Chapter 6 - June 22, 1943

Note: In this chapter we get to know one of my new favorite characters - Peggy Carter. Are you watching Marvel's Agent Carter? Because you should be.

Dear Bucky,

By the time you read this, I'll be…

Stevie wondered what to write. I'll be different? I'll be taller? If the project didn't go as planned, she could end up worse than she was now. Or dead. She tore the page out of her sketchbook and crumpled it. The whole project was classified anyway; she'd probably never be allowed to send any letter she did write.

Well, if it works, Bucky will be very surprised when he comes back, she thought.

Stevie was sitting on her cot in the empty barracks. It was late afternoon and she had already packed up the rest of her things, to be ready to leave that night. The Colonel had said the test would take place the next morning, somewhere several hours travel from Camp Lejeune, so she would be travelling through the night. The ten other trainees had been folded into the regular Marinette training program, off to become radio operators, code breakers and mechanics. Alice had left with good grace - Stevie had almost expected her to throw a punch, but Alice had just looked at her in passing, a look that blended anger with profound disappointment. Stevie had almost felt sorry for her.

There was a soft knock. Dr. Erskine stood in the doorway with a bottle of something golden-brown and a pair of what looked like stubby wine glasses.

"May I?" He asked.

"Sure," said Stevie, gesturing at the cot in front of her. He sat down and put the glasses and bottle on the foot locker. She felt all her unanswered questions well up inside her. Why had he picked her at the World Expo? Why had he championed her to the Colonel? Why had he chosen her to be the test subject?

Stevie gathered her courage. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Just one?" The doctor arched an eyebrow.

"Why me?"

The doctor nodded. "I suppose that is the one question that matters." He picked up the bottle and held it to the light. "This is from Augsburg," he said. "My city." In those two words, Stevie heard an untold story of loss and pain. The doctor continued.

"So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own. After the last war, they felt…weak. They felt slow. Then Hitler comes along with the marching and the big show and the flags and all that." The curl of his lip underscored his tone of contempt.

"And he hears of me. My work. And he finds me." Fear. That was what Stevie saw in the doctor's face now. "Then he says, you." He pointed at Stevie, the gesture of a remembered conversation. "He says, you will make us strong. Well, I am not interested, so he sends the head of Hydra - the Nazi research division - a brilliant scientist by the name of Johann Schmidt."

If his mention of Hitler carried fear, mentioning Schmidt seemed to evoke something worse. A shadow of terror hung over the doctor when he spoke that name.

"Now Schmidt is a member of the inner circle, and he's ambitious. Even Hitler shares his passion for occult power and Teutonic myth. Hitler uses these fantasies to inspire his followers, but for Schmidt it is not fantasy. For him, it is real. He has become convinced that is great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods, waiting to be seized by superior men."

Doctor Erskine clenched his fist, as if miming the act of seizing power from the earth. Stevie felt a shiver run through her. She had been getting an impression of how big the war was, but now she realized that it was also curiously small. That the fate of the world was hanging upon the mad whims of a few men.

"When Schmidt found my formula and what it can do," the Doctor continued, "he cannot resist. He wants to become the superior man."

This formula's already been used? Stevie hadn't known that. "Did it make him stronger?" she asked.

Doctor Erskine nodded. "Ja," he said, somberly. "But it has...other effects."

That doesn't sound good.

"The serum wasn't ready. But more important, the man." Doctor Erskine looked at Stevie, his brown eyes as searching as they had been in the recruiting station. "The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great. Bad becomes worse." He pointed at her.

"That is why you were chosen," he said. "Because the strong, who have known power all their lives, they lose respect for that power. But the weak know the value of strength. The value of mercy, and compassion."

He had said those last words in a tone of unshakeable confidence, and Stevie realized he was talking about her. He trusted her enough to give her the serum, and believed that she was good enough to make it work. That he believed in her precisely because she was an utter weakling spoiled the moment only a little.

