"I'm throwing a Christmas party in a week. I sent you three invites."

Peggy paused in her review of Jim's incident report and looked up. Howard was leaning in the doorway of her office, in slacks and a button-down, looking for all the world like he spent time on SHIELD's administrative level on a regular basis. The grease mark just barely visible on his sleeve cuff disproved that.

"It's not a SHIELD party," she said. "My official government position is very low in organizational charts."

"You're practically the typist pool, in an official capacity. But that's beside the point. You're a war hero, and I invited you."

SHIELD had been operational for a little over three months. In that time, Peggy had taken checks from Howard and little else. She knew he was searching for Steve, but she didn't ask him about it. She couldn't maintain hope - not like he could. She could barely stomach people who referred to Steve as missing, rather than killed in action.

"I'm not one for parties," she said finally.

"Ridiculous," he said. "I remember you going out with the Commandos. Just once or twice, sure, but you drank Dum Dum under the table."

"That was a different time." She looked back at her paperwork.

But Howard was assertive, arrogant, and entitled, and he didn't leave. On the contrary: despite the fact that it was only six PM and any number of people might still be in the office, he closed her office door and sat down across from her, intimate as could be. "I want you there, Peggy."

Avoidance, then, was not going to be an effective deterrent. She raised her eyes and met his gaze. "Why?"

"SHIELD's a shadow agency right now, but half the people at that party will know it exists, and who runs it. They know I give the organization - you - money, that I use the lab here. It'll make the agency look a hell of a lot better if you show."

Peggy was as capable of reading between the lines as any intelligent adult. "You're saying you want to show me off."

"I'd never be so crass."

"Well, that's not true," Peggy said. "But even if it were, that's still what you're saying."

Howard looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed. Then he smiled, looking like nothing so much as a boy who'd been caught with a bottle of single malt scotch. "Guilty as charged," he said. "But image means a lot. Image means money and power. Come, please? I won't even make you bring a date."

The devil of it was, she wanted to go. To drink and dance, to publicize SHIELD - as much as she legally could - and, most of all, to hold a position of authority that wasn't hung in shadows and muttered rumors about how, precisely, she secured funding from Howard. She knew Howard's party wouldn't be an escape, but it would, at least, be a change of pace.

So she found herself saying, "Very well. You've convinced me."

"Excellent," Howard said. "Why don't you let me drive you home? It's Friday. A lady such as yourself shouldn't be holed up in her office this late."

"It's hardly late," Peggy said, but she nodded and stood to gather her things. Howard held the door for her on the way out, a gentlemanly gesture that was only partially marred by the sarcastic quirk of his eyebrows as she brushed past him.

"You still live in that falling-down complex in Brooklyn, right?" Howard said as they got into his car.

"It's a short train ride to SHIELD," Peggy said.

"Uh huh."

"We can't all have Upper East Side mansions."

"Hey, I'm not criticizing," Howard said. "Well, I am, but you have your reasons. I can respect that."

"It's not because I miss him," Peggy said, before she could stop herself.

"Never said it was."

"People have implied." Peggy bit the inside of her cheek. This was not a confessional hour; Howard was considerably less circumspect than a priest. "I'd like our working relationship to be one characterized by honesty. That's all."

"I haven't lied to you." Howard drove them out of the garage, accelerating sharply to pull into the road. "And anyway, I miss him too, so it's not like I can blame you."

"This doesn't seem permanent yet," Peggy said. "SHIELD, I mean."

"The Soviets get more mysterious every day, and the government likes my long-range equipment," Howard said. "SHIELD's staying. I'll make sure of it."

Peggy felt the impulse to thank him, and tamped down on it fiercely, hating herself for it a bit. She didn't want to be the sort of person who was indebted to Howard Stark, even if, factually, she was. She stayed silent as they drove - Howard broke the speed limit as though it didn't even apply to him, and what was normally a thirty-minute taxi ride became a twenty-minute drive.

He didn't need to ask for directions, not even when they began winding down side streets. He found her apartment building unerringly. It made her wonder just how closely she was being watched.

She knew he wouldn't answer if she asked, though, so she simply took out her keys and said, "Thank you for the ride, Mr. Stark."

"Call me Howard."

She already did, mentally, and the realization would have made a younger Peggy blush. "Of course. Howard."

She reached for the door. Howard tapped the steering wheel and said, almost as if to himself, "When I find a wife, I'm making her pass your muster."

Peggy blinked. She had no idea why he'd voiced such a thought, what she'd done to prompt it, or why she felt suddenly uncertain, as though the pavement beneath them had tilted a few degrees. It took her a long moment to find her voice, and this time, when she spoke, she was most decidedly blushing. "When you find a wife, I hope she's not the sort to subject herself to such scrutiny merely for another's approval."

Howard laughed at that. Outright laughed, as though she'd told a hilarious joke. "I like my women weak-willed, Agent Carter," he said. "When it comes to the bedroom, anyway."

She didn't bother pointing out he'd repeatedly asked her to dinner in war zones, when she carried a sidearm. He wasn't trying to convince her; he was blustering, and for the life of her, she couldn't imagine why. There was nothing between them anymore but a sort of tired camaraderie, half made up of the maddening reality of post-war government work, and half made up of shared, painful memories.

"Goodnight, Howard, and thank you for the ride," she said again. She got out of the car and went up to her apartment without looking back. It didn't escape her that she didn't hear the car leave until she flicked her living room light on, visible from the front drive.

Howard was a strange man. He ought to be happy: he had his girlfriends, his cars, his mansion. Or mansions, rather. But she sensed in him the same dissatisfaction she herself often felt, a thorough frustration with the state of the world after the war. She'd never been so naive as to assume everything would fall into place; even when she'd let herself girlishly dream of a life with Steve, in between support missions as the Commandos raided various HYDRA bases - even in those days, there had been an element of complexity, a knowledge that rebuilding would be difficult. But now? Life went on. She kept a stiff upper lip and pretended not to hear her cousins' dissatisfied comments about how the English belonged at home, rebuilding with their countrymen. She went out with men, occasionally, and didn't speak even a peep of her work or her past. She built SHIELD; they were only three months old and already gathering a powerful force. She had her work. She had a life.

But on nights like tonight, lying alone in bed, she felt as though something were missing. Steve's absence felt like a barely-healed scar, but her overall dissatisfaction went beyond that. She felt her soul reaching out, yearning, and all she could do was roll over and keep her eyes closed, trusting that eventually exhaustion would overcome her nagging dissatisfaction.

It did, of course. It always did. And she woke to sunshine.

-

Office gossip was, generally, at a minimum in SHIELD. She employed a fleet of twenty administrative assistants, who did everything from processing incident reports to outfitting agents for missions both domestic and abroad. They were mostly women, old and young, and a newcomer might think they were prone to gossip. But Peggy herself frowned upon it, and that set a cultural example.

