Chapter 20
If Howard Stark had been a man of large dreams and an outsized ego, then Stark Industries was the manifestation of all of that in real-life form. As stunning as the day had already been for her, seeing the complex that formed the heart of Howard’s industrial empire spread across acres of Los Angeles coastal land left her somewhat in awe. He had always carried on about his vision, but to see it made real reminded her just how potent a force of nature he had been when she had known him when he’d been young enough to have such big ideas and careless enough to try and create them.
“And this is the empire he left behind to his son?”
“It’s part of it, yeah.” Coulson had parked in the visitors' structure, their badges only getting them a slightly better parking spot than the press, who were beginning to stream in, gleeful in their curiosity on the state of Tony Stark. They trailed behind one reporter and a man carrying what Peggy supposed was a modern camera for television reporting, scoping out an area of well-trimmed and groomed rosemary bushes to use as a backdrop, discussing the aesthetics of those rather than the shiny front of the visitors center just meters away. With a mild grimace of antipathy, Coulson stepped around them as they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to carry on their debate. He pivoted neatly around them before continuing his thought.
“This is the main aerospace research facility, of course, where they do a lot of different sort of work, but they have others. There’s Stark Tower in New York where a lot of the non-research business is housed. There is, I believe, a computer development and manufacturing facility in San Jose, another aerospace design facility in Seattle, more research going on in Switzerland - I don’t even know what for - and some sort of partnership with a medical research lab in South Korea. That’s not including the many subsidiaries and different arms of diversification such as agriculture and food sciences, commercial and retail, architecture and design, I think he owns a few race cars and maybe has part ownership of several sports teams.”
“All this from a kid who grew up in the Lower East Side playing stickball with Joseph Manfredi.” It was nearly far too ridiculous to imagine, and yet here she was. Howard had gotten lucky winning the lucrative Lend-Lease contract during the war, making his fortune and laying the foundation for all of this. If she were honest with herself, in a million years, she didn’t think that he would ever build something like this. This begged the question of how much of this was Howard’s after all and how much of it came at the direction of Stane’s guiding hand.
“Right this way!” A helpful-looking young man with a Stark Industries badge on the lapel of his jacket waved them around the crowd of cameras and reporters, barely contained behind rope lines in the plaza, and inside into a lobby of tiles and glass. More reporters loitered, standing in front of a podium and microphone set up with no chairs to rest in. Along the parameters of the room, photographers and people with film cameras waited, adjusting their lenses to catch the optimal angle as most others herded in the middle, whispering and chattering with one another, creating something of a din inside the high, open space.
“This is friendly,” Coulson quipped, eyeing the space over his sunglasses, slipping them off to fold neatly and place in his front breast pocket. “No chairs set up, nothing prepped.”
“I imagine his team was a bit taken by surprise,” Peggy observed as she watched one harassed-looking young woman try to keep three camera people off the glass of a far window. “How long will it take for his team to get here?”
“From Lancaster? About an hour and a half this time of day, give or take.” Coulson checked his watch. “He should be here any minute.”
Peggy nodded as she studied the knot of reporters in front of her. One clump of three, two men and a woman, openly speculated on theories as to why a press conference was even called. The consensus seemed to be that it was more a stunt to prove that Stark was alive and himself so he could shake them off his back. Peggy had to admit, it wasn’t precisely a false assessment.
“Do you think he will be up to this?” Coulson was more idly curious than truly doubtful.
Peggy shrugged. “It’s his party. He has something he wants to say. I’ve never known a Stark who didn’t know how to play to a camera.”
“You still think he didn’t know?”
“I have to believe that until he’s otherwise proven guilty. Isn’t that how the courts of law work?”
“Touché,” Coulson gallantly granted her. “That said, if he isn’t?”
“You are certain he is up to things here?”
Coulson shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what to believe. Common sense says he shouldn’t be alive right now, he should be dead. Anyone else in his shoes should have been, but he wasn’t. You got to ask yourself why.”
Peggy found herself growing irritated with the question in general. “In the absence of further information, it’s wiser to withhold judgment until we get that information. To do otherwise is to condemn a man who may not deserve it at all.”
“I’m not saying you're wrong, only that the possibility exists. If it does, Howard’s son or not, could you do what needs to be done?”
