Chapter 5
The one thing she could say about the future was that they had improved their holding cells from her day. The one that SHIELD currently held her in was sumptuous compared to what the SSR had before. She even had a bed with a lovely mattress and a toilet with privacy. Still, it wasn’t particularly exciting to be sitting, staring at gray walls and tile floors, and she had at least convinced them to allow her the novel she’d packed and the bag of apples she’d tucked inside. She crunched through them as she picked through Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions, wondering how long they intended to make her wait. Thus far, it had been four-and-a-half hours, and if they wished to keep her overnight, she certainly hoped that there would be something more substantial than her snack. The traveling between times had left her famished, and save for the coffee and toast pressed on her by Juan that morning, she’d had nothing since.
Her plan had somewhat gone accordingly, not that she’d had much of one to begin with, only a vague hope and a prayer that she might be able to convince someone at SHIELD she wasn’t mad and that she wanted to help. She hoped that by telling them she was a spy seeking to come in out of the cold, they’d be interested in talking, at least enough for her to get a foot in the door. She hadn’t bargained on the full custody and lock up that they had engaged in before she could even blink. The next thing she knew, she was having her hand scanned by some strange light device, her mouth swabbed by a very professional and pleasant attendant whose badge read “lab technician,” and her bag confiscated and searched. She wasn’t particularly surprised by the latter, and while her weapon had been taken temporarily - or so they said - they had assured her they would be returned if everything checked out. She had then been escorted to this comfy bland room and had not heard a word since. Judging from the reaction of the two agents, she didn’t know if that meant that they had discovered she wasn’t Katherine Wexford or they had figured out she was Peggy Carter. Either way, she would have thought they would have had a million questions for her.
It was just as this thought had flickered through her mind that the sound of a beep and a tumble of a lock sounded at the door to her holding room. It opened with a soundless whisper, and a tall, bald, dark-skinned man swept into the room, distinguished-looking and dressed head-to-toe in black. Well, as she considered him, "sweep" was perhaps less the term. He sauntered more than anything, rather like a large, predatory cat as he regarded her with his one good eye where she sprawled on the mattress with her book and apples and sat himself without preamble at the table in the corner.
“I believe we need to have a conversation,” he drawled with all the self-confidence of a man who was used to being in charge, dropping a thick, heavy manila folder on the table. “If you would please, Ms. Wexford, or would you prefer me to use your legal name?”
Peggy realized the jig was up at least, which was the whole point, but she still was wary as she uncurled herself from the mattress and wandered to the other seat to meet the man’s singular gaze with a smile. “I wondered how long it would take for you to figure it out. I’m stunned that you aren’t here with an army of psychiatrists determined to mark me as mad.”
“You’d think a dead woman showing up in my building on a national holiday 60 years after she disappeared would be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, Director Carter, but I can assure you it doesn’t even register in the top ten of my ‘weird shit’ list.”
That gave her pause, but she didn’t want to let him see that. “I’m afraid to ask what does rate, then.”
The man only smirked as he flipped the file open. Peggy could see attached to the left was her official portrait for SHIELD, the one Howard had insisted she get when they began plans for the new building. He rifled through several papers on the top, pulling one in particular and setting it in front of her. It only took a moment to recognize the quick, concise words in her neat handwriting, penned by her just the night before...at least in her reckoning of time, it was just the night before.
“Howard Stark figured you would turn up one day. Thanks for the note; incidentally, it helped us plan for it.”
She blinked, a soft smile curving as she touched the letter briefly. “I’m glad he took it seriously.”
“Seriously enough, he tried to figure out a way to find you but never did. The best he could hope for is that you would come wandering in. We’ve waited a long time for you to come back.”
Relief and sadness flooded her as she tried not to think of Howard and her disappearance and what it had done to those she left behind. “I figured they would all assume I had died.”
“Most had. Section Chief Sousa put out a full investigation into the matter, despite Howard’s protests, and came up with nothing, but it at least was enough that your family could declare you dead and move on.” He tapped the file briefly. “Truth be told, not many believed Howard’s story, especially no one who came after.”
“But you did?”
He shrugged broad shoulders lazily. “Like I’ve said, I’ve seen a lot of weird shit.”
Peggy could only snort as she met his posture, studying him briefly. He had to be in his late 50s, stern, with scarring in and around the patch over his left eye. By his bearing coming in and the sharp way he watched her with what vision he had left, she guessed he had seen some military at some point, but he was certainly an operative or had been one till the accident that took his eye.
“Who might you be?” She might as well be blunt about it.
“Colonel Nicholas Fury, Director of SHIELD.” He held out a hand for her. She stared at it a moment before taking it firmly. “I will say that it is an honor to finally be meeting the legend.”
“I don’t know how legendary I am, Colonel, but thank you.”
“The two agents you met this morning have been gibbering about it ever since, so I think your reputation remains intact.
Peggy couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that. “I couldn’t tell if they thought I was mad or someone else.”
“Katherine Wexford was one of the aliases you used in your SSR days. We have them all on file. When they typed it in, up you came, Peggy Carter, one of the founders.”
Founders? She had never used so lofty a title in her time, and it smacked overly of Howard's influence. “I was an agent turned organizer, nothing more. I was the one likable enough and responsible enough to get things done.”
“History has a funny way of getting away from you and doing its own thing, especially when you aren’t here to control it. This leads me to my main point of interest. How did you end up 60 years from your own time, and why?”
It was a fair question, and Peggy wished she had more to tell him than just signs of imminent danger. “So, last night, for me at least, I had a man appear in a back alley to tell me that the world was in danger and I was the only one who could fix it.”
She wasn’t sure if Fury had expected that out of her or not. He took a long moment to blink slowly at her. “Go on.”
She had a feeling this was all going to sound rather foolish once she got the entire story out. “There was a man, Scott Lang, who appeared in the bins. He said he’d come from the future, 2018 to be exact. He said that something was coming, something terrible, something that could destroy half the universe, an alien - Thanos, I think. He said that they needed the Avengers for it.”
At this, Fury perked up, frowning at her as he scooted up and leaned toward the table. “The Avengers?”
He knew what that was about. “That’s what he said. There was something a split over something, he didn’t say what, but that their division is why they will lose.”
He stared inscrutably at her for long moments. “Did he say why it was you, of all people, could fix something like that?”
“Because…” She trailed off, unsure how to put this. It would sound horribly like a lovesick schoolgirl saying it out loud, and she was far from that. “Because I’m the only one who could get through to the two men who you have leading this group.”
Fury didn’t need to ask her who those men were; she could see the question on his face.
“Tony Stark and...Steve Rogers.”
She didn’t think he had been expecting that.
“Really?”
She could hear rather than see his doubtful smile, and it gave way to an irrational need to be stubborn on the fact. “You accepted that I am Peggy Carter easily enough. Is it so hard to accept that what I told you is the truth?”
“In parts, sure! Steve Rogers has been dead 65 years, and Tony Stark is far more interested in his sports cars and supermodels than he is in saving the world.”
“Lang didn’t tell me how it was supposed to work, only that was the story he gave me.”
Fury processed that for long moments. “So, this time travel, how did you manage that?”
Again, Peggy felt at a loss and wished desperately she and Lang hadn’t been separated. “Something about a particle and quantum physics. He said it was invented by someone named Hank, who had a wife named Janet.”
“Hank Pym?” Fury whistled, chuffing briefly as he shook his bald head. “Greatest hits involved in this story.”
“You know who that is?”
“Pym used to work for SHIELD ages ago. Had created something he called the ‘Pym Particle, which allowed him to grow and shrink as needed. He and his wife, Janet van Dyne, were pioneers in the field of quantum physics.”
Peggy thought of the picture on Scott’s phone of an older couple. “He showed me a photo of them, I think, from his time.”
“Funny as Janet van Dyne disappeared twenty years ago. Some accident while out on a mission. She shrank and never came back. Pym decided his technology was too dangerous for the likes of SHIELD, certainly Howard Stark, and left to create his own company. He’s spat on us and Stark Industries ever since.”
Lang hadn’t mentioned any of that part of the story. “You’re certain? Because I saw a picture on his phone device with them in it.”
Fury could only shrug. “You left the past and jumped into the future. Who knows what sort of changes that created in reality, how that has altered the entire world by you stepping out of it.”
She hadn’t accounted for that part, and clearly, neither had Lang as he suggested it. She had come forward thinking it was a good thing, that no one would miss her, and that her loss wouldn’t affect anything greatly. The idea that it might have changed everything left Peggy feeling vaguely ill.
“All I know is that he was the one who developed the shrinking and that it’s his technology that Lang utilized to jump through time, but it was something else...a device, like a watch that Tony Stark invented. It was the one that had a way for us to get back and forth in time. Now, here I am.” She spread her hands wide in front of her.
“And here you are.” Fury sighed, nodding as he looked her over. “Telling me the world is going to be threatened and the only way to rescue it is to save a group that doesn’t even exist.”
“Not yet, at least. That isn’t to say you haven’t thought about the Avengers, though, am I correct?”
If Fury was surprised by her insight, he certainly hid it well. If anything, he was more delighted she had sussed it out. “The ‘Avengers Initiative’ is an idea. We’ve only been working on it for a few years. We wanted a group of people with abilities, unique, powerful ones, who could create a force to head off those sorts of threats to the world that not even SHIELD could manage on our own.”
“Such as?” She was curious as to why such a group would even figure and what sort of threat he could be referencing.
“Aliens, for one.” He smiled pointedly. “Whoever this is that you are referring to, he’s not the first nor the last. We’ve had several come to Earth over the millennia, all sorts of people, some who make it obvious what’s going on, others who hide in plain sight, masquerading themselves among us. Some of them are benign enough, but for the rest, we have no defense for what they bring to the table. You fought against Johann Schmidt. He had a piece of alien tech and outfitted an entire army of destruction with it. Imagine what someone who knows what they are doing could bring to the table.”
Peggy knew exactly the sort of strange and deadly threats there were in the world. While aliens may sound like something from one of the pulp novels the Howling Commandos passed among themselves, she had also just traveled through time to end up in the future at the hands of a mysterious particle no one had discovered yet. Perhaps she shouldn’t be casting too many stones when the glass on her house was so shiny.
Fury continued. “The idea behind the Avengers was that we would have a weapon on our side, those with powers that were greater than the average human possessed. People willing to fight for all of humanity...superheroes.”
“Like Captain America,” she said simply, the hope and pride that she had felt for Steve Rogers rising ever so slightly within her.
“Like him, yes. Those sorts of people are hard to come by.”
“What if they weren’t?”
“What? Superheroes?”
“What if Lang wasn’t wrong? What if it’s just not become apparent yet that you have what you need right in front of you?”
Fury at least didn’t dismiss her idea out of hand. “You mean like Captain America?”
She nodded, slowly. “Lang was quite clear on Steve. They said he was found, that the Valkyrie is in the Arctic, between Greenland and Canada, and that he’s not dead only in...stasis.”
That seemed to intrigue the other man. “Stasis?” He mulled this, stroking a long finger briefly along his chin. “You were one of the researchers on the Project Rebirth team. You think that’s possible?”
Her heart wanted to think so. She had to think with her head, though. “Dr. Erskine said the idea of the serum was that it would protect the subject’s cellular integrity as much as possible and provide for faster regeneration. If a subject was injured enough, say through blood loss or oxygen deprivation, the subject could be put into a lowered metabolic state, a way to preserve what function it could to allow for faster healing. That said, there are things the serum couldn’t fix. Too much blood loss, too fast, would still kill a subject as quickly as anyone else, and decapitation couldn’t be fixed.”
“So as long as he didn’t suffer massive damage in the initial crash, he could still be alive?”
“In theory.”
Fury ruminated for several quiet moments. “That is still a massive area of the planet to pick through for one lone wreck, especially in winter. We’d be better off in the summer trying it.”
She bit down on the impulse to burst into tears at the idea he was even suggesting it. “You’ll go look for him?”
Fury only snorted at her question. “Look for the greatest soldier who ever lived? Hell, yeah, if he’s alive. Howard Stark sent up search teams for years looking for him but never found anything. But with changes in global warming and weather patterns, he might turn up. We’ll put the word out to the fishing teams and shipping communities who use that route, and see if they spot something. Let Canada and Denmark know and see if their military can keep an eye out, maybe see if we can pull it up on satellite imaging.”
Peggy wasn’t sure what satellite imaging was, but she nodded, feeling relieved and grateful all at once. “Good...that’s good.”
She had never considered in the past that Steve might have survived all of it, what that could have meant. The idea of him there, asleep on the ice for all this time while the rest of the world passed him by was heartbreaking and terrifying. What if she hadn’t jumped forward? Did she even in Lang’s timeline? She hadn’t asked, hadn’t thought to beg the question. Did the Steve in his timeline originally wake up to no one and nothing? Had he been all alone in a world that had moved on, a place where all his friends had died off? That brought her to another depressing point, the fact that all of her friends and family likely died off as well. She stared at the file in front of her, thick as an Army field guide. “I suppose I’m on my own then in this new century, at least till we find him.”
Fury’s stern expression softened somewhat, compassion leaking through his tough edges. “Not completely, no, but most everyone you knew is gone now. Chester Phillips died in 1970, well into his 90s, practically in the saddle from what I understand. Howard died twenty years later. Sousa is gone. Most of the old Howling Commandos all have passed on, but I think Jones is still alive.”
