Chapter 7
This woman was a Carter, there was no denying it. Peggy could pick out pieces of her family in Sharon's face, perched on one of the stools across from her on the marble-topped island. She had Peggy’s mother’s expressive brows, noting how they knit together in thought just as Amanda Carter’s had, but her warm smile was all Harrison, Peggy’s father. The eyes, however, were the dead giveaway: Michael’s dark eyes, simultaneously grave and mischievous. They watched her now carefully as she spun a glass of cool chardonnay in her long fingers, searching for some words.
“When Fury told me you were alive, I didn’t believe it.” Her confession was blunt. She shrugged, flushing as she admitted it. “I mean...you are you...aren’t you?”
“As far as I can tell. The last few days have made me wonder.” Peggy had a red wine, deep and flavorful. She’d changed back into the functional trousers and top she’d worn to this world, uncomfortable meeting a stranger in something as casual as her nightwear. “Perhaps just as shocking as me appearing out of nowhere, alive and whole, is the revelation that I had a great-niece living in this world. Your father was young Harry?”
“That would be Dad, yeah.” She smiled fondly, reaching for the ubiquitous phone that everyone seemed to have. “I have pictures, even, from just the other week...Christmas!”
She was scanning across the glass quickly in a manner that made Peggy envious. She finally stopped, tapping on one, much as Lang had, and turning it towards Peggy. “There’s the family for the holidays: Dad, Mom, Aunt Maggie and Uncle Darren, my brothers - Mike and Will - and my sister Ashley. And then there are the spouses, grandbabies, and cousins galore; a whole Carter clan!”
A clan of them? Peggy blinked at the small crowd, all gathered on a deck somewhere, bundled against the cold in denim and puffy coats and smiling faces, several with Santa Claus hats on. She picked out Harrison, tall and lean like his father, with Michael’s smile, his hair thin and silver, wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He very much reminded her of her father, his namesake, and she found her eyes misting as she thought of her father's dear face and realized how very much she missed him.
“The last time I saw your father, he was still just a boy.” She swiped at her eyes, sniffing. “I don’t know if you ever heard the story of your grandfather and what happened to him.”
“Some of it, yeah.” Sharon frowned briefly, glancing down at the phone in her hand. “Dad told us some of it. The rest I got from SHIELD when I joined. I know about him being presumed dead for years, that he was involved in a secret program, that it had something to do with the forming of SHIELD.”
“That’s some of it,” she admitted, too tired and heart sore to get into the particulars. “I’m afraid your grandfather and I had something of a falling out. Not that I didn’t care, just...it was complicated.”
“Considering you thought him dead and then found out he was lying to you, no, I kind of get that.” Sharon smiled, shrugging. “I mean, at least when you jumped through time, you sent a note first.”
Peggy could only laugh. It had only been days ago for her. For Sharon and the rest, it had been decades. “I hadn’t said anything about jumping through time.”
“No, you hadn’t. Frankly, most of the family believed you had gone on a secret mission, one you knew was dangerous. When you didn’t come back...well, they assumed the worst.”
That stung more than Peggy wanted to admit. “I suppose your grandfather and I were alike in that.”
Perhaps, in the end, she had been unfair to her brother.
Far from seeming angry, Sharon appeared to be far more philosophical about it all. “I suppose it is easier to explain death in the line of duty than time travel. In the end, it’s not so different. I don’t know if anyone ever knew the time travel angle. Grandpa might have. I know he was involved in searching for you, but when his mother asked him to stop, they had you declared dead. I think Howard Stark was the only one who believed you would come back someday. I only found out about that after I joined.”
“Howard’s unending faith in me.” Peggy shot her niece a watery smile before pulling from her wine glass to settle her nerves. “It’s that more than anything that led to SHIELD. He was the one who fought for me to form it and lead it. He was a good friend...better than I thought he was.”
Sharon seemed to understand, tactfully looking for a way to change the subject. “So, anyway, this will be a crazy story to try and explain to Dad and Aunt Maggie. Surprise, your long lost aunt is alive, well, and looks my age.”
That was a conversation Peggy did not envy her niece. “I wonder if they even remember me.”
