Chapter 9
Peggy supposed the saying was true...you couldn’t ever go home again. She knew she couldn’t, she had prepared herself for it, but nothing, really, could prepare one for stepping onto the native soil for the first time in years...decades...and realize that it wasn’t the home that you remembered. When she first arrived in the twenty-first century in New York nearly three years before, she had the profound sense of living in a bizarre sort of déjà vu, of walking through a world she both recognized and did not, where buildings from the 1940s blended into towers of glass and steel, the city taller and more glittering that her memory said it should be. But that had been New York, a city that was forever on the move, forever changing how it looked. London was...well, London; stolid, reliable, a bit old-fashioned and stodgy, but...home.
The city she found in 2012 was in some ways that...in a lot of ways it wasn’t.
Even before Peggy had left for America, she knew that it would never quite be the same in the old city ever again. The Nazis had rather seen to that, destroying whole neighborhoods, homes, and lives. She had caught up on the long process of rebuilding, the ways in which the city worked to renew its neighborhoods, to return London into a glorious capital once more. Some initiatives, like always, were more successful than others. Still, the moment she had caught sight of the tall, glittering towers of glass lining the banks of the Thames, not to mention the large, thin hoop of a wheel incongruously turning around and around, Peggy realized that whatever had happened between 1948 and 2012, she couldn’t she had expected this. Even the London Bridge was different. The old bridge, the one she had grown up with all of her life, had been torn down sometime decades ago and replaced by a new, larger, broader one to accommodate the increased traffic in and out of the main heart of the greater metro area. The one she knew, whose length she had trudged across many times during her war years, was now mostly in Arizona as part of some resort town there. It boggled the mind to think of it. Standing tall over this new construction, however, was a single, crystal tower, like an arrow in the sky.
“That there’s your destination, the Shard,” the cabbie rumbled, a large, rumpled, middle aged sort that had long been associated with cabs in London - one of the few things that also hadn’t changed in her time away. “What the locals are calling it, leastaways. Just finished up a few months ago.”
Peggy blinked at it with eyes as wide as saucers. Obviously, in New York, she was used to such things. She lived in an apartment building that was tall enough to see New Jersey from her own balcony. But in London, such a thing felt incongruous, strange, out of place. “Just opened, you say?”
“Right,” he confirmed, more of a noise than a true word. “Surprised anyone is heading there. I heard no one has moved in yet.”
“One group has,” Peggy responded, with no more information than that. How common the knowledge of SHIELD offices having moved into the building was, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t about to advertise it. “Have you been inside?”
“Nah, not open yet. They say when it is you can go all the way to the top and look out all over the city. Why anyone would do that, I can’t imagine. Make me feel green, it would.”
“I don’t know, I live in New York,” Peggy said, cheerful in her reassurance. “It’s not so bad.”
“Maybe so, but New Yorkers are a strange breed who like the dangerous living. I watch the telly and see that. I’ll stick to my cab and the streets on the ground. Don’t need to be looking down on anyone.”
Her grin spread from ear-to-ear as he said it, the familiar cadence, the very English sensibility. “I’ve missed home.”
“Been away for a while, then?”
Peggy sighed, long and soft as she leaned back into the seat. “Longer than you can possibly know.”
He dropped her off near the front doors of the glittering construction of steel and glass. Peggy stepped out, eyeing the entire area with wondering eyes. This was not how she remembered this area at all. While parts of it looked familiar, vaguely, others were absolutely new. Big, boxy buildings of concrete and glass stood nearby, none as tall as the shining point standing above her. She could understand why it had its name, it looked like a shard of crystal had somehow landed bottom down on the earth.
Inside the building it was stark white and just as dazzling. The cabbie hadn’t been lying, the building had finished only months before and the crew that manned the lobby was skeletal at best, but Peggy moved to the long reception area, well used to this sort of set up from New York.
“Hello,” she greeted, pulling out her badge. “I’m here to see the new offices upstairs.”
The young woman sitting at the desk took one look at Peggy’s badge and frowned. “I’m sorry, Director Carter...I suppose you are here to speak with Mr. Blevin?”
Peggy had no idea who this Blevin was, but she went with it. “He’s not expecting me, but I was in town and wished to see the new offices.”
The woman didn’t seem particularly bothered by that. “Let me see if there is someone available to escort you.”
Smartly she tapped on her keyboard as an earpiece lit up in her ear. She had a distant look as she waited, perking up when someone on the other end answered. “Hello, Miss Sterling? Yes, this is Jessica downstairs, I have a Director Margaret Carter here? She says she wished to see Mr. Blevins. She has a proper badge and everything. Right…I’ll just sign her in then.”
