Bionic Battle Granny
Inspired by a Tumblr post. The link can't be put in on this site but is available on Ao3. Alternately, you can look at my Tumblr (ozhawkauthor). Message me there if you can't figure out which post I'm talking about!
I couldn't help myself.
This is set partly before Avengers and partly between Avengers and Winter Soldier. And because I can never resist the cast of thousands, it's not just Natasha that Peggy terrorises. In fact, this starts before Natasha even joins SHIELD…
(I'm going to imply that Peggy married Daniel Sousa, BTW. Because I ship them).
This was originally intended to be a one-shot, but it got a bit long – so there's three parts.
Part One
"Director," Coulson poked his head around the door of Fury's office, "do you have a moment?"
Fury nodded without looking up from the papers on his desk. "What is it, Coulson?"
"Um, we have a Red Fedora situation again, sir…"
"Again? That's the third time this month!" Fury scowled, stood up, shoving his chair back. "Why the fuck can't we going to find an agent who can keep up with her, Coulson? She's eighty-four!"
Coulson winced. "Well, you did promote Victoria Hand and reassign her to the Hub, sir, she was the best we had…"
"It was that or have her quit after Carter stranded her in Paraguay! Have you ever been to Paraguay, Phil? I can't imagine why so many of the Nazis went into hiding there. Godforsaken hellhole."
Phil said nothing. Fury sighed. "What's your recommendation, Phil? Where do you think the ancient hellbat has gone to this time?"
A cough outside the open door had them both turning to see Agent Hill there. Phil nodded to her to come in. Young and smart, he'd assigned her to lead the search for former-Director Carter.
"We have a facial recognition hit, sir. She boarded a plane in Atlanta yesterday evening."
"She took off yesterday evening and I'm only just now hearing about it?" Fury's voice rose in volume. "Who was on duty at her house? I'll have their heads!"
"I'm afraid Agents Garrett and Blake are already in the hospital nursing very sore heads indeed, Director," Hill said calmly. Coulson marvelled at her ability to keep a straight face when telling the Director of SHIELD that an eighty-four year old woman with dementia had knocked two of his top field agents unconscious – had actually cracked John Garrett's skull – and had vanished completely for over eleven hours before SHIELD even noticed.
"How many passport caches and false identities does she have?" Fury's voice rose until he was shouting.
"You know she won't tell us that, sir." Coulson shook his head. "She only mutters about moles inside the agency if we ask."
Fury sighed, rubbing his fingers over his chin. "All right, Agent Hill, give me the bad news. Where was her flight headed?"
Hill hesitated only a moment before confessing. "Madrid, sir. Where she changed planes, for Athens, and then, um, Kiev."
"Oh Christ, she's on the fucking loose in Eastern Europe again!"
Even Hill looked slightly intimidated by the volume of the yelling this time, though to her credit she didn't take a step back. "You asked me to alert you before advising any local offices, sir," she addressed Coulson, though she still watched Fury from the corner of her eye. "Would you like me to call Kiev?"
"No!" Phil and Fury both said in unison.
"No, Christ, no," Phil continued when Fury waved a hand at him to carry on and started pacing irritably. "We don't need London all over again. Let me think."
"London, sir?" Hill murmured.
"Yes, London, Agent Hill, when Agent May decided it was a good idea to take an entire STRIKE team into Heathrow Airport to apprehend one harmless-looking little old lady!"
"In her defence, sir, Agent May had good cause to be very wary of Director Carter!" Phil protested.
"In my opinion, Agent May was still holding a grudge over having to get her tooth replaced," Fury snapped.
Phil winced again. The three fell silent for a moment, the quiet broken as Hill tapped quickly on the tablet she held in the crook of one arm.
"The closest Specialist we have is Agent Barton, sir," she murmured to Coulson. "He's in Istanbul."
"Barton's in Turkey? Is that where you hid him after Singapore?" Fury turned his gimlet stare on Coulson.
