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August 1945
London
Peggy never thought she’d find herself wishing for the drab, stifling wool of her uniform, particularly in summer, but standing on the platform in her civvies, she feels strangely conspicuous.
She knows, logically, that she is nothing of the kind; the station is bustling, and even her nattiest skirt and blazer are hardly likely to turn heads. But the feeling lingers, all the same.
Steve is among the first off the train. He’s also in civilian attire: freshly-shaved and smartly dressed, tie in a crisp Windsor knot, shoes polished to a mirror shine. His overnight bag is fairly new and almost certainly borrowed, as is his hat.
“Look at you,” he declares, beaming.
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Captain. Especially such lacklustre flattery as that.”
Undaunted, Steve snags her by the waist and reels her in for a kiss, in plain view of the entire station.
He isn’t usually so demonstrative in public, but Peggy isn’t about to complain. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in weeks: he’s been in the field, she in the office. They’ve arranged the entire mission through a few carefully coded notes, carried back and forth by the long-suffering Sergeant Barnes.
Despite a late start, Steve has been a very quick study when it comes to kissing, and all things kissing-adjacent. By the time he’s through, all she feels fit to say is, “Steady on.”
He releases her, looking pleased with himself. “Are we all set?”
“Yes, my friend was very helpful. By the way, you mustn’t make fun of his name when you meet him. It’s Hatch.”
Steve looks at her blankly.
“And he works for the registry office,” she prompts.
Still nothing.
“Births, marriages, and deaths? Hatch, Match and Dispatch?”
He laughs. “I never heard that one.”
“Blast,” says Peggy, amiably. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Right.” She tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow as they walk. “We need to collect the package, make the rendezvous, and then Hatch is going to smuggle us into the archives. Oh, and I’ve arranged somewhere for us to stay the night afterwards.”
Steve leans down to murmur in her ear, “Lookin’ forward to that part.”
She swats him away in mock outrage.
“What? Sleeping in a real bed, eating food that wasn’t made in a lab…” He grins unrepentantly.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s all you meant.” She can’t quite suppress a grin of her own. “Did you brief Barnes?”
“He’ll be there. And Howard offered us his butler as a backup.”
“Yes,” says Peggy, dubiously. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Did he also lend you that hat? It’s dreadful.”
“He said after seeing what I do to my own clothes, he didn’t trust me with anything stylish. But that can’t be it,” he adds, “because he trusts me with you.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she tells him, squeezing his arm. “Come on. We’re already behind schedule.”
April 1946
Russia
Jack Thompson isn’t sure what he expected from the 107th, but it wasn’t this.
They all think Carter is the one running the show. When he tries to set the record straight, Barnes and Dugan seem more amused than anything. The others just ignore him. Even Li and Ramirez are too busy acting like groupies to pay him any attention.
All of Cap’s boys are lined up to hug Carter. Barnes snakes his hand into her bag, asking, “What’d you bring me, Santy Claus?”
“A good kick up the arse,” she retorts, snatching a candy bar away from him.
But for all her bluster, she has brought gifts. She doles them out throughout the journey, when she thinks Jack isn’t looking: bottles of liquor, cartons of cigarettes, bars of chocolate, paperback books, wool socks. All the comforts of home. No wonder they were all so happy to see her.
Every time he turns around, she’s talking quietly to either Barnes or Dugan. He gets the sense that they’re laughing at him behind his back, but he’s never able to catch them at it.
He wishes he’d thought to bring some booze of his own to share. Instead he drinks Carter’s bourbon, and listens morosely as the Howlies tell ghost stories: the time Steve jumped out of a plane without a parachute. The time Steve stopped a truck by picking up the back end of it. The other time Steve jumped out of a plane without a parachute. The time Steve fought a tank and won.
The guy’s been dead almost a year, but they talk like they just saw him yesterday. Jack finds it a little morbid.
*
Jack’s full bladder annoys him into wakefulness. He rolls onto his side, trying to tough it out so he doesn’t have to give up the body heat. He’s on the edge of sleep when he catches movement, just beyond the reach of the fire’s glow, and realizes that Carter’s bedroll is empty.
