August 1950
They know from the beginning it's going to be a challenging mission. A reliable source has located Dottie Underwood in Bolivia, and of course Peggy must go. Maria is not quite a year old now, but she's fully weaned, there are plenty of babysitters at hand to help Daniel out, and besides, the mission should only take a few weeks at most. Peggy is hesitant to leave, but she's clearly the most qualified to lead and they both know it. ("I'll try to not lose the baby while you're gone, Peg," he teases her. "Now go catch Underwood.")
The night before she flies out, she crawls into bed next to him and throws her arms around his neck while he strokes her hair and breathes in her scent. They don't say much. Later, Daniel thinks about this moment over and over again during those terrible months of not knowing, recycling in his mind all the things he ought to have said. Except he doesn't even know what he would have done if he had known. Begged her to stay? Insisted on going in her place instead?
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, she slips out of bed to shower and get dressed. Daniel blearily grabs his crutches and follows to find her bending over the crib, tracing the baby's cheek with her finger. He puts a hand on Peggy's elbow, studying her profile in the dim light. "Be careful out there," he says softly. They're not the type of people who do drawn-out, tearful farewells. Even the words I love you don't always come easily to them.
But love is there, without a doubt. Peggy looks at him and smiles, and he's struck again by his good fortune—that, born on different continents, they somehow survived a war and all that came after, and they found each other, and they chose each other.
Peggy takes his hand, draws him in for a kiss. "I won't be away for long."
And then, like that, she's gone.
Agent Ochoa dozes restlessly in the seat next to Peggy as their plane begins its descent. She looks out the window and thinks of Daniel and Maria, over three thousand miles away, the distance stretching out between them with every passing moment.
La Paz is covered completely in clouds. She cannot see what is lurking below.
September
Daniel worries as he always does, of course; he knows Peggy is perfectly capable and has plenty of backup and yet he can never help himself. He takes care of all the housekeeping chores, drops Maria off with the Jarvises while he goes into the office, and waits anxiously for updates. They come irregularly—a telegraph saying she and Agent Ochoa arrived in Bolivia safely; a brief call from the hotel. He could hardly even hear her speaking on the other end.
Rose senses his nervousness. "Daniel, she's fine," she tells him one afternoon as she bounces Maria on her lap. "You worry too much."
Maria starts to fuss and Rose hands her back over. Everyone says the baby takes after him, but when he looks at those bright brown eyes all he sees is Peggy. "Yeah, well, if you were married to Peggy Carter you'd have plenty to worry about too."
"Touché," she concedes. "We'll celebrate when she's back, all right? Take her out dancing, or surfing, or wherever she wants to go. She'll be here before you know it."
Dancing would be nice—between work and the baby, he and Peggy haven't gone out much in the past year. The pregnancy had not been easy, and she'd had a rough time after Maria was born too. Despite his concerns, Peggy getting back to the field was really a good thing, both for the agency and for herself. He knows how much she missed it.
But he misses her too, and throughout the day he keeps thinking back to the last time they went dancing. They hadn't gone anywhere special, just a modest club in Pasadena. She was already a few months pregnant and he'd been adjusting to a new prosthetic, so they'd been even more constrained than normal. They swayed together on the edge of the dance floor while the other couples whirled past, and the only thing Daniel saw was her, glowing under the soft lights.
The last message from Peggy arrives two days later. They will make contact with the informant in the morning.
After that, silence.
"Something is wrong," Peggy says just seconds before Ochoa is felled by a bullet. A sharp pain slices through Peggy's left thigh as she dives for the ground. Her instincts had been telling her all along it was a trap; she knew the directions from the informant were suspicious and yet they had gone ahead anyway. And now she lies on the concrete watching Eugenia Ochoa bleed out next to her.
Everyone around you dies!
The hail of bullets ends suddenly. Dottie Underwood's voice drifts loud and clear down the street. "Ah, Peggy. I knew you couldn't stay away for long."
"It's been too long," Daniel snaps as he paces around the office. "We should have had some sort of communication days ago. Something happened to them. Do we even know if they met the informant in the first place?"
Rose shakes her head. She looks a bit uneasy as she glances over at Thompson. "We've attempted to contact him multiple times, unsuccessfully."
"I want to pull everything we have on this informant," Daniel continues. "I want to know every organization and individual he's associated with, the places he's been to, everything. I want to know what this guy has for breakfast, lunch, dinner. Let's get a task force assembled and turn this city inside out."
"You think we haven't done that already?" Thompson interrupts sourly. "Jesus, I knew you'd react like this. We've got the best agents on it and we're shipping out there as soon as we have a better picture of what's going on. I'll be going with them."
Daniel stops in his tracks. "I'm going too."
Rose frowns. "Daniel, I know you're worried about Peg, but I don't think that's a good idea."
