Chapter 34
Peggy would have never suspected that Coulson had fire in him.
“Stane has eyes and ears in SHIELD, and that is a problem.” The glare he shot Hill over the video call could have melted the screen. How Hill was unphased by it all, Peggy would never know.
“It’s hardly like Carter’s status is a well-guarded secret.” Hill was unperturbed. “We haven’t precisely made huge efforts to hide it.”
“Maybe we should have,” Coulson snapped.
Peggy, the subject of this spat, merely frowned in annoyance between the two. “You would think I would have some say in this matter rather than the pair of you fighting over me like I was your favorite toy.”
Coulson at least had the grace to look embarrassed. Hill only gave him a pointedly triumphant look. Peggy shook her head at the two colleagues and paced the space in agitation. “All right, Stane has connections in SHIELD, we should have anticipated the potential, given the connections he does have. He doesn’t know who and what I am, but that doesn’t particularly matter. What does matter is that he believes he can use what he thinks is going on to force SHIELD into the assurance of non-interference. In exchange, he says he will spare Stark’s life.”
“Do you honestly believe he is going to do that?” Hill queried doubtfully.
“Oh, not in a million years. I think he will wait long enough to assume we aren’t looking, then make it happen in a way that appears like an accident. I imagine if he drives Stark from his own company, he will be doing plenty of things Stane could use as cover. The point is that we need to act sooner rather than later.”
She turned on Coulson. “We need to get to Stark. When do you meet with Potts?”
“Tomorrow, we have an appointment later in the day.”
“Any way you could move that forward?”
Coulson rolled his eyes. “It was hard enough getting it at all. Potts doesn’t know us, certainly doesn’t know me, and is inclined to avoid anyone she thinks wants to pester Stark.”
Peggy considered. “Any way we could get to his house and get him to listen?”
“Doubtful,” Hill surmised from her end of the conversation. “His house isn’t easy to get to and is rigged with the best security system in the world, run by that AI of his.”
“We couldn’t...what’s the word you all use...hack it?”
Hill shrugged. “We could for a little bit, but then you’d have to get Stark to listen.”
Therein lay the rub. “All right, how about getting a message to him?”
Hill was aiming to rain on every idea she had. “Stark’s not been seen in months and has been taking no messages, even from friends. The advantage of being as rich and as powerful as he is is that he can get away with doing that. I’m afraid Coulson’s the best bet.”
Peggy hated that answer, but it was where they were at.
“Why does he have to be so bloody impossible to talk to?” she muttered, spinning on her heel on another circuit. “Maybe if we get Rhodes?”
Coulson negated that. “Rhodes put his neck out enough with the military reaching out to us the first time. He’s not going to take our calls.”
“His best friend and he can’t pick up a phone for him?” All of this seemed ridiculous and over the top. Stark was one man. He shouldn’t be this hard to get a hold of. “Maybe I could drive up there. I did threaten to come talk to him if he didn’t speak to me first.”
“He’d likely just have you arrested as a security breach, gets you nowhere,” Hill offered, empathetic at least. “Potts is what you got right now. Honestly, Carter, she is one of the few people I know who can get Stark to listen.”
They were right. She hated it. “Right, well, let’s hope your powers of persuasion are up to snuff, Coulson. Certainly, I’m all out of options.”
“I'll do my best.” He drummed his fingers against the tabletop in front of him. “Why not just stop Stane ourselves?”
“Arrest him?” Hill snorted as if Coulson’s idea was the silliest she had heard. “With what evidence?”
“We have the communication trail.”
“That we can’t definitively link to him.”
“He confessed to Carter!”
“Hearsay at best. You know in a US court of law that’s never going to hold up!”
Peggy sighed bitterly, knowing the other woman was right. “He does have the advantage there. Everything we have on him is through guesswork and deduction, with no hard evidence that links him outside of what he admitted to, and even that is a game of he said/she said. We arrest him now without a strong link to the communications, and we are only tipping our hand to Stane that we don’t plan on supporting him. The minute his lawyers spring him, he’s likely gone and out of the country.”