“Oh, they do, or at least Dad does. You were a figure in many of my bedtime story adventures. You were my favorite! I don’t know how many of those stories were true, but I took them all as gospel. Did you take on Stalin single-handedly, all by yourself?”
Peggy had been sipping at her wine and nearly snorted it up her nose, spluttering into the glass and coughing at Sharon’s impish smirk. “I most certainly did not! I never met the man! Don’t tell me that was a story!”
“Figured that was one of Dad’s wilder ones, probably along with Aunt Peggy going to Mars.”
“Bloody hell, I wasn’t a superhero!” Sharon’s amusement with the idea only served to make Peggy more embarrassed. “What sort of stories were you all told?”
“Those were the sillier stories, the ones Dad made up because I wouldn’t go to sleep, and he was desperate.”
“Global politics and espionage is appropriate bedtime fair?”
“That was Dad’s jam, so I suppose so. I didn’t think anything of it! I was seven and thought the idea of an aunt who was a spy was perhaps the coolest thing that could happen to a little girl ever!” She laughed with faintly abashed nostalgia. “I don’t know, it was the 90s, and women as heroes were starting to be a thing, and I got to brag to all my school friends my Aunt Peggy founded SHIELD and punched Nazis in the face. You were quite the feminist icon.”
Something of that old hero worship still glowed on the face of Sharon even after all these years. Peggy found herself at odds with living up to it. “I don’t know if the real me could measure up to those impossibly high standards, I’m afraid. After all, I listened to a madman, jumped through time, and ended up here. Doesn’t sound responsible.”
“No, but it sounds about on par for the Agent Peggy Carter who went to Mars.”
Whether it was her overwrought emotions, the insanity of the whole situation, or the image of the boy she once knew growing up to be a man making up such ridiculous stories, she couldn’t tell, but the very notion caused something in Peggy to crack. Hysterical peels of laughter burst out of her as Sharon joined her in helpless giggles, dissolving onto the granite top and burying her head into her arms. It was long moments before either of them could pull their composure together enough to string words together, and even when they did, they only managed to start laughing again.
“I just...why Mars?”
“I don’t know. It just sounds cool when you are seven!” Sharon finally got herself together enough to wipe her eyes on a paper napkin from a holder in the island’s center. “Oh, God...I miss being a kid.”
“You and me both.” Peggy snorted, holding up her wine glass in silent tribute. “It was far easier back then, let me tell you.”
Sharon beamed as she raised her glass to clink with Peggy’s. “I will need stories...Grandpa stories! I want the good stuff, the things Dad doesn’t know.”
“I will have plenty of those for you. I’ll have to regale you with how I learned to drink whiskey, which was all Michael’s fault and made me so sick I thought Mother would kill him for sure.”
“I can believe that,” she snickered, sipping her wine.
All of this brought to mind the one question that had been niggling at Peggy since she let her brother’s granddaughter into her new flat. It was the first thing nearly every American noticed about her, including Juan the other day. It was the first thing she noticed about Sharon when she started to speak. “Your accent is American. When did the family leave Britain?”
Sharon looked as though she had expected this sooner rather than later. “Grandpa! When you disappeared, Howard Stark took nominal charge, and he transferred him over from London. He worked at Camp Lehigh for years. It’s where Dad and Maggie mostly grew up. He became the division chief in New York when all the operations began moving down to DC and retired just after they finished the Triskelion. He and Grandma went back to England after that and became old, quaint English people.”
Peggy knew without asking they were no longer alive. “How long have they been gone?”
“Grandpa died about five years ago, Alzheimer’s. His brain just... faded. It happened quickly...too quickly. I visited over the summer before my senior year of college, and he was just starting to get bad. Kept thinking I was you, funnily enough. He was gone before Christmas. Grandma hung on for another couple of years, but she died in her sleep. They are buried by your parents.”
Peggy had never properly sorted things out with her brother. She hadn’t wanted to, honestly, hurt and angry with his lies and deception. She’d stuck him in the fledgling London office more to keep him safe and out of trouble where she could keep an eye on him, but she had only returned a handful of letters, mostly couched in messages to her mother. Now he was gone, and she would never really be able to hash it out with him. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see him again.”