She was, then, somewhat dismayed when Jim leaned in her doorway Monday morning and said, "Heard you're attending Stark's party."

She looked up from her brief. It was dry reading, profiles on the five Senate members she'd be testifying in front of in January, as part of SHIELD's campaign for a science budget. "I beg your pardon?"

"Stark's Christmas party. The man himself told me he'd finally gotten you to agree to come."

Men, Peggy thought, had always been worse gossips than the women they refused to employ. "Will you be attending?"

"Sure I will." Jim smirked at her. "With a lady on my arm, unlike yourself."

"I can't say I'd considered bringing a lady," Peggy said. Her dryness was rewarded with Jim's laugh.

"You know what I mean," he said. "Anyway, you'd better expect an audience. Stark's bragging that he finally convinced you."

"Stark's a gauche upstart, so that doesn't surprise me."

"Charming, though."

"Quite," Peggy said.

Jim turned to leave, but stopped with his hand on the door frame. "I'm glad you're coming," he said, meeting her gaze. "It's been awhile since the war, but I know it hit you hard. In a lot of ways."

Peggy nodded. "I'll need to meet with you later regarding your report on Boris Yelich."

"Of course," Jim said, and left.

Boris Yelich was a New Jersey mob boss who was laundering his money using a brewery with shadowy HYDRA connections. Peggy would have preferred to just break his kneecaps and have done with it, but that wasn't the purpose of SHIELD. She sighed and went back to her dossiers. She needed to know every little detail about the five men she'd be defending SHIELD's importance to, well before January 16th.

The rest of the week passed in a blur. Peggy thought of herself as someone with a life outside of work, but she barely even ate that week. She stayed late every night, and it didn't occur to her until 1700 on Friday, when she got home and saw the date circled on her calendar, that she didn't have a dress, and the party was imminent.

There was nothing to be done about it. She could go to a department store, but that would make her unfashionably late. She went to her closet and looked through it. She had the red dress she'd worn during the war; she could practically see the memories clinging to it, and she quickly flicked past it. She had another red dress, more recently purchased, but wrinkled beyond immediate repair. She had several suits, with both skirts and pants; she moved past those as well. Finally she encountered a skirt-and-shirt set, the shirt a cotton v-neck, the skirt cotton and too pleated to be considered fashionable. Both were in a dark blue that set off her skin and hair nicely.

It would have to do. She put it on, touched up her makeup, and examined herself in the mirror. She looked rather a lot more casual and girlish than Howard Stark's Christmas party really called for. But she also looked like Peggy Carter, a career woman - so it would have to do.

She took a taxi to Howard's mansion. It was a veritable beacon in the night, every window having a candle in it, with electric lights lining the driveway and light pouring from the open front door. A wreath hung on the second, closed French door. The taxi pulled up in the queue of cars and Peggy paid the driver before getting out, choosing to walk the hundred meters or so to the front door.

"Peggy Carter," she told the butler. He nodded and led her in.

Howard was upon her before she could even think to look for Jim or Antoine. "Peggy!" He caught her hands and kissed each of them, eyebrows quirked as though he were inviting her in on a joke. "So glad you could make it."

"You knew I would," Peggy said. "You practically bribed me."

"Yet you're too classy a dame to take my money."

"Nonsense. SHIELD thrives on it," Peggy said.

Howard looked away from her, so quickly she thought it must be involuntary. "Jim's here," he said, looking back at her. "And the whole gang - everyone who's left, anyway. Here, this way."

It was typical of Howard, Peggy thought as he led her through the crowd, to outright state Steve's absence, before it could become the awkward truth they all avoided acknowledging. Her stomach twisted when he waved her towards the Commandos all the same, though. Oh, she missed him.

But now was not the time for grief. She pushed it aside and smiled. "Good to see you all."

"Some of us saw you just a few hours ago," Jim said with a smirk. He lifted his glass of punch. "You look great, Peggy."

"Thank you. It's tragically out of date, but I must confess, I forgot to buy a dress."

"It works for you," Howard said. She blinked and looked back at him; he was still standing by her side. "Can I get you some punch?"

"Don't you need to mingle?"

"Eh." Howard waved a hand. "They can come to me. Punch?"

He was still staring at Peggy, dark eyes intent - and Peggy wasn't sure what they were intent on, precisely. It made her uncomfortable, so she said, "Punch would be wonderful, thank you," and let out her breath slowly as he left.

"How's working with Howard?" Dum Dum - Tim, she reminded herself - said. He had a tumbler of whiskey, apparently unwilling to be unmanned with punch.

"You could always work for SHIELD and find out," Peggy said.

Tim snorted. "Please. I got a construction business up in Jersey - I make more in a month than SHIELD would pay me in six. I'm good."

"Working with Howard is going well," Peggy said. She'd resume her efforts to recruit him later. "He never had to make the transfer back to civilian life, after all."

"He doesn't hassle you too much? Not that I think you couldn't stop him," Tim added, nodding to Jim.

"He's the soul of a gentleman," Peggy said.

At that, everyone laughed. Peggy didn't bother protesting. Howard had a reputation, and none of the Commandos really believed he was being inappropriate - or, anyway, more inappropriate than Peggy herself could handle. Which was true. He hadn't even asked her on a date since he began funding SHIELD. She didn't miss the flirtation from him, specifically, but she could have done with a little frivolity all the same.

"Punch," Howard said, approaching her. He handed her a large glass, full to the brim with red liquid. She sniffed it before drinking. "Good Lord. Is all of it this..."

"Enhanced?" Howard pulled a flask from his waistcoat, wiggling it until it caught the light before sliding it back in. "Only for the special guests, Agent Carter. The rest is just lightly kissed with rum."

"It's not terribly politic to withhold the best spirits from all these important guests," Peggy said, but she took a long sip of the punch. She'd never been a shy drinker.

"Sure, but none of them are director of SHIELD." Howard's smile was just on the respectable side of sleazy. She smiled back, involuntarily. Then he cut his eyes to the Commandos, and Peggy became acutely aware of their surveillance.

She didn't allow it to put her on the defensive. A little harmless flirting was no more or less than what she'd done in the war. Though admittedly, back then, she'd far from encouraged Howard specifically.

Still, the silence was lengthening almost to the point of embarrassment before Jim said, "Tell us about what you're cooking up in the lab, Howard. Is it ever gonna be easier to target someone a thousand yards away?"

"Morita, Morita, are you implying the United States government utilizes snipers?" Howard said, and the Commandos all laughed.

He did, however, eventually have to mingle with other guests. Peggy herself really should have followed suit, but the companionship of the Commandos proved as irresistible as ever. She met a Senator Johnson at one point, and a Mr. Howe, who was apparently a close friend of the Rockefeller. She was as charming as she knew how to be, and ignored the fact that Howard's Christmas parties contained a marked dearth of women, old or young. But the end of the night found her standing with the Commandos, and it wasn't until Howard came back over that she realized nearly everyone else had left.

