Introductory Note: I don't usually write notes at the beginnings of chapters, but I wanted to state in advance that this is a rewrite of a story I started when I was 14 and am now coming back to almost five years later. If you read the original Monachopsis, a lot of this will be similar but with the biggest change being that: Audrey's aging isn't slowed, like it was in the original, something else happens to stunt it. If you're new to the story, then everything should make sense ! Thank you for reading :)
I. The Second Great American Century
"Either you leave or you get lost. As for me, I just can't anymore." —Alejandra Pizarnik
AUGUST 28, 1945; STARK ESTATE; LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Push. Push.
"Push!" ordered the nurse.
Had the pain been the slightest bit more mild, Peggy would have shot her a glower. I'm pushing, thank you very bloody much. Her grip on Edwin's hand tightened, those red manicured nails digging hard into his knuckles. She did not need to look at him to know that his eyes must've been bugging out of his head, but thankfully, the man had enough sense to keep his own suffering to himself.
Giving birth, pain aside, was quite boring. Most of the time Peggy was in pain, there was an air of urgency. War. Shootout. Impending foreign enemies. That sort of thing. All that awaited her after this bout of suffering was at least a month of mandatory leave from work, and the miserable reality of raising a baby without a father to help. "I see the head!" the nurse announced.
"Oh, Lord," Edwin muttered.
Peggy screwed her eyes shut tighter. Damn New York—if the whole city had to be blown off a map for her not to go through this ordeal on her own, so be it. She wanted Steve here, holding fast to her while that fresh red manicure drew super-soldier blood, because my God, that night in the rain had been wonderful but certainly not at all worth this. He'd left her with a baby—not on purpose, maybe, but she'd been the one to provide the birth control and he'd been the one to render it entirely ineffective. So she wished that Steve had let New York get blown to high heaven, she wished she had known about the baby before he'd crashed into the Arctic and killed himself, because as cruel as it was, Peggy knew that Steve wouldn't have played hero. Or he would've, but for her and their child, not for however many people lived in Manhattan.
"Oh, Christ!" she cried, gripping tighter to Edwin, who gave a little wince. Anna dabbed her forehead with a washcloth, and Peggy hissed at its coolness. "Steve, you fucking bastard!"
"Almost there," said the nurse.
"Can't you—just—pulltherestofitout?" Peggy sobbed, face tightening up into a grimace. This was worse than the bullet wound she'd sustained last year in Switzerland, the one she'd had to pack with snow and let freeze over to keep from bleeding out. "Just—it's his bloody baby, has to be some degree of in—destructible!"
"You're so close, Miss Carter."
Agent, she considered correcting, but then another contraction ripped through her and the words fell away to a wail. "You can do this," Anna promised. "You can do this."
"I don't want to do this," Peggy protested, but kept pushing anyway, until the pain was like a tremendous weight about to crush her. Just as it became unbearable, it shattered, vanishing, replaced suddenly by a birdlike squawk.
"It's a girl," the nurse announced, busying herself with the umbilical cord and wrapping the tiny, pink baby in a blanket. "You have a daughter, Miss Carter."
"A girl!" Anna said, the Irish lilt of her voice soothing despite Peggy's determination to remain irritated with her circumstances. A girl, she thought, with some disappointment, only because she'd been so sure the baby would be a boy and hadn't made any plans for naming it anything but Steve. As she was being handed the thing, though, she realized that Steve was quite a serious name for a tiny little baby, and also not so appropriate for a tiny little baby girl.
"A girl," she said, flatter than she meant to sound. Peggy drew her thumb across her daughter's cheek, and wished Steve were here again, but for different reasons. "Hello, girl," she greeted.
The baby stared, bug-eyed, back at her.
"I was going to name you Steve, after your father, but now I'm not quite sure what to call you."
"Could name her after your mother," Anna suggested.
Peggy considered it. "Bertha is so old, though."
"What about Steve's mother?" Edwin said.
"No," said Peggy swiftly. If Steve wanted to name their daughter after his mother, then perhaps he shouldn't have crashed his plane. "I'll think about it."
