Chapter 32
Waiting did not come naturally to Peggy.
On the vague edges of her memory, she recalled a moment from her very young childhood, so far back she couldn’t even be certain it was as much a real memory as much as a pastiche from stories her mother and brother had regaled her with. It had involved a formal tea, or so she recalled it, with people gathered in smart clothes and in a frock she detested. Her mother had made her promise that if she behaved like a lady and managed to neither embarrass herself in front of the guests nor stain and tear her dress, she would be allowed the cake she had been begging for. The rest of the details remained unclear, but she did recall an interminable hour of sitting on a chair as hard as steel, desperately trying not to swing her legs or pull at the ribbons that lined the hem of her dress, too focused on being miserable, bored, and itchy in starched cotton, forced to sit so still. The minute her mother gave her leave, however, she had grabbed a slice of cake off the table and, with a war whoop, tore out into the garden, all propriety forgotten, eager to be free with her prize. According to Michael, she’d climbed a tree in 15 seconds, flashing the church ladies' gardening circle with her knickers as she went. Peggy wasn't certain he had been a reliable source, but she did recall the utter joy of getting what she wanted and the rush of the immediacy of it.
She could be patient when she had to be, but at the moment, holed up as she had been for several days in their gilded hotel, she was less than happy about it. Stark was proving maddeningly elusive, Stane had yet to return, and despite Coulson’s best efforts, Potts had yet to budge on their meeting time. Indeed, she seemed to be wrapped up completely in Malibu, which seemed to indicate she was in on whatever Stark’s schemes were.
She felt like she was six once more, watching the hands tick by on her mother’s antique china clock sitting on the mantle.
Perhaps there was a certain amount of irony that she was currently sitting having high tea under hand-carved ceilings, an echo of a refined, Spanish style, with hints of Morocco and the Mediterranean. The tea itself was a delight, perhaps the first truly good cup she had had in this modern era, and the cakes and sandwiches were delicious enough, certainly better than she’d had since she left England for good. While it wasn’t as spot on to her mother’s sort of delicately planned spread, it was reminiscent enough to remind her of those long afternoons, knees bouncing nervously as she tried to patiently sit through the adults meeting and chatting with each other about boring things.
“You know, I should have thought to look for you here, but somehow, this wasn’t the place I went to first.”
Peggy had to give it to Coulson. It was perhaps a bit too stereotypical, but she had come more out of a need for comfort and something familiar than anything else. “Come, sit, have a cuppa.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a scone.” Coulson slid into a chair, eyeing the small tower with its goodies with dubious curiosity. “Or sandwiches cut into triangles, for that matter.”
“The chicken salad is a treat,” she recommended, flagging down a server for another cup and saucer.
Coulson neatly plucked a sandwich off one of the serving plates, studying it like he would a piece of evidence. “Why do they have to cut it so small?”
“I asked my mother the same question. She said it was because ladies like delicate things and told me not to stuff my mouth with three of them.”
That made the other man laugh as he popped the whole thing into his mouth just as the server returned with the requested cup. Peggy took it carefully, glancing at him. “How do you take it?”
“Take what?” he asked, seemingly satisfied with the first sandwich enough to try another.
“You’re tea,” she smirked, pouring amber liquid inside. “Everyone has a preference, usually.”
“I like it...Hot, I guess? Sometimes, I iced when it was warm out. Is this salmon and cucumber?”
“Yes,” she replied, passing the untouched cup of Darjeeling over, wondering vaguely if he was going to question every item on the tray. “You aren’t a tea drinker?”
“Not as such, no. You would think I would be, growing up in Wisconsin, which gets bitter cold, but it was hot chocolate, coffee, or nothing.” He sipped from the cup, found it palatable at least, then set it down again. “I can’t imagine you’ve had a proper one of these in a while?”
“No,” Peggy affirmed, sipping her own with a hint of sugar and lemon. “I don’t think since before the war. Once it started in earnest, most of this stuff was harder and harder to come by with rations. Still, my mother was fond of them. She had all of her groups she held them for. I found them deadly dull but was in it for the nibbles.”
Coulson helped himself to a tiny cake with more trust than he showed the sandwiches. “My grandmother used to do that sort of thing, I think. She had sets that she left to my mother. I think I packed them away somewhere, thinking maybe I could give them to a cousin or something, but haven’t gotten around to it.”
