Work Text:
There were photos of children – little girls who had gone missing all around Russia. Their faces looked innocent, some no older than four or five, but who knew how long it had been since these photos were last taken? How long had it been that these little girls had been turned into weapons?
Peggy Carter was determined to find out.
Staring at the bulletin board, one specific picture caught her eye. A little girl, with hair red like blood, and white skin. The girl looked younger than the rest, but there was something else different about her. She had a fire in her eyes, that the others lacked, a fire that would help her survive, but that fire did not control how she stayed alive, or what she would become in the process.
Peggy didn’t even know the little girl’s name, or how she would help her, but she knew one thing for sure. She would do everything in her power to save her, and every other little girl in the Black Widow Program.
***
Natalia remembered a woman with dark brown hair, kind eyes, and a British accent. It was the year 1952. The women called herself Agent Carter. She promised to save her, but Natalia knew that it wasn’t that simple. At the young age of nine, she knew that some people were too far gone to be saved.
***
“Don’t you touch her!” Agent Carter screamed from across the room, as Natalia was restrained in a metal chair.
The mission had gone horribly wrong. SHIELD didn’t provide her with enough Intel and the Russians were expecting her when she arrived at the profound Red Room.
Now here she was, trapped in some cellar, being forced to watch as a little girl was brainwashed, reprogrammed into a killer in front of her very own eyes.
“Get your bloody hands off of her,” Peggy shouted, earning a punch to her jaw by one of the guards.
“Don’t be afraid,” Natalia said to her in a small voice. “I won’t remember a thing,” she said, and Peggy swore she felt something break inside of her.
I’m so sorry, she wanted to say, but it was too late. The doctors were already attaching wires to her head, as they locked her into the chair, preparing to fire up the machines that would electrocute her into remember only what they wanted her to remember.
“This is what happens when you stick your nose where it does not belong,” the man in a lab coat and round glasses said to her, in a thick Russian accent.
“It’s okay,” Natalia mouthed to her from across the room, like this wasn’t the first time they used this form of torture on her.
Peggy watched as she closed her eyes, just before the electricity shot through her body. She watched the silence turn to screams, and then she turned her head away in shame that she was not able to prevent this – this living hell.
***
“Peggy wake up,” she heard someone say to her, but her head hurt, and everything felt blurry.
Opening her eyes, she saw Agent Sousa standing over her. “Where am I?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“You’re in the medivac center in the plane,” he replied.
“What happened?”
“We found you nearly frozen to death in the woods after you sent a signal to us about your location.”
“The Red Room – did you save the girls?” she asked frantically.
“The building was burnt to the ground by the time we got to it,” he said sadly.
“They want us to stop looking,” Peggy said.
“Are we going to?” he asked.
She thought of Natalia, and how she was punished for something that wasn’t her fault. Peggy realized that they would never stop, and to keep looking would just cause more casualties.
“Yes,” she responded. “We stop looking,” despite every fiber in her being rejecting the statement.
***
When Peggy first heard the news about the Black Widow joining SHIELD, she was already retired. She had already lived her life, married Daniel Sousa, and had children of her own. She was no longer an Agent of SHIELD, but she would forever be Agent Carter.
She could never quite forget about the little girl with red hair, she could never get the sound of her screams out of her head, or the look on her face as she told her to not be afraid.
Peggy had accepted the fact long ago that Natalia had most likely died, so when a now, much older looking woman showed up at the door of her house, she couldn’t help be surprised. She welcomed her inside, and they sat down at the kitchen table.
“Fury told me that you lived here,” she said, breaking the silence, sounding almost angry.
“You look so grown,” Peggy replied.
“Time does that to you,” she stated coldly.
“How are you?” Peggy asked.
“They put a tracker in my wrist. They think I might break at any moment, but who knows, they might be right,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Natalia,” Peggy said.
“It’s Natasha now.”
“Well, Natasha, you’re welcome to visit any time you want--.”
“You would like that wouldn’t you – if I come and see you it might make you feel less guilty for leaving me for dead in the Red Room,” she said, her fist clenched, and Peggy couldn’t help but wonder what they did to her in that place.
