Sharon's cannot remember anything before October 8th, 1984. She was four when she was sent to live with Margaret Carter. She has a vague recollection of being afraid, and she has a patchwork memory of a social worker introducing Angela Martinelli as a roommate, but that is mainly gleaned from hysterical giggles from Aunt Angie anytime she drinks just enough to be tipsy but not enough to be drunk. It's not that she didn't exist before she entered the brownstone that was her childhood home, but maybe she didn't exist until she became Sharon Carter.
How she feels about this really depends on the day.
It had been scary, standing in front of the short woman with silver streaked through her carefully coiffed hair. Even then, especially then she had exuded power as she told Sharon to call her Aunt Peggy.
Now of course Sharon knew that the stiff upper lip hid a warm, if morally ambivalent, heart that would do anything for those she cared about. But back then all Sharon could feel was small in the face of this imposing stranger.
Sharon sometimes considered herself lucky, not just for getting adopted by Peggy and Angie, and not just for the meticulous education and unconditional love and support, not just for the encouraged ambition. But also because not many people got to remember the first time they met their family.
Not many people get to be so specific about their first memory.
Again, how she feels about it really depends on the day.
She couldn't remember the first time she knew she was being groomed for a role larger than that of Peggy and Angie’s child. At some point in her childhood, probably around twelve or thirteen, Sharon figured out that she was ultimately a means to an end for Peggy. Not that Peggy didn't love her like a daughter every bit as much as Angie did, but Sharon and Peggy were more the same than either of them were to Angie.
Angie saw a child to love and care for, to finally make her little family complete. But Peggy saw an heir, a successor, a playing piece that she had crafted specifically for her own game. There was a streak of cold iron in her aunt, the same one that was there in everyone who desired power, and Sharon respected that.
Hell, she admired that. Liked to imagine that the reason she was chosen was that even at a young age Peggy had seen that same streak in Sharon.
A certain sort of ruthlessness. The type of person who could one day lead the world's best spy organization.
It wasn't always so easy for Sharon to swallow, growing up it was hard not to sometimes feel frustration and chafing at being led, rather than being allowed to explore as much as she would like. But growing pains aside, she did try as hard as she could to make Peggy proud.
Ultimately though how she feels about all this depends on the day.
~
For all the pressure of being a worthy heir, that's not really what drove Sharon. She does have her own ambitions and goals, something that was more than encouraged in the Carter household.
Maybe if she wasn't a Carter she'd, have not go into the army at all. Sharon always liked the idea of helping people. She always wanted something simple but vaguely undefined. Meanwhile screenwriters and novelists rhapsodized about the sexy danger of being a spy, of mysterious backgrounds and exotic locals.
She was 28, a spy, and vaguely wished she could be a baker or something benign. It was the only cliche she indulged in. West Point and army intelligence hadn't turned her into a ruthless killing machine to protect state secrets, and the move to shield hadn't been because of money or betrayal, it had just been an advancement in her career. Her codename was simply a job title, Agent 13, and came with a team and a fancy job description. Long term asset protection essentially boiled down to the fact that really all she did was high stakes babysitting.
Hell, she had never even had to run in high heel boots once in her entire career in intelligence.
The reality of spying for any organization was that she was not consistently in the field, she spent more time behind a desk than she'd prefer. Especially ateam leader it was unnecessary for her to do more than a rotation through the team once a week. Mainly she managed her assets from a desk job in a backwater German field office.
For the past six months she'd run a surveillance and protection detail on a Hungarian woman who had written some computer code, the description of which was not in the dossier and therefore none Sharon's business, which had gotten the attention of governments, shady multinationals, and terrorist organizations alike.
Sharon got the call from her aunt while she was reviewing the footage from her asset's day job. There had been something about this assignment that pickled at the edge of her mind. Slight discrepancies between intel and on the ground realities. Not much, just a pinch here and there, not enough that it couldn't be blamed on the unpredictability of their target and the people in his proximity. But it was consistent, it was a pattern, and that worried her. It meant that there was a breakdown in their intelligence gathering.
One of the few times that best case scenario was that someone was bad at their job.
She always tried to answer her Aunt's phone calls. The years had been suspiciously kind to them. You'd have to have less intelligence training to put together that little observation and knowledge that in shields early days they dabbled with reproducing project rebirth. Something like, not supersoldier level but maybe a few extra years, that'd tempt anyone. Even so, they were both solidly in their nineties and seemed so frail in contrast to how they'd always seemed growing up.
