A/N: It can't just be me who is terrified whenever entering a new fandom, right? Anyway, here is my first venture into the world of Marvel, with an end of the world AU featuring our favourite badass, Peggy Carter. I hope I've done her justice. This piece is sort of a 'make of it what you will' when it comes to ships – I am a strong Steggy shipper, but Cartinelli definitely have a real presence in this one, and I guess you can take that as romance or friendship depending on your stance. All I will say is: all they have is each other. Sort of.
Shout out to Cam for being utterly brilliant and getting me back on my feet.
Citizens are being advised to seal all windows and doors, and to ensure that, where possible, bomb shelters are used. If you show any signs of nausea or ill health, it is recommended that you seek medical attention immediately, and are immediately quarantined. When new information is available, we-
The transmission fizzles to an abrupt ending, just as the lights blow one by one. Hushed voices whisper in increasing tones of panic, but there's still an underlining feeling: we beat the war, we can beat whatever this is, too.
Can't we?
Brooklyn no longer looks like a city. If you squint, maybe. If you look past the tarpaulins hanging across doorways, the overturned cars, the rubble, the stench of dead flesh... It's difficult to remember what this place was before. It's difficult to imagine the bustle of businessmen, or nervous teenagers going on their first date, wiping sweaty hands on their slacks, and running their fingers through ruffled hair. (She pauses because the image is too clear, and it digs a hole in her chest because it makes her think of him and she knows that's why she can't leave this town, why she keeps ending up back here).
Peggy doesn't think she will ever get used to how bare everything is. How empty the streets are. The only sound comes from her own footsteps (which, honestly, she's been grateful of lately – it makes it easier to tell if she's being followed), the only movement bar her own, the slight flicker of shelters in the wind. She knows she's not alone here, but how many others are left, she does not know.
The auto-mat is the only building that still has hot water, and the bell still chimes half-heartedly when the door spins. She hears the click of a shot gun as she pushes the heavy glass, loud to her heightened senses.
"Oh, English, it's you."
Angie puts the shotgun down behind the remains of what used to be a counter, before it was torn out. Her eyes are no longer a shining sea-foam blue, but dark, hollow. She's aged five years in the last month. Her hair is scooped onto the top of her head and tied in a scarf, the end of the limp curls thick with grease. The bounce in her step is gone, the lightness in her voice replaced with exhaustion. Still, her lips twitch into a smile as her stubby fingers spread out over her dress.
"New frock?" Peggy asks, and she enjoys the way Angie's eyes light up, that tiny peek at the woman who resided here before all of this.
"Cost me half a box of powdered milk. You think it suits me?"
The dress's main appealing quality is the fact that it's clean, "oh, yes – it brings out your eyes."
Angie's smile only falters when she notices the smudges of dried blood on the collar of Peggy's blouse, the dirt caked under her chipped-red finger nails.
"It's not mine," Peggy assures her, following her line of sight, "and I didn't... if that's what you're thinking."
Angie gazes at her a while, and Peggy knows there's so much she wants to say, but they don't talk about these things. They never have, and there's no point in talking about it now. This Angie – the one who keeps a shotgun by her side, and sleeps with one eye open – is such a far stretch from the woman Peggy first met, the woman she spent months lying to. She never once believed Angie to be naïve, and she's adapted to this life a lot better than most, but there are still things they don't discuss.
"You should wash up," Angie finally says.
She nods absently, but her eyes are trained on the gap in the sheets hanging in front of the windows, the movement outside. It's getting dark out, but that doesn't mean that everybody has gone to bed. (for one, that would imply that they had beds). She knows better than to believe that just because it's quiet, it's calm.
Not for the first time, she wonders how things would be different if Steve were here. She blinks the thought away because she knows, rationally, that even Steve couldn't have stopped a virus this strong. That maybe he could have lessened the aftermath, but also maybe he couldn't. And besides – he wasn't invincible.
Thinking of Steve makes her think of Howard, and that isn't much better.
She clasps her hands together, focusses on the sound of water as Angie fills the tin bath tub out back, and continues her surveillance. There's an edge of irony in it all. That she's the last one left. That she's watched the rest of her team dissipate into nothingness.
