Chapter Two: Cold War Angels
"I don't mind being killed, but I don't want them to touch me." —Antigone
JUNE 1, 1970; S.H.I.E.L.D. ACADEMY; VIRGINIA, USA
"This year's graduating class includes a number of firsts. First women to ever graduate the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. The first Black student. The first Chinese student. It is only right that we honor this new decade, an era of change, by honoring the diversity of our students, and commend them for their perseverance and strength."
In the sixth row of graduates, twenty-six year old Nick Fury leaned over to Audrey Carter and mumbled, "They didn't even last forty seconds."
"I'm surprised it took them that long, honestly," Kelly Wu replied from Audrey's other side. She tucked her ink-black hair behind her ear. "I was half expecting them to plaster our faces on a mural by now. We're all one human race."
Audrey bit back a smile. "I didn't even get to be the first woman to graduate," she said, feigning disappointment. The Academy alternated between graduating students in alphabetical and reverse-alphabetical order, and this year was one for the latter. Kelly would be the first Chinese person and woman to graduate from the Academy ever, and the fourth person to graduate from their class.
"Ha," Kelly teased. "You were the first woman to matriculate, though. They gave you your badge before I got mine."
Audrey shrugged. Had they met under any other circumstances, she doubted that Kelly would spare her a second glance. While Audrey had arrived at the Academy with the intention of keeping her head down and surviving to graduation, her roommate had stumbled upon S.H.I.E.L.D. by happy accident and relied much more on impulse when it came to...everything, really. There was no doubt that Kelly was cooler than her in every possible respect, but she had been determined not to abandon Audrey. "There's only two of us. We have to look out for each other."
They'd met Nick during the first day of their Russian classes, and as the odd ones out of the otherwise all-white male student body, the three had quickly forged a friendship. "How long is this speech supposed to be?" Audrey muttered.
"You're the legacy," Kelly retorted. Audrey bristled, before realizing that Kelly had been talking about Peggy, not her father. "Shouldn't you know these things?"
"It's not like I grew up going to these ceremonies," Audrey said, though she was sure that was only because the Academy had been founded a mere twelve years ago. Had it been around during her childhood, she was positive Peggy would've dragged her along.
Though the last three years had been grueling—full of long-nights studying, brutal physical conditioning, and mediocre dining hall food—Audrey had grown so familiar with the Academy's campus that she couldn't help but feel a loss at the conclusion of her time there. It had taken her two months to map out the general layout of campus, and the rest of her tenure as a student to get all the details right. She would miss the big windows in the library, and the way the quad got golden during autumn afternoons, and the view from her dorm room. And she would especially miss Smokey, the gray cat that lurked in the shadows and traded affection for food.
"Ladies and gentleman," Chancellor Dugan concluded, "I present to you the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy Class of 1970."
Applause rose from the ceremony's guests, and Audrey, Nick, and Kelly took that as their cue to stand, along with the rest of their class. Of the three, Kelly went first, beaming as she accepted her badge and diploma. Nick followed a bit after, offering a modest smirk as he crossed the stage. By the time Kevin Carver was called, Audrey's heart was thudding, heavy in her chest. Peggy was wearing red, seated in the left side of the audience, but Audrey couldn't bring herself to search for her mother in the crowd, too concerned with the possibility of tripping or humiliating herself in some other way.
"Audrey Sarah Carter."
As Audrey crossed the stage, she recognized a rather unrefined holler that arose from the crowd—Howard, whooping and whistling like this was a baseball game and not a graduation ceremony. She offered a timid wave as she accepted her diploma, turning to face the photographer as she had a half-dozen times during graduation rehearsals. The camera bulb flashed, brighter than heaven, and Audrey winced before continuing on to the other side of the stage. When the photo arrived in Peggy's mailbox two weeks later, in its custom-ordered silver frame, both mother and daughter were dismayed to find that the damned photographer had captured the most important day of Audrey's life thus far, but immortalized it through a picture where she was blinking.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1974; THE DOLLHOUSE; CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE
Audrey was about as surprised by her assignment as she was by Nick's—which was to say, not surprised at all. Covert-ops had been his first choice, and he had such natural talent for it that SHIELD would be foolish to waste his potential anywhere else. So he was off to Chicago a week after graduation to start work, while Audrey was sent to New York.
Audrey had filled out her own assignment preference sheet randomly. It wouldn't matter what she said, they'd place in her in combat regardless. Her physical training courses had revealed fairly early on that she'd inherited more from Steve Rogers than his nose. Just as Nick took easily to espionage, and Kelly to marksmanship, Audrey was strong—oddly so.