"This is my wife we're talking about," Daniel says shortly. "I'm going."
"What is wrong with you; why are you so goddamn eager to make your kid an orphan?" Thompson snaps, his mask slipping for a moment.
Oh. His stomach does a somersault as he thinks about his daughter, who he left with Ana Jarvis that morning, as usual. He gave Maria a kiss and said goodbye, see you around dinnertime. Before she was born, he wouldn't have given it a second thought—he'd already be on the first plane to Bolivia to find Peggy. But now, he pictures Ana holding his daughter and looking out the window as the sun goes down, waiting and waiting for him to return…
This is exactly the reason why they made the decision after Peggy became pregnant that one of them needed to pull back from field work. It wasn't a difficult choice—though Daniel does miss the thrill of the field on occasion, his schedule at SHIELD is always full, between training new operatives and running analysis. Besides, the prospect of Peggy being stuck behind a desk full time was, in her words, not bloody likely.
And it had seemed reasonable at the time—in fact, Daniel had been the one who had pushed for it—but being confronted by the reality of it is something else. He sets aside his crutch and takes a seat behind his desk. "Fine," he says abruptly.
"What, still don't trust me to take care of things, after all this time?" Jack asks. "I'm hurt."
Daniel looks up at Jack. Peggy trusts him, and despite their many differences, took him on as a senior agent at SHIELD after the dissolution of the SSR. She's always had more faith in people. Privately, Daniel had his misgivings, though he'd never doubted Jack's abilities as an agent. He still hasn't forgotten the Jack Thompson he had met long ago in New York, eagerly ingratiating himself with Chief Dooley and picking on those he perceived as beneath him, just because he could. Or the Jack Thompson who shook the senator's hand and said I just did what needed to be done as he took credit for other people's work.
But with Peggy's life in the balance, Daniel will take all the help he can get. "Just bring her home."
"Yeah, I know, Sousa. I'll be dead meat if I come back without her. I'll probably be dead meat anyway when I come back with her. We'll have plenty of time to kill each other on the flight back from Bolivia."
Daniel rolls his eyes, but he can't help but smile a little bit at that.
"It's been ages, Peg," Dottie says as she tucks a stray hair behind Peggy's ear. It takes a considerable amount of willpower not to flinch. "How's motherhood suiting you?"
Don't you dare talk about my child. "What have you done with Agent Ochoa?"
"I'll be the one asking questions here." Dottie says with a shrug as she lifts the blanket covering Peggy's lower half. Her thigh is heavily bandaged. "Fortunately, the bullet just grazed you and the doctor expects you'll make a full recovery. No need to amputate," she says, and laughs at Peggy's reaction. "I suggest you make yourself comfortable, my dear. You're going to be here for a while."
Ana Jarvis immediately knows something is wrong when Daniel comes by later that day to pick up Maria. "Is it Director Carter?" she asks quietly as she smooths down Maria's curly hair.
He can't lie to her. "We haven't heard anything yet."
Her eyes widen. "Please, let us know what we can do to help."
"Of course." Daniel manages a small smile. The Jarvises are too kind, and they help out enough as is. He can hardly ask more from them. "How did Maria do today?" he asks as Ana gives him the baby.
"Oh, wonderfully," she says. "Very active in the morning, and then we had a nap after lunch. We read some books together and took a little walk to see the menagerie."
"That's great." His daughter smiles and gurgles something in baby-talk, unaware that anything is wrong, and suddenly his heart sinks. Christ, what were they thinking, bringing a child into the world? How reckless of them; how irresponsible, how selfish! And he and Peggy had discussed this all, too, knowing that they weren't normal people leading normal, safe lives. Knowing full well that one day, one of them might not come home.
But he still remembers how ecstatic he was when Peggy told him she was pregnant; wishing for all the world he could lift her off her feet and spin her around, because they were going to be parents and he was going to be a father. These were dreams he hadn't wanted to overindulge in back when he had been recovering from his injury, or later on, when he had fallen hard for Peggy Carter. And yet it had all happened: they had chosen each other, and married, and had a child.
And now Peggy is missing. Tonight, he will bring their baby back to an empty house. Again. He wonders how long it will take to get used to that; how many more nights it will be until he stops expecting to see her curled up on the couch with a file in her hand, or burning breakfast in the kitchen, or using up all the hot water in the shower.
He can hardly say any of this to Ana. "It's gonna be okay," he says, though he's not sure if he's saying this to her, or to his daughter, or to himself.
October
For her first escape attempt, Peggy stabs the guard who brings her meals with a piece of the spring from her mattress. She gets about twenty feet down the hallway before they take her down. They replace the mattress with a new one without springs.
On her second attempt, she clobbers the guard with the wooden desk chair. This time, she runs the other way and almost reaches the staircase. They bolt the chair to the ground.
