New York - 1945
She stood in the shadows unseen, watching. Across the street music filtered out of the building every time the front doors of the Stork Club opened. Young couples slipped out of cabs or came around the corners arm in arm, drawn in by the sound and bright lights. Many of the young men were finally home from the war and some of them were out with their sweethearts for the very first time since coming home. The euphoria over the end of the war still lingered and would for a bit longer, but it wasn't that sheer joy of life coming from the young couples heading in for a night of dancing and celebrating that held her attention. It was the deep sorrow that radiated off the young woman standing across the street watching all those happy couples going into the Stork Club that held her attention.
The tension in the younger woman's body told her that she was fighting against the sobs that the occasional hitch in her breathing said were just under the surface. Her face betrayed little, the prefect stiff upper lip mask, but her eyes told the real truth. She was too young for that much sadness, that much regret, and that much longing. But that's what war did, wasn't it? It haunted the young. Some would break under the weight of what they now carried along with them for the rest of their lives. Some would pick up that weight and use it to become stronger. Watching her now, in this very moment at least, she wondered which her young friend would be.
"I'm not some bloody fragile doll or broken bird." Peggy called out suddenly as if picking up the thoughts coming from the shadows. It made the woman watching her jump, and Peggy took a bit of satisfaction from that. "You can stop skulking in the shadows watching and actually say hello, Helen."
"Hello moppet." Helen said as she stepped out into the light coming from the street lamps.
Once Helen was close enough Peggy hugged her. "I heard what happened in France. I'm glad you're alright."
Helen returned the hug gladly. "And I you dear."
When they pulled apart Peggy turned to look at the club once more. His last few moments, their last few moments, replayed in her mind again. She couldn't seem to turn it off. Eight 'o'clock. The Stork Club. Don't you dare be late. Still can't dance. I'll teach you. Something slow. I don't want to step….
"Are you going inside?" Helen asked after watching Peggy's emotions play out in her eyes the way a newsreel played out on a cinema screen.
"No." Peggy said with a shake of her head and a force that made Helen take a step back just as she turned sharply to walk away. Peggy walked quickly, forcing Helen to keep up with her, and after a moment, once they were out of the glow of the Stork Club's lights she asked, "How did you know where to find me?"
"I may have strategically overheard your lads talking while refreshing their tankards and tumblers." Helen admitted. "Your Mister Dugan has horrid taste in liquor by the way. He kept passing up fifty year old scotch for cheap American bourbon. I still have heartburn."
It was just the briefest of flickers but the imagine of Helen and Dum Dum drinking together made Peggy smile. But it was just a flash of something other than sadness and grief, and it was quickly washed away. "They're no my lads. They were Steve's."
Helen reached out and took hold of Peggy's arm to make her stop walking and face her. She kept her hand around the younger woman's bicep while titling her head to make Peggy look her in the eyes. "I am so sorry about Captain Rodgers." Peggy tried to look away but Helen refused to allow her to do so. Peggy could hide behind her Englishness with everyone else in the world, but not with Helen, not with someone who knew all to well what she was doing because she did it herself. "He was a good man for a lot of good reasons, but none more important than the fact that he loved you, and I am so sorry you have to mourn him as well as what could have been."
Peggy didn't know what to say. She was struggling with the death grip she had on her emotions. Part of her wanted to break down and sob, give into the grief, and allow Helen to follow through on the support she was trying to offer. Part of her wanted to lash out at Helen, to get angry and yell, to tell the woman she didn't know a bloody thing about her, about Steve, about any of this. Peggy loved and lost a good man, a hero. Helen had loved a sick and twisted serial killer, who for all she knew, was still out there somewhere. Peggy pushed down both desires. "Thank you." She acknowledged Helen's feelings, her concern and caring, and then asked, "What do you want, Helen?"
"I know Colonel Phillips has, requested, you take some time off before he'll give you your new assignment." Helen replied.
Chocolate eyes rolled as Peggy replied, "Of course you do."