“So I suppose we just, what...hold tight?” Coulson didn’t like that one bit. In truth, neither did Peggy.
“What could Stane possibly do in twenty-four hours,” Hill asked with the sort of philosophical hopefulness that almost begged for something to go wrong.
“Let’s hope not a lot,” Peggy muttered fatalistically. She didn't think they were that lucky.
Their call ended. She eyed Coulson from across the conference area. “How could SHIELD keep Tony so far off their grid that they let this happen?”
For all that, this was an old argument on her part; Coulson, for his part, didn’t look like he would contradict the point that deeply with her. “Howard didn’t want him in.”
“Stane knew Howard was a part of SHIELD, for God’s sake, and no one could bother to reach out to Tony, tell him that his father helped to build this organization, and at least offer to work with him to ensure he wasn’t pursued by the ghosts of his father’s past? Howard has plenty of them, and it’s a small wonder none of them came up before now.”
“I don’t disagree, but it wasn’t my call.” Coulson threw up his hands, looking as frustrated as Peggy felt. “That was Howard’s call long ago, and after him, it was SHIELD policy; keep the hands off his kid.”
“And look what that got him?” Peggy flung back, angry with Howard, SHIELD, Fury for going along with the stupid policy, Stane, and even Tony to an extent. His self-absorption was as much to blame for the predicament he found himself in as anything else. “SHIELD should have caught this long before it got to this point.”
“Maybe it could have, with a different person at the helm than Howard.” Coulson’s reply was quiet but direct and pointed. Peggy blinked at him, her ire draining.
“You mean if I had stayed in the past and had been there to talk sense?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t suppose any of us will.” He shrugged. “That’s the funny thing about timelines, no matter which one you are living in, you can’t possibly know what the outcome of any decision is in the moment, I guess. Howard did what he thought was best for Tony, trying to protect him and keep him out of this craziness. It didn’t work. Now, we have to pick up the pieces. I’m just hoping we can do it in time to save his son is all.”
He was right, and she hated it.
Without a word, she turned out of the conference room doors, not so much angry as directionless. They were stuck, a position she detested, and with no ability to vent the frustration and nerves, she made her way to the bottom levels where an onsite gym was located. It seemed to be a standard feature of most SHIELD offices, and for once, she was glad of it, a safe space to work off...something. Much as Peggy hated to admit it, especially to Coulson, who still held her on some sort of pedestal, Stane had gotten to her. He’d crawled under her skin and left her discombobulated and itchy, like a scab she just couldn’t pick up. Like Hugh Jones and Vernon Masters, he was a man who was supremely arrogant in his ability and with little to no moral center to guide any of it. Supercilious and pompous, confident in his success, certain of his capability to outthink everyone, Stane had even believed he could woo her into the morally gray area he inhabited. He was a man who had spent decades slowly but surely taking whatever it was he wanted and cared little for those who might have stood in his way. He simply removed any obstacles. Had Howard not died as he had, would Stane have tried to kill him as well?
It was late in the day, and the facility was jammed. Those staff who had already finished office shifts had come down to use the facility before spreading out to head to their various homes scattered throughout the city. To Peggy, who had only ever lived in London and New York, the Angelenos' propensity to drive in from areas far outside of the city center to come to work seemed somewhat mad. Considering the amount of traffic and how long it took to get anywhere, she wasn’t shocked that so much of the equipment was in use. She wandered, watching people on the stationary bikes and the elliptical machines, most with headphones in their ears and their smartphones playing music, movies, or whatever media they consumed while they ran their paces. The strangeness of the future was just how much in a bubble everyone seemed to operate in. It was nothing like the training camps she and everyone else in the army had been put through, where they all suffered community through their sweat and pain. No matter how many hills they labored up, how many miles they panted after, how many steps they marched, they at least were all in hell together, and there was a certain comfort in that after all.