Peggy didn’t get a chance to answer. Outside, there was a din of people shouting questions or just Stark’s name as the reflections of hundreds of camera flash bulbs popped in and out of existence through the glass and down the hallway. Within minutes, a surge of security and employees washed through, bringing with them the familiar tall figure of Stane, a grin splitting his face. His arm was wrapped around a thoroughly exhausted-looking Tony Stark, stumbling beside him with a wrapped sandwich in hand. Behind them, both trailed Colonel Rhodes and more of an entourage, including a tall, beefy man who stoically hovered near Stark, likely the driver who served as his protection, Hogan. They made their way towards the front as cameras snapped and people called out questions. One lone figure didn’t get swept up by the crowd up to the front, however. The tall, strawberry blonde in her trim suit and elegant shoes pulled up in the back of the room, watching the front with mingled relief, worry, and apprehension. Pepper recognized her in an instant as Pepper Potts.
“I’m going to see if I can get her attention,” Coulson whispered when he caught Peggy’s eye. “If nothing else, perhaps I can make an appointment and have her consider speaking with me.”
“She’s already been through Sharon once. You’ll have to convince her.”
“I know, but if we strike out with Stark, she’s our next bet.”
“Good luck,” Peggy murmured as Coulson cooly and quietly moved over to chat with Potts. The woman looked startled at first at his intrusion, as polite and unobtrusive as it was. Potts was a professional, though, and she listened, even if she only did so with half an ear. Peggy could tell a polite brush-off when she saw one, and Potts had perhaps the best she’d seen from an assistant yet.
“Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?”
Peggy whipped back towards the front where Tony held court as he urged all the gathered reporters to sit on the cold, tile floor in their suits and skirts, like children in a classroom. They obliged him with varying degrees of gracefulness as he sat, collapsing in front of the podium with his sandwich, Stane and Rhodes beside him. The reporters and those gathered all exchanged nervous and curious looks, tittering softly. Peggy, for her part, chose instead to simply move further to the back, to stand along the wall and wait and watch.
“Good to see you…” A hint of genuine emotion flickered under a very forced and tired mask, the muscle memory of perhaps hundreds of these types of media presentations overlayed on top of months of whatever hardship he’d had to face in Afghanistan. He paused, seemingly searching for words as he fumbled with the sandwich in the paper, looking to Stane, something boyish and vulnerable at the moment.
“I never got to say goodbye to Dad,” he murmured, though it wasn’t clear if he was saying it to his long-time mentor or the confused reporters watching him hungrily. “I never got to say goodbye to my father. There are questions I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what his company did, if he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts - or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels.”
Peggy’s heart lurched at that, remembering all too well the difference between the cocky, self-confident man portrayed on film and the man who had been her friend with all of his many faults and foibles. What man had Howard become in the decades she missed? What impression had he given his son to make him wonder now?
“I saw young Americans killed,” Tony continued, voice ringing, a world of sadness and anger under those words. “By the very weapons I created to defend and protect them. And I saw that I had become a part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”
The weight of his statement fell heavily in the room as there were flickers of glances and the click of cameras. On Rhodes and Stane’s faces, there was clear worry, and even Potts standing next to Coulson looked brokenhearted as she watched the profound grief from a man who months ago likely would never have even acknowledged something like this in his world.
“Mr. Stark,” one reporter called, holding up a hand politely, catching Tony’s attention.
“Hey, Ben!” He smiled, fondly, clearly familiar with the man, enough so to be personable. That was the trick with handling the media, one Peggy recognized, but perhaps there was a small bit of pleasure and relief in his voice as he called on the man by name, happy to just be able to do it, to see him alive.
“What happened over there?” The reporter asked with blunt curiosity, laying the reason they were all there out on the table.
Peggy felt her nails bite into the skin of her palm, her mouth dry as she watched him stop and consider, his sandwich forgotten as something dark surfaced beneath his television persona. “I had my eyes opened,” he replied, dark eyes sweeping across the small crowd. “I came to realize I have more to offer this world than just making things blow up. That is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International until such time as I can decide what the future of the company will be.”
