Chapter 9
The future, as Peggy was learning, was beyond frustrating. It took her a week to figure out how to manage unlocking her door on her own. The phone was a whole separate matter. She’d figured out how to make calls on it but not how to find messages or even type on it well, and certainly any of these “apps” everyone was so blessedly fond of. She had tried the laptop and could manage this email protocol but found it exhausting in the extreme and wondered why modern people subjected themselves to it. They went happily to their laptops and pocket phones, or the larger versions of them, the tablets, and could be found with their faces buried in them at all times, even while holding whole conversations.
“My younger brother walks to school without looking up once, headphones in, face glued to the screen. He nearly got killed crossing the street in front of our house. About gave my mother a heart attack.” Cassandra Kam, the agent who had settled her into her new home, had taken to visiting Peggy in her training rooms over lunches, a kindly gesture Peggy knew the other woman meant as a way to give Peggy - a stranger in these times - someone to talk to. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s read a real book since he turned six.”
Peggy could only boggle at that as they wandered Times Square during lunch, mostly just people gazing. It was all so different, with these crowds, with this place. It still felt like Times Square. That much was familiar, but the giant signs that looked so lifelike blazing overhead told her otherwise. She sighed, crumpling a sandwich wrapper. For not the first time since her arrival, she cursed Lang for getting himself lost or talking her into this mad scheme.
“How old is your brother?” She glanced towards Kam, who was unapologetically enjoying a hot dog for her lunch.
Kam waited a moment to finish chewing before answering, swiping at mustard on her cheek. “Eighteen, though you’d never know it. He acts like he’s twelve.”
Spoken with only the disdain an older sibling could have for a younger one. “Eighteen is still quite young, all things considered.” She knew many young boys in the American army that age, most of whom went off to fight, all too young to be doing it.
“I know,” Kam sighed, rolling her lovely, dark eyes in a gesture that Peggy could guess she got from her mother. “That’s what I keep telling myself. He’s the baby, so he gets spoiled rotten for the most part, unless his grades slip, and then he gets hell for it from the family. Nothing guilts a Chinese kid into behaving more than having all the aunties shaming you on your report card.”
“And does he get bad grades?”
“Not since Mom got him into Midtown Tech in Queens. The principal over there is married to my cousin, so if Kevin steps a toe out of line, it’s up the family gossip chain before he even gets home. Poor kid. he got into Stanford to escape from the family.”
Peggy chuckled, thinking of Sharon, of the family Peggy now had and the one she had left behind. “I moved to America to be far away from mine. In fairness, England wasn’t precisely in good shape after the war. Most of London was obliterated, and many other English cities were, too. Thought I would have better luck here.”
Kam’s look of sympathy spoke to how much she couldn’t comprehend anything close to the devastation that Peggy saw in the war. “Wasn’t it hard back then, moving out here all by yourself, not knowing anyone?”
“Yes,” Peggy admitted, thinking of that first boat ride across to New York, back when she had still just been a raw SOE agent, before the SSR, Howard Stark, Abraham Erskine, and Chester Phillips. “I took a ship over to get to America and had to hope the Germans weren’t going to bomb us. I sailed into New York Harbor, not even sure what I would find here. I still remember coming into port into this great, glittering city floating on the water. I won’t lie; it was a gorgeous sight to see, even back then. Makes you realize why so many people immigrated here.”
“My family came through the West Coast,” she offered companionably. “They were fleeing what was happening back home. They were all intellectuals, and they were killing those, so they fled on foot to Hong Kong, then eventually over here. I think they all just saw California as a safe place to settle and not worry that you could get killed.”
Her story, so airly recounted, brought home just what political changes had occurred in the six decades - and two weeks for herself - since she stepped into this new world. “I had hoped that after the war, we would have some sort of peace in this world?”
“Peace for who?” Kam snorted before looking apologetic. “See, this is why they have me mostly working operations and not fieldwork. Hard not to have a touch of politics when you are a non-white person seeing the rest of the world but living in America.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. You should have heard me back in the day in the SSR.” Peggy had complained many times to Daniel’s sympathetic ear. “It’s why I created SHIELD. Well, Howard and I had the scheme, and we talked Phillips into it. We knew that the only way to keep things from escalating was to stand outside of the vested interests of those trying to escalate it.”