“You don’t have a sister to pass them on to?” It occurred to Peggy that for all that Coulson knew of her, or at least officially knew about her, she knew precious little about him. She’d worked alongside this man for months and hadn’t bothered to learn much beyond his name and his function in SHIELD.
Coulson didn’t seem bothered by this fact. Instead, he seemed pleased she cared. “Nope, I’m an only child.” Something a hint forlorn at that idea underlined his shrug. “That was what it was. Had my parents, though. Dad died just after I graduated high school, Mom passed after I started SHIELD.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, but it hit Peggy how alone he was. “I’m so sorry!”
Coulson seemed to take many things with an equanimity that Peggy never could muster. “It’s all right. I mean, Dad was a hard blow. He coached my baseball and football teams and taught me how to fix cars. After Mom got sick...well, I was just happy they were together.”
It was the sort of thing Steve said about his parents on the rare occasions he would talk about them. “And you don’t have any other family?”
“Well, the cousins. A couple in Milwaukee, one in Des Moines, and another in Minnesota, I think, all my Mom’s family. We drifted apart after she died, and I took up SHIELD. Working in espionage is hell on a family life.”
“Tell me about it,” Peggy agreed, thinking of Sharon, Harry, and the strain on their relationship. “Still, it has to be hard.”
“Sometimes,” he admitted with just a soft smile. “But, you make friends and connections in the work, and then you occasionally meet people.”
The hint of a flush on his pale cheeks spoke to hidden shyness she had not known in Coulson. Like a schoolgirl yearning for gossip, Peggy grinned at him. “Is there someone you’ve met?”
She hadn’t been aware Coulson could get this discombobulated, even around herself. He avoided answering for a moment by polishing off the tea in his cup, which Peggy promptly filled. “Someone...she lives out here... out on the West Coast, that is. Currently, she's in the Bay area.”
“I see,” Peggy replied amiably, but couldn’t help the hint of delight at that. “Is she a member of SHIELD?”
“No,” he was quick to answer, shaking his head. “No, she is a civilian, which is a highlight. It’s a bit easy to be isolated working in an organization like ours.”
That was the truth, Peggy silently admitted, and had been since even its SSR days. “It’s always easier to be close to those you went to war with.”
“I suppose, when you put it that way, I can see it. Still, she’s just a normal person. Plays cello with a local philharmonic.”
“I didn’t take you for a lover of classical music.”
“I wouldn’t say I was, but my knowledge doesn’t go much beyond the basics, admittedly.” It was a rare moment seeing Coulson so quietly bashful. “Anyway, when I get a chance, I go and see her.”
“Good for you,” Peggy enthused, surprised by how pleased she was by the idea. “The many layers of Coulson I am getting to see. You’re opening up like a flower.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” he chuckled, eyeing her curiously. “So now that you’ve been here, what, nine months already, what is it about this time that you’ve liked the most and what have you felt was most difficult?”
It wasn’t a question that surprised her, but it made her think as she leaned back in her cushioned seat and considered her life since she walked away from Howard’s party months ago and followed Scott Lang down the rabbit hole. “Well, I won’t lie, the world has been mad since I stepped into it, but I wouldn’t be where I am if I wasn’t adaptable. Some things are familiar, I suppose. Honestly, it isn’t as if the lot of you invented sex, drugs, and violence in the 21st century.”
“Good to know,” Coulson smirked over the rim of his cup.
Peggy continued. “The technology has been a massive change, but not insurmountable. I suppose that must be Howard’s influence on me. I’m rather used to odd bits of electronic gizmos being thrown at me and told to accept them. I do admit, however, that the phone situation you all find yourselves in is both alarming and highly addictive.”
“I remember when phones were still attached to wires in the wall, so I think I side more with you on that argument.”
“Yes, well, I do see why people love their smartphones.” Peggy had pointedly left hers in her room, which was part of why Coulson hadn’t been able to find her. “I think the one thing I find alarming is just how fast everything is. Things move at the speed of light; news, information, people, things. Do any of you ever stop?”
“When we sleep?” He chuckled, leaning back in his chair, lazy and relaxed. “Honestly, I wouldn’t know any different?”
“You don’t do anything to just slow down? Take a breath?”
“Sure! Read a book, tinker on my car, watch a ballgame.”
That was something she was familiar with, having spent so much time around American men and their fascination with sport. “Who is your team?”
“Depends on the sport!” Of course, he would like more than one, that seemed to be the way of many men she knew, even in their 40s. “My dad coached football, so I played that for a while. He loved Green Bay and the Badgers. My first love was baseball, though. Played all through childhood, from Little League up through college. I was a kid when they put a baseball team in Milwaukee, so you could get tickets for cheap, and every summer for years my dad and I would go to games.”
He spoke with the same idyllic longing that she had heard from many a GI, most especially Steve and Bucky. Even Howard had waxed poetic on the game. Something about it seemed to hearken to a simpler time, one far away from the pace and danger of the lives they led, something that made them feel like boys. It was the only thing Peggy could guess as she would listen for hours to the Howling Commandos carry on about their teams, throwing back statistics and jabs, a game of friendly rivalry as they tried to one-up each other in their love and affection for their favorite players and positions.
“I know little about the game,” she admitted. “Back when I worked in the SSR everyone there seemed to love the Yankees, I believe. Certainly, if one of them was mentioned a whole debate would start in the middle of the bullpen that would last for hours. I might have seen Joe DiMaggio once?”
She might as well have said she saw Jesus once for the look on Coulson’s face. “DiMaggio? Like...the real one?”
“Was there a fake one?” Her teasing only served to make him stare at her more.
“Like...how?”
“A nightclub I was at, investigating one of Howard’s stolen items, a formula for an explosive that made the atom bomb look like child’s play.” Why he had ever thought of these things, Peggy would never understand. “In any case, it seemed to be all anyone could ever talk about.”
“DiMaggio,” Coulson breathed, running a palm over his head in amazement. “I mean...I suppose I forget you are from that time, that period.”
Peggy could only chuckle at his seeming awe. “I know you got into SHIELD because Fury pursued you. I know you looked up to Steve. I know you even liked that ridiculous radio show I detest. What don’t I know about Phil Coulson?”
That caught him even more by surprise than the fact she may or may not have once met Joe DiMaggio in person. “I mean...my car can fly.”
Well that was...unexpected.
“Like one of Howard’s silly cars?”
“Exactly like that, mostly because it is one of his cars?”
Now Peggy did stare at him. “He never got one of those things to work!”
“No, he got exactly one of those things to work...well, work well enough that only he drove it. I have it now, a '62 Corvette, tricked out and everything. No one knows, of course, it’s anything more than just a regular car, but…”
“How did you get it?”
“My father did.” There was a memory there, something bittersweet. “Dad loved cars, loved tinkering with them. That’s what he’d do on his off time. He was the one who taught me. Anyway, he taught high school history when he wasn’t coaching, and he somehow knew a guy who did archiving for SHIELD. They were cleaning out a warehouse somewhere, upstate New York I think, and there she was in mothballs. Had been for a decade or better, but still beautiful. SHIELD couldn’t use it, Howard Stark had settled down into married life by then and didn’t want it, so they were going to auction it off at a sale with some other generic things. I guess Stark had forgotten, or neglected to tell anyone, that it was one of his flying cars. Dad didn’t figure it out till he got it home to Wisconsin.”
He paused to laugh at the idea of it. “Oh, man, was Mom upset! She hadn’t wanted him to buy the car in the first place. He didn’t dare tell her about it being a flying tank.”
Peggy could only blink, stunned herself that such a thing had been carelessly set loose on the world...again. “Honestly, Howard couldn’t keep track of half of his made creations out there. Someone could have been killed!”
Coulson didn’t deny this. “I mean, yeah, but none of the artillery was working then. I think he’d had sense enough to dismantle that before mothballing it.”
“Well, thank heaven for that,” Peggy snarked, wondering if she would continue to find the detritus of Howard’s maniacal genius floating around the world until she died.
Coulson was unfazed. “Anyway, we spent years, Dad and I, putting that thing together. Even figured out how to make the repulsors fly again, which you can never tell Tony Stark we ever did.”
Peggy wasn’t sure she knew what a repulsor was, but she highly doubted Stark would be jealous. If anything, he’d be far more curious about how they did it. “And no one caught on to the fact you had a flying car.”
“Nope, save my mother.” He was pleased with that. “I had the car out here for years when I was located in this office, but she’s back in DC now. I’ll show her to you sometime if you like.”
It was a moment of simple connection with the man, him offering something that had value to him in friendship, and as flippant as Peggy would like to be about both it and her fear of any of Howard’s more outlandish creations, she found she couldn’t. “If you and your father fixed it, I’m sure I won’t die in it then.”
“I’ve yet to kill anyone in Lola. Maybe I contemplated rear-ending someone who nearly dinged her paint job, but thought better of it.”
“Phil Coulson with an uncharitable thought?”
“I have plenty of those, Director. I lived in the Valley, briefly, when I did work out here. That was enough to try anyone’s patience.”
Perhaps that explained why they were in such a fancy hotel at the moment after all. “And look, you with a flying car who could get around car jams.”
“Only once or twice and when no one was looking.”
They fell into companionable silence as a server came to collect their tea things. Peggy watched it go with a hint of forlorn sadness, something that stuck her profoundly. “I miss my mother.”
Coulson, who had been finishing off a cake and checking his phone discreetly paused, having not been paying heed. “I’m sorry?”
“My mother,” Peggy qualified as she folded her linen napkin neatly. “I miss her. I don’t think it hit me till just now how much I did.”
She had spent so much energy resenting the differences between them, the misunderstandings that she and her mother had always had, that it hadn’t occurred to Peggy just how much she also missed the woman whom she had always bucked heads with. Not that Peggy would have ever accused Amanda Carter of not loving her daughter. She knew without a shadow of a doubt she did love her, but their mutual personalities had been so very different. And yet, she had been the woman who taught Peggy the value of patience, of bidding her time and waiting for the reward to come to her, of keeping up appearances in public even if it was the last thing you wanted to do. Her mother had given the tools that proved a greater value to her in her chosen profession than she ever knew.
“I was just thinking,” Peggy explained at Coulson’s quizzical look. “You and your father and the car...I hated my mother’s awful tea parties, and yet I learned a lot. I don’t think I gave her enough credit for that. I suppose it had to be difficult having a daughter who was so completely out to bend and break every rule put in front of her, but when you are in it you don’t appreciate the headaches you give a parent. I’m sure you and your father had your differences.”
Coulson’s tight nod confirmed that observation. “I can’t tell you how badly I hated working on that car.”
“See,” Peggy laughed, lightly. “But it taught you patience and perseverance.”
“And how to keep her in tune, even after all these years.” He regarded her, thoughtfully. “Do you regret what you did? Jumping forward in time, coming here and now, to a world that is so new and strange?”
“It’s not as strange as all that,” Peggy shot back. “I don’t know, most days I keep myself far too busy to think about it. I suppose I assume if I keep myself busy and motivated, then I don’t think about the loss too much. When I’m caught, waiting, staring at a clock I think about all the things I could have been doing...all the things I missed.”
“Would you go back, if you could?”
Peggy had thought of that too. In the safe in the posh flat she had in New York, overlooking Lincoln Center, was a device she knew Tony Stark would create in a few years, one that as of now she couldn’t operate because the particles needed were in the hands of Hank Pym, who was off the grid somewhere, speaking to no one. If she could get her hands on one of the particle tubes, she could take the other and go back in time, to where she belonged, maybe even find Steve then. But, if she did, what would become of Scott’s family...of Thanos...of half the world…
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” She chose to be evasive instead.
Coulson seemed to sense that she had no certain answer to that and chose to let it lie. “We are glad to have you. Whether you realize it or not, your work here is valuable.”
“I believe it’s certainly valuable in trying to save one Tony Stark,” she replied. “Any word yet on Stane’s return?”
“Not from Natasha, no. Has his assistant contacted you back?”
“After I upstaged her so dreadfully when last I saw her? No, she hasn’t. I can only hope he remembers I’m in town and reaches out.”
“Till then, I suppose we are stuck here, twiddling our thumbs.”
Peggy very much hated waiting.
“You used to live out here, correct?”
“Until ten years ago, yeah.”
“Good,” she nodded firmly, gathering herself together. “I’ve not been in Los Angeles in sixty years. I might as well take Sharon’s advice and learn this new world.”
It took Coulson five seconds to realize what she was getting at. “You want to go play tourist?”
“Isn’t that what everyone who comes to Los Angeles does?”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t think we have time for Disneyland.”
“Come along,” she called as she marched out of the gorgeous room, intent on gathering her things. “If I have to wait for Stane to come to me, at least I can keep myself occupied while doing it.”
If she had to wait in this infernal chair, she swore to herself, then she might as well get a goddamn piece of cake.