back to New York in one piece?"
"I would'a thought it would be more romantic." He untangled his arms from around her and then knelt in front of her. "Oh, wait. I should be on one knee."
Peggy laughed and placed her hands on his shoulders. "I love you, Steven Grant Rogers. And all the maddening nonsense that it will entail in this time. It doesn't matter who says it first, that doesn't stop it from being true."
Steve smiled at her, a soft and sensitive one she doubted he offered many people. "I've always loved you, Peggy. You're the standard everyone else has to live up to."
"Low standards, indeed," she joked, cupping his face in her hands. She silenced his protests. "We can ask King T'Challa how we can get it done in his country."
"Now?" he asked in surprise.
"Steve," she said gently, caressing his face. "We've waited long enough. I don't intend to wait any longer than we have to."
His grin was answer enough, but for good measure he got up and swept her up into his arms. Laughing all the while, they headed out to seek an audience with the king.
***
***
To Chapter Four - Violent Games
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: Steve/Peggy, Wanda/Vision mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to other people, and I am just playing in their sandbox for fun. This is born of a text conversation with mynuet regarding the possibility of Peggy getting a version of the serum at some point in her colorful history. Civil War compliant (no, really!) because I was actually very pleased with characterizations in it, even if some of the plotting made me go O_o at times. I do reference things from season 3 of Agents of SHIELD as well as season 2 of Agent Carter, but I think it would still make sense if you haven't seen that. Part of chapter 1 inspired by this photo, because of course that's how they should be.
Summary: In the wake of the Sokovian Accords, the Avengers scramble to find a safe haven. That gets complicated when Nick Fury arrives, announcing that he found Peggy Carter. The real Peggy Carter.
Prior chapters:
One - Escape
Two - Misdirection And Discovery
Three - Becoming Again
Steve stayed with Peggy as she read about the husband she hadn't married, the children she hadn't had, the niece she was supposed to have been close to. She read the articles about her funeral, the reports within the intelligence agencies and the glowing praise for her leadership throughout the years. Steve didn't know how to explain the awkward almost-thing he had with Sharon, if only because she reminded him of Peggy. That was probably a poor foundation for a relationship, but Sharon had been a comforting presence for a reason.
Meeting with Nick Fury also was visibly disconcerting, but Peggy sat through it anyway and waved off the offer of a counselor of some kind. "I've weathered quite a few disasters in my time, Mr. Fury. I do believe I can survive this one as well."
He had smiled fondly at Peggy. "At least they didn't change your sparkling personality."
"Isn't that one of the best parts of me?" she threw back with an answering smile.
"For those of us that believe in you, yes. For Hydra and those kinds of people? Not at all," he said. The fondness in his tone was one that Steve had only previously heard with Natasha or Maria Hill.
There was a hitch in Peggy's breath when she went through the file on Bucky, easily translating the Russian. She remained silent until she had gone through it all, then heaved a sigh. "And it's been redacted, but there's still a considerable amount here."
"Natasha assured me that was the whole file."
"The whole file she got, perhaps, but it's hardly the whole of his history, as bad as this is. There are references to other files, to a notebook of some sort..." She tilted her head to the side as Steve blinked and sucked in a breath. "Should I not speak of it, Steve?" she asked gently, putting her hand on his arm.
"Knowing what I did about what was done is bad enough. Knowing that there could be more?" Steve shook his head and willed himself to be still and calm. Not that it ever worked, but he was willing to try. His thoughts were a jumble, and he couldn't seem to keep himself from picturing Bucky in that cryogenics chamber. He was calm now, but he had been used as nothing more than a tool, wiped clean and made to do whatever his handler wished.
Just thinking about it made him feel sick.
"Perhaps I should speak with Natasha?" she asked him, squeezing his arm. "Your friend looks as though he'd like to speak with you," she added, nodding toward the door.
Sam was there, and Steve found himself nodding even though he didn't want to leave Peggy's side. He'd lost everyone over and over again, but miraculously enough, she was back. Some part of him never wanted her out of his sight. He realized it was irrational and stupid, that T'Challa would never let anything happen in his kingdom.
"Nothing important," Sam offered, shrugging. "Just wanted to see if I could help with anything."
