Moments


Stakeout


"How's Angie's gig doing? I can't tell from the reviews," Jack's voice broke the dark silence.

"It's doing moderately well. She thinks that despite her small role that she's impressed the director enough for there to be hope for something bigger down the road," she answered honestly, before shooting him a questioning sideways glance. "Why? Are you interested in her?"

Peggy could feel him stiffen briefly next to her, even as he breezily admitted, "No, she's not my type. Well, long-term that is. Short-term, she could have been, if she was not your friend. What can I say? I like to stay on your good side."

She had no response to this that wouldn't be cliché, so she let the silence return. They were on a stakeout. It was one of the many that she had been on in the past few weeks, but the first with him.

Stakeouts were Johnson's way of punishing those on his shit-list. He let Jack, as Deputy Agent, still use the lunch runs as his method of punishment, but for those that pissed him off, it was stakeouts. His official reason for sending her on almost all of them was that having a male and female pair sitting in a car into the wee hours of the night was a lot less suspicious than two men.

When Daniel complained on her behalf, she had asserted that Johnson's reasoning actually made sense and that she didn't mind. She didn't because she was at least doing something useful, in theory, but nothing had come of these last few, especially this pawn shop owner. It was beyond irritating.

The only one of Dooley's boys who hadn't been on these tedious jaunts with her was Wallace, and he got away with it because his uncle was New York's Police Commissioner. Johnson constantly courted the influential in this town, which is why this was Jack's first stakeout with her. Johnson needed his Deputy to keep his agents in line for him, while he was wining and dining.

"How is Jarvis doing?"

"Well," was her brisk reply, and then again with the suspicious side-glance, "Why?"

"It's called small talk, Peggy," he huffed indignantly. "People talk about mutual acquaintances and the weather. I am bored. People are more interesting, and he's your friend." His irritated tone changed to speculative as he mused aloud, "…unless, he's something…?"

"More? Else?" she supplied. "No, he's married."

She half-expected a cynical snort or comment about that not meaning anything, but he didn't and actually kept his mouth shut. Either he was finally getting to know her or, at least (and more likely), he was getting to know what was good for him.

Feeling magnanimous, she stated, "I met his wife. She's a gentle soul, has a backbone of steel, and razor sharp mind. Just the kind of woman those two idiots need to manage them."

Again there was silence. The boy was learning.

She waited expectantly for him to fire off his third question. Her colleagues just couldn't stand the quiet. She, on the other hand, could. She had learned early on in the war to pass the time like this by mentally reciting poetry or plays. Her favorite was "If" by Kipling.

She also amused herself by seeing how long it took her colleagues to crack under the weight of her silences. It was a cruel game she played. But she justified it by viewing it as training. In the coming days, these boys would need to know how to withstand interrogation techniques.

Daniel lasted eleven minutes. Reese, eight. Ramirez, nine, and Fisher, thirteen. She bet Jack would land somewhere between Ramirez and Fisher, whom she suspected lasted longest due to his wife being a sulker and/or he used similar memory techniques, most likely mathematical equations, to pass the time.

Eleven minutes and 49 seconds later…

"So now that you aren't at the Griffith, where are you living now?"

To avoid divulging that she was at one of Howard's residences, she went on the offensive, "Why all the personal questions? Why not: 'how about them Yankees?'"

He shrugged, "One, you don't follow baseball, and two, the war may be over but you and I are still in the trenches. And I know you know what that's like."

She did. On the nights before battle or equally dangerous if smaller scale raids, the soldiers would hunker down and swap stories – of home, their girls, anything to distract themselves or to remind themselves of why they were there in the first place.

Jack continued his diatribe, "It's called bonding. I'm sure you know what that was like too."

Again, she did. The sharing of lives was a ritual that almost all did to stave off feelings of loneliness, to remind you that the person next to you was as much in need of you as you were of him.

Jack looked at her, and from the little light that shone into the car form the pawn shop's sign, she could see his blue eyes brighten with an 'aha' moment.

"Of course, you did. But somewhere along the way, you become one of those veterans that shut down. You focused on the job, what was needed for the job, and that was it. The guy next to you was most likely cannon-fodder. If it wasn't him, it might be you. So either way, what's the point?"

Goddamn it. How did the silver-tongued, blue-eyed, office-peacock bastard do it?

As his words hit home, Peggy stilled. Her breathing slowed and not a muscle moved. She refused to squirm or blink under his scrutiny while she endured an existential crisis.

Jack was right. She had shut down. She had become what Krzeminski had not so quietly called her – the Ice Queen, ever since…

But hadn't she just vowed that day on the bridge to live again?