So is Barnes’s.
Jack has a pretty good idea of what they’re up to, but he gets up anyhow. There are tracks in the fresh snow, too small to be a man’s, leading off into the woods.
He doesn’t get more than a few yards in before crashing into Barnes.
“Can’t sleep, Thompson?” he asks, insolently, like he’s not talking to the guy in charge of this op.
“Gotta take a piss. Problem with that? Sergeant?”
Barnes shrugs, but gives no answer.
He continues to loiter, so Jack finds a tree and makes it his own, then stumbles back to camp and collapses into his sleeping bag.
When he opens his eyes again, it’s almost dawn. Carter is there, poking the ashes of the dying fire.
Barnes asks a question, too soft to hear.
“Brilliant.” Her back is to him, but Jack can hear her smile. “Thank you.”
Barnes grunts and turns over emphatically.
Later, as the team is striking camp, Jack retraces the tracks. One set of boots, joined by another, larger set further on. Big Boots seems to walk a few paces alone, and then there’s evidence of some kind of tangle against a tree. Somehow, he doubts Carter put up much of a fight.
Women are all the same, he thinks. Especially the ones who claim to be different.
*
The recon starts to go sideways when Dugan, true to his nickname, lets himself get stabbed by a little girl. Carter sends him off alone to find an alternate way out, while the rest of them join hands and skip merrily into a trap.
When the firefight starts, Jack’s head is full of static. He can’t seem to get clear of it.
Carter takes charge. He hears her talking on the radio to a voice he doesn’t recognize, calling for backup. There’s a crack like thunder, and then, suddenly, a doorway where there used to be a wall. She’s barking instructions in English and in Russian, everyone’s shouting and running around, it’s a goddamn circus. There are these weird pinging sounds, like gravel hitting the wheel well of a car.
Carter calls his name, but her voice sounds like it’s coming down a long tunnel.
The last thing he’s aware of, before he passes out, is someone big—Dugan, it must be Dugan—scooping him up and carrying him out of the building, fireman-style.
*
When he comes to, the first thing he hears is her laugh. His teeth rattle; the truck is moving at a clip.
Barnes and Carter are kneeling over him, chatting. Just another day at the office.
“He tell you he put in another request?” asks Barnes.
“He didn’t mention it.”
“Yeah, they said to ask again in six months.”
Carter makes an unladylike noise. “That’s what they said six months ago. I’ve half a mind to call Phillips myself.” Which is how Thompson knows they must be talking about a transfer. It makes sense that she’d use her connections to get back in the field—even Jack has to concede that she’s better at this than she is at making coffee or filing.
“You could miss your flight,” Barnes suggests.
“Chance would be a fine thing.”
“It’s been fun. Admit it.”
“It has. But someone’s got to find out who’s trying to sabotage Howard. Other than Howard.”
Barnes snorts. Then he catches Thompson’s eye and says, “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”
*
That night, Jack can’t sleep.
He can’t stop turning it over in his mind. The mission was a success—plenty of intel, two prisoners rescued, no loss of life—but he himself was a total failure, and everyone was there to see it. He’s certain that Carter’s going to rat him out to the chief the second they’re back in the office. It’s what he would do, in her place.
It doesn’t help that the squirrelly Russian scientist, Nikola, won’t stop weeping.
When Carter gets up to leave camp, it’s his chance to get some leverage: if he can catch her nailing Barnes, she’ll keep her mouth shut about the snafu.
There’s no snow this time, and she’s light on her feet, but he used to be an Eagle Scout.
He catches up to her in a clearing. And she’s not alone.
The guy is too tall to be Barnes, not bulky enough to be Dugan, and neither of them had a beard when last seen. A civilian, or dressed like one; his long coat hangs open, in spite of the blistering cold.
Their voices are too soft for Jack to make out words, but it’s clearly more than just business. Carter takes a step toward the guy, and he wraps his coat around her, pulling her close. He leans down to whisper something, and her lilting laugh carries on the air, as clear as a bell.
Jack tries to move in for a better look, but a branch snaps under his foot.
Carter and the guy startle and pull apart. The light goes out. By the time his eyes adjust, the lovers are long gone.
When Jack finally manages to find camp again, Carter is already there, huddled in the shallow break right alongside Barnes.
*
In the morning, Ivchenko is still there, but Nikola is gone. Jack is fit to be tied: the scientist was the only one able to prove even an indirect connection to Stark. He gives Carter a piece of his mind.
“He didn’t feel safe with us,” is her feeble excuse. “I found someone to take him home.”
It’s then that he really starts to wonder whether she’s on their side at all.
August 1945
Hampstead
The punt is just large enough for two to lie side-by-side. As a lounging spot for lovers, it’s practically spacious, even with all the cushions and blankets Peggy hauls out from the boathouse.
The cushions are mostly for Steve’s benefit. The only pillow she uses is him.
She hasn’t been out on the lake since the last summer Michael was home, but it’s still just as she remembers: diamonds of sunlight on the water, the gentle rocking of the little boat.
The plan has gone off almost entirely without a hitch. Now, floating in Steve’s arms, the minutes seem to spool away into hours. The sun hangs in the sky for an eternity before slowly dissolving into the horizon.
The muted sadness of their future parting is still there, but like spice added to a savoury dish: too much overwhelms the palate, but a small taste is almost exquisite. Tomorrow, they will return to their lives, to the work, and possibly not see each other again for months. But tonight belongs to them, and them alone.
The air has just started to turn cool when Steve murmurs, “Can’t stay here all night.” But he makes no move to sit up.
Neither does Peggy. “Enjoy it while it lasts. We won’t have any privacy tonight. The walls are thin as paper.”
“I like your mum.” He says it carefully, imitating her pronunciation.
“I rather thought you might.” She rests her hand against his cheek. “And she likes you. That’s why she took the mickey out of you so thoroughly.”
“I figured.”
“Michael would have liked you too.”
Steve says nothing, but his arm tightens around her.
“I know it’s selfish of me,” she continues, “but I’m so glad we didn’t wait.”
“I don’t think it’s selfish to ask for something that you could’ve easily had if I was anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t want you if you were anyone else,” she tells him, with a vehemence that surprises her.
Under the blanket, his hand brushes her bare knee; the promise of it makes her shiver.
He glances up at the house and asks, “Can you see the lake from there?”
“Yes.” She lifts up on her elbow to kiss him. “But I don’t care if you don’t.”
May 1946
New York
Jack finds Sousa surprisingly receptive to his concerns about Carter. It turns out that he’s been doing a little sleuthing of his own.
They find an empty meeting room, and Sousa runs over the evidence he’s collected: Sheldon McPhee’s identification of Peggy from her picture. Her deliberate bungling of the stolen car report that got Edwin Jarvis off the hook just as he was about to crack. The scars on Spider Raymond’s mystery blonde, matching the ones he saw on Peggy in the locker room—“Thanks for that, by the way.”
“Any time, pal.”
“Your turn.”
“She was up to something in Russia. Turning that scientist loose, acting cagey, sneaking off at night to meet some guy.”
Predictably, Sousa perks up at this. “Some guy? What guy?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t get a good look at him.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What was I supposed to say? Officially, she did everything by the book. It’s not up to me who she screws when she’s off the clock.”
Sousa winces.
“Besides, it would’ve been my word against hers, and you didn’t see those guys in the 107th. Any one of ‘em would take a bullet for her, never mind back her up in a lie.”
“I think we need to take this to the chief,” says Sousa, grimly.
*
They stake out Carter’s usual lunch spot, quietly talk to the staff, and usher out the few civilians there. Jack has to sweet-talk a cute blonde whose eyes go wide and shiny at the mere mention of police business. She’s clearly one of those girls who gets an extra-big kick out of a man in authority. He doesn’t have to work too hard to get a name and number from her.
Going on Jack’s gut instinct, he and Sousa nab Carter in the alley behind the automat, rather than lining up to take a punch from her like the rest of the SSR goon squad.
There’s a moment where she’s balling up her fists, and Jack thinks she might take a crack at him, but then she sighs and puts her hands up. “I suppose we’d better get this over with.”