Sensing the mood had shifted to the morose yet again, Sharon decided to lighten it up. “He’d be glad you got here safe and in this crazy world we have. How are you holding up with the technology?”
Peggy at least managed a faint, wry smile. “I’m terrified of the tablet they gave me, I haven’t tried the phone, the television is frightening, and I don’t even know what that thing is!” She pointed to the silver, square appliance hanging over the six-burner gas range.
“A microwave oven?”
“Yes, that! You have a regular oven below it. What does this microwave oven do?”
“I don’t know, I use mine mostly for reheating leftovers and making popcorn,” Sharon replied, standing to wander over it. “Don’t put anything metal in it, as that can cause a fire. Also, if you have a frozen dinner you put in there, read all the instructions thoroughly because I’ve melted more than one of those plastic dishes.”
Peggy threw up her hands. “If modern people can’t use their appliances, what hope do I have?”
Sharon was pressing the numbers on the front face. Apparently, they were buttons, causing beeping noises as they lit up and began to hum. “I’ll have to show you. It’s super easy! I was working one of these when I was five.”
Peggy sensed a resource standing right in front of her. “All right, what about that thing? The shiny cabinet with the racks inside?”
Sharon found that descriptive funny. “That’s a dishwasher, I know they had those back in the day.”
“Not that I could have ever afforded one.” Peggy eyed it warily. “I imagine I’ll have to have help using this, too.”
“You’ll get it soon enough. Is SHIELD going to give you a crash course on any of this at some point?”
“You heard they recruited me, then?” Peggy figured Fury must have told her.
“Only makes sense, after all, you wouldn’t have come here without a reason, and you are the founder of SHIELD. You are valuable just on that alone, and I can’t see Alexander Pierce being keen on letting someone of your stature get away.”
“And who is he when he’s at home,” Peggy queried, having not heard Pierce’s name come up yet in the various SHIELD conversations she had.
“Former director of SHIELD, now he sits on the World Security Council. It’s international government oversight for SHIELD.”
She hadn’t had one of those in her day. She filed that neatly away. “So this Pierce oversees Fury then?”
“More or less, they have a history together from Fury’s days in the CIA. When Pierce joined SHIELD, he brought Fury over too, and installed him in Los Angeles. When Pierce got booted up, so did Fury.”
Peggy considered this as she thought of her meeting with the man days before. “Do you trust either of them?”
Sharon was smart...very smart. She narrowed her eyes at Peggy’s question. “Do you think they aren’t?”
“I’m merely asking for an insider’s opinion! You have been here, you know them. You tell me!”
“Know them is a strong word.” She slouched against the far counter. “Fury is an operative at heart. I know it sounds weird, but there's something about that at least I trust. I think he may do crazy, even questionable things, but his eye is always on the greater good, and in that much, I trust him, even if he lives in the morally gray area. Pierce, on the other hand, is a politician, it’s why he sits on the council. He’s well respected in the intelligence and military communities, his background means he’s built up close ties with many of them. He’s forward-thinking and global-minded, and he’s got trust with a lot of very powerful figures out there.”
There was hesitancy in her niece’s words, something not yet spoken. “I sense a ‘but’ in all of this.”
Sharon merely grinned at Peggy’s statement, impressed she sussed it out. “But...there are some who say he’s a two-face, Machiavellian, power-grabbing son-of-a-bitch. Not in public, mind you, but, yeah, many haven’t liked the direction he’s taken SHIELD in the last ten years. They’ve gone from being a global security and intelligence agency into being the world’s peacekeepers trying to ‘safeguard democracy.’ Many feel that is the wrong direction it should take.”
Not knowing enough of the situation, Peggy wasn’t sure she could comment on it. “How do you feel about it?”
Sharon became far more indecisive here. “The world has changed a lot since the 1940s. The Nazis are gone, HYDRA is gone, the Soviet Union is gone, and the US is the one global superpower that remains and that can go either way. I get that there are bigger threats than ever out there, ones that endanger people and could cause real harm, but...I sometimes worry.”