On her third attempt, she uses the twisted bedsheet to choke the same unfortunate guard, and she actually makes it down to the next floor. They take away both the sheets and the pillows, and she sleeps on a bare mattress after that.
A lesson that Peggy learned early on in her SOE career is that nearly anything can be a weapon. Trouble is, Dottie knows it too. And she's all too happy to play along.
Daniel can hardly complain about the solid team that Jack has assembled. He would have chosen the exact same people—all of them experienced, trustworthy, and skilled. Jack shakes his hand before boarding the plane—"Take care, Sousa."
"You too." As the plane takes off, he remembers what he had told Peggy, once: sometimes you have to put your faith in others to get the job done. That didn't mean it was easy.
The news they get back is discouraging. The most promising leads peter out into nothing, and the frustration in Jack's voice is evident when he calls to check in. The trail gets colder with every passing day and they both know it. Daniel's own work gets buried under layers of city street maps of La Paz and every file with even the slightest relevance to Dottie Underwood. He irritates Rose with his constant pacing back and forth.
"You realize you're going to wear out the floor at this rate," she tells him, too tactful to complain. "Or yourself."
"Sorry," he mutters. "I just…I need to do something, you know." He pauses once more to examine the map, retracing Peggy's last known movements between the hotel and the informant's address. Having her take only Ochoa as her main backup had been a mistake—as useful as she was as a native Bolivian with all her local contacts and knowledge of the area, she didn't have the right level of field experience—but Peggy had scoffed at the suggestion she take more agents with her. ("What better way to alert Dottie than to have six gorillas in suits bumbling along after me?" "Highly trained gorillas, Peg.")
Rose comes over to look at the map with him. "We'll find her, Daniel," she says, a hint of steel in her voice.
"Yeah." He forces a smile. Looks down at all the papers spread out in front of him. He's gone through the entire stack multiple times already, hoping that somewhere, somehow, the dots will connect. It hasn't happened yet.
There's something he's missing. But what?
They transfer her to a new cell. This one is bare and empty, with hardly enough space to lie down on the floor. The temperature alternates between freezing and stiflingly hot, and the lights stay on constantly. There's always a radio playing somewhere in the background, the sound pitched too low to pick up the words. They're trying to deprive her of sleep, she understands; make her irritable and more likely to slip up. And it's working.
Occasionally, Dottie comes by for a chat. She's changed her hair color to a light brown this time, cut fashionably short. She spends most of these conversations reminiscing about the Griffith and digging for personal details about Peggy's life, and finally, Peggy reaches her snapping point. "What do you want?" she demands, interrupting Dottie mid-sentence. "You haven't asked for a ransom or tried to get information out of me. Why are you keeping me here?"
Dottie pauses. "So impatient," she clucks. "Did you want me to torture you, like your friend Vernon? Should I pull out your teeth and break your fingers? How dull. I'm hurt that you think I'm some sort of amateur, Peggy. And a ransom! What on earth would I need your money for? No, I'll release you when I'm ready." Her smile widens. "But by then, you'll be begging me to stay."
"Huh," Howard says, half to himself and half to Daniel, as he ducks down under the table in the lab to search for a tiny spring that popped out from somewhere in the vicinity of Daniel's prosthetic knee. "Well, maybe it'll still work without that part."
"Maybe?" Daniel repeats. He shifts his weight on the stool and eyes his leg, currently lying on the table in about a dozen pieces—a rather more involved process than the "routine maintenance" that he had initially been promised—and wonders if he should have brought a spare along with him.
"Uh, probably…oh, there it is!" Howard dives down and triumphantly retrieves the missing piece. He glances over at Daniel as he replaces the spring. "No news yet?" he asks quietly.
Daniel shakes his head and looks down, focusing on a spot on the floor.
Howard's screwdriver slips. "Damn," he mutters. Without looking up, he continues, "I've got a connection of my own in Bolivia. Heard back from him recently. Lots of talk about revolution down there—you remember the attempted coup last year? And those kidnapped diplomats, snatched right from their beds?"
"The whole damn continent is talking about revolution," Daniel says tiredly. Back when he was in the army, he'd had this notion that once the war was over, life could return to normal. Now he understood there was no peaceful world to go back to. You could only keep walking forward into an uncertain future, and hopefully leave things a little better than how you found them.
"Yeah, or they're in the process of actually having a revolution," Howard snorts. "But if you ask me, this smells like Hydra all over."
Privately, Daniel has similar suspicions, but right now there are still too many questions and not enough evidence. "We don't want to leap to conclusions," he says cautiously.
"'Course. Anyway, my connection is keeping an eye out. And there you go," Howard says, handing over the fully reassembled prosthetic with a flourish.
Daniel blinks. He'd been so preoccupied he hadn't even been paying attention to what Howard was doing with his leg. "Thanks." He grabs his crutch and starts to get up from the stool.
Howard is watching him with an odd expression on his face. They're too different to ever be close friends, but they've developed a certain level of respect for each other over the years. And Peggy, of course, has been the glue. "Just…trust her, Chief." Even though he's no longer Chief Sousa and hasn't been for a couple years now, Howard still calls him that. "Believe me, Peggy will find her way back."
True to her word, Dottie doesn't pull out her teeth or break her fingers. But she does inject Peggy with various substances; things that make her horribly nauseous, or loopy, or panicked. Her questions become more pointed too, probing for information about SHIELD's resources and organizational structure.
When she resists, Dottie pulls out a photograph. Peggy keeps it in her desk at work. It was taken at Howard's Christmas party last year, not long after Maria was born—Peggy holding the baby, Daniel half-leaning on her with a hand around her waist, the tinsel-covered tree in the background. She has no idea how Dottie got the picture, and she struggles to not let the alarm show in her expression.
"This is all very fun, Peggy, and if it were up to me we could do this indefinitely. I so enjoy our time together. Unfortunately, my employer has a schedule to keep, and you have a choice to make. Nobody can have everything they want, my dear. Sometimes we must sacrifice things that are important to us. So tell me, what do you love best? Who do you hold dearest?" She hands Peggy the picture. "I'll let you think about it."
Once she's gone, Peggy buries her face in her hands and cries.
November
Maria's first birthday party is largely the product of Rose and Ana putting their heads together, down to the silly hats they all have to wear. The subject of all the attention, of course, shoves her face in the cake at the first possible opportunity. (One of many things Daniel hadn't realized about children until he had one: they're sticky.) She then throws a fit when she gets passed around to Howard, who hastily hands her back to Jason Wilkes to deal with. He takes it in stride when she shoves a finger up his nose. Daniel laughs, snaps some pictures, and then stops. Peggy shouldn't be missing this, he thinks.
Ana brings him a slice of cake and takes a seat beside him. "Edwin made a second cake," she explains. "This one is vanilla with whipped cream and strawberries."
"Thanks," he says. The cake is good, but he doesn't have much of an appetite.
Ana places a hand on his arm. "You're thinking of Mrs. Sousa."
He looks down. "We haven't heard anything since September. It's been months and I've just been sitting here on my ass. I should be down there in South America, looking for her."
"If you were there, you'd also be missing Maria's first birthday."
"I know," he sighs. "But Peggy should be here."
Ana nods. "Yes, of course she should be. But since she's not, you'll have to make memories for both of you, so you can tell her about it when she returns." Last year, the Jarvises had gone back to her hometown in Hungary to try to find her family. To see what was left. She hadn't spoken of the experience to Daniel, and when he asked Peggy, she just shook her head.
All of them had needed to find ways to rebuild their lives after the war, but at least Daniel still had a place to come home to. Ana had no choice but leave it all behind, taking only the memories with her. "You've done so much for us. I don't know how we'll ever repay you."
Ana looks away. He follows her gaze across the room and watches Jarvis bouncing Maria up and down in his lap and making funny faces. The baby can't stop giggling.
"Daniel," she says, "I don't think you realize how much you've done for us, too."
There is no promise that Dottie Underwood can make that Peggy believes she will keep, and even as she looks at the picture she understands she is being asked to make a false choice anyway. Endangering SHIELD will endanger her family regardless. So when Dottie comes again, she lies, feeding her a mix of misinformation with some harmless truths thrown in for extra authenticity. And Dottie sits there and listens attentively, hands folded in front of her. She doesn't take notes and she rarely interrupts, apart from the occasional follow-up question.
After three days of this, Dottie suddenly stands up and yanks Peggy backward by her hair, pinning her up against the wall. "You must take me for a fool," she hisses, shoving her elbow into Peggy's throat until she gasps for breath. "You really believe your lies will protect them?"
Peggy stares back, unable to speak. Dottie relaxes her hold slightly and smiles. "My dear, I think you fail to understand the true nature of your situation. Perhaps it's time for a new lesson."
After that, the torture begins in earnest.
Thompson's been calling in at least a couple times per week with updates, but it's mostly been the same story—this or that lead didn't pan out but they're following up on another angle, followed by a litany of complaints about the food, the climate, the nightlife, whatever. But not this time. When he answers, he can immediately sense Thompson's hesitation over the phone. "Spit it out, Jack."
There's a long pause on the other end. "La Paz police recovered two bodies," he says abruptly. "Both female; very badly decomposed. They were dumped off a bridge six blocks away from the hotel."
Daniel sits frozen in place. Oh god. Peggy.
"Sousa? You still there? Daniel?"