It hadn't been immediately apparent—Audrey hadn't spent much time on an exercise regimen before matriculation. While most of her peers dedicated themselves to achieving the best physical condition they were capable of, Audrey never seemed to find her limit. Her mile time grew shorter and shorter even after the rest of the class had managed five minutes; she kept adding weight to her deadlift without issue; Audrey found that her body was a thing she could push, and that it would always eventually give way to her will.
And of course S.H.I.E.L.D. would want that. Audrey wasn't surprised when she found herself stationed in New York, partnered with Kelly at the new ALPHA program, their new initiative to keep scientists from international threat and coercion. Howard had pitched it to her as freedom of discovery. The liberation of the Fourth Frontier: the human mind. S.H.I.E.L.D. was still pretending to be internationalist back then, but they clearly weren't making enough of an effort to hide their American leanings.
"Fourth frontier this and that didn't consider that locking us in a house for six months would drive us insane," Kelly muttered, skimming over the case file on the couch. "So much for defending the human mind."
Audrey offered her a half-hearted smile. While Kelly had been camped out with a sniper rifle in the upstairs bedroom for almost half a year, she'd been charged with the job of escorting the environmentalist under their guard. Artem Kovalenko was in charge of regulating the soil acidity around the newly-built power plant. He wasn't bad company, but Audrey knew that Kelly had begun to grow restless.
"You don't like spending all your time with Sergei?"
Their fourth housemate, a Soviet statesman, had only really been stationed to make sure that Audrey and Kelly didn't do anything to sabotage the base's development. It hadn't been much of an issue—they always stayed a fair distance from the building, and anyway, that wasn't Audrey's job. But more than being an agent for an enemy government, Sergei was a bad roommate, leaving stray dishes everywhere and using all the hot water in the morning. He, like Kelly, had been confined to the house, though he actually seemed to enjoy it.
"Yeah," he echoed, from the dining room, where he was spreading jam on a piece of raisin toast. "You don't like to spend time with me?"
"No," Kelly answered plainly. "I really, really don't."
Sergei clicked his tongue in disappointment. "Breaks my heart."
Kelly shot Audrey a glare. "I wish I could break something else."
Sergei's head shot up, and through a mouthful of toast, he rushed to declare, "That would be interpreted—"
"—as an act of aggression, yes, I know," Kelly mocked. "I promise, I have no intentions of heating up the Cold War because someone doesn't follow the chore chart."
Audrey turned back to her book. The two of them bickering had become part of the routine; it persisted all day until Sergei returned to his room to write his lengthy reports and Kelly trekked back up to the attic to stare out the spy of her rifle. It was almost that time of the morning—Artem would be making his way downstairs soon, frazzled as ever, and he and Audrey would leave the house to their less-friendly counterparts.
"Good morning, friends," Artem greeted, descending the stairs with heavy footsteps.
"Comrade," said Sergei.
"Hi, Doc," said Kelly. "Comrade," she huffed under her breath, this time in English. Ukrainian had become a habit, by now, since Artem didn't speak anything else, but Kelly always transitioned back into English to insult Sergei, despite his fluency.
"Let's get to it, Daisy," Artem declared, bowing his head and swinging his satchel onto his good shoulder. Audrey smiled at the nickname, shutting her book and reaching for her bag. He'd given it to her after the first day of work, when she'd been tasked with carrying the samples he collected back to the house and she'd asked to keep some of the flowers when he'd finished studying them. Daisy-girl, he'd said, as she arranged the flowers in an empty soup can from their supply.
Audrey took the bundle of files from his arms and replaced them with toast wrapped in wax-paper.
"No—" he insisted.
"You'll get hungry."
"I won't."
"Then I'll eat it," Audrey promised.
But Artem finished the food during the car-ride to the site. After they'd parked, he'd offered her an arm, and the two strolled through the trees to the little flags he'd placed in the ground yesterday. Audrey hadn't expected to like him, not after everything she'd heard about the communists. But Artem was quiet and kind, even if he listened to the state radio every morning, and cared mostly about the soil being livable for flowers come springtime.
"How does it look?" she asked, reaching in her bag for the glass vials.
"No different." Artem parted the soil with the side of his hand, sweeping aside the surface layer and peering at the dirt below. "Still bugs."
Audrey wrinkled her nose, but it was still a good sign. "Is today the day you collect the bugs?"
He shook his head. "Not yet, Daisy. Not yet."
So Audrey just smiled and leaned back against one of the trees while she waited for him to finish. There hadn't been much trouble since the first few days, when factory guards had come to ask what they were doing and make sure it was properly permitted, and while she never relaxed, she considered it calm for a S.H.I.E.L.D. assignment.