"My social duties have been discharged. Who wants some hooch? I've got a great brew, apple-flavored, brought to be my a man with about as much respect for the law as hair." Howard's smile widened. "And he was bald. What say you?"

For a moment Peggy wondered if it was an oblique dismissal of her, but of course that wasn't Howard's way. When Tim said, "Hell yeah, Merry Christmas," Howard took Peggy's arm and led them all to the library.

It was a well-used library, full of books that hadn't been arranged in any particular order. Peggy was sure the disorder was an affectation, and that Howard could locate everything he needed. The drafting table and papers covered in sketches scattered on every surface, however, weren't affectations at all. There were couches and chairs arranged around a fire, and tables next to each of them. Howard cleared them off himself, coming away with a stack of papers an inch thick, before motioning for them all to sit. "I'll pour," he said.

Peggy sank into an overstuffed armchair and watched as Howard got out a mottled brown glass bottle. He poured clear liquid into cups laid out on a tray, then brought them to Peggy and the Commandos.

As they all raised their glasses, the silence in the room took on a different quality. Peggy felt not a single twinge of surprise when Howard said, "To the Captain," before knocking back his liquor. Peggy herself took a sip. It was more pleasant than Howard's description had implied, smooth and lightly apple-flavored.

"Now, Jim," Howard said after they'd all taken a drink. "I've got some records from France, the best of the wartime singers. Put one on and we'll talk about the good old days."

In the end, though, they didn't talk about the old days, good or otherwise. Peggy didn't know if her experience was representative of everyone's - but for herself, her tongue became suddenly awkward the single time she attempted to reminisce. Instead they talked about Howard's weapons: guns and missiles that utilized new computing technology, self-piloting instruments that might one day carry bombs. The Commandos cheerfully discussed how they might use them to make the world safer. Peggy joined in occasionally and tried not to wonder how long, exactly, SHIELD would be needed to keep the world safe.

They left one by one. Peggy's senses became blurred just a bit from the alcohol. It wasn't significant enough to make her become insensate, but it did mean she didn't really register the drop in their company until Jim stood and said, "I need to make it home by dawn," and looked between Howard and Peggy.

Peggy blinked, then stood. "I as well," she said quickly, before she could talk herself into staying. Liking Howard's company and feeling loneliness sharply when she drank wasn't reason enough to invite herself over. Even if no one would ever know, she cared about what it might look like, should someone find out.

"Let me call you a cab," Howard said. He'd been drinking as much as any of them and must have felt it, but where Jim was slurring a bit and Peggy was unsteady on her feet, Howard moved with surety. He went over to the phone and dialed a number he seemed to have memorized. Peggy thought of the rumored streams of women who'd left this mansion at all hours of the night and kept her lips pressed together.

Twenty minutes later, Howard ushered them into a taxi. "See you Monday," he told them, then tipped his hat to the driver, handed him a hundred-dollar bill, and walked back through his gate.

"That's really not necessary," Peggy said, but the driver had already tucked the bill away, and Peggy was too tired to argue. She leaned back in her seat as the car pulled into the street.

"I never would've pegged you guys for becoming friends," Jim said.

Peggy looked out her window. People had decorated ostentatiously with Christmas lights this year; she thought briefly of her mother's letters speaking of persisting austerity in England and averted her gaze back to the interior of the cab.

She realized too late that she hadn't responded. "I wouldn't have thought you'd stay on the East Coast," she said. "And yet, here we are."

"It's hard to feel too patriotic, given everything," Jim said. "But SHIELD at least is headed by people I trust."

She knew his family had been in the American camps for the Japanese, but he never talked about it, and she felt rude asking. Now she just nodded, saying, "I can promise you, SHIELD will never descend to such levels of...authoritarianism."

Jim's smile was narrow and not particularly humorous. "Here's hoping."

They rode home in silence. The driver took them to Peggy's address first, so she said, "Thank you," and exited, waving to Jim. She made it to her apartment without fanfare, undressing quickly, tending to her makeup and teeth, and then getting into bed.

If she had a narrow ache of loneliness in the pit of her stomach, well. There was nothing to be done about that. Her bed was wide and cold, her room dark and not particularly personal. But her cousins were inches shorter than they should be and thin besides; they were also all girls, as Peggy's male cousins had all been killed. America as a country was taking great, heaving steps into a period of ascendancy, and Howard Stark was at the forefront of that. War threatened, the Soviets and others sending spies and daggers in the night, but if Peggy and SHIELD held them back, America would see peace and prosperity. If Peggy couldn't bring herself to forget the context of such success, wasn't that her job? As an English officer working as a permanent liaison to the States, she couldn't possibly just forget that she didn't truly belong in New York. If a cloudless December sky seemed a bit overly bright, if her apartment never truly felt like home, that was simply a consequence of her own choices.

-

She woke in the morning feeling no ill effects from the moonshine, aside from vague embarrassment at having become maudlin after getting home. It was a week and a half before Christmas, and Peggy's radiator steamed loudly as she put the kettle on.

She'd need to go buy food. She was not going home for Christmas; she'd already posted cards for her family, one with money in it to pay for some flowers for her parents' graves. She would have liked to go home, but it wasn't practical, not when SHIELD was still in its infancy and January 16th was approaching so quickly. She'd dealt with Senate members before, and they tended to be both obtuse and bad-tempered. She needed to study.

Perhaps that was an excuse, a bit. She knew that since the war had ended, she had resisted closeness with anyone who hadn't been in the fighting. She chose to stick to her decision anyway.

That evening, she was idly stirring a hash of sausage and potatoes and reading Wordsworth that she'd propped up on the counter when someone knocked on her door. She turned the burner down to low and got her gun from the counter, walking silently to the front door. When she looked through the peephole she almost laughed, because Howard stood on the other side of the door.

She put the gun on the side table and opened the door. "May I help you?"

"Did you know your hallway smells of sauerkraut? It's very unpleasant."

"It's good for the constitution. Come in, then." Peggy stood aside.

Howard entered as though he owned the building, surveying her living room with interest. "Bit bare, isn't it?"

"I only moved in six months ago."

He sniffed the air. "You're cooking?"

"I do have to feed myself, you know." Peggy felt torn between amusement and annoyance. She hadn't the foggiest clue why Howard had come to her home, but his presence made her nervous in a manner she wasn't accustomed to. "May I ask why you stopped by?"

"Call it curiosity," Howard said. "Kitchen's through here?" He walked down the hallway without waiting for a response.

"I only prepared enough for one," Peggy said, hurrying after him. "So if you were hoping for a home-cooked meal, I'm afraid I'll have to deny you."

Howard looked at the full skillet, then back at Peggy. Peggy didn't flush this time, absent people watching them, but she did have to bite back a curse word or two.

"Very well," she said. "I'll feed you dinner, in exchange for you telling me why you're really here."