He moves in, cuffs in hand—which is when Carter tackles him and yells, “Run!”
Jarvis, surprisingly fast for someone so gangly, blows past Sousa and takes off.
Carter fights like a tiger, and Jack has to pop her one in the mouth before he manages to pin her down. Once he does, she stays down, which is a little surprising, given how hard she fought in Russia.
If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she let them catch her.
*
Jack warned the chief that Carter would be a tough nut to crack, but even he didn’t expect she’d be ballsy enough to pretend she was in the right. If she has a tell, he’s missing it. Then again, it’s not like he has experience interrogating broads. Before today, he’d never hit one.
“Who’d you meet in Russia?” he asks, for about the fortieth time.
She sighs. “Changing the phrasing of the question slightly is not going to get you a different answer. I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Can’t. You don’t have the clearance.”
“That’s funny,” says Jack. “I was under the impression we both had the same clearance.”
“This is need to know only.”
“You need to know and I don’t, is that it?”
She shrugs.
“Carter, you’re in it up to your eyeballs here. If there’s anyone who can vouch for you, I’d think long and hard about giving up a name.”
“I can’t,” she repeats.
“Okay, well, who can you tell? Can you tell the chief? ‘Cause he’s right outside. Should I try to get the president on the phone? The king of England, maybe?”
She rolls her eyes.
Sousa takes a softer approach, playing the betrayed friend angle. When that doesn’t land, he suggests that Carter screwed her way to the top, with Howard Stark as the latest rung on the ladder. It’s fun to watch her get angry, but Jack can tell they’re not getting anywhere.
Dooley must think so too; he slides into the room a second later. Not that he has much better luck: he threatens Carter with dismissal, deportation, prison, and hanging, in that order, and she never so much as bats her gorgeous eyelashes.
They’ve been at it for hours by the time a junior agent cracks the door to the interrogation room and sticks his head in.
“Someone to see you, chief.”
“It can wait,” snaps Dooley.
“Uh, not really.”
Carter looks surprised, then suddenly smug.
“Spit it out, Yauch.”
“It’s Captain Rogers.”
“Rogers who? Wait—Steve Rogers?”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re telling me Captain fucking America is out there right now?”
“He says he doesn’t go by that anymore. But yeah.”
No one’s asking the obvious question, so Thompson does: “Being dead doesn’t slow him down at all?”
“I didn’t ask,” Yauch retorts. “He’s in your office, chief.”
“What’s he want?”
“He says he has intel about Leviathan. And, he, uh… wants to know why his wife is in custody.”
All three men turn as one to look at Carter, who smiles, hands demurely folded in her lap.
“I’ll wait,” she tells them. “And I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.”
August 1945
London
“You two knuckleheads did what?!”
Steve takes hold of Peggy’s hand. “We got married,” he repeats, calm and sure.
The past twenty-four hours have been like a dream, but there’s something about hearing Steve say it so matter-of-factly that makes it suddenly real. They’ve actually done it. Breaking every rule in the book, and a few that no one thought to write down, they have somehow managed to successfully elope.
She is, for better or worse, Mrs. Steven Rogers.
Colonel Phillips, however, doesn’t seem to take quite such a romantic view of things. “How in the hell did you pull that off? In case you don’t read the papers, you’re dead! And we need you to stay that way!”
“Won’t be a problem, sir.”
“I have an old school friend at the registry office,” Peggy chimes in. “Andrew Hatch, formerly of Whitehall. Top secret clearance, and he owed me a favour. He’s agreed to bury the paperwork until Steve is officially alive again, but he knows to expect a call from you if you need to verify the details.”
“Sounds like you two geniuses have all the angles covered.”
“Rather.” Peggy can’t quite keep the note of pride out of her voice.
“You know this doesn’t change anything, right? You,” he jabs a finger in Steve’s direction, “still have HYDRA scientists to chase, and you,” aiming at Peggy, “still have a boat to catch.”
“That’s why we did this now.” Steve’s firmness starts to edge into defiance: jaw squared, eyes blazing. Peggy is momentarily distracted by how beautiful he is.
