A very big thanks to idoltina for continuing to be the best beta ever, and always surprising me with feedback.
Natasha's chapter contains a lot of trigger warnings, due to the nature of her history in the Red Room.
This was originally posted as part of the MCU Ladies Halfamoon Exchange 2015 on AO3, as a gift for Beatrice_Otter. Everything is mainly consistent (and can play around) with MCU canon up to episode 5 of Agent Carter, aired on Feb. 3, 2015.
It's dull.
Howard can see it, Colonel Phillips can see it. It's a problem.
But it's not taking lunch orders.
But it's dull.
She needs a project. Peggy sighs, turning away from her paperwork to look out at the world from her lofty perch in the newly built headquarters. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division-yes, its a mouthful and she was putting in the paperwork to shorten it as soon as she found the correct forms-is finally lifting off. They've received enough grants and funding and approval from the government to move out of the basement at Camp Lehigh. Howard funded and outfitted the high-rise himself-he calls it the Triskelion, for the three branches that converge in the middle. Their recruits are doing well in the field, and she's even managed to make peace with Operation Paperclip.
The nestlings are being pushed out into the world, and Peggy feels a bit like a mother whose children have grown.
Restlessly, she clicks her pen. It's an annoying habit she picked up from somewhere-Howard, probably-but it helps her think, providing enough background noise to free up her brain. It's not that she doesn't enjoy her position as director, she does. She just… wishes there were differences she could make. There are too many unavoidable situations she finds herself in compromising positions for.
There is endless paperwork and rare opportunities for fieldwork. She craves those opportunities, when chaos reigns and the only option left is calling in Level 10. She hates herself for craving them-she wanted peace, she wanted to take the wheel and keep everyone in line. But it's so dull and she wants to scream some days and-
And some days she wonders about Thompson and Dum-Dum and Sousa. How not everyone got to come home the same as they were when they left. Then she wonders if she's quite the same person as she was when she left.
She knows she isn't.
Howard and Phillips don't know what to tell her, and that's fine. If she wanted them to give her an opinion, she'd ask.
She also doesn't need their permission to form a new project. She just needs to find one. They have a partnership. They create their own divisions and run them-she oversees the communications division. Howard has his pet projects in the science division, and she knows he's been discussing the formation of an academy for younger recruits. Phillips has operations covered, for the most part. She helps there, mostly to keep busy when communications is calm, but also to keep the men sharp. They need to keep aware, hone their abilities, particularly if the Russians are-
Peggy pauses her pen clicking.
She's a damn fool, and shame on her for not seeing it sooner.
The organisation, particularly communications, is filled with women. Young things with bright eyes and rebellious streaks against their parents, older widows with sharp ears and a keen mind for piecing together gossip, middle-aged ladies who are tired of their old lives and crave a difference. Peggy has done everything she could, through all avenues-ladies magazines, soap operas, dance halls, tossing a coin and a word to known gossip-mongers, hell, even bribing someone to place slips in the damn sanitary napkin boxes-to get the word out that if you were a woman of age with certain qualities, apply for work.
Peggy wants them. She wants all of them.
Her old friend Angie has a flair for collecting and processing gossip. Peggy, through several links in the chain, had managed to position her in communications. Angie was now one of their top operatives-Peggy had watched her work one afternoon, fishing information out of one of their suspects like she'd been doing it her entire life.
It was a proud moment.
Peggy had personally gifted her with a whole case of schnapps the next afternoon. "You ain't half bad, English," Angie had said with a wink and a bump of hips.
But that's communications. Science and tech are still well-equipped with women-brilliant ones who took her breath away with the speed at which they worked and created and lived-but they needed more. She understands the current political climate outside of the division does not lead to encouraging girls into maths and sciences, but she hopes that if anything were to come out of the current Soviet-American squabble, it would be that these girls will open their eyes and see to it that everyone needed to pull their weight if they hoped to surpass the Russians.
Which leads her thought process to two separate entities, but in essence they are the same: operations and the Red Room.
The Russians are becoming a problem. She's no longer able keep track anymore of the number of sleeper agents who have attempted to worm their way into her division. Operations and communications land multiple, daily reports on her desk of subterfuge and a bitterly cold war growing between intelligence agencies. For now, most of the brunt of this underground war has been handled by the CIA and, at times, the FBI, but her own agents are starting to join the fray. And if Senator McCarthy has anything to say about it-and the winds gusting down from Capitol Hill hint that he has quite a lot to say about it-the budding intelligence war will require all hands on deck soon.
Operations staffs mostly men. It's dirty and dangerous, and the times haven't changed enough for a lot of the preemptive sign-ups to commit to it entirely.
However, the Russians are using little girls. She's seen it. Little girls kidnapped, sold, or born into the Red Room, trained up to become young women with skills and intelligence, young women who wreak havoc and leave bodies in their wake. The Black Widows are an elite group of female fighters, and Peggy at once fears and admires them.
"We've been going about ops all wrong," she breathes.
She's made sure that ops are trained to recognise a Black Widow. They can't afford another Dottie. Ops can engage and disarm, recognise and subdue. But what they don't have are Black Widows of their own.
She's a damn fool, and should be stripped of her position. This should have been implemented the moment she set foot in Camp Lehigh.
The Widows are more than fighters. They are a company of trained professionals pressed into a single person. She's read the files. They're trained in every possible art, able to adapt to any situation with ease. A Black Widow can perform in any situation-Peggy is certain that the one known Widow they keep tabs on has been seen at every major political fundraising event in the last three years, as well as dancing at a local gentleman's club and working as a housemaid for the family of a congressman-is fluent in at least six languages, trained in science and engineering. She is capable of entering, searching, and leaving a room while leaving no trace that she'd been there at all. She can detect and distill poisons. She can perform quick-changes of appearance that would make even a veteran Broadway performer weep with pride, and she can plot and execute tactical military manoeuvres with the precision of a five-star general.
A Widow, on the surface, is a blank slate upon which any role can be written and carried out with ease. Underneath, where the gears turn, is where the danger lies.
"Not unlike a well-placed pistol under your skirts…" Peggy murmurs, writing out her thoughts.
The operations division doesn't need blank slates and chalk, they need adaptable women. Smart women, clever women. She's seen it in the faces of the men she's trained and worked with, how they underestimate her.
How quickly she's proven them wrong.
How quickly they return to underestimating her again.
They need a company of women-a cavalry, if you would-who are willing and able to utilise and weaponise that low estimation, turn it to their advantage.
Adrenaline rushes through Peggy's veins as she looks over what she's written. She just needs to find the right way to implement it.