winter captain } { too real when i feel what my heart can't conceal

Howard's prognosis was not optimistic.

It seems that the Russians' brainwashing was quite thorough and getting Steve back was going to be a process. Not that Peggy is opposed to a project in any sense of the word, especially when that project is bringing back someone she loves so dearly, but the fact that Steve can't even look her in the eye right now without causing himself pain is still just as heartbreaking as it was before.

But they could work on it. They would get him back again. It was simply a matter of time.

After her debriefing from Howard, she makes her way back to Steve's room - she refuses to call it a cell, even if that is what it normally would be - knocking lightly on the door. He's not a prisoner, she doesn't want him to be, which means certain courtesies can be afforded. Perhaps the sooner they make him feel like a person, the sooner some things will come back to him.

"Steve? It's Peggy. May I come in?"

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."