Time Converges

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

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

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

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

“And boujee is?”

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

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

Sharon only chuckled as they continued their ride in silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It felt...strange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps.”

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

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

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

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