I didn't want to sit on this chapter for a week and I've been productive, so here you go!
Clipping from Good Morning America show April 14th, 2005:
"Today, renowned Russian composer Dmitri Mager-Loginov would have turned 137! The composer, best known for his operas in the Romantic period, was lost at sea on a crossing to England…"
Alice, Steve and Bucky bundled up to the apartment in a rush of adrenaline-fueled conversation. At the foot of the stairs Alice told them about her uncle, and had to repress a smile at the unsure way Steve and Bucky offered their condolences.
"It's alright," she said eventually, trying not to smile too widely at the thought of her dead uncle. Bucky and Steve each let out a relieved breath and then they thundered up the stairs. They all exclaimed at least three times how good it was to see each other again, and how different they'd all become. Because they were, Alice realized: Bucky was taller than she remembered, with a thick head of dark hair and a sense of stillness and watchfulness that Alice didn't remember noticing in him before. Steve was still small, but he'd grown. Since she'd left he'd become a man with serious eyes and a strong well of determination. He opened the door to his house with his key, set down his wallet on the counter inside the door and then gestured them inside.
Alice tried not to stare too obviously at him as she walked in. That first glimpse of him on the street had… it had frozen the breath in her chest and the blood in her veins and set her every hair on end. And then he'd run to her, and…
She hadn't cried so much in a long time. And now she couldn't take her eyes off him.
The boys bustled inside in a rush of noise, and after toeing off her shoes Alice came to a halt just at the end of the entry hall, staring around at the familiar apartment. Her childhood home might belong to someone else now, but this place was so familiar to her heart that it ached: the radio on the counter with the telegraph key still wired up to the back of it, the photo of Steve's dad on the wall (now accompanied by a portrait of his mom, she saw with a pang). She spotted a pile of letters with her handwriting on them on the table and just like that she was crying again; silent, wide-eyed tears that slid down her face.
Bucky and Steve were fussing, tidying the table and the couch and ducking into the kitchen to get Alice something to drink, but after a moment Steve stopped in his tracks long enough to look up and see Alice: a woman now, standing in nice clothes with so much hurt in her eyes, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
His heart seized. Steve grabbed a clean handkerchief from the coffee table and rushed over to her. Panic tweaked at his chest – he'd never known how to handle crying women – but this was Alice.
"Hey there," he said softly as Bucky clinked around in the kitchen. "S'alright, Alice. You're home now."
That made something in her expression crack, and he wasn't sure it was a good thing. But Alice took the handkerchief. Their fingers brushed and Steve's cheeks went pink at the electric crackle that sparked across his skin. He flexed his fingers and shoved his hand in his pocket.
Alice dabbed at her face, then beamed at him. "I am home," she said warmly.
Alice Moser. In his apartment. After five years of missing her. Steve stared stupidly at her.
A moment later Alice's smile grew a little wider, and then she swooped in to wrap her arms around him before Steve could do anything about it. Her collarbone slotted in above his, their shoulders bumped, and he swallowed at the feeling of her pressed against him before he raised his shaking arms to hold her.
"Thank you, Steve," Alice breathed. Her breath tickled the back of his neck.
For the life of him he couldn't think of what to say.
Bucky walked back in from the kitchen, carrying three water glasses. "Aw, Steve, you made her cry already."
Steve jerked away. "I didn't!" he glanced back at Alice, who was still smiling as she dabbed at her eyes again. "Did I?"
She flapped a hand at him. "You didn't. Guess I've just been… holding it in."
"Just for us? You shouldn't have," Bucky said drily. "Sit down before you fall down, Moser."
"I see you're just as much a charmer as ever," she replied primly as she took a seat on the couch. Bucky took the armchair, and Steve dithered a moment before sitting beside Alice.
Alice let out a shaky breath. She hadn't planned for all this… emotion. What a fool she was.
Bucky set his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "So you're back, right Al? For good?"
The handkerchief fell to her lap as she hesitated. That old nickname, Al, reminded her of what she had been doing – and what more she had yet to do – back across the ocean.
Steve stiffened. "Alice-"
"I don't know," she said. "I can't… no one knows that I'm here, and I… I haven't decided what I'll do." A clunky half truth that felt exactly like a lie.
"You're safe here," Bucky said firmly.
"I know." But that wasn't a final answer.
