00:00, May 23rd, 2014

"I'm just going to have a look around, okay?" Jessie said, getting up from her seat at the nurse's station and stretching. "Just to check up on everyone."

"You're too good, Jess," Cassidy sighed, glancing away from the TV screen that was set above the bank of personal alarms. "You don't really have to check on them every hour, y'know."

"I just like to know that everything's in order," Jessie said, stepping out of the nurse's office and walking down the hall. She checked in one room after another, looking in on one elderly patient after another. Her pulse was thrumming with anticipation, but she didn't allow it to show on her face.

Two years of the most boring covert op on the planet, she thought with a sigh. Two years having to feed pills to old ladies and clean up after old men who wet the bed. Two years of pretending to care about people who just aren't any use anymore. Two years of listening to bugged conversations after every shift… I know there are a few SHIELD higher-ups among her visitors, but they've never revealed any useful intel to her. Why would they? She's so demented that half the time she won't hear or understand what they're saying, and when she's lucid she's much too professional to let them…

She started breathing a little more deeply, her head buzzing as she approached the room of Margaret "Peggy" Carter. With one assassination, she could finally drop this cover and take on a better assignment. Assassination? She thought, opening the door. The woman's ninety-seven and so confused that most of the time she thinks she's in Nazi Austria. This isn't an assassination, it's euthanasia.

She closed the door behind her, reaching into the pocket of her scrubs and taking out the corked syringe. She removed the cork and approached the bed where the old woman lay sleeping peacefully. She probably wouldn't even feel it.

"Hail Hydra," Jessie whispered, taking the old lady's arm and injecting the fatal fluid. Peggy Carter would die of a heart attack, in her sleep, and none would be any the wiser.

Perhaps Captain America would suspect something was off. Perhaps not. Jessie didn't know why her superiors had chosen now to assassinate Carter, or indeed why she required assassination at all, but she didn't care. It meant she could have a more interesting assignment at last, and besides, an important part of being a Hydra agent was not to question orders, simply to follow them and trust that you were aiding a higher purpose.

Peggy moaned in pain, shifting in her sleep. Jessie took a deep breath, preparing to scream for help, to run to Cassidy in tears and tell her that Mrs Carter wasn't breathing.

Several minutes past and Peggy continued to writhe and gasp in pain, her groans growing steadily louder.

"Sssh!" Jessie hissed, grabbing one of the old woman's pillows. "Hurry up and—urk."

Jessie dropped to her knees after the punch collapsed her windpipe, choking and gasping for air. A foot was the last thing she saw before a sharp pain in her forehead turned everything black.

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00:15, May 23rd, 2014

Peggy Carter slowly opened her eyes as the pain subsided.

She took a deep breath. It felt easier than it had in years and made her head spin. It's like breathing for the first time, she thought dizzily. Is this how Steve felt, when his asthma was cured by the serum?

She looked around, discerning the room she was in clearly in the darkness. Her vision hadn't been this clear in decades. Am I dead? She wondered, looking around. All that pain… was that death? Am I a ghost, or does the afterlife seriously look like a bloody nursing home?

She looked down at the woman on the floor, the one she'd lashed out at. The girl looked vaguely familiar (she was clearly in her thirties, but at Peggy's age everybody who was premenopausal was a girl), but she couldn't place her face. Then again, most things since the early eighties were fuzzy.

Senile dementia, she thought, standing up and stretching. The feeling of her muscles moving without ache or stiffness was almost orgasmic. And arthritis, too. I remember getting diagnosed, back when my memory started to go… she looked at the photographs on the nightstand. They showed her husband, her children, her grandchildren.