She comes back to earth abruptly to find Phillips still glaring at her. “One word to anyone…” He lets the threat dangle, unspoken.
Peggy nods.
The colonel fumes for another long moment before settling back into his chair. “I suppose next you’re gonna to tell me you want time off to celebrate?”
“We’re not asking for special treatment,” says Steve, with the particularly American brand of boyish earnestness that has become his hallmark. “We just thought you ought to know.”
“In the event that something should happen,” Peggy clarifies, her voice faltering only slightly on the last word.
Steve squeezes her fingers.
Phillips looks from one to the other and then, without a word, takes a form out of his desk and starts writing.
“One night off,” he says gruffly. “Get this nonsense—” gesturing to their joined hands— “out of your system. And you’re back here at 0800.”
“Oh,” breathes Peggy, too grateful to say more than that.
“I mean it. Tomorrow, I see any looks across the room, any touching, any cutesy nicknames, and I’ll find someplace colder than Russia to send you both. Separately.”
Steve nods vigorously.
“And I’m still calling you Carter,” he grumbles.
Peggy beams. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”
May 1946
New York
Unlike his wife, Steve Rogers isn’t interested in coffee, or any other SSR hospitality. He’s extremely interested in finding out what Carter has been charged with, and when she’s going to be released.
That’s as much as Jack is able to find out before Dooley shuts the door. At one point, he clearly hears the chief yell the words “throwing your weight around,” but Rogers never raises his voice.
After the third time he catches Dr. Ivchenko hovering around the door, Jack gets Yauch to take him somewhere—he’s not a threat, but that doesn’t mean he should have the run of the SSR office. There’s something unsettling about the way the chief’s been dragging him around like a security blanket.
In the end, Dooley agrees to let Rogers see his missus, but refuses to let her off the hook until they can determine that she’s not a threat to national security.
On his way past Jack’s desk, Rogers slows his stride. He’s a far cry from the matinee idol of the newsreels: scruffy, bearded, and threadbare, he looks like he hasn’t eaten, slept, or changed his clothes in a month. Which, if the girl keeping house for him is Peggy Carter, isn’t all that surprising.
“Agent Thompson. Is that Russian doctor still here?”
The chief must be losing it, Jack thinks. Spilling his guts about the case, without bothering to check whether this guy has any right to be here at all.
“He’s part of an open investigation,” he replies cautiously.
“He’s dangerous.” His voice is low and urgent. “Don’t believe anything he tells you. Don’t let him be alone with anyone.”
Dooley taps Rogers on the shoulder, none too gently. “You mind? My guys have got work to do. Let’s move this along.”
It isn’t until after he’s gone that it occurs to Jack to wonder how Captain America knows his name.
*
Jack gets to the observation room just in time for the show.
He expects a tearful reunion, but Carter is her usual icy self, barely even saying hello as Rogers drags a chair over to sit beside her.
He doesn’t try to hug or kiss her. What he does do is inspect the ugly bruise at the corner of her mouth. There’s a look of white-hot rage that Jack’s never seen on any recruitment poster.
“I’m fine, Steve,” she assures him. “Don’t fuss.”
“You want out of the cuffs?” he asks, pleasantly.
“You’d have to break the table.”
A shrug of his massive shoulders.
She seems to actually be considering it before replying, “Best not, I think.”
“Okay.”
“How on earth did you get here so quickly?”
“I was already in London when I got Mr. Jarvis’s wire. So I hitched a ride.”
“I’m surprised they let you go.”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t exactly give them any say in the matter.”
Carter raises a single eyebrow. “I hope you haven’t burnt all your bridges, darling.”
“There might be one or two still standing.” He grins, and takes her free hand in both of his.
Carter nods towards the two-way glass.
“I know. Otherwise I’d be doing a lot more than holding your hand.”
“Steve.” She says it sternly, but the look on her face makes it clear that she doesn’t mind all that much.
“I’m guessing you never got my wire.”
“What do you mean?”
“That doctor. Ivchenko isn’t his real name. And he’s not one of ours.”
Carter curses under her breath. “If you say ‘I told you so’ to me while I’m in handcuffs, I’m going to kick you someplace very unpleasant.”