“True, and that’s why I joined, honestly. Well, that, and it was a job.” She finished the last of her meal, chewing and swallowing as she wiped her hands neatly. When she spoke again, it was with just a hint of wry melancholy. “I think we all join SHIELD hoping we can change the world for the better, but I don’t know, we keep seeming to think we can just control all the variables and that if we do, we can make it all better somehow.”
“That was certainly Howard’s thinking.” How many nights had they sat up arguing that?
“I never took the great Howard Stark, the champion of freedom of science and industry, to have an Orwellian worldview.” At Peggy’s polite confusion, she clarified. “The idea of ‘big brother is watching you’ and all of that. Controlling the life of everyday citizens to ensure some idea of a perfect order.”
“I don’t know if Howard was necessarily for that as much as he was for his idea of safety and security, honestly.” Howard had always possessed the nasty habit of believing his intellect was so brilliant that his judgment obviously could not be questioned, a misnomer she quelled again and again, often by explaining to him his serious lapses in judgment. “He had grown up poor on the Lower East Side. He saw how hard life could be and how easy it was to lose. I don’t think he ever forgot that part of himself, really, no matter how rich and comfortable he got. The idea of some outside force threatening him terrified him. If Howard was nothing else, he was a man who liked to control his destiny, and he had a horrible tendency to try to control everything around him to ensure the odds were always in his favor.”
“And you were friends with him?”
Kam’s incredulity surprised her, but then, perhaps it shouldn’t. She was a woman who grew up on the legend of Howard Stark, spoon-fed the authorized biography and whatever drivel he put out about himself. “Howard could be an ass, but outside of the womanizing, recklessness, and penchant for throwing himself in head first without thinking much of the consequences, he was a good man - or tried to be. I don’t know what he became in the decades after I disappeared.”
The other woman didn’t necessarily contradict this. Rather, she seemed to mentally take the measure of it, perhaps adding it to her understanding. “I think that Howard Stark wanted peace, same with SHIELD. I have to wonder who gets to define that. What does ‘peace’ look like? For my parents and grandparents, that looked like the chance to come to America and live their lives, not be hunted down for being smart and educated. For Howard Stark, that looked like not having to worry that someone would come and destroy everything you worked to build. I guess it’s something different for everyone.”
Peggy walked quietly beside the petite, pleasant woman beside her, quietly surprised by the fiercely introspective presence underneath the bubbly surface and friendly, helpful demeanor. "I have to say, you have pleasantly surprised me today.”
“Well, I couldn’t let that Columbia poli-sci degree go to waste managing property and requisitions for SHIELD.” She waved a hand airily, and Peggy privately wondered what the story behind it all was. “Anyway, what are the big plans for the afternoon? Catching up on 20th-century history or working your way through how to manage creating documents.”
Peggy groaned, her head already feeling overfull from all of it. “I sent my first email without sounding like an idiot today, so I suppose that is a small victory. The jury is out on document creation. As for the history, that is easy enough, I suppose, if a bit disheartening altogether. I suppose it was a bit idealistic to think that one intelligence agency could change the world and make it better.”
“It’s a nice dream,” Kam assured her with a touch of sympathy. “And hey, you did it! Some other people wouldn't have tried. For all the complicated bits, SHIELD does good work. I didn’t mean to rain on the parade. I don’t have enough clearance to know even half the secrets, but I do know of a few things they’ve stopped and prevented, ways they’ve saved all of us. I think society tends to be a bit more complicated than ideas and dreams at times. Humans aren’t just black and white.”
Something that Peggy was coming to understand more and more the older she became. “I’m rather glad I’ve gotten to know you, Agent Kam. Between you and Agent Carter, you’ve helped me get to know this time and place a bit better.”
“Cassandra,” she replied brightly just as they hit the doors of the same lobby that Peggy had stumbled into weeks ago. It took Peggy a moment to remember it was her first name. “Or Cassie, only my parents ever call me Cassandra. I figure we’ve had lunch every day this week, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”
“Well, then, if we are on a first-name basis, it is Peggy. I never liked Margaret, it sounded far too prim and proper for my liking.” She held out her hand for Cassandra to take. “And I’m always glad to make a friend.”
“I thought you might be.” Cassandra grinned, sighing wearily as they wandered past the plaques with Peggy’s ridiculous picture on them to the bank of elevators where several others stood, waiting on the lifts as well. More than a few surreptitiously slid curious gazes towards Peggy, then up to the picture on the wall and back again. She ignored them.
“Believe it or not, I’ve made other friends in my brief time here." Peggy continued the thread of the conversation they were in. "We will have to connect with them soon. I met a young man who works nearby in the Theater District. He and his partner, I think that’s the term he used, were the ones to find me that first day.”
“See, two weeks in and you already have friends! You’ll settle in here nicely!”
Cassandra Kam’s optimism warmed Peggy as she alighted on the top floor where an office had been made available to her for her use. It was a basic one by any standards, white walls, a window that looked out onto a floor of desks all huddled together in uniform matte gray rather than the honey-colored wood of the 1940s, but the effect was still the same. The office had been empty from what she had gathered, one that was set aside for visiting senior directors, with only a desk, a small conference table, and a flat, black, glass screen hanging flush against the far wall, one that the technical trainers they sent to walk her through things tended to like to use as they talked her through the various aspects of how to use the technology of today that even children understood. Peggy wasn’t an idiot by any means, and she grasped most of it, but even now, she glared at it resentfully as she opened the laptop issued to her, managing with no small amount of pride to turn on the ridiculous thing and find her way to her email with little issue.
She’d scanned through the scant offerings, mostly training modules and a message from Maria Hill responding to Peggy’s request for additional physical training on top of the technological training she’d been receiving. It hadn’t missed her observation just how that had changed in the decades as well. In 1948, few of the agents recruited for the first iteration of SHIELD had the sort of defensive training she saw in the agents in the modern era. Those who had served in the war, of course, had more military training than most, and Peggy had counted herself lucky that she had been trained in hand-to-hand tactics in the SOE well before coming to America, but in those earliest years, they had been far more interested in getting keen minds and warm bodies in the door than those who were physically fit. She had been wanting to push more of that with their latest recruits, but that had been still months off when she left. Now, she looked at the young men and women who handled themselves as agents and was left quietly despairing of even her capabilities. She’d never allowed them to fail, of course, but if her face was still hanging in the bloody lobby below, she felt that she should at least still be able to keep up with the most basic agent in the organization.
Blessedly, Hill had agreed with her and had set up time for her to train in the coming weeks at some place called the Farm, deep in the wilds of West Virginia. The idea of what it was seemed interesting, a cross between a boot camp, like Camp Lehigh, and an intelligence training facility. It far more reminded her of Beaulieu, the so-called finishing school for the SOE. She read through the arrangements Fury’s right hand had quickly made for her, the first travel she would have to make in this new existence of hers. She’d noted the most pertinent information when Sharon’s email popped onto the screen.
I found what I could. There’s a lot that is still classified, especially for Stark, but the most basic information is there. Let me know if you need anything or just want to talk.
Sharon
At the bottom of the missive were several small symbols Peggy had come to know as “attachments,” often a representation of a file folder. She traced her finger along the glass track panel on the laptop, forcing the small arrow to move to the first of the files, that for Dernier. It popped open, more symbols exploding to life, ones that, when clicked, showed records and reports, dates of his marriage and children, of cases and promotions, injuries, retirements, and eventually his passing. For the next three hours, she skimmed through the various files, never digging too deeply but getting the gist of the lives of the friends she had left behind, the people she had walked away from because Scott Lang had asked her to save the world…and because Steve Rogers lay on the other side of that request.
There was a lot of comfort in most of the files. Most of them had lived long and productive lives, working with SHIELD well until retirement age. It made her smile to think of brilliant and sardonic Falsworth and sweet, ebullient Dernier had moved on to head the London and Paris SHIELD offices respectively, both aging into graceful, middle-aged gentlemen who had settled into prosaic lives after decades of war and conflict. Dugan, for all of his idiocy, had eventually become Deputy Director of Field Operations, essentially Maria Hill’s role, then assumed the mantle of SHIELD director for a decade before a heart attack forced him to retire to Florida, where he lived out his golden years telling his grandchildren of his exploits. Morita stayed as well, delving into communications and technology, championing the growth of the new network systems that were evolving around the world, likely thick in the middle of it alongside Howard. He left to move back to California, working in the growing technology industry until his retirement, a father and grandfather many times over.
The only one who hadn’t stayed in SHIELD in the years after Peggy’s disappearance had been Gabriel Jones. That didn’t surprise Peggy when she thought about it. Gabe had always been more of a scholar than a fighter. He had quietly returned to Howard University in the early 1950s, finished his degree, and went back for more, eventually earning a Ph.D. from Yale. It surprised Peggy even less that he also became a figure in the growing push for racial equality in the United States, a position that perhaps could have cost him much in those days. He became an elder statesman in the movement and the 1960s accepted a position at Howard University, where he remained till his retirement, finally, 10 years ago. While he often consulted with SHIELD, he never returned and still lived in Washington DC, the last of the old Commandos to survive.
Those had been the happy stories
Peggy ignored Daniel’s file for the moment, the memory of that night on Howard’s balcony still too fresh and raw, choosing instead to focus on Howard’s thick volume. There was more there than she could read in a sitting; she’d be weeks perusing it, but she got the gist of some of it. He’d helped to guide SHIELD as best he could while running his own company until he was forced to bring other interests into both to help manage. Running a company had never been Howard’s forte, much less two, but he’d kept them both afloat when they could have easily failed. He’d married a woman who was a socialite, which rather surprised Peggy. She wondered who this Maria Carbonnel had been to catch Howard’s heart and forced him to finally settle down. He’d had his son late in life, and far from retiring to raise a family, he’d thrown himself further into his research and work, though it didn’t state exactly what he was up to. That he died of a simple accident on an icy road seemed almost unreal. Howard had some of the steadiest hands at the wheel she had ever seen, whether it was in the air or on the road, and the idea that a patch of black ice had taken him out seemed both tragic in the extreme and an awful, horrific irony. In the wake of it all, his company and all he built there had been left to his then 21-year-old son, Anthony, who had to figure it all out on his own.
Peggy studied the photo of this man who would be the other centerpiece of the Avengers alongside Steve. If there were any doubt he was Howard’s son, it fled looking at him. He was the image of the Howard she met so long ago at Camp Lehigh, sauntering into a meeting ridiculously late and completely unrepentant. She saw the arrogance there, as well as the ferocious intellect and the swagger Howard always had, but there was also a sensitivity that Howard never quite managed. Something about the glimmer in his dark eyes and the smirk tilting up the goatee on his face said he had a sense of humor that was very Howard-like, a certain charm that she could see would make him the same sort of celebrity. How he would end up a superhero of any sort still baffled her.
Heart aching, she set Howard aside to review the Jarvises. Unsurprisingly, their files were far smaller and a good deal more simple. They had remained in Howard’s employ until he died and after that under Tony’s, looking after the young man in the absence of his parents. They had died only recently in the grand scheme of things, Ana some seven years before of cancer, Edwin just a year ago of natural causes. That hurt, knowing how close she had been to seeing dear Edwin again, of assuring him she was all right and alive. It hurt to know he passed away, believing she had died before her time.
That thought hit her far harder than she had expected it to.
Peggy wasn’t sure why it was so imperative at the moment, only that it was. Without further thought, she shut down the computer in the unused office, grabbed the new coat and hat she’d purchased on her shopping trip with Sharon and Juan, and wrapped herself up in the sturdy wool over the functional business suit she’d worn to the office, the modern kind, dark and practical. Without a word to anyone else, she slipped out of the building.
She’d yet to manage a taxi on her own in the city, but Peggy braved hiring one for the long drive from Midtown to the Bronx, the GPS of the cemetery up on her phone, just as Cassandra had shown her how to do. She could have put it off for a better day, but for Peggy, the shots of the people who had been as close to her as family, people she walked away from, hit too close to home. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked to see what became of them; maybe it was her folly for digging too deep so soon after arriving when the memories of them were still new and the specter of them still hung so close in a city where she kept expecting to run into them. She had walked into this new life with her eyes wide open, even if it had been impulsive. She felt she needed to face the consequences of that decision as much as the benefits, to see what she had lost in the hopes of what she might be able to change.