“Natasha please--.”
“I need to leave, Agent Barton is expecting me to meet him back at the base soon,” she said, standing up from the kitchen seat.
“I’m sorry,” Peggy said sincerely.
“Me too,” Natasha replied before she walked out of the door.
***
It was three o’clock in the morning when Peggy received a call from Phil Coulson, asking her to come down to SHIELD immediately. Upon arriving, she was told that Natasha had bashed the head of a fellow agent into the bathroom sink, and that she wouldn’t speak to anyone but her.
“You wanted to see me?” Peggy said, entering the cell that they were keeping Natasha in, until everything got sorted out.
“You’ll the only one that will understand,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, if it could even be called that.
“Why did you hurt that Agent?” Peggy asked, sitting down next to her, but still keeping her distance.
“I just wanted a goodnights sleep,” she said, and then Peggy understood. “I didn’t want to hurt her, but I couldn’t sleep, and I was so tired,” Natasha finished.
“So you hurt the Agent so that they would handcuff you, and you could finally go to sleep,” Peggy stated, and Natasha slowly nodded her head in return.
“I just wanted to sleep,” she murmured in a small voice that made Peggy feel like she was talking to a little girl again, back in that dark cellar, so long ago.
***
“This is your fault,” Peggy said to Nick Fury and Coulson outside of the cell they were holding Natasha in.
“What do you suggest we do?” Nick asked. “We can’t have her running around hurting our agents.”
“Can’t you see that she needs help? She needs someone that understands, someone that will listen because I’m sure that no one has listened to her since she was a kid,” she said.
“She has mandatory therapy meetings--,” Coulson started.
“She doesn’t need a therapist, she needs a friends,” Peggy said.
“So you want us to cancel her meetings, and let her talk to you,” Nick said, with a sarcastic tone.
“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
***
The meetings started as soon as Natasha was let out of solitary confinement. Some days neither of them would say a word, and other days they would talk about nonsense, or visit monuments and museums. But on rare occasions, Natasha would open up, spilling a though, before closing in on herself like a building collapsing inwards.
“I asked Agent Barton why he didn’t kill me that night in Moscow, and he told me it was because he knew that I didn’t deserve to die, not when I had never lived,” Natasha said, as they sat on the couch in the old-fashioned living room in her home.
“Do you agree with him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about life, in the sense that it was more than a mission,” Natasha said.
“Well now what do you think,” Peggy asked.
“I think that you really need to redecorate your house,” Natasha said, and Peggy laughed.
“When you’re as old as I am, you start to care less about the way things look,” she responded.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you then,” Natasha said with a smirk, and it was enough for Peggy to feel like she was moving on, moving forwards, and that things were going to be okay.
***
"I thought I was a dancer," Natasha told her, one night after calling her unexpectedly on the phone. "I thought I was one of 27 Bolshevik Ballerinas, but that was all a lie."
"Do you want to talk more about it?" Peggy asked.
"No," Natasha responded, but Peggy stayed on the phone with her until she fell asleep anyway.
One day Natasha would tell her about the hospital fire, Budapest, and all the other bad memories plaguing her thoughts, but today was not that day, and that was okay.
***
Natasha had called her a few days later to tell her that she had been assigned to go on her first mission with Agent Barton the next day. Peggy asked her if she felt ready to go.
“I’m ready,” she replied.
“The Black Widow may be ready, but is Natasha?” Peggy asked.
“I think so,” Natasha said, a little unsure.
“I think if you’re willing to say that you’re not sure, then you are ready, because I know the old Natasha wouldn’t have even called me in the first place.”
Natasha hung up the phone not too long after, and when she returned a week later with good news from her mission, Peggy smiled, and then told her stories from her day as an Agent, and things felt like how they were supposed to be.
***
Some days Peggy forgot that Natasha was also the Black Widow, you know? Deadly assassin, master seductress, manipulator, and all that other good stuff.
So when she got called into SHIELD, yet again, and was shone live video footage of Natasha being tortured for information, she was reminded that she was more than the stubborn, sarcastic, and difficult girl that Peggy came to know.
