She cracks her gum.
In the car.
In the plane.
In the hotel.
In the boat.
Between punches.
The bloody girl cracks her gum.
It's an irritating constant Peggy's manages to suffer through only because it irritates Yelena even more, and someone has to make sure she doesn't throttle a gum cracking child.
"This would not stand in the Red Room," Yelena growls one morning as all three stalk out of a, currently in flames, HYDRA safe house.
Natalie cracks the gum, strawberry from the smell, obnoxiously loud, "Good thing we're not in Mother Russia."
"For a variety of reasons," Peggy mutters.
Yelena starts towards Natalie, slowly putting the chain whip she's been cracking HYDRA heads with into a spin. Peggy has to step between them to avoid another fight.
While HYDRA hasn't even scratched Yelena and Natalie they've broken each other's noses, cracked one of Natalie's ribs and given Yelena a gash at the hairline that Natalie keeps calling her aborted face lift.
What should have been a rampage across Eastern Europe to save the woman Peggy loves has devolved into Peggy Carter: Assassin Cat Herder.
The only saving grace of the team up is the genuine contempt Yelena and Natalie have for one another. It's not bickering to hide affection. They really would murder each other if it weren't for their desire to help their respective friends.
Peggy limps to the truck. Her leg's still bothering her, but plenty of painkillers and keeping it taped has helped. Her neck, meanwhile, is healing faster than it should. While the assassins bicker Peggy examines the healing wound in the rearview mirror. She pokes and prods the healing flesh.
Then she snips off the knot Yelena carefully made and begins plucking the stitches from her skin.
That's how Natalie finds her, and she doesn't bother to hide her mixture of disgust and awe. "You could have asked for help," she says.
Peggy grunts and pulls the last bit of thread out. "Didn't think you two would hear me over the bickering."
Natalie shrugs. Leans forward to hug the empty seat in front of her, "You know she probably gave Angie up right? She's in love with you and thought it'd be easy to clear the way."
At night, sleeping under the stars or wrapped up in a scratchy blanket in a derelict old home still gutted by the war, she thinks about that.
How she pulled Angie into her world. Set her up like a bleeding rube. How Yelena bristled in her presence like a cat when another's invaded it's territory.
How it's all her fault.
Natalie cracks her gum. "It's your fault," she says. "Angie's too nice for the company you keep."
Peggy grimaces. "I'm well aware."
Outside Yelena has produced a Springfield from the back of the truck and is taking aiming down the sights, focusing on a single HYDRA soldier running for the woods.
The gun goes off with a crack.
"You get the feeling she likes it," Natalie observes.
She's trying to set her apart from Yelena, but Peggy's seen the grim satisfaction on the girl's face as she suffocates a man with her legs or brings him down with a swift jab to the jugular.
It's the same feeling she gets when bones splinter against her knee or knuckles.
"We all do."
"Angie doesn't."
Peggy sighs.
Natalie's second favorite hobby, after sending Yelena into flights of rage over gum, is needling Peggy about her guilt. The girl is as accomplished at playing people as she is at playing the piano. It's probably why she was sent out all alone so young.
"What do you plan to do when we get her back?"
Peggy raises an eyebrow, "You're optimistic."
Natalie shrugs and tries to act like none of it matters, "I like her."
Yelena is coming back towards them through the field, dragging the body behind her by its foot.
Peggy skewers Natalie with a glare via the rearview mirror. "Some advice from an old spy to a young one."
Natalie lazily blows a bubble. It pops and she catches all the gum back in her mouth.
"Plan for the present, and never dare hope for the future. It's safer that way."
Natalie looks straight ahead.
And crack goes her gum.
####
They're in a beachside bar just outside of Tarifa. It's not a popular resort location. The winds are too strong for water sports and the beaches are nothing extraordinary.
The draw is the easy ferry ride to Morocco.
They were there for three days before returning to Europe.
It's been five weeks since Angie was taken. Peggy's all healed and Natalie and Yelena have forged some kind of peace and it's been five. Bloody. Weeks.
She leaves them at the bar to use the payphone.
The connection back to DC is wretched and not for the first time Peggy wishes she'd thought to bring more SHIELD equipment on their "tour."
She didn't. Assaulting the Italian office and slaughtering HYDRA across six nations and two continents is not appropriate behavior for the Director of SHIELD.
Technically she's on vacation.
She's sure Phillips is less that pleased.
But Howard, when he answers the phone, is relieved. "Thank Christ," he sighs, "Where the hell have you been?"
She clears her throat. "Waylaid."
"Peggy things are going nuts and you're not answering. You have any idea how crazy that makes me? We got trouble in Italy and someone's spent the last month and change going after the other guy with a sledgehammer made out of Ruski dames."
"This may be the time to tell you this line is, uh, not secure."
Static drones in Peggy's ear.
Enough to make her think she's been disconnected.
Until, "What did you do?"
She breathes low and slow and her head thumps against the phone. "They took her."
More silence.
"Is she-"
"No. No, at least I don't think so."
She hears something that sounds like leather creaking. Howard must be sitting down. Which means he's focused. Which means he's concerned.
Which is never a good thing.
"Why didn't you-with everything we got why'd you disappear?"
She's been accused, by more than one person, of taking on burdens out of a sense of guilt and loyalty. It's a habit she's never bothered to break.
Instead of saying that-instead of being honest-Peggy does something cowardly instead. "You're one to talk."
"That was different."
She sighs. "I know." She glances back into the bar. The assassins are getting restless and they'll need to leave soon. "Look I was just calling to let you know I'm alive and I'm, relatively, safe."
"Not to ask for help?"