A tense, awkward silence reigned for a few moments. It felt overwhelming to finally be in the same room as Steve and Bucky after years of half-believing she'd never see them again. She didn't often think she was dreaming, but today was an exception. Bucky and Steve traded glances while they thought she wasn't looking. The clock on the wall ticked obnoxiously.
Finally, Alice took in a deep breath, smiled, and then said: "So. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes." They looked up, and their worry fell away at the vibrant grin on her face. Alice leaned forward. "Tell me everything."
For the next hour the three of them caught up on everything they'd missed in each other's lives in the past five years. At first it was strange, like looking at a childhood photograph and not quite recognizing the person in it. Steve didn't say so much out loud as he did in his letters. But all it took was a few teasing barbs from Bucky and that same old wry half-smile on Steve's face as he looked at her, and Alice fell back into the easy rhythm of sharing her mind with her closest friends in the world.
They mostly repeated stuff they'd told her in their letters, along with jokes and arguments about whose account of an event was most accurate. Alice listened to it all with delight. When it came her turn to relate what she'd been up to, she stuck with the same half-truths and vague sentences that she had with Tom. Nothing about her network back in Austria, nothing about what she'd been doing. Just the singing, and funeral arrangements, and how it had been hard.
As Alice spoke about some friends she'd been to coffee with recently (leaving out all names and identifying information, of course), Steve cocked his head. "How's Jilí?"
Alice's smile dropped. Her face became rigid stone, and Steve and Bucky instantly knew. But she told them anyway. "She… went missing. She's probably dead."
Steve looked so heartbroken that it broke her heart all over again, that he would grieve for a woman he never knew. Bucky's face fell.
A long, sad moment passed. Alice realized that she had not really dealt with the aching void of losing Jilí. She'd just filled the hole with ice and kept on. But something about being around Steve made the ice inside her thaw. She wasn't sure it was a good thing.
Steve cleared his throat, shooting her a concerned look from under his fringe. "I'm sorry, Alice."
Alice swallowed thickly. "So am I."
His brow furrowed. "I'll… I'm going to go make some tea. Like mom used to." He got to his feet, knees creaking, and padded into the kitchen. He walked closely past Alice, so she could feel the warmth of his body as he went past.
Alice closed her eyes. She could feel Bucky's eyes on her, so after another moment of listening to Steve clatter and rustle in the kitchen she stood up and began pacing around the room. That's the book Steve lent me in middle school, she noted as she walked past the bookshelf. This is the patch of carpet where we almost kissed, that winter morning before I went away. She went to inspect the dried flowers on the windowsill. Restlessness rolled off her like static energy.
"How are you doing, Alice?" came Bucky's voice from the armchair.
Alice eyed the brown, flaking petals of a lavender stalk. "I'm alright."
He made a low sound at the back of his throat. "And exactly how long are you planning on staying in Brooklyn?"
Her head snapped around. "Bucky-"
He spread his hands. "I get it, you don't want to talk about it. But if you are going back…"
"What?" she asked bluntly.
He sighed. "I dunno. Guess I don't know why you'd want to go back. Seems to me both you and Steve want you to be in Brooklyn."
"Seems to me you want to get over to Europe," she replied, arching an eyebrow at him.
Bucky shrugged and leaned back in the armchair. In the kitchen the kettle whistled. "Guess you've got me there. I'm on weekend furlough from training."
"And how is that going?" she asked evenly. Her last letter hung in the air between them. She realized now how scary her words must have been for Bucky and Steve – here in Brooklyn the war felt distant, like something in stories. Her raw, frightened letter must have been a shock.
"I'm in marksmanship training at the moment, commanders reckon I've got a knack for it." He shrugged again. "Might be looking at a promotion to Sergeant by the time I get my orders."
Alice tried not to let the news hurt her. She just nodded silently, wishing she could lock them both up somewhere and hide them away from the world.
Clinking echoed out of the kitchen and Alice's head turned toward it. With a sigh, Bucky got to his feet and walked over to Alice. "I just…" he jerked his head toward the kitchen before turning warm eyes on her. His voice was low. "Steve's tried to enlist three times already, doll. Go easy on him." Alice could tell he was talking about so much more about the enlistment attempts, but it was the easiest thing to speak aloud.
"Of course," she said softly. "And if you ever call me doll again I'll hamstring you."
Bucky grinned. "She's back. Missed you, troublemaker." He slung an arm around her shoulder and they both leaned in for a hug. Alice closed her eyes.
At that moment Steve walked back in with three mugs of tea, and he went soft and warm at the sight of his two friends embracing – save for a glint of something like worry in his eyes.
