Peggy Carter
Peggy ducked behind a conveniently nearby car as a hail of bullets rained down on the street where she’d been just seconds earlier, resisting the urge to swear in a most unladylike fashion. Not that she cared much about being a lady, but she did care about not giving the shooters her exact location. This was not what she’d had in mind when she’d decided to take a brief holiday before resuming her hunt for Whitney Frost.
She should have known something was up the moment she’d found the dead body down by the river. Judging the rope that was still wrapped around the man’s wrists and ankles, it was unlikely to have been a suicide. Still, she’d called the local police and turned the whole mess over to them, certain that it wasn’t her problem. Apparently, the men shooting at her didn’t feel the same way.
“Oh, yes, Miss Carter, please do enjoy your holiday. I’m certain that it’ll be absolutely delightful this time of year,” she muttered under her breath as she replaced the clip in her Walther PPK/S, her fingers steady despite the hail of bullets slamming into the car at her back, glass shattering onto the street as one of the bullets struck a window. “When I get back, Mr. Jarvis is in for a piece of my mind,” she promised to herself. She really wished she had at least brought the Colt along, but she had only been going into town to pick up a few groceries.
Honestly, though, it wasn’t like she’d been expecting Hydra to be taking a beach vacation in Malibu of all places! She wasn’t even an hour away from Los Angeles, and she was more than ready to return there.
The gunfire stopped for a moment, and Peggy took the opening to dart across the street, firing off a couple of shots as she moved, hitting one of the gunmen in the arm and causing the others to take cover. She dived behind another car, pausing to catch her breath as shots were fired behind her again. A man came around the back of the car, and Peggy fired at him, watching him fall back with a strangled curse. Bracing her hand against the cool metal behind her, she moved into a crouch, preparing to move at any moment.
Suddenly, there was shouting and more gunfire, and Peggy ducked back down, slowly moving towards the front of the car to take a look, careful to make sure nobody came up behind her. Peering around the car’s bumper didn’t yield a good view, so she shuffled forward, he grip firm on her gun in case she had to start shooting.
“Yeah, that’s right, run, ya slimy bastards!” a familiar voice crowed. Peggy grinned, surging up to her feet and bracing her stance as she fired at the retreating Hydra agents, her bullets zipping past a familiar form and striking two more operatives. She didn’t recognize everybody, but Dum-Dum Dugan was hard to mistake for anybody else.
“Ah, there you are, Peggy!” he grinned when he caught sight of her. “All right, fellas, look like we’ve run them off,” he said, holstering his Colt M1911A1. The men around him responded with whoops and hollers, some of them running after the fleeing men to make sure they didn’t circle back around.
Peggy let Dum-Dum pull her into a firm hug, her feet lifting a few inches off the ground. She grinned. “What are you doing here, Dugan?” she asked. “Are the others here as well?” She knew that at least a few of them were here in America, though they had scattered after the war. She had thought that Dugan was still in New York.
He gave her a wide smile through his busy mustache. “Just rounding up some new recruits,” he shrugged. “This is the first action they’ve seen since the war ended, so they’re a bit excited,” he added ruefully. Peggy grinned; they were crazy, every last one of them. Which was probably why she liked them so much.
“Now, how about you? What is Captain America’s best girl doing out here?” he asked, gesturing to the men around them to follow as he headed for a nearby car, the others branching off into groups of three or four.
“I’m supposed to be on vacation, if you’d believe it,” Peggy admitted.
Dugan blinked. “Not much of a vacation, is it?” he asked.
Peggy grinned. “No, not much of one,” she agreed. “But really, what are you doing here?” she asked, more than happy to change the subject.
Dugan shrugged, opening the passenger side door so she could slide in. After he got himself settled in the driver’s seat and started the car moving towards wherever it was that they were going, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Just looking for a few good men,” he said after a long moment. “Well,” he amended, “maybe not all that good.” He flashed a quick smile at her before turning his attention back to the road. “For S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Peggy frowned. She’d hadn’t realized that Howard had already started recruiting people for the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Logistics Division, an organization that was intended to be a government agency that was larger and more expansive than the SSR, that would serve as a shield to protect the world against organizations like Hydra. He had asked Peggy to help found it, as well as Colonel Phillips. But he had seemed far more interested in womanizing than he had in starting a secret government organization. Besides, Peggy had her hands full at the moment with Whitney Frost.
“Ah, I see,” she said instead. “And where is Howard in all this?”
“Last I heard, he was in Los Angeles,” Dugan told her, seemingly surprised that she hadn’t already known. “How long have you been on vacation?” Peggy didn’t dignify that with a response. No doubt Howard was out cavorting with yet another woman. Or else he had gotten side-tracked by an idea for yet another one of his unpredictable, unreliable experiments.