Perfectly painted lips smirked for moment before Helen said, "My work during the war has shown me that keeping the Sanctuary confined to London and a handful of out reach posts simply isn't going to due, so I've decided to expand. I'm opening a Sanctuary here in North America. I've bought a little place in the Pacific Northwest. We're just starting to get up and running but I have a lead on something important, and I thought perhaps you might like to join me, unless of course you would rather take that downtime the Colonel requested you take."
She knew what Helen was doing. She was giving Peggy a chance to step out of reality for a little while, a chance to go on one of her straight-out-of-a-penny-dreadful adventures, a chance to spend a few moments not thinking about or grieving what she'd lost. Would it be fair to do that? Would it be right just step away for a moment and catch her breath?
"You don't have to decide right this second." Helen said as she pressed a piece of paper into Peggy's hand. "I'm not leaving for three days. If you want to come along come here before then."
"Helen." Peggy said softly. With Helen looking at her with so much concern and compassion Peggy suddenly didn't know what to say, again, so she asked, "Who ended up under the table?"
Helen laughed. "Who do you think?"
Peggy chuckled and it hurt. "Poor Timothy."
Old Town
Stepping out of the cab after passing the driver his fair Peggy walked up to the old rusted gate and gapped at what awaited her with wide eyes. A little place in the Northwest her arse! This was a decrypted falling down ruin, a long forgotten gothic sodding cathedral! Shaking her head Peggy shouldered her bag and then pushed the gate open. The old iron creaked and moaned against use, making an eerie kind of screech that made Peggy flinch. The building was covered in scaffolding and in the worse places where the old stone was missing and crumbling the most there were men working, making repairs and rebuilding what they could. Oddly, Peggy found herself feeling a strange sense of relief because she knew the damage here had nothing to do with the war. Countless years of existence had left the old building in this state. Peggy smiled a soft smile and shook her head. Perhaps this place was more fitting for Helen than most would understand.
The door was slightly ajar when Peggy finally reached it. She knocked and then pushed it open. Stepping into the grand foyer she felt as if she were stepping into one of the distinguished manors that littered the English countryside. The space was cluttered with wooden crates, furniture hidden beneath linen tarps, and more scaffolding. Wood and stone dust danced in the rays of light coming through the windows and the air was saturated with the smell of paint, wood stain, and turpentine. From somewhere within a gruff voice with an American accent called out, "Be careful with that or her highness will have your head!" Peggy smiled because she'd worked with Helen so she knew how demanding she could be, but she also rolled her eyes because she herself had gotten the derogatory royal titles thrown at her more than a few times.
"So what do you think?" Helen's voice called out.
Peggy turned to see the older woman making her way down the staircase. She gestured at the space around them and said, "Seriously?"
"What?" Helen replied easily as she greeted her friend with a double cheek kiss and playful smile. "I think it's quaint."
"Quaint?" Peggy repeated in a way that said she didn't believe Helen had just said that. "You daft old cow. It's a bloody cathedral!"
"I know." Helen replied as she began leading Peggy out of the foyer. "You wouldn't believe the deal I got. It's surprising easily to buy old places like this."
Not for the first time since meeting Helen all those years ago Peggy found herself thinking that no matter what life held in store for her she would never meet anyone quite like Helen Magnus. Which was probably a good thing because she wasn't sure she could survive having more than one Helen Magnus in her life. After being shown where she would be staying the night Peggy followed Helen into a room that would eventually become the older woman's office. That's where Helen explained what was going on.
"War will always bring out those types looking to benefit from what's going on around them." Helen said as she poured tea. "That includes scavengers, poachers, vultures the lot of them." Her voice was laced with anger that she quickly swept away before continuing. "The war has made certain elements of my work a bit less secretive, you see. Having armies and navies barreling through what seemed to be uninhabited reigns, such as, lets say, the sea, has caused a bit of a ruckus in the world I work in."
Peggy might not know the finger details of how Helen's world worked but she was a clever girl and quickly caught on. "You have a sudden black market type issue?"