"Don't worry, punk," Bucky laughed as he released Alice. "I'm not moving in on your girl."
Both Steve and Alice blushed.
"Jerk," Steve huffed at Bucky. His eyes flickered toward Alice. She could sense unspoken questions on his tongue.
Bucky looked between them, huffed a sigh, and then rolled his eyes heavenward. "So, Al." She glanced over to him. He rolled his eyes heavily as he glanced away from Steve. "Meet anyone nice over in Austria? Any boys chasing you?"
She eyed Bucky for a few dangerous seconds. She could feel every iota of Steve's attention on her, the drinks in his hands almost forgotten. "They might be chasing me," she eventually said. "But I'm too fast."
Bucky laughed, and when Alice glanced over to Steve he gave her a smile, then blushed, then tried to make the smile seem less relieved. He brought the tea over.
"Missed you, Alice," he said quietly as he handed her a mug.
Alice took the mug between her cold palms and felt herself thaw a little more. She looked into Steve's serious blue eyes and smiled. "I missed you too."
The next morning found Alice shivering and breathing vapor with her gloved hands pressed between her knees as she sat on an icy wooden bench in Central Park. She'd been sitting there only five minutes, not wanting to be too early nor too late, but the cold was already nipping at her exposed skin. It was just approaching ten in the morning, and the park was surprisingly busy. Students strode down the footpaths in long winter coats, and young men on leave from the army strolled with their sweethearts. Most people were moving about to get their blood moving. Alice had to sit there as the cold gnawed at her bones and tiredness itched at her eyes.
She'd stayed up far too late with Steve and Bucky, as mugs of tea turned into mugs of cheap brown liquor. They'd laughed at old memories for so long that Alice's sides had ached and her lungs had wheezed for air. She couldn't remember the last time that happened.
She'd insisted on going back to her hotel, more to clear her head than out of any sense of social propriety, and Bucky and Steve had walked her there in the early hours of the morning. When they'd said farewell at the door, Alice had promised she'd see them again today. It wasn't a good idea.
But now. The whole reason she'd come here. She'd memorized the instructions Vera had given her on the darkened shore in France, knowing they were too important to write down: when and where to meet the representative from the mysterious SSR.
Alice blew out a white breath and rubbed her hands together. A headache was grinding to life behind her eyes, no doubt thanks to Steve's bottom-shelf liquor.
Alice generally had pretty good situational awareness. She watched people and places, searching for clues and secrets all around her. So she blamed her budding hangover and lack of sleep for not noticing the person approaching her until they appeared on the seat beside her like magic.
Alice caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of her eye and flinched, skidding on the icy seat.
Quickly composing her face, she stared at the newcomer: a woman with sharp dark eyes and dark curls, wearing a white blouse, olive green pencil skirt over stockings and a thick brown overcoat. She wore heels and a dark red shade of lipstick that made Alice want to shiver. This was a dangerously capable woman.
More than that, Alice realized as the other woman eyed her up and down: she looked familiar. But she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
The woman's eyes narrowed and Alice's heart pounded. Does this woman know who I am?
She swallowed, unsticking the lump in her throat. "Do you have a newspaper?"
The woman's eyes remained sharp, assessing. "No, I get my news on the radio."
Alice did not show an iota of surprise at the woman's smooth British accent, but she certainly felt it. What's an Englishwoman doing all the way over here? She cocked her head and said the final line of the code: "What a pity, I don't have a radio."
A shivering wind blew across the park, picking up fine ice crystals from the lawns and flinging them into the air. Alice and the woman continued to look at each other, neither one willing to break eye contact first. The woman's dark gaze was focused, and she held herself like a soldier.
Where do I know you from? Alice wanted to ask. But she didn't feel like that should be her first question. Plus, she was pretty sure the woman wouldn't tell her.
The woman stayed silent, staring, and Alice realized she would have to be the first to speak.
She drew a steadying breath. "I'd like to work with you."
The woman stayed silent. A tactic: get the other person to blab and fill the silence, revealing all their cards. Normally that was Alice's move.
Alice sighed. How to do this without putting people in danger. "I have… friends in Europe. All over the place. I know lots of other people, but I'm not friends with them." A pause. Lips pressed together. She cast her eyes heavenward, feeling the woman's gaze like a brand. You've come this far, why not go the whole hog. She turned and faced the woman directly. "I would like to give the Allies ongoing information about the workings of the Nazi government, the movements of their generals and troops, supply lines, and ongoing plans."