He hadn’t finished speaking before pandemonium broke out, hands and bodies leaping up with desperate questions as beside him Stane and Rhodes looked stunned. It only took a second, however, before Stane dove in, wrapping a companionable arm around Stark as he chuckled, all pleased relief and rye bemusement as he effectively cut Stark off. “What we should take away from this is that Tony is back and he’s healthier than ever! We’re going to have a little internal discussion and we’ll get back to you with a follow-up.”
The questions didn’t stop, however, as Stane waved and smiled and Tony politely disengaged from his mentor, patting him on the back. While the crowd shouted out questions about what this would mean for the company and its profits, the future of Stark Industries, and the relationship with the US military, Stane and Rhodes attempted to bring order to the chaos. While they did that, Peggy noticed Tony ever so quietly drop off to the side, creeping towards an exit there, away from the madness.
Peggy only spared a pointed glance to Coulson as she made her way out of the front doors to follow. No one noticed caught up in the drama in the front of the room. Outside, the sea of reporters there looked up eagerly, but few recognized her, blessedly, and they soon returned to looking at their phones and chatting with each other in the hopes of catching Stark. She paused in front of them only long enough to scan the outline of the building, the fast expanse that formed the wing that Stark went down.
“Excuse me,” she called to one reporter, a youthful man who hardly looked old enough to be doing the sort of reporting work he was. “I’m afraid I got a bit turned around looking for the ladies. I was meeting my team over there, but I’m not sure what it is.”
Ignoring the fact that she lacked any sort of ID marking her as media, the young journalist seemed pleased to help, looking towards where she pointed. “Oh, that! It’s where they house the Arc Reactor. Right now they have it off limits, though, I don’t think you can get in.”
“No worries,” she trilled, imitating Sharon’s carefree slang. “I just needed a landmark for them to find me. This place is huge.”
“Of course,” the reporter smiled, flushing a little in his boyishness. Peggy was afraid if she smiled any harder, he just might faint. Instead, she moved around the crowd and the circular drive towards the space that she was sure was where Tony had gone. She was in luck as she saw it was relatively free of both reporters and security, far enough that it didn’t seem to be close to the center of the action, which was perhaps why he had chosen it to flee down in the first place.
She stepped inside, the room cool and pleasant after the bright lights of the press room. It was no less large inside, she discovered, looking into the large expanse of steel and tile into a space that housed a large turbine-like structure in its middle. They called it an Arc Reactor, and while Peggy didn’t get all the mechanics behind it, she understood enough to get at what Howard was trying to create - a sustainable, long-lasting type of energy production that would be both controllable and require no need for the sorts of fuel and resources that other forms of energy would need. It would mean no need to find uranium or plutonium, no need to have a stake in countries with oil reserves, and no need to be fighting over what precious few resources were available to them. It could mean, hopefully, one less reason for any of them to need to go to war.
It was a nice dream. She’d had that dream too, once when founding SHIELD. Like many dreams, it simply wasn’t sustainable or attainable. War came whether they liked it or not, and if she had learned nothing else in her many history lessons from her missing six decades it was that it often happened whether you wanted it to at all or not. There would always be someone else who would want it.
So much for dreams, she thought sadly as she regarded the giant structure, Howard’s life’s work. It was beautiful, she supposed, in that way that engineers found things beautiful. On the far side, studying it with the same sort of quiet regard she was, stood his son, suit jacket off, his expression unreadable. Tony hadn’t seemed to notice her and didn’t even look her way as her careful steps rang on the tile. The closer she got, the more heart-rending it was to see him. There was so much of the man she once knew in this one, from his dark hair and bright, brilliant, calculating dark eyes, to the way he stood, feet planted as he surveyed the world with a mind that wouldn’t stop. But Sharon’s warning rang true for her as well, this wasn’t Howard and she couldn’t treat him as such.
“Excuse me,” she murmured as quietly and non-threateningly as possible, given what he had just been through. She stopped far enough away not to startle as he turned to her, the sad contemplation immediately slipped into a more press-ready face, an easy smile, tight and ragged at the edges. He predictably looked her up and down, perhaps more out of habit than true interest, though he weakly tried to put on a good show.
“Normally, I would be interested, but I can’t believe I’m saying this, I just did get back from captivity for three months and I’d like to just sleep for a zillion years, so I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much company.”
“It’s a good thing I am not interested in yours,” she shot back, almost on instinct, the same tart reprove she would have used on his father. She hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but it tripped off her tongue, and far from insulting him it only seemed to amuse him and put him at something of his ease.
