straightshooter | winter carter } { the danger is i'm dangerous and i might just tear you apart

Current Mood: confused

Entry tags:

winter carter } { the danger is i'm dangerous and i might just tear you apart

SHIELD Director Margaret Carter was killed in the line of duty on April 7, 1950.

Or at least that's how it was reported.

It was a terribly tragic affair. The car went up like fireworks on the fourth of July, and it was so destroyed that any chance of finding let alone identifying the remains was out of the question, but there's no way she could have survived. Howard mourned her, the world mourned her, and for all intents and purposes, one of America's top intelligence assets was dead.

It would take seventy years and a series of incredibly effective military assaults for anyone to realize that that unassailable truth was wrong, and by then it might as well be the truth because Peggy Carter as they know it is gone. The person who's left behind isn't really a person at all - she's a weapon of war, something unbelievably sharp more like a sword than a blunt instrument. She's precise and surgical, and a deadly shot and most of the world believes she's a man for so long that it's possible she even believes it.

Except for the rare moments of clarity when she doesn't.

It's in one of those moments that she pulls Captain America from the Potomac. He calls her his best girl and there's a moment where it tugs at something inside of her, something unraveling and releasing a shower of something inside of her that she doesn't understand. All those years in the cold, feeling nothing, caring about nothing and there's something about this man, this target, this body she should just leave to complete her mission that makes her want to act against orders.

She tried to tell Pierce that she knew him. Every moment she has with him only confirms that more and more. So when he falls to the water, bleeding, knowing that he would probably drown and her mission would be completed, she deviates dragging him up out of the water to the shore.

She can't leave him there, however. Can't simply let things lie. She steals a car, shoves him none-to-gently into the back seat, and drives. She can steal the supplies from a local hospital, take him back to one of the appointed safe houses, and do the medical treatment herself.

And maybe when he's conscious again, she can question him and find out why he keeps calling her "Peggy."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It will be a long while before he awakens again. There is a soft groan when he's shoved in the backseat, but otherwise he's still save for some painful breathing. His body is focused on one thing at present: recovery. The Winter Solider may not have killed him, but she did enough that even his body is forced to work overtime to repair the damage. That's not to say Steve won't try to push past his body's limitations. It's what he's done most of his waking life. There are flickers of consciousness throughout his treatment. His fingers twitch, his brow knits, and he nearly says something once.

That is most she will get out for at least a day. When he does eventually come to he opens his eyes as it if it's the most challenging thing in the world after turning his head. He tries look around despite one of his eyes being badly swollen still and asks, "Where...?" Steve's not sure what he wants to know exactly. His head is too cloudy. It might have something to do with the amount of times he's been hit in the head in the past forty-eight hours.

"You're in a safehouse."

Her voice doesn't even have her usual clipped British accent. With her identity went everything that identified her as a person, and those that conditioned her had an American or Russian accent. She makes her way closer so that he can see her and not have to move too much.

"You lost a great deal of blood. You should be resting."

He misses the accent because it's hers. Everything about the woman he knew was amazing. That doesn't diminish his fondness for the person in front of him. It should be clear from the relief in his eyes when he sees her. It's like he couldn't properly breathe up until the second he caught sight of her. "You're alive." He sighs deeply in relief which makes him wince after a second. "I was worried you'd get pinned again by the beams and drown. I... no." His brows knit. He remembers an arm reaching out to him now. "You pulled me out of the water. You saved me."

Good luck getting him to sleep again short of drugging him.

No, Steve, you need to rest so that she can interrogate you. Do as you're told.

Her eyes narrow as she glances over to him, studying his face as she tried to infer the meaning behind his words. There's an emotional weight to them, one that she doesn't entirely understand and she doesn't want to respond until does. However, they don't have the time for that - she wants the answers more.

"I recovered an asset." She glances away after that, checking his vitals to make sure he wasn't over-stressing himself. He's no good to her if he becomes unresponsive. "You were no good to me dead."