Seeming to realize that Peggy didn’t want to talk about what Howard might be up to, Dugan started up a very one-sided conversation, sharing small details about some of the other men that Peggy had seen. If she was perfectly honest with herself, they sounded a lot like the Howling Commandos, and Peggy felt a sharp pain in her chest at the thought, the sudden grief catching her by surprise. She had long ago accepted that Steve Rogers was gone, drowned or frozen – or both – in the icy waters of the Arctic. But it was more than that; she missed the easy camaraderie that had surrounded the team, the knowledge that every man there had each other’s back, that they could, and would, travel into Hell if that’s where their Captain led them, and trust that he’d lead them back out, covered in soot and victorious.
The car rolled to a stop, and Peggy blinked, realizing that she’d been lost in her own thoughts for quite some time. Dugan was eyeing her worriedly, and she shook her head brusquely. “They sound like fine men,” she told him, letting herself out the car and looking around. This, at least, felt like home; a small side street bearing parallel rows of small shops all crammed together, people mostly window-shopping, their chatter a low buzz of nonsensical noise, interrupted occasionally by the honk of a car on the main road or the bright sound of laughter.
There was a library on the corner, and that’s where Dugan headed, Peggy keeping pace as she eyed her surroundings, dodging people as they made their way towards the large structure. As was usually the case in places like this, the mass of people lent a certain degree of anonymity, and nobody so much as glanced at them twice as they strode up the stairs to the library and slipped inside. The interior was cool and dry, and Peggy took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimness before following Dugan. The aisles were wide and airy, and there was a central study area filled with overstuffed, comfortable chairs and simple, long tables. A few people were inside, despite the beautiful weather, reading or studying.
Dugan ignored all of that, heading past the lobby and the biography section, making a right into a separate room that was filled with research books. There were encyclopedias and newspapers and large, thick tomes filled with information that few people actually cared about, as evidenced by the fact that the room was empty. Save for a single person, a woman seated in the back behind a large oak desk, a single lamp illuminating the maps in front of her.
She barely glanced up at the two of them as they walked by, Dugan offering her a cheerful, “Mornin’, Darlene!” as he headed for a plain wooden door partially hidden behind a shelf of books. There was a quiet buzz as they approached, and Dugan pressed his hand against the doorframe. Peggy noted that there weren’t any handles on the door, but that didn’t matter as it slid to the side, revealing a set of stairs.
“Feels almost like home,” she commented as Dugan gestured for her to lead the way. “Although, I’m surprised there isn’t a password.”
She could hear the laughter in the other man’s voice as he confided, “Her name’s not Darlene.” Peggy paused only for a moment as she considered that.
“Does she change her name often, then?” she asked lightly. Dugan’s pleased chortle was answer enough.
At the bottom of the stairs was a long hallway, with doors set at uneven intervals on either side, each of them labeled with a number and nothing else. There weren’t even windows, so Peggy had no idea what was behind each of the doors, and the hallway was eerily empty. Dugan took the lead again, and went straight to door 13 and pushed it open, Peggy following.
For as quiet as it had been a moment before, Peggy suddenly found herself surrounded by people and a flurry of activity. This was obviously some sort of call center, with phones ringing and people chattering, interns scurrying around delivering messages.
Dugan’s entrance didn’t go unnoticed. “Hey, Dum-Dum! Peggy!” a familiar voice called out, and Peggy waved over at Private Jim Morita, incredibly pleased to see him. There was a brief lull in activity as people paused to look at them, but a quick, “Quit yer gawkin’!” from Morita started them moving again, and the two of them made their way across the office space.
As soon as they were in front of him, Jim handed a note to Dugan and eyed Peggy with exaggerated suspicion. “How’d you get involved with a Hydra sleeper cell, Peggy?” he demanded incredulously.
Peggy scowled. “I stumbled across a dead body while enjoying a hike,” she snapped back, still a bit put out. She was supposed to be on vacation, not getting into shooting matches with Hydra agents in Malibu’s largest shopping district.
“That explains the pants,” Jim sassed, then handed her a note before she could do more than roll her eyes. “Stark called a bit ago, said he had something for you. Well,” he corrected, “a Chief Sousa has a case and mentioned it to Stark’s butler, who mentioned it to Stark. Who then called us lookin’ for you.”
Peggy unfolded the note almost eagerly – a case actually sounded preferable to her so-called vacation right now. Skimming its contents, she frowned, then read back over it a bit more slowly. One of Daniel’s men had found a body in an alley, but the manner of death seemed almost identical to the man that she had found in the river.
She looked over at Dugan. “Any idea what killed the man I found earlier?” she asked brusquely. She had, in fact, called it in, and if the local police knew about the body, she was certain that this branch of the SSR did as well.