There were days she realized when the isolation felt a bit too heavy.
She stopped in her steps, wandering the padded, musty area to glance at a dance studio in front of her. That seemed to be a feature of modern facilities, a place where they could do a variety of different types of exercises involving movement. Inside she caught several agents, one of whom was Romanoff, all working at a long barre along a mirror. Peggy watched, wandering to the window that enclosed the space, watching as they all bent and stretched. They were barefoot, save Romanoff, who was slipping her feet into toe shoes of cream-colored satin. The other women were done with whatever they were doing, however, as several wiped faces and foreheads off with towels, chattering with Romanoff as they did, companionable and friendly. Peggy didn’t think she’d ever see the operative so open with anyone, and yet there she was, laughing and showing off some sort of stretching maneuver to another woman, just like any friend would do.
In a cluster of twos and threes the other women left, all with parting farewells as they wandered to a dressing room. Romanoff was left to her own devices in the room. At some spoken command, music began to play, a ballet that Peggy was vaguely familiar with, not a well-known one, but one familiar enough that she recalled it from long ago and far away in some long-forgotten and much hated piano lesson. Romanoff knew it well as she nodded her head in time to the music, her long, auburn hair up in a bun at the back of it. Gracefully, she rose from the pale, golden wood of the floor, stretching and rolling her shoulders as she moved in step with the music.
Peggy had never learned how to dance ballet herself. Her mother had tried, once, thinking such an outlet would be a good way of teaching gracefulness to her energetic daughter, but it never stuck. Much like piano had, ballet had gone the way of many of the lessons for a lady of Peggy’s youth, and while Peggy had many other accomplishments to be proud of, there was a small part of her that wished she could be half as graceful as the woman in front of her. She stretched and curved herself, arms looking long and supple despite Romanoff’s compact height. She looked to be all the things that Amanda Carter had wanted Peggy to be. She also happened to be able to do many of the things Peggy could do as well. A perfect synthesis, Peggy thought with no small amount of disgruntlement.
For long moments, Peggy simply watched, wandering to the door to enter, saying nothing as Romanoff continued to step, lightly and beautifully, her eyes closed, as if in memory of whatever performance she had danced long ago. Nothing about it was showy or flashy, there were no pirouettes or leaps, though Peggy had no doubt she could do them. It was a dance much like Romanoff herself, beautiful and exquisite to look at, but nothing to draw your attention and hold it for too long.
When the music stopped, so too did Romanoff. She stilled, her eyes opening, as her head swiveled to meet Peggy, a knowing look on her face. “No applause, then?”
“I didn’t want to startle you,” Peggy admitted, hands clasped in front of her as she leaned against the door.
“You wouldn’t have. I knew you were there.” She shrugged, her shoulders bare under a sleeveless top, a fine sheen of sweat over them. “Not my best moves, but I’m still working on it.”
Peggy remembered Hill and Coulson observing her months ago. “Coulson said you were injured.”
“Shot.” She rubbed a spot just above her left hip bone with vague indifference. “SVB was after an Iranian scientist I was transporting. Nearly took me out while they were getting to him. They had to shoot through me. Another few centimeters and my future dance career would be over.”
She uttered that with a dry humor that Peggy occasionally heard her use with Coulson, more often with Barton, but never with her. “You wanted to be a dancer once?”
“No,” she replied, simply, snagging a white towel that hung over the barre to wipe at her face. “Just happened to learn it.”
Peggy recalled long ago that Dottie Underwood had said she was a ballet dancer. She hadn’t figured out if it was a cover or not, but knowing what little she did know of the girls and their training they might have all learned it as a matter of course, part of their unnatural discipline. What little she had seen of Dottie’s deadly grace, as well as Natasha’s, she wouldn’t be surprised.
Romanoff placed one foot daintily on the barre, stretching the leg, muscles flexing as she eyed Peggy with curiosity. “Did you have something you wanted to discuss or are you a patron of the arts?”
Romanoff had a way of always sounding cutting in every word she said. “Not especially, no. I happened to wander down here and saw you. Had a meeting with Stane today. He is aware we know about him, now. More than that, he knows I’m Peggy Carter, or at least a woman who looks and talks like she is the Peggy Carter who disappeared in 1949.”
On the whole, Romanoff was a woman Peggy had unique trouble getting a beat on. Even when she was very young, Peggy had prided herself on her ability to read people and their motivations, but Romanoff had remained a mystery, a woman who buried herself below so many levels of truth and lies that few people could ever really say they knew her. Considering her life and occupation, this was an asset far more than a hindrance. But even Romanoff had tells, just more easily concealed ones. Peggy could see hers as she leaned over her leg, a stiffness in her spine, a tightness in her jaw, minute as it was. It was only noticeable because she was trying to be flexible and graceful at the moment, standing out all the more.
Peggy waited till she was upright again, switching legs at the barre before she said anything. “Did you know he suspected who I was?”
“Know? Not really.” Romanoff’s casualness belied the tension that was still there as she reached over to stretch her body. She rose again, lowering her leg. “Stane doesn’t precisely talk to paralegals in the office.
“But you knew he was investigating my origins?”
“Makes sense he would. Stane’s not an idiot, he wouldn’t have gotten this far if he had. You were sniffing around Tony, he wanted to know who his competition was.”
She was right, but that didn’t explain the tension and caution. “So his running theory is either I’m an agent who has been made to think she is Peggy Carter or a clone of the original, both of which sound fantastical to me. He seems to believe SHIELD is up to that sort of business and is willing to keep his mouth shut on his suspicions of SHIELD’s illegal activities if we don’t interfere with his plans to remove Stark from his company.”
There was the tell again, faint but there. Romanoff was busying herself with her stretches, avoiding her eyes. “Sounds like he feels pretty confident in his assessment.”
“He sounds cuckoo is what he sounds like, an idea out of one of your modern science fiction films. Imagine, cloning or wiping someone’s mind, making them think they are someone else?”
Romanoff only met her question with careful silence as she took on another pose. Peggy had hit a nail on the head, then.
“Except you can imagine it, can’t you,” Peggy asked, quietly, finally seeing a chink in the impenetrable armor that was Natasha Romanoff.
“I can believe a lot of things, Director Carter,” she drawled, formally, as she stood perpendicular to the barre, her knees bent outwards as she flexed down. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my lifetime.”
“Like clones?”
“They cloned a sheep when I was twelve years old. I’ve grown up in a world where cloning living creatures is a thing.”
“Humans, though?” In a futuristic world where she carried a small computer in her pocket, Peggy couldn’t quite wrap her head around that.
“Stranger things have happened.”
This was maddening, Peggy decided, irritated with Romanoff’s evasiveness. “Why do you hate me?”
That earned an arched look from the other woman who didn’t stop her movements. “I don’t.”
“You certainly don’t like me.”
“Do I have to?” Her question wasn’t sarcastic, merely inquisitive.
“No, but your hostility is quite apparent and I want to know why.”
“To push you.” It was her quick, off-the-cuff reply. “Everyone has a breaking point, something that gets under their skin. You dislike people being dismissive of you and your capabilities, of belittling you or talking down to you.”
It clicked with Peggy what she was up to. “You were testing me.”
Romanoff rewarded her with the smallest of smiles. “In part, yes.”
“Why?” Anger snapped out before Peggy could stop it, feeling nettled and somewhat violated.
“For Fury.” She straightened to her full height, turning to put her back against the glass, leaning against the barre. “He wanted to know my assessment of you. It’s not unusual, he does it from time to time when he needs eyes and ears on people.”
“He doesn’t trust me is what you saying,” she muttered, something cold, hurt, and angry curdling inside of her.
“No, he does, absolutely...well as much as he trusts anybody, that is. Fury is a singularly paranoid person.”
“Enough to have you spy on me?”
“Less spy, just observe as we worked together. He couldn’t ask Coulson to do it, he hero-worships you and Steve Rogers. He’s like a walking history book, he could never be objective. Sharon is your niece and friend, so she was out, as were Agents Kim and Burk.”
All of that made sense, Peggy supposed, grimly. “And Agent Barton?”
“Barton has many, many gifts, but understanding people isn’t one of them.”
“He seems to think he understands you.”
That did seem to warm Romanoff a bit. “He has a big heart, Barton, especially for lost and broken animals.”
Peggy took note of the phrasing of Romanoff’s words. There was a story there, she was sure, but she would have to delve into that another time. “So all this drama and discomfort was in part to put stress on me and see if I broke?”
“Got to hand it to you, Carter, you are just as tough as they always said you were.” There was a hint of impudence in Romanoff’s compliment, but Peggy didn’t think it was completely true either. There was something else there, something she wasn’t copping to.
“I have to admit Fury questioning me surprises me,” Peggy carried on, the hurt of that real enough. “He seemed to accept me readily enough when I first came in.”
“Don’t take it to heart, Fury doesn’t trust anyone completely. It keeps him alive doing that.”
“Does he think I’m a clone or a mind-controlled deep agent?” Peggy posed the question bluntly, hoping to see which way Romanoff broke. It didn’t surprise her that when she cut right to the heart of the matter, Romanoff’s stoic expression slammed down as she tried to shut Peggy out of digging any further.
“He doesn’t share his ideas with me.”
“No, but he did set you to watch me. He told me he did a DNA test and matched me to Sharon, said that with that and the letter I wrote to Howard, he believed I was the real deal. So why would he send you to watch me?”
“Because he can’t trust 100% that you are you,” she returned, flatly. “Because you are a woman who disappeared in 1949 and suddenly waltzed into a door alive and with no explanation except a crazy story on time travel. Because SHIELD doesn’t do cloning or brainwashing, but some people do, people who have no compulsion to kidnapping women and manipulate them into spies who can infiltrate organizations like SHIELD in the hope that they can gain access to them. Those things do happen, all the time, and we couldn’t be sure you weren’t that.”
And therein lay the rub. “Is that Fury’s assessment or yours?”
Romanoff wasn’t apologetic. “Fury asked me my opinion. Given the relationship with SHIELD and the Soviets at the time, everyone assumed you died at the hands of Leviathan or the KGB. When you came wandering into the New York office they ran every test they could find on your DNA, all of it coming back as you being the real deal. Fury wanted to know if Russia had any way of creating someone who could pass for Peggy Carter, someone who could infiltrate and fool everyone.”
The very idea unsettled Peggy with its impossible wrongness. “And can they?”
Romanoff was circumspect for long moments, eyes burning a hole into the floor in front of her. “They can do many things, sure, up to and including twisting a person’s mind and personality till they forget who they were, who they are, what they ever could have been. They can turn a person into a machine, an automaton, or a psychopath, and make people into empty shells to be inhabited by any personality or cover they want. But the one thing they can’t do is make human flesh lie. They don’t have the technology to clone a whole person, and even if they did they couldn’t grow them fast enough to be an adult. If the genetics say you are Peggy Carter then that’s who you are. I suppose we just have to accept that time travel exists, whether we like it or not.”
“Not for a few years yet,” Peggy qualified, feeling vaguely sick at what Romanoff described. While she was relieved that they had yet to figure out how to make another human out of whole cloth, the idea of what she did describe, of how a person could be broken down, stripped of their personality and identity, turned into something else completely and against their will horrified her. It made her think of Dottie. Poor, mad, brilliant, dangerous Dottie.
The words tumbled out before she could catch them. “I once knew a woman just like you.”
Peggy regretted it almost as soon as she said it. She could see Romanoff stiffen against the mirror. “I don’t hear that very often.”
“Her name was Dottie, at least that was the name she went by when I knew her.” Despite all of her searches, Peggy had never found her true name. She’d always been curious. “She was like you, raised in a special school where they trained girls to be spies and assassins, forced them to kill. She used to be handcuffed to her bed at night, unable to escape.”
That only earned the smallest eyebrow twitch from the other woman. “That was the old method. They used to do that in the early days with the girls so they wouldn’t run away at night. They stopped doing that long before my time.”
“For what purpose,” Peggy found herself blurting, the long-ago horror of it still fresh in her mind. “They were just children!”
“Children who might have been dead otherwise,” Romanoff countered, quietly. “In the early years, it was seen as a benefit. The Soviets needed highly trained soldiers and capable warriors, and they had too many mouths to feed and no place for children who lacked homes and families. When the country is wracked with starvation and famine no one is going to miss a few parentless girls.”
“But they broke them!”
“Yes,” Romanoff’s answer was harsh and cold, painfully matter-of-fact. “It did break them. Those who were strong survived.”
Peggy couldn’t understand it. Perhaps she didn’t want to. “You must have been very strong indeed.”
“Strong enough,” she murmured, unflinching. “Though, to be honest, surviving was the easy part for me.”
Having seen her in her deadly dance with Barton, Peggy could believe that. “What was the hard part?”
“Walking away from it.” She lifted her chin, fire shining in her green eyes. “That, Director Carter, was far harder than you could ever imagine.”
Peggy thought of Dottie, of their few conversions. She had always envied Peggy her freedom, even when Peggy felt she didn’t have much of it at all. “Why did you do it?”
Romanoff studied her for long, quiet moments. Peggy could feel her examining her, picking her apart as she stood there, trying to be as impassive as Romanoff. Whatever the other woman found, it seemed to satisfy her, as she nodded, once, then pushed off from the glass.
“That is a story for another time, preferably over shots of some alcoholic beverages and some greasy food.”
It wasn’t an offer of friendship, but it was at least a thawing of relations. Peggy took it for what it was. “Perhaps sometime I can take you up on that offer.”
Romanoff nodded, wandering to the middle of the room. Peggy sensed she was being dismissed and turned to go, pushing away from the door. Romanoff’s voice stilled her with a simple question called back over her shoulder.
“Why did she do it?”
Peggy paused, realizing she meant Dottie. “I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t even know her outside of our few meetings. She was...a bit like you described earlier, a person who had been broken, her mind and person shattered. They do horrible things to little girls in this world, and I think for once she wanted to be free of that.”
“To be a good person?” The question was soft, floating quietly behind Romanoff.
“A good person? No, I don’t know if Dottie knew what that was anymore. I do think she wanted to be a free person, to build a life that someone else didn’t control. And...I think she wanted a friend, someone to see her, to understand her. I think that is why she gravitated to me.”
Romanoff turned her head ever so slightly to glance back at Peggy. “Were you that? Her friend?”
“No...and maybe yes. It’s complicated.” Peggy wished she could understand it more herself. “I think I was simply a person who saw her for who and what she was and not an object, a tool, a weapon. I was someone she felt equal to intellectually, and who could respect her capabilities. I don’t know, maybe she appreciated that we both were women living lies in a world that continually told us we couldn’t be who we were, that refused to see what we were capable of. I don’t know.”
Romanoff’s only response was to nod, turning her face to look forward once again. “Thanks. Maybe we can chat more sometime.”
With that Peggy turned to leave, just as Romanoff called for the AI in the room to play some music with a title uttered in near-flawless French. Peggy watched her enter her first moves for a long moment, considering the other woman, before turning to leave the area, her restlessness quelled for the moment. Instead, she mused, she felt the need for a glass of wine in the giant bathtub in her room, and a moment of peace and solitude. Romanoff had given her much to think about.