"Yeah," he says finally, but his brain is a million miles away.
"Hey, I know what you're thinking, okay? But there's no direct evidence to…to tie the bodies to Peggy and Ochoa. We don't have a positive identification yet. They could be trying to throw us off the trail."
"Her right scapula," Daniel recalls. "Peggy has two old gunshot wounds there."
"Yeah, I remember," Thompson says. "It was one of the first things we looked for. One didn't have the scars, and we couldn't find the bone from the other body. Might've gotten washed downstream. We're still looking. Listen," he hesitates again, "I hate to ask this, but does she have any other distinguishing marks?"
Suddenly, Daniel is grateful that this is Thompson's task, not his. "Teeth," he says. "She's missing a couple of molars on the upper left side."
"Bar fight?"
"Something like that." It had actually been a taco stand brawl.
"All right. Two molars, upper left side. I'll check it right now and call you back as soon as we have something."
Daniel exhales. "Okay."
He spends the next hour pacing back and forth again, trying not to let his mind jump to the worst possible conclusion. They haven't identified the bodies; it could be completely unrelated; it could be some sort of trick. She can't be dead. She just can't.
Daniel stumbles and almost loses his balance when the phone rings again. He snatches the receiver. "Sousa."
"No missing molars," Thompson says. "We'll keep trying to get a positive ID, but I think we can at least rule out that possibility."
Daniel collapses into his chair, shaking with relief.
"Sousa, did you hear me? I said—"
"Yeah, I heard you," he says hoarsely. "Thanks, Jack. I mean it."
For once, Thompson has nothing snide to say. "Carter didn't give up on me, you know, even when she had every right to. We won't stop looking." There's another long pause on his end. "I…shit, Sousa. I know this ain't been easy for you."
Sympathy from Jack Thompson, of all things. Christ. "You hit your head again or what?"
Thompson laughs. "Asshole."
"Takes one to know one, don't it?"
"What has Hydra offered you?" Peggy asks. It's unsubtle and Dottie's too experienced to catch off guard, but Peggy understands her well enough to know she'll play along.
Dottie gives her a coy smile and leans forward. "Very good, Peggy," she says. "If I tell you, will SHIELD make me a counteroffer?"
"SHIELD will give you back your old cell."
"I see you still haven't learned how to negotiate," she says, shaking her head. "Not that it matters much; you wouldn't be able to match their price anyway."
"You're not doing this for money," Peggy notes. "Is it ideological?"
Dottie shrugs. "Oh, you mean 'Hail Hydra,' all of that?" She raises her hand in a mocking salute and rolls her eyes. "Hardly. These days, I do as I please. And your company pleases me, as it always has, and it's an intriguing experiment. So I'll work with them as long as my interests align with theirs."
"Or until you get bored? It's all a game for you." Peggy can't quite mask the anger in her voice.
"It's the only game that matters." Dottie reaches out and runs her finger along Peggy's jaw. "You would understand if you'd had my education."
Peggy knows about Dottie's education: children handcuffed to beds; subliminal messages hidden in cartoons. Little girls molded into soldiers. She thinks of her own daughter and it makes her sick. "Your new friends will turn on you in the end."
Dottie raises her eyebrows. "Is this the part where you say that SHIELD can offer me protection? Of course they'll turn on me. I'm prepared. Do you know how I survived, all these years? I had to remake myself, over and over again. I suggest you do the same, Peggy." Her eyes narrow. "Or they'll remake you in their image. And you aren't going to have a choice about that, but in the end, you won't even know the difference."
"What is the experiment?" Peggy asks. Dottie just smiles.
December
Daniel's lying on the floor with Maria, just after bathing and shortly before her bedtime, and that's when it happens. She's flopping over from side to side, pushing herself up with her hands, falling back down, testing it out. She crawls over next to Daniel and uses his knee for support as she wobbles to her feet for the first time.
"Oh?" he murmurs. "Going somewhere, missy?"
Maria takes a few halting steps away from him before plopping down hard on her bottom. She turns and looks at him with wide eyes and he thinks she's about to cry, but then she laughs instead. Daniel's heart swells with pride as she gets up again and toddles back towards him. He nearly calls for Peggy to come see before he remembers.
"Good job," he tells Maria instead. He sits up with a grimace at the twinge in his lower back. Getting old, Sousa. He's turning thirty-three this year. If Peggy were here, she would firmly "suggest" he should make another physical therapy appointment; she's forever on his case about his health—this, of course, from the woman who was ready to tackle Whitney Frost and Dottie Underwood two days after being impaled. If Peggy were here.
Maria's starting to crawl away from him. Daniel catches her before she gets too far and he scoops her up into his arms for a kiss. She giggles, a bit of drool sliding down her chin and onto his shirt. How funny, this tiny person he and Peggy created together, he thinks as he looks into her big brown eyes. How wondrous.
