August, 1961

In which Michelle is definitely Steve and Peggy's daughter.


"Hello," Steve said, greeting the woman behind the front desk. He felt the odd need to speak in hushed tones since classes were in session, though he was sure his voice wasn't going to carry all the way down the hall from the receptionist's desk. "I'm Steve Carter. I got a call from the principal's office?"

"Oh, yes," the woman replied. She pointed to the door behind her. "Just through there and to the left." She was eyeing him carefully as he walked past, and Steve imagined it had something to do with the green paint on his sleeve. One of the aides had very apologetically interrupted his painting class with a message from the elementary school. Steve had hurried to return it, and though he had been assured it was not an emergency, he'd dismissed his students for the day anyway and left campus.

Passing through the door and turning left, he saw Michelle sitting on a bench outside the principal's office. Her pigtails were coming undone, her clothes were rumpled, and there was just a little bit of dried blood underneath her nose. "Michelle?" he asked, worried at the sight of the blood.

She looked up. "Oh. Hi, Daddy," she said.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" he asked, kneeling down in front of her and putting his hands on her shoulders.

"I'm fine," she said. " 'cept for bein' in trouble."

"What about this?" Steve asked, touching the side of her nose gently.

She reached up a hand and dashed it across her nose, looking surprised at the flakes of dried blood that came away on her hand. "Oh, I thought I got it all. I'm okay. It doesn't hurt anymore or nothin'."

The principal saw Steve through the door and beckoned him in, but Steve lingered a moment. He knew Michelle had gotten in trouble for fighting, and a bloody nose wasn't that bad, but fury was still churning in his chest at the thought of someone making his little girl bleed. "Are you sure?" he pressed.

"I'm sure," she said. She grinned a little. "You should see Billy Trask."

Steve shouldn't have laughed at that, but he couldn't help a little chuckle. "I'll be right back, okay?" he said, standing up. "You good right here?"

"Uh huh."

Still a little hesitant, Steve moved forward into the office.

"Mr. Carter," the principal said. "So good of you to come so quickly," he said, gesturing to one of the chairs.

Steve sat. "You said she was fighting?" he asked. Michelle did her fair share of roughhousing with James at home, but she'd never gotten into trouble at school before.

"Yes," the principal said, taking his own seat. "I'm sorry to say that Michelle started this fight."

"She did?" Steve asked, even more surprised.

"I'm afraid so."

"What happened?"

The principal sighed. "Well, it's difficult to get a straight story out of two second graders with wildly different sides of things, but the gist of it seems to be that one of the boys in her class said something that upset her, and she responded by hitting him. He hit her back, and they both exchanged several blows before a teacher could get them apart. Michelle, ah, well, she had pinned him to the ground and was sitting on his back by the time the teacher got there."

Steve had to smile internally at that. Peggy had taught her that move when James kept beating her at wrestling.

"No one was seriously hurt, but fighting is not something we allow here," the principal continued. "They're both being suspended for the rest of the week."

Steve nodded. "Alright." He stood up. "Is there anything else?"

"No. Thank you for coming down." They shook hands and Steve left.

"You ready to go?" Steve asked, extending a hand to Michelle. She nodded and took his hand, walking with him back down the hallway, shooting the occasional curious glance up at him. Steve guessed she was wondering what he was going to say, but he wanted to respect her privacy and wait to have the conversation until they were away from an audience.

"How much trouble am I in?" Michelle asked when they got to the car.

"Well," Steve said, picking her up to sit on the hood so they could look each other in the eye. "That depends. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

Michelle sighed and wrinkled her nose, wondering where to begin. "Okay. So, you know how it's Career Day next Friday?"

"No," Steve said. That was the first he was hearing of it.

"Oh," Michelle said. She turned and started digging in her backpack. "I have a paper about it. I guess I forgot to give it to you."

"You can get it later," Steve said. "You were saying about Career Day?"

"Oh. Right. Well, Mrs. Willis was reminding us about it, and then the bell rang to go to Art, and so we were talking about it while we lined up in the hall about what jobs we'd want to do when we grew up."

"Uh huh."

"And Ellie was saying that she wanted to be a detective when she grew up. And Billy Trask said that was stupid, because girls couldn't be detectives. And Ellie said they could too, and he said no, and she said what about Nancy Drew, and he said she doesn't count 'cause she's not real. And then he laughed at her and said that girls couldn't do stuff like that because they're not smart enough to figure out clues and they're not good at running and chasing bad guys."

Steve nodded. He thought he saw where this was going now.

"Well," Michelle continued. "He kept laughing at her, and so I said that girls can too do stuff like that, and I know because my mom does it. And he looked at me and rolled his eyes and said no she doesn't. I said that she does too, and she's real smart and figures out clues to catch bad guys that the police can't catch, and she chases 'em and knocks 'em down and even has a gun. And he called me a liar, and I said I wasn't, and he said I was lying and I was stupid like Ellie and my mom probably was too, so I punched him in the face."

She arched an eyebrow, as if daring Steve to comment, but he just nodded for her to go on. He was proud of her, actually, but he was trying to figure out how to say that without condoning punching classmates.

"So, then he hit me back, so I kicked him, and we started fighting, and Mrs. Willis and Mr. Burke ran over and made us stop," she said. "And then we got sent to the principal's office. I'm s'posed to tell him I'm sorry, but I'm not."

"Well, I think that's okay," Steve said. "You shouldn't tell people you're sorry when you're not."

"So, am I in trouble?" she wondered.

"Yes," Steve said. "But not as much as you probably think you're going to be."

She tilted her head and looked up at him curiously. Steve couldn't help sighing, imagining his mother up there somewhere looking down at him and laughing for having to deal with a child who was just like him.

"First of all, let me tell you what you're not in trouble for," Steve said. He remembered his ma sitting him down and clarifying the noble things and the not-so-noble things about the fights he'd gotten into as a boy. "You are not in trouble for standing up for your friend. That's a good thing, and that's something you should always do. And you're not in trouble for sticking up for your mom. I mean, you know your mom is pretty good at taking care of herself," he said, and Michelle nodded.

"That's still a good thing to do, though, backing up your family. So you're not in trouble for that either. Those are both good things you did, and I am proud of you for doing them."

Michelle smiled.

"But," Steve went on. "What you are in trouble for is for hitting somebody."

"Are you going to say I shouldn't've hit him because I'm a girl?" she sighed.

"No," Steve said. "Why would I say that?"

She shrugged. "That's what Mrs. Willis and Mr. Burke and Principal Walker said. They said ladies don't start fights."

Steve huffed a laugh. "I'm sorry, have you met your mother?" Michelle giggled. "Ladies start fights all the time," Steve said. "The thing is that you have to have a good reason to."

"I thought you said that standing up for Ellie and for Mama was a good reason?"

"It is a good thing," Steve confirmed. "But hitting shouldn't have been your first reaction. Sometimes it might come to that, but there are very few times that hitting someone is the right first response."

Michelle considered this. "But I was really mad at him."

"I know," Steve agreed. "And you should have been. But if we hit somebody every time we got mad, there would be a lot more bloody noses in this world."

She thought for a little bit longer. "So, what should I have done, then?"

"Well," he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the car. "When you're in a confrontation, the first thing you want to try to do is deescalate it. Do you know what that means?"

She shook her head.

"It means calm things down. You could have said something like, 'Hey, Billy, that's not cool. Girls are smart enough to do anything they want. Anyway, Ellie, what do you think we're going to do in Art today?' You make your point and try to change the subject. Sometimes that's all it takes. Another option, if you can, is to walk away, or ignore it."

"Will that make him stop?"

"It might," Steve allowed. "Bullies don't like being ignored. Sometimes it makes them stop and sometimes it doesn't, but you should always try it first. If that doesn't work, get a teacher. But," he said. "If he starts getting physical with you—if he grabs you or pushes you or something like that, you go right ahead and hit him."

Michelle nodded thoughtfully. "I think I see what you mean. It doesn't sound easy to do, though."

"It's not always," Steve admitted. He smiled at her. "When I was a kid, I tended to skip straight to the hitting people step too."

She smiled. "Did you get in trouble a lot?"

"I did," he said. "I think my mom wondered sometimes what she was ever going to do with me. I learned, though. You will too. It gets easier the more you do it."

She nodded. "Okay. I'll try it next time."

"Okay," he said with a smile.

"So, um, how much trouble am I in?" she wondered.

"Well," Steve said. "Getting suspended from school is pretty big. So, I think that will be most of it. But I think I'm going to have to say no allowance this week."

"Aaw," she groaned. She sighed. "Fiiiine."

Steve smiled and looped an arm around her. "But you know what?"

"What?"

"You remember what I told you when you broke the lamp in the living room?"

"That there was no kind of trouble I could get in that would make you not love me," she said.

"That's right," Steve told her. He kissed her on the cheek. "I love you, Jellybean."

She looped her arms around his waist and hugged him back. "Thanks, Daddy. I love you too. And I'm sorry."

"I know." He kissed her again. "I forgive you."

They just sat there for a couple of minutes, watching the wind blow a couple of leaves around the parking lot. "Hey, Daddy?" she said, tilting her head to look up at him.

"Yeah?"

"You said hitting somebody first isn't usually the right thing, but then, that means that sometimes it is. When is it okay?" she wondered.

"Well," he said. "It's okay to hit somebody first if they're hurting someone else. And it's okay to hit somebody first if they're trying to hurt you. When it comes to keeping people safe, it's okay to jump in swinging. It's also okay if somebody touches you in a place they shouldn't or in a way that makes you uncomfortable. That happens, you pound them a good one," he said emphatically.

She nodded.

"You ready to go home?" he asked her.

"Yeah," she said, sliding down off the car. As they pulled out of the parking lot, she looked up at him with a cheeky smile. "So, even though I got sent home from school, I guess it's not all bad," she said.

"Oh?" he replied, cocking a curious eyebrow.

"It got me out of Art class," she said, and Steve laughed.

When Peggy got home that evening, she had a little talk with Michelle as well, mostly reiterating the same things Steve had said, and adding in some things from her own experience she could try to say to make bullying boys come up short. "You know," Peggy said later that evening, lying against Steve's side in bed. "In some ways I wonder that it's taken us this long to be called in for one of our children fighting."

"Why?" Steve wondered.

Peggy smiled. "Darling, I know the sorts of fights you got into as a youngster. I was just as bad. One would have thought our children would be genetically inclined to schoolyard brawls in the name of justice."

Steve laughed.

"I must admit, though," Peggy said. "I'm very proud of her for being able to pin that boy to the ground."

"Oh, so am I," Steve agreed. He chuckled. "I know which one Billy Trask is, and he's bigger than her. Her mother taught her well."

Peggy grinned. "Well, of course, I did. We'll work on style as she gets older. The physics are the important thing for her to master now, but by the time she's in high school, she'll be coming out of fights without a hair out of place."

"I always wondered how you did that," Steve said. "Back in the war, it never seemed to matter what kind of mess we were in, you always came out of it looking gorgeous."

Peggy laughed and kissed him. "Well, there is a possibility that your feelings for me might have given you rose-colored glasses. There were certainly times in the field where I did not feel particularly glamorous. But there is a bit of a knack to it."

"Are you going to share with the class?"

"It's a secret," Peggy teased. "Passed on from mother to daughter for lo these many generations."

Steve laughed again and kissed her.

For the next few days, Michelle came along with Steve to his art classes in the morning, and she would bring a book and sit in the back and read—she may not have had any work sent home, but she should still be doing something educational with her mornings. Eventually, they found the wayward Career Day paper in her backpack, and filled it out and turned it in when they dropped her off for class on Monday. Friday came, and they sat in the back of the classroom and listened as other parents answered questions about their different jobs. Michelle's turn came, and her teacher motioned for her to stand up.

"Alright, Michelle," she said. "Why don't you introduce us to your father and tell us what he does?"

"Well, that's my dad," Michelle said, pointing to Steve. "He teaches art at the college. But actually, my mom is the one who's going to come up here and talk. She's a special government agent."

There were murmurs of interest among the students, and Steve squeezed Peggy's hand and she winked at him as she made her way up to the front.

"Hello," she greeted the class. "I'm Mrs. Carter. And I am the Director at S.H.I.E.L.D. How many of you know what that is?"

A few hands went up, and Steve saw some impressed glances being exchanged amongst the parents. Peggy pointed at one of the girls who raised her hand. "Can you tell everyone what it is?"

The girl nodded. "It's like the F.B.I., where you hunt down bad guys and stuff, except all over the world, and not just in America."

"That's right," Peggy said, and more interested murmurs rippled through the class. Steve grinned as Michelle shot Billy Trask a triumphant look. "Our job is to protect people, and we catch criminals and fight off problems around the world, wherever people need us…"