Tapping her ear, the woman then reached for a clipboard, filling out one of the spaces with Peggy’s badge information. She passed it over the counter to Peggy. “If you would sign in, please, Mr. Blevin’s assistant will be down to let you up.”
“Of course.” In her neat, looping, old-fashioned handwriting she signed her name, passing it back to the woman as she took back her SHIELD badge and accepted a visitor’s tag to clip onto her now rather rumpled suit coat, creased from her long flight across the ocean. No sooner than she had done so than an lift opened and a woman marched across, looking flustered as she eyed Peggy up and down rather as if she had seen a ghost.
“It’s you!” Her wide, hazel eyes looked as if they were about to fall out of her thin face. She looked to be older than Peggy, with short, stylish hair and gold hoops offsetting her practical office wear, but the stricken, awed look on her face would have been hysterical if Peggy hadn’t been trying to be as professional as she could be.
“I do believe so...or it was when I got off the plane this morning.”
“The Peggy Carter?” The woman grinned, reaching out a manicured hand to take Peggy’s. “I mean, I’ve seen your picture loads, but might I say it’s rather amazing to see you alive and in the flesh. Cathy Sterling, I assistant to Chief Blevins of the London Office. It’s a surprise to have you here!”
“It’s rather unplanned,” Peggy admitted, flushing at the now curious gaze of the two women behind the long, white counter. “I was hoping to catch Agent Sharon Carter, I was told she was in this office working on her case.”
“Ahh, yes!” With an eager nod, the woman gently took Peggy’s elbow to lead her towards the elevator, clearly not wanting to say too much in the open. Still, even as she walked, there was a nervous energy to her. “I do believe she’s in a meeting with Scotland Yard and MI5 at the moment, but till then I can take you up. How was your flight?”
“Long,” Peggy admitted. As much as she would have preferred to take a quinjet to London and damn Hill’s complaints on expense, she wasn’t precisely going for Avengers business...well, rather tangentially she was. Besides, she wasn’t exactly Nick Fury, able to command SHIELD transport whenever she needed. So a commercial flight was purchased, though she had splurged on a first class ticket. Seeing the regular seats behind her on the flight, Peggy was rather glad she had. “It was a spur of the moment sort of decision.”
The woman nodded, clearly uninterested in asking any further questions than that. “I have to say, Director, it is a pleasure meeting you. You are a legend here, of course, but when we heard you had reappeared after all these years, well...it was quite the surprise.”
Peggy raised a delicate eyebrow, unsure of what to say. She never was in moments like these, which happened less frequently now at days, but were still no less uncomfortable. “Ummm...thank you.”
“Of course, the Avengers caused quite the stir as well.” Miss Sterling continued to prattle as the lift carried them to the 26th floor. “I am just hoping we never need them here in Britain. I imagine they are still cleaning up in New York.”
“Yes, the reconstruction continues.” Something about the woman’s flippant attitude, the way she carried on as if the battle had been a television show or a scene from a film rubbed Peggy rather wrong. To people who lived so far away from it all, the battle that occurred in the New York skies must feel distant and unreal, like it happened to someone else. To her and the people who lived there, it had been a terrifying moment, one in which millions of lives and the fate of the whole planet had hung in the balance.
“Imagine...aliens being real? If one popped up in my back garden I don’t know what I would do!”
The lift doors opened as Peggy stepped out with the assistant into what passed for a lobby to the SHIELD offices within the Shard. The other woman placed her hand against a pad by the closed doors, the sensors turning green as the doors opened, allowing her and Peggy to walk inside. The floor was still sparsely filled. The London office was in the process of relocating, and here and there, Peggy could see evidence of continued painting and building, not unlike what was going on at Stark Tower with the new Avengers facility. The main administrative area, however, was up and running, furnished and looking immaculate. Miss Sterling was busy showing off the place, waving hands towards the various areas as she described them.
“Here is of course Chief Blevins’ office. He will want to catch you at some point, you know, but currently he is in the meeting with Agent Carter. Oh, and of course, we have the Wall of Honor set up already.”
Peggy blinked at a space near the most open, visible part of the main area. There was a list of names, agents who had served with distinction or who had fallen in the line of duty from the London office. Blessedly, no pictures adorned it, Peggy wasn’t forced to look at her own face, but she did see her name along with Howard’s and Phillip’s at the top of the display. Not far behind was the name of Fred Wells, the first chief of this office and her former fiance. Alongside it was another name.
“You have Michael’s name here?” Surprised, she raised a finger to the imprinted plate, metal layered with bronze, her brother’s name set alongside his title and the dates of his service.
“Oh, yes!” The other woman was pleased to confirm that, not aware of the history Michael had in this office or even why he had even first been there. “Of course, he did serve longer in New York, but he was a founding agent in this office, and I believe that Chief Braddock when he was the head here had his name added. I understand he was related to you?”