"Get Steve out of here," Peggy said briskly. "He hovers like a mother hen, and I'm hardly bed bound. I am quite capable of handling the horrors that Hydra had to dispense."
He flashed Peggy a bright grin and nodded. "Seems you've got a type," he whispered to Steve as he approached.
"Those with excellent hearing?" Peggy asked from the desk, reaching for another folder. Her smile told Sam and Steve that she didn't mind the statement at all.
"Brains," Sam replied simply. "Maybe 'cause you haven't got 'em," he teased, shaking his head at Steve. "C'mon, man. The lady is obviously done with you right now. You can come with me downtown. I'm meeting Wanda for lunch."
"Oh, I like you," Peggy declared in Sam's direction. "I can see you've certainly cared for Steve very well. Thank you."
"Someone has to," Sam replied with the same grin on his face. He gave Steve a playful nudge on the arm. "This fool certainly dives right in without thinking. Did he always jump out of planes without parachutes or keep fighting when he's all busted up and should be falling over?"
Peggy laughed. "He most certainly did. In the middle of being fired at, too."
"Some things never change," Sam said to Steve in a mocking admonishing tone. "Don't have Wanda do the same thing, now." He looked over at Peggy. "I'll have a proper sit down with you later, Miss Carter."
"Peggy's just fine, I assure you. Mr. Jarvis always used to call me Miss Carter, and it's just not the same," she told him, a wistful smile on her face.
"Peggy," Sam repeated with a nod. "We'll be back in a bit, talk more. I know this dude can be overwhelming without really meaning to be."
She laughed, expression softening, and then sank back into her chair when they left. She looked through the files in front of her again, sure she was being watched by someone. It could have been Nick Fury again, it could have been another of Steve's friends, it could have been the king himself or one of his emissaries. Her fingers ghosted over the script in her own file, the markers in her blood that were assumed to be artifactual to the freezing process. She wasn't stupid, she had a very good idea what Howard might have actually been doing with his tests. It hadn't occurred to her at the time, and he probably thought he had failed in his attempt to put the super soldier serum into her bloodstream. Perhaps that was why he kept up his experiments, until that batch of serum that had been in the trunk of his car the night he was killed.
Her clone had been a Hydra plant, and likely would have encouraged Howard to do such a thing, and would have let others know about it. Or maybe her clone was innocent, and there were plenty of other Hydra informants by that time. Maybe that was why the clone had developed dementia; too many implanted code words, too many memory overlays, too many times her clone might have been erased and tampered with.
It hurt her head to think about it, and there was an ache deep in her chest. She bowed her head over the files, shutting her eyes tight against the tears that wanted to come.
Once upon a time, she had made her peace with grief, with feeling as though she had let down Steve and his memory. She had let her emotions loose, she had tried to move on and build a life without him, even as his ghost followed her.
Now she had to do the same for all of those she had left behind without meaning to.
A gentle knock at the door startled her out of her reverie. A petite redhead stood there, dressed in a tank top, jeans and canvas sneakers. "Hello," Peggy said, tone brisk as if her emotions weren't running rampant. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."
"Natasha Romanoff," the redhead replied.
"Ah. The one that procured a great many files. They're redacted, of course."
"I thought Steve would have it translated. I'm not sure if he bothered, though." Natasha came in and sat beside Peggy at the desk, right where Steve had been. "He'd been through a lot, and I didn't want to make it worse."
"You knew more than you told him," Peggy guessed.
Natasha's smile was sad. "It was out there for him to find if he wanted to. I didn't want him to. I didn't want him more hurt than he already was. No one ever gave him time to process anything when they thawed him out of the ice. They treated him like an unstoppable legend, a hero. Not a man." She shrugged and looked back at the file. "That was the first one I received."
"And the rest?"
"Stolen, anyway. It was a mess when SHIELD fell."
Her voice was so tired and sad, and Peggy's heart went out to her. Steve had mentioned Natasha, mostly in passing, but with a fondness that was impossible to miss. "I'm sure a clean slate was needed. Hydra is an infestation that has to be eradicated."
"They've destroyed a lot of things, and continue to," Natasha agreed. "There are too many secrets, even with trying to put things out in the open."