He tenses at the word asset because no. He refuses to go down the road no matter how helpless he is right now. Steve looks about as ready for a fight as a man who can barely move his head can be until Peggy adds herself. He relaxes somewhat, but still eyes her critically. "I'm an asset to you? Just you?" Because they need to be clear on this right now otherwise he will escape the first chance he gets.

"My mission was to eliminate you. They don't want you as an asset."

But she does. She has questions that need answering, information that can only be provided by him, and she's not willing to let him go yet. She may still eliminate him when the time comes, but not until he's filled in the blanks.

Steve relaxes further and cracks a crooked smile as if sharing a joke with a friend. "Just as long as they still want me dead." He can deal with that. As much as he wished Peggy would stop talking about him in such clinical terms he's too happy to see her alive to complain. It does help he's too exhausted to do more than crack a smile and talk softly. He'll at least try to stay on point even if that point is unlikely to line up with hers.

"So what good am I to you like this, Peggy? Aside from friendly company."

She doesn't know how to talk to him except in clinical terms. She doesn't know how to communicate outside of them. Words are still a mostly foreign concept, but she can speak. She just doesn't always choose to use it.

Then he calls her that name again, and she tenses, fingers gripping his wrist a little too tightly as she checks his pulse.

"Who is Peggy?"

"You." He frowns not only from the uncomfortable grip, but the fact that this information is lost to her over what he can only assume were years of suffering. Steve doesn't hesitate to continue his answer. She deserves to know who she is. "Your name is Margaret Carter. The people who care about you call you Peggy. We fought together in the War. You were a brilliant agent who saved a lot of lives including mine."

He smiles wistfully. This is actually making him a little tired so forgive him if he loses his train of thought. "You still owe me that dance."

She pulls away from him as he speaks, and the words, at first, mean nothing. The name is just a name, and she's been in a lot of wars - or at least, she thinks she has. It feels like there's been many battles with very little rest in between, and there are moments where a part of her aches for it, aches for something other than cold and darkness but there wasn't anything she could do to change that.

It's that last sentence that jolts something inside of her. An intense sadness and a flash of an old console with a microphone. Her cheeks are wet and her voice is shaking as she speaks.

The Stork Club, eight o'clock. And don't you dare be late.

She won't realize until after the fact that she may have said that out loud.

His face crumbles for a moment. "That's right. You were supposed to teach me how to dance." A sad smile follows shortly afterward. Those words are etched into his heart. He'll never forget them and it seems she didn't either. "But, I was late. Really, really late. If I had found another way back then, none of this would have happened. I'm sorry, Peggy. I should have been there to dance with you."

That part of her that's feeling something, something she doesn't understand, turns redhot at the sound of the apology. She isn't sure if it's at him or directed at something else entirely but she doesn't know what to do with the information he's presenting her. Or the apology. She doesn't understand what he's apologizing for, mostly because she doesn't remember it.

"Stop calling me that."

Peggy. Even if he says she's this person, she's conscious enough to realize that right now, she's not. And him expecting her to be isn't going to go any better.

"It's who you are." It's simply stated because it's undeniable to Steve. She can't stop being Peggy even when her identity and life is stripped away. Even in a haze of pain, Steve accepts the obvious truth that things are different now. They can't go back to the way things were. He's willing to show that he understands that. "If you want me to call you something else now, I will."

She relaxes slightly at the offer to call her something else, but the catch to that is she doesn't know what to have him call her. She doesn't have another name, unless it's given to her for a mission. All she has is a bunch of unanswered questions.

"I don't want you to call me anything." She takes a breath regains herself, and turns to face him. "I just want you to answer my questions."

He is getting through to her or he thinks he is. Steve can't do much except for talk right now and even that is pretty draining. Still it's something to work with especially if Peggy wants answers. He just needs to find a way to drag this out as long as possible. "You don't think that will sound rude when I answer? I can't keep calling you you. It's disrespectful." His tone makes it very clearly he doesn't want to do that. In fact, it seems like Steve thinks he's chatting with an old friend more than anything else.

Peggy frowns at the last word. Disrespectful. It's been a long time since anyone's cared about being respectful of her, teaching her as anything but a tool to achieve their own ends. Her brow furrows in confusion and she shakes her head.

"What does that matter?"

It's a bit of a shock to hear her ask that. The woman he knew fought hard to be treated as she deserved as an equal. He supposes it shouldn't be though. They've made Peggy do a lot of things aren't very much like her. He tries to answer as neutrally as possible, but there's a stubborn undercurrent to his words. He's not going to compromise on this. "It's an acknowledgement. That's me saying that you're a human being who deserves my full attention and consideration while I answer your questions. You is dismissive. I might as well being saying that I don't care about your questions or you. Let me take a nap already."

He releases a tired sigh. "That's not how I feel so don't try to make me do that. I won't so either you give me something to work with here or else I'll be forced to go back to sleep."

She studies him for a moment, weighing the consideration in what he says. She doesn't want to be this Peggy, because she's not. Being Peggy comes with expectations - mission parameters that have not been defined. She could go undercover with the best of them, but she needs to know the rules to be an effective operative, and here she doesn't.

Peggy is an unacceptable cover, but she doesn't know what to give him in return. She hasn't been given enough information to form one.

"If you're tired you should sleep." Wearing himself out is no good, and it will give her time to form an appropriate answer. "Your body needs the rest to heal. We can resume when you wake up."

Steve wants to protest, but even his good eye has gotten too heavy to keep open. He still has a long way to go before he's even remotely alright again. "Can you do something for me?" He doesn't wait for her answer. Steve continues on, "Let my team know I survived. I don't want them searching the bottom of the river for me." He already unknowingly put that sad fate onto Howard once. He doesn't want that to happen to his son or the others.

She pauses for a moment, weighing the risks. It's easy enough to do. She has a computer, she can spoof a text from his phone and make it seem as though it's coming from him. If they're not looking for him, it means she has longer to question him, which is preferable.

"Fine. I'll do it."

Steve exhales audibly. He's relieved he doesn't need to make a case here to essentially his captor. (He's not as dumb as he pretends to be. He knows what's going on here.) All that's left for him slip away for a little while and hopefully be strong enough to do more than talk to Peggy. There are a lot of goals ahead of him. He has to get away from whatever is left of HYDRA with Peggy, catch up with his allies, and figure out where to go next in this crazy new world of theirs. He falls asleep thinking about it, only whispering a soft goodnight before he fades away completely.

She watches him carefully as he drifts off to sleep. No one has ever been quite so polite to her as they went unconscious before. All the same, she's just going to send the spoof text, then sit and wait for him to wake up.

Maybe he'll have something useful in the morning.

It's closer to noon than morning the next time he wakes up. He took a significant amount of damage. Steve needs all the rest he can get. He might have slept longer if not for the nightmares creeping in towards the end. He sees ice. He falls, Bucky falls, and there's death raging on the battlefield in multiple countries. He wakes up when it hits the hellicarrier gasping for air and trying to grab his shield. He has to save those long dead people.

Her attention is drawn back to him as the nightmares start, the sounds of him moving bringing her back into the room. She doesn't try to wake him, her curiosity at what he's seeing overriding the interruption his troubled psyche is causing her. She wonders, idly, if she's left alone by HYDRA long enough if she'll have nightmares too.

(To be fair, hers will probably be worse.)

It's when he starts to move that she stops him, one hand coming and planting itself in the middle of his chest, pushing him back down against the gurney so that he doesn't hurt himself more.

"You need to rest."

His eyes snap fully into focus when she touches him. It's real and grounding. Steve quickly realizes that everything he saw before was just an illusion. "Peggy?" Once he says her name it hits him. She brought him here to talk.

"Sorry." That wasn't what they agreed on. What did they agree on again? It's fuzzy to him. Steve manages a soft chuckle a moment later as something else occurs to him. "You ever going to get tired of telling me to rest? I'm a terrible patient."

They didn't agree on anything. She didn't want to be called anything. She just wants to get the answers to her questions and Steve is making that part very difficult. She couldn't care less about what kind of patient he is.