"You did tell me that you didn't want to see him for a while," Phil murmured.
Fury started to grin. "We've never sicced your pet project onto Carter, have we, Phil?"
"I do not think this is a good idea, sir," Phil said hastily.
Fury waved a hand dismissively. "You know, if I'm going to have to clean up another one of Peggy Carter's disasters, I might at least get some amusement out of seeing Barton up to his neck in dogshit. Send him in, Hill."
Too well trained to query a direct order, Hill tapped commands into her tablet at lightning speed. "Done, sir."
"Good. Now get out, the pair of you. And try to keep this from turning into another international incident, Coulson!"
"Yes, Director," Coulson murmured.
"Excuse me, sir, but what the hell?" Hill demanded once they were safely back in his office.
"Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Hill. All the stories you hear about Peggy Carter are absolutely true." Coulson dropped into his chair and started typing hastily at his computer.
"Surely not, sir!"
Coulson smiled grimly. "Well done, by the way. Fury liked you. If you're very, very lucky, you'll never get assigned to Operation Red Fedora."
Maria Hill blinked.
At lunch that day she found herself sitting at a table with Agent Bobbi Morse, who she'd qualified through SHIELD Academy with, and a pretty blonde she didn't know, who Morse introduced as Sharon Carter.
"Any relation…" she didn't even get to finish the question.
"She's my great-aunt," Sharon said.
"I've been hearing about Operation Red Fedora this morning," Hill said tentatively.
"What's she done now?" Sharon sighed. Bobbi leaned forward, grinning.
"Do tell. Sharon's been telling me some hilarious stories."
"She put two agents in the hospital and took off for Kiev. Barton's been sent in after her."
Sharon giggled at that. "That's good, actually. She'll probably like him. He's young and handsome enough to amuse her, for a little while anyway. And he tells good stories about his circus days."
"Why aren't you her minder, if she's a relative?" Maria asked curiously.
"Oh God no! She hates all of us. Tells us we're fussy brats for confiscating her guns. Last time I saw her, she knocked me out, left me tied up in a cupboard, stole my emergency outfit bag and crashed an Oscars afterparty in LA wearing my little black Chanel dress."
Maria and Bobbi were both leaning in, eyes wide. "Why?" Bobbi asked.
Sharon grinned. "She wanted to tear a strip off Tony Stark. She punched him in the balls, held his head in a fishtank for a while to sober him up, and when she let him up to breathe told him that she hadn't raised him to be a drunk and he needed to pull his head out of his ass."
All three women collapsed laughing on the table.
"Director," Clint said politely when he finally caught up with Peggy Carter. She'd stopped for a breather. Which was good, because he'd already had to send SHIELD's cleanup crew in to deal with four bodies in a mob den. And he had no idea where she'd been and what she'd been up to before that.
Peggy turned from her seat on the bar stool and surveyed the man before her. Not over tall, but solidly muscled. Pretty blue-green eyes, short blond hair, a rather handsome face. She gave him a flirtatious smile. "Going to buy me a drink, young man?"
Clint looked at the row of upturned shot glasses on the bar in front of her. "Another one, ma'am?"
"Don't mind if I do."
He studied her, shrugged and gestured to the bartender, tapped three fingers on the bar. Three filled glasses were put in front of them. He annexed two before Peggy could grab them, tossed one back fast.
"Drinking on duty, Agent?"
"I have the feeling I'm going to need it, ma'am."
She laughed. "I like you."
"Does that mean I get to go home without any broken bones, ma'am?"
"For today." She lifted her one filled glass, tapped it against his. They both drank and then she stood, still totally steady on her feet, and tucked her hand into his arm. "Let's go, then. What's your name, young man?"
"Barton, ma'am. Clint Barton." He breathed a sigh of relief when she let him lead her out to the car he had waiting outside. She dozed off on his shoulder on the way to the airport.
Fortunately he'd been assigned his own quinjet, was able to load Carter on it and strap her in back. Called Coulson and got orders to take Carter straight to the Triskelion for debrief.
"Barton's got her," Phil told Fury a couple of minutes later, popping his head around the door of the office again. "Loaded her on his quinjet and they're on the way back."
"Tell him to make sure she can't get to a parachute and he'd better put restraints on her," Fury said without even looking up.
"Already did, sir."
Coulson headed down to the hangar himself to meet Barton's incoming jet. STRIKE Team Alpha had just returned from a mission, and he nodded to the men disembarking.
"Successful mission, Jack?" he said cheerfully to Agent Rollins, who was laughing at something.
"Excellent, sir." Rollins suddenly jumped and spun around.
"Jack!" Peggy Carter said delightedly. "Haven't seen you in a while, Agent Thompson." She reached up a gnarled, frail-looking hand and squeezed Rollins' thick biceps muscle. "You're looking good. New exercise regime must really be working for you. Carry on."
"She thinks he's an old friend," Phil whispered to Clint, who was watching, eyes dancing with amusement. "Rollins has orders to play along with her."
"Oh, shit," a deep voice said suddenly from inside the STRIKE quinjet, and Peggy Carter's eyes lit up. She darted forward, hip-checking Rollins out of her way so hard he stumbled and almost fell off the metal ramp.
"Unfortunately, we really can't order Agent Rumlow to permit himself to be sexually assaulted by an octogenarian."
"How did she not break a hip doing that to Rollins?" Clint said in admiration, watching the big STRIKE agent recover his balance.
"They're both titanium. If we'd known back then what we know now, I daresay we wouldn't have let her get the replacements done. It might have slowed her down enough for us to keep up."
Clint couldn't quite resist moving forward to have a look into the STRIKE quinjet. Brock Rumlow was still strapped in the pilot's seat, obviously doing his post-flight checks – and former-Director Carter was seated astride his lap, stroking his face lovingly.
Clint totally failed to suppress his laughter. Rumlow glared at him, mouthing "Get me out of here!"
"Please tell me that happens every time she sees him," Clint said through his hysterical cackles.
"Yes, I'm afraid so. She thinks he's her husband. Who's been dead since 1981." Phil sighed. "Agent Rumlow, if you would please…"
"I am so fucking sick of this shit," Rumlow muttered under his breath, before unfastening his straps and getting up, easily carrying Peggy Carter's aged, withered body. She wrapped her legs around his waist and giggled.
"Fuck debrief, Danny, let's just go to bed."
Rumlow's STRIKE team were all too afraid of him to laugh, Clint noticed as Rumlow carried Peggy Carter out of the hangar, the tiny old woman placing kisses across his neck and jaw the whole time. At least, they were too afraid of him to laugh to Rumlow's face. A roar of laughter erupted the moment the door closed behind him, though.
"Come on," Phil said, and, still chuckling, Clint followed him. They caught up with Rumlow carrying Peggy into the elevators, and Clint stepped forward to join him.
Rumlow shot him a death stare over Peggy's white head, and Phil grabbed his arm. "No, we'll get the next one." The doors slid closed.
"Uh, why?"
"Rumlow has a special code that takes him express to Fury's office and turns off the surveillance cameras." Phil led Clint into the next elevator in the bank as it pinged open.
"I'm going to regret asking, but why do the surveillance cameras need to be turned off?"
"You will regret it very much if you ask Agent Rumlow that question, Barton," Phil said, looking straight ahead.
Rumlow was just escaping Fury's office , looking stressed and harried and – was he seriously just zipping his fly up? There were red lipstick marks all over his neck and jaw, too. The death stare he gave Clint was enough to make Clint hold his laughter in until the older agent was gone, though.
"I like your new boy, Nicky," Peggy was saying to Fury as Clint and Coulson entered the office. She was just opening a secret panel in the wall and helping herself to Fury's Scotch. Smiling at Clint as he came in, she waved her glass at him. "He's going to teach me archery! I never did learn that."