And I remember Tommy's funeral, she thought, ghosting her fingers over the picture of her husband, one taken shortly after their wedding in the early fifties. She couldn't remember the last years of his life very well; she remembered him best young and glowing. After the war, he'd taken and endless joy in civilian life. It was one of the things that first attracted her to him. He enjoyed leaving the army so much that he'd never been anything less than completely happy with staying at home, with raising the children so Peggy could work at SHIELD. While he never wanted to fight again himself, he'd always respected her work, and had never had a problem with her keeping her surname for professional reasons so long as the kids used his surname. In her confusion, she'd so often forgotten that he was dead, and then when she'd remembered, it had been like losing him all over again. But if I'm dead too, now… "Tommy?" she said aloud, looking around. "Tommy, are you here? Is anyone here?"

"Agent Matheson," a faint, almost indiscernible voice said. "Report, Agent Matheson."

Peggy walked around the bed, staring down at the unconscious girl. Tentatively, she reached down, amazed at how easy it was to lift the woman up, to put her on the bed. Her hands were smooth and strong and unwrinkled, muscles filling out skin that was no longer white and saggy and fragile. The sound was coming from the woman's right ear. Peggy brushed her fingers over it and found a tiny, practically invisible earpiece. Peggy took it out and put it in her own ear.

"Agent Matheson, report," a voice repeated. Peggy searched the woman for a microphone, and found it hidden in her necklace. She put it on and, pressing the switch she found concealed on the back, clicked her tongue. Back in the day, it had been an almost universal signal for "listening, can't talk" on radio communication, and it had still been commonly used as a signal when she'd retired from SHIELD. Whoever was transmitting evidently took it as such.

"Agent Matheson, abort the mission. Dr Luskin gave you the wrong syringe. It is vital that you return the syringe that you have intact, do you understand?"

Peggy clicked her tongue again, frowning. She could see an empty syringe lying on the sheets.

"Finish your shift, arouse no suspicion, report to base by 0700 with the syringe. Those are your orders. Hail Hydra."

Peggy froze. There was a click as the person speaking to her ended the transmission. It was several moments before she remembered to breathe.

Hail Hydra.

That was it. That phrase had woken her, dragged her into semiconsciousness with fear and horror, in time to feel the sting of a needle, and then…

There was an open door across from her bed, leading into her bathroom. Peggy hurried in, flicking on the light and staring at herself in the bathroom mirror.

For a moment, she thought she was looking at her daughter Susan, but no, it was her, a her from sixty, seventy years ago. She hesitantly touched her face, half-expecting to feel the rubber of a mask, but it was real, flesh and blood and young. She combed her fingers through her hair. It was still snow-white, but it felt smooth, not dry and brittle.

"Dr Luskin gave you the wrong syringe."

"What the bloody hell was in that syringe?" she whispered. There was a groan from inside the bedroom.

Peggy walked back through to see the nurse beginning to come around, hunched over and coughing. Peggy patted her down and found a tiny handgun concealed under her shirt and loose scrubs. Peggy withdrew the gun and pressed the barrel between the woman's eyes.

"I won't kill you if you scream," she said softly, "but you don't need both of your elbows to talk to me. "What was supposed to be in that syringe?"

The nurse set her jaw, shaking her head, even though she trembled as Peggy pressed the gun down harder.

"You're Hydra," Peggy hissed. "I heard you. Were you sent here to kill me?"

The woman continued to keep mum.

"I see," Peggy said, regarding the woman thoughtfully. "So that's how it is, is it?" She pressed the woman back, grabbing her mouth and feeling her teeth. She located the cyanide capsule and pulled it out. "Some things never change," she muttered, dropping it on the floor and grinding it under her heel. "And yet, you haven't used it. Do you think you can still escape, or do you just not want to die?"

The woman continued to remain silent. If I'm going to interrogate her, I'll have to take her somewhere more private, Peggy thought, looking around. Somewhere that we won't be interrupted.

Keeping the gun between the nurse's eyes, Peggy reached over and snatcher her chart off of the end of the bed. The letterhead at the top of the front page told her that she was in a nursing home in DC. She skimmed past her medical history and list of medications until she found what she was looking for: emergency contacts. Her son's details and address in London were there, and her daughter's in Australia, but the primary contact, and the only person with a DC address, was her niece Sharon. It took a moment of focus on recollection to bring her up; a sweet girl, blonde and pretty, but oh so clever and with a proud gleam in her eye as she said, "Director Fury himself commended me, Auntie. I'm considering putting in for more solo assignments, now that I feel more confident about it…"

Sharon had joined SHIELD. She could get Peggy in touch with whoever was running SHIELD now, tell her where to take a captured Hydra agent for a proper interrogation.