"Thanks," Stevie said. "I think."

Doctor Erskine nodded and fiddled with the bottle, removing a wire cap and pulling out the cork with a soft pop. He handed Stevie one of the glasses and poured a little of the golden liqueur into its round bowl, then poured a glass for himself, raising it as if making a toast.

"Whatever happens tomorrow," he said, "you must promise me one thing."

Stevie nodded. The doctor smiled at her warmly.

"Promise that you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good person. A kind woman."

Stevie smiled back. "I'll drink to that," she said, and raised her glass to touch his. She took a healthy swallow, thinking something that looked so much like a butterscotch hard candy probably tasted just as smooth. It hit the back of her throat like a hot coal and burned all the way down.

"Are you alright?" The doctor asked.

"Fine," Stevie choked out between coughs. "Strong stuff."

He chuckled. "Why don't I have the rest of that," he said, taking her glass from her gently.

As Stevie cleared her throat - relieved to find the lining still intact - Doctor Erskine drained her glass and his own in a few quick gulps, winked at her conspiratorially, and left with the bottle.

They left at sunset in separate cars - Stevie with Agent Carter and Doctor Erskine with the Colonel. Agent Carter told Stevie that they would drive different routes to their destination to throw off potential followers. As to where they were going, Agent Carter wouldn't tell.

"You'll know it when you see it," was all she said. She also said the drive would take all night and Stevie was free to sleep if she wanted to.

"I don't think I can," Stevie said. "Got the jitters, I guess."

"Me too," said Agent Carter. She was driving the car herself. When Stevie asked her about it she said she had started out as a driver - shuttling officers around - and that she had developed a taste for it. "Driving relaxes me," she said.

"Is that how you met all those important people you convinced to let you join the army?" Stevie asked.

"Ah," said Agent Carter. "Well reasoned. Yes, I did use the opportunity to try to convince the higher-ups that my skills were better suited to field work. Mostly they just gave me the brush off." She smiled at Stevie, "You'll never guess who finally gave me my chance."

Stevie shook her head.

"It was Colonel Phillips," Agent Carter said.

"No!" Stevie replied. "He seems so - disapproving. Of everything."

Agent Carter nodded. "The Strategic Scientific Research division was just getting started and he was its American liaison. They had recently secured the support of Howard Stark - you know, the inventor?"

Stevie nodded. How could she forget the World Expo and the tuxedo girls?

"Even so, They were scrambling for funds, for personnel. I found out that they needed an operative for an urgent mission, someone who could speak German without an accent."

"And let me guess," said Stevie. "You can."

"Natürlich," she said. "No one wanted to give up one of their people for an operation with so little chance of success run by a division no one had heard of, but I was able, and available, so Colonel Phillips was forced to send me or give up."

Stevie was eaten up by curiosity. "What was the operation? If it's not classified, I mean."

"Not anymore" said Agent Carter, and seemed to deliberate with herself before grinning. "Why not? I don't get many opportunities to toot my own horn. And telling you will keep me from falling asleep at the wheel."

Interlude - November, 1940 - Castle Kaufmann - The Bavarian Alps

Castle Kaufmann brooded above her as Peggy Carter negotiated the hairpin turns of the mountain road. The manor she grew up in had been quite large, but Castle Kaufmann was a mad medievalist's fantasy of turrets and colonnades, with almost 200 rooms. In its heyday it would have housed the Kaufmann family and their many servants, but now it was the home and base of operations for Johann Schmidt - the head of the Nazi scientific research program known as Hydra - and the prison where he held his captive scientist, Doctor Abraham Erskine. Peggy had reached the intricate wrought iron gate that marked the beginning of the long, curving cobblestone drive. A young, bored, SS officer leaned against the wall of the gatehouse.

"Hello, Gunter," called Peggy.

