Chapter 21
Unsurprisingly, weeks went by without a word from Stark.
The media had a frenzy regarding his sudden rescue and now reclusiveness. Peggy wasn’t particularly sure why they had expected him to throw himself back into the life he had once lived with its endless parties, women, alcohol, and all manner of other vices, but his lack of outrageous behavior had many theorizing that the great Tony Stark had finally had his emotional break, had cut himself off from society, that he had lost his mind!
“I’m not so sure that he is crazy,” Cassandra mused as she sat in Peggy’s office discussing it. Since Sharon’s return to Washington, the other agent had become something of a companion, often coming by simply to say hello. Peggy found she appreciated her desire to just connect. It reminded her a great deal of Angie.
Peggy paused in her reviewing of files as she glanced over the computer monitor to the screen Cassandra had been watching. “He’s not, but he is a man who has been through a rather massive ordeal. It is a small wonder he wants to keep to himself for the time being.”
“He hasn’t explained yet how he got out, has he?”
“No, not yet.” Peggy knew she had her suspicions based on the evidence Agent Burk had from the satellite images, but what had happened still was known only to Stark. “How has your life been back in requisitions?”
“Boring,” Cassandra sighed, picking at a salad dispiritedly. “I had to walk through a townhome for Alexander Pierce’s granddaughter today. She’s starting college at NYU in the fall, and he doesn’t want her staying in campus housing.”
“And he’s using SHIELD resources to requisition her a place to stay?”
“Not the worst idea in the world, considering the track record his family has had with terrorists. Her mother once was in an embassy that got taken hostage, so I think he’s a bit paranoid. And you got to admit the granddaughter of the head of the World Security Council is kind of a target; eighteen, just out of school, on her own for the first time, apt to do something stupid and dangerous.”
When put in that light, Peggy had to admit it was a fair point. “How did the world get to the point where someone’s granddaughter could be a target of kidnapping and attack?”
“Welcome to modern terrorism.” Cassie shrugged, setting her salad aside. “Anyway, it’s nice enough, a shoebox like all things are in the Village, but it is secure so she and her friend living there don't have to worry about outside threats.”
“You do good work,” Peggy assured her, knowing it wasn’t perhaps the most exciting.
“Well, if it keeps a girl going off to college for the first time safe, then I’m glad. Still, I’ve had a taste of investigative work, and I found I liked it. Working with you and Sharon, that was fun...interesting.”
“Are you thinking of transferring?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted, though she had considered it. “I mean, David and I keep talking about marriage and settling down, and having to jet set across the country all the time for work is hard on that, you know.”
Cassandra had mentioned a live-in boyfriend, an aspect of the modern world that had surprised Peggy more than it had shocked her. She couldn’t help but think of Miriam Fry and what she would have to say about the scandal of it all. Still, from the way Cassandra spoke of him, he might as well be a husband. He was a lawyer in a firm in the city, still rather junior in the position but with room to grow. Peggy had yet to meet him, but he sounded like a nice man, stable, reliable, sweet - rather fitting for Cassandra from what she knew of her. That said, that usually didn’t make for a tolerant partner when it came to a life of adventure.
“Have you discussed this with him yet?” Peggy asked, curious.
“No, not yet.” She flushed, twiddling her fork. “Work has been insane for him of late, and I didn’t want to lay possibly considering a shift in my career on him at the same time, at least not till I’m sure how serious I am about it.”
“Fair,” Peggy acknowledged. Both Fred Wells and Daniel Sousa came to mind. Both men had proposed to her without much in the way of discussion on the subject of marriage and futures, hopes and dreams. They had simply got down on one knee with a ring in hand and asked. To the first, she had immediately said yes, mostly because that was the answer she knew she was supposed to give to that question, whether she wanted to or not. To the second, she had broken-heartedly crushed Daniel, walking away from him and that life altogether. Neither of those relationships had once opened the discussion of what a future together would look like if she wanted to work in the field she was in or even how they would manage it. As much as she had cared for both men deeply, that blind spot for them both hurt to think on. It hadn’t occurred to them that the conversation was even needed.