After a bit of doting, Edwin and Anna took leave. The two weren't alone for long before Howard knocked on the doorway and poked his head in. "They done with the gross parts yet?" he asked. Peggy, having regained some of her strength, now shot him a glower. He was quick to apologize, holding up a stack of tabloid magazines and handing them to her like one would flowers. "I brought you a gift, to help you keep busy while the whole…" he gestured vaguely at her. "Wears off."
"It's not like I had too many drinks and passed out at the pub," she muttered.
"Then how the hell did this little miracle happen, huh?"
Howard poked the baby on the cheek, and Peggy shifted to adjust to her weight. "Which magazines?" she asked, rocking the baby in her arms.
"Oh, tabloids. Gossip stuff. You like that, right?"
"Shut up," Peggy snapped, though she accepted the magazine anyway in one hand, scanning the cover for a moment before her eyes were pulled back to the baby. Since the Los Angeles reassignment, she'd found herself more absorbed by the trifles of Hollywood stars than she would ever admit.
"What did you name her?" Howard asked. "Heard the nurse mention she was a girl."
"I haven't decided yet."
"Name her after one of these stars," Howard suggested, flipping open one of the magazines and tossing the rest aside. "Oh, you know what? There's this movie they're filming at the studio that I think you'll like. Lady in the Lake."
"That's too soon," Peggy muttered.
"Alright, I'm not trying to call up any bad memories," Howard defended, holding a hand up. "I'm just saying that there's this character you'd like, I think. Adrienne."
"Oh, I can't name her Adrienne," Peggy protested. "There was an absolutely wicked girl in my primary school named Adrienne who used to yank at my hair whenever she could." She sighed, rocking the baby, knowing that it was fine while also worrying that she was somehow doing it wrong. "Who plays her?"
"Adrienne?" asked Howard. "Audrey something-or-other."
"Audrey's nice." Peggy cooed at the baby. "You could be an Audrey. Are you Audrey?"
The baby let out a hiccup.
"Audrey." She thought about Steve, and felt guilty for dismissing him so quickly. "Audrey Sarah Carter, is that you?"
She hiccupped again.
"That's you," said Peggy. "Audrey Sarah Carter."
"You two make a beautiful family," said Howard. "He should feel terrible about missing it."
"He should," Peggy concurred, though her eyes began to sting from the tears. "Your father was a very brave, and very stupid man," she told Audrey. Was. She'd had plenty of time to get used to it, but it hadn't gotten easier. "May you be just as brave as him."
"And just as smart as your mother," Howard chimed in.
Peggy offered a weak smile. "But most importantly, Audrey, may you be happy."
The baby blinked her huge bug eyes once and then closed them into sleep, completely and utterly oblivious.
NOVEMBER 13, 1953; THE WEST WING; WASHINGTON D.C.
"Weird kid you've got there."
Howard leaned back in his chair, sipping on his coffee like it was a beer on a hot summer day and not a fifteen minute chat between military contract deals with Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense. If Audrey knew what was going on, she didn't show it—just kept fidgeting with the colored pencils in her hand, rolling them back and forth despite the lack of non-redacted paper anywhere nearby. "Like you're a paramount of normalcy," Peggy snorted.
At eight, Audrey had grown into a lanky, but bizarrely strong child. Peggy supposed she had her father to thank for that particular trait, along with Audrey's tendency for spontaneous heroics, but she wasn't sure where the rest had come from. Her daughter was quieter than either of her parents, always somewhat distracted, and strangely fascinated with maps and miniatures. At this particular moment, Audrey was working on a scale model of the apartment building they'd just moved into in Brooklyn. She'd been mapping out their floor before the secret service agents at the door had confiscated the gridded notebook she carried with her, and though Audrey had let them take it, Peggy could tell she was growing anxious. "I can hear you, Uncle Howard," Audrey mumbled, rattling the pencils in her hand.
"Oh, kiddo, I mean it with all the affection in the world." He reached over to ruffle her hair and—like always—she ducked, pinching up her face as she swerved out of his hand's path.
MAY 6, 1959; CARTER RESIDENCE; BROOKLYN, NY
Audrey enjoyed her lessons with the Matthews twins plenty, but mostly, she enjoyed their trips to Stan's Diner for lunch. Students at Empire State, Mavis and Martin were not entirely clued into their charge's heritage or life outside of school, but they knew that she was diligent, and that they received a large check from the Stark Corporation every month compensating them for their services. Mavis taught Audrey her maths and sciences, while Martin taught her English, history, and French.
After a particularly grueling session on the Civil War and Pythagorean triangles, Mavis turned to her brother and said, "I could go for a strawberry milkshake. Audrey?"
"I'm hungry," the girl concurred.
"Stan's?" asked Martin.
So the trio found themselves on the way down to the diner, where Audrey always spent the walk admiring the scarlet color of Mavis' hair and the way it glinted in the sun. Ever since she'd turned thirteen, she'd gotten bored of her drab blonde hair and craved something more radiant, like Mavis, or mysterious, like her mother. But it felt silly to mention, so she bit her tongue.
While Martin recounted a story of his friend's dog getting into the fridge, Mavis made eyes at a group of leather-jacket clad boys with their hands in their pockets. Audrey watched, fascinated, as she gave a little spin to keep her eyes on them as they passed, shouting, "Keep looking, boys, it's all you'll get!"
Mavis carried on down the sidewalk, Martin following behind, rolling his eyes at his sister's antics. Audrey arched an eyebrow as one of the boys from the group slipped a hand into Martin's pocket, withdrawing his wallet. She stopped, waiting for Martin to notice, but he'd already caught up to his twin.
"Can I have it back?" Audrey asked.
The boy blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in her face and laughed. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"The wallet," said Audrey.
"What wallet?"
By then, the twins had stopped to see what was going on. Audrey furrowed her brow, and reached into his pocket. "Whoa, whoa, hey!" he protested, grabbing her wrist, but Audrey just twisted out of his hold, grabbing onto the wallet and holding it up.
"Son of a gun," Martin cried.
The leather-clad boys took off down the street, and Audrey watched them go. Later, in their favorite booth at Stan's, Mavis turned to Audrey and asked, "How did you know to do that?"
Audrey didn't know how to answer. The conversations she'd overheard with her mother, the things she'd inherited from her father. "I don't know," she answered. "It was just the right thing to do."
SEPTEMBER 1, 1963; MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE, VERMONT
When the twins had imparted all the knowledge on her that they were capable of imparting, Audrey made up her mind to apply to college. "I want to study architecture," she'd told Peggy.
"Darling…" Peggy had replied. "Wouldn't you rather do something more relevant? Political science? Legal studies? You could always join the Academy, you know."
"I know," Audrey had said. "But I wouldn't be as happy, I don't think. I want to make something."
So she'd sent off her applications and found herself choosing between Middlebury and Mount Holyoke, eventually settling on the former when they'd offered her a sizable scholarship. Audrey moved into the dorms, excited at the possibility to have something of her own, untouched by her parents' or Howard's influence. She hung up posters on her walls and cut her hair to her shoulders, wore headbands and minidresses, and missed home terribly. Her roommate wasn't much help—a girl named Doreen who wanted only to find a husband at the nearby Vermont Technical College and leave with what she called an M-R-S degree—missus. Audrey had no clue how one even went about finding a husband, and she wasn't feeling up to the challenge, really, and so buried herself in her classes before going to spend winter break with Angie in Manhattan.
"Your mom is sorry she couldn't be here," Angie said.
"I know," said Audrey. Peggy's mission to recover a hostage scientist could hardly wait for the holiday season to end, so she wasn't clinging to any resentment. Besides—holidays had never been much of an ordeal between the two of them, and even when Peggy had finally married Daniel, and had Laura and Michael, Christmas had never happened precisely on the 25th, just on the nearest day to it that everyone was in the same place.
