Moments


A/N: Warning - there be delicious angst ahead.


Jack Injured


"Everyone! Split up among the crowd and check the perimeter! Look for potential threats – except, you Sousa, and you Carter!" Jack instructed as they all piled out of the cars.

They were at the fourth annual of the World Exposition of Tomorrow. And somewhere among the crowd was a Zodiac agent or two that wanted to kill its founder and her friend.

"You two are going to try to find Stark in this mess and try to talk him out of showcasing tonight. I'll check backstage and direct the bo– " he stopped himself just in time from causing a mass panic with the terror-inducing 'b' word, reducing "b– sniffing dogs" to simply, " – the K9 units."

Peggy couldn't help but admire his strategy. If there was going to be any agent aside from her that could talk Howard out of his favorite moment of glory, it would be the anti-thesis of glory-hound, Agent Daniel Sousa.

As Jack disappeared into the mob, Daniel asked her hopefully, "Do you know where Stark will be?"

As Peggy scanned the crowd, she shook her head in the negative, causing Daniel's shoulders to slump.

But then she spotted their salvation. Nodding to the tall thin man near the front of the main stage, she declared happily, "No, but I know who might."

As soon as they were in hearing distance, she shouted for Mr. Jarvis, who signaled to the security guard that they could approach the stage.

"Do you know where Howard is?"

Jarvis shrugged and made a longsuffering face, "Probably celebrating early with his latest No. 1 fan."

"Which would be where?" Daniel prodded.

"In or near his dressing room, I would imagine," he replied sheepishly, again with a shrug, but then their presence and somber expressions got through to him, and he asked hesitantly, his brow furrowing with concern, "What's this about?"

Ignoring him, Peggy turned to Daniel and ordered, "Go and help Jack find Howard backstage."

Daniel did so and was able to get passed the second security guard with the combination of his badge and a nod from Jarvis. She was relieved to see that not just anyone with supposed credentials had an all-access pass.

Finally, she explained to her patiently waiting friend, "One of the Zodiac agents in custody finally broke down in interrogation and informed us that the remaining two agents would know by now that they were the last, and that this would prompt them to engage in their contingency plan."

"Which is?"

Well, there really was no way to sugarcoat it, so she bluntly stated, "Kill Howard Stark. Tonight."

While Jarvis predictably spluttered his astonishment, she scanned the area assessing threats, which is a lot like trying to find a homicidal Waldo in a Fourth of July parade.

To answer his question of "W-w-why?", she mused, "I don't know for sure. To stop him from revealing something? To make a statement? I just don't know, and even if I did, I don't think it would make sense."

'There are no good angles for snipers. Crowd control has managed to keep the audience at a safe distance, which leaves the threat coming from either No. 1 fan as Dottie 2.0 or from a staff member…'

"Walk me through Howard's presentation," she instructed.

"What?"

"I'm sure you have watched the rehearsal for this. Walk me through from when Howard enters stage right until he exits stage left."

"Oh. Well, actually, it's the other way around. He enters stage left…"

As Jarvis described the scene to her, she pictured it: Howard walking up the stairs on the left, past the camera, to shake the introducer's hand, the speech is given…yada-yada-yada, award is given, Howard shakes award presenter's hand for the camera at the other end of the stage, exit stage …

"The camera!" she blurted excitedly. "The first one. It's redundant."

Jarvis looked at the cloth-covered 'camera' at the other end of the stage quizzically, and seeming unfazed by its presence, he noted dryly, "Which is probably why it's covered."

Peggy's instincts were screaming that something was off. She scowled at it and the one closer to them, carefully contrasting the odd differences: It's longer and narrower and while covered has an operator fiddling with it… and it is on a tri-pod

Her mind raced and filled in the blanks that her subconscious had been telling her all along – This was no camera, but some form of sub-machine gun.

Even as she finally made this realization, she knew that her mind hadn't worked fast enough, because she could see that Howard was on his way out, and she could do nothing to save him in time. She was on the wrong end of the stage.

As she frantically searched for anyway to stop the horror of watching her friend get mowed down in front of her, her terrified gaze met that of Jack's and then she found herself screaming. To this day, she doesn't know what, but it must have been enough because it clued Jack into the danger.

And the next thing she knew her partner was leaping in front of her friend, tackling him to the ground, and being riddled with bullets.

~A~

"Is he going to make it?"

Peggy shrugged. She had been asking herself that over and over again, praying and begging for the answer to be yes, as she stared helplessly through the hospital room window at his comatose body, which was pinned and poked and be-tubed to the point she did not know where he started and they began.

After a moment's pause, she answered her old friend tiredly, "They say if he doesn't get an infection, his chances are good…but I just don't know."