"You evidently didn't have plans," Howard said, but he took off his coat and kicked off his boots as though her kitchen were his mansion's foyer.

"This might shock you, but I'm not a socialite." Peggy eyed his coat and boots, then decided to leave them there. It was doubtful her mother's ghost would appear to chastise her for her housekeeping, and anyway, she strongly disliked the idea of picking up after Howard Stark.

Howard didn't reply. The sausages sizzled in silence for a few more minutes, and then Peggy divided it into two plates, adding some crusty bread to flesh the meal out.

It wasn't until they were sitting across from one another, each with a glass of wine, that Peggy said, "Now: why are you in my home?"

"Easy," Howard said. "I've got a good reason, I promise." He took a big bite of food. "This is good."

"Thank you," Peggy said. She didn't mention how much she generally disliked cooking. "Answer the question, please."

"Three reporters saw you leaving my house last night. All of them are claiming Jim didn't leave with you."

Peggy blinked.

"I've paid them off," Howard said, "but I've had things leaked before, even when I pay up. They won't turn it into a blackmail situation, they know me too well for that, but -"

"If it gets out, SHIELD's funding is ruined."

"I'd continue funding it."

Peggy spoke without really thinking; apparently, events in peacetime could shock her after all. "Your funding won't be enough for my goals. I need the Senate on board. SHIELD needs legitimacy."

"I could have 'em killed," Howard said, as though he were offering to run out and ask a neighbor for a cup of sugar.

Peggy took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. "No," she said, succeeding in keeping her voice down. "No; there must be another way to repair this. This isn't the nineteenth century. You had a party. We're friends."

"The Senators you're meeting with wish it was still eighteen fifty-three," Howard said. "I'm sorry, Peggy, but we need a game plan. And a damn good one."

Peggy sipped her wine. The food was getting cold, so she took another bite. There was, of course, an obvious solution. It had virtually no pitfalls, aside from making Peggy seem superficial, weak, and altogether not in charge of the agency she was head of.

It was the only solution, though. Peggy was capable of taking her lumps. "Right, then. I'm not seeing anyone, anyway. As of right now, you're my fiancé."

"And here I thought I'd have to man up and propose."

Peggy didn't want to ask, but she forced herself to say, "I assume we can find someone to plan the actual ceremony?"

"We could just run away to a courthouse." Howard shrugged. "As long as it's filed with the city, they can't fault us."

"And when should that be?"

"Let's plan for this summer. Time it right, and you can divorce me before '55, no worse for wear."

It didn't feel real, and perhaps that was why Peggy found herself laughing. She'd long since given up on the dream of an ordinary life as some man's jobless wife. That particular goal had lost its shine when she'd been in the military long enough to gain a bit of authority. But sitting at her worn little kitchen table across from Howard Stark, one of the richer men in New York, as he ate her food -

"I'll drink to that," Howard said as she continued to laugh, and finished the wine. "Pour me another glass? It's Saturday."

Peggy did, and topped her glass off as well. Marriage to Howard. This at least meant she could ask an impertinent question that had been bothering her for awhile. "Where is your money coming from, exactly?"

Howard didn't seem surprised that she'd asked. "Government contracts, mostly. Some smart investments."

"That's why you're encouraging military spending?"

Howard raised his eyebrows.

"My sources are modest in scope, but I do have them," Peggy said, sipping her wine.

"We need a robust defense," Howard said. "After the first big war, everyone swore it'd never happen again - and then ten years later, off we go. There's no guarantee Hitler was the last maniac, that this won't all happen again. If the whole world goes down in flames, you want to sock the guy who sucker punched you before you black out, right?"

"You're mixing metaphors," Peggy said.

"Still."

"it's a persuasive argument."

"And one you agree with. You want to protect the world."

"I want my spies to keep wars from happening."

"I'll be the pragmatist, then," Howard said. He stared off at the wall, swirling his wine in his glass. "That's probably the man's job."

"Probably?"

"My mother died when I was young." Howard shrugged and took a drink. "My father wasn't much for parenting."

"Well," Peggy said. "The 'man's job', as you put it, is to be a partner. In a true marriage. Which ours isn't."

"And thank God for that." Howard met her gaze again. "You're a great girl, Peggy, but I wouldn't want you as a wife. Wives...wives aren't fun."

"Oh, and I'm fun?"

"After a fashion."

"Very well, then," Peggy said. "You might as well stay while I get roaring drunk."

"Oh, really?"

Peggy wasn't feeling particularly reckless, but frustration held its own power. It sat in the pit of her stomach and made imbibing more alcohol seem like a wonderful idea. "Really," she said, and took another, long drink.

Some several large drinks later, they slumped across the table from one another, having exhausted most topics that they held in common. Peggy was about to suggest a walk in the cold, to sober up if nothing else, when Howard spoke.

"You know, a sham marriage doesn't necessarily have to be a celibate marriage."

She almost choked. He said it so bluntly, with the edge in his voice that spoke of the lower class. He was smirking, too, very deliberately, as he looked her up and down. "What are you saying?"

"That I'm attracted to you, Peg. That you're the kind of girl who makes a man want more than commitment."

More than commitment. An interesting way, she thought, of referencing impropriety. "You want to fuck me, is that what you're saying?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Language."

"Spare us both. One of us spent time on the front lines, and it wasn't you."

She wasn't prepared for him to lean forward, eyes intent on her. "And what did you learn there? Did anyone pull you aside? Give you a tumble 'cause you both might die?"

His words were ridiculous, and somewhere she knew that. But at that moment, she didn't care. The truth was she'd kissed very few men, Steve most recently and none after that. She ached - for companionship, yes, but also for sex. She needed him, and he was willing to have her.

She kissed him.

It sent fire through her. Her toes curled. She'd always known she felt strongly, and had even worried her desire for Steve implied something about her character, but this was different. This was her fiancé, if only in name, and he was tangling his hands in her hair and moving them both until they stood, pressed together, arching against one another as his tongue dipped into her mouth.

By the time he pulled away, she was gasping and desperate for more.

He looked at her. His dark eyes took in everything: her face, her hair, her - chest - her legs. Everything. Then he said, "Bedroom?"

It was as uncivil as the rest of their interactions. It thrilled her. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall.

They reached her room seconds later and he immediately tugged at her clothes. He kissed her and undressed her so quickly that she barely had a chance to consider anything but rushing on and on, and then he touched her, his mouth on her nipples, his face pressed into her belly.

For a moment, she came back to herself, utterly naked and leaning against her bedroom wall. "Howard -"

He grinned up at her. "Yes?"

She wanted. Oh, she wanted so much. "Keep going," she said, and he did.

She knew, of course, that men used their mouths, lips and tongue and all that. She knew too that they used their fingers. But knowledge didn't compare to this: Howard clutching her to his face; Howard's tongue against her; Howard's fingers buried in her. She arrived at completion twice before he was satisfied, and then he dragged her to bed and divested himself of clothing.

