Flight Communication Log. Valkyrie. February 16, 1945.
"Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?"
"Steve, is that you? Are you alright?"
"Peggy, Schmidt's dead."
"What about the plane?"
"That's a little bit tougher to explain."
"Give me your coordinates. I'll find you a safe landing site."
"There's not gonna be a safe landing. But I can try and force it down."
"I'll get Howard on the line. He'll know what to do."
"There's not enough time. This thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York….I gotta put her in the water."
"Please, don't do this. We have time. We can work it out."
"Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die. Peggy...this is my choice. I never took her dancing, y'know? Married for almost six years and I never once took her dancing. But I made a promise. So, when I see her, I'll take her dancing."
"That sounds perfect, Steve."
"You'll bury her, right? You'll bury them both? Even if it's an empty grave...just don't let the world forget. They were heroes. She was a hero. Even if she wouldn't admit it. She saved so many people, Peggy. Don't let them forget her name."
"I won't, Steve. I won't."
"She didn't deserve to die, Peggy. She didn't. She was good. She was-"
Communication ended.
/
Mysterious woman saves three French resistance members. Four spies rooted out of RAF by "Spitfire". Stalingrad siege stopped by Soviet fighters. Captain America and masked woman at Normandy.
They stared at the wall before them. Tucked back in the corner of Phillips' office, the wall held one of the SSR's best kept secrets. Photos mixed with newspapers covered the plaster from floor to ceiling. Peggy reached out and touched the photo at the center of the display.
"They can't know," she finally said.
"Who can't know?" Howard asked.
"The world. She begged me to never let them know she was a success."
Peggy let her hand fall, revealing the photo she stared at intently.
The three friends stood in the middle of some forest in Austria. They had just returned from a mission and were waiting for an SSR retrieval. Gabe brought along a camera to aid in propaganda footage, but he instead took one of the most precious photographs that would never see the light of day.
Ada Kennedy stood in between her husband, Steve Rogers, and friend, Bucky Barnes, with smiles on all three of their faces. Ada and Bucky faced the camera, but Steve's eyes were turned to focus on the two people standing beside him.
"This is the only copy, right?" Phillips asked.
"Yes, sir."
The colonel began to remove the papers from the wall and piled them neatly into stacks. "We find any copy and destroy it. We bury this. The only people that know the name are us and the Commandos."
"Sir?" Peggy asked.
Phillips looked up at the two with a storm of grief and rage in his eyes. "When Dugan and Morita went back to retrieve her body, it was gone. From this day on, Ada Kennedy no longer exists. She never existed to begin with. Erase her from the files. I want everything we have on her, every photo and every report and every newspaper article in this folder."
He grabbed a stamp off of his desk and pressed it down to the top of the manila folder.
Now, over the scowling face of Ada Kennedy, lay one word.