Chapter Text
It wasn’t until after the attack on Manhattan that Steve finally worked up the courage to call the number that Nick Fury had given him for Peggy Carter.
The voice on the other end of the line was heartbreakingly familiar, and surprisingly alert. The only real difference was that her accent had softened a little, after so many years living in the States. She said apartment instead of flat, trash instead of rubbish. (She did, however, still use the word arse.)
They exchanged pleasantries for a while before the prospect of a visit was raised. Steve was ready to suggest that he could take the train to D.C., but Peggy surprised him yet again by offering to meet him in New York. “I’m often in the city on business,” she told him. “It’s practically a second home.”
“I thought you were retired?” inquired Steve, uncertainly. He wondered if she could be getting a little confused, if she maybe… wasn’t entirely present anymore. He’d seen it already a couple of times, with other old friends.
“I am, but I still do a bit of consulting. Just enough to keep my hand in. I’m not the type to sit around all day tending my roses. That’s not a euphemism, in case you were wondering—I do actually have roses, though I’m rather careless with them. I think it’s improved the look of them, on the whole.”
She sure sounded present. Steve wasn’t sure what to say, or if he should say anything at all.
“I’ll be in town next Thursday,” Peggy continued. “Shall we have dinner?”
“Sure. That’d be swell.” Steve hadn’t said ‘swell’ in over a year—well, technically, in over 70 years—and he wasn’t exactly sure why he was busting it out now. “Sorry. That was pretty corny.”
Peggy just chuckled appreciatively, and gave the address of an upscale hotel in Manhattan. “Do you have a car?” she inquired. “Or shall I come and collect you?”
“I can drive.” Steve figured he’d rent a car. Otherwise, she might insist on dropping him home after dinner; he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of her having to drive to Brooklyn and then back to the hotel so late, especially with all the construction detours.
“Lovely. You can pick me up at seven-thirty, and we’ll find somewhere close by that hasn’t been smashed to bits by you and your new friends.”
“Swell,” he repeated—on purpose this time, droll. “See you then.”
*
Peggy’s suggestion of ‘finding somewhere’ for dinner hadn’t given him many cues for how to dress. In the end, he’d made a selection from the more traditional side of his closet: khaki trousers, button-down shirt in a soft blue check pattern, leather jacket, penny loafers. He was both shaved and after-shaved, his hair neatly combed and pomaded despite the shorter style.
He drove too fast, arrived at the hotel too early, parked in visitor parking, and panicked quietly in the car for a quarter of an hour or so. Then he took a walk around the block, pulled himself the hell together, and went inside.
Peggy had said she’d meet him in the hotel lounge. He wished he’d had the foresight to ask for a recent photo, or for her to describe what she’d be wearing. As much as he would have liked to believe in the romantic notion that he’d know her anywhere, he’d learned that it was absolutely possible for time to alter a familiar face beyond recognition.
He scanned the occupants of the lounge, ruling them each out in turn: a trio of young people in business-wear, all of whom had their laptops on the table; a silver-haired fellow in a power suit, musing quietly over a martini; and a striking woman in a sleeveless black dress and pearls, sitting alone at the bar.
It wasn’t until he was seated at the bar himself, a few stools away from the woman in the black dress, that Steve caught a glimpse of her profile—and froze.
Was this some kind of trick? A test? Or just a cruel joke?
The woman turned towards him. “Hello, Steve,” she said warmly, patting the seat beside her. “Come on. I promise I won’t bite.”
Steve didn’t say anything, didn’t move.
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.” Her voice was exactly the same as it had been on the phone. “Surely I don’t look that awful?”
The truth was, she looked fantastic. Her face was as radiant as always, her figure just as incredible. Her hairstyle was a modern one: loose waves, swept over to one side and layered asymmetrically. Her dress and jewellery were simple, elegant, stylish.
She did look older, but not much older; she might be in her forties, but only barely.
Steve wondered for just a moment if he was having some sort of break with reality. “You look… different… than I was expecting,” he said, very cautiously.
“No one told you.” The words were quiet, restrained, but the flash of hot anger in her dark eyes gave her away.
“Told me what?”
Peggy stood up and laid a bill on the bar, covering the cost of her unfinished scotch. “Come and have a drink in my room,” she suggested. “I’ll explain everything.”
*
It took Peggy a full hour to even begin to explain everything.
She wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened, but she had a theory. In 1946, she’d gotten an accidental dose of Vita-rays—not a high dose, but enough to be detected during a body scan. Not too long after that, she’d broken a vial of Steve’s blood, and cut her hand in the process.
Because the overall exposure was so small, the effect hadn’t been as dramatic on her as it had been on Steve: “Just enough to put an edge to my blade,” was her charming way of putting it.
She hadn’t taken notice of the effects at all, at first: in typical Peggy Carter style, she’d simply assumed she was in top form, physically and mentally, and got on with it. It, in this case, being founding SHIELD and keeping the world safe. All in a day’s work.
It wasn’t until her late thirties that a suspiciously fast-healing broken ankle and a few long looks in the mirror had prompted her to ask herself some hard questions. She and Howard ran some tests, and discovered what was going on, but kept it to themselves, for Peggy’s safety.
As time passed, her colleagues began to speculate that Director Carter had found herself a gifted cosmetic surgeon; Peggy played up to it, cultivating the rumours wherever she could. Over time, she also adopted strategies to distract people from the truth: she started wearing glasses, added a few subtle streaks of grey to her hair, and tried to dress in a way that suggested a softening physique.
Inevitably, her slow rate of aging and her prolific career had made her face rather too recognizable in the theatre of espionage. She’d declined a seat on the World Security Council—twice—and retired when she felt her deputy director and protégé, Nick Fury, was ready to take the reins. Fury was one of the few people she’d trusted with the secret of her dramatic longevity.
She still acted as an advisor from time to time (“for an astronomical fee, naturally”), both to SHIELD and to a select few national intelligence agencies around the world. She’d long since given up trying to look her age; when dealing with a trusted contact, she appeared in person, and the rest of the time, she conducted her business via telephone or the internet.
“And so, here I am,” she concluded. “Ninety-four years old, and only slightly the worse for wear. Though to you, I suppose, it must seem like night and day.”
“Not really.” He’d had time to observe her while they talked, and had noted the small differences. Her face might have had a couple more lines, her hair a few silver threads, but these details only added character. “You look amazing,” he said, before he could quite stop himself.
She gave his arm a little tap and said, “You’re already in my room, charmer.”
Steve wasn’t much better at flirting now than he had been the first time around, but at least he could tell when he was being flirted with. “Seems like maybe we got things a little backwards, then.”
“Oh?”
He grinned. “Yeah, you’re supposed to buy me dinner first.”
“Well, then,” said Peggy, merrily, “I won’t hold your poor stomach hostage any longer while you to cater to an old woman’s vanity. The restaurant downstairs does a decent prime rib, if you like that.”
Steve liked that fine.
*
It wasn’t the type of dinner date they might have had if they’d gotten to see out the end of the war together. But just the same, the evening was as close to perfect as Steve could have asked for.
Peggy knew a lot more than Steve did about food, and about wine—though at ninety-four, he imagined she must know a lot more than he did about almost everything. He supposed that ought to bother him more than it did, but she never made him feel childish or ignorant; she spoke to him just as she had always done, as an equal, and seemed interested in hearing his opinions.
He let her take the lead, and order the wine for both of them (and tried not to look too scandalized when she nonchalantly selected a two-hundred-dollar bottle of syrah); he followed her recommendation on the prime rib, which was excellent.
She told him about her life back then: her work with the SSR and SHIELD, her failed marriage to a man who expected her to give it all up just as she felt she was finally making progress.
He told her about his life now: how Nick Fury and his Avengers Initiative had gotten Steve back into the stars and stripes. Peggy knew parts of it, though she’d been out of the country when the attack on Manhattan had happened.
“Fury called me when they found you, of course. I told him it was a foolish idea to keep you in that room, that you’d figure it out the moment you woke up. As a matter of fact, he still owes me a bottle of scotch for that one.”
“You never came to see me.” Steve tried, and failed, to keep the hurt out of his voice.
“And you had my number for months and never called,” she countered. “But here we are, regardless. No sense in crying over it.” She refilled his glass of wine, and that was that.
Everything about her instinctively made sense to him. She was the woman that the girl he once knew had aspired to be: courageous, dignified, accomplished in her field, respected by her peers. She was kind, clever, and passionate—he’d seen these qualities in the rough when she was young, and he saw them in her still, distilled over time and tempered by a vast and varied life experience.
In short, she was still Peggy—she was simply more Peggy.
And Steve found himself more drawn to her than ever.
It felt good to talk to her, good to get her perspective on everything that had happened to him since he’d arrived in this alien world. He’d always valued her insight, and she had a lot of it to give. His stories took less time to tell than they would have if he’d been speaking to someone who didn’t already have an idea of the characters and the setting—but he also didn’t feel the need to hold back his opinions, the way he might if he were speaking to a field agent.
Peggy was able to give him an insider’s view of top-level politics at SHIELD, and spoke quite candidly about what she felt were some of the division’s greatest shortcomings. She also suggested a few other avenues his career might take, if he wasn’t interested in picking up the shield again for a while.
“Regardless of whatever claptrap they’re putting up in the Smithsonian, the United States government didn’t create you, and SHIELD doesn’t own you now.” There was a slight bitter edge to her voice. “You’ve done your duty. Don’t let them make you feel as though you owe them anything.”
“Someone called me about that, the exhibit. They asked me to go and review the plan for it. They said they were ‘committed to a balanced perspective.’”
“How nice for them, to have the luxury,” said Peggy dryly. “Will you take them up on it?”
“I think so. At least they asked.”
“Let me know when you’ll be in town,” she told him, with a casual confidence he envied.
They said goodnight in the lobby of the hotel. It would have been an awkward spot to try to kiss her, even if Steve had been certain that she wanted him to. But she did give him a long hug, the length of her body flush against his, her perfume going to his head in a way the wine hadn’t.
“I’m glad we got to do this,” he said tightly, resisting the urge to tuck his face into her shoulder. “No matter what happens.”
Her long fingers were deliciously cool on the back of his neck. “Don’t talk nonsense, Steve,” she murmured, turning her head to press her lips against his cheek. “I’ll call you.”