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i.
New York: April, 1963
Peggy's mother is rolling over in her un-dug grave the day Peggy becomes a spy.
It’s Sharon’s fault, really. Peggy’s only in Washington for a visit, a change of scene after the implosion of her engagement to Freddie. If she spends another second listening to her mother lament the loss of such a wonderful son-in-law, so soon after the death of her Michael, Peggy is going to put a dessert fork in her mother’s eye. This way, she gets to cool her heels and take a little holiday, and her mother gets to keep her eyes. A win-win.
And if Sharon has mounted a not-so-subtle campaign to get Peggy to stay in America, well, she’s willing to be convinced.
“They pay really well over here, you know,” Sharon says conversationally. “And the work’s real interesting. You’d love it, Peggy. Right up your alley.” There’s a cryptic twist to her smile, like she knows more about this job than she’s letting on—and she must, because there is nothing about secretarial work that is ‘up Peggy’s alley’ at all.
Peggy humours it with a dry smile. “I’m not looking for work at the moment, but I’ll take that under advisement.”
She also suspects that Sharon is trying to set her up with one of her coworkers—a man named Steve, whom Sharon has not stopped talking about since Peggy arrived. Her suspicions are confirmed when Sharon announces they’re going to the Palladium on Saturday night and that Peggy should wear her best dress. She’s sure Steve is lovely, but she’s only just gotten one man’s ring off her finger. She isn’t interested in wearing another’s.
Still, Peggy loves a good party, so she puts on her best dress—a stunning red number that flatters every one of her curves—and styles her hair and piles into the cab with Sharon to take them downtown. She’ll flirt and dance and have a good time.
(This, at any rate, is the plan.)
Peggy realises very quickly that Sharon has forgotten to mention a key detail about Steve: he’s a veritable American god. Tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with biceps that Peggy could swing on like monkey bars. He looks like the sort of man who would hold doors open and help elderly women with their shopping. It's all she can do to keep from reaching out and touching his chest when he opens the door.
Steve is also clearly not expecting them on his doorstep; he’s wearing the polite frown of someone who has no idea what is going on and doesn’t want to be rude about it. “Sharon,” he says. “Hi.”
“Hi, Steve,” Sharon says breezily. “This is my cousin, Peggy. Peggy, Steve.”
Steve holds out his hand to shake, still looking slightly dazed. “Nice to meet you, Peggy.” He glances at Sharon. “Can we, uh, talk for a second?”
Sharon shakes her head. “Not here.” She clamps a hand on Peggy’s wrist and all but hauls her past a startled Steve and into the apartment. Steve shuts the door behind them.
“Sharon, what the bloody hell is going on—?”
“I’m a spy, Peggy,” Sharon says. “Not a secretary.”
Peggy stares at her. She wonders, for a moment, if this is an absurd dream. Steve is watching them, transfixed.
“Well, I’m not really a spy, I work at a desk, but still—I work for an intelligence organisation called SHIELD—”
“Called what?”
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Never mind that. Look, the point is, higher ups suspect there’s a Soviet mole and we’re going to flush him out. Tonight.”
“We?”
“Yes. Steve’s pretty sure he’s identified him, so we’ve invited him to come out dancing with us.”
“Wait,” Steve interjects. “Are you using your cousin as bait?”
“No,” says Peggy, with dawning realisation. It all makes sense: all Sharon’s talk of her job, how much she loved it, how well it paid, how she thought it would be right up Peggy’s alley. Spying. How delightful. “She’s testing me.”
Sharon grins. “Told you she was sharp, Rogers. And she speaks Russian.”
She does, and it comes in handy that night: not only do they flush out the Soviet mole, but Peggy gets offered a job, albeit after much grumbling about protocol and reckless behaviour and endangering civilian lives. The best part of the evening—other than the thrill of the chase, and the rush of satisfaction when it’s all over—is Steve’s smile, warm and brilliant.
“See you around, Peggy,” he says and Peggy sincerely hopes he will.
Peggy takes to spying like a duck to water. She’s always had an eye for patterns, an eye for people; she used to drive her mother crazy reading behavioural ticks at dinner parties and causing scenes. She has a knack for wringing information out of people—which mostly comes down to the fact that people underestimate Peggy because she’s a woman and she knows it.
Sharon sets her up with a nice apartment in Brooklyn across the hall from Steve. She claims it’s an accident, but Peggy knows better. She has a roommate, an actress named Angie, whom she adores—even if she asks too many questions about Peggy’s job. (“Are you sure you're just a secretary, English? Seems to me that people like you know better than to settle for that sort of thing.”) She goes running in the park on Saturday afternoons in spite of the stares from passersby and enjoys a luxurious breakfast on Sunday mornings while she does the crossword. On Fridays, if Steve’s in town, they go dancing. He isn’t very good, but Peggy doesn’t mind—she enjoys his company far more than the dancing.
She'd much rather be out in the field than typing mission briefs and compiling, but it's better than being a secretary—or worse, a housewife.
Besides, Fury can’t keep her behind a desk forever. She’ll make sure of it.
She’s summoned to his office less than a month later.
“You asked to see me, sir?”
Fury nods, waving her into the office. It’s nice—or at least, as nice as they can manage for a base located underneath a tailor’s shop: space enough for a desk and a filing cabinet and a window that oversees the work floor below. Peggy can see her own tiny desk, now empty; beside it, Lorna is beavering away at her typewriter. “Word on the street is that you’re good with languages, Carter.”
“Oh?”
“How’s your German?”
“I expect you already know, sir, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me here.”
The corner of Fury’s mouth twitches. “You’re a sharp one, Carter, I’ll give you that.” He pushes a file across his desk. “Read it, and then destroy it. You’ll meet Rogers at JFK in six hours.”
Peggy snatches up the folder. She hopes Fury can’t hear her heart hammering. “Yessir.”
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ii.
West Berlin: July 1963
They haven’t been in the field for five minutes before it occurs to Peggy that Steve is terrible at subterfuge.
He stands out in a crowd, for one—too tall, too blond, too muscular. He carries himself stiffly, like he’s uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s always watching exits, checking for snipers. Their cover’s going to be blown the moment the show up at Checkpoint Charlie unless Peggy can find a way to make it convincing.
Officially, Steve is James Wolfe, an attaché at the embassy in West Berlin. Peggy is his wife, Meg, who works as a translator. Unofficially, they’re here to smuggle a Red Room defector back to Washington. They’re meeting another operative at the safe-house; he’s the defector’s contact and can give them directions to her safe-house on the other side of the wall.
Assuming, that is, that they make it to the safe-house without blowing their cover.
Cooking has always been a stress-reliever for Steve. At first, he learned to help out his mom: he felt bad about the long hours she worked to support them, how tired she was when she came home. In the leanest years after she died, it was a small comfort he could manage for himself. He and Bucky would scour the grocery stores for discounted ingredients that Steve would whip into culinary masterpieces in their tiny kitchen. Some of the things Steve concocted in those early days were truly awful, but Buck never complained, always tucked in with a grin and told Steve it was “delicious”. (It wasn’t, but neither of them realised this until they joined SHIELD and were exposed to the culinary wonders of the world.)
This was all before Bucky died, of course. Now, Steve cooks to keep his demons at bay.
Peggy and Clint are in the living room, going over the plan for tomorrow night. Steve is in the kitchen, making mushroom risotto with truffles.
He isn’t entirely comfortable with Peggy being out in the field. She can handle herself—better than most of the agents he’s worked with, probably—but he worries. He’s already lost Bucky in the field. He can’t lose anyone else. Especially not Peggy.
“So what’s it like pretending to be married to this fella?” Clint asks with a grin. “He treatin’ you all right?”
Heat creeps up the back of Steve’s neck and it isn’t from the stovetop. He and Peggy haven’t talked much about what they are to one another; sure, they’ve been dancing a few times and they’ve engaged in some mild flirtation on his couch, but it’s nothing serious. Steve would like it to be, but the though of broaching the subject with Peggy fills him with dread. He’s never had a way with ladies. Buck always teased him mercilessly about it.
If only you could see me now, Buck. Dating the finest lady in all of New York and too chicken to ask her to go steady.