In the video, Natasha was hanging from a rope that fell from the ceiling in the burnt out warehouse. She had a nasty bruise on her cheek, and her red hair was plastered to her face.
“Where is she?” Peggy asked Coulson.
“I’m afraid that’s classified--,” he stated, earning a look that could bring the dead back to life from Peggy. The man cleared his throat, and then said, “Russia, she’s in Russia.”
“You sent her back there knowing what she’s been through; knowing what they’ve done to her?” Peggy stated, the anger evident in her voice.
“With all due respect Mrs. Carter, Agent Romanov requested to go back. She said she had some unfinished business,” Coulson replied, obviously annoyed about being blamed for Natasha’s situation.
“At least tell me she has an extraction plan?” she said, with no response. “Back up?” nothing. “So she’s all alone in the place that teared her apart? Well done,” Peggy said sarcastically.
Coulson adjusted his tie, and said, “We called you in here to ask the whereabouts of the Red Room facility you ran into on the job.”
“That place burnt down, I saw it myself,” Peggy said.
“We believe it may have been rebuilt – that Agent Romanov is currently being held hostage in the new and improved Red Room, or one of them,” Coulson said, and Peggy felt sick.
She was about to yell at Coulson for what a mess this whole operation turned into when her cell phone started ringing. It was an unknown number.
“Hello?” she asked.
“I could use a ride out of here?” said the tired voice of Natasha Romanov.
Looking up at the footage from the warehouse, it showed a dozen bodies scatter around the area, Natasha was just bound to.
“May I ask how you just did that?” Peggy said, her voice full of relief.
“A Black Widow hanging from a string is a dangerous thing,” she said, and Peggy could hear the smirk in her voice.
“I can see that,” Peggy said, before handing the phone to Coulson to get her out of there.
Just now she was realizes the repercussions of caring for someone in this line of work, but of course Peggy Carter was never one to back down from a challenge.
***
It was supposed to be a routine mission. Peggy knew from experience that every mission had a chance of fatality, or injury, but she tried not to dwell on that. It’s hard to do your job when you think that death is just around the corner. She knew that Natasha was good at her job, probably one of the best, but she still worried, like a mother worries about her child, except Natasha wasn’t her child, she was never a child.
So when Clint Barton showed up at her door with a pained expression on his face, avoiding direct eye contact, Peggy knew that something had gone terribly wrong.
Arriving at the SHIELD hospital, she was told by Fury that Natasha was supposed to be escorting a mechanic in Odessa, until her car was blown off the street, and some assassin had put a bullet through her gut to get to the target.
Peggy walked into the hospital room to find Natasha on the bed, attached to an IV, with a heavy bandage wrapped around her stomach. She sat down in an uncomfortable chair besides her, avoiding the aches her body cursed with age was giving her.
Brushing a strand of red hair out of Natasha’s face, she started to stir. Still groggy from the pain medicine, Natasha opened her eyes.
“Am I dead?” Natasha asked, her voice dry.
“No, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re still stuck here with me,” Peggy replied, earning a small laugh out of Natasha, at least until the sudden movement caused her pain.
The light mood in the room suddenly faded when Natasha stated, “I knew the man who shot me.”
“Who?”
“They call him the Winter Soldier. He was one of my trainers back in the Red Room.”
“How do you know that it was him?”
“Not many people have a metal arm,” Natasha said.
“Do you think that he remembered you?” Peggy asked.
“Most likely not. The last time I saw him, he was being reprogrammed because we were caught--,” she paused, closing her eyes, like she was reliving a painful memory. “They wiped his memory, and probably mine too, but they left the memory I had of him, so that I would ‘learn from my mistakes,’ and watching him forget me was the worst torture anyway,” Natasha finished, her voice laced with exhaustion.
“Did you love him,” Peggy asked, hoping she wasn’t overstepping her boundaries.
“Love his for children,” Natasha said in a whisper. “We were just two lost people who wanted to feel alive.”
Peggy watched, as her eyes started blinking slowly, as she gave into the meds forcing her to sleep, forcing her wounds to heal, even though most of them were scars by now.