He leans over to kiss her on the forehead. “I feel like the score’s about even by now, Mrs. Rogers.”
*
“Something still feels off to me,” says Sousa. “Her being married to him wouldn’t prove anything—even if there was any record of a marriage license. Which there isn’t. But okay, let’s say it’s true. We didn’t know. The chief didn’t know. If she could lie about that, then what else is she lying about? What about all the stuff she got up to in Russia?”
“I don’t think she was up to anything in Russia,” says Jack slowly.
The same pieces are all coming together to form a new picture. The guy in the long coat hadn’t been a Soviet agent; he’d been the husband Carter hadn’t seen in months. The tracks Jack found marked the reunion, and the meeting he’d interrupted was the goodbye.
Rogers had called Jack by name because he’d been there, on the mission, just out of sight. He’d been the one on the radio, the one who got them out of the trap when Jack had fallen apart. Carter didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want Jack to give away her little secret.
A female agent is barely tolerable; a married female agent is a bridge too far.
Sousa opens a desk drawer, stares into it aimlessly, and slams it shut again. Over his shoulder, Jack can see the door to the chief’s office hanging open.
“You seen Dooley?”
“Yeah, he took Ivchenko outside for a smoke.”
Jack feels the back of his neck prickle. “Why didn’t he get one of us to do that? Or Yauch?”
“What do I look like, a mind reader?” says Sousa, irritably. “Yauch left about an hour ago. I think he went home sick. He didn’t look right.”
“Shit.”
*
Jack throws open the door to the interrogation room. “Rogers.”
Both of the lovebirds turn to look.
“Well, isn’t that fuckin’ adorable. Captain Rogers. What’d you say earlier about Ivchenko?”
“His real name is Johann Fenhoff. He’s a hypnotist, he’s been working with Leviathan. Chief Dooley told me he was in the lockup.”
“He hasn’t been, at all,” says Carter, alarmed. “He’s had the run of the office.”
“He and Dooley just walked out of here arm in arm,” says Jack. “Come on, Cap, lend a hand.”
Rogers points to the handcuffs Carter is still wearing. “We come as a team.”
It’s hard to argue with Captain America. Jack tosses him the keys. “Let’s go.”
*
Thompson, Carter, and Rogers find the chief and Fenhoff in the lab, going through the recovered tech from Stark’s vault.
According to Carter, there are enough explosives in Stark’s toy chest to level the building. So Rogers goes in first, and gets his hair parted by a bullet for his trouble.
The chief gets off two more shots before Carter, using her husband as a human shield, tosses a rolling chair hard enough to knock him senseless.
“Nice shot,” says Rogers. The two of them exchange a look so openly lustful that it’s embarrassing.
Jack steps in and snags Fenhoff by the collar to stop him from running out of the room.
“Steve.” Carter points to Rogers’ side. His grimy coat is dark with fresh blood.
“Shit,” says Rogers reflexively.
“Let me look.” She sounds more annoyed than concerned. Just in case there was any doubt they were telling the truth about being married.
Rogers sighs, but lifts his arm anyhow.
“You need assistance?” inquires Fenhoff, mild and unctuous. “I have steady hands.”
“We’re all right, thanks,” says Carter briskly.
Rogers jabs a finger at Jack and barks, “Keep him quiet.”
“It looks like a clean shot. Does this hurt?”
“You poking it? No. Feels great.” He’s slightly green around the gills. “You want to go ahead and kick me in the crotch too? I think that’s really all I’m missing.”
“Hmm. What a shame he didn’t hit you somewhere that might stop you speaking.”
“I missed you too, sweetheart.”
Apparently satisfied, Carter looks around for something to wipe her hands.
Fenhoff murmurs, “You really believe I am the spy?”
“Pipe down,” says Jack, giving him a shake.
The doctor shrugs. “It is easy to see how you would think so. No one would suspect the great Captain America. He has the perfect cover story.”
Jack feels like he’s just had blinders taken off. It’s been staring him in the face all along. Rogers is working for the Russians, along with his old buddy Howard Stark. Carter has blood on her hands, figuratively as well as literally.
“Thompson,” says Rogers, low and warning.
“They oughta call you Captain Communist,” says Jack, chuckling at his own joke. He reaches for his sidearm.
Everything goes a little hazy after that.
*
The next thing he knows, Jack is on the ground, with Carter kneeling on his chest. She’s got a gun pointed right in his face. He’s pretty sure it’s his. Rogers and the doctor are nowhere in sight.
“What the fuck,” he wheezes. Her knee is wedged into his diaphragm.
“Lie still.”
“Get off me!”
“You’re not yourself, Jack. Fenhoff had you in his control. You let him go and attacked us. Steve’s gone after him.”
“Can you ease up?” asks Jack, pitifully. “You’re heavier’n you look.”
The look she gives him is strangely sympathetic, but she doesn’t budge. “I’m sorry.”
“How long have you been Mrs. America, anyhow?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Hey, you married him.”
“It’s not the nickname that I object to. I don’t mind a bit of teasing, if it’s in good fun. Only it never has been in good fun, has it? Not with you and your friends.”
“Oh, come on—”
“All those comments about me doing my best work on my back? Serving under a captain? I was tried in the court of your opinion for having worked alongside men, and for having had the nerve to fall in love with one. And what’s worse, you let it compromise your detective work.”
“You could’ve corrected us any old time.”
“Could I have? And said what, exactly? ‘Captain America is really alive, and he’s been chasing Leviathan for months now, and oh, by the way, we’re married?’ Was I supposed to compromise Steve’s entire mission just because you lot couldn’t be bothered to do your jobs?”
Jack can’t think of a comeback. His head is splitting.
“You could have worked it all out yourself in Russia, if you’d paid any attention at all. But no, as soon as you suspected that I was up to something, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that some man must have seduced me into it, doe-eyed simpleton that I am. Steve and I saved your arse over there. And again today. We’re a damn good team. But we aren’t allowed to be a team, because of what a few small men with dirty minds might think.”
Jack feels his ears turning red. “All of that’s swell, sweetheart, but I can’t fuckin’ breathe.”
Carter gives him a disgusted look, but lets him up.
*
Between the two of them, they manage to revive Dooley and get him on his feet. He’s disoriented—either a hypnotism hangover, or a concussion from the wallop Carter gave him—and keeps talking about how he needs to get home for dinner with his missus.
They get back to the bullpen just ahead of Rogers, who brings Fenhoff in bound and gagged.
Sousa has his hands full with Yauch, who’s crying and talking nonsense. Turns out ol’ Danny Boy had to wrestle the guy to stop him hurling himself into the path of an oncoming delivery truck, on Fenhoff’s orders.
They manage to jury-rig a muzzle for Fenhoff and hand him off for processing. They can’t charge him with anything concrete related to the mind control stuff, but at the very least they’ve got him on breaking into the lab.
Jack walks Dooley and Rogers over to medical to get checked out, despite the latter's insistence that he doesn't need it. Sure enough, when he lifts up his shirt, the worst thing there is a layer of grime. He waits with Jack while they run Dooley through the usual tests.
“We nearly done here?” asks the chief, plaintively. Jack is embarrassed on his behalf. “I wanna go home and see my wife.”
“Don’t we all,” mutters Rogers.
Jack gives him a nudge. “I don’t get you. Why not use some of that war hero influence to get yourself a promotion, transfer back to the U.S.? If I had a girl that looked like Carter waiting for me at home, I’d—”
Rogers cuts him off with a look—probably for the best, since Jack has no idea where that sentence was headed anyhow.
“I don’t think anyone really knows what goes on in a marriage, except the people inside it,” he remarks, philosophically. “But neither of us are any good at sitting on the sidelines. So here we are.”
As answers go, it's unsatisfying. Maybe even a little insulting. But Jack's not about to ask again.
*
After getting the all-clear, Dooley high-tails it out of there—leaving Jack at something of a loss for what to do about Carter, who’s still technically supposed to be in custody.
Carter herself seems to think otherwise: Jack finds her waiting in the bullpen with her jacket on. She’s somehow convinced one of the field agents to fetch her handbag from the evidence locker.