"I want to fuck you," he said. He looked concerned suddenly, almost sensitive. It was impossible, she supposed, to know if he meant it seriously. "Is that okay?"

She'd given away control to her body and impulses. She could only nod.

A stretch, but just barely, because she was so wet already. Noises and sensation, Howard's fingers on her again, Howard kissing her, Howard playing with her tits. And then him pulling out - quickly, as though he'd almost forgotten, spilling himself on the bed before flopping next to her.

"God," he said. It almost sounded like he meant it. "My God."

She fell asleep before thinking of a comment.

-

Peggy had developed the light sleep typical of a member of the military during her time with the Army. Alcohol, however, had a tendency to overwhelm the instincts. She woke when the sun was shining into her window, registering first the pain of the light pricking her eyes, then the odd ache of her shoulder, then the arm flung over her waist. Howard breathed on her neck - and it was definitely Howard; her memory of the previous night was unimpaired. His legs were tangled with hers. When she shifted a little, attempting to ease away from him, he huffed a breath and drew her more tightly against him.

She was sure embarrassment and regret would make themselves known at any moment. Right then, however, she mostly felt mildly exasperated. She wouldn't have guessed that Howard was the sort to clutch a woman as though she were a blanket, and he a child.

"Howard," she said in a low voice, pushing at his arm. "Howard, wake up."

"Don't tell me you wanna go to church," Howard mumbled. "'s not Christmas yet."

"Howard," Peggy said again, a little more sharply.

Howard suddenly went very still. He removed his arm from around Peggy's waist, then rolled over so that their backs were pressed together, his legs curled under the blankets. "Sorry about that, doll," he said. "That wine of your does strange things to a man."

"It was a nice bottle," Peggy said. "Or rather, a nice three bottles."

"I prefer the harder stuff, personally."

She felt him move. She ought to get up; cowardice made for poor motivation, generally speaking. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, counted to ten, then rolled out of bed to face him in one smooth motion.

She was naked and, apparently, so was he. Howard stared at her with an odd expression. In lieu of feeling shame, she chose to cross her arms and raise a single eyebrow. "Is there a problem?"

"None at all." He looked away, towards the door. "So I guess I'll just be going."

Her first instinct was to protest, which was ridiculous. Howard was a busy man, and they were getting engaged out of sheer convenience. He was a friend, and they'd - expressed friendship physically last night. But - "This doesn't change anything."

Howard raised his eyebrows. "No, of course not."

"I mean, between us. I appreciate your time and of course we'll get married, and I imagine there will be a consummation, but -"

"Peggy, relax. The marriage and this, they have nothing to do with each other. We were drunk." Howard looked around the room. "There's my underwear," he said, and went to retrieve it.

As far as Howard was concerned, that was the end of it. He hailed a taxi and Peggy locked the door behind him, going directly to the bath. She had bruises on her thighs and ached in very specific places, but her memories of the previous night were pleasant.

She wouldn't be averse to doing it again, she thought. For fun, not legality's sake. But of course that wasn't really feasible. Still, she was thankful that the - incident - had been as pleasant as she'd hoped. Howard certainly wasn't lacking in skill, even when drunk. And he'd enjoyed himself, she thought. She was almost certain that he hadn't guessed at her lack of experience.

She passed the rest of the day in silence, leaving her record player alone in favor of listening to the ambient noise of the street below. She'd memorized the dossiers of the Senators who'd be interrogating her in January, so she put them aside in favor of reading Walt Whitman.

It was lovely, really. She had a peaceful Sunday, during which she could almost ignore the lingering physical evidence that she was no longer sexually inexperienced. By the time she went to bed, she'd almost put the whole episode out of her mind.

She saw little of Howard in the work week leading up to SHIELD's Christmas shutdown. She heard from others that he was in the lab, and saw no reason to disturb him. Many administrative tasks required her attention, and on top of that, she had interrogations to conduct. SHIELD's interrogation methods were evolving; Erskine's notes included a formula for a kind of truth serum, and Peggy was experimenting with disorientation and isolation as gentle - or, more gentle than torture - interrogation techniques. It wasn't particularly pleasant, and didn't make her feel overly generous or full of Christmas spirit, but the people she was interrogating were Nazis. Her sympathy only extended so far.

Thoughts of home darted through her mind more frequently than she'd have preferred that week. She imagined the flowers on her parents' graves, the rain coming down in sheets. Austerity had not yet been lifted from England, and she could picture the greyness of that holiday perfectly - everything from the comparative lack of decoration and reconstruction of bombed-out buildings to the patched, cobbled-together presents her cousins would be giving one another. She didn't miss her cousins particularly strongly, as she'd never been close to them. But all the same, looking at the States' defiant showing of lights on every corner, and seeing the elaborate potential gifts in shop windows, she felt the ache of homesickness.

She expected Christmas would be lonely. On Christmas Eve, at two PM, she locked the door to her office and went home. She went to bed early, banking the fire in her room and huddling under three heavy quilts. Sleeping late was unintentional, but she did it all the same. She woke at ten AM with her head swimming, so disoriented that it took her a long few moments to realize someone was pounding on the door.

Her wartime habits had never really deserted her, and she'd picked up habits of espionage since then. She instantly went still, then silently slipped out of bed. She was wearing pajamas and didn't bother putting on a robe; she simply grabbed the gun from her bedside table and went out to the entryway.

When she swung open the door, she almost cold-cocked the man standing there. It was Howard, carrying a bottle of wine and an already-open bottle of whiskey.

He raised an eyebrow at the gun she still had pointed at him. "That's a rough welcome for a friend."

"You didn't warn me," she said. She put the gun down and ushered him in, but she didn't stop glaring at him. "You could have phoned, you know."

"Where's the fun in that? Besides, I figured you'd say no. You're not the type to drink on the holidays."

"And you are?"

"Darling, I'm the type to drink on all days." Howard wiggled the bottles. "Now, do you want to get drunk and play poker, or not?"

Peggy had only played poker a few times, and never with Howard. But she'd always been a good liar, even back when her lies were only about who'd stolen the last sweets. "Yes," she said. "Let's."

Howard raised his eyebrows. He'd expected her to say no. She briefly wondered what his backup plan was, if he'd just go back to the mansion and drink alone. She didn't wish to feel pity for him, but a bit did make itself known, buried deep in exasperation.

"The kitchen," she said. "I suspect this could get messy. And we'll need a table."

"As my lady commands," Howard said, and laughed when she swatted him.

Playing poker with Howard in her kitchen, as a fire crackled and they made their way through the bottle of whiskey, was not precisely a SHIELD calamity - but it was also far from the safest or most boring thing Peggy had ever done. She found it increasingly difficult to keep a straight face as the games wore on.

And Howard was determined to get a rise from her. That much was obvious. He reached out and touched her hand a half dozen times before even three inches was gone from the whiskey bottle. He brushed his stocking-clad feet against hers. When she leaned forward to place her cards on the table, his eyes went first to her bosom, then to her cards - and then he scowled, because she'd beaten him again. She laughed and warmed under his gaze, taking the pennies they'd been wagering. "I believe these are mine."