The woman's gaze didn't waver. "How do you have such information?"
Alice swallowed. "Obviously I don't have all of it. But I know a lot. And I'm good at finding things out. I have been finding things out. I want a secure, direct way to get that information to the people who can do something with it. Let me know what you need and I'll get it. I'd also like help with getting endangered people to safety."
Slowly, the woman's eyes dragged over Alice's face. It reminded Alice of the jewelry appraiser her uncle used to visit in Vienna: keen, trained eyes searching for the smallest flaw or blemish. For a few long moments the two of them sat in silence.
Finally, the woman straightened her shoulders. "Come to Ratner's dairy restaurant tomorrow at 0800." Then she stood, turned, and strode away down the path before Alice could speak another word.
Alice let her go. She watched the woman's straight back and perfectly-curled hair fade into a crowd of tourists and then disappear. She knew this game: trust, suspicion.
She let out a sigh of vapor and got to her feet.
SSR Inter-office memo #18011942, Agent PC to File Room. Archived by Catherine Laurey, SHIELD Archivist
Patricia. Please send up all the files we have on Alice Moser (alias: Siren). I believe we started a file on her following the incident at Castle Kauffman. Send the files into Phillips' office, I'll meet you there.
- Carter
On her way back to her hotel, Alice noticed a dark car shadowing each turn she took through Manhattan. She supposed it was probably the agency the British woman belonged to, but she didn't want to bet on that, so she slipped into a mall to lose them. She emerged out a staff exit twenty minutes later in a completely different outfit and booked a taxi to Brooklyn.
Alice couldn't get the British woman's silent, assessing gaze out of her head for the rest of the day. She'd never met anyone quite so difficult to read.
That evening Alice went out for dinner with Steve, Bucky, and Tom at a Gowanus Italian restaurant which had been there since before any of them were born. Alice had expected some awkwardness, but when they all took their seats and started butchering the pronunciations of the items on the menu, she felt startled at how easy this was. Tom, Steve, and Bucky had in jokes she didn't understand, which felt bizarre but made her smile. There was always a funny story to be told, a piece of news to be given, a teasing joke.
Somehow she and Steve ended up sitting side by side, and though they only cast fleeting glances at each other sometimes their knuckles brushed, or their shoulders bumped, and it made Alice's guts twist so hard that she thought she might be sick. She wondered with alarm: Did it feel like this before? She'd been cold for so many years. No one else had ever made her feel like this. It almost made her want to push Steve away.
Tom and Bucky started arguing about baseball, and Steve lifted his gaze to Alice. "This must seem strange."
She took another bite of her pasta and met his eyes. Her stomach jolted. "Hm?"
Steve gestured to Tom and Bucky across the table, and then awkwardly between them. "Being back. Must feel weird."
Alice let her eyes track across the people around her. "Not really. This… feels like the way life is meant to be." Her expression shuttered. "It's my other life that's strange."
Steve's eyes darkened and he opened his mouth, but at that moment the waitress came over with their second round of drinks on a tray. Alice looked up with a bland smile, but something about the image of the woman approaching with the condensation-covered drinks sparked a memory at the back of her mind.
Of course.
A castle in the Bavarian Alps. A room full of men in uniforms watching her sing, and after the song faded a push through the crowd–
A dark haired maid. Would you care for a drink, Fräu Siren?
In the restaurant in Brooklyn, the waitress set Alice's whisky in front of her with a smile and then whisked away. Alice stared at the drink with wide eyes. The woman from this morning… had been in Europe? In Johann Schmidt's castle, no less?
A moment later she thought of the sad-eyed doctor – Erskine – and the rumors that a doctor had escaped to the Allies, and her heart leaped. Could it be…?
A pale, skinny hand landed on Alice's wrist and she almost flinched. Her eyes flicked to Steve's to find him shooting her a concerned glance.
"Alice?"
"I'm alright," she said, pasting a smile over her shock. Steve saw through her – remarkable, even after all these years, but drew his hand away from her wrist.
"As I was saying," came Bucky's warm voice, "let's have a toast!" he raised his beer and nudged Tom to lift his juice. Alice and Steve shared a wry glance before mimicking him.
"What're we toasting to?" Steve asked, moving almost unconsciously a little closer into Alice's space.
Bucky looked at them seriously over his bottle. "To Alice! And…" he looked around. "To Tom passing his test, and to military furlough, and to Steve losing his title as the most stubborn occupant of Brooklyn."