"You know you can't give it. She's…" Peggy has to be careful with what she says. While it's likely no one is listening it's still an unsecured line. She may have gone rogue but she's not going to go and commit treason too. "This is on me Howard. I have to be the one to sort it."
"If you need anything-"
"I know," she says softly.
"A plane."
She laughs at the suggestion. Only it comes out as warily as a sigh. "Howard…"
"Look, you're gonna get the girl okay? And then what? Fly commercial? No sir. You two are gonna fly back here first class."
She laughs again and this time she wants to cringe because she sounds hopeful.
"And then I'm going to let you take us all out for steak and whiskey."
"Oh how magnanimous," she says, and she's grateful when Howard doesn't mention the emotion coloring her voice.
"Bring her home," Howard says softly instead.
This time.
This time Peggy's gonna bring them home.
####
They're in southeast Yugoslavia again and they've just spoken with a very reliable old man who insists—insists—that HYDRA still exists and they're not the series of splinter cells every other outpost has claimed thus far.
He's unshaven and a little mad and Peggy thinks that maybe he's been sampling his own wares when he's not using them on the Slovenes they've found half dead in his facility.
Natalie is ushering those same people out and actually patting some of them on the back.
Whatever Mother Russia has done to the girl it hasn't bred all the empathy out of her.
Yelena, on the other hand, is a cold statue lurking over the man. Her German is harsher than Peggy's. More guttural. She demands to know where other facilities are. Slaps him. Not enough to bleed or even hurt.
More to shock.
So Peggy doesn't move. Just stares cooly.
That's when he tells them of a ship. A place where their most precious work is carried out. Far from prying eyes. Hidden. Remote. In the Baltic Sea.
Peggy hisses and Yelena's eyes widen.
The Baltic Sea is not an easy place to get to currently, let alone recon for an assault. It's a major battleground in the ideological war waged by the benefactors of both SHIELD and Leviathan. They can't just secure a boat and set sail. Every port is watched. Every beach monitored. Every—
Before Peggy can let herself feel disheartened the man kindly distracts her by charging her with a pitiful war cry.
It's a terrible ploy on his part. He's old and strung out and she's in a prime. More importantly Yelena is there with her eager trigger finger. She shoots him before he can make it a foot.
Peggy wants to chastise her. That's the right thing to do. But really all she can think about is how it's saved her the trouble of calling SHIELD.
"He could have had more information," she says softly.
Yelena is unmoved, "He didn't."
"You're so sure?"
There it is. That little twitch. Almost imperceptible. The kind of thing her keepers spent years trying to train out of her but likely gave up on. "What's the point," they thought, "she'll never be anywhere long enough for them to catch on."
They must not have planned on her committing to a month plus long tour of every HYDRA base in Europe and North Africa.
Natalie returns, hand lazily resting on her rifle, and gum still cracking. "Civilians are clear. So where we headed after we blow this place up."
Peggy closes her eyes when she realizes what her best, if most ill-advised option is. When she opens them again Yelena and Natalie are both tilting their heads and looking at her curiously.
"Back to the beach," she says, "I'm afraid we'll need a friend's help."
####
Sometimes, when Howard is being especially trying, Peggy likes to think of how he was really just training wheels for her every interaction with Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Because while Howard can be an obscenely cocky twit when he so desires, he has nothing on the King is f Atlantis.
Who is currently standing before her, his glistening chest swelling with pride.
"I was so happy to hear from you," he coos. "I knew you would see the error of your ways."
"Error," Natalie asks.
"He wants me to leave my husband." Natalie opens her mouth, no doubt to point out that Peggy effectively has. "For him."
Natalie's mouth snaps shut.
"I am just pleased as punch to meet you," Yelena claims.
Peggy's noticed that Yelena is very fond of taking on her Dottie persona when she's speaking with strange men. It's only mildly less disturbing in English than Portuguese or Russian.
Namor glances at Yelena and then, presumably, deems her unworthy of his attention because he turns back to Peggy. "Have you left him?"
"No, and Daniel's not why I'm here."
Namor snorts.
Peggy rolls her eyes. "And would you kindly keep your derision to yourself? In case you haven't noticed I'm exhausted, and clearly at my rope's end. Otherwise I wouldn't be dragging you out of the bog you call home."
Namor scowls, "I can only presume you're being this disagreeable because your experiencing your womanly trouble or Steve Rogers has crashed himself into another frozen tundra."
If Namor weren't the strongest man Peggy had ever met and she weren't in dire need of his help to save the woman she loves Peggy would have kicked him so hard in his little green underpants that his baritone would have become a soprano.
"A friend has been taken," she speaks clearly, "by HYDRA."
He pretends to ponder it, "I do despise HYDRA."
"If I remember correctly it and fire are the only things you can't stand."
"And your husband."
"A given," she says through clenched teeth.
He ticks them off with long fingers, "Also Rogers. Stark. That man with the bowler—"
"You've made your point Namor. Now will you help?"
"I owe no allegiance or favors to those who walk on land—"
"I know that."
"Even if it is for one for whom I harbor affection."
Namor and his people are, above all else, proud. Peggy knows that too. Knows she can't meet the Atlantean king on a beach and just beg for help.
She has to offer something.
"Antartica," she spits out.
One of his perfectly manicured eyebrows arches. "It is Atlantean territory," he says imperiously.
"I know that and you know that. But the rest of the world isn't even sure if you exists. What if I could continue to ensure that mystery and preserve your claims to the continent?"
"How?"
"It'll take time—"
He steps closer. Water's still dripping down a torso that even Renaissance sculptors would be hard-pressed to reproduce. "How?"
"A treaty."
"You would give me a continent for one friend?"
What surprises Peggy, later when she revisits the conversation in her head, is that she doesn't even have to consider it.
It's just a simple and sure
"Yes."