Then she reaches up and gives his hair a very firm yank, and he winces. She's a Carter, for sure.
In between her sessions with Dottie, Peggy spends a lot of the time reviewing what went wrong with this mission and wondering what she should have done differently. She had been so eager to chase down Dottie that she had walked right into a trap. Worse, she had brought another agent down with her.
Peggy had known Eugenia Ochoa from her early days at the SSR New York office, a petite woman with dark curly hair, a welcoming smile, and a powerful uppercut. She had worked the switchboard and had once tackled a particularly squirrelly suspect who had somehow escaped his handcuffs while awaiting interrogation and almost made it out the front door. Like a lot of the other female agents on the switchboard, she had far more talent than she had ever gotten credit for, and when Peggy founded SHIELD, Ochoa was one of the first agents she had brought on.
…and gotten killed, probably, just as she had gotten other people killed. Of course she didn't mean for any of them to die, but that didn't change the truth of it. Good intentions never brought anybody back.
But, she thinks, reaching back through her memory—Dottie had never confirmed that Eugenia was dead. There was no reason to keep it from her, if it was true. Then again, if she was still alive, why hadn't Dottie used her as leverage yet? Like the photograph, it troubles her; a puzzle piece that doesn't fit.
She knows one thing for sure, though: if Eugenia is alive, Peggy isn't leaving without her.
His father looks very pale and very queasy as he staggers off the plane, but he smiles when he sees Daniel balancing a squirmy Maria with one hand. The old man hates to fly, hates to drive, hates to venture outside his own Manhattan neighborhood. Yet during their last telephone call, he had abruptly announced he was flying into Los Angeles for Christmas and the time Daniel needed to pick him up from the airport. He could hardly say no.
Daniel has been thinking about his father often, lately. This is the man who raised him on his own, after his mother had died. His mother's extended family lived nearby and they did what they could to help, but for the most part it had just been the two of them. His father had crossed the ocean by himself as a teenager; he knew something about starting over.
"How did you do it, Pop?" Daniel asks him that night, after putting Maria to bed. He doesn't have much of an appetite, but he forces down a few more mouthfuls of room temperature chow mein. "Without Mom, I mean."
His father stabs at a piece of shrimp and frowns. "What do you mean, how did I do it? I don't know, Daniel. I just did the best I could. You turned out okay, I guess." Then he grins.
Daniel rolls his eyes. "Pop."
"It was hard, you know?" his father says. He stares down at his plate. "It was real hard sometimes."
Daniel waits for him to continue, but he doesn't. The words hang silently in the space between them. And then you left too. It isn't an accusation; there's no hidden resentment, but there is loneliness. Coffee brewed for one; the radio the only voice in the apartment. The worn wooden floor, creaking and sighing under one set of footsteps.
Daniel had thought he understood loneliness when he moved to California, living by himself for the first time in his life, but he hadn't truly—not until these past few months without Peggy. He feels her absence in everything, from the half-empty bottle of lavender-scented shampoo, to the pile of shoes in the closet, to the empty space beside him when he wakes up in the morning. God, how he misses her.
"Hey," his father says, putting a hand on Daniel's arm. "I got you, remember?"
"Yeah," Daniel swallows. "I know."
Towards the end of another interrogation session, Dottie, in a somewhat peculiar mood, takes sudden interest in the photograph again. She frowns as she traces her finger around the outline of the Christmas tree and abruptly shifts her line of questioning. "Why are you here?"
It throws Peggy off, but Dottie continues before she can reply. "No, I know, this is what you've been asking me this entire time—why am I here, what does your employer want with me, and so on. But remember, you came here to look for me, not the other way around, even though you had dozens of other agents that could have taken the assignment.
"Didn't you have everything you wanted back home? A handsome husband and a baby? Every girl's dream, isn't it? Or did you grow tired of it—always fetching his crutches; calming down your screaming brat at three in the morning? Did you never yearn for your freedom?"
"Did you?"
Dottie draws back and laughs. "Ah, Peggy! Isn't this fun? You cannot convince me you don't miss the life you had before. You love the thrill of the chase, just as I do. So tell me again: why are you here?"
"Because you're my responsibility." It had seemed like the best option at the time, but releasing Dottie all those years ago had been a serious error in judgment. This is something she needs to fix.
Dottie twists her mouth into a smile as she stands up. "Doesn't all this responsibility get old, after a while?" She hands the picture back to Peggy before leaving.
Despite being on opposite sides, they have always understood each other well. Dottie doesn't need to know the details to grasp a small part of the truth. As a girl, Peggy was made to understand that a wife and a mother were the only things she was ever supposed to be. It meant shrinking herself into the mold that was expected of her; to compromise and let go of little pieces of dreams, one by one.