She nodded, her heart aching at the idea of Howard and Daniel now gone forever. It had only been the night before - hours ago for her, really - when she had been laughing at something Howard said. What was it? And Daniel had proposed to her out there on Howard’s balcony. She had broken his heart as he kneeled before her, expression so hopeful. Now he was dead.
She dashed at tears lining her lashes. “What about my family?” She felt most guilty over them. What had they thought when they received her letter? Had her mother’s heart finally broken? How had her father born it? What had Michael done? She hadn’t even considered, really, the long-term impacts, she had just done it.
“What we know of them, they all were fine. One of them is here now in SHIELD, a great-niece, Sharon. She’s not been informed of your sudden appearance, but if you would like, we could connect you both.”
Her mind blanked at the very idea. “I’m sorry...you said a great-niece?”
“Yes.” The word hissed through Fury’s perfect teeth.
Peggy blinked at him, wondering if perhaps her jump through time left her senses addled. “Michael’s?”
One of Fury’s grizzled eyebrows rose with the sort of look that was both rueful and apologetic. “There other Carter siblings running around in this world I need to know about?”
“No!” Michael had a granddaughter? It was strange to think that this was perhaps the least of the ideas she would have to get used to and wrap her brain around. She hadn’t even grappled with the idea that Howard had a son out there somewhere, likely most of the people she knew had children and grandchildren.
“I suppose I will need to figure out what to do with myself now,” she murmured faintly. “Before my presence starts causing trouble.”
“Your presence has already caused trouble, Carter, but nothing can be done about that now. Rumors are going to be flying by the start of business tomorrow, so we may as well embrace it.” Fury was no nonsense about this, rather like Phillips, and Peggy found herself warming to it. “Unfortunately, your title stands as ‘director’ and I can’t have another head running around.”
She hadn’t even considered that and what that would mean for him. “Honestly, I don’t know what I am doing or what to do. I came to SHIELD mostly because it was...familiar. After all, I helped build it, I hoped if anything it would be the one thing I left behind that I could turn to.”
“Believe me, the fact you didn’t think through what you were doing was loud and clear.” He tapped long fingers on her file on the table thoughtfully. “But you are an asset, Carter, and I’d be a fool to turn that down. You’re an experienced field agent with a unique knowledge of the founding of SHIELD and Project Rebirth. You were one of the smartest minds SHIELD ever had and grossly underutilized by the SSR, and I’m not about to throw a weapon like that away.”
He was practical and pragmatic. She was appreciating Fury more. “So I wouldn’t be asked to make the coffee and do dictation?”
“We have computers who can do all that for us now and a phone that does my calendar. I think I can manage.”
Well, that was a difference, at least. “I’ve lost 60 years in a single night. When last I was on the political scene, Soviet Communists were the threat and terror of the world. I don’t even know the political landscape now and I know how fast it changes. I would be no good to you as is, I don’t know the situation enough to take charge and I doubt my work in the field would qualify me now at days to do the same job. So, I have to wonder, Director, where you will place me if you do utilize me?”
Her response only made him grin. “You were never stupid, I grant you that. Why I always admired you the most of all the former directors. It’s also why I want you here. I figure we can have you work as ‘special consultant to the director’, a fancy title to say you do whatever I think you’re good at. I’ll have you working with my right and left hands mostly.”
“Right and left hands?” That hadn’t been a term she used in her all too brief time in charge.
“We’re spies, Carter, and you know how hard it is to rely on anyone in this job. Maria Hill is my deputy. She was a commander in the US Navy. She's tough as nails and keeps my people in line, which they often need. She handles much of SHIELD’s on-the-ground operations, particularly the military ops, and oversees personnel and deployment. She’s your go-to for knowing what is going on and who is doing it at any one time. The other is Phil Coulson, my lead operative, and head of field agents. He is my literal left eye and my left hand, heading up our intelligence and information. If there is something you need to find out or need to do, Coulson can do it. He’s never failed me yet. He and Hill keep this place running, and I want you working with them. You always had a talent for seeing things no one else did, handling the cases no one else could. We could use that in SHIELD if you are willing.”
She had to admit, considering where she had been only 24 hours before in her time, sitting in long meetings and negotiating budgets, this sounded far more appealing. “I’ll need a place to live and perhaps someone to acculturate me.”
Fury smiled slowly, clearly pleased she was agreeing. “I think that can all be arranged.”
Peggy nodded firmly sticking her hand out as he wrapped it in his long fingers. “Well, then, let’s hope we don’t both regret this decision. What do you plan on telling everyone about me?”
“What else? Peggy Carter has finally come home.”