Peggy rolls her eyes, but a fond smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. The colour in her cheeks is probably just a trick of the light; Clint’s walls are a horrible pastel colour. “He’s perfect gentleman.” She meets Steve’s eyes and the smile that curls around her lips is filled with promise. “Any woman would be lucky to have him.”
Peggy isn’t the least bit surprised to see they’re being followed. The Red Room isn’t going to let one of their best assets go without a fight; someone has put out a hit on Natalia Alianovna.
She first spots the man in the shadows as they cross the checkpoint. She’s flirting with the guard so that he won’t notice the false bottom in her suitcase where she’s stashed their guns. He’s leaning against a doorframe, reading the newspaper. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a flat cap pulled low over his eyes. His hair is long, unkempt. A shiver runs the length of Peggy’s spine.
It’s nothing, she tells herself. Just a Soviet agent. It can’t be him.
Steve places a hand on the small of her back as they walk to their waiting cab. The driver is a SHIELD agent named Sousa. Clint said he’d be waiting for them.
“You all right?” he asks.
The man is still watching them. Peggy puts on her best smile and pulls Steve in for a kiss. It’s long and deep and leaves the tips of Steve’s ears pink. “Of course,” she says. She presses her mouth to his ear as if to whispers sweet nothings and murmurs, “We’re got company.”
Steve’s head snaps up, but the man is gone.
He doesn’t reappear until after they’ve located Natalia. (Who is hardly more than a child; Peggy imagines she can’t be more than eighteen. The Red Room robbed her of her childhood—robbed all these Black Widows of their childhoods. Seeing it in the flesh makes Peggy angrier than she thought she would be.)
“Steve,” she hisses. The figure in the street glides toward the apartment complex like a ghost. Peggy has read enough files on Soviet operations to know with sinking certainty who they’ve sent. “Time to go.”
Steve frowns. “We aren’t suppose to leave until midnight. Barton won’t be at the drop point.”
Peggy rolls her eyes; he is such a stickler for rules. “Correct, but unless you want to have a less-than-friendly run-in with the Winter Soldier, I suggest we get out.”
Steve pales. Natalia curses quietly in Russian. In the silence, the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
“Do you have a car?” Peggy asks.
Natalia nods.
“Excellent.”
“You do realise,” Steve says as they hurtle down the rickety fire escape on the outside of the building, “that we’re leaving the extraction point?”
“Of course,” Peggy says sharply, “but the Winter Soldier doesn’t know that.”
The corner of Natalia’s mouth twitches. Peggy imagines this is what passes for a smile in the Red Room.
“Are you sure you can outrun him?” Steve asks. Peggy can feel the energy rippling under his skin; he’s chafing at the bit for a fight. The Winter Soldier killed one of their agents three months ago. Steve was with him at the time. Peggy heard that he paid off the widow’s mortgage after the funeral.
Peggy’s grin is all teeth. “I’m an excellent driver.”
Peggy drives like a demon. Steve likes to think he’s got pretty modern attitudes towards women, but he will admit that he’s shocked when Peggy throws the car into gear and tears off down the street like she’s Steve McQueen.
“Where did you learn to drive like this?” he asks as she executes a hairpin turn into an alley nearly as wide as the car. They must be going at least thirty miles an hour. Behind them, the headlights of the Soldier’s car arc after them. Steve is holding onto the door handle so tightly he’s afraid it might fall off.
“I grew up on a farm with an older brother, Steve,” she replies, like it’s a perfectly normal thing for young girls on the farm to do. Like they’re making conversation on a Sunday drive, not being chased by a deadly assassin. “We had lots of empty fields and my father didn’t take the car out very much.” Her eyes flick to the mirror. “Is he still following us?”
Beside her, Natalia nods. “He won’t let us get away. The Soldier never fails a mission.”
“Yes, well, if he wants us, he’s going to have to kill us,” Peggy mutters through gritted teeth. She takes a hard left onto a dark street. Steve, who is trying to load his gun in the backseat, is nearly flung onto the floor. His bullets scatter on the carpet like confetti. Cursing, he scrabbles to pick them up.
Natalia’s head peers over the side of the seat. She’s grinning. “Everything all right back there?”
Steve glares at her. “Just keep your eyes on the road,” he mutters.
They make it back to Natalia’s with three minutes to spare. Natalia’s car is a wreck and the Soldier is still on their tail—on foot, at least; Peggy managed to manoeuvre him into a trash heap three blocks back—but they’re all still alive. It’s the small victories that count, Peggy thinks as she crawls out of the car and through the window of the first floor apartment.
“Barton should already be in position,” she gasps as they pound up the stairs. “If something happens to either one of us, Natalia, you have to keep going.”
Natalia nods. “He takes no prisoners,” she says solemnly. “I’ve seen it.”
“So have I,” Steve says. “And I’m not letting him get away with it again.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Peggy mutters. The latch on the rooftop hatch sticks; she throws her shoulder into it and it swings open. “Now is not the time for a pissing contest with the Winter bloody Soldier.”
The rooftop is dark. Peggy flashes her lamp twice; across the chasm, she sees a light flicker twice in reply.
“He killed Williams. And Jones before that—”
“And you think that getting yourself killed will avenge them?” There’s a hiss and a thwack as the grappling hook embeds itself in the chimney. Time to go. “Yes, that’s a bloody marvellous plan.”
Natalia watches the two of them with a smirk. “Are you two going to stand there bickering, or do I have to extract myself?”
Peggy shoots Steve a murderous look. Now is not the time to be going all Captain American Patriotism and saving the world. He’s already done more than enough to help Williams—and, she suspects, Jones. Throwing punches is not going to solve any of their problems.
The hatch shudders. Steve wedged a steel bar overtop to buy them some time, but it’s little match for the Winter Soldier. Peggy’s heard he has a cybernetic arm.
“Right,” she says. “Time to go.”
Steve is reaching for the zipline when the hatch bursts open. He grins. He’s been looking forward to this fight ever since Siberia.
“Steve.” Peggy’s tone is pleading. “We need to go.”
“You go without me,” he says.
“Steve—”
“I’ll meet you at the safe house. I promise.”
He can feel Peggy glaring daggers into his back, but he doesn’t care. He’s going to end this once and for all. For Williams. For Jones. For Bucky.
The Winter Soldier straightens. His gun is trained on Steve’s chest. He isn’t wearing a mask.
Steve stares into the eyes of his dead best friend.
“Bucky,” Steve breathes.
The Soldier lowers his gun.
“Steve!” Peggy shouts. She’s standing on the edge of the roof, hand extended towards her. Natalia is gone; she must have crossed alone. There’s a glint of panic in Peggy’s eye, but her jaw is set. She isn’t leaving without him.
Across no man’s land, floodlights begin to turn on. Another second and he’ll be sniper’s bait. He can’t leave Bucky.
He can’t condemn Peggy to die, either.
He takes Peggy’s hand and they jump.
When he looks back on the other side, the Soldier is gone.
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iii.
West Berlin: July, 1963
“It’s him,” Steve says breathlessly. He’s been pacing the length of their tiny hotel room for almost an hour, working himself up to a nice panic attack. “It’s Bucky, Peggy. I saw him. He’s alive.”
“Alive and working for the enemy,” Peggy replies calmly because as glad as she is that Steve’s best friend and former partner is not in fact dead, he was very intent on killing them.
“That’s not him. They’ve done something to him—brainwashing—”
“Probably, but those sorts of things can be difficult to break—”
“I have to go after him,” Steve says with a finality that tells Peggy not to waste her breath trying to change his mind. “He’s my best friend, Peggy, I can’t just leave him there—”
“I never said that.” Peggy would be lying if she said she’s enthused to be breaking the Winter Soldier out of East Germany, but she’ll be damned if she goes back to New York and sits behind a desk compiling information briefs for field agents. Besides, she knows how important this is to Steve. Sharon told her the story one night over drinks in her flat: how they were like brothers, how they joined up together, how Barnes died on a mission in Switzerland three years ago. Steve was never the same after that, she said. He blamed himself for it. “But you can’t just rush headlong into Soviet territory and break out their top asset. He wouldn’t go with you, for a start.”
Steve frowns. “You don’t have to come with me. I wouldn’t ask you to risk—”
“I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Steven, and if you haven’t already figured that out then you’re a bigger fool than I thought,” Peggy says sharply. Steve, at least, has the decency to look cowed. “I don’t need protecting. Besides, I’m an unknown quantity. Barnes knows your moves like the back of his hand; the only reason we made it out of there alive is because he can’t predict what I’m going to do.” She levels him with a pointed look. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds in East Germany on your own.”