Peggy wanted her to come for a visit, ‘preferably long but understandable if short.’ As team leader Sharon preferred to stay in country. But she had two deep cover plants at the scientist’s work and living next door, she also had a discrete surveillance team round the clock. Not to mention that she had received intel from higher ups that indicated that the threat to the scientist was lowering.
If it was any other mission that would be enough to reassure her. Her team was highly effective, good at their jobs and worked well together. But there was the worry that was scratching at the back of her mind, the pattern of small discrepancies, and just her instincts from five years of running the intel for covert ops. There was something more, something else. It was not an ideal time to go all the way back to New York.
The compromise was that Peggy and Angie would come to Germany herself and they would all stay at a rental in Koln, an hour out from the tiny town her asset was hiding in. It'd be a long weekend for Sharon and they could see the sights, talk about whatever Peggy needed to tell her, then her aunts would head off on an European vacation.
When she picked her aunts up she was surprised once again at the sight of them. They had been pushing sixty when they adopted her, and despite having rather remarkable lives they looked like someone's grandmothers, but on the other side they didn't look quite ninety either. Just benignly elderly.
Angie fluttered off the train, the way she walked always, half dance half skip, even at this age. Sharon gave them both firm hugs before taking their bags. They made small talk in the car, on the way to rented house (“we are civilized Sharon, we cannot stay in a hotel at our age.”) both knew not to ask for details about her assignment, but they asked the typical mothering questions they always asked. Was Sharon doing okay? Did she get enough to eat? Was her work okay? Was she being safe? Gentle nagging that somehow soothed rather than irritated, because they always asked these things, because they cared. Peggy complained about some neighbor of theirs whose garden was encroaching on their property, and that had clearly been a topic of gentle bickering because they fell into that now.
It felt good to be around people she trusted. It felt familiar and safe. Not that she necessarily felt unsafe, but it was hard for Sharon to make friends under even the best of circumstances, currently though there was something, something that made it hard to relax among her team. It was nothing more solid than an instinct, but she had learned to trust her instincts, to lean into them. She hadn't really started digging yet, but she kept a sharper eye on them than she did her army intelligence coworkers, added a few more layers of accountability than were strictly necessary.
That, on top of the other red flags. It never hurt to be safe. She was going to pull everyone involved in the whole operation when she got back.
They finally pulled into a plain looking house on a residential street. Angie bustled inside clucking about getting settled. Peggy and Sharon followed, slower bringing in the bags with help from the driver/bodyguard that always went every where Peggy and Angie went.
The secrets in Peggy's head could topple regimes.
After everything was settled, Peggy led her to the living room. She sat them both down facing each other, the way her spine was ramrod straight and the slight arch to her eyebrow familiar and comforting.
“I have got word that shield is starting a new special project, one I think you should take part in.”
Sharon stomach jumped, although it was getting harder to tell if it was from nerves or anticipation. Peggy had never specifically said it, but Sharon always knew that she'd been groomed to be director one day. It was something she even wanted for herself, well something she told herself to want. The more she saw of shield, the harder it was to want to be in charge.
“What sort of special project?”
“You know about project rebirth?” Peggy asked, as if she didn't know the answer, “That sort of special project.”
“I'm not a scientist, Pegs, or a weapons expert, I'm better at people. I don't think I'd be a good choice to head the project.”
Peggy gave a fond but exasperated eye roll at the nickname, one that only Angie and Sharon got away with calling her.
“Well a people person would be needed to select candidates, but no that's not the position I was thinking of. It's a project to create another Captain America, another supersoldier to take up the shield. I want you to go for it, I think you should be the next Captain America.”
She said it like it was an honor, but it felt like a slap in the face. Because being enhanced, being Captain America, being a figurehead, that meant that all chance of being the next Director Carter was out the window. Sure Sharon had been having doubts, but she had never mentioned them to Peggy, which meant that Peggy had come to her own independent conclusions on Sharon's fitness to run shield and Sharon had come up wanting.
She had tried to keep her face blank, but she could never hide from the women who raised her.
“I know what this means. And if you look me in the eye and convince me right now that heading shield is what you truly want then I will drop this and we can put together a plan to make that happen.” Peggy paused, tilting her head slightly, “But, I don't think that's what you want, and while I think you'd excel at whatever you do, I think that career choice would make you deeply unhappy. I'll always be far more concerned with your happiness rather than my power plays.”