"You're too young to be so... resigned," Peggy commented.
"I was never a child. Not really, not how it counts for most people." There was a raw and aching expression that led Peggy to grasp her hand tightly and squeeze. "I belonged nowhere, so I could be anywhere. I was trained to become anyone I needed to be. But then that means there isn't much to me. There's too much for me to make up, no matter how hard I try to balance the scales. Maybe it can never be made right."
"You can be anyone you need to be?" Peggy echoed, a chill down her spine. Her eyes drifted down to Natasha's wrists, but there were no scars there. "Were you handcuffed to the bed?" she asked, voice hushed.
Natasha blinked. "What do you know about the Red Room?"
"There was an operative I met years ago," Peggy said slowly. "She said the same thing. She could be anyone she wanted to be. The training she had in Russia included children's films with subliminal messages. The girls were handcuffed to beds, trained to kill even as they looked far too innocent to do it."
"When I escaped the Red Room, I burned it to the ground. But I have no illusions about it being the only one. I haven't found any others, though."
Peggy sighed. "I suppose I clearly still have a role to play in this era, then." She shot Natasha a rueful smile. "I don't do well with sitting still and peacetime, I'm afraid. It grows quite boring. I find I have a taste for adventure."
Returning her rueful smile, Natasha nodded. "Then it's a good thing that Nick found you. There's a lot going on in the world right now. Plenty of opportunity for adventure."
"And as a recently dead woman, no one would expect me to go looking for it."
Natasha smiled at her, a small but genuine one. "Let's see what we can do."
***
King T'Challa was wary at first of this woman that Hydra had encased in a glass tube; he'd seen what their other frozen citizen was capable of doing. He saw all of the video of her interactions with Steve, Nick, Sam and Natasha; though he had gone through all of the information that had been leaked to the internet, the folders Nick had brought and whatever his own scientists had been able to determine, it was still surprising to see for himself. Most of the old SSR files weren't digitized, so there was no way to get his hands on that, and Director Coulson of the new SHIELD wasn't very obliging about sharing the archived documents. T'Challa could understand that he was chasing down some kind of new threat, though surely there were other junior agents that could be tasked with the job as busy work.
He stood in front of the cryogenic chamber holding Bucky Barnes. The fear in the other man's eyes had been a palpable thing when T'Challa thought back to their fights. He had been fueled by the need for vengeance, and Bucky had been motivated purely by survival. He had been turned into a tool for other people to use, a victim under the hands of cruel and devious people that never saw him as a man. Bucky had been a blunt instrument, nameless and faceless, a ghost in the intelligence community, nothing more than a threat to gain leverage for an organization that should have died decades ago.
Lifting his hand to the glass, T'Challa took in the resigned but peaceful expression on Bucky's face. He chose cryogenic sleep over the risk of harming others, another sign that the man beneath the Hydra trigger words was a good one. Steve Rogers wouldn't have risked his life, reputation and friends for anything less.
"Do you think he knows we're here?" Natasha asked quietly, coming into the room behind him. "Or is it that he sleeps, and eventually will think this is all a dream?"
"I'm surprised you made it past my guards," T'Challa answered instead.
She smiled mirthlessly, and came closer to him. She was still an arm's length away from him, away from the cryogenic tube. "I'm a different kind of ghost around here."
Ah, yes. So she had heard the cutting whispers and rumors in the plaza, that ghosts were coming into the kingdom to take over jobs and undermine their authority. None openly discriminated against his guests, but it was likely a near thing.
"To answer your question," T'Challa replied, turning to face her directly, "this is very much like sleep. The monitoring includes EEG, and brain activity matches sleep."
Her expression softened fractionally. "Good. It would be a different kind of horror for him to be aware of every moment, to live through it all and feel helpless."
"You feel mercy for a killer?" he asked, surprise marking his expression. "When you felt that all should have oversight and punishment?"
Natasha looked at him with her neutral but grave expression. "Punishment is only worthwhile when you can learn something from it. If you can't derive a lesson from it, when you're not capable of changing your course of action, it's not punishment anymore. It's torture. It's hurting someone so that you don't have to."
"You speak from experience?"