(She’s right and they both know it.)
The plan is simple: lure the Soldier to Paris with a trail of breadcrumbs, then let him think he’s given them the slip and catch him. On paper, it’s foolproof. In the field, it’s anything but.
The Winter Soldier does give them the slip, for starters.
“I thought you said you were watching him!” Steve snaps.
“I was,” Peggy hisses, “until he went into the men’s toilets. I couldn’t well follow him in there, now could I?” (She would have, but covert operations are paramount when they’re AWOL, and storming the men’s toilets at the Louvre is decidedly overt.)
“Well, you could have at least alerted me—”
“There were civilians everywhere! We’re already in enough trouble as it is—”
“I hate to interrupt a lover’s spat, but you really shouldn’t be here.”
Peggy has the knife out of her boot and hurled in the direction of the stranger’s voice before she’s even turned around. The Winter Soldier is crouched in the open window, Peggy’s knife in his fist.
“Nice throw,” he says.
Steve looks like he’s seen a ghost. Peggy thinks that he looks nothing like a man who has been brainwashed. In fact, she’s beginning to suspect that luck had nothing to do with the success of Natalia’s extraction. She remembers Natalia, in the aftermath, strangely agitated. “You have to help him,” she said quietly, before Clint ushered her into the waiting car. “He’s a good man.” At the time, Peggy assumed she meant Steve; he was in a right state after realising the Winter Soldier was his dead best friend. Now, she realises Natalia was talking about Barnes.
“Bucky?” Steve says hoarsely.
Barnes’ smile is bittersweet. “The one and only.”
“And, evidently, not brainwashed,” Peggy says.
Guilt flickers across his face. “No.”
“Then why didn’t you come home?” Steve asks. His voice is raw, hands clenched in fists. Peggy places a gentle hand on his arm. It’s shaking. “I thought you were dead—”
“It doesn’t matter, Steve, I shouldn’t even be here, if they find out—”
“I’m not leaving you,” Steve insists stubbornly. His bicep jumps under Peggy's hand. “Whatever they have on you, Buck, we can fix it.”
“You don’t understand, Steve! They’re watching my family. They’re watching you. They said they’d kill you if I didn’t comply.”
Peggy suddenly feels as though she’s intruding on a private moment. She clears her throat delicately. Steve and Bucky whirl on her, expressions an identical mixture of embarrassment and guilt. “Look, this reunion is charming and all, gentlemen, but we have more pressing concerns at hand. Like finishing whatever it is you’re up to before we get court-martialled.”
Bucky glowers. “I’m not up to anything.”
“Don’t be coy with me, Barnes, it’s a waste of your time. I know you helped smuggled Natalia out of Russia and planted her at SHIELD—”
“She isn’t a plant,” Bucky says quietly. “She’s a good person. She deserves a life.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Peggy replies. “But you need someone on the inside to convince Fury that you’re worth saving. Although, I’m not sure Natalia was the right choice; he might just think this is all some elaborate Soviet ruse. I’ve heard he suspects everyone’s out to get him.” Suddenly, the pieces fall into place: Natalia’s defection, the whispers Barton mentioned about HYDRA being back, Bucky’s reluctance to defect when they clearly could arrange for his family’s safety. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Something so good it will prove your innocence to SHIELD—or at least valuable enough to give you leverage.”
Bucky whistles softly under his breath. “She’s sharp as tack, isn’t she, Stevie? Nothing gets by her.”
Steve grins. “Peggy’s our best agent.”
It isn’t true—not technically, anyway; Peggy has only just become an agent—but she’ll happily take the compliment.
“You’re right,” Bucky says.
HYDRA is building a weapon. Some kind of leftover tesseract technology, Barnes suspects, but he doesn’t know enough to be sure. All he knows is that the Red Room was very interested in getting their hands on it, which means it’s probably dangerous. Peggy isn’t surprised: weapons of mass destruction are HYDRA’s speciality. She also knows exactly where to look.
Jarvis owes her a favour, and it’s time to collect.
“Right,” says Peggy. “We’re going to Rome.”
Steve frowns. “How do you know they’re in Rome?”
Peggy rolls her eyes. “I read briefs about HYDRA all day, Steve. There are lots of former Nazi sympathisers in Rome; SHIELD has long suspected HYDRA to be running operations there. I’ve got a contact in the city who owes me a favour—he’ll give us a place to stay and the equipment we need—”
“Hang on.” Bucky holds up a hand in protest. “I can’t let you risk—”
The corner of Steve’s mouth twitches.
“We’ve already gone AWOL looking for you, Barnes,” Peggy says crisply. “The least we can do is make it worth our while.”
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iv.
Rome: August, 1963
Peggy calls Jarvis from a pay phone outside Roma Termini. If he’s surprised to hear from her, he doesn’t let on, merely insists on picking them up despite Peggy’s protests that they’re more than capable of hailing a taxi.
When he pulls up in a red coupe with the top down, Peggy wishes they’d hailed a taxi anyway.
“Miss Carter,” Jarvis says smoothly. “Always a pleasure to see you.”
Beside her, Bucky attempts, unsuccessfully, to disguise his laugh as a cough.
“Mr Jarvis,” Peggy hisses, “I said to be discrete.”
Jarvis raises his eyebrows innocently. “I assure you, Miss Carter, this is the most discrete of Mr Stark’s European cars.”
“European cars,” Bucky mutters. “Jesus.”
Steve elbows him.
Peggy doesn’t doubt it. She’s only met Howard Stark once: at his son Tony’s sixteenth birthday party (to which Jarvis generously invited her after finding out she was in New York) and her impression of the man was someone who liked to live as large as his considerable fortune would allow. She supposes a car like this won’t look too out of place on the streets of Rome.
“Mr Jarvis,” Peggy says. “This car only has two seats.”
Jarvis smiles apologetically at Steve and Bucky. “My apologies, gentlemen, I didn’t realise Miss Carter had guests.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jarvis, I told you—”
“It’s fine, Peggy,” Steve says quietly. “We’ll get a cab. Probably better if we show up separately anyways. Less chance we’ll be followed.”
They don’t really have another choice; it isn’t like they can strap Steve and Bucky to the back of the car.
“Fine,” she says, “but be careful.”
Steve presses a swift kiss to her cheek. Peggy isn’t sure which one of them is more surprised. Bucky and Jarvis are watching them with identical expressions of interest. Her face is hot, and it has nothing to do with the Italian sun. “Always am.”
“So you’re a spy now,” Jarvis says as they cruise through the streets of Rome. A car horn honks behind them; Jarvis politely flips him off and merges into the roundabout. “How exciting.”
“Who told you I was a spy?”
Jarvis smiles. “My dear. I work for Howard Stark. I know all about Agent Rogers and Agent Barnes—although, I was under the impression that Barnes was working for the Soviets.”
“You knew he was alive?” Peggy exclaims. “Why didn’t you do anything about it?”
“Well, Mr Stark suspected it, but he never had enough information to act on it, otherwise I’m sure he would have.”
Peggy strongly suspects that Stark would have done nothing. She can’t blame him: the Winter Soldier was the Soviet’s most deadly asset; as far as she knew, Steve was the only agent to face him and live to tell the tale. (In hindsight, that should have been the greatest indication that the Soldier and Barnes were one and the same.) Attempting an extraction on a hunch that he might be a former agent was a suicide mission—and even if they were to succeed, there would be no guarantee that Barnes would still be in there. The rumours all suggested he had been brainwashed, to kill with such precision.
(Now, knowing that he wasn't, Peggy doesn't want to know what made Barnes kill with such precision.)
“They couldn’t find the body, you know, and then when the Winter Soldier appeared on the scene, Mr Stark suspected—”
“For a butler, you know an awful lot about covert business,” Peggy cuts in sharply.
“Mr Stark is very talkative.”
“And I suspect you’re very nosy.”
Jarvis smiles. “Touché, Miss Carter. It’s in everyone’s best interests that I stay apprised of Mr Stark’s doings. In case he were to need, shall we say, extraction from a delicate situation.”
“Yes I hear he finds himself in those quite frequently,” Peggy says dryly. “You must have your hands full.”
“No more than you, I expect. That Agent Rogers is rather handsome.”
Peggy refuses to dignify that remark with a response, although she suspects her furious blush is more than response enough.
Stark’s Roman villa is huge. Steve has never seen anything so ostentatious in his life. He’s afraid to touch the bedsheets in case they disintegrate under his fingers. Bucky says they’re real silk. Steve doesn’t know how he would know that, but he supposes there are a lot of things he doesn’t know about Bucky anymore.
“I’ve put you in the master suite. It has a most splendid view of the park, which reminds me of the view from your parents’ sitting room in Hampshire—albeit a little more Italian—so I’m sure you’ll feel right at home—”
Jarvis and Peggy appear in the doorway. Steve springs from the bed guiltily, like he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He must be in the wrong room; Buck told him it was the fancy one at the end of the hall with the big bed, but he must have been having Steve on—
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ll just— I was just leaving.”
Jarvis frowns. “Whatever for, Mr Rogers?”
“Well, I’m, ah, in the wrong room—”
“Nonsense,” Jarvis says firmly. “Do you really think I would be so ridiculous as to put your wife in another room?”
“My— What?”
“His wife?” Peggy repeats dryly. There’s a quirk to her eyebrow that suggests she doesn’t think this is an accident.
“Yes.” Jarvis glances between the two of them, confused. “Mr Barnes said—”
Of course he did. He ribbed Steve about Peggy the whole way here, it’s just like him to set them up— And they are pretending to be married—or at least they were for the op in Berlin—
“I’m sure he did,” Peggy says sharply. “Thank you, Mr Jarvis, for being so accommodating.”
Jarvis dips his head. “I aim to please, Miss Carter.”
“You aim to be a right pain in my arse,” Peggy mutters at his retreating back.
Steve bites his lip to keep from grinning. “Look, Peggy, I don’t mind sleeping on the couch— Or I can camp with Bucky—”
“Whatever for?”
“Well—” Steve gestures helplessly at the bed.
“Afraid of sharing a bed?”
There’s a challenge in her eyes and something else—something dark and heated that stirs a fire in Steve’s belly.
“No, ma’am,” he says quietly.
“Excellent,” Peggy says, and just like that, it’s back to business. Steve tugs at his collar; his clothes suddenly feel uncomfortably tight. “Well, if that’s sorted, we should find Barnes. We’ve got a weapon of mass destruction to steal.”
They set up camp in Steve and Peggy’s ensuite sitting room to make their plan. It isn’t ideal: all Peggy’s files are back in New York, for starters, and Bucky’s knowledge of HYDRA is limited to rumours overheard in dark corridors. None of it is enough to tell them where HYDRA might be hiding a weapon capable of vaporising an entire city. They might be able to come up with a complete picture eventually, but time is not on their side: Peggy and Steve are going to be officially declared AWOL soon if they haven’t already been, and the Red Room is certainly looking looking for Bucky.
(At least his family is safe: Peggy telephoned Sharon from Paris to make the arrangements.)
“So, what exactly do we know about HYDRA operations?” Steve asks after an hour of fruitless speculation about the best places to hide a secret HYDRA facility in Europe. “I thought they were wiped out after the war.”
“Everyone did,” Bucky replies. “The SSR was supposed to have defeated them in ’45.”
“Obviously, they didn’t.”
“That was likely by design,” Peggy says. “You know, ‘cut off one head and two more will take its place’ and all that. They likely planned the whole thing.”
“Let us think they were defeated, you mean.”
Peggy nods. “I mean, it was apparent that they weren’t going to win the war. The Nazis were all but defeated, the SSR was closing in, Zola was in captivity—”
“What happened to Zola?” Steve asks, frowning. “Wasn’t he one of ours after?”
“He was, until he disappeared three months ago—”
And just like that, all the pieces fall into place: the top secret investigation of Zola’s disappearance, despite Thompson’s repeated insistences that the Soviets were responsible; rumours of a bomb built with tesseract technology—technology with which Zola has extensive experience; the return of HYDRA after nearly twenty years of inactivity.
“It’s Zola,” Peggy says. “He wasn’t kidnapped— It was staged, he wanted us to think it was the Soviets and then while we’re all squabbling with one another, HYDRA rises like a phoenix from the bloody ashes.”
“He’s got the technical knowledge,” Steve adds grimly. “He had exclusive access to the tesseract during the war.”
“But where would he have gone?”
Bucky, who has been studying the embroidery on his chair for the last five minutes like it contains the secrets of the universe, finally speaks. “He’s here,” he says quietly. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but— I did a, uh, job here a few months ago. Special assignment. My contact was a Baron von Strucker, he has a villa just outside the city, owns a giant shipping company. Apparently, he was friends with a lot of fascists, they were able to get him out of Germany during the war—”
“Wasn’t there a Strucker who was high up in HYDRA ranks? Schmidt’s second in command?” Steve asks.
Bucky nods. “This is the son. The shipping company’s a perfect front—they could bring in all kinds of materials and no one would suspect—”
“And it would be easy to smuggle Zola in undetected,” Peggy adds.
“Plus, if his dad was Schmidt’s right-hand man, he seems like a good candidate to back a HYDRA revival,” Steve says.
“You know, if you wanted to meet the Struckers, you merely had to ask.”
Peggy whirls around. Jarvis is standing in the doorway, bearing a tea set and wearing an innocent expression. She has a feeling he’s been there for far longer than he’s let on.
“You know them?” Steve asks.
“Well, I don’t know them, per se,” Jarvis says as he busies himself setting up the tea, “but they’re acquainted with Mr Stark. As a matter of fact, Master Stark is going to a party at their estate tomorrow—an anniversary celebration or some such — They own some sort of racetrack—young Master Werner is very interested in motorsports, and Master Stark has taken up driving as a kind of hobby, despite my repeated efforts to talk him out of it—”
“Edwin,” Peggy says politely, “can you get us into that party?”
Jarvis pauses, looking mildly embarrassed. “Oh, erm, yes. Of course. Master Stark will be delighted to bring guests.”
“Excellent. We’ll need a cover story—”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that,” Jarvis says enthusiastically, and if Peggy needed any more proof he was eavesdropping she certainly has it now. “We could easily pass Mr Barnes off as a Stark cousin—of course, there aren’t any Stark cousins, but no one there will know—”
“Besides,” Steve interjects with a grin, “he’s got the personality for it.”
Bucky smirks. “The gals back home always did call me a lady killer.”
“Yes, you’re positively irresistible, Mr Barnes,” Peggy retorts dryly. “I don’t know how I’ve managed to resist you for so long.”
Steve sniggers. “I was thinking more because you’ve got such a great big head,” he replies.
“Punk.”
“Jerk.”
“Boys.” Peggy shoots them both a meaningful look. If they’re going to have even a slim chance in hell of pulling this off, then they need to focus. “We’ll say that Steve is one of Barnes’ friends from America—that much, at least is true—and I’m his fiancée.”
“He does have a weakness for that sort of thing,” Jarvis adds. “His wife died some time ago, and he hasn’t remarried—in part, I suspect because it gives him license to make eyes at every beautiful woman he sees.”
“Marriage hardly removes that license, Jarvis,” Peggy replies coolly.
“Perhaps not,” Jarvis concedes.
“So I’m just supposed to let my fiancée flirt brazenly with some other man?” Steve asks. His arms are folded across his chest. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
Bucky's smirk is entirely too smug for Peggy's liking. “It’s a little bit of flirting, Steve,” he says. “Totally harmless. Besides, it’s not like you and Carter are actually engaged.”
“Believe me, I won’t enjoy it,” Peggy says grimly, “but unfortunately, I don’t think he’ll respond to either one of your attempts to charm him with your womanly wiles.” She wanders over to the window, under the guise of admiring the view, but really to disguise the colour flooding her face at the mention of the engagement. She’s a professional. She certainly isn’t about the let her feelings get in the way of saving the world. Get a grip, Carter. Otherwise, someone’s going to get killed—
“Jarvis, is that a flamingo on the lawn?”
Tony is delighted to learn that they’re coming with him tomorrow—and even more delighted to learn that it’s in service of some secret spy work. Peggy was determined not to tell him, but Jarvis let it slip over dinner. Perhaps it’s for the best; Tony is rumoured to be quite the inventor and he seems to have better knowledge of the Struckers than the rest of them on account of his frequent racing with young Werner.
“I always knew there was something off about that guy,” Tony says. “Always lurking like some disapproving shadow.”
Privately, Peggy thinks he might disapprove of his son’s lifestyle—from the sounds of it, Werner has much more interest in models and champagne than in continuing the family business. Not exactly the qualities of HYDRA’s next leader.
“His assistant’s the one you need to watch out for, though. Dottie Underwood. Passes herself off as some airhead from Kansas, but she’s scary.”
Tony’s girlfriend, Pepper, smiles. “Tony thinks anyone who tells him what to do is scary.”
“I do not— Am I scared of you?”
“You should be,” Pepper replies.
“And I am,” Tony says. “Terrified.” Then without missing a beat: “Say, Agent Rogers, did I tell you I’ve been experimenting with tesseract technology?”
“He’s just like his father,” Peggy says as Tony leads Steve and Bucky off to his lab to show them a cosmic activity sensor he’s been developing.
Pepper grins. “Did you want to go for a swim? Tony keeps champagne on ice by the pool.”
Peggy smiles. “I’d be delighted.”
Tony Stark might be an entitled asshole, but Steve has to admit he’s also a genius. Not only has he developed a sensor that can detect cosmic radiation (which is more than can be said for SHIELD), but he’s also applied the technology to film.
“Figured it would be useful in case you needed to collect evidence of cosmic activity in a public place,” Tony says with a shrug as he passes Steve a couple film canisters. “You know, like a party, or a racetrack…” He eyes Bucky sharply. “Say, is it true you have a cybernetic arm?”
Bucky laughs. “Nope.” He flexes his fingers experimentally. “I’m afraid that was a rumour to enhance the Winter Soldier’s mystique.” His tone is light, but there’s a grimness in his eyes, a tension in his shoulders that makes Steve think the mystique isn’t anything near what it’s cracked up to be.
Tony’s expression is equal parts satisfaction and disappointment. “I thought so, when I saw your hands, because there’s no way the Soviets have synthetic flesh technology already— I could make you one, if you want. Could be useful in the field: indestructible, projectiles, jet powered, all that stuff.”
This time, when Bucky smiles, it touches his eyes.
“He might be a little shit,” Bucky murmurs as they climb the stairs a few minutes later, after repeatedly refusing Tony’s requests to design him a weaponised prosthetic, “but he’s a likeable little shit.”
“His heart’s in the right place, I think,” Steve says. Tony’s mother died recently, Peggy said. Steve remembers the months after his mother’s own death: the emptiness inside him that no amount of work could seem to fill; the hope that surged in his heart every time there was a knock at the door, thinking that his mother might be on the other side. Howard Stark is up to his neck in SHIELD business—Steve reckons that he’s seen the man more than his own son has this past year. And with all this money at his disposal—well, it’s no wonder that Tony’s cavorting around the world getting into trouble, is all.
Bucky runs a hand wearily over his face. There’s a heaviness to him, a bone-deep exhaustion, that never used to be there. Steve wonders what really happened to him in the Red Room—and whether Bucky will ever tell him about it. “Well, I’m beat.” A smile curls at the corners of his mouth. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to keep Carter waiting. King bed all to herself—who knows what she’s doin’.”
Peggy, as it turns out, is sparring with Pepper. They’ve tossed all the pillows onto the floor as a makeshift crash mat. There’s an empty bottle of champagne on the floor beside them. They’re both in bathing suits.
Pepper takes one look at Steve and flees, towel clutched against her chest. Her cheeks are as red as her hair. Steve isn’t sure which one of them is more embarrassed.
Peggy is not in the least embarrassed. She’s standing in the middle of the room with her arms folded across her chest. Her hair is still damp, the ends beginning to curl. Her cheeks are flushed; Steve has no idea if it’s from the exertion or the champagne.
He’s never seen her in a swimsuit before. It’s red, like her nails, like her signature lipstick, with a tiny pattern of white polka dots. Her legs seem endless: miles of smooth, uninterrupted—
“Um,” says Steve. His skin feels like it’s about three sizes too small. He feels like he’s walked in on an intimate moment. He shouldn’t be here. In fact, he should literally be anywhere else. He casts around helplessly for something to look at that isn’t smooth, bare skin, and settles on an ornamental vase on the sideboard. It looks expensive.
“I was showing Pepper some self-defence moves,” Peggy says.
“Right.” Steve rubs the back of his neck. The film canister in his pocket digs uncomfortably into his thigh. He’s afraid to look at Peggy; he might explode if he does. “You should be more careful, you know. Fighting like that after you’ve been drinking—you could hurt yourself.”
Peggy’s lips curl into a deliciously devious grin. “Concerned about my safety, now, are you Agent Rogers?”
Steve swallows.
“Perhaps you’d like to show me,” Peggy says quietly. She takes a step closer. Steve imagines the air between them crackling with electricity. Somehow, he doesn’t think they’re talking about sparring anymore.
Carter’s one hell of a woman, Bucky told him earlier on their way to the Stark estate. Dame like that can set a man on fire just by lookin’ at him.
Steve thinks that he might like to be set on fire right now.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. He’s never been good at controlling his anger. It’s gotten him into trouble more than once on the sparring mat; he broke Barton’s jaw two years ago in a training match.
Peggy raises a challenging eyebrow. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Peggy—”
“I’m not a shrinking violet, Steve. Just because procedure doesn’t allow women in the field doesn’t mean I’m not qualified to be here—”
“I never meant—”
She closes the space between them and shoves. Hard. Steve stumbles back. He feels the flicker in the pit of his stomach, the twitch in his fingers: familiar tells of anger rising to the surface. Buck used to say he could always tell when Steve was going to start fighting because his fingers would shake. Experience has not made his fighting urge any easier to control.
Steve thinks Peggy knows this.
Steve thinks Peggy is counting on this.
Another shove.
Steve isn’t thinking anymore.
“Are you going to just let me push you around, Steven, or are you going to fight back?”
He’s moving before he even knows it, but Peggy dodges, lighting quick. He lunges again, but she evades him. He’s sloppy and distracted, telegraphing all his movements. He’s an easy target; Peggy has him pinned on his back in seconds, hands above his head. She’s straddling him; Steve is suddenly very aware of the press of her thighs against his ribs.
For a moment, they watch one another, chests heaving. Time seems suspended. Every nerve in Steve’s body crackles with energy. Peggy is watching him with hungry, dark eyes. Steve, who normally hates showing weakness, is happy to be devoured.
Peggy licks her lips. “Is that the best you’ve got, soldier?”
It isn’t.
Bucky’s always told him he’s an overachiever, and this time, Steve is more than happy to rise to the challenge.
The Struckers are the kind of people who like to flaunt their wealth. Peggy counts a half-dozen classical sculptures (or incredibly accurate replicas, though she suspects the former rather than the latter) lining the cobbled drive to their house—which is really a small palace, on an island, no less. Tony eagerly informs them that they have a full-sized race track on the grounds.
It is also, conveniently, the kind of money that would be useful to restart an illicit fascist organisation.
Tony is right about the Struckers: the Baron is a taciturn fellow, who oversees the whole party with an air of disdain; his son Werner, young and arrogant. Peggy sincerely hopes Tony beats him at the race. The assistant, Dottie, is the most interesting: with her blond curls and blue eyes, she looks every bit the innocent farm girl, but Peggy has batted her eyelashes at enough fancy parties to know otherwise. Women learn much more in this world by acting like they know nothing.
“I know her,” Bucky murmurs as they enter the terrace. “She’s a Red Room operative.”
“Well,” Peggy demurs, swiping a flute of Prosecco from a passing waiter, “we know we’re in the right place, then.”
“You’ll have to make yourself scarce,” Steve says quietly. “If she recognises you—”
“You two find out what you can from Strucker and get some pictures,” Peggy says, downing her champagne in one sip. She can feel Dottie’s eyes on her back from across the room. “I’ll deal with Underwood.”
They haven’t been gone two seconds when a voice at her elbow purrs, “You know, honey, you’re better off without them.”
Peggy smiles. Flirting with Dottie will be far more enjoyable than flirting with Baron von Strucker. “I know. But men can be so useful sometimes.”
Dottie’s grin is sharp. In another world, where they weren’t on opposite sides of a nuclear conflict, Peggy thinks she might even like her.
Tony wins the race, in the end, much to Werner’s disappointment—and Tony’s great satisfaction.
More importantly, Peggy learns that Strucker’s company is headquartered outside Fiumicino—and that they have a munitions factory there.
“Leftover from the war, of course,” Peggy says with a raised eyebrow. “Dottie assures me that it isn’t active anymore.”
“Well, the evidence would say otherwise,” Bucky says. Tony’s film worked wonders: Dottie, Strucker, and half of the company’s employees are glowing in all the photographs. Peggy can practically hear the wheels spinning in his brain; she wonders what he’s planning, and whether he’ll share it.
(He doesn’t.)
The plan, as it turns out, is for Steve and Bucky to both sneak out of the house and break into the factory. Alone. Because telling anybody else about the plan would put them in danger, and neither Steve nor Bucky like unnecessary risks. Or necessary risks, for that matter, if others’ lives are involved.
They think it’s a stroke of genius.
Peggy knows it’s a recipe for disaster.
She gives them a five minute head start before she rouses Jarvis from his bed and gets him to bring the car around—his own car this time, a discrete black Mercedes, because Peggy is not fleeing the scene of a crime in a red bloody Chrysler. They’re going to need someone to drive the getaway car when this inevitably goes tits up.
“Are you sure I can’t come with you?” Jarvis asks.
“Certain,” Peggy says firmly. The last thing she needs is another man to babysit—she’ll have her hands full enough as it is with Steve and Bucky. Honestly, at the rate they attempt to sacrifice themselves for others, it’s a miracle they aren’t dead already. “Once I shut off the power, we have about ten minutes until the generators come on, and I have a feeling we’re going to need to make a quick getaway. We aren’t exactly good at covert operations.”
She’s right: it takes Bucky eight minutes to trip the alarm in the (supposedly uncrackable) safe—a safe whose model, he assured them, does not have an alarm. It takes another forty-five seconds for the guards to arrive and start shooting at them.
“We need to split up to draw their fire,” Peggy gasps, throwing herself behind a steel girder to avoid a spray of bullets.
“No,” Steve says. “I’m not leaving you alone—”
“And who’s going to stop HYDRA if we’re all dead?” Peggy snaps.
“She has a point, Steve,” Bucky mutters. “We need a distraction.”
Bucky’s idea of a distraction, as it turns out, is to commandeer a boat and lead security on a goose chase around the harbour. Steve sits on the back, manning a machine gun. Peggy, personally, thinks it’s a ridiculous plan, but it does keep them distracted long enough for Jarvis to bring the car around.
“How are they going to get away?” Jarvis asks as they watch Bucky make another figure eight around the harbour.
“I have no idea,” Peggy says.
Peggy isn’t quite sure how they manage it—there’s a lot of fire and a truck—but they make it back to the car. They’re both soaked. Bucky is draped over Steve’s shoulder.
Jarvis looks alarmed. “Is he—?”
“He’ll live,” Steve gasps.
“Mr Jarvis,” Peggy says, “if we could please get out of here.”
“Yes, of course.” Jarvis throws the car into gear. He glances in the rearview mirror. “Be careful back there, Agent Rogers. Blood’s a devil to get out of the upholstery.”
Despite bleeding like a stuck pig all over the backseat of his car, Jarvis informs them, the bullet missed all of Bucky’s vital organs.
“He’s heavily sedated,” he adds. “I doubt he’ll wake until morning.”
“Right.” Steve, who has been pacing the hallway for the last thirty minutes while Jarvis worked, sighs and runs a hand over his face. He looks exhausted; the emotional toll of the past few days has caught up with him. “That’s great. Thanks, Jarvis.”
“You’re welcome. Now, you ought to get some rest.” He glances pointedly at Peggy. “Both of you.”
Peggy isn’t about to argue. She hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since she left New York, what seems like a lifetime ago now.
Steve, however, will be harder to convince: when Peggy emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later, showered and in her pyjamas (she refuses to go to sleep covered in blood and grime, no matter how tired she might be), he’s still dressed and roaming the room like a caged tiger. His black turtleneck and trousers are stiff with Bucky’s blood, long since dried.
“Steve,” Peggy says softly.
He turns to her, eyes full of wild desperation, like the world is falling apart in front of him and he has no idea how to keep it together. Peggy’s heart aches for him.
“You ought to clean up,” she says.
Steve nods distractedly. “Yeah. Right.” There’s a lost look in his eyes, like he doesn’t know where to start. Peggy felt similarly after Michael died; she remembers Jarvis pulling her from the bathtub, fully clothed. She’d forgotten to undress.
"Come on." She places a hand on Steve's arm and guides him to the bathroom. He allows her to undress him, stands numbly like a rag doll while she peels off his blood-stained clothes. His unresponsiveness is unsettling.
Peggy felt the same numbness after Michael's death. She still remembers the day they got the news like it was yesterday: the car pulling up to the drive, her mother falling to the ground. Peggy remembers wondering how the world could go on turning, how people could go on as if nothing had changed. To Peggy, the world had stopped. Michael was the best thing in her life. The only one who believed in her. She wasn’t sure she could go on in a world where he didn’t exist.
In many ways, Steve reminds her of Michael.
“You know,” she says quietly as she helps Steve out of his shirt. “I didn’t get out of bed for a week after my brother died. I was supposed to be married, but when we heard the news— He was in Israel, on an operation. They never said how he died—it was classified. Military intelligence and all that. And— Well, after that, I couldn’t stomach the thought of marrying a boy from the parish anymore.” She smiles ruefully. “Michael always wanted me to do something with my life and becoming a housewife seemed a very poor way to repay him.”
The corner of Steve’s mouth twitches half-heartedly.
“He’ll be all right, you know,” she says gently. “Jarvis is an excellent surgeon.”
“I know,” Steve says. “I just— When we were in Switzerland and he fell off that train— I thought he was gone forever. And now that he’s back I don’t— I can’t lose him, Peggy. Not again.”
“And you won’t,” Peggy says fiercely. “We’re going to make it out of this.” She presses a soft kiss to his cheek. “Now you’d best get in the shower and come to bed. You’re no use to anyone exhausted.”
.
.
.
v.
Rome: August, 1963
Steve’s mother always used to say that he and Bucky were terrible patients. Her worst by far. She said it with a smile and a sparkle in her eyes, but there was some truth to it: they both hated being laid low. Steve was the worst, always running around with fevers and bruised limbs, pushing himself until he made things worse. He once famously sat through a whole school day after breaking his arm in a fight at recess because he didn’t want to miss a math test. Bucky always said that’s when he knew Steve was meant to be a spy: “No one else would be fool enough to sit through that much pain for a math test.”
The Soviets have taken a lot of things from Bucky. His smile, his laugh, his easy manner. They’ve implanted a chip in his shoulder, a bitterness.
They haven’t made him a better patient.
“I should be out there doing something,” Bucky mutters. He struggles to sit up and winces.
“Not with that shoulder, you shouldn’t,” Peggy says firmly. “Jarvis recommends five to ten days rest—”
Bucky grimaces. “Just get me some fresh bandages and painkillers and I’ll be fine. I’ve dealt with worse.”
Steve is pretty sure the Soviets don’t believe in bed rest. Neither does SHIELD, for that matter.
“—but I think that you’ll be all right to handle some light field work, as long as you promise not to exert yourself.” Steve suspects Peggy is also a terrible patient. Maybe it is a hallmark of spies. “Like, say, paying a visit to Baron Strucker’s offices to enquire about potential business ventures? Rumour is that Stark’s cousin has a terrible head for business and a lot of money.”
Steve will personally be a lot happier if Bucky stays in bed until this is over, but since the chances of that happening are about as likely as the Mets winning the World Series, he keeps his mouth shut. Better to have Bucky swanning around some office building than sneaking out to try and play the hero. He’ll be fine. Jarvis will be with him.
(Things, as it turns out, will not be fine. In fact, they’ll be about as far from fine as humanly possible, but Steve doesn’t know that yet.)
Bucky waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “And what are you two lovebirds going to be up to while I’m talkin’ shop with HYDRA’s new head honcho?”
Peggy grins triumphantly. “I’m going to lunch. At the Café de Paris. With Dottie Underwood.”
Steve frowns. “Alone?”
“She thinks men are a waste of time.” Peggy says. She smiles wryly. “She’s not entirely wrong, you know.”
Bucky lets out a sharp bark of laughter. Steve isn’t laughing. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything funny about sending Peggy out to meet a Soviet assassin. Alone.
Of course, if Steve says any of these things, Bucky will laugh and say that he’s gone soft. (They both know the truth: Steve has always been soft. Steve starts fights for causes he believes in, for people he loves. Steve wanted to be a spy because he believed that there was good in people, because he wanted to spend his life making a difference, even if no one would ever know. It was never about glory or adventure for Steve—it was about the ordinary people who deserved to go to bed at night and know they would wake up in the morning. Bucky’s the one with the chip on his shoulder, the cynicism that no amount of smooth talking can conceal.)
Peggy’s her own woman, Steve, he’ll say. She can take care of herself.
Steve doesn’t doubt this, but Steve is tired of losing people he loves.
“So that’s it? We’re just going to let her go?”
Peggy raises a sharp brow. “I wasn’t aware that it was up to you to let me do anything,” she says curtly.
“That’s not what I mean,” Steve snaps, exasperated. He wishes that he had Bucky’s way with words—maybe then he could better articulate the tangle of fear and dread in his chest. “I just think that—”
But whatever Steve is about to say (he’s not even sure of it himself) is drowned out by the sudden appearance of Tony, wearing tight white pants, a nautical striped shirt, and a flustered expression. He’s carrying what looks like a miniaturised radio transceiver.
“Peggy, is your— Oh. ” Tony glances between Steve and Peggy uncomfortably. “Is this a bad— Should I go? I’ll go.”
Peggy rolls her eyes in exasperation. “What is it?”
“Um.” Tony darts a glance at Peggy. Steve doesn’t blame him; if looks could kill, hers would be murderous. “I can’t get a signal on your tracker. Did you turn it on?”
“I don’t know,” Peggy snaps. She lifts her skirt; the tracker is attached to a garter on her upper thigh. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
Tony swallows.
“You know,” Bucky says loudly, struggling out of bed, “after last night’s escapades, I’ve decided to reconsider the prosthetic arm.”
Bucky, Steve thinks as his best friend leads a very excited Tony from the room, is a horrible person. And an even worse friend. Steve should have left him in East Germany.
The door closes. Steve and Peggy stare at one another for a moment. There are a million things Steve wants to say, but he can’t voice any of them. Finally, he settles on: “You should have told me you were wearing a tracker.”
This is the wrong thing to say; he knows it from the sharp, disapproving crease in her brows. “And you should know I’d never go in without one.”
Steve places his hand on Peggy’s thighs instead of responding. She flinches.
“Your hands are like ice blocks.”
“Sorry,” he murmurs. He hopes she knows what he’s trying to say: he’s sorry for snapping at her, for picking a fight. He trusts her, but he worries for her safety.
“It’s all right,” Peggy says softly. There’s a fondness in her eyes; he thinks she understands.
“I still don’t think you should go alone” Steve confesses. He can’t shake the dread lodged like an icy rock in the pit of his gut. He hasn’t felt this way about an assignment since Switzerland—and that ended with Bucky plunging off a train in the Alps. His fingers find the edge of the tracker and he flips the switch. “If something happens—”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Peggy replies, with what Steve suspects is a lot more confidence than she feels. Between his hands, her legs are trembling. She’s scared, although she’ll never admit it. “You’ll be with me the whole time.”
Somehow, Steve doesn’t think that will be enough.
Peggy knows the minute she steps out of the taxi on Via Veneto that she’s walking into a trap. She suspected it was one when Dottie phoned this morning; she surely would have heard about the break-in by then and it’s too much to hope that none of them were recognised. Her suspicions are confirmed when Dottie tells her there’s been a change of plan: they’re going to lunch at the Strucker’s country estate instead.
“I have some business that’s come up,” she says apologetically. “I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” Peggy demurs.
She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but she suspected it might—which is why she had Tony plant the radio transmitter in her ring. Steve, she knows is hidden at the edge of the park, listening to everything she says.
He’ll understand. She’s doing what’s necessary to keep them alive. Besides, he’s more than capable of handling himself.
So when Dottie tells her about the break-in as they sip red wine on the Strucker’s back terrace, Peggy puts on slyest smile and tells Dottie the (partial) truth: that Bucky is a Red Room defector and Steve works for SHIELD, that they’re trying to get their hands on the bomb, that Dottie’s men can catch Steve spying in the garden if they’re fast enough. (They won’t be. She’s given Steve more than enough of a head start.)
“You look surprised,” she says when she’s finished.
The corner of Dottie’s mouth curls, like they’re sharing a secret. “I just never figured you for a traitor, that’s all.”
Peggy’s answering smile is cold. “Hail HYDRA.”
Bucky is having a shit day.
Really, Bucky's life has been shit ever since he fell off that train in Switzerland, but the last few days have really taken the cake. First, he's shot, then he's drugged by Strucker because Peggy gave him up (a brilliant move on her part, pretending to be a HYDRA agent; Bucky wished he’d thought to do it when he first saw Dottie at the Strucker’s party—it would have saved them a lot of trouble and him a couple of bullet holes), and now he’s strapped to some electric death chair listening to Arnim fucking Zola describe all the ways in which he’s going to make Bucky regret being born.
He can try his best, but he’s going to be disappointed; the Winter Soldier was trained to resist interrogation. Extensively. Bucky has probably experienced things that would make Zola’s toes curl, and he’s still kickin’. He’s like a bad penny: try as you might, you just can’t get rid of him.
“I’ve been experimenting with cryogenic technology,” Zola says gleefully. “I expect it will come in very handy with our newest asset. You will never age; we will simply wipe your memory and keep you on ice between mission.”
And okay, that might be a little more than the Soviets ever managed to do to him, but Bucky’s too busy watching the guard outside the door stagger like a drunk to be really worried. When the familiar silhouette appears behind him, Bucky almost grins.
“Woulda been nice if you’d showed up ten minutes earlier, punk,” he drawls. “Coulda saved me a few good shocks.”
Zola leaps out of his seat like he’s been scalded.
Steve grins, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. Worried about Peggy, Bucky expects. Steve never likes to put other people in danger if he can put himself in danger instead. “What’s it that Coulson always used to say, ‘adversity builds character’?”
Bucky snorts. “Well, I’ve got it in spades, then.”
Zola is predictably cooperative: as soon as the strap him in the chair, he starts singing like a canary.
“Doesn’t he know that you aren’t supposed to give everything up right away?” Bucky asks. “Takes all the fun out of torturing.”
Steve frowns at him. Bucky knows the joke’s in poor taste, but his morbid sense of humour is all he’s got left these days. The Winter Soldier took everything else. “We should bring him with us. He could have useful information.”
“Yeah, and you know that SHIELD’s gonna cut a deal with him,” Bucky replies bitterly. “They always do with his type: they think he’ll cooperate because they’ve got him cornered but the truth is he’ll just use them to set up the next arm of HYDRA. Leopards like him don’t change their spots.”
“So we leave him here,” Steve says.
Bucky grins. “Unless you wanna kill him.”
They don’t need to, in the end: he sets the chair off himself and goes up in a blaze of glory.
(This is why Coulson always taught them never to wire their own circuits. Faulty wiring is a hell of a way to go.)
Jarvis is still waiting in the car exactly where Bucky left him an hour ago. He takes one look at the blood running from Bucky’s nose and the soot on Steve’s face and says, “I take it the Baron wasn’t pleased to see you.”
“He wasn’t,” Bucky replies, “but I bet he’ll be even less pleased to see I’m still alive.”
The odds of them all making out of this without causing some calamitous world disaster, Steve thinks, are very slim. His superiors are probably used to this by now; Steve rarely completes a mission without collateral damage. Bucky always said it was because his strategy was to punch first and ask questions later. Steve always reminded him that Bucky was usually the reason Steve had to push his way out of things in the first place.
And if Steve kept punching his way out of things after Bucky disappeared, well, that was just habit.
They’re going to need a miracle to pull this off.
A miracle named Maria Hill.