“You going soft in your old age?”
The teasing brought a wry smile to Peggy's face.
“She is!” a voice rang out from the kitchen, a second before Angie entered, carrying a tray of tea, tipping her head with a saucy wink towards her wife, “I just want to know where the soldier I married ran off to, leaving me with a sentimental old woman.”
“Oh well,” Peggy drawled, “Probably ran off with a hot young thing from a diner, I head that that's the soldier's type.”
Angie smirked and dropped a kiss on Peggy’s iron grey hair, before crossing and sitting closely to Sharon, grabbing her hand and giving it a tender pat.
“If you're trying to talk my daughter into getting experimented on, you're going to have to convince both of us.”
So Peggy did.
~
That night Sharon got a call on her work phone that had her racing out to Kreifeild.
Rumlow, the man on surveillance, that evening told her that someone had shot their asset. A contingency that hadn't been watched because the line of sight had been impossible. A half a mile away, through a wall, in the dark. They had gotten to the next in less than five minutes, but the shooter had been gone. CCTV had been erased for the area.
It was only through pouring over all footage that she caught it. A flash of dark shadows, what looked like a silver glove curling over a window sill before the footage cut out.
It was nothing. Her asset was dead, all she bad was a scrap of footage and Rumlow’s excuses. Not that it was his fault, she was team leader, this was her assignment, the blame was squarely on her.
It's just, it all smelled wrong. There was something she couldn't quite parse out, the little things adding up to something she couldn't quite grasp.
She sent her findings, all her notes from months of protect and surveil, up the ladder and was told in no uncertain terms that any further involvement from her would not be necessary.
Which was not a surprise, of course she wouldn't be allowed to investigate her own failures.
But still…
Then a week later she got call from Maria Hill scheduling an interview with Director Fury.
An interview to become Captain America.
~
He had looked down at her with one eye, his face granite.
“You were recommended by one of my predecessors, which would be high praise if you weren't her niece.”
It was a question. The response to which mattered more than anything in her file, this was the true qualifying test.
She could protest and claim she had worked to get where she was, only half true because yes having a connection like aunt Peggy opened doors whether you asked for it or not. She could list her qualifications, her accomplishments, try and prove herself worthy. But she said something else instead.
“Peggy Carter put the shield into the hands of Captain Rogers, she built shield from the ground up, her way of picking up the mantle after Rogers went down in that plane. She has sacrificed a lifetime to carrying that mantle. Are you implying she would jeopardize her life's work for anyone, even me?”
Fury was silent for several moments, considering, before he explained what he wanted. There were beings from other planets, there were exceptional individuals, there were threats that even the best the world had to offer couldn't fight. He wanted a group of exceptional individuals to protect the world, fight the battles that no one else could.
He wanted Captain America to lead those individuals.
~
Her identity would be kept a secret, she would just be Captain America when she wore the cowl and carried the shield.
Mostly she wanted assurance that this would not have to be forever.
~
The serum stopped her heart. Then it started it again.
Sharon had always been healthy and strong.
The scientists explained that the serum cranked human potential up to eleven. That's why Rogers, having grown up half starved and sick had shot up a foot and put on one hundred pounds. Her upbringing had been balanced and healthy. There'd only be minimal observable changes.
She only grew a half an inch, and her already toned body hardened slightly. But it was like having been blind and deaf her whole life. It was like there had been some sort of weight removed that had been holding her back.
She remembered pictures of Rogers just after getting the serum, poorly masked confusion and looking unsettled in his own skin.
She definitely understood the feeling.
~
The public opinion was loud and varied. There were think pieces on feminism, on gender equality, on traditional values. Pundits decried her a betrayal of the original Captain America. Blogs talked about the legacy of the shield.
They all demanded to know who she was.
~
An arctic geology mission found an anomalous mass of metal in a glacier and applied for a research grant to fund a dig. But before they could get approval the Chitari invaded and the international fallout put off the dig for two years.
Sharon already knew Tony, he was her aunt's godson and somewhat like an actual uncle to her. Thor was a trip and half, and Banner was alarming. She got on with Barton like a wildfire though.
~
In 2014 a grad student was chipping away at the ice when he reached the tip of the strange metal.
When he got out of the digger to investigate he said “Holy fuck it's a spaceship.”
It was not a spaceship.
After seventy years and Five hundred miles west of where they were thought to have gone down, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were finally found in the ice