August, 1949

In which Chester Phillips is too old for this.


Colonel Chester Phillips ascended the stairs of the building masquerading as a phone company, marching into a room where a woman with red hair sat at a desk reading a magazine.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, looking up as he flung the door open. "I'm afraid customers aren't allowed above the first floor. Were you here with a complaint about your account? I can direct you to the appropriate office downstairs."

Phillips looked her over for a minute before answering. She was calm and collected, appearing to be no more than a friendly telephone company representative, but he noticed the tension in the set of her shoulders and the way one hand had vanished under the desk, presumably lingering on the weapon that should be hidden there. Just what security at the front desk should be. Good.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his I.D. badge. "Colonel Chester Phillips, S.S.R.," he said. "I'm here to see Chief Carter."

The woman took the badge and examined it for a moment instead of just jumping up and letting him in. Another point in her favor. He liked her. "Of course, Sir," she said after a moment, handing the badge back with a genuine smile this time. She pressed a button under the desk and part of the back wall slid open. "Go right on in. Her office is in the back on the right."

Phillips nodded his thanks and moved inside. The office was humming with activity, and though several curious eyes looked up at him as he walked through, no one stopped him. Carter's office was along the back window, and pride filled his chest for a moment seeing her name painted on the door in black and gold letters underneath the word 'Chief'. He'd felt bad dropping her here after the War—her service record should have gotten her in just fine, but the fact that he'd had to remind Roger Dooley that he owed him a favor before he let her in had left a bad taste in his mouth. He knew she was going to have an uphill battle here, but this was the main S.S.R. office, and it was where she needed to be to stay on the radar for the big reconstruction he'd been planning. And if anyone could handle the fight to prove a woman could do intelligence work, it was Peggy Carter.

The door with her name on it was shut, and he stopped outside and rapped on it sharply. She was inside talking to someone, and she looked up in surprise when she saw him through the window, then jumped up to let him in.

"Colonel Phillips," she said, inviting him in. "Good morning, Sir. I wasn't expecting you until next week."

"Senator Gower was much more accommodating than I expected him to be," he said by way of explanation. He nodded toward the other occupant of the room. "You in the middle of something?"

"Oh," she replied, looking back at the man who was getting to his feet. "No, not anything official. This is my husband. Colonel Chester Phillips, Steve Carter."

"That's right, congratulations are in order, aren't they?" Phillips said, shaking the man's hand as he stepped forward. He'd heard Carter had gotten engaged, and he'd actually been invited to the wedding, but had been out of the country at the time. He looked the man up and down thoughtfully and didn't allow himself to show any of the surprise he was feeling. The man was the spitting image of Steve Rogers, back from the dead.

"Thank you, Sir," she replied.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," her husband said in a pleasant, very familiar voice. "Peggy's told me some great things about you." He looked nothing but friendly and sincere, but there was something in his eyes that looked like he was waiting for Phillips to say something. It was the exact same look Rogers had often had whenever he and Carter had been working alone in a room and Phillips walked in.

"Darling, I think we'd best skip lunch," Carter said, smiling at her husband and ushering him to the door. "This is very likely going to be a long meeting."

"Sure," he said. "You want me to come back and pick you up around five?"

She shot a look at Phillips to confirm the timeframe, and he nodded. "That would be lovely. See you this evening." Phillips moved a little farther into the office as she walked her husband out the door, giving them space for a couple of private words, but watching them discreetly all the same.

Back during the War, he'd turned a blind eye to the way Carter and Rogers were clearly over the moon for each other. Fraternization was against the rules, and he'd had no desire to lose his two best people over something so trivial. It never interfered with their work and they'd hidden it well enough that it never caused any problems, but to someone who spent as much time around the two of them as Phillips had, their attempts to hide their attraction had been just pitiful. His presence now must have brought all their old habits back, because in the sixty seconds it took Carter to come back inside, Phillips saw every single one of their little tells from the office in London, from the soulful way they stared at each other, to the way she folded her arms across her body like it would keep her from touching him, right down to the way he kept looking back at Phillips and scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. Phillips snorted softly to himself. If that boy wasn't Steve Rogers, then Phillips was a monkey's uncle.

When Carter came back into the office professional as ever, Phillips felt his suspicions confirmed, especially when she moved the conversation straight into his visit and offered not a word of explanation as far as Rogers went. She'd been just the same way during the War. He shelved his curiosity for the moment and moved on to why he'd come.

As he'd suspected, Carter was very interested in his new project. The S.S.R. was a wartime agency, and as soon as the war had started winding down, he'd been looking toward the future. With some minor adjustments to better suit the times, there was still a lot to be done in their line of work. It had taken a while to get the backing he'd needed on the Hill, but plans for the new agency had wheels under them now, and he wanted Carter in on the ground floor. He spent the afternoon laying out what had been done so far and what needed to be done yet. Most of it was political wrangling he was still working on, but there were other pieces that Carter could be working on from here. He laid out the scope the agency would have, the sorts of projects they would take on, and what he planned for her to do. A familiar, excited spark was growing in her eyes as he laid it all out.

"You want me to be the Deputy Director?" she asked.

"No one better," he replied. Actually, he wanted her to be the Director—he was getting too old for this and wanted to retire one of these days—but that would never fly with the boys on the Hill. He'd had to pull some strings as it was to get them to let him make her second in command, so he'd take the wheel for a few years and let them see she knew her stuff, then hand it over to her and bow out. "Give it a few years, and you'll be running the place."