At some point along the line, she realized that the world was much bigger than Hampstead, and it needed her. She learned she would have to find her own way, even though it was often a difficult and uncertain path. Her mistake was believing that she had to do it alone. Because without even meaning to, she found friends to walk the path with her: the Jarvises, Howard, Rose, Angie, Jason, even Jack. And Daniel, always Daniel, for whom she knew she would never have to shrink herself for.
Peggy looks at the photograph again. Allowing her to keep it is meant to be a deliberate reminder—this is yours to lose.
But there's another way to think about it: this is yours to fight for.
With his father still in town to take care of the baby, it frees up Daniel to put in some late nights at the office. Except for a handful of sleepy agents on the night shift, he has almost the entire place to himself, and he takes advantage of the quiet to go back through the files yet again. Something is still nagging at him. Eyes closed, he tries to put himself in Peggy's place back in September. A quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, perhaps stale toast with jam and a cup of tea. Review the plans with Ochoa. Out the door.
A phone starts ringing shrilly in the next room over. He jumps and accidentally knocks the entire stack of files to the floor, sending papers flying everywhere. Daniel curses, grabs his crutch, and storms down the hall to the locker room. He slams the door behind him and spends the next thirty seconds taking his fury out on the lockers. It feels good, and then he feels stupid for throwing a tantrum. He takes a moment to breathe before heading back to his desk.
The papers are still all over the floor, and he grumbles a bit as he carefully drops down on one knee to start gathering them up. It's going to take forever to reorganize it all. Not just the files on Peggy's case, but the past year. Anything he could find related to Bolivia—a failed coup, the economy in decline, labor riots. A group of kidnapped diplomats and their assistants, still missing almost a year later.
He pauses, his hand hovering over the pictures of the missing diplomats. One younger man looks familiar, somehow, though he knows he's never met any of them.
That's when it hits him. He dives for the phone and frantically starts dialing.
New Year's Day, 1951
Peggy develops a hacking cough and a fever. During one of her visits, Dottie presses her hand against Peggy's forehead. "Oh Peg, you don't look so good," she says. "Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of."
The doctor comes the next day. She sits and quietly lets the doctor take her temperature and check her heartbeat. As he presses the stethoscope against her chest, she slams her head into his as hard as she can. He staggers back against the wall of the cell and she's on him already, wrapping the cord of the stethoscope around his neck. She hastily retrieves a scalpel from his bag and presses the point up against the middle of his back. "Where is Agent Ochoa?" she demands.
"Don't know, don't know," the doctor stammers as she shoves him into the hall, startling the guard. The guard is different than the usual one, Peggy registers briefly—this one is younger, barely old enough to have a beard.
"Drop the gun," she orders, and he does, after a moment of hesitation. "You will take me to Agent Ochoa's cell."
The guard leads them to the end of the hall past a long line of doors, and, with shaking hands, unlocks one. Agent Ochoa is sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, her face thin and haggard. But alive.
Peggy pushes the doctor and the guard into the cell and pulls the other agent out of there, locking the two men inside. Ochoa stumbles after her with a bewildered expression on her face. "You should go without me," she mumbles.
"Don't be absurd. We're getting out of here together," Peggy snaps, scanning the hallway for more guards. None appear. In the end, they find their way out by squeezing through the window of a communal bathroom, and for the first time in months, Peggy takes a gulp of fresh air. The fog is so thick she can hardly see more than ten meters in front of her. But if their visibility is low, that means their captors will also have a hard time finding them.
Too easy, she thinks to herself as they pick a direction and start running, ignoring the sharp pain in her lungs—after all that time, all she had to do was take a hostage? But she's not about to turn back now.
"We need to get word back to SHIELD as soon as possible. I think the most reasonable option is to follow the river north until we reach the nearest village," Peggy says, choking down a cough as they huddle under a wooden bridge. They are hardly equipped for a trek through a tropical forest, but the vegetation will at least provide some good cover.
No response. Peggy turns to look at the other agent. "Eugenia?"
The only warning she has is the flicker in Agent Ochoa's eyes. The flash of the knife hidden up her sleeve.
The call comes just after midnight. Daniel has been awake for over twenty four hours. We found her. You have to come now.
Peggy opens her eyes. Blinks. Daniel is slumped over in the chair next to her bed, asleep.
She smiles and closes her eyes again.
When she opens her eyes the next time, he's awake too. "Peggy," he croaks.
Everything hurts. Her voice is barely more than a whisper. "Daniel."
"God, Peg. You really scared me."
She looks away. "Sorry."
"No, no," he says, stroking her hair. "It's okay; everything's gonna be okay."
"Maria?"
"Good. With my dad, and the Jarvises. She's walking now, Peg," he says with pride. "I wish you could've been there to see it. I don't think I'll be able to keep up with her for much longer."