***
Most of their ‘talks’ took place at Peggy’s house, but Natasha was still recovering from the gunshot wound, that was still a week fresh, so Peggy came to her this time, in her SHIELD issued room.
They normally started with small talk, and Peggy would wait for the spy to open up, or shut down, whatever came first, but this time, Natasha got straight to the point. Maybe it was the pain killers they had her on.
“I can’t have children,” Natasha stated, the sentence void from any emotion as she sat down on the couch in the small room besides Peggy.
“Nat I--,” the older women started not sure how to respond, Natasha once again catching her off guard.
“Clint took me to his house a few days ago, after I got discharged from the hospital. Actually it was a farm. He has a wife, and two kids, apparently. I never really saw him as the type of guy to settle down, but I guess I was wrong. I was sitting at the kitchen table, Clint was outside playing catch with his son, and Laura, his wife, was tending to the baby – a little girl. She wouldn’t stop crying, and then Laura handed her to me, God knows why, and she just went silent,” Natasha said, clenching her jaw. “She stopped crying, and Laura told me what a good mother I would make,” she finished, her eyes moving from the floor to the ceiling.
“And how did that make you feel?” Peggy asked.
“I didn’t feel anything. I thought I would be angry or sad, but I just felt numb. His wife barely knows me, she has no idea what I’ve done, or all the red in my ledger. If she knew she would never have let me hold her daughter – they shouldn’t trust me with something, someone so innocent,” Natasha said.
“I think it is you who doesn’t trust yourself.”
“Trust gets people stabbed in the back,” Natasha stated.
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Would you trust me to save your life?” Natasha asked.
“I would now,” Peggy said, and she meant it.
***
At the age of eighty four, Peggy Carter, former Agent of SHIELD, the same women who had fought alongside Captain America, against Hydra, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It all started after she started forgetting simple things like what she ate for breakfast, or things like phone numbers, but it gradually increased to her forgetting that she turned the stove on, or where she lived. Then one day she fell getting out of bed, and at the doctors, they had taken some tests, coming to the conclusion that she had Alzheimer’s.
It wasn’t like other diseases, because there was no cure. It was just an invisible force that slowly ate away one’s brain, and took memories with it.
Natasha had come to visit her one day in the hospital, as Peggy was still recovering from bruising her hip during the fall.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, like she wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I feel helpless. Like if only I knew, maybe this could have been prevented,” Peggy said.
“Coulson tells me that you’re looking into nursing homes,” Natasha said with no emotion.
“I think it will be best, so that I don’t hurt myself or others,” she responded.
“If there’s anything I can do--,” Natasha started.
“Just remind me who I am before the memories start to go,” Peggy said.
She looked at Natasha’s face, and for a moments, a split second, she saw something flash on it. Maybe it was anger, or sadness, but before Peggy could figure it out, she was being pulled into her embrace.
“Promise you won’t forget me,” Natasha said in a quiet voice.
“How could I ever forget you?” Peggy said, ignoring the voice in the back of her head telling her that she might not have a choice, but she said the words anyway to comfort Natasha, and to comfort herself too before she forgot how.
***
The Nursing home felt more like a prison than anything, but she didn’t complain because she’s been through worse. Of course life threatening missions from her past seemed like a gift compared to sitting around in a building that smelt of lavender, and age.
It was 2010, and she was reading the newspaper, something she did often these days. The words ‘Captain America Found in the Ice after Seventy Years,’ was plastered on the front page, a picture of his shield in black and white below it. At first Peggy thought she was seeing things, but no, he really was alive. Steve Rogers was alive after all these years.
She remembered dropping the last remnants of his blood into the Potomac so many years ago. She remembered saying goodbye to him, as his legacy lived on, but she wasn’t sure how she would say hello to him – the love of her life, a life that had frozen in the ice along with him the day he crashed that plane to save everyone’s life.
Every life except his own, and now here he was alive, the same age he was the day he supposedly died.
He would come visit her a few weeks later, and they would both cry about a life lost. She told him of her disease, and he told her that she’d always be his best girl. They would then dance, slowly, but surely they would dance in the cramped room in the Nursing Home, as Elvis’s, I Can’t Help Falling in Love, played softly in the background.