“My elder brother,” Peggy said, turning crisply. “Agent Carter’s grandfather, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh! She hadn’t mentioned that!” Miss Sterling apparently was making a mental note of it. Peggy swallowed the desire to cringe. Sharon rarely advertised it, though it was far from secret. She wouldn’t thank Peggy if the assistant made a thing out of it.
The doors to a large conference room opened abruptly as people began to mill outside. Judging from the snippets of conversation between the men and women coming out, they were part of the team on the Mandarin case. Just inside the doors, Peggy could see Sharon in discussion with someone else as a man, tall, balding, and somewhat grizzled, marched out, a portfolio folder in hand as he gave Peggy a brief once over and shot Miss Sterling an inquisitive look.
“Chief Blevins,” the assistant practically gasped, as if he wasn’t standing five feet in front of her asking silent questions. “A bit of a surprise! I’d like to introduce Director Margaret Carter.”
Why she had to be so formal, Peggy didn’t know, but she went with it as she held her right hand out to the man. “Peggy Carter is just fine. I rarely stand on ceremony.”
Even if she didn’t, the man’s wiry eyebrows rose, bright eyes flickering between Peggy, the assistant, and the wall behind them both. “That Peggy Carter, then?”
Peggy flushed, nodding. “Well, yes, it seems so. It’s not precisely a secret that I arrived back here, at least not among SHIELD circles. I don’t try and hide it, but I don’t advertise it either.”
“Good, because it sounds barmy no matter how you say it, but here you are.” He had a hint of the rougher side of town about him. This Blevins was no public school, Oxbridge educated toff, and somehow that made him more respectable to Peggy. “What brings you into town, then? Avengers business?”
Peggy shook her head, only slightly nettled at the fact she had been so pigeon-holed. “In part, though not exactly. I’m here in regards to the Mandarin case that Agent Carter is working on.”
“What about it?”
Peggy glanced inside to where Sharon was still chatting with several others. “I’m interested in the pharmaceutical company and they work they are doing. I think it might give some direction.”
“MST? They are clean as a whistle. No one is even sure why anyone would bomb them.” His gaze sharpened and cut curiously at her. “Why do you think it?”
“A hunch, really.” Peggy shrugged, smiling breezily, one that gave nothing away. She knew it would irk him and she was right. His scowl flickered to the conference room.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to talk to the other Carter then. I’ll have you know that after that business in New York some in the Home Office weren’t too keen on sending up a case like this to SHIELD and we’re under pressure here to work it out in a way that satisfies the government without blowing up a city. They will have little patience with alien gods and Tony Stark and another of his ridiculous suits, you hear.”
“I am here by myself, aren’t I?” Peggy’s arch expression only met with the granite scowl of the London office chief. “I understand that this case has a lot of people on edge and there is pressure to figure it out. Not to make light of the seriousness of this case, as it is quite serious, but it is not at the level of the Avengers involvement in it.”
She couldn’t tell if his dark scowl said he agreed or disagreed with her assessment. “Go on, then. Let Miss Sterling know if you need anything.”
He marched off, already on to other matters as Peggy loosed a breath, watching the man as he consulted with his wide-eyed assistant. She couldn’t fault him for his gruff frankness, honestly, it was well appreciated in a world of double-speak and hidden meanings. He was a man here to do a job and ensure his office ran well, and likely had not been terribly happy with the antics of the World Security Council in New York either. Still, she felt she didn’t particularly want to get on the bad side of him and wandered, rather more meekly, to the conference room.
“Get me video from that if you can,” she heard Sharon say to what Peggy presumed was another SHIELD agent busy tapping on his phone. Her presence at the door gained her niece’s attention, as she blinked in confused surprise at Peggy’s small wave.
“Yeah, by the end of the day if you can, Paul. I’d appreciate it.” With a rather flustered nod, she dismissed the other agent, who gathered his things and wandered past Peggy with quiet pardons. Peggy waited till he was gone to meet Sharon’s confusion with a sheepish smile.
“What are you doing here?” There was a shrewd glint in her niece’s eye. She wasn’t an idiot and likely already suspected that Peggy was here for her case.
“Had something come up,” Peggy shrugged, setting her own case against a chair in the room. “And I suspect that our interests align somewhat on your case.”
“Our interests align?” Predictably, Sharon didn’t sound thrilled with that. “On a terrorism case that has utterly nothing to do with space gods and magic portal boxes?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the Avengers, per se,” Peggy hedged, knowing she had very little reason to butt into any of this and treading a thin line with Sharon’s good graces. “But it might have a lot to do with one of my old projects.”
Sharon’s expression was skeptical. “Which one?”
“Project: Rebirth.”