“About what?”
The other woman hesitated, frowning down at her bare feet against the ash-gray wood floor. It clicked with Peggy just how politically sticky a situation Sharon might be finding herself in with her position at SHIELD. She was young, very young, around Peggy’s age, and without the years and experience of war that Peggy brought to the table. She was a legacy agent with SHIELD, the great-niece of one of its founders, and the granddaughter of one of its section heads, she could well imagine the name of Carter perhaps opened doors to her that wouldn’t be opened to others, and yet, she was a smart, capable agent in her own right who yearned to prove herself outside of the shadow of the Carters who came before her. She carried with her the legacy of SHIELD's beginnings. There would be many, perhaps even Pierce or Fury, who would want someone like Sharon to stand by their decisions, if nothing else, to show continuity with the ideals of SHIELD from its roots.
“Sharon,” Peggy murmured. “I’m fairly safe to tell. After all, I walked into this world just days ago. What investment do I have?”
“Perhaps more than you know,” Sharon replied. “Look, I know my grandfather’s story, you know it too. The whole idea surrounding SHIELD was that it was supposed to be above the games of nationalism and politics, that it wasn’t owned or controlled by one single entity or global interest trying to play its games. It was supposed to be a truly global network, and yet now that the US is the only kid on the block in terms of superpowers, I feel that SHIELD is just becoming more and more an extension of their interests. Whoever America deems a threat is suddenly who is a threat to SHIELD. I don’t know if I’m okay with that.”
Michael left a long legacy indeed. “And yet you're still here.”
“I am still here.” She sighed, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Honestly, this is the only job I’ve wanted since I was a little girl. When I told Grandpa I wanted to go into SHIELD, he was...so proud. He said you would be thrilled. I went in thinking I could be a hero like the two of you. Now...I don’t know.”
So that was the state of things. Peggy mulled it over, considering. If this was the case, SHIELD was a far cry from what she, Howard, and Philips started all those decades ago. Where had it gone off the rails? How had it happened? And what was more, what role did Fury and this Pierce have for her in it?”
“Do you know anything about an ‘Avengers Initiative’?” Peggy eyed her niece and her empty wine glass, deciding to fill it again.
The name didn’t appear to ring any bells for Sharon. “No, not that I’ve heard of. Why?”
“Fury brought it up to me. It’s something he wants me working on.”
“The name is a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Peggy reached past where Sharon stood to the wine fridge where they had stowed the opened bottle of white earlier. “Fury strikes me as being a bit dramatic himself. After all, he swaggers about with a dark coat and an eye patch like some sort of pirate out of an Errol Flynn film.”
“Errol Flynn! That’s a blast from the past! You are a product of the 1940s!”
Peggy made a face as she poured more wine into Sharon’s outstretched glass. “I’m rather fond of his films, though the man himself was horrible! Still, he could be entertaining.”
“We seriously need to update your popular culture references.” Sharon’s eyes lit up as they flickered beyond the living area with its squashy couches and the giant, flat black panel of glass that lined the far wall above the fireplace. “Have you tried the television yet?’
Peggy put the wine back, snorting. “I told you it terrified me, so no.”
Her niece's mind was calculating quickly. “How about I teach you how to use it, and in exchange, you let me pick one piece of modern media to introduce you to.”
Peggy wasn’t sure she liked the gleeful gleam in Sharon’s eyes. “Am I going to hate it?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to see it and find out.”
She gave in, if nothing else, because it saved her from spending an evening in this new, strange, and overwhelming place by herself. “All right, but if I hate it, I get the right to put a stop to it.”
“Deal,” Sharon stuck her hand out to shake it. Peggy took it firmly, deciding she rather liked her newfound niece...her newfound family.
“Now, let’s see if they stocked any popcorn in this joint,” Sharon muttered, opening cabinets.
Peggy saw her evil plan instantly. “So you can use this microwave contraption?”
“Just like driving, the best way to learn is to just do it, right?”
Peggy could only smile and shake her head as Sharon dug through one of the cabinets. “That sounds like something Michael used to say.”