“You should talk to him, Cassie,” she suggested, her words speaking to the regret that she hadn’t with either Fred or Daniel...or even Steve for that matter, though in fairness, they had never gotten that far. “Speaking from a world of regret, I know that this is one of those conversations that should happen. If you feel that your life is leading you towards a different path, that you want to take on a different career, then, by all means, have the conversation with him. Don’t wait until he pops the question and you find out that you both want two completely different things.”
Cassandra took her caution gracefully, if a bit surprised by it. “Speaking from experience, Peg?”
“A few times over, yes.” She rolled her eyes at the other woman’s marked interest. “Don’t be silly, remember it was a different time. It’s because of that I know that the conversation is crucial. If you don’t, you’ll end up with broken hearts and hurt feelings, and in my case, the occasional rash decision to throw yourself into a war or jump forward through time, things of that nature.”
Her self-deprecation only served to make the other woman laugh. “Honestly, if every turned-down proposal ends up with you doing something foolish on the other side, you may want to reconsider the type of men you are dating.”
Peggy made a face but chose not to comment. “If you were to make a career change, what would you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, eyeing Peggy’s computer curiously. “What are you working on?”
Peggy had a feeling that was where this was going. “On something for Fury. Why?”
“You have a nose for interesting things, that’s why!”
“You romanticize me far too much,” Peggy shot back. “Besides, there isn’t much to go on here, not yet, at least. Perhaps...we’ll see. If this turns into something more, we can talk then.”
Cassandra seemed to find this fair. “Hopefully, it does. Till then, I suppose I have to get back to picking what sort of floor tile will be cute enough for a teenage girl and yet stain-resistant for whatever spiked punch might be served at any potential apartment parties.”
“Have fun with that,” Peggy laughed, sending Cassie on her way, thoughtful. The more she delved into Fury’s pet project, the more expansive it was beginning to look. What he wanted was less a team and more an entire division, a group of people who would work together to protect against large-scale threats, not just humans with extraordinary capabilities but a support staff as well. This would require scientists, engineers, researchers, and people who would be dedicated to this outside of the normal SHIELD purview. This was much less about maintaining intelligence in streams outside of national governments and more hyperfocused on global security both on the planet and off it. This was much, much bigger than she had imagined when she said yes.
What had Fury just sucked her into?
She’d been hours more at it - admittedly trying to figure out one of the spreadsheet programs that confused and confounded her - when her phone rang. She picked it up without even looking at who was calling, more because she kept forgetting she could do that in this century. “Carter.”
“You still at the office?” Sharon pretended to be surprised by that.
“Where else would I be?” She smiled, finding she missed her niece. “How are you?”
“Back to boring analyst work,” she lamented, only half meaning that. “I figure things have quieted down now that Stark has been found.”
“For now, at least. Burk is still picking through data, and last I knew of Romanoff was in Los Angeles. But as for me, yes, I’ve moved on to other projects.”
“Fury’s pet one?”
“That would be it.” Peggy frowned blandly at budget reports and projections, her eyes hurting from the effort. “I don’t know if your modern computers make this easier or more frustrating.”
“Both,” she joked on the other end of the line. “So, it’s a holiday weekend coming up, Memorial Day. Like always, there is the family get-together. I was curious if you were interested.”
Ahhh, yes...Michael’s family. Sharon had been hinting for weeks, months even, and Peggy had skillfully danced around it till now. “How big of a gathering is it?”
“This is smaller than Christmas, just Mom, Dad, the boys and their families, Ash and her boyfriend. Aunt Maggie and her husband will be there, but none of the cousins on that side.”
It still sounded plenty big enough to Peggy. It wasn't that she never felt nervous. She often did, but she had always had the knack of soldiering on through them. Now they swarmed as she considered. She’d avoided Sharon’s polite entreaties for months, convinced that the awkwardness of it all would lead simply to uncomfortableness all around, and yet there in the back of it all sat the guilt and loss of having walked away from all of them so many years ago, leaving them behind to come to an amorphous and unknown future, where all she knew was that there would be some future, potentially world-ending event and Steve Rogers was at the other end of it. In hindsight, it sounded thin and outlandish, hardly the thing to give her nephew and niece by way of an explanation as to why she dropped out of their lives completely. Were she in their shoes, even if she did believe it, she wouldn’t necessarily buy the explanation of why it had to happen, at least not without anger and hurt? But if she didn’t go through with it, confront it, see them, she risked the same situation she had on her hands in 1948 when she’d purposely avoided all of them and walked away as if they didn’t matter.