She’s waiting in Stark's helicopter when Jarvis pulls up to the airfield. "Mr Stark won't mind in the slightest," Jarvis said when Steve asked him about it earlier. "He hardly ever uses the thing; I daresay he won't notice if it never returns. Not to say, of course, that you shouldn't endeavour to return it, but if there were to be a mishap, I'm sure it would be no bother."
“Do you realise how much paperwork I am going to have to fill out if you two start World War III?” she asks.
Bucky snaps on his headset and grins. “I thought you loved paperwork.”
Maria glares at him. “I haven’t forgotten about Madrid,” she retorts.
“I missed you, too, Hill.”
“Guys,” Steve says sharply. “A little less flirting, a little more focus. Peggy’s life is on the line here.”
Both of them have the decency to look chastened.
“Here’s the plan. When we get to the compound—”
“Please tell me that your plan involves more than storming through the front door and punching our way to Peggy,” Maria says.
Steve’s plan was actually punch their way to Peggy and then figure out the rest, but he realises that this isn’t much more of a plan, so he says nothing.
“Honestly.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s a miracle the two of you are still alive. Where’s the warhead?”
“No idea,” Steve admits “That’s what Peggy went to figure out.”
“Right, so we find Peggy, and then we find and disable the warhead, get the tesseract, and get out of there without setting off a cosmic explosion."
Bucky smirks. “Something tells me this plan is still going to involve a lot of punching.”
Admittedly, Peggy would have a better handle on the situation if she weren’t handcuffed to a chair.
“They will come for me, you know,” she says much more calmly than she feels. Her heart is hammering against her ribs. If this doesn’t work, if Steve and Bucky aren’t able to get to her on time— Well, she doesn’t really want to think about what might happen. The end of the world, in all likelihood.
So much for her promising career in espionage.
“Your boyfriend? I’m counting on it.” Dottie’s grin sends a shiver up Peggy’s spine. “I’m going to enjoy killing him. And the Soldier. They used to make us spar with him, you know. As part of our training. He always won, but he won’t this time.” Her fingers flex on her gun. “He’s gone soft. Weakness is death.”
She sounds like she’s reciting a mantra. Peggy can imagine a dozen girls with identical pig tails lined up in front of a combat mat. Weakness is death.
“Is that all they teach you in spy school?” she asks dryly. She shifts her weight. An hour ago, before she was shackled, before her lies were exposed, Peggy slipped a hairpin between her teeth. When Dottie backhanded her onto the floor, she spit it into her fingers. Now, if she can keep Dottie distracted, she might just manage to pick the lock.
Steve will come for her. Peggy believes that, but she also knows that time is rapidly running out and she can’t let Strucker escape with Zola’s prototypes.
Never count on a man for anything you can do yourself, Angie always says.
Dottie laughs. “It’s a shame I’m going to have to kill you too, Peggy,” she says. “You would have made an excellent spy.”
“Yes, that would be a shame.” Another few seconds, and— Yes. The manacles clatter to the floor and Peggy aims her gun (a miniaturised Walther PPK, designed by Tony and carefully concealed in a holster on her other thigh) at Dottie. “Unless, of course, I kill you first.”
A slow, sweet smile curls around the corners of Dottie’s mouth, like Peggy’s a delicious gift to be unwrapped. “Why, Peggy Carter, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Peggy isn’t sure she has it in herself, to be frank, but they’re spared from finding out by the arrival of Steve and Bucky, who burst through the door, guns raised.
“You’re late,” Peggy says reproachfully.
Steve grins, lopsided and relieved. “I couldn’t call my ride.”
Peggy would very much like to kiss him soundly, right here and now, but there will be time for that once they’ve saved the world.
.
.
.
vi.
New York: October, 1964
Saving the world, Peggy realises, is not all that it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it loses its appeal once you’ve done it a dozen or so times.
“You’d think this would be more exiting,” Bucky says idly. His foot dangles off the edge of the couch, a copy of 1984 discarded on his chest. They just come back from a successful mission in London, and taken up their usual positions: Steve is cooking, Peggy is laying the table, and Bucky is lounging. “How many times is it now? Six? Seven? Surely we deserve some kind of medal for our efforts. Or at the very least a proper holiday.”
In the kitchen, Steve laughs. Whatever he’s making—a surprise, he insists—smells delicious: sweet and sharp with a hint of spice. “If you wanted medals, Buck, you shoulda been a boxer.”
“And I woulda been a great one too, if you hadn’t pulled me away from it to become a spy.”
“You were terrible, you lost every fight—”
“Boys,” Peggy says fondly. Steve and Bucky have bickered their way through every assignment from Istanbul to San Francisco. Peggy has had to rescue them from captivity on three separate occasions because of it. She’s staring to understand what Maria means about paperwork; there’s always mountains of it anytime they go anywhere. (Peggy will never admit it, but she makes as much trouble as the two of them.)
Fury, as it turns out, had, in his maddeningly omniscient way, orchestrated the whole affair with the tesseract: he knew that Bucky was the Winter Soldier and orchestrated Natalia’s defection in order to gain control of the tesseract (which he would have done had Peggy not had the foresight to throw it overboard on their way back to the mainland; no one should have that kind of power) and recruit Bucky for his new secret task force—a task force that included Steve and Peggy.
“HYDRA will be back,” Fury said dryly. “And when it comes, we’ll be ready.”
Since then, they’ve taken down three rogue HYDRA cells, stolen two unknown cosmic devices from the black market, and foiled the assassination of the President. Peggy has also moved across the hall into Steve’s apartment, with promises to have Angie over for dinner “once a week, or whenever you’re free, English,”.
Sharon, predictably, is delighted. “I always knew you two would get along,” she said the first time Peggy and Steve had her over.
“I knew she was right from the moment I laid eyes on you,” Peggy admitted later as they lay in bed. “I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
Steve smiled. “What? Was I too handsome?”
“Well, it certainly didn’t hurt.” She trailed a sly hand over his chest, watching the way his pectorals clenched under her fingers. She loved how he reacted to her touch, how his body came alive beneath hers. “But mostly I was afraid of what would happen if I let myself love you. I’d already lost Michael.”
“You aren’t going to lose me,” Steve replied with an honesty, a sincerity, that made her desperately want to believe him.
Standing over his bedside three days later after he nearly died in Marrakesh, Peggy knew it was a promise he couldn’t keep.
Peggy is learning to put her faith in promises that can be kept.
Steve loves her. She loves Steve. They might not make it through their next assignment, but they can enjoy the time that they have with one another. Moments like these, with Nina Simone on the phonograph, Steve barefoot in the kitchen, Bucky griping on the couch. Later, Angie and Natalia and Sharon and Clint and Maria will come for dinner; Angie will tease Steve about his cooking, Bucky and Natasha will squabble in Russian like siblings, and Clint will trounce everyone at darts. Tony and Pepper will arrive later in the evening; Bucky will slip them glasses of wine when Steve’s back is turned and Peggy will pretend not to notice. It will be crowded and noisy and Peggy will relish every minute with this family’s she’s created.
“Well.” Bucky rises from the couch and stretches, cat-like. “I’d better get changed for dinner.” He winks at Peggy. “You kiddos behave yourselves while I’m gone.”
Steve snorts. “I don’t know what he thinks we’re going to get up to,” he says as Peggy pads into the kitchen. She tries to sneak a taste from the pot on the stove but he bats her finger away. “He’s taking all the trouble with him.”
“Mm.” Peggy hops onto the counter. She twines her ankles around his thigh; his muscles quiver. A slow smiles curls around the corners of her mouth. “I can think of a few things.”
A delicious red flush creeps up the back of Steve’s neck. “You know, I’ve been thinking, we should get out of here.”
Peggy blinks, momentarily thrown by the non-sequitur.
“Get a house, maybe. In the country. Somewhere with lots of space. We could make a proper place for Buck upstairs, and maybe get a dog—”
Realisation dawns slowly, a warm bloom that begins in Peggy’s toes and diffuses through her whole body. Her skin tingles, electric and alert with promise.
“Steven Grant Rogers, are you asking me to marry you?” she asks.
Steve blushes. “What if I am?”
“Well, then I’d say yes.” Saying the words aloud make her feel giddy. “Yes. A thousand times yes.”
“Well in that case”—Steve grins—“I’d better go get the ring before the company arrives.”