Steve would come to see her a lot after that. They would talk about old memories, and Peggy would tell her about working for SHIELD, and with Howard, and her family, not missing the pained look in his eyes as she did.
***
Sitting in the nursing home living room, surrounded by other elderly women, Peggy watched on the television, images of New York become a battlefield. The News was reporting an Alien attack on America, and the Avengers coming to save the day.
She didn’t miss the shimmer of Captain America’s shield as it flew through the air.
He was doing what he was meant to do, save lives, and she couldn’t have been happier.
Peggy swore she saw a flash of red hair on the screen flying on one of the alien’s transportation plane, and for that she was happy too. She was happy that they were both living up to what she wanted for SHIELD, a sign of hope.
***
Things were getting harder and harder, and it only took a year. Peggy now rarely left her room in the nursing home, and her Alzheimer’s was growing stronger each day. Natasha visited her between missions, though that was growing more seldom as the world grew more dangerous.
“You straighten your hair?” Peggy asked, looking at Natasha’s new hair style, much different from its old short, and curly look.
“I needed a change,” she said. “How’ve you been?”
“Better now that you’re here. How’s work?” Peggy asked.
“The same old thing. I think Fury is trying to see how many mission me and Rogers can go on before shit explodes,” Natasha stated, with a smile – a smile that Peggy noticed every time she mentioned Steve.
“Language,” she warned, causing Natasha to throw her hands up in a surrendering motion.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, with a laugh.
“How is Steve?” Peggy asked.
“You know, he throws himself into his work to run from real problems,” she said.
“That reminds me of someone else I know,” Peggy said, referring to Natasha, who just shrugged her shoulders in response.
“You changed your hair?” Peggy asked, watching the smile disappear off of Natasha’s face, as sadness flickered across it briefly, before she composed herself once again.
“Yeah, I thought I’d try something new.”
***
“You should be proud of yourself, Peggy,” Steve said, dressed in a blue jacket.
He smelt like he had rode his motorcycle over to visit her.
“I have lived a life, my only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours,” Peggy said, noticing the conflicted look on his face. “What is it?”
“For as long as I can remember I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I’m not quite sure what that is anymore,” he started. “And I thought I could throw myself back in, follow orders, and serve – it’s just not the same,” he finished, and he was right.
Nothing was the same anymore, but instead she said, “You’re always so dramatic,” with a laugh. “Look, you save the world, we rather mucked it up.”
“You didn’t,” he said with the shake of his head. “Knowing that you help found SHIELD is half the reason I stay.”
Taking his hand into her own she said, “The world has changed, none of us can go back, all we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over--,” getting interrupted by an incoming coughing fit, that she has been having more and more recently these days.
Steve fetched her a glass of water – Steve he was here, in front of her. “You’re alive, you came back,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“Yeah, Peggy,” he said sadly.
“It’s been so long, so long.”
“I couldn’t leave my best girl,” he said.
***
Some nights Peggy dreamed of memories that seized to exist when she was awake. She dreamed of skinny kid from Brooklyn who just wanted to do the right thing. She dreamed of that same kid, crashing into ice, and disappearing.
She dreamed of a little girl with red hair, who had saved her life back in Russia so long ago. She dreamed of the prints that the handcuffs left on her wrists, while she slept soundly, and she dreamed of the sound of her scream as she woke up from yet another nightmare.
Peggy dreamed, but when she awoke, all those memories were just stories in her head – a book with faded words, and torn pages -- a book that was lost somewhere on the shelf.
***
SHIELD had fallen. Natasha told her that one night, as she crept through the window of her room in the nursing home. When Peggy asked her why she didn’t use the door, Natasha told her that SHIELD was nothing anymore -- that all her covers were out in the open, and she didn’t know what to do.
“I thought I knew whose lies I was telling. I thought I was going straight, but I just traded the KGB for Hydra,” she said, and Peggy hadn’t seen her this lost since she first came to SHIELD.
“Do you remember that day in Russia, back when you were only a child?” Peggy asked.
“I remember seeing your face, nothing else.”
