Shock
Peggy chucked the pliers she was holding at Rogers, but they bounced off him like a damn rubber ball. Grabbing the tool bag, she pulled out a bolt tightener, a wrench and a screw driver. She threw all of those at Rogers too. She had good aim and they all hit him, but they didn’t hurt or slow him down.
“Please stop,” Rogers said, walking forward with his arms up and his palms spread.
Peggy threw the hammer next. “Ha!” She cried as it smacked Rogers squarely in the nose, snapping his head back at what looked like a painful angle. Anyone else sustaining a blow like that would have been knocked unconscious or worse. Rogers just shock it off, but his tone turned from appeasing to annoyed for the first time, “stop that!”
Peggy threw every last tool in the bag at him, but he still made his way up the hill toward her, ducking and blocking the heavy objects with ease. When he was nearly upon her, she played her last card. She threw the empty bag in his face to block his vision, then bend down to grab a big branch laying by her feet. She got damn lucky. When she swung it, some of the twigs on the end got Rogers right in the eye. Crying out in pain, he stumbled backwards down the slope, grabbing his face.
Peggy only registered the blood between his fingers briefly before she turned and ran. She made straight on the road at first to put some quick distance between them, before darting off of it into the woods. Despite all the rumors of Rogers’ prowess on the battlefield, the truth was the Allies had no idea what his full capabilities were. His speed and strength had stupidly been left untested after his transformation thanks to the self-aggrandizing senator who sent him off on that bonds tour.
Peggy didn’t know what his healing time would be, and what condition he’d be in when he pursued her, but she knew he’d come. She had to put some distance between her and Rogers, but not enough to set off the tracker. The tree tops were going to be her best option, and she’d just begun to scope them out when a sharp, shooting pain brought her down.
###
She woke up slowly. The first thing she registered was the sky, both somehow clear and full of fiery sunset at once. No, that wasn’t right. It was the blue of Rogers’ one eye and the slightly swollen one she had hit. The skin around it was purple and she’d clearly broken blood vessels in his pupil.
She was on her back. He was sitting beside her, looking down.
“You ran outside of your tracker range. It's shorter than they told you,” he said neutrally.
“Crikey O’Riley,” She moaned, then closed her eyes again and hoped somehow to wake from this nightmare.
“You’re as determined as I remember you being.”
She was up on her elbows, eyes wide in an instant. “You and I have never met before.”
“Yes, we have,” Rogers stated emphatically.
“I would remember your traitorous-”
Rogers held up Peggy’s necklace. It spun in his hands. The sun glistened off the gold. “You dropped this,” he stated flatly, “and I returned it to you.”
Peggy felt her mouth fall open and her memory turned backwards. She had lost the necklace at the World Exposition in New York. She’d been undercover at the time, working to unearth a plot to assassinate Dr. Erskine. She’d had to do a quick costume change from some stupidly sexy tuxedo number for Howard’s showcase to clothing that would allow her to mix with the crowd. The chain must have broken in her mad fury to get redressed. When Peggy had realized, she’d ran back to the exam room she’d used to change in. They’d been signing up men at the Expo, and Peggy could only hope that none of them had noticed the necklace lying about and taken it.
She’d searched the room from top to bottom—twice—to no avail. Finally, in desperation, she’d tried the lost and found. Peggy was describing the necklace to the indifferent attendant when a man behind her stepped forward saying he’d found it. He’d held the necklace up and Peggy was so blinded by it, she’d barely noticed him at first. Something that was odd for her both by training and disposition. When she did look, she noticed that the man was small in scale and so thin it was concerning. But he was neatly dressed, his hair was combed properly, and he had beautiful, bright blue eyes.
Peggy had very seldom been speechless in her life, but she’d been so overwhelmed by getting the necklace back she’d forgotten her tongue and couldn’t form the words to thank the man. He was turning to leave when Peggy stepped forward to stop him, but a set of approaching couples made her pause. The man had seemed to know them, even as Peggy could tell instantly the conversation was not friendly. They were jeering at him. When one of the coupled-off men had made a disparaging remark about how he was alone, Peggy stepped up to the small man and slide her arm through his.
“Friends of yours, darling,” she’d purred. Peggy knew she was attractive in the same way she knew she was intelligent. And while she hated that her looks were considered more valuable than her brain as a woman, she had no problem using them to her advantage when and where it was called for.
She leaned forward and kissed the small man on the cheek, making sure to leave a red lip print behind. The two couples were no less stunted than the small man had been. He stuttered and stammered for a moment, but didn’t shake off her touch.
“We were just headed to the dance floor, weren’t we, darling? Did you all care to join us?”
“Since when do you dance?” One of the women asked speaking to the small man, but still starring at Peggy dumbly, almost as if she couldn’t believe she was there.