"Hmm," said Artem, bringing one of the vials closer to his face. His brow furrowed, and he straightened. "Do you smell that?"
She raised an eyebrow, but sniffed the air cautiously. "What?"
"It's like smoke. Metal," he said, and then a shot rang out through the woods. Artem crumpled into the dirt.
Audrey—stupidly, maybe—thought he'd noticed something on the ground worthy of his attention when he first went down. It was only when she noticed the spray of his blood on her shirt that she pieced it together—he'd been shot. And she'd failed her mission.
Even knowing it was too late, even knowing he was already gone, Audrey lunged forward, covering his body from his. Over her shoulder, she tried to scope out the trees for rifles, but whoever had killed him had abandoned their spot. They couldn't have gotten far. She knew that, even if she didn't quite understand why the Soviets—and it had to be Soviets, right?—would kill one of their own.
She'd been trained for this. The geometry of the bullet. The physics of the barrel. But there was a body going cold curled up beneath her, and Audrey wasn't accustomed to the intimacy of death.
Before she could check for a pulse, she was being yanked back by her hair, dragged across the forest floor. Audrey reached to her belt for a gun or a knife and found nothing—because of course they hadn't given her a gun, she was an American on enemy soil. She screamed, because it felt like the right thing to do, and began thrashing, but her scalp felt so hot it had to be bleeding, and when she reached up for her attacker's hand, it wasn't skin she found, but metal.
She screamed again, because she wasn't sure what else to do. The grip on her hair loosed, wrapping this time around her neck and slamming her back into one of the trees. The whole forest must've vibrated from the force of it. Audrey blinked and blinked until the inky swells receded from her vision, just enough to make out a muzzled man. "No," she choked out. "He's Soviet. Oн один из вас. You got the wrong man."
"I'm not here for him," the man muttered. The mask muffled his words, but his accent was American.
Audrey veered back, digging her head into the trunk of the tree, desperate for a gap between his silver fist and her throat. She kicked forward, almost involuntarily, gasping and gasping until she finally hit something—something human. Something flesh. The man reached for the gun on his belt, placed the barrel to her temple. All that strength from her father, all that Academy training was proving useless now. Her fists were nothing to gunpowder and iron, no matter how she swung.
"They said you're like him."
"I don't know," Audrey gasped. "Don't know what you mean." The impulse to vomit was almost uncontrollable, but his palm was unyielding, and her eyes were growing watery as she kicked and felt the trickle of blood seeping down her face. "Just kill me," she rasped. "End it."
For a moment, the man seemed to hesitate. Audrey's mouth kept moving, and words kept spilling out, but she couldn't hear anything but her heart in her ears and her own feeble struggle for breath, before a pop of gunfire silenced both and her head fell forward, unshaking.
FROM THE RECOVERED FILES OF JOHANN FENHOFF
TRANSCRIPT: SEPTEMBER 13, 1974
INTERVIEW #12-1
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Please state your name for the record.
SUBJECT #12: I can't remember.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: We could not find identification on you, so you are to be known for the record as subject number twelve. Can you please introduce yourself as such?
SUBJECT #12: I am subject number twelve.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: This is a review of your recovery progress. Do you understand?
SUBJECT #12: Yes.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Please recount what you can recall of September 8, 1974.
SUBJECT #12: I don't remember. I hit my head.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: You were shot in the head.
SUBJECT #12: Oh.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Do you remember who shot you?
SUBJECT #12: No. Um—he had long hair. Blue eyes.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Do you remember where you are?
SUBJECT #12: I was at the Chernobyl site.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Where are you now?
SUBJECT #12: I don't know.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Alright.
[papers shuffling]
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: We are going to begin a series of injections now that will help you heal from your injuries. They've proven successful so far in speeding up your recovery. Do you understand?
SUBJECT #12: I understand.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Alright. Let's begin.
FROM THE RECOVERED FILES OF JOHANN FENHOFF
TRANSCRIPT: SEPTEMBER 20, 1974
INTERVIEW # 12-8
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Please state your name for the record.
SUBJECT #12: Subject number-twelve.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Good. How are you feeling, subject number-eleven?
SUBJECT #12: Nauseous. Feverish.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: That's to be expected. Your body is healing from a traumatic experience.
SUBJECT #12: I know.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Can you describe your injury? The circumstances surrounding it?
SUBJECT #12: I was shot. I don't remember who shot me. Someone brought me to this hospital.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Good.