“So you want me to fly down there?”
“I could pick you up at the airport and drive you out. My parents live out on a farm in Northern Virginia, it’s gorgeous.”
“I am sure.” Peggy felt like cotton-lined her mouth. “Harry and Maggie are all right with...this?”
Here Sharon paused somewhat. “They should be, I mean, we discussed it. They’re...amazed, confused, curious.”
In the grand scheme of adjectives those weren’t exactly happy or positive, ambiguous at best. “I am shocked they didn’t think you were stark, raving mad.”
“I think the pictures helped.”
Peggy had forgotten she had those on her phone. “What did they say?”
“Dad didn’t say anything for a long time. Maggie kept laughing and said that she had always suspected you did something insane and got caught up in it.”
Peggy wasn’t sure how she felt about her brother’s daughter making that assumption - worse because she wasn’t wrong in it. “And your mother is...all right with this?”
Sharon laughed gaily at that. “I don’t think that a full frontal assault on the house would upset Mom. She has grown so used to the strange stories from Dad about his family and their adventures that she sort of shrugged and asked when she could meet you and if you like scones. You do like those, right?”
Peggy couldn’t remember the last time she had a good one. Despite herself, she felt her eyes misty at the memory of her and Michael as children in the warmth of their family kitchen, Mrs. Jenkins making their tea complete with a warm, fresh-from-the-oven scone a piece. The memory was strong enough that she could almost smell them and she found herself smiling. “I do like them, yes.”
“I’ll let her know. She was just looking for an excuse to make them. She’s excited to meet you, and so are the boys and Ash. It’s like you told them Captain America is walking through the door.”
Give Fury time, she privately thought, not giving voice to that private longing. “I hope I live up to their expectations.”
“I think they will be disappointed that you aren’t ten feet tall and an Amazon, but you know I think they will survive.”
The more she avoided this, the longer she prolonged this, the more awkward it would get. Peggy knew this, and she had never exactly been one to ever just avoid anything. “All right, I’ll work on getting someone here in the office to help me book a flight and let you know the details.”
Sharon was excited about this, far more than Peggy was. “I’m telling you, they will be thrilled.”
“It will be good to see them again.”
“Let me know what you get set up. I got to head back, there’s a meeting in about ten minutes and I’ve got to prepare myself for two hours of boredom.”
“Best of luck,” Peggy wished as she hung up the line, staring at the phone in quiet trepidation. It had been over six decades since she saw Michael’s children. They’d been so young then, likely hardly remembering her, recalled only in hazy images and through the stories of their father years on. She didn’t know them, really, for all that they were family and they didn’t know her. For all that she got on well with Sharon, could she say the same about the rest of the Carter clan? Would they be as accepting of the sheer insanity of her existence as the rest of SHIELD seemed to inexplicably be?
“This is madness,” she breathed, sighing as she stared at the work she could no longer concentrate on. She shut it down, gathering things as she pulled together her briefcase. A walk would do her good, perhaps stopping at one of those ridiculous coffee shops Sharon seemed addicted to, anything to clear her head. She was out of the door and into the warmth of oncoming summer. This at least felt familiar to her, the growing heat of the city, not so sticky and oppressive as it would be in weeks, but also pleasant enough that one could stroll through the streets without melting. The bustle still felt the same, the business, the people wandering to and fro, the horns of the vehicles, even the smell of garbage waiting to be picked up, these things felt familiar even if everything else about it did not.
She wandered, really not thinking of going much of anywhere, looking in windows, staring at the things inside, the different types of goods that were on sale now, noting the little differences here and there, reading the bills for the various shows playing in the theaters. It was only when she was reading the sign of one building that she realized it was the very shop where Juan worked. She’d not been inside, having only ever met him outside. Curious, she entered the cool front office, greeted by a young woman at a desk with violently purple hair and a series of multi-colored tattoos up her arms.