“Since I came along,” Peggy replied curtly, dropped the cooing facade for a moment, before turning it back on again to meet the small man’s clear, blue eyes. “Shall we, my love?”
He looked at her dead on, searching for something. Clearly trusting what he saw, he’d nodded. As the two other couples followed close behind them, they weren’t able to chat until they moved to the dance floor, where the noise from the crowd gave them a little privacy.
“You didn’t need to do that,” the small man began with a firm tone, then stuttered awkwardly, “I mean, I’m grateful…..and I…but you didn’t have to.”
“You didn’t have to be honest and return my necklace,” Peggy said emphatically, stepping back from him slightly when his foot hit her toes.
“Sorry.”
She waved off the misstep. “I’m happy to return a kindness. I hope those aren’t friends.” Peggy had said, eyeing the two couples who were still nearby with open disdain.
“No.”
“Good. You deserve better than that.”
“Thank you,” the man said, swallowing thickly. He’d stepped on Peggy’s foot again.
“Sorry. Sorry! See, I’ve not….I’ve never really danced with a dame…a lady…before and I…...”
“Oh,” Peggy exclaimed truly shocked, then had offered without thinking, “I can take the lead.”
Peggy thought truly well of the man that he had seemed grateful and not emasculated by the suggestion. She’d been ready to tell him how to count off steps, but once she’d moved her feet to bank his, they’d fallen into an easy and natural rhythm. He was more than content to follow the unspoken guidance of her body, and had a surprising ability to read it. He was short for a man, but Peggy had found that she liked that his height made their eyes level. And that he was looking at her so directly. The look of bewildered joy on his face as he managed the dance without hitting her feet was frankly adorable.
“Is it always this easy, or did I stumble on the right partner?” He asked.
“I think the latter. Even with a trained dancer, it can take a while to fall in together.”
The man had beamed at her. His face was so sincere and honest that Peggy had felt compelled to tell him, “I’m so grateful to you for going out of you way to return the necklace. Not everyone would be honest enough to have made the effort. It is valuable, but what it means to me sentimentally….thank you.”
“I just did the right thing is all. It’s not a big deal. You being kind enough to make those jerks think that you and I….well that…was…” He turned the most endearing shade of pink.
Peggy wanted to spare him the embarrassment. Truthfully, she wanted to get his name and see if she could perhaps make arrangements to see him again while she was still in New York. But movement over his shoulder had caught her attention. It was Howard, stumbling down the steps of his show’s platform and making some kind of a ruckus. Part of Peggy’s job was babysitting the talented, but idiotic, engineer and she knew from her history with Howard that there was about to be an incident.
The man looked over his shoulder, following Peggy’s line of sight. “I don’t want to keep you from….” He sentence died off when there was an explosion behind Howard that sent people running out of the expo hall. Peggy politely, and regretfully, excused herself to deal with the mad scientist. By the time she’d literally put out a fire, the man wasn’t among the remaining throngs of people who’d stuck around to watch the show. The sense of a lost connection had pained her at the time, but she’d buried it down as she had done with so many things since the war started.
Looking at Rogers’ larger, stronger features now, she did see the distorted image of the kind man who’d returned her necklace that night. As a rule, Peggy considered herself to be a pretty good judge of character. She had to be in her line of work. So, either her intuition had been wrong or Erskine’s serum twisted a good man beyond recognition.
Peggy surprised herself by spitting in Rogers' face in anger over either possibility.
He wiped the saliva from his cheek without expression. He tone was almost bland, when he said, “I was planning to release you, but it’s nearly night now and you wouldn’t be able to make it pass the patrols in the darkness. We’ll have to go back to camp and try this again.” Standing, he tucked her necklace into a pocket, “I’ll return it to you, once I let you go. They’ll only take it from you now if they find it on you.”
###
The ride back to the Hydra base had been silent and cold. Peggy wondered how Rogers was going to explain their prolonged absence, before realizing her appearance was its own answer. With half the leaves of the forest stuck in her hair and her dirty back, Peggy looked thoroughly ravaged.
As she followed Rogers back to his room, she wondered at his motivations. Had he selected her as a bride with the intention of releasing her because she’d paid him a kindness in dancing with him when he’d still been small? Just who was listening in on him in his private quarters and why? And what had he been doing with that transponder in the woods? Even if they had to have the entire conversation with pencil and paper, Peggy was determined to get answers.
“I see that you’ve chosen quite well for yourself,” a voice said the second Rogers pushed his door open. It was thick with a German accent. Peggy’s eyes widen at sight of the Red Skull. He moved towards her, looking her over with a critical eye. “Highly intelligent, extremely competent and quite attractive. Yes, you’ve chosen well, Steven. I hope to hear of an impedingly blessing soon. In fact, I am here to make sure there isn’t just one, but three or four.”