Helen nodded. "With living beings at the heart of it. As I said, I find myself faced with the task of expanding what my Father started. If I am to carry on his work I must think past the confines of the boundaries he set in place. I would ask you to join me darling but I have a feeling you've rather committed yourself to another crusade."
"I have." Peggy nodded her acknowledgement. She was going to continue with her work, with Steve's work. "But I'm more than happy to help when I can, Helen."
Reaching over Helen took Peggy's hand and squeezed it. "The same goes for me, Peggy. If you ever need me, for whatever reason, all you need to do is send word and I'll be there."
"I know." Peggy said gratefully. She gave Helen a smile and then got back down to business. "What do these poachers have that you want to get back?"
"According to my sources," Helen began and then waited for Peggy's reaction. "A mermaid."
Peggy choked on her tea for a moment and then stared at Helen with wide eyes. "A mermaid?"
"How are you on ships, darling?" Helen asked with a wicked grin.
Their investigation started in Central America and ended on a ship making it's way to a cluster of islands north of Russia. "Mark my words," Helen whispered as she and Peggy made their way aboard the ship. "They may have been our allies in the war but they're going to be trouble in the long run."
Peggy simply nodded because she'd had the same gut feeling Helen must have had. It was pitch black in the middle of the ocean. No one saw their small craft come along side the cargo ship, no one notice as the two darkly dressed figures boarded, and since it was the middle of the night and most of the crew was asleep no one saw the pair sneaking into the hold to search for Helen's poached Mermaid. Peggy was gobsmacked when they actually found a mermaid in a rudimentary tank. Helen was angry. The poor thing was barley alive. Helen had a ship waiting with a handful of people she'd recruited, but they would need to secure the cargo ship and radio them in. After confirming the mermaid was on board Helen and Peggy dawned gas masks and pulled out the canisters they'd brought with the sleeping gas. That took care of about ninety percent of the ship's crew.
Peggy found herself ducking led pipes, dodging the occasional bullet, and rolling out of reach of a boot angled toward her stomach and another which hovered over her head. She found herself breaking a mop handle over someone's back, whipping the end of a rope across a face, and angling a harpoon just so, so that it hooked into a boot, causing a very angry drunk Russian face first into a railing. Peggy didn't think past her next move, her next counter move. She didn't feel anything but the rush of adrenaline. For the first time since her world had filled with the sound of radio static, Peggy could breathe.
"Will she be alright?" Peggy asked when Helen came out of her medical lab in the lower levels of her gothic cathedral.
"I don't know." Helen said honestly. "I think we got to her in time but I won't know until she regains consciousness."
"You live in a strange and wonderful world, my friend." Peggy said as she took one last glance at the tank on the other side of the window.
"And you're off to make sure the rest of the world is safe and sound." Helen replied. "Will you be alright?"
"I don't know." Peggy echoed the honest answer.
"The grief, the anger and pain, it will fade." Helen told the younger woman. "But there will always be a scar. You're very young Margaret Carter. You have a whole remarkable and amazing life ahead of you. But oh darling moppet, there will be a lot of scars before it's all said and done, and I know you will be strong enough to bare them all with grace and strength."
"You have a lot of faith in me, Helen." Peggy said while they made their way back upstairs. Peggy would be leaving soon, back to New York and her new job at the SSR's New York office. "I wish I could tell you that faith was well placed."
"When you're young," Helen smiled as Peggy rolled her eyes. "It's the faith of others who keep you buoyed until you've figured it out for yourself."
"Figured what out?" Peggy asked.
"You're value." Helen answered. "And I don't mean the value others place on you but the value you place on yourself, because once you know that, once you know your own worth, no one else can force you to be more or less than that."
Peggy thought about what Helen said. What was her value? She started thinking about everything she had to offer, what she could do, the things she could get done. She bet it would be pretty high, now she just had to prove it. At least, she had to prove it to herself and that was easier said than done.