But Audrey didn't mind spending Christmas with Angie. Her parties were legendary for their exclusive invite lists, and even though she was hiding out on the penthouse's staircase, Audrey was feeling starstruck. "Are you doing well in school?" Angie asked, taking a drag off of her cigarette.
"My exams went okay," Audrey said, which was only half-false. Her exams had gone okay, the written ones at least, but her design professor had not appreciated the final project she'd turned in, calling it uncreative. "It's harder than I thought it would be."
"School isn't for everyone, you know," Angie assured her. "I didn't go to school, and look at me." She gestured at the room, and Audrey scanned the party's attendees. The mayor; his wife; his movie-star mistress. Angie had made it, but she was also a Broadway star, and Audrey couldn't carry a tune to save her life.
"I just don't know what else I'm supposed to do with myself," admitted Audrey. "I've spent my entire life sitting in that apartment in Brooklyn, and Mom got remarried but she's always at work, and I feel so weird hanging out with Daniel and Laura and Michael. It doesn't feel like I'm part of that family."
"They love you," Angie promised.
"I know," said Audrey. "But it still doesn't feel like home."
"Does Middlebury?" Angie asked.
The answer was immediate—no. Every day was full of anxiety, and parties she wasn't invited to, and studying for exams that she failed anyway. Audrey had always thought that college would be different, and it was, but for worse. "I don't know where else to go."
"That's never a good reason to stay," Angie said. "You don't have to go back if you don't want to. Stay here with me. You're eighteen, kid, and it's a new generation. You don't need to settle down so quickly."
Audrey considered it. She knew well enough that Middlebury was a dead end for her, but so was Brooklyn. She needed to do something she hadn't done before, and—well—she'd never dropped out of college to live with her movie-star aunt before, had she? "She'll be mad at me," she said.
"Probably," Angie concurred. "But that's what being eighteen is for, babe. If you don't have at least one fight with your parents about following your dreams, you're doing it wrong."
"I don't even know what my dreams are."
Angie shrugged, and flagged down a passing waiter for a champagne flute. She passed it to Audrey. "No time like the present to find out."
JANUARY 4, 1964; CARTER RESIDENCE; BROOKLYN, NY
By the time Peggy returned from Berlin and Daniel got the Christmas tree up, Audrey had submitted the paperwork announcing her withdrawal from Middlebury. Her intention was to wait until she and Peggy could sit down alone, so she could make her case with enough time to prepare, but then, as Audrey reached for the bread pudding, her mother turned to her and asked, "Which classes will you enroll in for Spring?"
Audrey's hand faltered over the serving spoon. "Well," she said, mustering up enough courage to sound confident, even if she didn't quite feel it, "I don't know."
Laura sighed from across the table. "When I go to college, I'll learn how to be an astronaut. I'm gonna go to Jupiter."
"You can't go to Jupiter," Michael retorted. "You'd get sucked into it."
"You can do whatever you want, kiddo," Daniel interrupted. "Don't discourage your sister, Michael."
"We have enough time to talk about everyone else's plans for university when we get there," Peggy said, and the table went quiet. She turned back to Audrey. "Do you think you'll take anything on Victorian design?"
"No," Audrey said.
"No?" asked Peggy. "Why not?"
"I don't think I'll be taking any classes," Audrey explained slowly. "Since I'm not going back."
Peggy put a spoonful of scalloped potatoes in her mouth, and took a minute to chew. Then, her voice tight, she asked, "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Um," said Audrey. "It means that I dropped out."
"And where do you plan on living?" asked Peggy.
Audrey's eyes darted over to Laura and Michael, where the nine-year-old twins had stopped eating entirely just to gawk at her. "Angie said I could stay with her."
"Hmmmm," said Peggy, dabbing at her mouth with the custom embroidered C&D napkin. "Well, that's simply not going to happen."
"Honey—" Daniel started, before Peggy raised a hand at him to stop. He obeyed, sitting back into his chair.
"You cannot drop out of college just because you feel like it, Audrey, especially not without consulting me and your Uncle Howard. Think of the tuition he spent so you could go to college, only to find out that you couldn't even make it through a year."