"What? Who did I – oh." Steve's ears flushed as he looked at Alice, and she rolled her eyes at him.
Tom cleared his throat. "Are we toasting?"
As one they leaned in to clink their drinks together, and the three boys cried: "To Alice!"
Alice's cheeks went pink and she smiled into her drink. By her side, Steve watched her with a warm smile.
Once Tom was on his train back to Harlem, Steve and Bucky walked Alice back to her hotel again. A block away from the hotel Bucky fell to a stop, cursing his shoelaces, and waved for them to go on ahead.
Alice shot him a sharp, knowing look, but walked ahead with Steve all the same.
For the first few moments they walked in silence in the orange streetlight. Their footsteps echoed in time. Alice wondered how long they'd spent walking the streets like this together, side by side.
Her mind still swirled with thoughts of the SSR woman from that morning, and the jarring sense of suddenly returning to a world that felt normal, so she couldn't think of what to say to Steve. Everything she considered was too earnest, to full of feeling for people who had only just re-met each other yesterday.
She thought of all those letters. Yours, Alice. She'd meant every word.
Steve opened his mouth first, his voice a surprise in the quiet of the night. "I don't know what kind of life you had over there," he said solemnly. Alice peeked at him out of the corner of her eye and saw him looking down at the pavement as he walked. His hands were in his pockets. "I know you couldn't tell me everything. But I know… I know you were scared. I know you lost people." His eyes flicked to hers, and Alice couldn't look away. Her breath caught in her chest.
"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to," he murmured. "But you and I…" he searched for the words for a moment. "We're friends, Alice. We have been for years. We still are, right?"
"Of course," she breathed, almost tripping over her own tongue in her haste to get the words out. "That's never changed, Steve. Never." The thought of Steve not being her friend felt like having the breath pressed out of her chest.
Steve's eyes were hard to see in the lamplight. "But you have changed."
Alice's throat constricted and her head jerked away, turning straight ahead. She fought to keep her breath steady.
Steve let out a frustrated noise. "I don't mean-" he stopped walking, so Alice had to stop and turn to face him. He was small but it was easy for Alice to forget that, given how much of her attention he always seemed to take up. Standing on the footpath in the dark, she couldn't look at anything else aside from the boy – man, now – with his hair in his eyes and his hands gesturing helplessly.
Steve met her eyes. "What I mean to say is… you've changed, of course you have, and so've I. I'd like to…" something like desperation flitted across his gaze. "I'd like to get to know you."
Alice blinked. "But we've been writing each other letters for-"
"I know," a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. "And I've liked that. But can you honestly say that you know everything about me now?"
Alice's gaze turned assessing. She eyed Steve, little Steve Rogers who had grown up while she was away in a country tearing itself apart. At first, she understood Bucky's ever-pervasive instinct to protect him: Steve had skinny arms and hunched shoulders, and looked like a strong wind would carry him off. But in the next moment she saw, as she always had, that deep drive inside him that pushed for the world to be better. The stubborn jut of his jaw, the look in his dark blue eyes. He was nervous, that was plain to see, but under that was determination; as if this was a moment he had been thinking about for a long time.
Alice knew him, she thought. But looking into his eyes at that moment, she thought that maybe she had never understood him at all.
She used to be good at navigating this strange space that she and Steve shared, like a held breath or the shimmering swell of a cloud before it began to rain.
It made her head ache. She couldn't wheedle out information or eavesdrop on a conversation to sort out whatever was going on here. She realized, very quickly, that she had no experience here.
The thought sent a thrill from the soles of her feet to the top of her scalp.
"I guess not," she eventually answered. She let out a breath and smiled at him. "But I'd very much like to find out."
An answering grin lifted his lips.
A moment later Bucky strolled up, moaning about his shoelaces and the early train he had to take back to camp tomorrow morning, and slung his arms around both of their shoulders when he reached them. Alice huffed under the weight of his arm – he'd grown too, into muscle and sinew – and met Steve's suffering gaze. He rolled his eyes at her, and it didn't feel like an echo of an old memory. It felt like the start of a brand new one.
Excerpt from article 'A Friendship for the Ages,' by Yumi Miyagi, 1995
No biography of Steve Rogers is complete without an in-depth analysis of his long-time friendship with Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, and likewise no story about Barnes can omit Steve Rogers.