"I see I'm not the card sharp I thought I was."

"Maybe against other people," Peggy said. "But I played with the Commandos, remember."

Howard's smile was soft around the edges. Not bitter, but not happy, either. "I couldn't forget even if I wanted to." His tone implied he did want to, but he took a drink of whiskey instead of elaborating, and Peggy didn't ask for more details.

Her stomach clenched a bit, and she realized it was half past noon. "Shall I make lunch?"

"Seems a shame to make you cook for me, when we're not even married yet."

Peggy raised her eyebrows. "I thought you were wealthy, Mr. Stark. Are you incapable of employing a cook?"

"Maybe I just like the idea of you doing the job sometimes. For me."

He meant it to be sweet, that much was obvious. But something cold settled in Peggy's stomach, a sense of foreboding that was as much spiritual as it was physical. "Maybe you should go."

"Peggy." He put a hands on hers again, and she couldn't move away. "I'm sorry. What if I made us eggs?"

"You can't make eggs."

"I supported myself for years when I was starting out," Howard said. "My old man was a mechanic - it's not like we had a chef. Let me make eggs."

His intended reassurance wasn't particularly successful, given that Peggy was perfectly aware of the horrors young men would eat while insisting upon their edibility. But she didn't want to drive a wedge between them, not when in a week they'd be announcing their engagement. So she leaned back and said, "Go on, then."

The eggs tasted fine, neither exceptionally wonderful nor exceptionally awful. Peggy's impression of them was heavily influenced by the whiskey, though - she'd had two glasses by then, both on ice, with nothing substantial to dilute them. It was fine whiskey, far too fine for sordid Christmas Day drinking. Peggy assumed Howard enjoyed the perversity. It seemed like him.

He didn't wash the dishes, but he did take hers to the sink. She stood, feeling as though she should take care of the mess, should be useful, on this day when she was lonely enough to be getting drunk with Howard Stark. She walked to the sink, where Howard stood, and it wasn't until he turned that she realized she'd misjudged the distance, a little tipsier than she intended to be. They were standing quite close.

"We probably shouldn't keep doing this," Howard said. His eyes were darting back and forth, sometimes meeting hers, sometimes looking at the wall behind her, as though focusing elsewhere would lessen the tension between them.

"Probably," Peggy said. But she was aroused, and she was lonely, and this felt, in many ways, like a foregone conclusion. She sat down in her chair at the kitchen table and waited, feeling prepared for anything.

She was somehow still surprised when he slid to his knees right there, in the kitchen. It was a graceful movement - impossibly so, considering that he carried his whiskey with him, setting it down on the floor next to her chair. He looked up at her, touching the edge of her pajama pants. His eyes were large and dark, his expression unfathomable. They were going to be married, Peggy thought, and yet she still would understand so little about him.

But she did understand this. She lifted her hips, pulling her pajama pants down to her ankles, and spread her legs. He leaned in, his hair brushing the inside of her thighs, and licked her - lightly, teasing, then more firmly, his head following the movement.

She sighed a little, defenses dropping in spite of herself. She was past tipsy now, drunk enough that the very real consequences for doing this felt unimportant and far away. She stroked his hair, lamenting that the strands weren't long enough to really tug, and leaned back in the chair, her nipples dragging against the fabric of her top as he ran his tongue over her opening, then back up to her clitoris.

It was heavenly. He focused on her as he would a machine, and she found she didn't mind - found, in fact, that she enjoyed it. His tongue flicked over her clitoris until she was so wet it was almost embarrassing, and then he slid two fingers into her, stretching her easily. She arched her back so as to better press her hips up, pressing his face against her. He made a low noise of appreciation and crooked his fingers, and she gasped in spite of herself, hand sliding down to grip his shoulder.

He pulled away long enough to mutter, "Good, good, keep doing that," lifting a hand and placing it over hers, pressing her fingers down until her nails dug into his skin. Then he entered her with a third finger, igniting a slow burn that became almost unbearable when he applied his mouth to her clitoris again, sucking and pressing the flat of his tongue against her, sending shattering sensation throughout her body.

"Oh," she said, and orgasmed, biting her lip to keep from embarrassing herself. It only barely helped, though; she still moaned, vulgar and rather loud, nails scraping against Howard's skin.

When she felt able, she leaned forward and looked down at him. He was sitting back on his heels, sipping his whiskey again, looking at her with frank appreciation. She felt distantly as though it should have put her off, but of course it didn't. She gripped his necktie - already askew - and pulled him up. He stumbled as he stood, the whiskey in his glass sloshing, but her chair was against the wall and she didn't feel too shy to pull him onto her lap.

He wasn't tall enough for it to be awkward. She got his pants open quickly, unbuttoning them with the kind of alacrity that only accompanied alcohol. Then he was in her hand, hard and thick. She licked her palm and stroked him, looking up at him - and then looking away, because his stare was too much. Too intense, too knowing; this was an assignation that Peggy didn't want to give grand significance to. She refused.

He said her name when he arrived at completion, petting her hair and kissing her, biting her lip as he made a mess of her pajamas. It was intimate, startlingly so, and as his tremors stilled, she pushed him off her lap.

"I should change."

Howard picked up his whiskey and finished it, then got up, pouring himself another glass. "Should I leave?"

It was a question baldly asked, which she appreciated. The answer, for her, was simple - even if she didn't like it. "No. Stay."

"Sure," he said, and sat back down at the table as Peggy left.

She returned wearing lounge pants and a different, more concealing top - along with undergarments this time. It was scarcely 1400, but the light already looked tired. Howard greeted her when she returned to the kitchen with a lifted glass and a refill of her own whiskey. His eyes were a little bloodshot. She decided not to ask questions.

They spent the rest of the day getting quietly drunk. Peggy thought about telling Howard to leave many times, especially after they exhausted their interest in poker and moved to the living room to listen to the radio and swap wartime stories. But every time she opened her mouth to imply he should leave, he would say something that set them off on another thread of conversation.

And then, as they ate cold chicken on bread with cheese - a rustic sort of meal, fitting for how long they'd both been drunk - Howard said, "He'd've made it Christmas for us both if he was here."

Peggy went very still.

"I think about him sometimes," Howard said. "More than sometimes. Christ, he was really something."

She did her best to sound neutral when she said, "The serum -"

"It wasn't the serum and you know it. That kid was different. Special."

Peggy closed her eyes. It didn't help. She could still see Steve looking at her, hear his voice right before the radio went to static. "Howard."

"We were both thinking of him. On some level, we were."

"I loved him." It felt safe to say it, here, under the cover of whiskey, the safety of an engagement. "I loved him, and he's gone, and you want to reminisce about him like we're talking to Time Magazine?"