The cemetery was sprawling, over acres of land, surrounded by the urban spread that seemed to characterize life even outside of the center of the city. The cemetery was the place where the famous and elite of New York once had their final remains buried, an oasis in the concrete and steel around them. Even wandering the large expanse, she saw here and there names that were familiar even to her, a foreigner in this land. There was a sort of sad beauty in this place, a lovely park filled with the memories of the dead. It was a mish-mosh of expression of loss; an elaborate confection of baroque grief stood beside something more simple but no less poignant memorials to those long gone. She wandered between the monuments, noting stones of people who would have been ancient even in her own time only yards away from newer stones of people who had been born after she left and died far more recently. More than a few died in the years of the war. Peggy couldn’t help but wonder if she had known any of them.
The Stark plot was in the exact middle of the cemetery, which was fitting, considering Howard’s love of being the center of attention. It was situated a bit off from others but not fenced in, and she wandered to the simple gathering of stones around a squat piece of granite that simply carried the family's last name. Peggy didn’t know much of Howard’s family. He’d been loath to discuss it much outside of the fact that his father had come from upstate to New York to find his fortunes and had failed badly at it. She knew he had sold fruit at one point, that Howard's mother had sewn shirtwaists in one of the sweatshops on the Lower East Side, and he had been a product of a Catholic education till his clear genius had won him a place in a prestigious school where he thrived. Outside of that and his friendship with the known criminal element of his rough neighborhood as a child, she knew very little of his upbringing or of the world that had produced him. She gazed curiously at the single stone that marked the graves of Walter and Elizabeth Stark. They’d lived at least till their son had grown, and both had died while he was still young, his mother dying just after Peggy disappeared. She recalled he’d built a house for her upstate, and she’d retired happily enough, only sewing for auxiliaries and church charities and not providing for her son. Perhaps it was more for her and less his father that Howard had buried them in elite company, in a plot he had intended for family.
Just below their stone sat the granite slab for Howard and Maria, so simple she hardly believed it was his. She stooped, regarding it sadly in the damp, blasted grass. He hadn’t been young when he passed, nearly seventy-five at the time of his death. He’d at least lived a full life. She studied the name of his wife, Maria. She had been younger than Howard by nearly twelve years, a fact that amused her more than scandalized her, as she’d have expected him to have shacked up with a much younger chorus girl or movie starlet. What little she had gathered on the woman who had captured her friend’s heart showed Maria was a woman of taste and class, the daughter of a New York Socialite and a very wealthy Italian-American businessman, someone raised in the rarified society that Howard had always privately resented and longed to be a part of. How Howard convinced her to marry him was a mystery, but they had in the 1960s, with Tony arriving several years later. Howard seemed to have been happy with his wife at least. All the scandalous behavior that had posed such a threat to global security just twenty years before seemed to cease. He settled down to SHIELD and his business and had become something of a venerable, respected figure in his old age. Maria must have been quite the woman to elicit that out of him.
She sighed as she brushed away twigs, leaves, and other detritus from the stones left there, likely by the last snow melt. She placed the small bouquet of lilies she had purchased by Maria’s grave before turning to Howard’s with a sad smile. The breeze picked up, and she pulled her coat a bit tighter around her as she tried not to feel foolish, standing there speaking to a piece of granite.
“Hello, Howard.” She smiled, almost hearing his irreverent drawl in her ear, the mark of his Lower East Side upbringing. “I finally came back, just like you always knew I would. I’m sorry I missed you.”
Her words sounded vaguely absurd as she spoke them, as if she had just popped by on an afternoon to say hello and he happened to be out, not twenty years dead and gone. She dug a toe of her serviceable shoes into the muddy ground, feeling nerves she was sure she would never have felt had he been alive and standing there.
“Thank you for everything you did for me, believing the insane story I told you. I knew if anyone would trust it, it was you. Of course, the tidy sum you left for me is appreciated. You didn’t have to do that, you know, I would have managed just fine on my own. I always have.”
Somehow, she doubted she would have won the argument in person.
