Chapter Text
Past Lives
Chapter 1
She wasn’t doing anything wrong, Sarah told herself firmly. She really wasn’t. She knew her parents would not be pleased to know she had snuck away from their chaperoned school group while going through the still-new National Museum of American History but she wasn’t up to any mischief. Really, she wasn’t. She had sworn her best friend Amy to secrecy about it and Amy agreed that Sarah wasn’t doing anything wrong.
She had been tentatively planning this for weeks now, ever since the event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Captain America’s death last year. Until then, Sarah hadn’t really thought much about her mom and how her mom had known Captain America. Oh, she and Jamie both knew their mom had worked in the SSR during the war and that Mom had been there when Captain America had been created and then a few years after the war had ended, Mom and Uncle Howard had worked together to found SHIELD. And they knew that both Mom and Dad had served in the war, where they had met, although they had not married until a couple years after the war was over.
But Sarah hadn’t thought much about it growing up, except from becoming aware that her mom was unusual among the other mothers of her classmates for still working and that Dad was even more unusual for being the one who had stayed at home and taken care of both Sarah and Jamie when they had been little and who still handled almost all of the cooking and general household work. Jamie, she knew, had started to feel more and more uncomfortable with it, with the way kids at school commented on it, but Sarah had, at least, moved past that stage and accepted it as making sense because, as Dad had explained more than once, his work as an artist was something he could and did do at home whereas Mom’s job with SHIELD was not.
Besides, Sarah had rather accepted that all adults were strange in different ways.
But then when the ceremony to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Captain America’s death had been announced and then occurred, even though she and Jamie had not been able to go because it had occurred on a school day and hadn’t particularly wanted to go either as they expected it would be a boring ceremony of grown-ups talking about old memories of the war, she had realized sharply that Mom, her mother who she thought she knew so well, had this whole past life of which Sarah herself knew very little. And this past life of her mom’s had been important and dramatic enough that her mom had been asked to be one of the main organizers of the event and also had been asked to speak at this special event about which there had been quite a stir. She had heard the other kids at school talking about it, especially as most of their fathers had also served in the war and had been talking about it. Apparently almost all of her classmates’ parents knew about Captain America, had followed his exploits, and Sarah had even learned that some of the parents remembered going to see Captain America’s early shows for the USO before he had gone off to fight like a soldier and ultimately died for the country.
She had heard about Captain America before, of course, but she hadn’t paid much attention to him. He was just more ancient history, another long-dead historical figure, rather like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, as far as she was concerned. That was why it had been so jarring to come up against the reality that actually, he wasn’t just some long-dead historical figure, that her mom had known him and known him well, if the talk Sarah had heard was any indication. And then she had heard some of the kids at school mentioning something they had heard their parents talking about, that her mother had even been interviewed by the Smithsonian about Captain America years ago. She’d heard that a brief clip from the interview had been played at the ceremony to commemorate Captain America’s death and that had sparked her curiosity to watch this interview.
The fact that her school had already organized this class trip down to Washington, D.C. had seemed providential. And once she had learned that one of their stops on the visit was to the newly-opened Museum of American History, which Sarah was reasonably sure had to be the museum that would have her mom’s interview in its archives, it had seemed even more so.
So here she was. And after all, she told herself again, it was only natural that any kid would want to watch an interview given by their own parent, wasn’t it? That was the argument Sarah had just used to convince the museum staff member to allow her to watch the full interview, explaining that she was Margaret Carter’s daughter and had heard about the interview and wanted to watch it. When the staff member had appeared dubious, Sarah had produced the single snapshot she had with her of one of their family pictures as proof that she was really Margaret Carter’s daughter, along with one of her best smiles and adopting her mother’s own reasonable tones as she explained her interest, and the staff member had given way.
The first thing that surprised Sarah was when she saw that the interview had taken place in their own home. She recognized the couch her mother was sitting on as the old one before they had bought a new couch a couple years ago and the lamp beside her mother was still in the family room.
The interview had apparently taken place over two separate days, probably because, Sarah guessed, her mother had not been able to take that much time away from her work to give the entire interview in one day. The first portion of the interview dealt with the SSR and the formation of SHIELD and Sarah did not find it particularly interesting. She had already heard the outlines of the story and her mother was being even more than usually brisk and business-like about it. Sarah straightened up when the second portion of the interview began and her mother immediately knew that the interviewer wanted to ask about “Steve Rogers.” The name startled Sarah a little. She had forgotten that that was Captain America’s real name and it occurred to her belatedly that Jamie must have been named after Captain America. Captain America had been that important to her mother that she had wanted to name her own son after him? Sarah wondered what her dad had thought of that. Did he mind, that Jamie hadn’t been named after him and was named after another man instead? After all, Sarah’s own middle name was the same as her mom’s. But then perhaps her dad had reasoned it was fair because Dad had chosen Sarah’s first name, had named her after his own mother. It occurred to Sarah to wonder who Jamie’s other namesake was. Maybe James had been the name of Dad’s own father? All she knew about Dad’s father was that he had died when Dad was just a baby and that Dad didn’t remember him at all. She did know that Mom’s father had been named John and Mom’s mother’s name had also been Margaret.
At first, Sarah did not notice much unusual about her mother’s talking about Captain America, well, Captain Rogers as she usually called him when she wasn’t calling him “Steve.” Her mom must have called Captain America “Steve” all the time, Sarah thought, so she had known Captain America well enough to be on first-name terms with him. Sarah only knew about Captain America as a hero, about his shield, his super strength, and had a general sense of some of his daring rescues and exploits during the war up until his final sacrifice. But listening to her mom talk about him, it became clear that her mom had known him not as a hero but as a man, a person. She really had been friends with Captain America.
Sarah blinked in surprise when Mom said that Captain America had saved “the man who would become my husband.” Her dad had never mentioned Captain America, let alone that he had ever seen the hero, but she supposed that wasn’t surprising because her dad didn’t talk much about his time during the war except in passing references when talking with her mom. She knew her dad had been a soldier–he was still very much a military man in some ways, holding himself upright with a soldier’s bearing, and her mom sometimes teasingly called him “soldier”--but otherwise, Sarah had only heard her dad make brief references to his time during the war but he didn’t tell war stories or anything like that the way she knew some of the other fathers who had also served in the war tended to. She knew that her dad hadn’t been seriously wounded during the war because her dad was so obviously hale and whole and when she had stopped to think about it, which she had not done often, she thought maybe it was a sort of guilt over his having come through the war unscathed when so many other men had not that kept her dad so silent about his years in service. It was a little startling to hear that her dad had been among the troops that had been “pinned down” by Hydra forces for months before being rescued, made her realize all over again that her dad had experienced actual combat. It was a strange thought. Sarah could not really imagine Dad fighting. He was, well, an artist, a house husband who stayed at home and cooked and cleaned and had taken care of herself and Jamie. She was more likely to picture Dad wearing an apron than ever using a gun.
But then the interviewer asked about her mom having been the last one to talk to Captain America before his plane went down and Sarah stiffened a little, straightening up as she saw with some shock the tears come to Mom’s eyes, heard the catch in her voice. Mom was crying at the mention of Captain America’s death! Crying and so overcome she couldn’t even answer the question about Captain America’s last words.
Sarah almost gaped as the screen went dark with the interview apparently ending abruptly on that note. Mom had cried. It was shocking. Sarah wasn’t sure she had ever seen her mother cry before–she hadn’t, had she? And to see her mother become so overcome with emotion in front of the interviewer who had to be a complete stranger was all the more shocking because Mom was, well, British, as Mom liked to remind them (not that it wasn’t obvious). Mom joked about it, the “stiff upper lip” and “keep calm and carry on,” and all that. But joking and even Britishness aside, Sarah knew that her mom was not usually the openly emotional sort. Not like some of the other mothers who had been known to become teary-eyed and even cry when they came to school recitals and performances. Her dad was the one among her parents who was more likely to become rather misty-eyed at their school performances but her mom never had. Her mom had not cried at the news of President Kennedy’s assassination, unlike many of the other school mothers, Sarah knew, and her mom did not really cry over movies either. But her mom had cried over Captain America’s death, even back then, years after Captain America had died.
Sarah thought again about what her mom had said about “Steve,” and how he never let her forget that these were real lives and deaths at stake, heard again the tones of her mom’s familiar voice, the emotion in it, remembered her tears. Mom hadn’t just been friends with Captain America. Mom had loved him.
The thought, the word, struck Sarah almost like a blow and she jerked almost in spite of herself. She wanted to protest, wanted to argue, even against her own self, the realization she’d had, but found she couldn’t. She tried to tell herself that she had to be wrong, that Mom couldn’t have really loved Captain America. She had just liked him, even cared about him. She was grateful to him for having saved Dad’s life. Maybe something like the way Mom liked Uncle Edwin or Uncle Howard, although maybe not, with the way Mom and Uncle Howard argued sometimes. Then maybe it was more like the way Sarah cared about her cousin Tommy, far away in England, but still one of Sarah’s favorite people and who she wrote to because he was such fun and didn’t treat Sarah like a little kid even though he was almost ten years older than she was and done with college, or university, as they called it in England.
But Sarah found her rationalizations, her protests, sounding lame and unconvincing even to her. She knew her mom, knew the tones of her mom’s voice. And the softness in her mom’s tone when she had spoken about “Steve” was one that Sarah could only really remember hearing in her mother’s voice when her mom spoke to, well, Dad or to Sarah or Jamie, in her mom’s tender moments. She knew her mom’s expressions and the look on her mom’s face was also… different, could only be compared to the way Sarah sometimes saw Mom look at Dad.
Oh God. Sarah inwardly recoiled but the thought stuck, stayed in her mind, with dismaying persistence. Mom had loved another man before she’d loved Dad.
No, it was worse than that, Sarah remembered with a sickening twist of her stomach. The interview had happened in 1953. But that was after Mom had married Dad, after Sarah and Jamie had been born, even. And even then, even years after Mom had been married to Dad, she had loved another man. Loved him enough that she had still cried over his death.
Could Mom still, even now… For the first time in her life, Sarah found herself questioning her mother’s love for her father. It didn’t even matter–or at least not much–that Captain America was long dead, more than 20 years dead, as Sarah knew very well. What mattered was the sudden doubt, the sick wondering, if even now, her mom loved another man, not Dad.
Sarah knew, although she didn’t particularly like knowing it, that Mom had been, oh, associated with other men before she had met and married Dad. She knew that Mom had been engaged to another man, an old family friend, before the war but that her mom had broken off the engagement when Sarah’s Uncle Michael had been killed and Mom had decided to start working for the SOE. And rather more disturbingly, she knew that Mom had gone steady with another man–Chief Daniel Sousa, Sarah had even met him a few times–for a couple months after the war before marrying Dad. But her mom spoke so easily about both those relationships and anyway, both those relationships had been long over before Mom had married Dad so Sarah hadn’t taken them very seriously, when she had thought about it at all, which she tried not to do. Anyway, it didn’t surprise Sarah much because her mom was beautiful. Sarah had always thought so and privately envied her mom her dark curly hair, thought it was so much lovelier and more attractive than Sarah’s own wavy indeterminately blonde hair, not truly flaxen or golden but somewhere in between, that didn’t hold proper curls for long either. And Sarah didn’t even have the benefit of the traditional blue eyes that seemed to go best with blonde hair, blue eyes like Dad had. Rather, Sarah tended to think of her eyes as being “mud-brown.” She had her mother’s eyes and she was never sure why on her mother, her brown eyes looked somehow better, brighter and even mysterious at times, whereas Sarah always felt her own eyes looked so boring. Sarah had always thought it would have been so much nicer if she had inherited blue eyes like Dad’s as well as his blonde hair. But however it was, her mom was beautiful so of course she would have had other suitors besides Dad. Sarah had even heard Dad joke as much.
But this–this was different. To know that Mom had actually loved another man, not only before she’d married Dad but that, by all appearances from that interview, had still loved him after she’d married Dad.
Oh God. Dad. Did Dad know? He couldn’t possibly know. Not with the way Dad loved Mom. Sarah had read in books about men who looked at women as if the sun rose and set in them and it had occurred to her, with a little vague discomfort, that the phrase perfectly described how Dad loved Mom. And Dad, as far as Sarah knew, had never really looked at another woman, only Mom. She had never heard her dad mention any other woman that he’d gone steady with before Mom. In fact, Dad had said a couple times that after he’d met Mom during the war, no other woman had compared. So Sarah was very sure that her dad had never cared about another woman, let alone loved another woman, besides her mom.
A day ago, an hour ago, Sarah would have laughed at the thought of doubting her parents’ love for each other, would have scoffed at the mere idea that anyone or anything could ever come between her parents. Her parents’ sickening love for each other had always been an immutable fact of her existence, like the law of gravity or the sun rising in the east. But now, shockingly, Sarah found herself wondering, questioning, if it was possible that her mom loved another man, if her dad was, somehow, a sort of replacement, a second-best, after her mom had lost the man she really loved.
The mere thought made her feel as if the ground had tilted beneath her, were suddenly unsteady. It had never before occurred to Sarah how much she relied on her parents’ marriage as a source of stability but now it did. Her parents’ marriage, their happiness together as a single unit, as Grant-and-Peggy-Carter, was–had been–like a fortress to her, she realized, a stable center that would hold strong no matter what happened to the rest of the world. It had always been that way. Sarah barely even considered her parents to be individuals at all; they were always together in her mind, a pair, just as she knew perfectly well that telling one of them something was the same as telling them both because her parents shared everything. She had rarely even heard her parents disagreeing and had realized in recent years that her parents didn’t just love each other, they liked each other as well and that mattered too.
She could picture in her mind her parents’ wedding photograph, one that stood in pride of place on her parents’ dresser in their bedroom, saw her dad looking tall and handsome and so happy in his nice suit and her mother so beautiful in her simple white dress as they smiled at each other. But now it was as if she could see the shadowy figure of a ghost of a helmeted hero with a shield hovering between her parents, the ghost of the man who was her mother’s first, true love, even as she married another man.
Oh God, why had she ever thought she wanted to watch the interview her mother had given anyway? Curiosity killed the cat, Sarah thought rather bitterly, and decided that maybe, it was better not to know too much about her parents and their past lives before they had become parents.
Sarah was never very sure afterwards how she made her way back through the museum to rejoin her classmates but she had to push aside her preoccupation. It was even a little shocking to realize how little time had actually passed since the interview had been short enough, barely half an hour in all, so Sarah had returned well within an hour. Such a short time and she felt as if her world had been rocked on its foundations.
Amy pulled her aside to ask in a quiet whisper, “How did it go?”
“It was fine,” Sarah responded a little flatly. “Once I convinced the museum staff member that I just wanted to watch my own mom’s interview, it was simple and the interview itself was mostly boring,” she added. The first portion of the interview about the founding of SHIELD really had been. She just wished the second portion of the interview had been equally so but Sarah had a sinking feeling that she would be haunted by the part of her mom’s interview that had involved Captain America for a long time.
~To be continued...~