scars
You regain consciousness on a soft feather bed without waking up.
The mattress is far softer than anything you’ve ever felt before, outside of Tony Stark’s mansion – the comforter just as plush beneath your fingertips – and your wrist aches with fondness for the rope holding you in place, likely attached to something wooden they think you can’t break. No, this is Peggy. She’s smarter than that.
You are certain, then, that you are in one of Stark’s mansions. You want to smirk, but you don’t. No need to let them know that you’re conscious before it’s worth it.
Peggy is coming. You can smell her before you hear her – talking to someone, the door creaking open, and then it’s excuses, reasons why she should be in here with you but no one else, and you think that’s her British stubbornness or, more likely, her idea of virtue and the fact that she has left you lying near nude on top of this bed – and when the door shuts behind her with a click, stifling whoever it is out there speaking (you think it’s Jeeves because he has that same accent Peggy does, all stiff and proper when you know she’s anything but), it thrusts the scent of her over to you, stronger than before.
Whatever the scent is, you haven’t been able to exactly identify it yet, but you know that it’s her and that it’s Peggy because no one else – nothing else – smells as sweet as she does.
You’re curious as to what Peggy Carter wants with you unconscious and naked on her bed.
Curious and more than a little amused.
She doesn’t move from the door, instead pressing her whole weight against it. You know because you could hear her footsteps if she moved closer to you, and she’d seemed wounded when you saw her earlier. They do not teach British soldiers to withstand torture the same way you were taught in the Red Room. She has not had to pull her own fingernails out with her teeth, neither has she had to light her skin on fire with a blowtorch. All of these scars and more, hidden places where they won’t be seen except by intimate men and intimate situations, and they’re more intent on letting their hands explore and their need be satisfied than actually looking at her. With the light off, they don’t notice – or if they do, they don’t care to mention it. You all live in a postwar time now. Maybe they expect their women to look like you do.
Peggy pushes herself off from the door – again, you know by hearing, by the creak of the door as she finally moves away from it – and she groans a little bit, puts her hand – where, child, do you know where? You can hear the press against fabric; you think from the folds of it and the way she’d moved earlier that it must be in her abdomen, but you cannot be exact. You think, with your eyes closed, you could find it, if you were close enough.
You hear the scuff of one foot along the floor. You know how Peggy walks. That’s her left foot, so it’s in her left side. It must hurt to walk. Fascinating.
She’s close enough that you could grab her, if you wanted.
You don’t.
This close, the scent of her is almost overwhelming.
Almost.
You’ve been closer.
You kissed her, after all.
Nineteen years old, almost twenty, and you are an adult.
You tell yourself that, but you’re not sure what it means.
Peggy bends over you – wimpers, and you think that’s the pain until she brushes the back of her nails across your face. It’s hard not to flinch, not to open your eyes, and you wonder if that’s why she did it in the first place, to try and catch you off-guard. Then she’s sitting next to you, the mattress is thick beneath the weight of her, and her fingers run across the first of many, many scars. They’re interlaced. Her fingers move from one to the next and spread out and still don’t reach the end of them.
“What did they do to you?”
Nothing, you don’t say. I did most of that myself.
Some were from other girls in your year before you killed them (or before they killed each other; it wasn’t important which, only that, in the end, you were the last one standing). On graduating, they fixed you – whatever that meant – you knew that there were new scars in places your fur would hide easily enough and that now, whenever someone hurt you, you healed faster and didn’t scar. This was important; how else would you have escaped after Peggy threw you out the window?
Peggy stops, and you know that she is staring at you.
She takes a deep breath.
Then she moves from the bed, comes back with the rustling of other fabric, and unties the rope around your wrist before she slowly tries to pull you into enough of an upright position that she can force something down over your head. A dress, maybe. It feels like a dress. You are deadweight, and you take great delight in leaning against her, face on her shoulder, arms dead across her thighs.
She lets her head rest on yours, and the scent of her is overwhelming.
You reach out and your hand finds a squicky mess in her side, and you turn your head just enough so that your lips brush the skin of her neck.
“Dottie?”
She freezes beneath you.
“You’ve made a mess of yourself, Peg.” Your eyes flutter open, and you don’t have to glance down to feel her blood warm and sticky against your palm. “Let me see.”
“I will most certainly not—” She stops. You don’t know why she stops. You haven’t pressed down on the wound or anything like that. You did grab the rope, but you haven’t done anything with that either. Not yet. That wouldn’t be any fun at all.
You brush your nose along her neck. “What have they done to you?”
“Nothing.” Peggy is tight-lipped when you finally move back enough to look at her face-to-face. “I did most of that myself.”
You smile. It’s a joke. Just for you and me. Don’t tell anyone.