"You were in Berlin," Audrey protested. "And Uncle Howard owns six separate mansions."
"Then you should've waited until I got back." As for Howard, she said nothing.
Audrey pursed her lips. "It's my life."
Peggy set the fork down on her plate, and pushed her chair out from the table. "Fine. It's your life, Audrey. If you want to spend it with Angie, who am I to stop you?" She stood up. "Laura, Michael, put the dishes in the sink when you're through. I'm going to bed."
The sound of her heels ascending the stairs quieted the room for a long moment, and Audrey stared down at her mashed potatoes contemplatively. "She'll come around," Daniel promised her. "She's just tired from the flight."
"Mom never comes around," Michael grumbled. "She's stubborn."
"Hey," Daniel scolded, pointing at the two of them. "Eat your asparagus. I'm going to check on your mother, and if there's any green on your plate by the time I come down, I'm going to call Santa and tell him not to come."
When he'd gone upstairs, Michael fixed Audrey with a glare. "Look what you did, Audrey," he said. "You ruined Christmas."
APRIL 23, 1966; MCALLISTER BOARDING HOUSE; SAN FRANCISCO, CA
San Francisco had, for the most part, been an accident. Audrey had spent the winter with Angie in Hollywood while she filmed an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's plays, all glitz and gowns. It was there, after the premiere, that she met Gloria and Walter, two SF State students working as assistants on set who had plans to head back north when the semester started. Audrey, by then, had grown bored of reading on set and asking craft service for more tiny sandwiches, and asked Angie to go with them to see the city.
"I'm finding myself," she'd said. "And Gloria and Walter are helping me explore on this journey."
Angie had eyed her wearily. "You've got that super-strength, don't you?"
Audrey had nodded. It wasn't her first choice of descriptors, but it wasn't wrong, either.
"And you call me if anything happens to you?"
She'd nodded again.
Angie let out a sigh, and acquiesced. "When you smoke pot for the first time, don't cough. It'll make it burn worse."
"I won't smoke pot."
Angie just laughed. "If you fall in love, use a condom. Don't let a man on a motorcycle break your heart. And call me every once in a while. You have my number."
"I will," Audrey promised. "Of course I will."
"Good," said Angie. "You be well, babe. I'm proud of you."
Audrey took all of the advice to heart, except for the coughing. The first and only time she tried to smoke, it made her cough so bad her eyes turned red and teary, and though Gloria swore she was laughing with love it felt so weird that she never touched the stuff again. While Gloria and Walter and whatever rotation of hippies they'd met were doing shrooms and talking about God, Audrey took photos with her brand new camera and sat on the sidelines, not quite home here either.
One night, while Walter went on one of his speeches about "what's happening in Berkeley", the owner of their boarding house came to knock on the door and ask, "Is there anyone here named Carter?"
Audrey lowered her camera. "Me," she said.
"There's a woman on the phone for you downstairs. Says it's urgent."
Angie was just being dramatic, as she always was, as she'd made her career from being. Still, Audrey set the camera down on the cushion and pushed up from the floor, her long blonde hair swaying behind her as the heavy white boots she bought clomped on the hardwood with each step. In the office downstairs, she accepted the receiver and asked, "Angie, is it urgent or are you just deciding which shoes to wear?"
"It's more important than shoes, I can say," came Peggy's reply.
Audrey's heart stuttered in her chest, the homesickness she'd shoved away suddenly threatening to break the surface. "Mom?" she asked, hoping her voice wouldn't wobble. She didn't want Peggy to know how badly she missed home, how much she missed Daniel and the twins and their little Brooklyn brownstone, Stan's diner, the maps that covered her bedroom walls.
"I hope you don't mind me calling," Peggy said, clipped but somehow reluctant, too. "I wasn't sure you wanted to hear from me, but Howard insisted that I let you know that he's getting married in two weeks and would like you to be there."
Howard was getting married? Audrey blinked, trying to understand how the man who brought a different woman to every holiday dinner had managed to settle down. "That sounds like a lie," she said.