And who better to start with than the man to first get passed her stony façade and make her feel again, even if most often it was frustrated fury?

So to the provocative and irksome man, she said on a slow exhale, "Alright. But it's tit-for-tat."

"Fair's fair. I have kind of put you on the hot seat tonight," he admitted.

She wanted to point out 'not kind of' and 'not only tonight' and 'how about like ever since the day I transferred back to New York?', recalling all the times he had prodded her with questions like 'So were you really Captain America's girl?' or 'So how long and how well did you know playboy Stark?' or 'Haven't you put poor Susan out of his misery yet?'

She didn't though. She kept her eyes on the shop, because it was her job, one that did not involve killing the man with her iciest of death glares. After a few moments of contemplative quiet, she asked, "So what was your Gam-Gam's best dessert?"

Jack laughed. "Why in the world would you want to know that?"

"It's called small talk, Thompson," she retorted, mimicking his earlier words.

"Okay." He replied, holding his hands up in a truce gesture. "The truth is my grandmother could not cook or bake to save her life. That's why Pop-pops had to hire Nana Maria."

Her eyebrow arched at that, causing him to retort defensively, "Oh, don't look at me like that, Carter. I don't come from that type of privileged and entitled family. It was a matter of survival. She and he couldn't feed themselves and Nana Maria needed a place for her family to live. Both families benefited. Her family lived in the apartment above the garage and the Gutierrez kids got to go to a better school."

She nodded and then asked, "So if not biscuits or whatever it is you Americans call them, what makes you love her so?"

"She listens and sees into the hearts of people."

Peggy wanted to snort. It was a gift her grandson had somewhat inherited, as much as a male could – not that she was going to tell him that.

When she didn't say anything, Jack prodded her with, "So what is your second question?"

"I'm thinking of a good one. Shh…" she hushed.

He shot her a skeptical look, his arched blond brows glinting in the dark, but she ignored him, for she was indeed thinking.

In a similar, but less antagonistic conversation with Daniel over coffee and while they were waiting for the matinee of Angie's play to start, she had asked him what his dreams were, his aspirations. He had told her of wanting to find a girl, the girl, get married, and have a family. It was sweet and what she had come to expect from her friend.

When he had asked her to reciprocate, she had been honest and shared that she would have liked something similar, minus it being a man and not a girl, but that she didn't believe she could. When he questioned this, she had explained, "I don't think I could bring innocents into this messed-up world, raise a family in it, if I didn't or couldn't do something about it. And I don't see how I could do both."

Daniel had sympathized, acknowledging her dilemma, but had grown distant since then, and she had not encouraged him otherwise. He deserved some woman who shared his vision and could be fully committed to it.

She wanted to invade Jack's personal space like he had hers, but she didn't want to give the cynical and realist man that was Jack Thompson the opportunity to confirm her fears of unachievable dreams to be true.

So instead she asked, "When you were a kid, what did you dream of being?"

This surprised a delighted laugh from him, and a genuine, non-smirking smile spread across his face as he answered, "A singer like Bing Crosby."

And that startled an amused chortle out of her. He was a terrible singer, as she had the misfortune of bearing witness to on the night they came back from Russia, and whiskey did not improve his vocals. He croaked not crooned as he had insisted all the while she and Ramirez had stuffed his serenading and intoxicated self into a taxi.

"Oh my, how long did that last?"

"A lot longer than you would expect as my friends and family were not of the opinion that brutal honesty is the best policy as my friends these days," he confessed wryly.

And then of course was the inevitable: "How about you?"

"I wanted to be the first girl on the moon."

She said this matter-of-factly and braced herself for censure. But Jack surprised her. His snort wasn't as derisive as it could have been as he dryly noted, "Why doesn't that surprise me that you of all people would shoot for the stars?"

There may have even been a hint of admiration in his tone.

She didn't have an answer to this, nor was she given an opportunity to formulate one. The pawn shop owner's son was opening the door to Mick Riley, the front man of the O'Donnelly family, the arms-dealing kingpins of the Northeast shores.

As Jack handed her the camera to take a few pictures, he whispered, "Well, Boston wasn't such a bust after-all."

"Fisher is going to be unbearable tomorrow. He's worse than Daniel in the I-told-you-so department."

"Yep," he concurred, and then with heavy sigh of resignation, he added glumly, "And, please, don't forget Johnson's validation that this past week hasn't been a waste of resources."

On this miserable note, they waited in silence for the meeting to end before calling it a night.


A/N: I thought Kipling's poem If suited Peggy perfectly, so I wanted to share it with you:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

.

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

.

Anywho, thoughts?