A/N
HALT! ANOTHER CHAPTER WAS RELEASED TODAY! HAVE YOU READ IT? IF NOT, GO BACK!
But uh yeah things are about to take a quick turn
1952, June, Belgium
S.H.I.E.L.D. Outpost
Peggy walked down the hall as quickly as she could without running, the alarm bells ringing harshly in her ears from the speakers in the ceiling. Her heels clicked loudly on the floor, and she wished not for the first time that she'd been wearing more sensible footwear today. Unfortunately, wishes wouldn't get her anywhere.
Her eyes were glued to the door at the end of the bend in the hall - her office, where her things were. Were her gun was. Her neck was prickling with fear the closer she got to the door, the effect of being so close to being armed and yet expecting the worst to happen more and more any moment. But she reached and slipped into the room without a figure stepping out in her way, and she immediately hurried to the gun sitting on her desk, picking it up with a harsh breath of relief, and kicking her impractical heels off. After pulling on the emergency boots tucked under her desk, she turned back towards the door, and froze. There, in the frosted glass of the door, was the silhouette of a person. She dropped into a crouch as silently as she could, behind the desk, a hand going to cover her mouth to stifle her own breathing.
"Peggy!" She heard from down the hall, and she screwed up her face in frustration, and looked over the edge of the desk. The silhouette, which had appeared to be mid-reach for the door, had twisted, looking back over its shoulder. "Peggy!" She heard again, and this time she could make out that it was Frank, the outpost's lead agent. He was about to run right into a hostile, and Peggy cursed him for it. Quickly she shifted up, bracing her gun on the desk, her finger moving to the trigger, but the silhouette's head jerked towards the door like it'd heard something, and then a second later reeled away, and the bullet shattered the glass door and embedded itself in the ceiling down the hall.
"Shit," Peggy hissed, and then the figure rose back into view, and this time, Peggy could see exactly what they looked like. It was a woman, her startling red hair pulled into a braid behind her head, body clad in a black tactical suit, her sharp face uncovered. Peggy's eyes went wide, her hands tight on the gun but unmoving, and the body of Katherine Lewis stared back, her green eyes unrecognizing. Unremembering. Unfrightened at a near miss with a weapon. Kat's hand came up to grab the edge of the shattered glass and Peggy watched in shock as she simply shoved her gloved hand through the remaining glass and down to grab the wood of the door, the fabric of the glove shredding under the rough treatment to show slivers of silver. Her fingers made contact with the door, and then she ripped a chunk out of it with an explosion of wood splinters. This woman did not recognize her. Peggy scrambled backwards, raising her gun again, and Katherine came barreling through the door with an almighty crash, and two gunshots rang out at once.
Kat staggered to the left, her hand coming out to stop her before she ran her shoulder into the wall, and Peggy shot again, only to duck as Kat's right arm came flying up to block the bullet, and it ricocheted a foot away from Peggy's head. "Peggy! I'm covering you, go!" came Frank's voice from outside of the office, and through the dust of a door having been destroyed a few moments prior, she could see him standing there, a gun trained on Kat's back. There was just the matter of getting past her without being grabbed by that arm. Whatever else it could do, she didn't want to find out. Peggy edged to the other side of the office, her gun still trained on Kat, her breaths coming hard. Kat was staring right back, teeth gritted into a grimace, and a glance downwards confirmed that both Peggy and Frank had hit their target square on. Two dark, wet spots were forming on the front of the left side of Kat's torso. Location-wise, they weren't far from some very risky territory, but it looked like she only had a few moments before Kat was recovered enough to make another move.
She lunged towards the doorway, and flinched downwards as Kat exploded off the wall towards her and then staggered back at another gunshot, her fingertips brushing Peggy's back, and then she was out and she and Frank were running. They had a five second head start before they heard Kat's footsteps come thundering after them, and Peggy had a split second moment where she wondered if this was what a rabbit felt like right before it was grabbed by a dog, and then something a few rooms away exploded, and all three people in the hallway were sent flying into the right side of the hallway, entire pieces of the left wall giving up the ghost to the explosion.
Peggy only registered all of this very briefly before something hit her head.
She woke up to a horrendous headache what could only be a few moments later, a roaring in her ears, her eyes picking up the scene blurrily. She pushed herself up off the floor a little, closing her eyes for a moment as something in her side told her it was very much in pain, and opened them again to see Kat staggering away down the hall, boots dragging a little, a hand clutching the side of her head, blood on the floor behind her in a drip trail. The world went dark again.
This time, she woke up in a hospital bed. She blinked, looking around in confusion, trying to piece together how she'd gotten here. It looked to be a Belgium hospital (or that was her hunch, anyway). She wondered where Frank was.
Kat. Kat was alive? It had been nearly ten years since her disappearance in Germany, and she hadn't looked a day past the 25 she'd been when she had dropped off the face of the earth. Something like dread sunk into Peggy's stomach.
Later
Frank was dead, she found out. Killed in the blast.
She wrote the report as soon as the nurses let her sit up to do it, describing the encounter and strongly recommending following up on Katherine Lewis' cold case.
That was not the first recommendation she made on the subject, but when the bomb analysis came back and the evidence said it was an inside job, Frank was blamed for the blast, and the doctors and her superiors told her that there was no evidence of a woman matching Kat's description on the premises, and that she'd hit her head so hard, you see...
When she remembered this, sixty years in the future, after the fall of the Triskelion, she knew that it had been a coverup. The Hydra agents within S.H.I.E.L.D. had tried to kill her with a brainwashed Katherine Lewis. They had failed, and to cover their tracks, they had not tried in the same way again. Hydra was, after all, supposed to be gone and dead.
Maybe, with Steve reunited with Bucky and Kat, it would be one day.
Peggy folded up the piece of paper she'd scribbled her reminder on and placed it in her front dress pocket, and laid back down in bed. After a minute of staring up into the darkness, old memories lingering at the surface, she shut her eyes and fell asleep.
A/N
Missing the 1940s? Don't worry, we'll get back to them! But it was time for some SPICE! Let us know what you think, pretty please? Thanks for reading!