The young man's face brightened. "Eva!" he said, sauntering up to her lowered window. "Did you have any trouble getting to town? I don't like how they make you scramble up and down that goat path they call a road, running errands for them."

"It's no trouble at all," she said. "I like the drive." Karl, the chauffeur, had been happy to find that the new maid could handle a car - he was getting on in years, and with his arthritic knees, trips to town were both painful and dangerous. It suited Peggy just fine - while "Eva" the maid ran errands, Peggy could make arrangements with her contacts in the village.

"You're so modern, Eva." Gunter smiled at her. "Did you bring me a gift from the village? If you did not, I will accept a kiss in exchange for opening the gate."

Peggy giggled girlishly and suppressed the urge to run over his foot. "Of course I brought you something. Close your eyes."

Gunter obediently closed them, and Peggy pulled a treasure out of the parcels and bags on the passenger seat - a perfect, pink apple. "Now, open."

Gunter's joy was childlike. "You're a magician!" He cried, seizing the fruit and kissing it. "Where did you get it?"

"A magician never reveals her secrets," Peggy said, mysteriously, and a grinning Gunter waved her through the gate.

It was easy enough - grocers and bakers liked having a pretty young girl to listen to them and sometimes help them around the shop. And with little treats like this, she could make sure that Gunter never found what she was really carrying - under the hams and sacks of potatoes she had brought in extra sets of clothes, false moustaches, forged ID papers, and everything else she would need to smuggle Doctor Erskine to safety. Now all she needed was the right moment - the chance to get him out of the castle unseen. So far, though, she hadn't even been able to talk to him - the Doctor was shuffled between the laboratory and his rooms under guard.

Peggy handed the car over to Karl at the garage and hauled the sacks and boxes into the castle, rejecting the aging chauffeur's gallant offer to help. It wouldn't do for him to see her hide one of her parcels behind a hidden panel in the wall of the mudroom, just inside the servants' entrance. By the time she turned twelve, Peggy had found all the secret passages and priest holes in her family's manor, and it hadn't taken her long to find this gem - a servant's staircase running up the wall from the ground floor to the master suite. When Peggy had found it, it had been thick with dust, unused perhaps for decades. It was the perfect place to store her contraband, and, hopefully, the perfect escape route for herself and Dr. Erskine when the time was right. Peggy hung up her coat and dusted off her black dress and white apron carefully before bringing the rest of the packages to Ingrid, the cook.

"Oh, thank you, dear," Ingrid said as she entered, surrounded as usual by baked goods and clouds of fragrant steam. "You're an angel, going shopping for me on what should be your half holiday."

"No trouble," Peggy said with a smile. Servants were the best source of information in a large house, and a little help could win lasting loyalty. She lowered her voice. "How is...he...today?"

The servants talked about Johann Schmidt like this, indirectly and with fear. Schmidt had gained possession of Castle Kaufmann recently, rumor had it, by murdering Graf Ernst Kaufmann in a military coup that had also gotten him control of Kaufmann's Special Weapons division. The servants, in a display of feudal loyalty, hated him immediately - why, Schmidt, that Saupreiẞ, wasn't even Bavarian! - but those who had complained loudest had disappeared overnight, leaving no trace. After that, the other servants kept their complaints to themselves.

Ingrid shook her head. "He's in a black mood," she said, whispering, as if Schmidt could hear her through the thick stone walls. "Very bad. I think his 'guest' is giving him trouble again."

Peggy tutted sympathetically. Ingrid frowned. "And, on today of all days, Heike is ill. I was just about to take his supper up myself, but…"

Ingrid was, like any respectable cook, a large woman of a certain age, and the many flights of stairs between the kitchen and Schmidt's might as well be Mount Everest.

"I'll do it," said Peggy, trying not to sound eager. She had gleaned as much information on Schmidt as she could, but with him shut up in his study or badgering Doctor Erskine in the lab, she hadn't had much opportunity. Ingrid praised her lavishly and promised her an apple turnover upon her return.

Schmidt's study was on one of the castle's higher floors. The hall leading up to it was lined by tall windows that offered a spectacular view of the snow-covered peaks outside - and a freezing draft from the November wind that seeped in through every gap. The guard outside the study door was not young or smiling like Gunter. One of Schmidt's personal guards, his face was as blank as a carved mask.

"Supper for Herr Schmidt," she said, eyes downcast, and he let her in.

Peggy entered cautiously, but Schmidt was not inside. She heard voices coming from behind an inner door - a study within a study? Peggy supposed it made sense in a building as baroque and over-designed as Castle Kaufmann. The study was large, with floor-to-ceiling shelves on two walls and mullioned windows on the third. A fire roared in the huge fireplace, to limited effect, and a heavy wooden table filled the center of the room. Peggy carefully set her tray on it so that she could look around. The shelves had once held the Kaufmann family library, but many of those volumes had been removed to make room for Schmidt's personal collection - tomes in some languages Peggy didn't know and some she didn't even recognize. One looked like it had been written in runes. The table itself was covered in maps - some old, some new - marked with circles, arrows and annotations in red pen. The maps were all of Nordic countries; Denmark, Norway, Finland; and it looked to Peggy as if Schmidt were trying to correlate locations on the old ones with modern towns and cities. Peggy shifted a map aside and saw that Schmidt had left a book underneath it, a leather-bound volume, so old its pages were vellum instead of paper. The book was open at an illustration, still stunningly bright despite the book's obvious age - a man with one eye holding a small blue box, beams of light emerging from it to strike cowering figures below. The illustration seemed to shift and move as she looked at it, the script around its border coiling and uncoiling like a snake. Peggy blinked.

The fire must be playing tricks with my eyes, she thought. The voices behind the door grew louder.

"You are stalling, Doctor." That was Schmidt's voice, cold and dangerous. Doctor? Could he be speaking to Doctor Erskine?

Now's my chance.

Peggy tore the corner off an already battered map, and jotted a note with Schmidt's red pen.

I am an Allied agent. We are arranging your escape. Be ready.

She crumpled the note and held it loosely in her palm, then moved silently to stand just outside the door.

"I am not lying to you, Herr Schmidt," said a softer voice that was probably Dr. Erskine. "The serum is not ready. It would be violation of my oath as a physician to allow you to use it as it is now."

"Is that so?" Schmidt said. "How very...ethical of you." His voice became even more menacing. "But I know of several doctors who do not share your...scruples. Doctors like Arnim Zola. You remember him? You were colleagues, I am told."

Peggy heard the measured tread of Schmidt's boots, and imagined him circling Doctor Erskine like a tiger closing in on its prey.

"Like you, Doctor Zola is studying the limits of human potential...of human...endurance, shall we say. I'm sure he would enjoy getting reacquainted with you. Perhaps he could also meet your wife and daughters. Such exciting research Doctor Zola is doing."

"Please…" Doctor Erskine said, his voice thick with fear. "I swear to you, I am working as hard as I can, day and night. The serum will be ready soon. Please...don't harm my family."

"You have had many months to work, with the best equipment the Reich can supply," Schmidt continued. "Perhaps what you require is a deadline, yes? Some motivation? You have until this Friday. Then, I will test the serum, and if it is not what I require...you and Zola will have a little reunion."

The booted steps grew louder, and Peggy barely jerked back before the door opened and Schmidt himself appeared. He was a tall, lean man, with a high forehead, a face lined in a perpetual frown, and cold blue eyes. Those eyes found Peggy, and he moved like a striking serpent to grasp her around the wrist.

"Listening at keyholes, fräulein?" Schmidt asked, forcing her to walk backward until she bumped up against the table. "Hear anything of interest?" His grip on her wrist was painful. He did not look at her like an angry employer confronting a servant, but like someone considering a troublesome fly, wondering if it was worth the trouble and mess to crush it.

"I was bringing your supper, Herr Schmidt," she said. She didn't have to pretend to be afraid of him. There was something inhuman about the man. "I was about to knock, but it sounded like you were arguing."

Peggy played up her fear and allowed her hand to tremble. Schmidt wouldn't look at her too closely if she was just another terrified servant. "Please," she said, "you're hurting me."

Doctor Erskine had emerged from the inner room and strode quickly to stand next to them. "There is no need for this," he said softly. "You don't have to hurt her to make a point. Look how frightened she is."

Schmidt looked from Peggy to the Doctor and chuckled, a disturbing sound, devoid of mirth. "How gallant the doctor is," he said. "But I can be gallant as well. And I keep my word." He released Peggy and she collapsed against the table, using the motion to slip her note into Doctor Erskine's coat pocket.

"Get out, both of you."

Peggy stayed in character and did what Eva the maid would do. She turned and fled.

The intervening days passed in a blink and then it was Friday. Peggy was certain she hadn't slept more than few hours since Monday - whether the test went well or badly, this was the moment. Peggy had to get Doctor Erskine out of the castle today. All her supplies were ready - maps, electric torches, changes of clothes, food - she had even smuggled in a revolver - but she hadn't been able to communicate with Doctor Erskine at all. With the threat of Arnim Zola hanging over his head, he lived in the lab full-time. She only hoped he had read her message.

Johann Schmidt had spent the day closed up in his study - presumably poring over his old maps and strange books. Peggy had spent the day in a state of high alert and now she was practically vibrating. She found every excuse she could to hover outside the study, dusting already spotless knick knacks. When she came up with an arrangement of dried flowers for the decorative crystal vase - for the second time that day - she saw Gunter slouching outside the door. As always, he greeted her with a smile.

"Eva!" He said melodramatically. "Why are you bringing these dried flowers when you yourself are like the freshest blooming rose?"

"Gunter," Peggy said with mock surprise. "They let you in the house?"

"Klaus is ill," Gunter said - not sadly; there was no love lost between the two. "Food poisoning." He snickered. "He's been on the toilet all day."

"No!" said Peggy. She was not at all surprised, really, because she was the one who put him there - laxatives stolen from Ingrid's supply and snuck into his morning coffee. When the moment for her escape finally came, she would rather be up against smiling, smitten Gunter than the emotionless Klaus. And if Gunter was standing around outside the study…

The doctor is in there with Schmidt, Peggy thought. It felt like an electric charge was running through her. After the months of infiltration and preparation, the time had come.

"No, I am begging you!" Doctor Erskine's voice shouted from behind the door. "You must not! You do not know what it will do!"

Schmidt's voice replied, but through the thick door it was impossible to tell what he was saying. Gunter frowned and put his hand on the doorknob - he seemed to be debating whether to open the door and risk Schmidt's displeasure. Peggy glanced at the heavy crystal vase and wondered if this was the moment to take Gunter down. Her thoughts were interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream. It came from behind the study door, a cry of absolute agony. Peggy had heard that sound before - from the burn victims at the manor.

Gunter threw open the door. Doctor Erskine stood with his hands braced on the heavy table, staring in horror. Inside the study, Schmidt was in a leather armchair, one of his sleeves rolled up. He had injected himself with the serum. He convulsed and writhed, clenching and unclenching his fists, all the while screaming, howling as if he was being burned alive. His face looked strangely melted, and as Schmidt clawed at it, his skin peeled away like a tattered mask. Peggy could see something wet and red beneath. Gunter cursed loudly. Peggy grabbed Doctor Erskine by the arm and dragged him out the room, Gunter slamming the door behind them.

"What...the hell?" Gunter looked back at the door. The horrible screaming was still coming from behind it, on and on. "I….I have to do something….I have to call someone."

If he did, Peggy's opportunity would be lost. She had to act now.