“Anyway, the modern world is madness, but I am sure you know that. Computers everywhere, this internet that everyone is perpetually connected to, using it to fling insults and pictures of cats as far as I can tell, but I’ve only been here a few weeks, I’m sure I’ll get used to that.”
Howard like as not would have been in the thick of it all had he been alive to see it. Chances were high he probably funded a lot of what made the modern world so very connected and fast. He’d always had an eye to the future. She wondered how different his son was.
“I’ve yet to meet Anthony, by the way. I still have been trying to manage how to operate a microwave and live in a world that believed I died ages ago. Perhaps, once I’ve settled at SHIELD, I can reach out to him. I’m not sure what I will say. After all, how does one explain that I am an old friend of yours and not quite as dead as people suspected?”
She sighed, regarding the silent, flat stone, so quiet compared to his large personality. “I miss you already, and it’s only been weeks. It’s rather good you aren’t here. I would hate to think you assumed I was getting sentimental on you, but there it is. I feel you’d manage this all far better than I would. But I had to come...I know it was madness, what Lang said, but if it is at all liked he suspects...well, you know me, sitting idly by and doing nothing when I could help was never quite my style.”
What had Howard thought, she wondered, staring at the gray granite at her feet. Fury said he had tried ways of finding her, and considering he had lived and died a normal life, he never succeeded. Had she become another sad footnote, like Steve, an obsession he would trot out every so often and attempt to fix? What sort of man had he become in the end? Was he bitter over his losses? Had he perhaps gained perspective and grown from it? He’d found a lasting marriage with Maria. Had he been a good husband and father? Her one, split-moment decision now cost her the chance of ever knowing what became of him, of Edwin, of Ana, Angie, Daniel…
She hadn’t realized she was crying till she heard herself sobbing in the cold stillness, a gut-wrenching sound. It hurt as it ripped out of her and shocked her as she tried to stifle the sound against the scalding tears running down her cheeks. She’d made this decision herself; she knew the consequences, and yet, it was one thing to embrace it in the moment. It was another thing to live out the effects of it, to stare at the reality of everything that was lost in her impulsivity. Her family, her friends, the life she had known, she’d chosen to walk away from all of it out of the hope of finding Steve and somehow fixing the world. Perhaps they could fix things, or perhaps they would fail, but already it came at a price, and while she accepted that cost, it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. She stood over Howard’s grave, face in hand, as she mourned everything she’d let go, oblivious to the scant few who wandered about this cemetery at this time of day. She heard nothing save for the sound of her broken tears, missing the whisper of footsteps in the dry, brittle winter grass until there was a soft noise of a throat clearing at her shoulder.
“Hate to see anyone cry.” Fury stood beside her, holding out a tissue for her. She blinked both at him and the tissue briefly before taking it gratefully, surprised at his appearance. In his other hand, he held a bouquet that he bent to place in between Howard and Maria’s stones. He remained silent for several long, respectful moments as she put herself back together, and he paid his respects. When she’d mopped up the worst of the make-up smears and straightened her shoulders once again, he turned his head to finally regard her with his good eye.
“Thank you,” she said simply, knowing she didn’t need to say much else.
“Of course.”
She felt foolish in the moment, blubbering over the consequences of her own decisions. “I had to come and see for myself, I suppose. It seems far too strange to me that he...that any of them are gone.”
“I don’t personally know, but I can well imagine. Sort of like those people who go into comas and wake up again to find decades have passed without their knowledge.”
“Except I wasn’t asleep, it happened in one night.” She knew it when she did it, but it didn’t make it easier to wrap her head around. “I will adjust, I suppose.”
“But the mourning is real, even if the choice was all yours.” He gave her an empathetic smile. “In this line of business, we all sacrifice something. We go into it wide-eyed, thinking we know the consequences, but it doesn’t hurt any less when they come to hit us in the face.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” She sniffed softly, staring at Howard’s name in firm, block letters.
“We got lots of people for you to talk to, you know. I know therapists weren’t as approved in your time, but they do help, and you’ve seen more than most.”
She hadn’t even thought to consider it but nodded without commitment, unable to process what that even would entail. “Do you regularly come out here to pay your respects to Howard?”