"Agent Matheson," she said, taking the contacts sheet and folding it up, "do you have a car?" Matheson continued to not answer, but her eyes flickered. "Then we're going for a drive."

{}

01:04, May 23rd, 2014

While the buildings themselves were unfamiliar, the street layout of DC was similar enough for Peggy to direct Matheson towards Sharon's address. The car had a computer screen in the dashboard, telling her that it was just past 1am on the 23rd of May, that the year was 2014. The streets were mostly empty, and the car was too dark inside to see into. Nobody spotted the white-haired young woman in a baggy nightdress holding her driver at gunpoint.

Sharon lived on the third floor of an apartment block. Peggy almost wished it was higher. It had been so long since she'd been able to climb stairs at all, and so, so long since she'd felt anything but aches and pains when she moved. She made a mental note to go running as soon as she could, to run until her lungs burned.

They reached the third floor and approached the first flat. "Knock on the door," she ordered, pressing the gun to the back of Matheson's skull. Matheson knocked tentatively.

The response came in less than a minute. Sharon was a field agent, Peggy was sure, so she was probably a light sleeper. Peggy could hear her niece walk up to the door and pause, likely peering through the fish-eye in the door.

"Who is it?" she called, not recognizing Matheson.

"Sharon, it's your aunt Peggy," Peggy called. "Please let my new friend and I in."

The locks clicked rapidly and Sharon opened the door, staring in shock as Peggy pressed Matheson past her and into the flat.

"A-Auntie?" she said in confusion. "What are you—oh my god, you look—who are you?""

"Close the door, Sharon," Peggy said levelly. "This young lady is a Hydra agent. I believe that she came to kill me, not that I'm complaining with how it didn't work out. I needed a secure location to bring her for holding until I can get in touch with SHIELD."

Sharon hurried past her and pulled out a chair from her dining table, reaching into the coat draped over the back of her couch and producing three sets of handcuffs. She cuffed Agent Matheson to the chair and her ankles together. Then she drew a gun from her coat and pointed it at Peggy.

"Now, who are you?" she demanded. "My great-aunt Peggy is ninety-seven years old. You've done a good job of looking like she did in the forties, nice touch with the white hair and nightdress, but do you honestly expect me to believe that she dropped seventy years just like that?"

"Frankly, Sharon, I'd be very disappointed in you if believed me," Peggy said with a smile, holding up her hands and showing that she didn't have her fingers on the trigger of the little gun. "Alright, how to do this… my name is Margaret Carter. I was born on the 23rd of April, 1917. I created SHIELD with Howard Stark and Colonel Chester Philips in 1946. I married Thomas Johnson in 1953. I gave birth to my son Edward in 1957 and my daughter Susan in 1960. You are Sharon Carter, the granddaughter of my younger brother Richard. You were born in 1984 to my nephew Harrison and his wife Amanda. You joined SHIELD as a field agent. You received a commendation from Nick Fury himself in…. in 2009…" she wavered uncertainly about the date, but from the look on Sharon's face, remembering the commendation at all meant something. "You were very proud, and said that it gave you the confidence to take up solo missions. When you were little, you loved to ask me stories about the war, about the operations that I was in… you first told me that you wanted to be in SHIELD when you were five years old after I told you about the first time I helped Captain America get behind enemy lines…"

Sharon nodded, her eyes wide. "Okay," she said. "Okay. So… you are great-aunt Peggy, and… how?"

"This woman stuck me with something," Peggy said, handing over the folded paper that she'd brought from the nursing home. Sharon unfolded and set aside the contact sheet, exposing the empty syringe. "I don't think there's anything left in it, but possibly SHIELD technicians can—"

"Auntie, SHIELD's gone," Sharon said softly. "Did anyone tell you? Do you remember anyone telling you?"

"I'm sorry, Peggy. Hydra's corruption was everywhere. We had to take it all down."

"Yes, I… I remember Steve telling me that," she said distantly. "I'm sorry, my memories of the last twenty years or so are very hazy… I didn't think it was real. Captain Rogers… he's gone, isn't he…?"

"SHIELD found him three years ago," Sharon said sympathetically. "Frozen under the arctic circle. The serum kept him alive while he was under the ice. He's been working for SHIELD for the past few years, but when he found out about Hydra…"

"He took it down," Peggy said with a smile. "I'm sorry, Sharon, do be patient with me. I'm afraid I'm rather confused about the past few years, and I shall have to catch up at some point…" she rubbed her forehead. "Although, truth be told, I'm frightened that even though my arthritis is gone and my eyesight and hearing are back, my dementia hasn't changed and I'm just in a lucid period…"

"How did this happen, Auntie?" Sharon said, pulling a second handgun out of a drawer and handing it to her aunt, who set the tiny handgun far out of Matheson's reach before taking the better gun. "You said she was sent to kill you?"

"I believe so," Peggy said. "She injected me with something that she wasn't supposed to." She tapped her ear. "I have her comm. She was ordered to bring the syringe back. She has refused to say anything to me so far, but I really haven't questioned her properly."

Sharon nodded, turning her gun on Matheson. "So," she said, "easy questions first. Were you sent to kill my aunt?"

"I was assigned for her protection two years ago," Matheson said calmly. "By SHIELD. Check their records. When SHIELD went down, I stuck with the nursing home job for lack of any better options. I don't know what happened to your aunt, but—"

"Oh, stop it," Sharon snapped. "Just because you were assigned by SHIELD doesn't mean a damn thing, honey. I had to shoot a lot of coworkers that I thought I could trust recently. I don't like working for the CIA as much as I liked working for SHIELD, because they keep watching me in case I turn out to be Hydra after all and the assignments I get aren't as interesting." Matheson's gaze flickered. "Oh, were you looking forward to getting something more interesting after killing my aunt?"

"It doesn't matter what you do to me," she spat. "I won't tell you anything. I can't tell you anything. I don't question my orders. I follow them."

"I stormed an awful lot of concentration camps in late 1945," Peggy said coldly. "There were a lot of people saying that they were just following orders then, too. You were meant to have a syringe full of something that would kill me. What did you give me instead?"

"I don't know," Matheson muttered. Sharon pressed the barrel of her gun to her knee. "I really don't! My operation concerned you and you alone. When I was put on your case, I was ordered to bug and guard you by SHIELD. It was my Hydra handler who told me what kind of information to sift for for Hydra, and that at some point I might be ordered to kill you for the greater good. My handler is gone, but another Hydra agent got in touch with me two weeks ago. I don't know what else he's running. I don't care. I have orders. I believe in Hydra's purpose. A world of order. A world of safety."

"All it would take is the death of twenty million people, hmm?" Sharon said. Peggy was at a loss for what it meant, but kept up a united front against Matheson.

"You really think that the world is safe with people like Tony Stark and Bruce Banner around?" Matheson spat. "You know how dangerous they are. They are not controlled. They have no superior officers to report to, no handlers that can keep them on a leash."

"While I don't know the gentlemen personally, I do understand that Captain Rogers trusts them greatly," Sharon said coolly.

Matheson sneered. "The man who destroyed SHIELD," she said. "Yes, you must feel so much safer with him running around, dismantling the organizations set in place to protect this world!"

"The thing about Captain Rogers," Peggy interjected, "is that he doesn't need superior officers and handlers. He has these things called 'morals'. Now, you may not know what else your superior officer is running, but you received this syringe from somebody called Doctor Luskin, yes? You are supposed to report in, in person, to return the syringe at 0700. Where are you supposed to go?"