"Geez, Peg, I'm so sorry…" Howard exclaimed in a half-whisper as he rubbed his hands through his hair in a gesture fraught with equal helplessness. "I know he was your partner, and if he doesn't pull through, I – "

She couldn't take it anymore. His pity, his guilt, she just couldn't, not when she had her own to bear. So she whirled on him and hissed bitterly, "You'll what? Torture yourself like you did over Steve? Build me a tin-man partner to fight the evil witches of the world? One with the perfect combination of brain and brawn with the added benefit of no actual life force to mourn when he inevitably dies because that's what this business does? Chews up all the good men and spits them out or takes them to the Void?"

Howard stood there, mouth-agape, his eyes briefly flickering with hurt and anger and understanding, before he buried them or shrugged them off or whatever Howard does with unwanted emotions, and in their place was self-deprecating humor.

"No, I have learned that self-flagellation does not look good on me, and even I know that I have limitations," he acknowledged with a slight wry grin, which quickly changed into a teasing one as he added with exaggerated thoughtfulness, "But now that you mention it… some part of me is itching to take you up on that challenge, Dorothy."

When that did not get a smile out of her, the mercurial man dropped his façade of levity, fixed her with his most somber of expressions, and vowed, "But seriously, Peg, I will make it my life mission to find some way to offer a modicum of protection for those idiotic heroes who go flying about trying to shield the rest of us idiots, or pathetic geniuses as the case maybe."

It wasn't the smoothest of speeches that Howard had ever made, but it was certainly heartfelt. And if anyone could do it, this 'pathetic genius' could.

"Promise?"

"On the life of my firstborn."

If she had been in any other state of mind, she would have asked him how many bastard kids he had out there. But she wasn't, so she simply nodded and turned to resume her silent vigil.

Howard sensing that he was dismissed gave her shoulder a quick comforting if awkward squeeze and then left.

As she stared at Jack's near lifeless body, she tried not to think of all that could go wrong and instead on all that had gone right so far.

Jack had been grazed on the shoulder and his side, missing any major arteries and bone. At worst he would have 'heroic scars' to dazzle women with. His leg had taken two bullets, again missing his femoral artery and bone. He had taken one in the ass, a much less swoon-worthy scar. But the ones that really counted were the three he took in the chest. One had collapsed a lung, and the two others had been inches from his heart.

Overall, the doctors had said he had been extremely lucky. Although the bulletproof jacket had not been up to protecting Jack from assault rifle caliber bullets at such close range, it had slowed them enough to lessen the impact and thus internal damage. But even then, he might not have survived if there had not already been medical personnel nearby to do immediate emergency procedures. He would have bled out or drowned in his own blood otherwise.

That last part she knew to be true. In fact at the time, she had thought it had happened a dozen times over.

She remembers him coughing up blood and leaking it everywhere. Of her and Daniel's hands and clothes being soaked with it. After they had returned the favor and pumped the shooter full of lead, they had raced to Jack's side and tried to stop the bleeding.

She doesn't remember much after Jack had been loaded into the ambulance, not what she did with those bloody clothes (burned them she hoped), not what they did with the shooter's body or his camera-rifle.

She did remember tracking down the remaining Zodiac agent to the docks, where he was attempting to be smuggled out of the country. She remembered aiming her Colt .45 at him and instructing him to 'give himself up' and trying not to give into temptation to squeeze the trigger just a smidge.

Whether she would have or not, was a decision that had been taken out of her hands by Dottie's sniper bullet, which claimed him first.

Peggy knew it was her, as the rifle that was left behind had a handkerchief tied to it with a smudge of red lipstick.

After that, Johnson had pulled her from the hunt and sent her home for the night. But she had found herself here, holding vigil, as if by her willpower alone she could save him.

Which was ridiculous, because nothing was more obvious than the fact that the ghost of a woman reflected back in the window was of no use to anyone.

But she couldn't go home to sleep. Every time she tried, Jack's bloody flight to shield Howard and his bleeding, gasping for breath body flashed across her retinas. She had never found Steve's body, and so his voice, tinny through the radio, haunted her dreams, and now Jack's bullet-torn body did too.

'I hate him. I officially hate him. If he had stayed as the office's obligatory pompous jackass, I wouldn't care so damn much. But nooo, now he is something else. He means something else…'

She doesn't know what he meant – means – to her, but she could admit, even if only to herself, that he does mean something, and she was terribly afraid that like with Steve she would not get the chance to explore that something.

She glanced at her watch and counted down the hours until the earliest time she could get away with being back in the office.

For the only good thing about all of these tumultuous and torturous feelings was that their prisoners sensed them in her, bubbling just beneath the surface.

And when she questions them, she is truly terrifying.