The two met in their childhood and formed a friendship that saw them through the Great Depression, numerous spats on the playgrounds and streets of Brooklyn, and eventually through the fires of war. They would come to save each other's lives multiple times over, leading one of the most famous and most effective tactical units of the entire European campaign, until the war finally claimed them both.
Their friendship is one which has made a mark upon the face of history, one of those famous duos which exist beyond death and time like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Their stories are entwined together so firmly that one will never be thought of without the other by his side.
The next morning, at 7:45, Alice pushed open the narrow door underneath the sign which read in stylish font: RATNER'S. She smiled as she entered. You couldn't tell from the outside, but she knew that around the corner down the alley was a nondescript door which lead to a smoky staircase, which lead to a secret (or perhaps not so secret anymore) speakeasy. The very same that Bucky had taken her and Steve to for her fourteenth birthday. She supposed it was still there; Prohibition was over, which would only make a lovely bar like that all the more popular. Though wartime wasn't exactly the best time to be going out on the town.
Alice cast her eyes around the dairy restaurant, but there was only one other woman sitting at the long counter and she looked to be bordering on ninety years old. Unsurprised, Alice smiled at the server behind the counter and then sat down at one of the small tables in the back corner, facing away from the door. Ratner's was smaller than she expected, with dark wooden furniture and a low hum of conversation and clinking cutlery. It smelled like fresh bread.
A finely-dressed waiter approached Alice, and she ordered a coffee and a bagel. Just before he turned away she added: "Actually, make that two cups."
She sat and very pointedly did not fidget, and when the coffee came she sipped hers without turning around to look at the door once.
The door opened at precisely 8AM, letting in a gust of cold air and the sound of clicking footsteps. Alice caught a glimpse of a dark coat out of the corner of her eye a moment before the woman from yesterday pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. Their eyes met.
"Why," said the woman by way of greeting. Her cheeks were pinked from the cold.
Alice sipped her coffee as she slid the other steaming mug toward the woman. "You're asking a question you already know the answer to."
"Why would I do that?" She didn't touch the coffee.
"Because you're smart." Alice smiled thinly. "But I'll play along." She took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. The woman's eyes narrowed. "I'm doing this because my mother raised me to turn the other cheek when someone was cruel to me, but to act when I saw injustice being done to others. She taught me that if you saw a man being kicked and you stood by, then you may as well throw another boot into his side."
Alice sat back, thinking of the men who had beat Matthias in the street that night. "I'm doing this because although Austria will always be my first home, I grew up here. In Brooklyn. Which I'm sure you know, as you'll have done your research. I'm sure you also know that I was a part of this community. That I love it. That I have friends and family here. I'm sure you know that my family was ripped away from me when my mother and stepfather were killed by someone who hated them because of who they chose to love."
Alice took a sharp breath. "I'm sure you know about my uncle, about the views he espoused and the people he chose to grow close to." She bit her lip. "I'm not here because I think that Germany is full of villains and America is full of heroes. I'm here because too many in Germany and Austria have stood by while powerful men kick others to the ground. I won't stand by any longer."
She tightened her fingers around her coffee mug and leveled her gaze at the other woman. "Let me help."
For a few moments, silence stretched between them. Alice had spoken softly, conversationally, matching the tone of the dairy restaurant around them.
The other woman's dark eyes flicked over her appraisingly. "I believe you. But I don't trust you."
"That's smart. Again." Alice quirked a brow. "I like to think that anyone who wants to protect lives can trust me, but it's foolish to trust anyone on the basis of a single conversation."
The woman rested a hand on the outside of the coffee mug Alice had ordered for her, but did not drink. Her eyes were unwavering from Alice's face. "So I take it you don't trust me."
"Not yet," Alice said simply.
"That's smart," the woman shot back. Her eyes narrowed again. "We've got no record of you entering the United States, Ms Moser."
It was the first time the woman had acknowledged that she knew Alice's name, but Alice just shrugged. "There's a war on. Identities… are not as concrete as they are in peacetime. What's your name?"
"You can call me Agent Carter." Agent Carter eyed Alice for another long moment. "Be outside your hotel at this time tomorrow morning. We'll discuss your future with us further then."
Alice's eyes narrowed. She shouldn't be surprised that they'd figured out where she was staying, but it made her nervous all the same. "I can't tell if you've decided to give me a chance or if there'll be a black van and a set of handcuffs waiting for me tomorrow."
Agent Carter raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps I haven't decided yet."