“Can I help you?” She was pleasant enough, blinking up at her behind large, black plastic glasses, her hair in two pigtails.
“Is Juan Machado still in?” She felt so formal asking a young woman in a t-shirt and dungarees that question.
“I think so! I can go check. Are you with one of his shows?”
“Oh, no.” Peggy smiled at that idea. “No, I just was wandering by, I hoped to catch him.”
“Who can I say is asking?”
“Peggy Carter.”
She muttered the name to herself, perhaps to memorize it. “Sure, give me a sec.” She wandered into a large space that had that so-called ‘industrial’ look that many places in the city now seemed to embrace, with the stripped-down walls, covered in brick and rows of bright lights to work with. Just inside she could see a cluster of young people, all dressed in various styles of clothes, from casual to more artistic, working on what seemed to be pieces of different costumes. From the back, she could spot Juan and he cheerfully called to her, surprised to see her and pleased.
“Girl, what you doing here?”
“Was on a bit of a walk and felt like company. You up for taking a break and getting something to drink?”
“Alcoholic or no,” he grinned with a wink.
“That is up to you! Coffee or something more mellow.”
“The coffee around here is shit, but there is this great place three blocks over, it’s a British-style pub, You’ll like it!”
Peggy eyed him dubiously, but as she was the one imposing on his work day she agreed. “Very well, but so you know I don’t know why Americans serve their beer cold.”
“Because it tastes good that way and shut up,” he teased, calling back to the receptionist. “Marissa, I’m going out. You got my cell if you need it.”
“Okay,” she called back, supremely unconcerned. The casualness of this era would never fail to amuse her.
“Come on, I skipped lunch anyway and Papi is working late. I don’t feel so bad sneaking in fish and chips.” He took her arm as he led her down the street companionably, dragging Peggy into his adventure. “I know, I know, it’s nothing like London. I had the best stuff there, but this place will do.”
“In fairness, I’ve not had food there in a long time either.” It wasn’t often she felt a sudden pang for home, but she did then. This entire world was new and strange to her and the idea of London seemed a secondary notion to her behind the strangeness of New York, Washington DC, and, heaven help her, Los Angeles. Much like seeing her own family, she needed to be brave and go to London, wander its streets again, relearn the city of her birth and what it made of itself after the war.
Juan chattered to her the entire way of the costumes he was making, apparently for a new show starting in the fall, only stopping when they got to a sign that proclaimed itself as “The Boar and Stag,” beaming proudly as he held open the door. “I swear it smells like a pub in England.”
In fairness, he wasn’t wrong, if you meant that it smelled heavily of fried foods and spilled ale. Other than that, the resemblance wasn’t as strong as one might think. It was of course done up in the sort of dark woods and low lighting that characterized many a public house in Britain, but therein the similarities ended. The large screen televisions covered in seemingly endless games of football were completely modern and felt very American, as did the walls covered in advertisements for any and all European beers they could get their hands on.
They settled in a booth, a young woman in a very tight t-shirt with the establishment's name emblazoned across the front of it passing them plastic-covered menus. “What can I get you?”
“Do you have any porters?” Peggy was less than hopeful but felt worth the asking.
To her surprise, the woman smiled brightly. “We do. Would you like a pint or larger?”
They had larger than a pint? “A pint will do?”
“And you, sir?”
Juan had zeroed in on what he wanted. “I’ll take your wheat beer and fish and chips, stat!”
“Of course, anything else?”
“No,” they chorused as she nodded, taking their menus.
“I’ll get that in for you,” she assured, cheerfully, wandering off to leave them with the football on the screen across from them. That was another difference between her time and this, just how powerful and how wealthy sports in all their forms had become. She had known, of course, that the boys had all been mad about baseball and boxing, but now it was so many other sports. The idea that football of all things would be so outrageously popular all over the world...save for here in America where they had their version that Peggy had never paid attention to.
“You a big fan?” Juan observed her studying the screen and she shook her head, chuckling at his assumption.
