A/N: So glad everyone enjoyed chapter one. Here's chapter two!

Enjoy!

Something soft and scratchy rubbed against Jane's skin. She turned to lay on her opposite side, but the lumps in her mobile home mattress had gone completely out of whack. That one loose spring was no longer poking her armpit, and unless she was imagining it, there were bits of straw sticking out of the sides. Trust Darcy to get extra creative with her pranks. As soon as Jane got up, she was giving that girl a piece of her mind. First that stupid TV, now this. No wonder Jane had to go to the roof last night and clear her head-

She'd been on the roof. And then that storm, and then her machine, and then-

Jane catapulted out of bed. Her surroundings were in no way familiar to her. A square shaped ten by ten office with no equipment, no tools, not even a clock. No way of knowing the time of day or how long she'd been unconscious or where she even was.

"Calm down, Jane," she said, rubbing the sand from her eyes. "Think. You're a scientist and you can figure this out. Just stay calm and focus."

The room had few distinguishing features. The glow of a kerosene lamp cast a dim light around walls painted murky brown. The general clutter, while extensive, gave her little by way of who worked here. Stacks upon stacks of files weighed down a wooden desk that had seen better days. A woman's coat hung from a nail embedded in the wall. Old time war propaganda posters adorned the few portions of wall not hidden by boxes. The whole place screamed 'temporary living conditions' but to Jane's increasing alarm, that was all it said.

"Have to calm down. Have to think…"

"That's always a good idea." A woman Jane had never seen before came in. She was around her age, brown hair and eyes, probably taller than her, and dressed in feminine business attire that wouldn't be out of place in a WWII museum.

In fact, now that she thought about it, everything in this room looked like it came out of a museum, right down to the wall calendar hanging over the woman's shoulder.

"What's going on?" She put her head in her hands, wishing she could feel the roof beneath her instead of itchy straw.

"I was rather hoping you could tell me," said the woman, her British accent lent a soothing quality to her voice. It reminded Jane of her grandmother. "Are you hungry? I couldn't get much from the mess hall, but I did manage to sneak this."

She held out a peanut butter sandwich on white bread, Jane's least favorite kind of bread. Her stomach rumbled regardless. She'd skipped lunch yesterday and only ate half her dinner. Thanking the woman, she took a bite of the nearly stale bread and it almost tasted good. "How long was I out?"

The woman checked her watch, her very old-fashioned watch. "A few hours. It was past midnight when I found you. How are you feeling? Any headaches?"

Jane's head felt like someone had pulled it off, shook it like a soda can, and then stuck it back on her neck. "I'm fine. Just confused. I don't know what happened last night and I don't like not knowing things."

The woman nodded sympathetically. "Well, my name is Margaret Carter, Peggy for short. Currently, you're on the New Mexico military base. I couldn't tell you how you got here as I'm not entirely sure myself."

All Jane remembered after the storm and seeing her double was falling. She'd fallen endlessly into the void. By the time she landed she was either already knocked out or too dazed to commit anything to memory. If she thought hard, a voice like Peggy's poked through the fog.

"My generator," Jane muttered. "It went off. I think it malfunctioned. The lightning…" Her head throbbed again.

"Are you sure you don't need an aspirin?" asked Peggy.

"No, thank you," said Jane, "Just give me a minute."

Jane threw off the blanket to find herself dressed barring her shoes. Her blue jeans and plaid shirt clashed horribly with the drab browns and whites of the office. She checked her pocket to find it empty, but when she looked up, Peggy had her wallet in hand and an apologetic look on her face.

"Sorry, I did look inside," she said. "I normally wouldn't pry, but given you fell out of a hole in the sky in front of an active military base, it seemed pertinent."

"No problem." Jane took it back. She didn't bother checking the contents. All she had in there was her ID, a library card, and a credit card that expired last month. All her cash was kept in her coat pockets or the lockbox in the bottom drawer of her desk.

"So with that in mind, we need to figure out what to do here, Ms. Foster," Peggy said.

"Doctor," Jane corrected automatically. "I'm a doctor of astrophysics. You can call me Jane, though."

Peggy appeared more than impressed and laced her fingers together in her lap. "All right then, Jane. Do you know what year it is?"

"I know what year it should be," Jane said, looking again at the calendar and then at Peggy's period clothes. "I have a feeling it isn't."

"Today is Tuesday, May 11th, 1943."