Though her lips quirked at him, her eyes were sad. "The world is aware of that experience."
T'Challa wasn't going to admit that he had devoured her publicly available files after meeting her at the Accords signing, that he had noticed the gaps and redacted information that hadn't been released. She might have dumped SHIELD's secrets, but they weren't all of them, and they weren't the highest level ones. It had been a calculated move, obviously, and one that had kept the hounds at bay for a time.
"Are you atoning for your sins, then?" T'Challa asked quietly.
"We all are. We're flawed," Natasha replied. "Liars and killers in the service of liars and killers," she said. There was the air of an in joke he didn't understand, but he didn't press the issue. "All we can do is try our best, to go the straight path, to make up for any evil we've done and hope that it's enough, that it wipes out the red."
Something shifted in T'Challa's mind, and he recalled the discussion that Natasha had with Peggy earlier, of cruelties merely hinted at. "Have you been able to make up for it?"
"Some," Natasha replied softly.
"And for Mr. Barnes here..."
"We were weapons to be used once. I managed to take control of myself. I hope he can do the same someday."
"Mr. Fury thinks it's possible, with the psychologists and different files he found."
"For Bucky's sake, I hope it works," she murmured. "And for Steve's. He'll be devastated if it doesn't, and even more determined to think this is all his fault."
"Whose fault do you think it is?"
Natasha sighed heavily, her expression drawn. "There's too many to blame easily. There was Zola, who experimented on him in the first place. There were those that took a damaged, nearly dead body and transformed it into something they could use. The ones that put the triggers in his head in the first place. The ones that used him without any kind of regard to who he was or should have been..."
"You should work with him when we wake him," T'Challa decided. He wasn't amused by her surprise the way he thought he would be. Instead, this entire situation made him tired and cheerless. How many lives were ruined over the course of history? How many more would be caught in the cycle of vengeance and be destroyed by it?
"Wake him? But the-"
"I had my own agents on the lookout for the missing data we needed." At her silence, he smiled mirthlessly. "Outside of Wakanda, we are simply dark skinned immigrants. In the United States especially, we are seen for the color of our skin. The prejudice is different in Europe, in different parts of Africa. So we aren't seen. And no one monitors what they say around the help. So our agents easily tracked down where Zemo sent the information he found."
"He asked to be kept on ice. He felt that he was too dangerous to be woken up-"
"There are resources enough to put that to the test."
Breath whistling in through her teeth, Natasha leaned back a little. "I hope it's not a mistake."
T'Challa fixed her with a mirthless smile. "So do I."
***
"I think I may be of use," Peggy told T'Challa without preamble as soon as she was seated in his conference room. She had requested an audience, and the dora milaje had been amused and impressed by the quiet confidence. Some had remarked that she acted as if she was a member of the dora milaje herself, which T'Challa understood to be the praise it was.
"In what way?" he asked her, gesturing for a servant to begin pouring tea.
Peggy smiled graciously at the young man and thanked him, then waited for T'Challa to raise his cup before raising hers to take a sip. "I'm a dead woman, after all," she said pointedly after she wet her lips with the tea. She couldn't help but smile at the blink the servant made, even though he obviously was supposed to be invisible. "Quite all right, dear man. But the news reports state that I am dead. Possibly we can forge papers and say I am my own granddaughter or some rot like that, it doesn't matter. But this is a world in utter shambles, and it must be put to rights. I cannot sit back if I may help in some capacity."
Oh yes, T'Challa could see why the dora milaje had been impressed by her attitude.
"It is quite a shock to realize that you're presumed dead."
Letting out a small breath, Peggy nodded and put down her cup. "It is a shock, yes. One of many I've had in my lifetime, and I'm sure that there will be more." She held up a hand when T'Challa was about to say something. "I don't need to know the science, if you think I'm not ready for it, this isn't about that. Greater minds than mine can puzzle that out. It wasn't where I was most useful in the past. I was a codebreaker. I took command in covert operations. I investigated where others would look blindly at me and see just a woman and not the mind I possess. It was especially the case in peacetime. There must be a role I may play now."
"I disagree in your assessment," T'Challa began, nearly smiling when she began to have an affronted expression. "I think you can understand the science very well."