"If you teach her how to shoot your bow I will personally garrotte you with your own bowstring," Fury said flatly to Clint.
"Yes, Director."
Peggy tilted her head. "Hmm. He's good at saying what you want to hear and then taking off and doing exactly what he wants to, I suspect." Clint was struck, suddenly, by how sharp her voice suddenly sounded. Not quavery and old-ladyish at all.
Fury sighed. "As always, Peg, you have it right."
Peggy smiled and took another swig of Scotch. "Now. Let's talk about this fuck-up in Kiev. Your station chief over there has been taking bribes."
Clint's jaw dropped.
Two hours later, Clint was still staring incredulously at the little old lady, who was now fast asleep on Fury's black leather couch, a blanket over her.
"I thought you were kidding when you were telling me stories about her," he said finally to Phil.
"We couldn't make up better stories than the ones Peggy creates just by being Peggy," Fury shook his head. "You did well to get her back so quickly, Barton, but it seems she'd completed her mission."
"How the hell did she find out about the station chief?" Coulson asked. "Nobody had any idea."
"When and if you figure that out, I'd really like to know," Fury said dryly. "Now, Barton. She's taken to you. What did you do?"
"I bought her a drink, sir."
Coulson grinned. Fury rolled his eyes. "Of course you did. No wonder she likes you."
"She'd already had quite a few before I got there." Clint hesitated, then asked, "Does she really have dementia, or is she faking it to make people underestimate her?"
"She really does have it," Coulson's face was sad. "It started very slowly."
"It's why I eventually convinced her to retire," Fury said quietly. "It was Rumlow that made us realise, actually. She kept calling him Danny. One day I realised that she really did think he was her husband. He, and Rollins who reminds her of an old friend, always trigger her episodes. Tony Stark too, sometimes. Sometimes she knows him and sometimes she thinks he's his father. Phil and I have known her a long time. We got to be able to recognise what time her head was in. She's a brilliant woman, still, she switches so smoothly from the past to the present that most people just can't tell. Rumlow actually thought she was just fucking with his head for the longest time."
Clint was quiet for a moment, and then he said "Sir – there were four dead men in Kiev that I'm quite sure were her work. And at least two of them were killed without a weapon, though I'm thinking the other two were killed with a gun she'd taken off one of the others."
Neither Fury nor Coulson looked surprised. Clint plowed on. "And, sir, I'm just wondering – how the hell is she still capable of this? Physically?"
Fury sighed. "Peggy Carter was the Director of SHIELD until just ten years ago, Barton. And even when she retired and handed the reins over to me, she kept her hand in. She still does, as you can see, even though for the most part we'd really rather she didn't."
"Still doesn't explain how a little old lady in her eighties took down two big Bratva thugs without any kind of weapon, sir."
"As Director of SHIELD, she had access to any number of medical technologies so advanced that most of the world remains unaware of them."
Clint's eyes narrowed. "She hasn't just got titanium hips joints, has she?"
Coulson shook his head.
"Just how many joints has she had replaced?"
"Most of them," Fury confessed, "including, just last year when she hacked a medical centre to put herself on the list for the operation, three spinal vertebrae."
Clint stared incredulously. "Wait. You're telling me that you allowed this woman, this already lethal old lady, to turn herself into a bionic battle granny?"
Coulson had to bite down on the inside of his cheeks to stop his laughter.
Fury glared. "You are going to learn, Barton," he said menacingly, "that it is not a question of allowing Peggy Carter do anything." Heading over to his desk, he tapped on his computer keyboard for a few moments, before smiling, showing his teeth. "Have you ever heard the saying about the reward for a job well done?"
Clint was getting a terrible sinking feeling. "Yes, sir," he said in a small voice.
"Well, for your excellent work with Director Carter today – I am promoting you to Level Five and assigning you to Operation Red Fedora. Congratulations. Now get out of my office."
I just think that Peggy would have loved Clint and his unorthodox way of going about things. Next chapter, Natasha…