"And you?"
The question catches him off guard. "I'm—" his voice cracks. "I love you."
Now her eyes are welling up. "Oh, Daniel. I love you too."
She drifts in and out of consciousness over the next day or so, and Daniel stays by her side the entire time. Thompson drops by to visit a few times and fill him in on the details. Peggy had been brought in by a pair of local villagers, who had found her lying under a bridge some ten miles outside La Paz. A strange woman wearing a thin gray dress splattered in blood had flagged them down on the road and told them where to find her before vanishing into the fog without a trace.
He's rereading Ochoa's file again when he looks up and sees Peggy watching him, eyes clear. "Hey," he says, setting the file down.
"What happened?" She coughs and then gasps from the pain.
"Easy, now." He squeezes her shoulder gently. "You were stabbed three times. Nothing vital, though she just barely missed puncturing your left lung. The doctors expect you'll make a full recovery. Oh, and you've got a nasty case of bronchitis too, by the way. You'll need to take it easy for a while," he says, and when he sees her impatient nod, he adds, "This means you don't get to decide you're fine after three days so you can go hunting for Dottie Underwood again. I'll tie you down to the bed myself if I have to."
She gives him a sly smile. "Mm. Well, that would be a change from the usual, wouldn't it?"
Daniel reddens. "And none of that until you're recovered, Mrs. Sousa."
She laughs at him and then stops, wincing. "What about Dottie? You found the compound?"
He shakes his head. "Underwood gave us the slip, again. The building was mostly cleared out by the time we got there, though we recovered a few interesting things. Somebody must've tipped them off; I'm sure they've got contacts within the police department."
Daniel notices her moment of hesitation before she speaks next, and he wonders what exactly was done to her. She doesn't seem ready to talk about it yet, but he does know that Dottie Underwood has much to answer for. "She's with Hydra, Daniel," Peggy says. "She spoke of an experiment." She begins to cough again.
"Shhh," he murmurs, rubbing her palm with his thumb until the coughing subsides. "What experiment?"
"I don't…some sort of brainwashing program, I think." She falters again. "Where is Eugenia?"
"We haven't found Ochoa yet, but we don't think she could've made it far. I've got some questions when we do find her," he says, a slight edge to his voice.
"You knew she was a mole."
"We didn't realize it soon enough. Her brother was one of the diplomats that got kidnapped last year; they must have been using him as leverage." He shakes his head. "Ochoa compromised SHIELD, Peggy. Even if she was coerced, the damage is already done. Not to mention, she tried to kill you."
"If she truly meant to kill me, she had multiple opportunities. There was no reason for her to wait as long as she did."
Daniel stares at her. "Next you're gonna tell me she didn't really mean it because she only stabbed you three times and not ten."
"Why not finish the job? She certainly could have. Or take me back to the compound. But I don't believe she wanted to," Peggy concludes. "She was manipulated, just as they tried to do to me. They were keeping her as a prisoner too. Daniel, we must help her."
Part of him wants to say something sarcastic, but the stubborn, determined look on her face stops him. Peggy Carter doesn't leave anybody behind. It's one of the things he loves about her. "We'll keep looking," he says instead.
"Good." She closes her eyes and frowns.
"More morphine?" he asks. He hasn't forgotten what that's like. "I'll call the nurse."
Peggy shakes her head. Holds out her hand. He takes it and it reminds him suddenly of that terrible night at Roxxon; how she had fallen and he had been unable to stop it. He wonders if she remembers the ride back to Violet's place; Jarvis driving like a madman while Daniel in the back seat had pressed down on her wound to stop the bleeding. She had reached out and grabbed his hand; clung to him like a lifeline.
"Just stay with me," she says now.
He's not going anywhere. She's his lifeline too.
Peggy dreams. In her dream, she finds herself sitting in an empty car on the New York City subway, passing by every platform without stopping, hurling faster and faster through the tunnels. She draws her coat around her closer, shivering, and suddenly she feels horribly claustrophobic. She walks unsteadily to the door and peers outside into the darkness.
But when she turns around, she sees she isn't alone. All her friends are on the subway too, happily chattering away: the Jarvises whispering to each other fondly, Jason and Howard arguing over some obscure scientific theorem, Rose and Angie teaming up to tease Jack. And Daniel is there, holding Maria on his lap and beaming as the train slows to a stop.
Daniel hands Maria to her and stands up. She follows him out the door and onto the platform, the rest of the group trailing after them. Her spirits lift as she takes Daniel's hand and they walk up the stairs and step into the light together, no words necessary to convey what is in the heart. We all need each other.
She doesn't remember the dream when she wakes. But dreams that are forgotten are never truly lost: they are always there, hovering at the edge of memory, waiting to be called home.