Matheson immediately clammed up. "What? You were so chatty a minute ago," Sharon exclaimed. "So you do know something after all."

"What are you going to do? Torture me?" Matheson said acidly. "Is that part of your 'morals'?"

"My morals dictate protecting innocent people," Peggy said firmly. "And my life experience dictates that taking out Nazis, one way or another, is a good way to do that. But I don't have to torture you—although, trust me, those concentration camps? We learned a lot about what the human body can take, looking at the states of some of those prisoners."

"You think you can scare me?" Matheson challenged.

"I don't need to scare you, sweetie," Peggy said with a smile. "Because you're not as dedicated to Hydra as you say you are. You let me take your cyanide capsule. You're not willing to die for them. And frankly, if your only job on their behalf has been monitoring me, then you're not important to them and don't know enough about them to matter. What matters to them is whatever was in that syringe, that vital syringe…" Matheson paled. "They gave you cyanide. They expected you to die rather than fail. They do have a track record for punishing failure with death. But Sharon and I won't kill you. In fact, if we're busy gutting a much bigger catch… the only fish who knows that you're involved with Hydra, that you failed Hydra… well, we might just forget about you altogether." She smiled wider, baring her teeth. "I am, after all, only a senile old lady…"

Matheson swallowed, then nodded. "There's a… a gym," she said. "Muscle Burn. Officially, it's mainly classrooms and members-only workout rooms with better equipment, so nobody thinks much of the fact that the majority of the building isn't accessible. The codeword at the desk is to ask for the red workout room. I don't know what they do down there. I was only ever let into the… the anteroom, I guess you could call it. I didn't even know the name of the guy who gave me the earpiece, capsule and syringe. I don't know if the person on the front desk is Hydra or not. I don't know anything, I only—"

"Only follow orders," Peggy said coolly.

Sharon stood up and walked away, vanishing into her room. She returned with some kind of miniature needle gun, which she stabbed into the yelping Matheson's hand.

"That's a short-term tracker," she said. "It deactivates after three days. They're actually designed to be swallowed, but I worry about you suddenly developing bulimia after what I'm about to tell you, which is this: If we go to this gym at 0700 and find nothing, I am texting my friend Natasha—well, after the tribunal, she's pretty well known as Natalia Romanova now, I guess—and giving her the tracking signal. She's a great workmate, and it's not that she doesn't have morals, it's just that they don't come naturally to her, and they're very easy for her to set aside when she feels the need…"

"It is Muscle Burn!" Matheson said desperately, rattling off an address. "I swear it is!"

"I believe you," Sharon said with a smile, whacking Matheson in the forehead with the butt of her gun, knocking her out. She turned to her aunt. "That was a work of art," she informed her, grinning. "I think I've been sent on a few too many ops where I'm facing fanatics who mean it when they say they'll die for their cause."

"You just don't send a top-level operative to assassinate a senile old lady," Peggy said with a sigh. "The Nazi party in general have never been above using fear to coerce people into working for them, or taking advantage of people's pragmatism." She set her gun down on the table. "What was that about killing twenty million people?"

"That was Hydra's plan," Sharon explained. "Project Insight was a trio of helicarriers that were intended to be put in place to locate and eliminate terrorist threats from the air. Hydra was going to use it to eliminate anyone that they considered a present or potential threat…"

"I see," Peggy said. "Tony Stark… Howard's little boy?"

"He's forty-two, Auntie," Sharon said with a smile. "And, for that matter… Doctor Banner's staying under his protection right now. If there's anything left in that syringe to find or analyse, they'll find it."

"Well, first things first, let's have a look at Muscle Burn, shall we? Then we may have a little more than an empty syringe to pith up with," Peggy suggested, looking around for a clock. "Matheson's rendezvous is five hours away and I don't have a thing to wear."

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I started posting ficlets on Tumblr a while back but this storyline will not leave my skull so I'm cleaning it up and posting it properly. Ignore my dumb premise and enjoy Peggy Carter kicking ass with me.