"Do you really think that's it? Christ." Howard rubbed his temple. "Maybe I didn't love him," he said after a silent minute. "But I wake up every day and I think about what a shame it is I can't drop in on you two, two peas in a damn pod - that's got to count for something, right?"

Peggy couldn't answer. Whatever words she might have said were caught in her throat. She wanted to know with almost painful acuity if Howard had also felt an attraction to Steve, and yet, she was frightened of the answer.

Finally, she said, "Of course."

"Right, then." Howard leaned back into the couch. "Christ. It's late."

Peggy looked at the clock. It was scarcely 17:00, but she felt tired down to the bone.

"I should go home," Howard said, with absolutely no conviction.

"Stay," Peggy said. She immediately winced, irritated at her voice for sounding nakedly emotional to the point of being American. But Howard sat up, looking at her with such hope that she knew she couldn't retract the invitation.

"Sure," Howard said. He smiled a little.

Peggy smiled back.

They slept together that night, side by side. Howard had hooked his leg over Peggy's ankle and their shoulders were pressed against one another. It was overly warm, a bit, so Peggy reached behind her and cracked the bedroom window. She fell asleep to the sound of Howard's steady breathing, cold air streaming over her face.

When she woke in the morning, Howard's mouth was on her breast. He was, to all appearances, asleep, but his expression was decidedly lewd.

She sighed and shoved at him, none too gently. Her head didn't hurt, a minor miracle, but she felt - raw. Exposed. Altogether too open to the man who was currently hogging her bed, and all her blankets.

Would they sleep in the same room at his mansion? She couldn't imagine. That was definitely a question for another day. "Howard," she said. "Howard, wake up."

He moaned and turned his head, his lips brushing her nipple. She punched him, then, a hard thump on his shoulder that made him yelp and leap away from her. "God damn, woman!"

"It's nine in the morning," Peggy said. "High time we stopped lazing about, don't you think?"

Howard rubbed his shoulder and eyed her with a decided expression of betrayal. She raised her eyebrows and did her best to convey her lack of amusement.

"I need to get you a ring," Howard said finally, rolling out of bed. "Women are nicer when you get them rings."

"You'd know this how, exactly?"

"Oh, you know," Howard said. "I hear things." He rifled through her bureau, pulling out a blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders before making his way out into the kitchen.

She sighed and followed. He'd want coffee, and she had no faith in his ability to work the press post-Christmas drunkenness.

They had a quiet breakfast, and Peggy sent Howard downstairs when his car arrived. She planned to pass a quiet day reading, but about an hour after Howard left, her telephone rang.

She answered it on the second ring. "Peggy Carter speaking."

"What kind of rings do you like?"

"Howard?"

"The one and only. We're gonna have to speed up the engagement. Oh, and you'll need to come to my New Year's party."

"I'm sorry - what?"

"There are shots in the paper. Some worthless piece of shit saw me entering and leaving your building, and unfortunately, your address is a matter of public record."

Peggy closed her eyes.

"They don't know about the SHIELD connection, obviously, but I told 'em I was visiting my fiancé."

"Wonderful."

"Do you like blue? I can have a sapphire cut and sent to you."

"Not sapphire," Peggy said quickly, as the image of a pair of concerned blue eyes flickered in her mind. "Emerald, please, with diamonds. In white gold."

"You got it. Should be there by tomorrow."

"I'd like to call on you," Peggy said before she could think better of it.

"That's not exactly proper."

"None of this is."

"I'll have the ring sent to me, then," Howard said. "I'll see you tomorrow for dinner?"

"That would be lovely."

"Great," Howard said, and hung up.

He was abrupt to the point of being vulgar, but Peggy honestly preferred that. The thought of all but hosting a party with Howard disturbed her to her core. But that was going to be her life, wasn't it? She would never be the sort of trophy wife a man like Howard ought to have, but neither would she be entirely free of marriage-related obligations.

Though some of those were, obviously, quite pleasant. Just thinking of his head between her legs was enough to make a shiver of arousal run through her.

She liked Howard. Why, then, did that make this whole situation even more frustrating?

She kept herself busy for the next day, going over SHIELD paperwork and amassing material for her presentation in front of the Senate. She needed to have an absolutely iron-clad case - she'd be alone for the hearing, without any support but her own notes. She knew that she couldn't really prepare enough, but she had to try.

When she arrived at Howard's mansion for dinner the next night, she was wearing a green dress with a straight skirt, purchased and altered the day before. It was satin, and rather more ornate than she felt comfortable wearing. She felt even more out of place when, instead of being escorted to the dining room, Howard's butler brought her to a small sitting room. There was a table in the corner with food for two, and a fire crackling behind an ornate wrought iron grate.

"Well," she said when Howard appeared in slacks and a button-down, "I feel overdressed."

Howard appraised her with a frankness that would have made Peggy blush, once upon a time. "I could send for something else."

"No," she said. "This is hardly the first time I've felt out of place." She walked - marched, really - over to the table and sat down, before Howard had a chance to pull out her chair.

He sat down across from her, wearing a bit of a smirk. "You were quite the dame in the woods in Germany, you know."

"We were in the midst of a world-consuming war," Peggy said, "and your commentary on the experience is that I was 'quite the dame'?"

"If a worldwide crisis isn't an appropriate time to appreciate the female form, when is?" Howard poured them both a glass of wine. "And your form is particularly delightful."

"Have you ever paid a compliment to a woman that wasn't absolutely disrespectful?"

"Sure," Howard said. "My housekeeper makes wonderful scones."

Peggy shook her head, but as she took a sip of her wine, she found herself smiling a bit.

Howard smiled back, a quirk of the lips that looked sly and a bit scandalous. Peggy wasn't entirely sure he knew how to smile any other way. "It doesn't have to be awful, you know," he said as he served her roast and vegetables.

"What doesn't?" She sipped her wine, more as an excuse to keep herself occupied than anything else. She knew he was talking about the marriage, of course. What else would he be referring to?

"This. Us. I think we work well together."

"This is a marriage," Peggy said. "Or - it will be a marriage."

"It's a business arrangement. I've got investors, I know how this works. We're investing in each other."

The bruises on the inside of Peggy's thighs told a different story. But Peggy had always been perceptive, and it was easy to see, right now, that Howard was working to deceive himself, even as he attempted to convince her. "Of course," she said. She cut her roast quickly. It was soft, succulent; when she moved to this mansion, her diet wouldn't suffer.

God, she didn't want to move. But she knew she had to.

"We do work well together," she said. "Even if our specialties lie in rather different areas."

Howard took a bite of broccoli and eyed her appraisingly. "I could go on a mission."

She just barely managed not to choke on potato. "And do what? You're a civilian, Howard. Honestly."

"You're a director, or had you forgotten? SHIELD needs you behind a desk."

That was a cowardly blow. Peggy narrowed her eyes at him, but he looked utterly unabashed.