That she, the tea girl, the lunch-orders-lady, the runaround, is still here. That she is still doing what she does best.
"You sure were gone a long time," Angie says, and perhaps Peggy has lost her touch after all, because she doesn't hear her coming, "I began to think you weren't coming back."
Peggy wants to promise that she'll always come back, that she'll never leave her, but she knows it's unrealistic, so she doesn't. The truth is, Peggy thrives off this situation, whether she is willing to admit to it or not. She can't be idle now, no more than she could at war. She refuses to accept that there's nothing she can do. There's still a sense of duty in being Agent Peggy Carter, even in a world where that title means nothing.
If Steve were here, it's what he'd do, too.
She's glad Angie understands her need to do this, even if she doesn't necessarily agree.
"I covered more ground than I thought I would," she says, instead, turning her back to her to keep watch, "but still not enough... I'm afraid I can't stay for long."
"You didn't find... what you were looking for?"
Angie doesn't want details; often her questions remind Peggy of the lines of code she'd used during the war, at the SSR. "I always carry an umbrella". She spends all her time reading between the lines, speaking passages with short sentences or curt shakes of her head. It's so different from before. Angie would sit beside her on the couch, legs tucked under her, and try to get any piece of information she could out of Peggy, groaning and rolling her eyes at the word 'classified', eventually giving up and going to bed, but not after giving her a lecture on how good at keeping secrets she was. It feels like a thousand years ago. The life of espionage doesn't feel so exciting now that it's the only life they know; the novelty has worn off.
"No," Peggy replies, quietly. She knows it's getting more and more unlikely that she will find anything, but that isn't going to stop her from looking, "but I did manage to find a few things we can use."
She slips the leather map case off her body, trying to ignore the way her muscles ache as she does so, and hands it to Angie. Where the heavy strap has been across her shoulder for so long, its cut into her skin. She makes a mental note to find something to bandage it before she sets off again. She begins the process of removing the rest of her clothes, remembering that her primary objective is to get washed up, to clean the dirt from every crevice of her body.
To smell a little less like rotting flesh.
Angie has her back to her, going through the contents of the bag, but even if she wasn't, undressing in front of her is no longer something Peggy even stops to think about. She folds her grimy clothes into a neat pile, as Angie hungrily catalogues all of the new items: two cans of beans; a reasonably sized, if slightly discoloured, potato; a small bag of rice; a can of corned beef; a can of tomato soup; two boxes of matches; a hairbrush.
"Not a bad haul," Angie nods with approval as Peggy slips behind the counter and into the bath, "whadya do, raid someone's bomb shelter?"
Sinking into the lukewarm water of the bath, Peggy closes her eyes, and tries not to think about the places the food had come from, "something like that."
It's only once she lets the water soak over her that she realises just how many bruises and cuts she's acquired over the last few days – not that that's anything new. She inspects a few of the deeper ones, decides they'll heal in time and don't need any attention. The bar of soap gets smaller every time she returns, and now its half the size of her palm. She uses it sparingly, absently wondering how long it will be before the hot water runs out too.
She gets out of the bath to find a clean pile of clothes on the counter. The gentleman's trousers have a row of wobbly stitching across a rip in the knee, and the bottoms have been turned up. Peggy slips into them and is pleased to find they're not a bad size on her, though she has to roll them up further. She pulls a blouse over her head. It's unmistakably hers, but Angie's pounded the stains of blood until they've almost disappeared.
"Oh, Angie, you needn't have-"
She's cut off by a loud bang outside. Suddenly, she's alert, reaching for her hand pistol, just as Angie's fingers grip around a knife. They speak in glances, tiny gestures. Angie moves to the door, stands by the doorframe, pressed flat to the wall. Peggy edges around to the front of the counter, her eye on the gap in the sheeting, her fingers tight on the metal of her gun. She's barefoot, and leaving small puddles of water everywhere she walks, her hair dripping down the back of her blouse, but her whole attention is on outside.
The door begins to turn, and Peggy raises a finger in the air to Angie, cocking her gun, and crouching.
When it opens all the way, Peggy almost forgets how to breathe, and it's only when she realises Angie is staring at her, awaiting a command, that she manages to whisper, "it's okay, Angie. Stand down."