Alice smiled at that. "Well, whatever your decision, I'll be there. If I can't help, I may as well be in chains."
Agent Carter eyed her for another moment longer, then got up to leave without having even sipped from her coffee.
"Wait," Alice called. Carter paused beside the table and looked over with an arched eyebrow. Alice swallowed. "You were the maid."
That fine, dark eyebrow just arched further. Alice knew that look, she'd perfected it: it meant what on earth are you talking about? It didn't fool her.
"At Castle Kauffman. Herr Schmidt's gathering."
Carter slowly eyed Alice. "I hadn't thought you would remember me."
"I didn't at first. But I never forget a face." It had taken her a while to place Carter's dark, watchful eyes, but she remembered her now: she'd offered Alice a drink. Carter just arched her eyebrow again in silence. Alice fidgeted slightly. "Is… is Herr Erskine alright?"
For the first time, Carter betrayed a hint of surprise: her eyes widened incrementally.
"We only spoke once," Alice clarified, "but I heard later that he… that someone might have escaped. I was hoping it was him."
"That's classified," said Carter, and Alice burst out in a brilliant grin. Because that meant yes, and that meant that the kind man who she'd bonded with for barely a moment was alive and free.
She glanced down for a moment to conceal her relief, then looked up again. Carter was watching her closely. "I'll see you tomorrow, Agent Carter."
"Perhaps," she replied. Then Agent Carter turned and strode away.
Excerpt from article 'An Evening with Margaret Carter,' by Lauren Hart, 1983
Margaret "Peggy" Carter is one of the most influential foreign-born agents of United States history, with a much-shrouded history of working within this country's intelligence system. Carter, or as she was known then, 'Agent Carter', first traveled to America during WWII, as a transplant from the British counter-intelligence agency MI5. She was only twenty years old when she first joined. She joined the newly-created Strategic Scientific Reserve, in which capacity she worked as an advisor, field agent, recruit assessor and trainer, and analyst.
When I asked Carter about her initial work with the SSR, she informed me that much of it remained classified. I asked what skills she brought to the table, for her to be given such a unique transfer.
"Oh, this and that," the now sixty-two year old told me with a flap of her hand. "I started off as a code-breaker in Bletchley Park, you know, before taking on an assignment to train as a field agent. I picked things up pretty quickly."
"Can you tell us a little about your work during the war?" I asked.
"Probably not," Carter returned. "But I assure you I was very impressive."
It was at this point that I recalled that Carter had only agreed to this interview in exchange for my newspaper releasing some documents to her agency for an ongoing investigation. Margaret Carter is a whip-smart woman, perhaps more so now with experience than she was in the war, and she still protects secrets that may have been long-declassified by now. Openness is not her forte.
When I asked her about the recruits she oversaw at the SSR in those war years, Carter shot me a coy look.
"Are there any specific recruits you'd like to discuss?"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was quiet on a Tuesday morning, with most of the city's population busy at work or war.
It was quiet enough that Steve could hear two sets of footsteps clearly: his own and Alice's, falling in step as they strolled through the galleries. He listened to the soft inhale and exhale of her breath as they paused in front of an arching Greek alabaster statue: a rendering of an ancient bard. A moment later they turned and continued on.
He tried not to look at her too much, despite the fact that he'd much rather be doing that than looking at the centuries-old art. He caught glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye: wisps of blonde hair, a flash of green eyes, the soft darkness of her coat.
Sometimes she fell out of his line of vision and he snapped around, afraid that she'd be gone for good.
It was surreal for Steve to have Alice back. He'd had an image of her in his head for so long: distant, suffering and sad, just words in a letter. She'd occupied his thoughts every day but she was just that: a thought.
But then she arrived back into his life with warmth and a soft voice and green eyes that made his chest ache, and he didn't know what to do with her. They'd barely had a chance to be alone at first, save for that moment when Bucky had hung back to tie his shoe.
But after that first weekend Bucky had gone back to basic training (after wrapping Alice up in a bone-popping hug and murmuring something into her ear that made her scowl). Tom had gone back to school, and Alice and Steve were left with just each other for company.
It had taken days for it to properly sink in: Alice was back.
But even as Steve got used to seeing Alice physically there in front of him, he realized that she wasn't back. Not completely.
It was easy to miss: sadness that flitted across her eyes when she thought no one was looking, her silence when it came to talk of the future. The way she looked at Tom, Bucky, and Steve as if she was preserving the image of them in her mind like a photograph. She'd asked Bucky and Steve not to tell anyone that she was back. Not even Edith and Finn, who'd just gotten married.