"Fine," she said, forced to acknowledge her censure wouldn't shame him in the slightest. "We're both past the time when we can be spared to run around in the wilderness, shooting at fascists. I'm still a better shot than you."

"Of course," Howard said. "And I'm a better pilot."

He smiled at her, and Peggy had to look away. She knew - she was, in fact, painfully aware - that Howard was a flirt. He was flirting now, because flirting made things easier, and they were in desperate need of some social ease. She understood that. She could even appreciate it.

But Peggy was a woman, and somewhat lonely besides. All the worldly knowledge known to mankind could not prevent her from feeling a low tug of want, in the wistful part of her that she generally tried to repress and ignore. If she and Howard could have a real marriage - but of course that was impossible. Howard didn't seem inclined to monogamy, and Peggy wasn't entirely sure she wanted a true marriage.

She'd joined the armed forces, after all, and any dreams she'd had in that direction were quickly overcome by dreams of authority and helping to shape the world. That she then hoped for a marriage with Steve was an aberration more than anything else.

"This is delicious," Peggy said, and took a larger bite of her roast than was strictly necessary.

"It's an old standby of my cook's," Howard said. "I was going to give you this, by the way." He pushed a velvet box towards her.

It was clearly a ring box, which Peggy had known to expect. She swallowed her food and told her stomach to calm down as sternly as she could before lifting the box. "Thank you," she said, and opened it.

He'd gotten her an emerald, flanked by diamonds and set in white gold, as she'd asked. Peggy was largely surprised by how tasteful it was, as she hadn't expected anything short of a flashy ring. It seemed as though he'd picked something with her in mind, which was itself disconcerting.

"Thank you," she said, and slid the ring onto her finger.

"You'll marry me, then?"

She didn't point out that she was in a fairly revealing satin dress in a man's house long past a polite hour. Times were changing, and besides, they had already had what amounted to conjugal relations. "Of course," she said. "For Queen and country, as my cousins would say."

Howard lifted his champagne glass, but his smile didn't quite look genuine. It was only after they'd both taken sips of champagne that he said, "I hope it won't be that bad."

She blinked. "Pardon?"

"If we consummate -"

"Mr. Stark, please." She headed off embarrassment at the pass, speaking as firmly as she knew how. "We will, of course, consummate the marriage, in the interests of legality, if nothing else. But if you were referring to thinking of the Queen -"

"Howard, Peggy, please call me Howard, and I didn't mean -"

"Of course. But I assure you. I am not frigid." She looked away from him, examining the far wall. "I'd hoped you'd realized that already."

"Christ," Howard muttered. "Peggy, of course I realized. That was stupid of me. I didn't mean it like that."

She continued to train her gaze on the wall, which was tastefully papered, and considerably more restful than Howard's face. "Oh?"

"I just meant, if you're doing it because we're married, it's less...alluring. It's an obligation. The old ball and chain, you know what I'm saying?"

Peggy stared at him. "Are you saying if we exchange vows and rings, you won't be attracted to me?"

"Technically speaking, I'll be buying the rings - ah. Shit. No, that's not what I mean."

"Then -"

Howard reached out to her. He moved quickly and without hesitation. Had Peggy had full control of her facilities, she might have moved away in time, but she was somewhat distressed. As such, he easily captured her hand.

"I want you to enjoy it," Howard said. He was looking at her intensely, with all of that focus she remembered largely from accompanying him down to the lab. She'd have liked to think the shift in attention to her was a positive sign, but she really wasn't sure. "Peggy, I've never fucked a woman who didn't want it. I'm not keen to start now."

She had some dim idea that Howard referring to fucking women should engender a feeling of disgust, or at least prudery, in her. It had rather the opposite effect. "Howard. I enjoy sex. I will enjoy it even if it's to ensure the legality of our union."

"Ah. Well." He smiled at her, a little lopsidedly. "That's good, then."

She took a deep breath. It was two days after Christmas; their engagement was going to be in the papers in just a few days, and she didn't feel prepared. Keeping that in mind, she knew there were a few things she could do to feel at least a little better. One of them involved reaching out to Howard. Literally, in a way.

She turned her hand until their palms were pressed together and said, "I enjoy kissing."

He blinked.

"The usual way, of course," she said. "But on my shoulders, as well. My collarbones. My neck."

"I see." He swallowed. "That's good to know."

"What do you like?"

Howard's laugh was ragged. "I'm a man, Peggy. I like anything warm and wet around my cock."

The memory made her clench her thighs together. She kept her voice as steady as she could when she said, "Don't be ridiculous. Men enjoy things other than - thrusting away like dogs."

"You'd know, would you?"

No. But if she usually let uncertainty deter her, she'd be in a different business. "Tell me."

"I like women." Howard shrugged. It looked like an attempt to be casual. "And men, but women more, or maybe it's just easier. I like pussy. I like tonguing a woman, I like 'em straddling me. I like a bit of trim in my face. Does that clear things up for you?"

It was not the sort of speech women were meant to find alluring. But imagining herself like that, over Howard, made Peggy's breath catch.

"Yes," she finally managed to say. "That is sufficient."

His shoulders slumped, and she realized that he'd been holding himself unnaturally upright, as though under interrogation. She could keep her breathing steady and her body still, but she couldn't help the rushing sensation in her head, as though her blood were deserting her mind for more - practical - areas.

"Thanks, Agent," he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. It wasn't quite a smile, and when he lifted his fork to eat another bite of roast, his hand was shaking.

A moment passed; he chewed and swallowed. Then she kissed him. The movement was far from deliberate. Of course, it was helped along by the table being small; she really only needed to lean forward a bit. He had time to move away, and she had time to stop herself, and yet their lips met, her lipstick smearing as he opened his mouth and gasped in surprise.

They were of a similar height, but Howard slumped in such a way that Peggy had to lean down as she kissed him. The food cooled between them as she bit his lip and gently dipped her tongue into his mouth. His hand, again clasped in hers, was shaking.

She didn't know what to do when they pulled apart. His mouth was bright red from her lipstick, and she could feel within her a terrible, familiar longing, for a kind of companionship she knew she wouldn't find with him. Finally, she decided to lean back. Action followed thought, and she dabbed at her mouth before picking up her fork again.

"Our food's getting cold."

"Are you serious?"

She paused. "Well. Yes."

"After that, you want to finish your roast?"

Eye contact was difficult, but she forced herself to engage in it anyway. "I'm not sure what else you want me to do."

"There's a bedroom down the hall."

She noticed the lack of a possessive pronoun. Howard, she imagined, liked his space. She would not share his bed as he'd shared her apartment. She wasn't even sure she wanted to. "We should finish eating."

"Should we?"

"Yes," she said. To emphasize how serious she was, she took a large bite of vegetables.

His gaze stayed on her, transparently wanting. He was clearly hungry, however, and when she continued eating, he followed suit.

The fire between them slowly diminished. Peggy could feel her brain begin to function again. