Chapter 2: I can tell you about
Peggy Carter had been sleeping – let's be honest: Peggy Carter had been trying to sleep for three hours when her phone – and wasn't that weird how those small little things were actually portable phones? – rang.
She eyed the name on the screen – Director Fury – remembering quite well the man's words from a few days before. That basically, there wasn't one person who had his phone number registered under his actual name, he made sure of that, but he was willing to make an exception for her considering her... peculiar circumstances. AKA, you're probably weirded out by everything, Agent Carter, and maybe it would be for the best not to confuse you more than necessary.
It took her a few seconds to remember how to answer the call, though.
Before she could even utter a word, Fury's voice sounded from the device.
"You are called back on duty, Miss Victory. Loki has the Tesseract, Erik Selvig, Bruce Banner and Maria Hill changed sides, and yes all their files are in your nightstand, as well as your potential teammates'. I'll contact you again."
And he hung up.
Which Peggy wouldn't exactly call a problem, considering how she had been in the spying business before the serum and the seventy years in the ice, and people were just rude – and efficient – like that in that world. Except it had been only two weeks and a half since she had been retrieved from the ice, she had no idea who Loki was, she had barely gathered that the Tesseract apparently was the cube that had atomized the Red Skull from Fury's second debrief, and she wasn't totally sure if the two doctors mentioned were the older man and the shy man whom she had met last week while walking out of her third debrief.
So she might have stared helplessly at the phone for about thirty seconds after the call ended, just because she had no idea what else to do about it.
Soon enough she got herself back together, and decided that perhaps it didn't really matter whether or not all of this made sense, and what actually mattered was for her to take a look at those files SHIELD had apparently left in her nightstand – when, how, and why, by the way?
Peggy rose from her bed with too much energy for someone who had been supposed to be asleep – cold, cold, and the sound of melted ice dripping slowly along the frozen casket resounded in her ears, and she tried not to think about the first hours of waking up, when she hadn't been entirely unfrozen yet. At first she hadn't remembered the long, agonizing process of coming back to consciousness, only thinking she had fallen asleep and was now waking up as usual, but after the first week... Peggy wasn't even sure if it was her memories or her imagination at this point.
She barely registered the sound of her room's door opening up, too busy eyeing distrustfully the drawer where Fury had said she'd find the files.
The nightstand, of course, was empty.
Howard cleared his throat – and god, how old he sounded, when only three weeks ago he was barely past twenty, and Peggy couldn't ignore how time had left her behind, but not the people she used to know. Dugan, Dernier, Barnes, Morita, Falsworth, Jones, Steve – no, not Steve – they were all dead, had been for a few years, if not a few decades when she had been taken out of the ice.
"Fury had me put a fake bottom in the drawer the moment I offered to take you in, if you're interested."
How could she have not thought of that?
A few knocks on the wood and she heard it. There, now if she could just...
The false bottom suddenly went up, and Peggy was grateful she hadn't put anything inside the drawer, or she'd have probably gotten it in the face. She immediately recognized SHIELD's emblem on the folder that fit perfectly inside the drawer.
She looked at Howard, and barely repressed a wince as her eyes took in his old, tired face. Ninety-five years old. She could barely believe it.
Of course, she was happy that Howard had lived that long – considering how he had played with his life during the war, it hadn't been a granted outcome – and it was a good thing that he could still walk alone, that he didn't have dementia, and that he was overall healthy, but still... Peggy could never not notice how quiet his voice sounded, how white his hair had become, and the fact that he sometimes had trouble doing what he used to do easily in his lab – try keeping a Stark away from their labs, and they just annoyed you so much you eventually gave up.
"Thanks, Howard, but shouldn't you be sleeping?"
The – old – man gave her a look, and just went to sit on the bed next to her – a safe distance away, as they used to back when they were both young and Peggy had made it clear Howard wasn't her kind of guy, a statement to which Howard had simply laughed and asked if she'd rather be friends with him instead.
"I can tell you about the Tesseract, and I know a bit about these teammates of yours."
Peggy considered telling him to go to bed, because he was old and frail and he needed the rest, and she was more than capable to comb though these files alone, thank you very much – but she knew how stubborn he could be, and it was true that while she could read the files alone, it'd probably be more interesting to do so with Howard's input.
So she just tried one last approach, more out of duty than true conviction.
"Your wife will try to kill me if you pull another all-nighter at your age."
Howard snorted.
"Maria will kill me, not you, except I'll probably be asleep by the time she wakes up. I'm not exactly able to pull an all-nighter anymore, unlike someone else I know..."
He barely mumbled the last part under his breath, and Peggy had a feeling he wasn't talking about her this time. If Tony Stark was anything like his father, he was probably the subject of Howard's discontent – hypocrite, but then again, weren't all parents that way? She wouldn't know, though, because she had yet to meet the kid – who was, she belatedly realized, physically older than her, if not chronologically so.
"Alright then, oh founding member of SHIELD. Tell me what you know."
Howard gave her a crooked smile – they had been speaking about starting an international secret agency back during the war, when neither of them could sleep and they wondered about the problems of the world, that they were more than aware wouldn't just all disappear with Hitler. They had been pondering the possibility, back then... And Howard had done it. Without her, but he had done it.
He explained to her what they had found out about the Tesseract – how he had found it searching for her, and his hope as it had been found, and his despair when he had realized the Valkyrie wasn't there with the Tesseract. He told her that SHIELD had been trying to harness its power for decades, and that the arc reactor he had come up with was based off it – Tony had perfectioned it only two years ago, and Howard was terribly proud of that too – that he had been the main scientist on the job until he had retired twenty years ago. That Tony had taken the lead after he had come back – Peggy wasn't sure what Howard meant by that, and from the look in her friend's eyes she knew not to ask for now – and had been working on it with SHIELD's n°1 scientist, Bruce Banner, and an astrophysicist named Erik Selvig. How Howard suspected that Fury had started working on using it for military purposes – something he could understand – but couldn't tell for sure because Tony had backed out of the main research after Afghanistan – another thing Peggy would have to ask about, but didn't think it was the right moment to.
Peggy Carter was a realistic woman, even if she occasionally tended to the idealistic side of things. She understood why SHIELD would want weapons powerful enough to take on anything, and she couldn't fault the logic behind doing it secretly. She only hoped it wouldn't go to hell, if only because she was also aware that problems existed on either sides of a solution.
"What about that team Fury wants me to be on?"
A smirk grew on Howard's lips, as if he had been waiting for that question all along. He had that look Peggy was used to see just before he showed someone his latest insane creation.
She wasn't sure whether or not that was a good omen.
Her hands went for the second part of the folder, and six – seven with her own – files fell on the bed. Two women and four men, with what looked like a futuristic robot on one of the women's file, and one of the men looking very much like Howard used to.
"Let me tell you about my greatest creation first, Peggy."
So yeah, Peggy Carter is "Captain America", except she's British and 40's, so not a captain. Meaning she's Miss Victory, because she was a symbol of hope ( and efficiency ) for the troops of the Allied forces. Might call her Captain or Agent Victory later on.
What happened is that the HYDRA agent who killed Erskine arrived a bit sooner, when Peggy was alone in the room with the serum and the pod, there was a bit of a struggle and he thought he had killed her, except she dragged herself to the pod and survived, becoming the first supersoldier ( Red Skull ignored ).
What that means for Steve, well...
Also, Howard and Maria are alive, and closer ( or not ) to Tony, because he was a bit busy with something else instead of making the serum again in 1991.