"His face!" She screamed hysterically. "Did you see it? Horrible, so horrible!" She put her hands over her eyes and sobbed, shaking.

Gunter took her by the shoulders. "Eva, it's all right, we'll get someone…" Peggy stepped back and punched him right in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. As he tried to come back to his feet, she took the crystal vase with its dried flower arrangement and broke it over Gunter's head. Doctor Erskine gaped at her.

"Come on!" She said, taking his hand. "They'll be here any minute!" Someone, somewhere, would have heard Schmidt's screams, which were now accompanied by an enormous crashing sound - as if the bookshelves or even the massive table were being overturned.

Peggy pulled Erskine down the corridor, past the row of high windows and around the corner. There was a molding on the last window frame decorated with a carved grapevine, and when Peggy pressed one of the grapes, a panel swung open in the wall, revealing a dark passageway. She pushed Doctor Erskine into it and closed the panel behind them. Not a moment too soon - there was the sound of booted feet and shouting in the corridor outside. She and the doctor stood on a small landing of the servant's staircase she had found. Holding Doctor Erskine's hand in the dark, she led him down the stairs as swiftly and silently as she could, until they reached the bottom, where she had combined her supplies into two fat rucksacks. Peggy pulled her .38 out of one of the bags and gave the other to doctor Erskine, who was wide-eyed and gasping.

"Stay calm, doctor," she whispered, as soothingly as possible. "We're almost out. Do you have everything you need?" All he had were the clothes on his back and a leather bound notebook.

"This is everything," he said, clutching the notebook to his chest. "All my notes. My work."

Peggy nodded. "Good."

The last door of the secret stair opened into the mudroom directly off the servant's entrance; from there it was a quick walk across the gravel drive to the garage. Peggy hoped that Karl the chauffeur would be in the kitchen, drinking coffee and flirting with Ingrid, but as she crept into the garage she heard him humming to himself. He always hummed and sang when he polished the cars. Sometimes he talked to them, too, as if they were the horses the garage used to hold when it had been a stable. Peggy sighed and stepped forward. Karl looked up from where he was buffing a sky blue Alpha Romeo.

"Eva!" he said, smiling. "What brings you out…" and then he saw the gun in her hand.

"Sorry, Karl," Peggy said. "We're going to need the car."

They sped down the mountain road as quickly as Peggy could go without sending them over the edge. Karl's look of confusion and betrayal had pained her, but that was the nature of intelligence work, she supposed. You betrayed some to save others.

"So," Doctor Erskine said. "I take it your name isn't Eva?"

"Peggy Carter," she replied, dropping the German. "Strategic Scientific Reserve."

"British?" Doctor Erskine, asked. "I wouldn't have guessed. Your accent is flawless."

Gravel flew from the wheels of the Alpha Romeo as Peggy brought them around one of the road's sharp turns. Doctor Erskine held onto the dashboard, looking a little green.

"I know that we are fleeing for our lives," he said. "But could we perhaps go a little more carefully?"

"Don't worry, Doctor," Peggy said, bringing the car to a sudden stop. "We'll be going much more slowly now. Help me push."

Together, they shoved the Alpha Romeo over the edge of a steep embankment and watched it tumble down the slope into the river below. Sorry, Karl, Peggy thought again. It had been a beautiful automobile, and lovingly maintained - but leaving it on the road would draw too much attention, and give pursuers too much direction for their search. Peggy and the Doctor left the road and entered the forest, stopping to change clothes once the trees hid them from the street. Peggy traded her maid's uniform for a pair of trousers and a large wool coat, her brown braid tucked up under a cap. Doctor Erskine had changed into a similar ensemble. With some false moustaches, they would look like a father and son coming back from a hunt - at least, from a distance.