[papers shuffling]
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: You have been receiving an experimental treatment trial over the last few weeks. You have consented to each injection. Is that correct?
SUBJECT #12: Yes.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: And knowing the risks, knowing what has happened to the others, do you continue to consent?
SUBJECT #12: Yes.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Should this treatment succeed, you understand that you will be expected to use your success to build a better world?
[clicking noise can be heard in the background—possibly gun, but uncertain]
SUBJECT #12: I understand.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Do you understand that your refusal of these terms will result in your immediate expulsion from the trial program? Do you understand that expulsion from this program will pose a mortal threat to your wellbeing?
SUBJECT #12: Yes. I know.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Good. Let's begin.
FROM THE NOTES OF DR. JOHANN FENHOFF
11/6/74
Of the thirteen subjects who received the injection, only one has survived. Subjects one through eleven, and thirteen, have each experienced reactions to the trials similar to parasitic infections. Subject twelve has survived the full trial, and retains her strength. Notes left to us by AZ prove true. Subject twelve is scheduled to meet with the Madame tomorrow for possible assignment.
FROM THE RECOVERED FILES OF JOHANN FENHOFF
TRANSCRIPT: NOVEMBER 7, 1974
INTERVIEW # 12-22
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Please state your name for the record.
SUBJECT #12: Subject number-twelve.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Good. How are you feeling, subject number-twelve?
SUBJECT #12: Good. I feel jittery.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: We have finished the full treatment trial as of today at oh-eight-hundred. You have become better from it.
SUBJECT #12: I have.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: You will continue your work under the tutelage of the Madame. Do you understand?
SUBJECT #12: I understand.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Have you selected a name?
SUBJECT #12: I have.
DOCTOR JOHANN FENHOFF: Please reintroduce yourself for the record.
SUBJECT #12: My name is Daisy.
FEBRUARY 16, 1976; CARTER RESIDENCE; BROOKLYN, NY
After the plane crash, Peggy had thrown away so much time searching for a body. When Audrey died, she reached for the impulse to torture herself with it again, and Daniel had let her, almost, until he'd put his hand over her own with all the tenderness and sorrow he could muster. "You can't do this, Peg," he'd warned. "It's not your fault."
It wasn't, she knew, but she still could've stopped it. Let Audrey study as much architecture as she wanted, or get married at twenty, or travel the country in the back of a Volkswagen. She shouldn't have let her go so long without talking, or wasted the time they'd gotten at work. If it could bring her daughter back, Peggy would. Even if it meant abandoning S.H.I.E.L.D. to Thompson and Stark.
But she couldn't change what had happened, and she certainly couldn't spend time dwelling on it. Peggy had two other children to care for as they went away to college to pursue futures of their own, and a job to hold down, and people to protect. So Peggy did what grieving mothers were supposed to do: she held a funeral. She cried at the wake. She struggled through birthdays, and Christmas, each time she reached for the phone, she reminded herself that Audrey was dead.
FEBRUARY 17, 1976; ROQUEBRUNE-CAP-MARTIN; MONTE CARLO, MONACO
Kelly Wu was not all that surprised by people trying to kill her these days. It was just one of those things she'd signed up for—like shitty coffee from the office machine, and weeks gone by without sleep. So while she was used to seeing the same face track her in the crowd from time to time, she was not sure what to do when that face was identical to that of her dead best friend.
The first time, while she shopped for fruits to keep in the fridge of her hotel room hideout, she thought it was just a coincidence. Audrey had a very distinct mouth—always set into a frown, but Kelly found herself reaching for blonde strangers on the train when she'd first gotten back to New York. They always turned, nervous smiles on their lips, eyes done smokey, and Kelly always had to say Oh, sorry, I thought you were someone else. It was just another blonde woman she'd misrecognized, and Kelly turned back to the oranges.
Then it happened again—the same woman, for only a second, at a restaurant where Kelly was watching her actual target brunch with his mistress. She'd left early and called Nick from her hotel room, and he'd insisted she was just suffering from lack of sleep. "I'm always tired," Kelly said. "But I don't hallucinate."
"Look," he started. "I miss her like hell. But she's gone. We can't change that."
She considered telling him what she wanted to do—dress up like a tourist and go to the least guarded spot possible, just to see what would happen—but he knew she'd shoot her idea down. So Kelly didn't ask, just dressed in bright colors and bought a disposable camera to bring up to one of the cliffs and spent an hour pretending to take photos of the sunset. If it wasn't Audrey, it was still someone trying to kill her—she might as well get it out of the way.