That settled it. The universe hated Jane Foster. For whatever reason, it had some kind of vendetta against her, and it was going to dangle all her hopes and dreams in front of her like cheese to a mouse, only to snatch it away at the last second. She met Thor and learned her theories were correct, and then he disappeared, taking the magic with him. She built her first prototype generator and got it through basic testing with a hitch, and then a stupid storm scrambled the circuits and sent her back in time.

Boy, wouldn't Darcy love hearing about this?

Assuming Jane found a way back to the present which was unlikely without her-

"By the way, you had this with you when you fell." Peggy picked up the remote transmitter off the floor. It had scuff marks down one side and the screen was cracked, but it was the most perfect thing Jane had ever seen.

"Oh thank God," Jane snatched it up and hugged it to her chest. "Thank God thank God thank God. I don't even believe in God, but thank God. Now I might be able to get home."

"Do you know how to make it work?"

Jane scoffed at Peggy. "I'll have you know I built it myself. I know exactly how to use it."

She pressed a button, which immediately popped out. Along with every other button on the console. Also, the battery appeared to be dead, and when she opened the back cover, it was welded to the spring.

Though Peggy didn't laugh, Jane could see it in her eyes. She scowled at the remote. "I will know how to use it once I fix it."

"Just so we're clear," said Peggy, "I'm to assume you're from the future."

Somehow, Jane had forgotten Peggy could hear every word of her musings. It was a good thing she hadn't blurted out anything about Thor or Asgard or else this conversation would be even more painful. "Er- yes, I am… which I know sounds crazy, but-"

Peggy held up a hand. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never believe it, but seeing as I did, I'd be a fool to deny it."

"You're taking this incredibly well," said Jane. If it was her, she'd be screaming by now.

"I'm a special intelligence agent," said Peggy. "I've seen and heard things you couldn't begin to imagine. This might not be quite in the same vein, but I've learned to expect the unexpected."

You don't get more unexpected than spontaneous time travelers.

"I guess that solves one problem," said Jane. Outside, the sun was just rising, and a jaunty rendition of Reveille had awoken the sleeping soldiers for another day of fighting Nazis.

Because this was 1943, the middle of World War II.

She was in 1943…

"Are you all right?" Peggy asked, concern washing over her. "You're looking very pale."

"I'm fine!" Jane's voice broke. "Just fine. Processing. Processing a lot. Not every day I wake up seventy years in the past."

"If it helps," Peggy said, her words measured like she was containing a healthy freak out of her own, "It's not every day I meet someone from seventy years in the future."

Jane chuckled. She had a feeling she was going to like Peggy Carter. If nothing else, she had that going for her. She could've been found by some hard-nosed drill sergeant type who would disbelieve her story have her carted off to the nuthouse. The kind where mild depression was cured with lobotomies and the bathroom was whatever spot of the floor was cleanest. Or maybe she'd be pegged as a German spy and they'd chain her up and interrogate her for Nazi secrets. Secrets she couldn't give because seventy years from now, that would not be part of the curriculum for high school American History classes.

"Okay," Jane rubbed her temples as if that would banish all intrusive thoughts to the pit from whence they came. "No one else can find out about this."

"I agree," Peggy said, patting a trunk next to her. "Though if you wish to blend in, I'd suggest a wardrobe change."

She waited outside as Jane buttoned up a clean blouse and tucked the ends into a knee length skirt. Her clothes went into a burlap sack which was then shoved into the corner of Peggy's trunk under five more identical shirts. Her hair she pulled into a lopsided bun and secured with a pin. The only mirror in the room was too small to give her a full-length view of herself, but from the shoulders up, her new forties look was approaching passable.

"Done?" Peggy asked, peeking in.

"Mostly," Jane said, adjusting the shirt. It hung loosely over her chest in a way Peggy would never have to worry about. "There are certain undergarments I don't think we could share. And I won't lie, I haven't felt this kind of inadequacy since high school."

Peggy smiled. "We can get whatever you need in town. I'll be in filing paperwork all morning, but afterward, my schedule is clear."

"That would be great," Jane said before another thought gave her pause. "Unless we shouldn't. I'm not supposed to be in this time period. Anything I do or say or touch could drastically change the course of history!"

"You're already wearing my clothes," Peggy remarked.

