Thick and Red and Violent and Good

Peggy Carter was a woman of science yet what stood before her defied rational explanation. What had she got herself caught up in this time?

Pairing: Peggy/Bucky
Rating: mature
Warnings: blood, horror
Tropes: vampire AU
Words: 945
Original Release Date: 2 Mar 2018
Additional Notes: This was originally posted separately but since it didn't have reviews I decided to add it here where it belongs.

Peggy Carter was a woman of science. She'd seen some of the research that had gone into the seeming miracle of Project Rebirth but she knew it was science. She'd seen the devastation caused by the weapons HYDRA had made, but again, it had been science.

What stood before her defied everything her rational mind was telling her.

Sergeant James Barnes was standing in front of her. His skin was paler than she'd ever seen even when she'd first met him after Azzano. His shoulders were hunched, bulkier than before, and he was raised on the balls of his feet like he was expecting to have to chase her.

Behind him were her emergency candles burned low in their holders like he'd been waiting for her a long time. The warm amber glow they cast over his bared torso made the whisky she'd nursed until closing time reheat her blood. There was something about him standing there, hesitant, anticipating, that made her want to both go to him and flee.

Something was going on here and she had no idea what.

She'd read the report in January. Had comforted Steve through his attempt to drink himself into a stupor. Sergeant Barnes had fallen from a high-speed train down a snowy mountain crevasse. No one would have survived that fall, except maybe Steve Rogers.

Then why was Sergeant Barnes standing in her bedroom looking at her like she was prey and something he wanted to eat.

"Peggy?" he asked, voice not the playful tease he'd always addressed her with but smaller, darker, more vulnerable and more hungry than she'd ever heard it. "Peggy, something's wrong."

She swallowed hard and straightened her shoulders. Readying herself to take charge of the situation as it seemed he wasn't able.

"Where's Steve?" he asked, even quieter than before.

"Captain Rogers died, Sergeant Barnes, two months after—" she paused not knowing how to word it. After you died.

"I died."

"According to the reports, yes. You fell from the train."

He looked up at her, the hunch in his shoulders straightening out as he faced her fully. When she met his gaze he averted his, to look down at his hands. She heard him swallow. He turned his left hand back and forth, studying it like it was something new and different. He made a fist and relaxed it. "I was cold. My arm was practically torn off. I could see it dangling from a strip of meat from my elbow." His face scrunched as if he were going to cry and Peggy thought the expression looked so out of place. He'd never shown emotion like that, though there was something entrancing about it. He seemed somehow beautiful. His next words were whispered, "Could see it dragging through the snow." He looked back up at her, the tearful emotion suddenly gone from his face. Replaced with something like fear. "There's something wrong." He licked his lips and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed again. "I'm... thirsty."

* . * . *

Peggy thought she must have been dreaming. Her dreams had always been vibrant, her nightmares even more so. It must have been the whisky she drank the night before.

She flexed her fingers to try and bring circulation back to them and climbed out of bed. Her body felt drained, exhausted in different ways. She felt like she had had sex, more vigorous than she'd ever had it with Fred, and languid in a way she could only associate with too much drink. She didn't think she'd consumed that much last night. She was naked but that wasn't too surprising. If she'd been as drunk as she must have been it was a wonder she'd removed any of her clothes much less had the acuity to put some back on. She stepped into her bathroom and looked into the mirror.

The mirror was cracked. Splintered from the centre as if someone had punched it. As her eyes took in the damage she caught herself in the reflection. There was an incongruous amount of red in the image staring back at her. She raised a hand to her neck where it looked concentrated. Was that blood? Her fingers scratched at the red and it flaked off her skin. She looked down at her hands to see they were also coated in what had been red and sticky at one point, now it was dried a dirty brown. Confused, she returned to her bedroom.

Her bedding was soaked in dirty brown blood. Not a little either, too much, and not just as if she'd had a ladies' sort of accident. Near her pillow it was still wet and gooey. What had happened last night? She looked around. Her candles had guttered themselves out and one of her china teacups and saucers was on the vanity. A thick black-red substance had poured down the side and stuck the cup to the saucer. There were two red-brown lip-prints on the rim of the teacup.

Her bedroom, her body, looked like a gruesome, horrific crime scene. She looked towards the window, trying to determine what time it was and how much time she had until she had to go to work, but the sunlight was wrong. It was fading as if she'd slept until sunset. She stood there, waiting, confused, trying to get her rational, scientific mind to remember and recognise what had happened until the last rays of sun slipped past the horizon.

The spent candles flared to life and Peggy startled, looking up towards her bedroom door. Leaning against the frame, wearing nothing but a wicked smirk, was Sergeant James Barnes.