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December 25, 2014
Sharon feels the pulse right before her phone starts to vibrate, which means she has about two seconds to slip out of her great-aunt’s room unnoticed. Of course, she’s not a Level 6 agent for nothing – she pulls the door shut behind her just as a peppy Kelly Clarkson tune begins to play.
Was.
Sharon’s not a Level 6 agent anymore because the person calling her – though it’s popping up as “Unknown,” she’s given this number to exactly four people and three are in the room she just left – sent S.H.I.E.L.D. crashing into the Potomac. She silences Kelly with a tap.
“Hi,” she says cautiously.
The deep voice on the other end is instantly recognizable. “Merry Christmas, Agent Carter.”
Sharon reminds herself that Steve wouldn’t know how hard she worked to separate herself from Peggy’s legacy, that she once threw a knife at a classmate who made that joke at the Academy, that no one at S.H.I.E.L.D. dared to call her that ever again. “Merry Christmas, Captain Rogers.”
“You’re in D.C.?”
“Bethesda,” says Sharon because what he’s really asking is if she’s visiting Peggy at the nursing home. She leans back against the wall, about to ask where he is, then decides she doesn’t want to put him in the position of having to lie to her.
That means there’s a pause while Steve tries to come up with an innocuous question to ask. He settles on, “So, uh, any big plans later?”
“Not unless you count remembering to change my ringtone back from ‘Underneath the Tree,’” Sharon quips.
“That Kelly Clarkson song?”
“I’m surprised you know it.”
She hears Steve shrug. “Heard it at a mall the other day,” he says, which puts him in the U.S., or at least an English-speaking country. Huh. She figured he was somewhere in Eastern Europe. “I didn’t realize you were a fan.”
“My niece,” Sharon explains, though she’s pretty sure 15-year-old Danielle is actually something like her first cousin once removed. Anyway. “A few years ago, she changed it to a Justin Bieber song, which would’ve been fine, only I forgot to change it back. My phone went off in a briefing a week later. I ended up spending the next six months in Madripoor.”
“Who sent you there?”
“Hill – and I have on good authority she was still humming ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ into February.”
Steve chuckles appreciatively. “Sounds like a fun Christmas tradition,” he says.
No, a fun Christmas tradition is “The Nutcracker” at the Kennedy Center or ice skating at the Sculpture Garden, Uncle Mike making hot cocoa with real chocolate on the stove while Uncle Chris stuffs your stocking so full it falls from the mantle. But Sharon doesn't correct him. “What about you?” she asks, fingers curling around her phone. “Planning to do anything special?”
“There’s a diner nearby with an inflatable Santa on the roof and ‘Open on X-mas!’ in lights in the window. We’ll probably stop in for a slice of pie.”
Sharon wishes he’d ask already. “Apple or pecan?”
“I’m holding out for peach.” Steve clears his throat. “How’s Peggy?”
Finally. Sharon forces a smile. Her handler always said you could hear it in people’s voices when they weren’t smiling. “Telling us we shouldn’t have come.” Which, in a moment of clarity, Peggy had. But Steve doesn’t need to know it’s a bad day. “She’s in good spirits,” Sharon lies. “Would you like me to put her on?”
“No, no,” says Steve, just like she knew he would. “Actually, I should go. Give her my best?”
“Of course.”
It’s only after she’s hung up that Sharon realizes she’s not alone in the hallway. “Steve?” Chris guesses.
Sharon hesitates, then nods. “I know it’s sick.”
He shakes his head, joining her along the wall. “Not sick,” he says firmly, which is the invitation Sharon needs to rest her head on his puffy vest-clad shoulder. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s genetic. Your Uncle Mike had the biggest crush on him. Imagine finding out your mom used to date the superhero that made you realize you were gay.”
Sharon snorts.
“Did you tell him about Berlin?”
The CIA assigned her to its Germany-based joint terrorism task force. She leaves in a week. “I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
She shrugs, lifting her head off her uncle’s shoulder. He’s not really your uncle, she can hear her mom saying. But to Sharon, Peggy’s son’s longtime partner will always be Uncle Chris. “He isn’t calling to talk about me.”
“Are you sure?” Chris asks, though behind his round glasses, his pale eyes flicker to Peggy’s closed door, the nameplate on the wall identifying it as Mrs. Margaret Sousa’s room.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell him she thinks it’s 1978, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says. All morning long Peggy’s been asking for her husband, who died when Sharon was 4, and Michael.
Chris motions her over to a bank of uncomfortable plastic chairs. “I know it’s hard seeing her like this, kiddo,” he says, lowering himself gingerly into one of them and stretching out the knee he’d just had replaced. “Ah.”
Sometimes Sharon forgets he’s pushing 70. She’s about to excuse herself, but then he pats the chair next to him. It’s hard for her, sure, but she thinks it must be worse for him. She sits. “Can I ask you a question?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Always,” he says. He spent a career peddling politicians’ lies, yet he’s the only one Sharon’s ever trusted to give it to her straight.
She bites her lip. “Do you think I made – was it the right call?” she blurts. “Or do you think Aunt Peggy deserved to know?”
“About what, S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Sharon nods. “Nah. I think you did an old woman a kindness at the end of her life.” Chris pauses. “Though, I have to say, it surprised me how eager she was to have you follow in her footsteps.”
Hidden under the smart chambray she’s wearing is the knife holster her aunt had given her as an 18th birthday present. “It did?”
“You know Mike wanted to be a spy, right?” Sharon hadn’t. Chris continues, “Yeah, after he got his political science degree from George Washington – this would’ve been before The Academy – he applied to all three agencies. They all rejected him. Why? Because Peggy Carter said to.”
Sharon frowns. “That doesn’t sound like Aunt Peggy.”
(But every day giant cranes lift slabs of broken concrete and hunks of twisted steel from the Potomac, and what does she know?)
“We better get back in there,” says Chris, rising from his chair. “Melanie will be wondering where we went. Though ... ”
“What?”
“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” He rubs his mouth. “I keep reading about all these accidents HYDRA caused, only they weren’t accidents. It got me thinking, what if the car crash that killed – ”
“No,” Sharon interrupts, her heart beating very fast. “Just a car crash.”
“Just a car crash,” Chris repeats, twisting his wedding band and Mike’s around his ring finger. Suddenly he laughs. “What the hell would I have done had you told me it was HYDRA?”
A kindness, Sharon tells herself as he disappears into Peggy’s room, only it feels just like a lie.