“Well, frankness is also appreciated, but if you’re here for an interview you’ll have to speak with Miss Potts, my assistant. I’m not granting anything one-on-one at this time...though in the future, I may be convinced.”
“I’m not here for an interview, precisely.” She ignored the subtle suggestion about convincing him, instead pulling out one of her business cards from inside her purse. “I’m here to talk with you about what happened. My name is Margaret Carter. I’m with SHIELD.”
If her name had any meaning for him it didn’t register. The name of SHIELD did. “Like the spy network?”
“Among other things,” she affirmed as he stared at the card, pondering it for long seconds.
“I’m not usually keen on being handed things,” he shrugged, perhaps as an excuse not to take it, perhaps as a brush-off. “It’s a...thing…”
Peggy only smiled, placing it then on the flat top of the railing not far from his hands. “You can take it when you’re ready.”
He glanced at it for a long moment, then back up at her, curious and guarded all at once. “What does SHIELD want with me? Don’t you guys go spy on Russian diplomats and African warlords or something?”
“Only to understand what happened.”
“I’m sure that the military has a full report.”
Peggy only smiled politely at his evasiveness. “Did you know that the Department of Defense waited a whole month to announce that you were even missing?”
He hadn’t known that. Something flared briefly, then clicked with other pieces, all coalescing into a sort of cynical laugh. “I bet that went over well with Rhodey.”
She assumed that the name referred to Colonel Rhodes. “He was the one who reached out to us. He’s a good friend. He wanted someone, anyone, to help get you back.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, finally taking her card in his long fingers, and studying it. “Special director? That’s impressive. What’s so special they have you directing?”
“What sort of employee for a secretive organization of counter-intelligence and global security agents would I be if I told you that?”
“Good point.” He flipped the card in his fingers and tucked it away into his front shirt pocket. “So they sent the big guns out to talk with me. I guess I should be honored.”
“I'm hardly that, but they do want to speak to you when you are ready.”
That gave him pause. “What, not here to give me the third degree right now? I mean, if you’re doing it, it might be...interesting.”
Peggy had to admit he was far smoother in his delivery than his father was, but she was also well used to not taking that bait. “Mr. Stark, you’ve been through a lot. I know that you know that. If I took you in to answer questions now, I’m not sure I’d get the whole story. When you are ready, though, we would like to talk to you. We aren’t here to demand answers, just to understand.”
He grimaced, unconsciously rubbing a hand across his chest as he mulled over her words. “You came out here just to give me a pep talk and tell me you’re here to listen?”
“Would you rather I have handcuffs and drag you to a holding cell?”
She could see him visibly recoil, his fingers on his chest clutching...something. There was some device there, something attached underneath the fine fabric of his clothes. But he played it cool, a tired, dry flirtatious smile trying to crawl up his face. “Well, it’s not exactly my sort of kink, but I’m game to try anything if you are. Do I need a safe word?”
Peggy stopped just short of lecturing him for being lewd. “I doubt that you are very much up to anything, Mr. Stark. That said, I am patient, but not so patient I won’t come calling again if you put it off too long. Please call.”
Behind her there was a whirring sound and the voice of Stane calling to someone else in the distance. Peggy turned to see him wheeling over on a sort of strange, two-wheel scooter, balancing perfectly even under his tall height. He recognized her in an instant as he came to a stop, something hard and curious in his polite and friendly smile.
“Director Carter, I didn’t know you were here! Surprise, surprise!” He met her with his hand extended. She took it politely as he looked towards Tony. “I see you’ve met Miss Carter from SHIELD.”
“Yeah!” Tony’s hand went from the middle of his chest to his front shirt pocket where her card lay. “We may have to have drinks sometime.”
Stane chuckled, throwing an arm around him. “I’m glad to see some things haven’t changed. You need to thank the director and SHIELD, Tony, they threw a hell of a lot of resources toward finding you. Without her, we would have given up hope.”
“I think the real person you should be thanking is Colonel Rhodes,” Peggy countered. “He raised the alarm, he reached out to us, and he gave us the information we needed to find you. Had he not it would have been a needle in a haystack.”
Tony cocked his head, something catching his attention as he considered, then smiled, a real one, grateful. “Thank you for everything.”
“Of course,” she replied. She held out her hand for him to take. “We are glad you are home. Just remember I am here.”
He nodded as he took her fingers firmly before Peggy did the same with Stane. “Goodbye, gentleman. Mr. Stark, I’m happy you are back, safe and sound. Till we meet again.”
She turned then to walk out, leaving the two of them muttering to each other as she left. She paused only once to glance back before she headed out of the door. Whatever was going on, Tony was showing Stane whatever was under his shirt, whatever he clutched when she brought up his ordeal. Stane looked both awed and worried. Peggy turned, curious but knowing her continued presence would only draw suspicion.
Once outside, she pulled out her phone to see a message from Coulson saying only to meet him at the car. Trekking past the reporters, she considered her first meeting with Howard’s son. Underneath the bravado and flirtation, all an obvious cover, she could see whatever he had been through affected him. He had the same worn and ragged look she had seen on so many GIs held for months and years in prison camps under terrifying conditions. The smiles, the suggestions, the comments, all were desperate attempts to cover it up, to prove to others, perhaps even himself, that he was fine, that he was the same old guy. The Howling Commandos all had that habit right after Azanno as she recalled. Each was a bit different, but there were little things; laughing too hard at a joke, drinking a little too much of the flowing alcohol, flirting just a little too hard. They all had been guilty of the latter, but she remembered Barnes the most as he had flirted with her, pulling out the sort of charm he might have once used in a dance hall in Brooklyn and charmed the socks of some silly girl with. But dig just underneath that bravado, there was always something tired, sad, terrified, and angry lying just beneath it. She had a feeling that was where Tony Stark currently was.
Coulson was waiting by the car, sunglasses on, curious as she walked up. “How did it go?”
“I gave him my information. We will see if he reaches out.”
Coulson arched an eyebrow at her over his mirrored glasses. “You think he will?”
“Perhaps he will, perhaps he won’t, but I don’t think now he was up for it. Give him some time to sort it out, I doubt he would have given us anything straight as it was.”
He sighed, unhappy but conceding the point. “You’re probably right.”
“How about you with Potts?”
“Much the same. She wasn’t about to give up her boss. The best I could get out of her was to set up an appointment to talk. She is quite good at what she does.”
“I have to admit, she is. Hopefully, he pays her well.” Peggy rounded the car to climb into the passenger's seat. “Did you set up an appointment?”
“Not yet, but persistence means she will meet with me at some point, if nothing else to shut me up and get me out of her hair, right?”
“One of the things I do appreciate about you, Agent Coulson, is that you are so hopeful in the face of ridiculous odds.”
“That from you, Director, is perhaps one of the best compliments I’ve ever had.”
She laughed at him as he started the engine. “Now what do we do?”
He waited till he had backed the SUV out of the space so he could exit the parking garage to answer. “We wait and hope they reach out to us. In the meantime, we move on to other objectives. I know you have a project you are working on.”
And she knew he was well aware of it. “I am and I suppose I’ll have to pick it back up. You have no interest in working on it?”
Coulson was polite enough not to openly display the doubts he had. “I think the idea isn’t wholly and completely insane, but I think that it requires a lot of factors falling into place. We’ve been gathering information on potential candidates for years, people who have special abilities who might be willing to work on a team like this, but pulling them together and building the team...that’s something different.”
“I don’t disagree. Building something like this is not easy to do. Heaven knows Phillips tried many times over during the war, and the only one that ever stuck was the Howling Commandos.” The whole lot of them were reprobates, but she had loved them for it, despite it all. They were good - very good - and just reckless enough to bend the rules when need be, to push the limits and in doing so work very effectively together. That sort of chemistry only ever seemed to happen on accident, by happenstance, something the SSR had never been able to recreate outside of the Howling Commandos ever again.
“I still can’t believe you knew them,” Coulson shook his head in awe. “Half the stories, are they even true?”
“Probably only half of them,” she theorized, not knowing what stories he had heard. “They were rather fond of embellishing their feets.”
“I’m sure,” he chuckled, pulling into traffic. “How they came together like that and did what they did, I don’t think you can catch that sort of lightning in a bottle twice.”