“Shall we?” she asks, taking her husband firmly by the arm.
Nobody gets in their way as they walk out.
*
Feeling in need of a win, Jack digs up the number he pulled off the blonde at the automat. Dottie, with a little heart over the i. Cute.
Just as he predicted, she’s thrilled to get his call. She tells him, breathlessly, that she can’t wait to hear all about his work.
She seems a little naive, but Jack doesn’t mind that so much. He isn’t looking for conversation.
*
Two days later, the chief is back in his office, and Carter’s gone for good.
Jack feels a twinge of something unpleasant in his gut whenever he has to pass the empty desk. He reminds himself that Carter made her share of poor choices. It’s only thanks to her husband’s influence that she isn’t in jail.
Sousa still has a fading shiner from his scuffle with Yauch, and is looking even gloomier than usual. His desk is a mess of papers; Carter has bequeathed him all of her research on the Howard Stark case. The legwork is impressive: it’s pretty clear that Stark was fleeced by someone, with the intention of framing him. Not that Jack ever considered him a serious suspect.
“You find that dame?”
“Ida Emke?” Sousa shrugs. “As far as I can tell, she never existed before or after she rented that apartment. She’s a ghost.”
“Probably just a minor player, anyhow,” says Jack sagely.
Sousa gives a noncommittal hum.
“Hey, you want to work an overnight for me tomorrow?”
“Why do you always assume I don’t have plans?”
“Do you have plans?”
Sousa glares at him.
“Good. I promised to take a girl to the pictures.”
“What girl?”
“Ida Emke,” retorts Jack.
“Well, have fun calling Ida and telling her you have to work, wise guy.”
“Shame about your pal Carter leaving,” says Jack, just to twist the knife a little. “I hope you at least got a goodbye handshake out of it.”
“She seemed pretty happy to be going overseas,” says Sousa, without looking up from his reading.
“Deported?”
“Transferred. She and the 107th are gonna be digging deeper into Leviathan from the ground up.”
“Huh. Cap too?”
“Cap’s dead, Thompson.”
Jack has to admit, he walked into that one.
July 1946
[CLASSIFIED]
“What’s wrong with Egypt?”
“It’s just—” Steve pauses to finish taking off his boots, lining them up next to Peggy’s. “We’re talking about a honeymoon. It’s not very romantic.”
“A cruise down the Nile?” Peggy pokes her head out, her breath rising in the frigid air. “I call that romantic.”
“In July? I call it sweating our asses off.”
“Which would make a nice change from freezing them off,” she murmurs, wriggling closer. Steve takes the hint, letting her open the bedroll to fold him in.
She’s still fully dressed, coat and all. The storm would have caught a less experienced team unawares; fortunately, the Commandos knew the signs well enough to dig in, put up the tents, and hunker down before it hit.
“You gotta take some of this stuff off,” says Steve. “You’re gonna overheat. And I feel like I’m spooning a pile of laundry.”
Peggy sits up. She casts off her woolly hat and her mittens; he helps her out of her coat, and the topmost layer under it, before snuggling down again. She yawns hugely, and slips her ice-cold hands under his shirt, making him squirm.
“Paris?” he asks.
“Too French.”
She says it with such conviction that he has to muffle a laugh against her shoulder.
“Somewhere hot,” she says wistfully. “By the sea.”
“Oh, yeah. You could get one of those little two-piece bathing suits.”
“You’d like that, would you?”
“I can’t think of a man alive who wouldn’t,” says Steve, honestly.
Mischievously, she suggests, “If we went to California, we could stay with Howard.”
“That’s unromantic.”
Just outside, a disembodied voice observes, “I liked it better when you two were sneakin’ around.”
“Nobody invited you to pitch your tent right on top of ours, Buck,” Steve calls back.
They’re quiet for a moment, listening to the howling wind outside. Steve closes his eyes and tries to picture white sand and blue water and scanty swimsuits, but his mind refuses to let go of the here and now: Peggy, curled up in his arms, her breathing slow and soft as she slides into sleep.
He presses a kiss into her hair. “I don’t care where we go,” he whispers, like the sap he is, “as long as I’m with you.”