"Believe me," Peggy said. "I know."
Pause.
"But he wants you to come," Peggy continued awkwardly. "He misses you. Everybody misses you." There it was—her mother's pride. Her inability to admit that she'd missed Audrey too. "Will you come home next week? You can stay here, I'll have Angie arrange a flight for you. And a flight back, so you won't have to worry about getting back to wherever you're staying."
But Audrey knew she didn't want to come back, really, not to the clouds of smoke that made her cough and the poetry she didn't understand and the theories of God and death and sex and heaven that had her head spinning with confusion. "I'll come home," she told her mother, and swiped a hand at her running nose. "Tell Howard congratulations for me."
"I will," said Peggy. She cleared her throat. "Well, I won't keep you. I'm glad we talked."
"Yeah," Audrey said, remembering a second too late that her mother had conditioned the word out of her vocabulary, citing it's impropriety. "Yes," she corrected. "Me too."
MAY 8, 1966; THE PLAZA HOTEL; MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
Those powder pink dresses looked so itchy that Audrey almost felt glad she hadn't been included in the wedding party. Peggy, in a flowing, lacey sheath, spent most of the evening dancing with Laura—clad in a matching tea-dress—and Daniel, while Audrey sat at table four and made small talk with people she'd met as a child but no longer remembered. Home was not how she remembered it either, really. Stan's had been remodelled, and Peggy had taken the maps down from her walls and placed them neatly in a package under the bed, so that her room could be used for guests. All traces of her past life were gone and buried.
By the time Peggy sat down beside her, Audrey was about ready to give up and head back to San Francisco, and just pretend that the pot didn't burn her lungs when she inhaled. "I'm surprised you came back," Peggy admitted, taking a long sip from her glass of champagne. "You never called or wrote. I thought the next time I might hear about you was in the paper."
Audrey furrowed a brow. "You mean my obituary?"
"I hope to God not," Peggy retorted. "I thought you might get arrested at a protest, or decide to become an actress, or something like that."
"Oh," said Audrey. "No. I was just watching. Trying to see what's out there. I keep thinking that one day I'll find where I'm supposed to be, but I've had a long losing streak so far."
Peggy sighed. "It's not easy, you know."
"It was easy for you. And for Steve." Steve. Dad. She'd called him that as a child, caught up in the fantasy of his legend—the man who saved America! The hero who ended the war! But when she'd learned the true history of the war, the shield had lost its shine, as had most of her patriotism. He was just like any other soldier, only difference was some vial of steroids and her mother's affection for him.
"It was not," Peggy disagreed. "I went into the war because it was a necessity. Your father did it because he felt it was his responsibility. We didn't have choices the way you do."
"Well, I don't want to fight in a war. We shouldn't even be in Vietnam."
Peggy contemplated that for a long while, before saying finally, "You don't have to fight our battles. We did plenty of that. But you have the same gifts as your father—strength of character and of body. If you want to use them, you should."
It had never occurred to Audrey that her body could be anything other than defensive. That she was allowed to use it to its full potential. She picked at a hangnail on her thumb. "I feel like I'll never be able to know him as anything but the guy who flew a plane into the ocean."
Her mother smiled, and rested a hand over Audrey's own. "I have so many stories, darling. All you have to do is ask."
A/N: Continuing my annual ritual of regressing into my Marvel phase every spring...well. Thank you for reading and please let me know what you thought! This universe has always been so comforting to me and I'm so happy to be returning to it, hopefully as a better writer than I was in middle school lmfao. I promise the 20th century isn't going to occupy much of this fic—I'll spend another chapter or two pre-movies before we go into Thor, and then pretty soon after that we'll be at the Avengers :) I'll see you all next chapter!
tumblr: bravadoseries
II. Cold War Angels
While Howard rambled on with his remarks, in the sixth row of S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy graduates, twenty-six year old Nick Fury leaned over to Audrey Carter and mumbled, "He couldn't make it forty seconds before mentioning diversity."
"As someone who's known him my entire life," Audrey replied, "I'm surprised he lasted half that."