"Would you rather bleed to death?"

"No, I think that might upset a few people." He says it with perfect seriousness. It's more sincere though with his follow up question. "You contact them?"

"No. They think you did." She moves to sit on a stool that she brought in, so that she doesn't have to be on her feet, but could still be eye level with him. "I used a internet program to spoof it as though it was coming from your phone."

"That's... helpful." There's no way in Hell any of them will buy that. If nothing else, it will motivate them to verify it. He did his best to give them some hope at least. "Thank you."

Well, she tried. She couldn't have known your useless at technology, Steve. "You're welcome." The words sound robotic, but she doesn't know how to be any other way. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, but still like half the world tried to kill me a few times." He smiles at his own joke as much as he can. "What about you? You had a rough go of it too." Steve would apologize, but he's not sure if it's appropriate or even if he'd mean it completely given the circumstances.

She gives a quick shake of her head. She's fine. There were injuries, but nothing she couldn't fix on her own. It left her to wonder if he was holding back, out of some kind of respect to this "Peggy" he thought she was.

"Nothing that won't heal."

He nods, looking somewhat relieved to hear it. Peggy as she is now wouldn't have any reason to lie about that. It's both heartening and sad all at once. "Small favors." He swallows and tries hard not to let the sadness win out. He needs to stay focused. "So you up for a chat or should I return to my sleeping beauty routine?" He tilts his head to the side and smiles as best he can with cut up lips. "Not that I'm all that pretty right now."

Her head tips to the side slightly as she appraises him, and there's a hint of a smirk, something that feels natural in the moment, even if she doesn't quite understand why, but to an outsider, it would almost seem like she's appreciating the view.

"We can talk."

Steve smiles almost shyly under that look. He wasn't expecting an actual reaction to that. He's just buying time wherever he can get it; appreciating the fact she's alive even if it is under such terrible circumstances. "You have some questions. A lot of questions, right?" He lets the question linger a moment before purposely getting off track. "It might help if we do proper introductions first. I know they probably showed you files on me, but those aren't entirely accurate so bear with me a second?"

He smiles as best he can. Humor him, please? He promises there is a point to this even if it doesn't quite serve her agenda. "Steve Rogers. I'm a veteran, an Avenger, and I'm kind of unemployed at the moment since I destroyed my place of work." He tilts his head to the side. What can do you? It was evil. "I used to be an artist. More of a side job really back in the day, but I don't know. Maybe I'll get back into it since no one in their right mind would let me serve under them again." He says with good humor. "What about you?"

The words come at her in a flurry of information, and her brain tries to sort it into categories of important or not, but she isn't really sure one way or the other. All of it is too much at once, really, because with this new objective, with keeping him alive rather than killing him, which parts matter, which ones don't?

She doesn't even know if she has a response to his question beyond the obvious one.

"I'm a soldier."

Steve nods carefully given his injuries. He watches her for a moment before continuing, "And what are you fighting for?" He makes his tone sound as neutral as possible.

At that, her face falters again. She's a soldier without a cause, now, given that HYDRA is gone. She has enough awareness to know that much, but what she doesn't know is where she's supposed to go now. In the end, she looks away, focusing on one of the tools left on the table next to him.

"Whatever they tell me to."

Steve can't hide the disappointment in his eyes. It strengthens his resolve at the same time. Maybe Peggy Carter is dead and gone. Maybe there's no bringing her back. Whoever this is, he has to help them find their way. "Even after all this, you still think that's the way to go?" He sets his jaw and continues. "Respectfully, I think you should figure out what you want, not them. HYDRA, SHIELD; it's all gone now. We have to start over." He thinks it sounds like something she might have said a lifetime ago.

"I don't want anything."

That's a lie. She knows it's a lie as she says it. She wants to know who he is to her. She wants to know why she feels the need to keep him here, to keep speaking with him. She wants to know why he wants her. She wants to know what these flashes of him mean, because she can't make sense of them.

"I just need a mission."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

winter carter } { the danger is i'm dangerous and i might just tear you apart

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject