Chapter 6
The future was a strange place, and Peggy found herself ill-prepared for it.
She had never been the futurist Howard was. For all her flights of fancy and romantic aspirations of glory, Peggy was a realist at heart and tended to take life as it came at her. She remembered all too well the conversations Barnes and Howard would enter into about technologies of the future, as the latter expounded on the idea of phones without wires that could communicate via radio waves across the world and airplanes that could fly so fast you could travel the globe in a day. She had dismissed it all as nonsense then and now could kick herself. The future was nearly just the way Howard had expected it to be.
Although Fury was willing to welcome her with open arms, there was protocol to follow and the eternal problem of paperwork. She needed just as much proof of identity in 2010 as she had in 1948, and it became all the trickier when she was technically supposed to be nearly 90 years old. Fury seemed to wave this off and had left it to the capable and efficient Maria Hill to make right. Commander Hill had been everything Fury had promised, and Peggy could see immediately why it was that Fury had her as his right hand. She was no-nonsense and could keep a startling amount of information and threads going in her head at any one time, making her able to multitask to ridiculous levels. She was a born strategist, and it took her less than five minutes in Peggy’s presence to begin a plan of action as to how to handle the newly returned SHIELD founder’s entrance into the modern world.
“So we’ll need to get you an identity.” Immediately, the brunette began tapping lithe fingers across the large glass device, not dissimilar to the phone that Lang had, but what she had referred to as a “tablet”. The difference was it didn’t necessarily make calls, though Hill could still communicate just fine on it.
“I have an identity I like very much, thank you.” Peggy hadn’t meant to sound waspish, but she was now on her third day in her rather nice detention cell. She’d hardly been out of SHIELD’s sight, mainly because they had been scrambling to decide what to do with her as if she were the unwanted maiden aunt that everyone now had to deal with. A week into the future, she had been no farther afield than on brief jaunts to the patio/garden area, which may have been lovely in the summer but was frozen and frigid in the New York winter. Even then, between her rooms and the gray refuge outside were hundreds of eyes, all staring in wonder at the mysterious woman who seemed to have stepped out of legend, a curiosity no one was brave enough to approach or speak to like a human being. It was taxing and vexing, and Peggy heartily found herself missing her now long-gone tidy little flat from 1948.
Hill hardly seemed to take notice of her temper. “I wasn’t planning on changing it, but the world does think you are dead.”
“Oh, well, there is that.” Peggy sighed, flipping listlessly at her book. The Young Lions had ended on a depressing note, one that had left her thinking a great deal of Steve and of all the young men like him who had entered into a war and what had come out the other side. She set it aside as she regarded Hill instead.
The other woman was swiping diligently at her tablet. “I have an inside contact at the State Department who can pull some strings to quietly get you dual citizenship. This will allow you to have the right to stay in the US legally without having to give up your UK citizenship. I figure it’s the least we could do for someone who served to save both countries in a war.”
“A nice thank you, to be sure.” She was bemused by how handily Hill just seemed to cut through bureaucratic red tape. “Do you just snap your fingers and poof, the world turns?”
A small, rather rusty smile came to life on the other woman’s face. “Not quite, but we are spies, and it’s sometimes useful in our line of work to have ties to people who can get things done without questions asked and in a timely fashion.”
That Peggy understood implicitly. “And you don’t even have to show a bit of cleavage or leg to get it done.”
It didn’t shock the other woman to hear that, but it did make her snort loudly. “Not that we don’t still have those same challenges, as many women can attest to, but you are right, it’s nice to be taken seriously when I ask for things. Besides, I also have access to all the dirt on most of the State Department, so that helps in negotiations.”
Clearly, Hill was a woman after Peggy’s own heart.
“I should get the citizenship thing cleared in a couple of hours. Once that’s done, it’s a fairly simple process of producing passports and IDs, all the things to prove you are you. And then we can set up your bank account, credit cards…”
“Credit cards?” Peggy was frantically trying to keep up with her.
“Forms of payment using credit, fairly common with people in this period. That reminds me. I should set you up with a financial advisor.”
“Advisor?”
“Sort of an accountant, but usually with more investment experience.”
Peggy stared at her as if she were mad. “I haven’t a cent to my name. What little I had saved was in a bank account long ago, and I doubt is still around now.”
“It isn’t,” Hill replied, half-distracted.
That was surprisingly depressing to her, the idea that the small salary she had worked so hard to earn was now lost to her. “Well, there you have it.”
Hill was still half distracted as she continued. “Howard Stark got power of attorney over your funds and rolled it into some investments. That, along with a tidy trust fund he set up with SHIELD in your name, has made you enough money to make you a very wealthy woman and make me rather jealous.”
Peggy stopped with the paper cup of atrocious tea she had been sipping halfway to her lips. “I'm sorry, what?”
Hill turned violet eyes up to her, blinking in lazy confusion. “You’re surprised by this?”
“Bloody hell, of course, I am! Why would he do something like that?”
It was no concern of the other woman as she simply tapped on her screen several times and then turned it to face her. Some sort of receipt or record of an account showed there with an obscene amount of money in it. Peggy stared at the figure, gaping like a fish as she tried not to choke on her tepid, awful tea.
“That’s...not all mine, is it?”
“Well, it will be once we get it officially transferred to your name, but yeah, it’s all yours. Don’t go blowing it in one place.”
Peggy floundered, staring at the undrinkable stuff before setting it aside in agitation. “But...how?”
“It’s all above board, don’t worry.”
Peggy found herself snorting in frustration at the other woman’s calm. “I am not saying it isn’t, just...why?”
Hill paused in her tapping to consider - really consider - and not just wave it all away. “Perhaps he was always in love with you.”
Peggy, at least, had enough dignity not to laugh in the other woman’s face. “You never knew Howard Stark, but I can promise you the answer to that was no.”
“Then that answers one assumption I had.” Faint patches of pink rose across the woman’s high cheekbones as Peggy sussed out in an instant what she meant.
“Howard made his way through many women. I was not one of them.”
Hill looked embarrassed for even considering it. “Look...I’m sorry, it’s just...well, the guy got around. His son is the same way.”
That was a rather unfortunate legacy to carry forward. “Howard was a dear friend, one of the dearest, but...he needed someone to worship him, and I needed a man I could look up to. Therein lay our problem.”
It was a blunt statement for a blunt woman, and she seemed to accept it ready enough. “Perhaps he did it as a gift to a friend, then...one he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to.”
Guilt rose with the other woman’s words, and they were true enough. She hadn’t bothered to even say goodbye to him that night at his party. She’d been so overwrought with Daniel’s proposal, and he’d been in his element. She hadn’t bothered him. She hadn’t said goodbye to Mr. Jarvis and his wife, to Angie, to anyone. It all felt selfish on this side of the timeline.
“It was generous of him, I will say that.”
Hill’s sympathy was surprising, a trait she’d not seen in the woman till now. “He cared enough to leave something so you wouldn’t be left flat when you got here. No one else believed him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take care of it. And hey, you still have investments that pay out very nice dividends. You could just not work a day for the rest of your life, but I don’t think you’d be as thrilled with that.”
“The idea of an idyllic retirement gardening wasn’t one I was ever fond of, no.” She considered her mother’s garden, the one she had lovingly tended in Hempstead. “What about housing?
Hill had already thought of that, as her answer was immediate. “We’ve secured an apartment for you in Hell’s Kitchen, not far from here, overlooking Lincoln Center.”
She had no idea what Lincoln Center was and only nodded by way of response. “Temporary housing?”
“Yours as long as you want it. SHIELD owns the entire building. We use it for our full-time operations staff who live in the city. As this is a secondary headquarters, most of our team here come and go with only a few staying on a more permanent basis.”
“Secondary? Where is the main headquarters?”
“DC, the Triskelion. When we get you up and running, we will have to show you the place.” A beep sounded as a light blinked in the woman’s right ear, the device she called an “earpiece” apparently warning her someone was trying to get a hold of her. Peggy politely busied herself with the file in front of her as Hill clicked a button in the earpiece and began talking, half of a phone conversation that she could listen to, but chose not to.
This brave new world Peggy had wandered into and all the wonders in it! She sighed, considering everything she would have to catch up on. The technology alone was terrifying, everything from the sleek modern cars they drove to the phones that they spoke to each other on, and she didn’t want to think about the computers that were ubiquitous to modern living. Hill had joked her three-year-old nephew could use a tablet better than she could and the other woman had grown up with these technological marvels coming at her all the time. What hope did a woman from the 1940s have? The television, at least, had made some sense, as she had grown up with the radio and cinema and had seen television in its infancy, but the sheer amount of televised information had been overwhelming! Channels for news, sport, for films, for children’s animation, had been dizzying. For not the first time, she wondered if her impulsive jaunt into the future with Lang had been such a good idea.
“Right!” Hill signed off whatever call she was on and eyed Peggy, a hint of concern flickering across her otherwise stoic face. “That was word your place is ready. You can move in this afternoon if you like.”
She blinked mildly at the other woman. “You do move rather quickly, don’t you?”
“I help run one of the largest intelligence and paramilitary networks in the world, I don’t have time to get caught up in red tape.” She tapped against her tablet, unbothered at Peggy’s amazement. “Imagine if you would have had me back in the day.”
“I’d have killed to have someone like you, if nothing else to just have another female presence in the office.” Peggy was privately pleased the old boy’s club that had run everything after the war had given way to common sense and other perspectives. She considered with brief reflection of Whitney Frost and her twisted, angry ambition. Perhaps she, like Peggy, had been too ahead of her time. What she could have done in the future, had she been able to jump forward, as Peggy had.
“I’m sending an agent to escort you over there now. We can at least get you settled while I work out the other details of your re-entry into human society.”
Peggy found she didn’t care as long as it meant being set free into this strange world she found herself in. “Not that I dislike your company, Deputy Director, but it would be nice to not feel like a prisoner in the very agency I helped to start.”
She at least smirked openly at that, a rare open display of emotion. “Wait till you see what we’ve got for you. I think you’ll see I’ve made up for a few days of inconvenience.”
That was an understatement.
Within the hour, she found herself in perhaps the nicest flat she had ever seen in her entire life. Not that she had grown up hard off, her family owned a nice home, she had been sent to a public school considered to be of high quality for ladies of her age and class, and had wanted for little, even as the rest of the world sank into a financial depression. She hadn’t known true privation till the war, and even then she had spent a good deal of time in America where the rationing was not as severe and bombs of London were very far away indeed. Still, as an adult woman, she had never had a nice flat to call her own till she was made a director for SHIELD.
This apartment still made it feel shabby by comparison. The building itself was tall and gorgeous, complete with a doorman waiting at the front when the agent, a young woman by the name of Cassandra Kam, had let her in to show the place. It was light and airy inside, with marble floors and recessed lamps far brighter than anything they used in her day. The future liked things brighter and far more simple, a look that she appreciated after years of making do in cramped, musty boarding houses and second-hand rentals.
The place itself was controlled, like everything seemingly, by a computer, requiring a thumb scan to even get in. She wasn’t sure what a scan even was until Agent Kam explained the bar of light taking a photograph of her thumb and somehow keeping the data inside its memory, which Peggy had decided must be the equivalent of the computer’s brain by the way people spoke of it. She was then ushered into a flat that was big enough to house a family of six in its depths, fully furnished, much to her relief. She wouldn’t have known where to start. As it was she was already overwhelmed with the modernist furniture, to her eyes at least, and the array of soft-colored walls, a contrast to the tired wallpaper of the many places she had lived in during her stay in New York thus far - Howard’s tasteful decorated townhome notwithstanding. Kam dragged her gapping from the large living area, with its views of Lincoln Square and the aforementioned Lincoln Center, to the kitchen that was filled with shining steel and granite, through a den area with a fireplace and into a master bedroom with a bath that was large enough to swim in. She had blinked at all of it and was told that this unit had been requested just for her by Director Fury.
She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful for it or not.
After perusing the master bedroom, which was the size of her previous apartment with a bed that looked like a football pitch made of marshmallows, to the kitchen with enough appliances to make her feel overwhelmed, Kam had her sign documents on the strange tablet she carried - all with her finger, which hardly seemed legal, but so far this world was a strange place. She then assured Peggy that all paperwork would be sent to her email - whatever that was - showed her how to use the strange panel in the main areas to control things like lights, temperature, and security, and then wished her luck in her new place.
“I can’t tell you what an honor it has been, Director Carter, just to meet you,” she gushed, clearly thrilled in a way Peggy little understood.
“I...well, thank you.” Already overwhelmed, Peggy nodded politely, eyeing the bottles of wine in the shining, brushed steel fridge set aside for just that purpose. “I may call on you just to...you know, figure all of this out.”
“I know, this has to be overwhelming!” The other woman waived a well-manicured hand in a generic way to encompass the flat...and well everything, Peggy supposed.
“Just a bit.” Where to begin even explaining that? “Are everybody’s homes so...complicated?”
The other woman snorted merrily. “Oh, no...my apartment is out in Brooklyn and isn’t anywhere near this fancy.”
Brooklyn! Peggy’s heart swelled at that. “I don’t know if I wouldn’t prefer yours over mine.”
Kam shrugged, seemingly getting it. “I mean, yeah, it’s a lot to take in. Frankly, the fridge alone is terrifying, but if you need any help, give me a call!”
Blessedly, she passed over a paper card rather than referring Peggy to a “website”, something she had been referenced to several times throughout the afternoon. It had the official look of a SHIELD card and Peggy took it gratefully, hoping she would figure out the telephone. She’d been issued one that looked similar to Lang’s but had no blessed idea of how to utilize it.
Kam clearly understood her plight. “Let me see your phone.”