“Not in a while, no.” He knew she was looking for anything to change the subject. “Used to work with him a lot when I was in the LA field office. He was in and out on various things over the time I was there, but knew him mostly from his Project: Pegasus work.”
She had no idea what that even was and imagined it was some other mad invention Howard was involved in. “Did he have a good life?’
“Mostly, from what I could tell. We weren’t best friends, but he was the richest man in America, with an entire company in his hands, and helped to run one of the world’s largest espionage organizations. I think he did all right.”
Being in charge and being happy were two different ideas, but Peggy didn’t quibble as she wrapped her arms around her middle. “So, why did you have me followed, Director Fury?”
He didn’t bother looking repentant, only reached inside his long, sweeping coat to pull out a slim, plastic object with a metal end and a plastic tab inside that. “It’s called a USB drive. You use it on a computer. On there are files for the project I need you on.”
“My first assignment?” She couldn’t help but feel a thrill at that. It had been a long time- since taking the leadership of SHIELD at its founding - since she had an assignment. She rubbed a thumb over the stylized SHIELD logo on the top. “What do you have for me?”
“I began to do this myself, but I’m in a position where too many eyes are on me, and it’s best to hand it off to someone who has all my status and skills and none of the political strings-tying her down.”
“Ahh, so now you know how I felt. And how is it at the top?”
“About as boring as when you sat in this chair, but I have to deal with about five multi-billion dollar projects at the moment and have no time for this one.” He nodded at the device in her fingers. “That is all the files I have on the Avengers Initiative thus far.”
She stared up at him, then held the plastic device up. “In here?”
He smiled. “Technology, Carter, we’ll get you caught up.”
She would have been insulted if it weren’t so true. “So, what do you have for me?”
“The proposal, mostly, the nuts and bolts. The initial idea, the proposed budget numbers, the stuff you’ll be bored with. But I also have a database of potential perspectives for the initiative.”
“And have you vetted them?”
“Not yet. Haven’t gotten too far off the ground with it. As you know, this is the sort of role where anything and everything else becomes a priority, and this got shoved to the back burner. But you’re here now, and you are tied to it, for better or for worse. You knew Captain America better than anyone, and you know who he’s worked with. If there is anyone who can build a team around him, it’s you.”
That was a lofty assumption if she ever saw one. “I didn’t build the Howling Commandos, Steve did, mostly by walking into a pub and bribing them with an open tab.”
“They still worked, didn’t they?”
They had, despite what common sense and military expertise had told her. “They respected him as fellow soldiers. What you want is a team of these ‘superheroes’. I guess that few of them have ever had to be on a team together.”
“And yet we need to somehow make them work. That’s where you come in, Carter.”
Well, if she had to earn her keep doing something. “Right, well, I suppose then I’ll have to learn how to use this...USB drive.”
“Do you know how to use a modern phone?”
“Yes,” she snapped indignantly. “Mostly.”
Fury smirked but wisely decided not to prod her further on her sensitivity to technology. “In the meantime, I’ll get you clearance to do what you need. I’ll get Pierce on it, I think it will ease his mind knowing you are handling it.”
She took note of Pierce’s involvement as she pocketed the USB drive. “Well, then, I suppose I need to prepare for my assignment.”
“I suppose you do, though I feel I should at least buy a lady dinner for her work. What are your feelings on pastrami?”
“Is it Katz’s?”
“Where else?”
A small smile tugged upwards as she saw what the taciturn director was up to. “I’m glad some things in this mad world haven’t changed from my time.”
“Carter, you’d be stunned how few things have changed from your time to this one, good and bad.” He held out an arm for her to wrap a hand around. “Least I can still be a gentleman.”
“Your mother taught you well.”
“She was a southern lady, if I did anything different she’d smack me into next week. God rest her soul!” He glanced back at the graves at their feet. “Besides, I think I owe it to Howard to make sure I keep my good eye on you.”
“Will I ever learn how you lost the bad one?” She tapped her left eye pointedly.
“Classified, Carter. When you get the clearance, you can find out.”
“Now you are begging me to look into it.”
He only chuckled as he walked with her across the brown grass, through the gravestones that marked the memories of other lifetimes and other people now gone long ago.