“No,” she admitted, softly, thinking of a smoky pub in London, of the music playing off the old piano, the men singing drunkenly, the smell of beeswax, bodies, and booze - and of course the one man she had hoped to impress that night as she wandered in. “Steve had been the one to unite them. He’d gotten to know all of them while on the march from Azzano, they had come to trust him. He brought them together on nothing more than a promise to hunt HYDRA and Nazis and many adventures along the way. They were in. He had that effect on people, being able to connect those who had usually no business wanting to unite together in common purpose.”
“I know,” Coulson’s reply was a bit on the giddy side for the normally controlled, professional man. “I watched all of his movies as a kid growing up.”
That made Peggy laugh. She had forgotten about those. “Were any of them good?”
“No, but to a nine-year-old, that doesn’t matter. They would come on Sunday afternoons on television and I’d watch them with my father.” There was wistfulness there and Peggy remembered he’d mentioned his parents had passed away when he was still younger.
“That’s a good memory to have,” she smiled at his profile as he maneuvered from the massive Stark Industries complex to the freeway up ahead.
“Yeah, well Dad watched them when he was a boy growing up in the Midwest during the war, and so it was sort of a right of passage. He was the one who loved Cap first. I suppose that’s why I like them as well. My father wanted to be like him and so did I. Unfortunately, I never did manage to get my discus technique down well enough to use a shield in battle, but I do have some pretty sweet hand-to-hand skills.”
At that, Peggy laughed outright. “That stupid shield...ahh, well that happened I think more organically than anything, Steve was the worst hand-to-hand fighter in the beginning.” Even his most basic of basic training hadn’t really fully prepared him for that, but the serum had enhanced his mental acuity so much he was able to learn with startling speed. “I believe it evolved out of his self-defense mechanisms when he was a boy getting into scraps in back alleys with Barnes. Trash can lids sometimes were at hand to fight or protect himself with.”
“One day, I’ll need to get his story from you.”
“I don’t know how much I have to tell.” She thought of him, frozen somewhere a continent away. What would he say when they found him and woke him to this brave new world? Would he be just as confused and bemused by it as she was? What will he think of it, with its computers and cell phones, its internet and interconnectivity?
Beside her, Coulson brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “About Stark, do you think he was serious in there?”
“About ending his weapons program?” That had been a shock to everyone. The weapons side of the company was at the heart and soul of Stark Industries, the core that had founded the company so long ago. It had been how Howard had made his mark on the world. “He seemed to be honest at the moment, though I think there is something to it. He saw something over there, experienced...something. You could see it in his eyes. Whatever happened, that’s what precipitated the events of today.”
“If he wasn’t aware of the sale of his arms to them, perhaps he is now?”
“Probably, and that precipitated all of this.” She considered the way he clutched at his chest while they spoke, the way his fingers tightened on something underneath the fabric. “Do you have his medical report by any chance?”
“No, Rhodes only called it in. We haven’t been able to get our hands on it, which isn’t surprising. As a private citizen, HIPAA laws would protect his information, so I doubt we would get them anyway. Why, do you suspect something?”
“I think he was more injured in Afghanistan than he has let on to the public. He has something going on, perhaps it has something to do with that. I’m not sure, but I think his desire to stop creating weapons is real enough. I don’t think the US military will appreciate that overly much, judging from Rhodes’ reaction.”
“No they will not, though he is far from the first wealthy person to have a ‘come to Jesus’ sort of moment and then to a complete 180 on his stance. The question is if it will stick or not.”
“Who knows.” Peggy wasn’t sure. Howard had destroyed all of his so-called ‘bad babies’ after the Leviathan incident, too fearful of them getting into the wrong hands. That said, it hadn’t stopped him from creating other weapons in the hope of saving the world, ones that had inspired his son to create his own that ended up in the hands of terrorists. “I suppose we will have to wait and see.”
“I suppose we will,” Coulson replied, not pleased with the answer but knowing they would have to accept it for now. Patience was the name of the game at the moment, much as they both disliked it. Either Stark would come to them or they would find some piece out that would force everything forward. Either way, for now, their main objective was done, Stark was home, safe and sound. For how long he would stay that way...that was the question. All Peggy had was that at some point he would become an Avenger, that he would become something of a figure enough to buck heads with Steve and to split them. How that happened, Peggy didn’t know.
Much like Coulson, she would have to wait and see.