That night, they stayed in an abandoned shepherd's cottage. In the next few days they made their way into Switzerland hidden in a cargo train, then passed through occupied France, moving from one Resistance cell to another. Finally, they were taken to England in the hold of a smuggler's boat, where they were received by Colonel Phillips and inducted into the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

"Wow," said Stevie when Peggy's story was done. The car was a bubble of light floating on top of the black and gray landscape. "That is amazing. Really, really amazing."

"Thank you," said Peggy. Another car passed them, sending pools of light and shadow sliding over her face.

"After tomorrow…" Stevie started. "After...the procedure...do you think I could do that? Could I do work like you?"

"I don't see why not," said Peggy. "They'll probably want to run some tests, but after that they'll put you to work, I'm sure. You're clever and brave - you would be a great asset in the field."

"Brave?" Stevie laughed. "You snuck a man out of Germany under Hitler's nose!"

"You jumped on a grenade," Peggy countered.

"Anyone could have done that," Stevie muttered.

"But no one did, except you."

Stevie was grateful the car was dark because she was blushing to the roots of her hair.

"Well...I guess," said Stevie.

They drove in silence for a moment.

"I have a question about your story," said Stevie.

"What's that?"

"What happened to the doctor's family?"

"Ah," said Peggy, frowning. "That didn't end so happily."

From England to New York they all flew first-class on one of Howard Stark's transatlantic seaplanes. True to form, the millionaire-playboy-industrialist had stocked it with enough champagne for three times their number, but Doctor Erskine wasn't interested in celebrating. The entire journey he had been consumed with worry for his wife and daughters, certain that Johann Schmidt would have them killed in retaliation for his escape. He had told Peggy about them - his wife, Greta, had been one of his students when he taught biology at Frederick William University in Berlin. Her parents had not approved of their marriage because of his age - and because he was Jewish and she was not. His two daughters were ten and twelve years old.

After a week in New York, Peggy received a telegram from London - the telegram, the one she had been dreading since she asked her network to search for Greta Erskine. Despite Colonel Phillips' offer to accompany her, she took it to the doctor's apartment in Queens and read it to him herself. Peggy's contact had found records of Greta and the girls in a camp called Dachau. In 1937, an outbreak of typhus had swept through the camp, killing hundreds of prisoners - among them, Greta and the girls. Doctor Erskine listened to her without expression, nodding as she spoke.

"Schmidt knew?" he asked. "For three years, he knew?"

"Yes," Peggy said. "He kept it from you so you would keep working for him. Without the threat to your family, he would have had no hold over you." She felt like she should say something comforting, but how can you comfort someone whose whole life had been ripped away in an afternoon?

"I never knew what Greta saw in me," Erskine said. "I was so much older than she was, so much less...glamorous. And I brought her so much trouble." He took off his glasses carefully and set them on the table. "And now, I never will know."

He put his head in his hands and sobbed. Peggy sat next to him with her hand on his shoulder and felt more helpless than she had in her entire life.

Stevie listened somberly. The war had barely touched her life, yet so many good people had been hurt by it already. How many more would have to pay the price before it was finally over?

Despite her nerves, and her serious train of thought, Stevie found herself nodding off. When she awoke, her glasses were digging into the side of her face, the sun was shining, and they were driving through Brooklyn, of all places.

"Hey," Stevie said, straightening her glasses. "I know this neighborhood." She pointed at an alley. "That's where I stopped Johnny Shotsman from chucking rocks at a stray cat. He threw me in...that dumpster. Right there."

Peggy chuckled. "I told you that you'd know where we were going."

She pulled up in front of a store with a sign that said "Antiques" in fading yellow. "Come on," she said. "We're here."

Notes: Thanks for reading, everyone! I'm so happy that you enjoy this little story that I made. :-)

Thanks are also due to my sister, PhD student in German history (who goes by Hey Gal on the Something Awful forums) for giving me the term Saupreiẞ, and explaining how Bavarians hate non-Bavarians. And, yes, that is an Asgardian book in Schmidt's collection, like the one seen in Thor: The Dark World, which also had moving illustrations.