Peggy pulled the device out of her rucksack, still in its box, as the other woman powered it up and walked her through the basics of using it. She kindly even inputted her number and address into a sort of virtual contact book, all with an air of calm reassurance. “If you need anything, even if it’s just someone to talk to, help you figure out how a computer works, I’m here. Subways still work, so you can find me. And this button here, if you click on it, takes you to a map that will tell you how to get anywhere.”
Peggy blinked in wide-eyed amazement at that. “Where was that when I was stuck in the wilds of Eastern Europe without a map?”
“I know, right?” She passed the phone back to Peggy’s outstretched. “Seriously, though, I get what it’s like being in a new place with strange everything. If you need, hit me up, I’m happy to help.”
It was only after Agent Kam left that Peggy realized she might have just made her second friend in this new century.
That evening, as she puttered around the over-large space, she was rather glad for Kam’s kind-hearted gesture. It occurred to her that she was now all alone in a new century, in a city she had known well once upon a time, but which had changed drastically in just a few days for her. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She’d unpacked her few belongings, studying critically the clothing she brought, trying to determine how unfashionable it would be to wear in this century. She’d paid some attention to what Maria Hill and Cassandra Kam wore, sturdy-looking pantsuits in dark colors, a far cry from the bright colors Peggy had preferred after her years of wearing the drab olive of the US Army. Still, she had noted not just how many women there were in SHIELD, and in places of leadership and experience, such as Hill, but how their look had melded subtly with the look of the men around them. It was complicated, she realized, how the feminine now melded into the masculine, both removing the femininity from those women in the workplace while giving them clearance to be in it. It was a strange dichotomy, but it at least was a world away from the environment she had just left behind.
The shower had been a marvel, a luxury she at least hadn’t felt overwhelmed by. For all that it had these modern, electronic controls, she’d figured it out readily enough and had been delighted to find multiple kinds of shower heads with all manner of sprays. She amused herself for long minutes, trying different ones, settling on one called “tropical rain” before trying out the products thoughtfully provided and smelling luxurious. Frankly, the idea of being clean and in her pajamas after several days in SHIELD custody was divine, and she indulged in it as she wandered the stocked kitchen, attempting to decide on what to even eat. As kind-hearted as Hill and Kam’s gesture of a fully stocked larder was, she didn’t have the heart to admit to either of them that the kitchen was a strange and foreign place to her, but she at least found the makings of a sandwich which would sustain her for the evening. That and a glass of wine sufficed to bolster her as she attempted to use the tablet provided.
Fifteen minutes later, she gave up. The foreign bit of technology seemed friendly enough to use, but the many bright buttons - apps as Kam had called them - meant little to her, and short of one that seemed to show some sort of film, she couldn’t figure the rest out. Frustrated, she tossed it aside, staring at the glittering and shining apartment that was now hers...beautiful and quite empty and lonely. In mild frustration, she wandered from her perch at the kitchen’s island to stare at the glass window that led onto a balcony that overlooked the frigid city. It was far too cold to be standing outside this high up, but she rather wished she could, to hear the sounds of the cars below, smell the air, and know that this was real, that all of this had happened, and that she hadn’t dreamed it all. Honestly, as overwhelmed as she felt, she wasn’t half-sure she wasn’t living in some Wizard of Oz-esque fantasy land.
A bell chimed and it took her several long moments to realize that it was the doorbell and that someone was wanting to see her. Thus far only a few of SHIELD operatives knew about her and her existence, and she doubted Fury had shared her address far and wide. Outside of the kind but mostly hapless Juan and taciturn Julio, whom she still needed to thank for their helpfulness, no one but Hill and Kam in this city knew her. She highly doubted it was the still missing Lang. Carefully, she padded across the carpeted space, stopping long enough to retrieve the weapon that SHIELD gave her back, before glancing out of the peephole in the door.
The woman who stood outside glanced back at the peephole and smiled. She was aware enough to know Peggy would be checking there. She didn’t look like a threat, but Peggy was cautious in how she opened the door all the same, her right hand hidden behind it as she peeked around at the blonde, whose smile slipped from friendly to thunderstruck in the blink of an eye.
“May I help you?” She tried to plaster on the most polite expression she could manage in the face of her entire world turning upside down.
The woman simply blinked for long moments, her mouth working as she struggled to pull words together. She must be someone Fury told about her presence. The woman finally laughed as she ran a nervous hand through her hair, staring at Peggy as if she’d seen a ghost. “You look exactly like all of your old pictures, you know.”
That caught Peggy off guard as it took her a long minute to process what in the world the woman meant. “You must be my great niece.”
Sharon Carter nodded, eyes round in wonder as she eyed Peggy up and down. “And you must be my hero come to life.”
Hero? She wasn’t so sure she was any of that. “Well, I suppose I should ask you to come in, shouldn’t I?”