“No, not especially. My brother liked it well enough, but he was more a rugby man from his school days.”
“It’s the one thing Lolo and I could agree on. We spent so much time watching matches.” His smile was full of fond and exasperated wistfulness. “Family, right? Sometimes they make you crazy.”
“Yes,” she murmured as their server returned with their drinks, cold as Peggy predicted, but she put up with it as she pulled it closer. “Are you close to yours?”
He gave the sort of half-shrug, half-wince that indicated that he was somewhere in the middle. “Yeah, I guess. I was raised mostly with Lala and Lolo, my grandparents. My mom was in and out of jail for a bit and had a rough time. She got straight and sober, though, but it was some religious program she used, so having a gay son was I guess God’s punishment to her for being a drug addict or something.”
He said it with all the casualness of discussing a particularly bothersome person at work, but there was something undeniably painful there despite his perpetually light and fun-loving manner. “Did she just abandon you?”
“Abandon, no, I sort of wish she had. She tried to pray the gay away for a while, but I ran away and stayed with my grandparents and Lala told her if she couldn’t stop being an idiot she couldn’t have her son back, so I stayed with my grandma. Seriously, my abuela is an angel if you meet her. Mean as hell if you cross her, but mostly just the kindest person. She made sure I was fed and taken care of and that I saw all my cousins, so I had a good family life despite it all. Lolo wasn’t so sure of my sexuality, I think, but he used his pension to help pay for design school, which I suppose means he cared.”
The vagaries of sexuality and how much more open and discussed it was in this modern world still left Peggy feeling a bit off her feet, unsure of how to proceed. “Have you spoken to your mother since?”
“Christmas and birthdays, mostly because she’s at Lala’s and we have to put up with each other. I keep expecting her to bust out holy water or something, and sprinkle me with it, but she usually behaves herself in front of Lala. All I’m saying is that’s a lot of talk coming from a woman who spent twenty years in and out of prison because of heroin and crack cocaine, but what do I know?”
Whether he knew it or not, Juan had put her family angst into perspective considerably. “I suppose families are a chore whatever situation you are in.”
“Right? At least you and Sharon get along! How is she doing? She sent me a message last week but I’ve not chatted.”
“She’s fine. Busy with work.” She ran a finger along the rim of the pint, skimming the foam there. “I am supposed to be going over the weekend to see the family, myself. It is the first time I’ve seen them in quite a few years.”
“Really? Wow, I thought you and Sharon seemed super close.”
“We have come to be,” she tactfully clarified, dancing around the truth. “Especially recently, but I’ve not seen the rest since we were all a bit younger.”
“So this is one of those awkward family reunion type of moments. I know those!”
“I’m sure you do,” she chuckled, thinking of his familiar anecdote. “I’m debating on how to best proceed with it. I have to face them sometime, but...there is a lot of baggage with that family history.”
“Isn’t there always? Seriously if you don’t have baggage from your family, then they aren’t doing it right.”
A cynical, but perhaps realistic viewpoint on it all. “Does Julio have the same sort of baggage you do?”
“He’s got his own, I guess, but nah. He grew up in the most white-bread, middle-class family you can get for a Latinx kid. His mother is a doctor, his father is a lawyer, his older sister is a surgeon, and his younger brother is a teacher in an inner-city school. Like, he’s the black sheep of the family working in city government. When he came out as gay, his sister was like ‘It’s about time you figured it out’ and then said everyone was waiting for him to catch on to it and they moved on like it was nothing. When he told me that I was like ‘Seriously, no one said a thing?’ His mother loves me, though, she’s adopted me.”
“That’s good,” Peggy chuckled, thinking of her many friends whose in-laws were not so wonderful and understanding. “I don’t know what my family will be like. I wasn’t particularly in close contact with them before I...started working for SHIELD and I’m afraid I let my work rather get in the way of it.”
“I understand, it’s easy to do. But, you know, if they are like Sharon, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Hmmm,” she sipped from her beer, dark, bitter, tasting faintly of chocolate. It wasn’t horrible, she realized, and it made that longing she was feeling ache just a little more, the memory of home.