"Could I?" she asked, blinking in surprise. "Very well, tell me of the science involved in my miraculous resurrection and recovery."
"Howard Stark gave you a version of the super soldier serum," T'Challa said, and took a sip of his tea while Peggy digested that piece of information. "I have samples of blood from you, Steve Rogers and James Barnes. There are several markers that are the same."
"The freezing process?"
"No," T'Challa disagreed. "I had others at the medical college independently study the same samples, and they came to the same conclusion."
Peggy was very still, and looked at him evenly. "Which is that Howard gave me an untested concoction meant to be similar to Erskine's serum, which could not have been, because there were no samples left, no vita rays involved-"
"Similar to the version that Steve Rogers was given in how it function, not in how it was made or administered," T'Challa said smoothly. "What we know of the aging process regards something called telomeres at the ends of genes. They're caps to protect the genes from degrading, so to speak; damage in any way shortens them, and cuts down the number of replications that can be made. Once the telomere is too short, the cell either stops dividing or undergoes apoptosis, or planned cell death."
Peggy gave him a wan smile. "You're doing quite well explaining this, Your Highness. I don't know why you worried I wouldn't understand."
"Shorter telomeres in current research is indicated in cancers, and in response to stress or poor lifestyle choices. Stress shortens the telomeres, and that includes things like mental disorders, hormones, any damage to a person's DNA." T'Challa paused, then gently inclined his head in her direction. "What this serum in your blood is to return the telomere lengths to their optimum. It essentially delays and reverses the aging process. This is what would allow you to heal, to be in peak physical condition, to have fast reflexes, and to refrain from getting ill."
A hand on her stomach, Peggy took in a deep breath. "Oh dear."
"There's more," he said gently.
Her eyes flew to his, startled and with a trace of fear. "Of course there is." She nodded briskly, clearly bracing herself for it. "There's more. Tell me what it is."
"You likely never knew what happened, because it seems to be something that only activates upon a death." There was compassion in his tone and gaze as he related this last piece of relevant information; he wouldn't have relegated it to a researcher, even the lead, because Peggy at least knew T'Challa. She wouldn't have known any of the doctors on the research team, and might not have trusted them.
The distress in her gaze wasn't for herself, however. "Steve died? When we were testing the serum?" She swallowed painfully and looked down, shaking her head. "Oh, my darling. Why did he never say anything?" she murmured. But immediately afterward, she gave a bitter huff of mirthless laughter. "Because I was about to stop the experiment. I wouldn't hurt him. So of course he said it was fine. We were killing him, and he let us."
"I don't think he knew," T'Challa offered, leaning forward to get her attention. "It's not the death, exactly. I think the serum interacts with adrenaline, and the amounts of which needed for this to work are released in the panic of an approaching death. Obviously, we wouldn't know for sure unless we tested the theory."
Peggy recoiled from him. "Absolutely not!"
"We are not intending or planning on such a thing, and those of us that have studied this serum and its markers are a very small and trusted few. Miss Carter, I tell you this not to alarm you, but to let you know that there is a reason for your appearance here. There is a reason you survived, and it's not a mistake."
"There are no mistakes, no coincidences," Peggy murmured, gaze turned inward.
"Precisely," T'Challa agreed with a nod.
Her posture slumped a little and she had a near helpless expression on her face. "So what does this mean for me, long term?"
"You age incredibly slowly, Miss Carter. Your body will be able to repair some of the damage done to it, healing quickly. Cuts, abrasions, broken bones and the like. Cancer is likely not one of the ills you will ever suffer. Nor the dementia that your clone had," he added thoughtfully. "It would take grievous injury to kill you, but you are still very much mortal. As are Captain Rogers and Mr. Barnes."
"All the more reason to be useful, I suppose," she told him, a faint smile on her lips. "The knowledge I possess might be outdated, but sometimes the old ways are best. Too few of the modern agents would be able to guess the old codes and drops."
T'Challa reached forward and touched the back of her hand. It was an informality that few ever received from him, and it made the servant gasp in surprise. Not knowing Wakanda or its customs, Peggy didn't realize the honor he had just bestowed upon her. Rumors would likely soon spread about the woman who could heal from ordinary wounds that the King treated as a respected equal.