'And me wearing your clothes may have drastically changed history!" Jane paced around the room, as much as the cramped space would allow. "I only got here because of a freak accident. I don't know how time travel works. No one does! All anyone's ever had is theories. If multiverse theory is true, then maybe I've created a new timeline split off from the old one. Or maybe I didn't go to the past but rather I entered an alternate universe where the second world war is still ongoing. And if this is the same universe, any mistake I make could erase my own existence! I might just solve the grandfather paradox if I'm not careful."

"The what?"

"Another theory," Jane explained, not slowing her step. "The idea is that if you went back in time, you wouldn't be able to kill your grandfather because then you'd never be born, and if you were never born, then you couldn't have gone back in time and killed your grandfather in the first place."

Peggy blinked a few times. "Were you intending to murder your grandfather while you're here?"

Jane's shoulders sagged. "Okay, but there's no telling how my presence in the past will affect the future. My best bet is to lay low and devote all my energy to getting home ASAP."

"I'm happy to help however I can," said Peggy. She pulled a jacket off a nail hammered halfway into the wall and threw it around Jane, who stuck her arms through the sleeves without complaint. "There. My shirt will look more like it fits you with this over it. By the way, what is 'asap'?"

Jane's eyes bulged out of her skull. "You don't have that expression yet? Oh… oh no. Oh my God-"

"Relax!" Peggy ordered. "I won't ask again and I won't repeat it. I don't know so much about time mechanics as you, but I'm fairly certain if something had changed, we would know by now."

Jane could have argued that the rule of time over all life and matter meant any changes to the larger world would also come with altered memories. That tomorrow she could wake up with two extra toes, antennas, and green skin and think nothing was different. But the weight of her situation had come down like a block of solid concrete to her chest, and nothing sounded better to her than a good night sleep. Preferably with alcohol in her system, and lots of it.

'Darcy was right, I should've just gone out and gotten drunk,' Jane thought miserably. 'Now I'm in nineteen goddamn forty-three.'

She sunk onto the bed, bunches of rough straw jabbing her in the behind. Her energy drained, she didn't bother scootching over. With her luck, she'd just land on something sharper. She grabbed her unfinished sandwich and ate it in two bites, washing it down with a glass of water helpfully provided by Peggy.

'Eating that sandwich changed the future,' her inner voice whispered. 'Someone else was supposed to use that bread. Maybe it was the last of the loaf. Maybe they were starving to death. Maybe they're dead because they had nothing to eat. Congratulations Jane, you just potentially eliminated someone's children and grandchildren."

"Peggy, was there more bread where you got this?" Jane asked, hating herself for the stupidity of the question.

"We have a whole shelf full in the mess hall. Plenty to go around."

Jane sighed with relief-

"That was the last of the peanut butter, though."

-and moaned in agony.

"All right, now that you look the part, we have to figure out where you're going to stay." Peggy placed her hands in her lap, her posture flawless in a way Jane's very British mother had tried and failed to instill in her daughter.

Jane slouched over. "I guess I can't hide in the closet."

"I have an apartment, but it's back in London. Much too far to travel with a stowaway. Are you sure you can't interact with anyone?"

And there was the painful truth staring Jane right in the face. The truth all scientists had to face at least once, if not multiple times, in their careers. "I don't know. I honestly have no idea. I've already talked to you and nothing's happened. Nothing I know about anyway."

"Well, fortunately, I'm not meant to leave this base until the end of the week," said Peggy. "As long as no one sees you, that should give us enough time to come up with a plan."

The door swung open, admitting a middle-aged man in a decorated uniform. He carried with him an unoppressive but powerful aura of authority, helped by his far greater height and the rough lines of an aging face. "Agent Carter, we've received word from Dr. Erskine. Our base at Camp Lehigh is up and running. Have your bags packed by 0500 tomorrow. We won't be back." He turned abruptly to Jane, his eyes dark and hawk-like. "Who are you?"

If Jane didn't have a face for her scary analytical drill sergeant before, she did now. Her arms snapped to her sides, awaiting the straitjacket he would inevitably request. Peggy wasn't much better off. In the short time she'd known her, Jane's impression of Peggy was that she was used to being in control, be it over others or her own emotions. She embodied Stiff Upper Lip to a T, and unlike some of her mother's old friends, it never came off as a pose. There were two sides to every person, though, and all that grace had melted away. Peggy was as speechless as Jane, better only in that she recovered first.

"Colonel Phillips," she said, placing herself between the man and Jane. "I beg your pardon, but I wasn't expecting you until after your meeting with the Brass."

"It was cut short," Colonel Phillips said, eyes narrowing. "Sorry for interrupting your little get together, Agent, but I wasn't aware you'd be bringing civilians onto a restricted army base against regulations."

"Sir, allow me to explain-"

Jane would never know what kind of half-baked lie Peggy had cooked up to magically make this go away. Her mind rushed along a mile a minute. She was running on autopilot, standing up and clearing her throat and putting on her most professional face long before her conscious mind had processed 'stand'.

"I can see you're busy, Agent Carter, so I think I'll go and get a jump on that filing now." Her mother's voice sounded in the back of her skull. Johanna Foster lived in America for twenty-six years, but she never lost her thick Scouse accent. Jane's imitation of it was middling at best, but under this kind of pressure, she'd dare the greatest actor in the world to do better.

She moved to the door, fully expecting to be stopped. Within two steps, the colonel's arm had blocked her. "You didn't answer my question," he said.

Jane swallowed. She brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh dear, where are my manners? Forgive me, Colonel Phillips, I am Jane…" 'Not your real name! Make something up! HURRY!' "Cinderhouse. Jane Cinderhouse."

He raised an eyebrow. "Jane Cinderhouse."

"Yes sir," she saluted, in the process nearly smacking him in the face. Mortification burned a deep hole in her stomach as she went on. "I've just been appointed Agent Carter's new administrative assistant. It's an honor to meet you."

"Likewise," Phillips said, shaking her hand. When that skin to skin contact didn't tear the space-time continuum apart, Jane breathed a little easier, but they weren't out of the woods yet. "I wasn't informed Agent Carter was getting a new assistant."

"Ms. Cinderhouse received her assignment this morning," Peggy interjected, slipping into the scene like every word she said was cold hard fact. "I'm surprised our colleagues in the SSR didn't tell you. Would you like me to make some calls?"

"I can do that myself," said Phillips. He hadn't taken his eyes off Jane, and she knew he was sizing her up. Seeing if she had what it took to make it in a high-stress military environment. Two months ago, that would've been a big fat N-O, but after surviving Norse gods and alien robot attacks, World War II would be a cake walk.

'I hope…'

"I'm pleased to be working alongside such distinguished officers as yourself and Agent Carter, Colonel Phillips."

"Happy to serve your country, you mean."

"Yes sir," Jane almost lost the British inflection there and coughed to cover it. Phillips had yet to cease his appraisal of her, even as he backed out of the room and spoke to Peggy:

"I'll be waiting for a report on Ms. Cinderhouse's credentials. If I don't have it by the time we reach Camp Lehigh, you and I are going to have words."

"Understood," said Peggy.

His steps were heavy as they disappeared down the hall. Jane fell back on the mattress, no longer caring if it wanted to beat her up. It was suddenly and for the next five seconds the most comfortable bed in the world. "That could've been better, but it also could've been worse. I'd count that as a win."

"For now," said Peggy, opening the door a crack and looking out. When she was satisfied there would be no more unwanted visitors, she closed and locked it. "Where on earth did you get cinderhouse from?"

"Let's just say it's as weird in my time as it is here."

"Fair enough," Peggy nodded. "Good work thinking on your feet, but you realize you've put yourself in a bind here. Colonel Phillips is a hard man to fool. If he thinks you're lying to him, he will get the truth out of you."

'And then I'll be put away,' Jane thought with a shiver. She'd forgotten all about that, and now her mind filled with images of padded cells and foot long needles and sadistic orderlies with no laws or ethics codes to stop them from doing what they pleased to the vulnerable patients.

"Fortunately, I have friends in the SSR who owe me favors," Peggy said, breaking Jane from her musing. "They can have all the documentation drawn up by the time we reach the East coast."

"But isn't that against the law?"

Peggy smiled in a way that reminded Jane how little she knew about this woman. "The only thing you have to worry about is how many cabinet drawers there are to sort through. That is if you wish to stick to this assistant story."

Jane shrugged. "Don't really have a choice, do I?"

Logic dictated that if her current interactions with people from the past hadn't destroyed the universe, any more to come would do no greater damage. Of course, she wouldn't know for sure until her remote was fixed, but for now, she dismissed the thought as negativity bias. Her sanity wouldn't last otherwise. As long as she kept her head down, didn't get buddy buddy with the soldiers, and avoided involvement in any major historical events, she'd be perfectly fine and home before the month was out.

Which meant she wouldn't get to live her grandma's dream of kicking Adolf Hitler in the balls.

Oh well. You can't have it all.