That hadn’t been an angle Sharon had expected, nor did Peggy think anyone would think to look for it. “Erskine’s work? How?”
“The pharmaceutical company that got hit, I mentioned it to Betty Ross. She knew of it from her work with Banner, said they had done some work in cellular regeneration and healing and at some point had studied the formula. She insists that isn’t what they are up to now, but...what if they are? Or perhaps they used the formula as a springboard for other research based off of it, perhaps innocent research, that someone is trying to get their hands on.”
“The serum?” Sharon’s arched expression was dubious, but not dismissive. “You came all the way here to London to chase after a supposition you could have sent me in an email?”
When she put it that way…
Peggy lifted her chin, a tad mutinous. “What if it is the serum?”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but did that mean you had to show up here in the middle of my case to inject yourself in it?”
She had suspected it would come down to that for Sharon. Somewhat guiltily, she shrugged a shoulder, stubbornness overriding reason at the moment. “I was following up on a lead that very much interests me and my work.”
“It’s a speculation at best and now you’ve arrived here in all of your Peggy Carter glory to stick yourself in the middle of this,” Sharon snapped, crossing her arms in annoyance in a pose that Peggy recognized as one she used and didn’t precisely like being directed back at herself.
“In all my glory? Whatever are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend your name doesn’t still have cache in SHIELD. Between you and grandpa, I’ve spent years trying to work around both to be taken seriously as an agent. This case, this Mandarin, is my first big chance to prove that I have chops all on my own, and to do it myself. Now my legendary aunt shows up because of super soldiers and any credibility I have as point on this investigation is now undermined by you standing here.”
Sharon’s irritated outburst took Peggy by surprise. “I’m not here to take over your case, you know. I have a very specific interest that just happens to dovetail with your case.”
Sharon’s dark eyebrows rose nearly to her blonde hair, with a patented Carter dubiousness. Peggy shifted from foot-to-foot, feeling as if she were ten-years-old again in her mother’s garden, being told off for being covered in mud again. In truth, Peggy hadn’t given the entire thing much thought. She had focused on the serum angle of everything and how that related to Sharon’s case. That Sharon might be upset had passed, fleetingly, through her thoughts, but had never been a concern. To see her angry now underscored that Peggy had, with her usual straightforward focus, bulldozed herself into the situation without even asking Sharon how she would feel about it.
“I concede the point,” Peggy admitted, quietly, thinking of Miss Sterling’s reaction and imagining how that would have to be difficult for Sharon. How does one maintain the leadership in this situation when your aunt is the one that everyone keeps looking to, even if she was only tangentially related to the case? “I apologize for just barging in here. It occurs to me that I perhaps could have simply made a phone call or sent an email with my concerns and perhaps followed up on my own without inviting myself here to inject myself in the middle of everything.”
“Yes,” Sharon replied simply, her frown deepening before finally softening. “I mean, I get it, you are you, and you are focused and dedicated, I get it. I’ve seen you work. But...you aren’t the one-woman show anymore, Agent Peggy Carter, out against all the other men in the SSR, trying to make a name for yourself, trying to be seen and taken seriously. You’re a founder of SHIELD, you’re the director for the Avengers, you are stopping aliens and saving planets. You’re dating Captain America and are best friends with Iron Man. That is...a very larger than life position to be in. And I’m just trying to make my bones doing what you did, to show I can live up to your and Grandpa’s rather large footsteps.”
Peggy couldn’t help but chuckle, softly, at the very idea of that. “Neither Michael nor I could ever claim to be perfect. Your grandfather was involved in one of the largest scandals in British security history, and I disappeared without a trace a year later leaving everything behind, making everyone else responsible for it. If there are a pair of idiots out there, that would be me and my brother.”
“I don’t know,” Sharon temporized with a soft smile. “Having known you both, I would say you both have some redeeming qualities.”
“Is bossiness a redeeming quality,” Peggy wondered aloud, half jokingly.
“Must be as I think that is half the reason Steve is in love with you.” Sharon uncrossed her arms with a sigh, shoving her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “And I won’t deny that I could use someone outside of the box on the case. Not that I’m not working with the best of the best in counter-terrorism here, but you are rather outside of all this, maybe you will see something I don’t. Besides, as I recall on the Stark case, you and I make a pretty good team when we work together.”
“That we do,” Peggy agreed, fondly thinking back to their time searching for the then missing Tony Stark. “And you said it yourself, I needed a chance to visit the old homestead.”
“Your room is available at the house,” Sharon nodded, slowly, a speculative expression on her face. “I’m willing for you to consult and in exchange maybe we can dig into this serum theory of yours?”
She was, after all, home. And Peggy hadn’t been there in a long, long time.
“Deal,” she agreed without hesitation.