“Well, that day you saved my life,” she started, stifling a cough. “I tried to sneak into the Red Room, to gain information to help bring the Black Widow Program down. I turned out to be a trap. I was cornered in some room, a man pointing a gun at my head, and then out of nowhere you appeared. You kicked one of the guards in the shin, and gave a hell of a fight, before they restrained you. That’s when they decided to punish me, by punishing you, by taking away your memories, while I watched you scream, and I could do nothing to help you,” she said.
“They told me that you stopped looking because I wasn’t worth being saved,” Natasha said in a small voice.
“I stopped because I couldn’t bear to see you get punished for my mistakes. They were going to kill me, and you saved my life. After I woke up in the snow, I was told that the Red Room had been burnt to the ground. I took that as a sign to stop looking,” Peggy said, regret, and guilt clear in her voice.
“I forgive you,” Natasha said, taking Peggy’s hand into her own. “Who would have thought you would watch them take my memories, and I would watch you forget yours,” she said painfully.
“I’ve lived a good life, now it’s your turn. Don’t let me stop you from being with Steve, you guys both deserve some happiness. Life hasn’t been fair to both of you, but that doesn’t mean there’s no future,” she said.
“Why do you think I like Steve?” Natasha asked.
“I see the way your face lights up when you talk about him. I’m old, not stupid,” she said with a laugh, before going into another coughing fit.
Once it passed, like a scratched record, Peggy asked, “You did something new with your hair?”
Natasha smiled sadly, and said, “Yes, yes I did.”
***
It was a Sunday afternoon when a nurse brought Natasha into her room.
“What brings you to Washington?” Peggy asked.
“Memories,” she responded.
“Old memories I presume,” Peggy said.
“You could say that,” Natasha said back.
“Now sit down and tell me why you’re really here?”
“I was in Idaho, laying low at Clint’s farm, where his family is. His daughter, Lila, well she asked me about my family, and I didn’t know what to tell her,” Natasha started, playing with her hands, like she did when she tried to form words that she had trouble saying. “I didn’t know what to say, so I told her about you.”
“So you came here to tell me that you consider me to be your family?” Peggy asked.
“The doctors called me, they said that you’re not doing too well. I told Steve, but he’s in Europe trying to track down Bucky, so I knew I had to see you,” she said trying to stay composed.
“I’ve lived a long life,” Peggy said – her response to most things these days.
“You came to see me that night I put a SHIELD agent in the hospital to get a good night’s sleep, so I thought I’d return the favor.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Natasha,” Peggy stated like it was a fact.
“I know you may think that, but some nights your words were the only thing that stopped me from putting a gun to my head. I’d close my eyes and see them, those people that took everything from me, and I’d feel shackles on my wrists like a burning poison, even though there was nothing there, but then I’d think of you, and you telling me that life was more than a mission, and I just knew that I couldn’t let them win -- and if the only way to beat them was to stay alive, to keep breathing, then I would do that, for myself, and for you,” Natasha finished, tears in her eyes, tears of sadness mixed with relief.
"Clint made the decision not to kill me, but you, you saved my life, and I can't thank you enough for that."
“That’s what family do, they – we save each other; just like the way you saved my life that night in the Red Room,” Peggy said.
“I told you love was for children, and maybe that’s still true, but I’m starting to think it’s not,” Natasha said, and Peggy, even in her old state, knew what she was trying to say.
“I love you too, like the daughter I never had,” she said, as Natasha embraced her into a hug, saying what words could not.
***
Two days later Peggy Carter died in her sleep.
Her funeral took place in London, with not Captain America, but Steve Rogers carrying her casket, with Natasha Romanov right beside him, the two people she loved the most.
And in the end, Peggy left the world without her memories, while Natasha was finally starting to get some of her own for a change. It is irony that screws us all over in the end.
Natasha kept her promise, and would make sure no one ever forgot who Agent Carter was, because even though SHIELD had fallen, she would be damned if she would let Peggy Carter’s legacy fall with it. A women who effected the lives of all, touched the lives of many, but changed the lives of few, two of which would be forever grateful. In the background a man with a metal arm blended into the crowd, looking upon the site with something he hadnt felt in a long time: sadness.