“How is it?” Juan eyed her drink with the sort of mild curiosity one might do a slug on a plate.
“Tastes not entirely dissimilar to what I remember. Perhaps a bit more...chocolate?” She hadn’t remembered that flavor. “It reminds me of stuff my father would sneak me when I was little when he thought my mother wouldn’t find out.”
“Did she ever?”
“No,” Peggy laughed, before reconsidering. “Well, maybe, my father was always dragging me off to something she deemed unladylike but she rarely stopped him.”
“Oh, she was one of those British moms, with the pinky sticking out and everything.”
“Oh, very much so.” Amanda Carter had grown up in the fading glory of the old empire. She’d learned how to curtsy and drink tea and walk straight and all the other horrible things they made girls do in the early 20th century. “My grandfather on that side was a vicar, a rather boring man from what I understand, and her marrying a man-in-law was something of a disappointment to my grandmother who had hoped for at least a landed gentleman or wealthy businessman, if not a lesser aristocrat.”
That caused Juan to choke on his beer, eyes streaming at the notion. “That’s some straight up Jane Austen shit right there! You can’t be serious!”
“As a heartbeat, they always despaired of me. I was always off climbing trees and chasing my brother only to try and beat him up. I suppose I was the black sheep of the family, you could say. I do, at least, know how to hold a proper cup of tea.”
“Well, if you have to have life skills,” Juan teased as the waitress returned with his giant plate of fish and chips with a side of almost neon bright, green peas that looked so shocking against the white and golden colors on the plate as to seem unreal. “Oh, yeah, help yourself, I will not eat all of this.”
Peggy experimentally snagged a chip to nibble. It wasn’t very different from any other American fry, to be honest, and she finished it to be polite, but decided to stick to her porter. Juan ignored her as he savored a perfectly golden chip with salt and vinegar.
“Fat and potato is my idea of heaven!” He sighed happily, picking up another. “So, you are the black sheep and now you are here in America and trying to figure out how to approach all of them after you’ve been ghosting them for a while. Is that your problem?”
He sussed it out succinctly enough, she supposed. “I’m supposed to be meeting the American family and it has been some time. I don’t know how well it will go and that worries me.”
“Sounds like every family reunion I have.”
“It doesn’t stop you from going?”
“No,” he shrugged, chewing thoughtfully. “No, I mean, everyone’s family is different. I have some friends whose families are the worst, straight-up toxic, and I told them they need to get the hell out. But being alone isn’t good either. Family is what you make it, but you got to make the effort to make it.”
Long ago, or perhaps not, Mr. Jarvis had said something similar, chiding her for trying to take the weight of the world on alone. “Sometimes it’s just easier to be by yourself.”
“You can think that, but then you wouldn’t be sitting in a pub with me on a Wednesday afternoon drinking beer, now would you?”
She could only laugh as she supposed he had a good point. “If you want to call this a pub, that is.”
He rolled his eyes, chewing around breaded fish. “I know, I know, it’s not a London pub, no ‘blimey’ or ‘govanah’ or ‘bobs your uncle’.”
His affected accent made her cringe. “Why can Americans never sound British?”
Juan was far from sorry about how horrible it sounded. “Why can’t Brits sound American?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Peggy replied smoothly, pulling up a Brooklyn accent from that part of her that had spent too many nights sleeping rough in the wilds of Central Europe listening to Steve and Barnes trade stories and insults with one another. “I think I do all right when it comes to accents, on account of working for an organization that makes me use them every so often.”
The fish on Juan’s fork fell to the plate with a soft plop, his mouth agape and eyes wide. Peggy smiled widely in satisfaction, sipping from her drink, which was now becoming an acceptable temperature for porter consumption. When he finally pulled himself together, he shook himself, closing his mouth with a snap. “You know, I have actresses who don’t pull that off so good as that. How did you do that?”
She shrugged. “Spy secret, if I tell you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Really?”
“No, I was a gifted mimic in school and always had an ear. It’s how I managed to make off with my headmaster’s best alcohol and a pair of his wife’s knickers.”
“Wait, what?”
“Finish your lunch, Juan, and I will tell you a story of my misspent youth.”