Dugan shook his head. “We thought it was a plain murder,” he explained, “until Hydra took it personally.” Which made a lot of sense, actually; a little more digging might have revealed something unusual about the manner of death – or the body itself – but Hydra hadn’t been willing to wait and see. Which meant that Peggy needed to get back to Los Angeles.
“Can you send a message back?” she asked Jim, who nodded. “Good. Tell Chief Sousa to hold tight and to not tamper with the body. And to watch out for Hydra operatives,” she added almost absently as she debated whether or not she needed to swing by the bed and breakfast she’d been staying at before catching the first bus out of town.
Before she could ask for a ride, a young man stuck his head out of a side door. “Uh….Agent Carter?” he asked awkwardly.
“That would be me, yes,” Peggy agreed. When the boy glanced to the men on either side of her, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you have a message for me?” she demanded.
“Uh, oh, sorry ma’am. Agent,” he corrected hastily, meeting her eyes briefly before dropping them again. She found herself feeling almost sorry for him; clearly this young man didn’t know how to deal with a woman. She’d met plenty like him before, but at least he wasn’t patronizing her. “A Mister Stark called, said you’d find his butler waiting outside of your…residence.”
“Mr. Jarvis. Excellent,” Peggy smiled, knowing that the butler had probably jumped at the chance to drive all the way to Malibu just to pick her up. She just hoped that Hydra wasn’t waiting outside the bed and breakfast as well, in an attempt to get the jump on her. Jarvis really didn’t need to get caught in the crossfire, especially not after Whitney had shot his wife. Peggy was tired of putting the people around her at risk, but she couldn’t deny that she’d prefer Jarvis’ company over anybody else’s right now. And it would certainly make getting back home easier.
Dugan didn’t even ask if she was sure, just hollered, “Johnson! Mallory!” Two men stood up from their desks and hurried over to him. “Take Agent Carter back to pick up her things, and make sure there are no Hydra thugs waitin’ for her.”
“Yes, sir,” the two men agreed, nodding to Peggy before turning and heading out.
“Sorry I can’t come this time, Peggy,” Dugan apologized, “but I trust those two – recruited them myself. And they know better than to mess with you.”
Peggy shook her head. “It’s all right,” she reassured the soldier. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. I’ll protect them if need be.” The laugh she got from Dugan and Morita was worth it, and she gave them each a hug and extracted promises to keep in touch before following another agent out of the office and back up the stairs. Darlene – or whatever her name was – didn’t even look up from her book, but Peggy could feel her attention at her back as they left.
One of the agents – Mallory, she believed – was waiting by the car, and he opened the door for her as she approached. “Ma’am,” he greeted respectfully, his tone and expression carefully neutral. Peggy inclined her head in thanks and settled into the backseat. Agent Mallory climbed into the passenger’s side and Agent Johnson moved the car into traffic, taking several smaller side streets and slowly meandering closer to Peggy’s temporary residence. She appreciated the consideration, but would have preferred to just take her chances and go the short way. She was pretty sure she could have walked to the inn faster than they were getting there in the car.
Regardless, they did eventually arrive, and Agents Johnson and Mallory didn’t insist on going inside before her to scope the place out. Peggy picked out Edwin Jarvis easily enough – he was both the tallest and the most well-dressed man in the immediate vicinity, and she strode up to where he was waiting with a warm smile, holding her arms out to him. “Mr. Jarvis,” she greeted. “Thank you for coming.”
Jarvis gave her a pleased smile in return, humoring her and allowing a brief hug of greeting. “Miss Carter, it was my pleasure,” he replied sincerely. That was what Peggy loved most about the man; he was refreshingly honest. Even when she’d prefer that he kept his thoughts to himself, she couldn’t deny that his dry sense of humor over even the most ridiculous of observations was somewhat invigorating.
“So, I hear Howard is up to his usual antics again,” she stated brusquely, glancing in the boot when Jarvis opened it, pleased to see that her belongings were already stored. There would be no delay in returning to Los Angeles. She’d been rather tired of living out of her suitcases anyhow.
“I’m afraid so,” Jarvis agreed with a pained grimace. “But then again, I do not believe it was Mr. Stark whose impassioned plea draws you back to Los Angeles.
Peggy muffled her laugh behind her hand, her eyes sparkling. “Quite right,” she agreed, allowing Jarvis to open the car door for her. Agents Johnson and Mallory shifted uneasily where they stood, as if uncertain whether or not the Englishman could be trusted. She stuck her head out the window. “Oh, do go on. I’m all packed and heading home. Please give Misters Dugan and Morita my regards,” she stated primly.
As Jarvis started the car and pulled away from the curb, she turned her attention to the file in her hands. Vacation was over, and she had work to do. They all did.