She smiled at that and he gave her a smile in return. When their business concluded, they spent a little time catching up on the events and people in the year since he'd seen her last. Aside from thanking him for the wedding present he'd sent, her marriage didn't come up at all, so, alright, apparently Rogers was staying officially dead. He assumed they had their reasons.

Rogers showed back up to pick her up, and as they were all getting ready to go, Carter remembered that there was a file she wanted to give Phillips. "Let me just go and get that for you," she said. She turned to Rogers. "Would you like to walk with me?" Carter had always been smooth about their clandestine whatever-it-was, but Rogers never had been. Clearly, things hadn't changed, and they were trying to limit the time he spent in Phillips' presence.

"Why don't you stay here, son?" Phillips said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Give me a minute to get to know the man who caught my best agent's eye."

"Um," Rogers said, looking at Carter in a plea for escape, and Phillips just managed to keep from rolling his eyes. Nope. Nothing had changed. "Alright," he finally said.

He moved inside the office as Carter left to get the file, and Phillips closed the door behind her. They eyed one another for a moment. He looked a little older than Phillips would have expected, but then, he didn't know what had gone on since he'd disappeared. Evidently a lot, if he'd only shown back up last year. Still, he was clearly Steve Rogers. The fact that no one else seemed to notice surprised Phillips, and yet it didn't. People had an astounding ability to miss the obvious when they weren't looking for it, which is probably what the two of them were counting on. No one was expecting Captain America to be walking around the S.S.R. offices four years after he was supposed to have died, so they just saw Steve Carter, the Chief's husband. Still, it was fairly obvious to anyone who'd known the man. He could have at least tried growing a beard or something.

Rogers scratched at the back of his neck again, looking nervous, and Phillips gestured toward the chair he'd just vacated. "Have a seat, Rogers. I'm not going to bite."

"Yes, Sir," Rogers said, sitting down quickly before his eyes went wide as he realized what he'd just done.

Phillips smiled. Gotcha. "Welcome back."

"I, uh, I'm not sure what you mean, Sir," Rogers stammered.

"It's the sort of thing you say to a person who's been gone for a while. Though I've never said it to someone who died in a plane crash before."

"I, uh…I don't think…I mean, I'm not—"

"If you're not Steve Rogers, I'm Rita Hayworth."

Rogers was quiet for a moment. "How did you know?" he asked.

Phillips snorted. "Aside from the fact that you look and sound and act exactly the same? There's a reason Carter was the spy and you were the soldier," he said. "You're a lousy actor, son. I'll never know how you didn't get kicked out of the USO before you made it to Europe."

That got a chuckle out of Rogers. "I've heard that one before. And you're not the first to tell me I'm a terrible liar."

"You most certainly are," Phillips agreed. Rogers opened his mouth, and Phillips held up a hand. "Look, I don't know what you're doing here, and to be honest, I don't want to."

"You don't?"

"No." Sure, he was curious how Rogers had survived the crash and where he'd been all this time. But whatever the explanation, it had passed Carter's muster, so it was good enough for him. And it was probably complicated, like everything was with these two, and he didn't want the headache. "You and Carter presumably have your reasons for keeping this under wraps, and I've got my own troubles to deal with." He granted Rogers a small smile. "I won't tell anybody."

Rogers smiled back. "Thank you, Sir." Faint color rose in his cheeks. "I'm sorry for—"

"Don't be. Like I said, I'm sure you've got your reasons." He smiled warmly at him then, then gave him a nod. "The world lost a good man when the Valkyrie went down. It's good to have you back, son."

"Thank you, Sir." Emotion swam in Rogers' eyes as he smiled back at his former commanding officer. "It's good to see you too."

"I assume you're a civilian now," Phillips said. "You don't have to keep calling me 'Sir'."

"Yes, Sir," Rogers replied, then huffed a laugh. "Hard habit to break."

Phillips inclined his head in agreement. "So, how many people know who you really are?"

"Well, you'd be the first as far as I know," Rogers said. "People aren't exactly expecting me to be here. And I think it helps that most photographs people would have seen of me during the War included the uniform and the cowl."

"That'll take you a long way," Phillips agreed. "Stark hasn't figured it out?"

Rogers smiled. "I haven't seen much of him, but Peggy and I weren't planning on telling him. We didn't think he could keep it to himself."

That got a chuckle out of Phillips. "You've got a point there." He reached over and clapped Rogers once on the shoulder. "Whatever your reasons are for keeping this under your hat, it really is good to see you alive again."

Carter came back then and he took a few steps back from Rogers. No doubt he would tell her all about their conversation the minute they were alone, but the door to the main office was open now, and they had a charade to keep up.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Carter," Phillips said, shaking Rogers' hand. "Carter," he went on, taking her hand. "Glad to have you officially on board. I'll give you a call after I meet with the Security Committee and we'll hammer out some more details then."

"Yes, Sir," she said. "Thank you, Sir." If she had any suspicions that something was amiss after his conversation with Rogers, she was careful not to show it. Poker face like that was why she was the secret agent.

"I'll see myself out," Phillips said, taking the folder she offered him and making his way to the front. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Rogers taking hold of her arm and whispering frantically in her ear, then the office door slammed shut. He chuckled to himself and headed for the lobby.