She smiled at him, a sad one that didn't reach her eyes, and one that he suspected she often used when relaying terrible news to others. "Every king and country has need of intelligence, and I have need to be of use. So perhaps we may help each other."
He nodded gravely. "I do believe we can."
"Excellent. When do I start?"
***
Peggy found Steve looking out over the jungles of Wakanda, the statue of its protector looking over the valley. He didn't startle as she sidled up next to him, a hand sliding down his back before resting at his waist. Steve put an arm around her shoulders, holding her close as his breath hitched. "I thought I lost everything," he said quietly. "I had a nightmare. Wanda can induce them, bring on your greatest fear."
"And what was your fear?"
"That the war was over and there was no place for me," he said quietly. "What do I know of anything except fighting anymore? I can't stand down. I can't give you a simple dance or a house and two kids in the country. I can't give you peace."
His voice was so broken, so hurt. Peggy squeezed him tightly, her throat closing up in empathic agony. "Who said I wanted those things?"
The quiet words startled Steve. "We used to talk about after the war, of settling down-"
"Because that was what we were supposed to do. I had a time after the war before I was frozen," she pointed out. "I didn't do settling down very well. I was an Agent, I couldn't stay still. I couldn't stand down either."
Steve looked at her, lips quivering a little. "Who am I, if I'm not a soldier anymore?"
"And who am I, if I'm not a spy?"
"You're Peggy," he told her instantly, voice sure and firm.
"And you're Steve," she told him patiently. "And what we do is help each other, however we can. Maybe all they expected you to be was a fighter with a pretty face, someone to sell war bonds and dress up. But you were more than what they expected you to be. And goodness knows, they never saw past my sex. We're both more than what we were supposed to be. So be more than a soldier, and I'll be more than a spy."
"So who are those people going to be?" Steve asked, sounding as unsure as he had when Peggy had first met him.
She reached up and touched his chest. "We're going to do good, whatever it means in this time," she said firmly. "You have such heart, and it's broken. We'll mend it, and we'll do what we can in this awfully broken world. No one expects it of us."
"We'll be recognized," Steve said, shoulders slumping.
"Would we really? A man out of time and a younger version of a dead woman? With the tech that seems to be available, and the remnants of SHIELD out there, I think there is still a lot of good that we might do." She pulled him close and rested her head on his chest. His heart beat steadily beneath her ear, and oh, how good was it to hear again. "We can't sit idle, we're not that kind. I'm sure we'll make mistakes; this isn't our world, not really. But we get back up, we give it a try. If we hide too long, the evil wins."
"All evil needs is for good men to do nothing," Steve murmured, dropping his chin onto the top of her head.
"Exactly," Peggy said, nodding against his chest. Steve was warm and solid in her arms, and the longing she had tried to push away was finally fulfilled. She squeezed her eyes shut. There might have been the fantasy of a white wedding dress, flowers and a church. But the woman that had wanted such things was long gone.
This woman was practical, and would take what she could get.
Pulling back, she grinned up at him. "Marry me, Steve."
He sputtered, the darling innocent, and she couldn't help but laugh at his shock. "Are you telling me that you wouldn't have proposed if you made it back to New York in one piece?"
"I would'a thought it would be more romantic." He untangled his arms from around her and then knelt in front of her. "Oh, wait. I should be on one knee."
Peggy laughed and placed her hands on his shoulders. "I love you, Steven Grant Rogers. And all the maddening nonsense that it will entail in this time. It doesn't matter who says it first, that doesn't stop it from being true."
Steve smiled at her, a soft and sensitive one she doubted he offered many people. "I've always loved you, Peggy. You're the standard everyone else has to live up to."
"Low standards, indeed," she joked, cupping his face in her hands. She silenced his protests. "We can ask King T'Challa how we can get it done in his country."
"Now?" he asked in surprise.
"Steve," she said gently, caressing his face. "We've waited long enough. I don't intend to wait any longer than we have to."
His grin was answer enough, but for good measure he got up and swept her up into his arms. Laughing all the while, they headed out to seek an audience with the king.
***
***
To Chapter Four - Violent Games