“I showed you mine.” You pull your innocent face, even though you know that means beans to Peggy Carter, and you keep that hand on her waist. “Now you show me yours.” You bat your eyes at her. “Oh, I won’t hurt you. I’m not that petty.” The smile drops because you don’t need it anymore. “We can both be nice, can’t we? And then I’ll go back to playing whatever little game it is you have in mind.”
Whatever it is sounds so much more fun than prison did, and no matter what Peggy has up her sleeves, you know that you’ll get away from her in the end. It’s just another game. She only caught you the first time because you wanted to be caught. You just didn’t expect her to be taken away so soon. A miscalculation. You won’t do it again.
Peggy doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t believe you. You aren’t lying. Why would you be lying? That’s not your style. Not with Peggy. You just give her little breadcrumbs and watch to see what she’ll do with them.
Hannibal Lecter has not been invented yet, and you wouldn’t appreciate the comparison. He’s cruel. You aren’t. Just bored.
Besides, if he had been invented, you don’t think he would ever understand what it would be to be a nineteen year old girl with a brain torn apart and stitched back together by Russian scientists wanting a war machine comprised of ballet and assassin work and the mimicry of a serum used to make America’s own super soldier now frozen who knows where. (You don’t think he’s dead because you wouldn’t be dead. But it’s not any fun to tell Peggy that.)
You sigh and move your hand away from the wound. “Please. That is the magic word, isn’t it, Peg? Please?”
Peggy takes a deep breath, and the shirt is off all at once. Quicker than you thought it would be. She messes with the gauze wrapped around her torso, but you peel it away. It’s a nice hole – straight through from one side to the other – and you’d almost ignore the other, smaller scars just to focus on this one, but you don’t. You can’t.
“What did you do to yourself, Peg?” You run your fingers across the wound – it’s pulled its stitches apart, and you think this isn’t the first time, given Peggy. “You need a better doctor.”
“Are you done now?” Peggy’s face is taut with pain, and all you’ve done is touch the poor thing.
You think she needs something better than whatever it is they’re offering her. Your gaze drifts to the thin of your skin, and you don’t even think about it before you use your teeth to rip through the soft flesh just beneath the scars around your wrist. The wound will heal enough eventually.
Blood to blood – your arm to her wound – and you know it doesn’t quite work that way, but you think it might, and almost as soon as you’ve put the two together, she flinches away from you, and you look up with eyes like steel. “Stay still.” It’s a hiss. You don’t hiss around Peggy.
Her eyes search yours. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t make me carve open my arm again, Peg.”
She doesn’t flinch when you press your wound to hers again and only stares when you move your wrist away. The pain’s long gone; you know that you’ve stitched yourself back together again, and you show her the wound that is no longer a wound, the scar that should be not appearing in the slightest. Then you nod to the wound. “Get better soon. You’re no fun like this.”
Then you slump back on the bed like deadweight, close your eyes again, and let the rope fall from your fingertips. Call it a point. You’ve earned a point. They’ve all been your points, really. Peggy just doesn’t like to play as fair as you do.
Sometimes, she reminds you of Marya Morevna, although you wouldn’t tell her that. She wouldn’t get the reference. You think you wish you were Ivan, but you know that you’re Koschei the Deathless, locked up in the basement, kept secret from the good Ivan her husband. Isn’t that the way the story goes?
She tries to lift your body, but you are deadweight now. “Dottie, move.”
You open your eyes. “I want to know how you thought you would move me without help.” Your gaze moves back to the wound. “You can’t lift me.” It doesn’t occur to you that now that you’re clothed her British virtues mean nothing, and when it does, you wonder why she hasn’t called for help by now. You think maybe she enjoys this just as much as you do. Or she doesn’t want to endanger any of her friends.
“The chair, please.”
You stand, and the dress drops. “Zip me up first.”
This time there are no fingers brushing along the numerous scars you know are on your back, only the gentle warmth of her touch as the zipper is moved. “What did they do to you?” she asks again as you move to the chair.
“Naughty, Peggy. If you won’t give me your secrets, don’t ask for mine.” Your hands grip the arms of the wooden chair. “Now tie me up.” You gesture to the rope. “It’ll make you feel better.”
She looks at you, and you think it’s something like pity. You hate being pitied. There’s nothing to pity. You close your eyes again. Deadweight. Just like she wanted.
You don’t even flinch when she sits across from you and tries to do your make-up, but you do grab her wrist and open her eyes and press your lips together. “Let me do it, Peg. It’ll look so much better. Since you aren’t tying me up.”
Her eyes narrow. She stares at you. Then she hands you the brush.
“Thank you.”
When you’re done, you stare at her, and you smile. “Here,” you say, “let me knock myself out this time. Thirty minutes should be good enough, right?”
“Dottie—”
You ram your head back, and you fall back into unconsciousness again.