By the time it was dark, she considered giving up. Nobody had come by, and her plan to dress like a lost American had unfortunately not included a hoodie for when the evening breeze picked up. But then a gun cocked against the back of her head. "You shouldn't have come here alone."
Kelly winced. That voice. "I want to talk."
She made a show of putting her hands up, and turned very slowly. Through the smear of black charcoal, a pair of green eyes blinked back at her. "I'm not here to talk," the woman said quietly, voice muffled by a piece of hardware over her mouth.
"You know me," said Kelly, positive even despite the half-mask. "We lived together for three years. I brought you lemon cake from the dining halls because you didn't like how noisy it got on Fridays."
The woman blinked. Kelly cringed.
"You're out of time."
"Audrey."
"That's not my name."
"It was. You used to know me."
She faltered, and Kelly knew she couldn't count on memories, so she switched to a different tactic—winding back her fist and punching Audrey square in the face. She reeled back, the train of her gun spinning off to the side and giving Kelly enough time to reach for it.
Just as she got a hand on the barrel, Audrey fired. The bullet went flying somewhere out over the Mediterranean, and Audrey took advantage of Kelly's distraction to tackle her to the ground, wrapping a hand around her neck. "You're out of time."
Kelly kicked, blindly, until her toe connected with Audrey's shin. Kelly twisted the gun, just needing to get it out of the equation or into her hands, but Audrey's grip was relentless. "You hated the communal shower!" she shouted, scrabbling for a rock to grab onto and ramming it into the other woman's temple. Audrey rolled off of her, and Kelly pulled at the gun with everything she had. It went flying, skidding down the path and over the cliff's edge.
"I don't know you," Audrey muttered. She swung and Kelly ducked, her tourist sneakers slipping out from under her as she dodged the blow. As she rushed to regain her footing, Audrey swung again, this time hitting her in the cheek. Color exploded before Kelly's eyes, and she hissed.
"You hated the range because of the—the echo!" she shouted, sweeping her feet out under her and knocking Audrey to the ground. "You had a diary and sometimes I read it. I'm sorry about that. You wrote about your dad."
The recognition she was waiting for didn't come. Kelly lunged for one of the knives on Audrey's belt and grabbed the handle roughly, swiping the blade across her face without precision, but with a wide enough range that it left a slash across her cheek.
"Why are you trying to kill me?" Kelly asked. "If you don't know me."
Audrey looked up at her, the blood rolling down her cheeks like tears. "I was given orders."
Kelly scowled. There was no walking away from this. "Your mom really misses you, you know," she said, and then ran as fast as she could towards Audrey, grabbing onto the straps of her Kevlar, and taking both of them over the edge of the cliff. She squeezed her eyes shut before she could think better of it, held Audrey beneath her as a shield, and waited for the water to break and make way for their bodies. It opened for them with more eagerness than she would've liked, a rush of cool blue, stained by the red of both of their wounds.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
FROM THE NOTES OF DR. ANNIE LARSON
03/16/76
Following several violent episodes from Patient, only one treatment option became viable: ROOK PROTOCOL. Patient was anesthetized at 09:12 this morning, and procedure was completed at 03:38. We witnessed positive behavioral changes following awareness, including but not limited to: altered memory recollection; calm demeanor; increased appetite. Bloodwork was performed soon after; significant amount of virus body still discovered, but it seems to have gone into a dormant state. We expect to see this number decrease.
RECORDS TO BE DESTROYED UPON COMPLETION OF TREATMENT PLAN.
AUTHORIZED BY: Director Margaret Carter
A/N: hi everyone thank you so much for reading! this chapter went through a lot and it's supposed to be a little bit confusing as to what actually happened to audrey, but we'll revisit her in the next chapter and soon we'll be off to the canon parts of the universe. next chapter is gonna include cameos from a bunch of canon characters: natasha, clint, carol, fury, and tony—so i'm really excited to get there! also, credits to pixie (starklore on tumblr) for the transcript format :)
thank you so much to Emilia Christine, Jedi Knight Kat, EleanorJames, and yzalex for reviewing chapter 1! i wanted to answer a few questions that were left in reviews so: this fic is still going to be an eventual bruce/audrey but audrey is going to have a secondary...something during the avengers that will be fun. also, the original will still be left up (and eventually i'll post a note on there about the updated backstory)!
thank you again for reading and i will see you all next chapter :)
Chapter Three: The Archivist
"Hey," the man greeted. "You're the archivist, right? I'm here to get my personnel info corrected."
Audrey blinked. "Did you have an appointment?"
"Yup," he said, popping the p. "Clint Barton. Just got divorced." He put up his hand in a peace sign.