And there was something else going on. It took Steve about a week to notice, but there were hours missing out of Alice's day. She never missed meet ups or appointments, but when he asked what she'd gotten up to while he was at work she'd shrug off the question or lie. He could spot her lies – couldn't explain how, which had irritated her when they were kids, but he just knew.
So he didn't push. He'd only just gotten her back, he didn't want to scare her away by asking questions she wasn't ready to answer.
More that, Steve pondered as they moved from the Greek and Roman gallery into the European sculpture and decorative arts wing. He was… distracted. Steve had confronted his feelings for Alice when he was just sixteen, and he'd known since then that if Alice asked, he would be hers in a heartbeat. Alice had been so close to asking that day when they'd nursed their colds in his apartment. Then the world had taken the choice away.
Alice strode a few paces ahead of Steve into the hall of sculptures, gazing up at a statue of a faceless woman on her knees, her arm raised as if to shield against an incoming blow.
Alice was back, Steve realized, and he didn't know what to do. She wasn't the same girl she'd been when she left, that was for sure, but he felt he still understood the person she'd become. She'd become somehow even more closed off, full of secrets and silences, but he could still see the same genuine, open kindness hiding under all that. He could see the same girl who used to close her eyes and smile when she sang. The same razor-sharp intelligence waited behind her eyes. He could see her thinking even as she gazed at the finely-detailed statue, as if it were a problem to be worked out.
Steve's pulse fluttered at his throat as he approached. "I don't know how good this artist could've been, he forgot to do the face."
Alice's eyes closed and her head tilted back as she laughed, and when she opened her eyes again Steve caught a glimpse of surprise – surprise that she had it within herself to laugh? Steve's heart juddered, stuttered, and then pounded.
She shook her head at him. "Guess they'll let any old rot into the museum these days." Her clear green eyes rested on him. "You know, you're funny, Steve."
His shoulders hunched. "That's not usually the first word people use to describe me."
"And yet," she said lightly as they continued through the hall, "you are. You just keep it secret."
You keep bigger secrets, he thought, but didn't say. He settled for rolling his eyes at her. Alice drifted closer to him as they made their way through the ancient busts and sculptures. Their elbows were almost brushing.
"You've got questions," Alice said after a minute of silence.
Steve looked up at a sculpture whose face had fallen into shadow, and didn't meet Alice's eye. "Yeah, I… yes."
He felt rather than heard her sigh. "Go on."
He took a deep breath and turned to her. He had so many questions: How did you get here? What happened in Austria? What happened to Jilí? Why does it feel like you're not going to stay?
But he just sighed and asked: "Are you happy?"
Her eyes went round. She hadn't expected that. "That's… a complicated question."
Steve's face shuttered and he moved to turn aside, but Alice's hand darted out to catch his arm.
"Steve." He met her gaze again. "I…" she huffed. "I'm no good at… this. But I… when I'm with you, I am. Happy." Her eyes were almost desperate, searching his own, hoping he understood. Alice so often seemed intangible, as if she was caught between two worlds, but very suddenly she became real and present. Human.
And he believed her. Alice had clearly grown unaccustomed to joy, but he knew happiness in her face when he saw it. He'd seen it when she first arrived outside his house, and he caught glimpses of it whenever they met.
Alice must have seen something in his face because she smiled softly and let go of his arm as she glanced away. The tips of her ears were red.
"What about you?"
Steve blinked stupidly. "What?"
"Are you happy?"
He thought about his life. The going-nowhere jobs that he kept getting fired from, the late nights spent drawing with only the hope of pennies in return, living alone in an apartment he could barely afford. Bucky off to war and Steve told to stay behind.
"I am," he said quietly. "When I'm with you."
The tips of Alice's ears went even redder and she couldn't resist, for an instant, an impossibly pleased smile. A moment later she ducked her head and gestured for them to keep walking. Steve followed her and tried to settle his racing heart.
I have no idea what we're doing, he thought. But I like where we're going.
Reviews
jul: Hello, you caught up! Sorry for making you cry (but I'm not actually very sorry). Thank you for your lovely review, I'm so glad you're enjoying this story. Let me know if you reread the Wyvern, drop a review over there! Let me know your favorite part :)
Guest: I will make you cry by the time this fic is out. I hope you enjoyed the reunion fluff in this chapter :)
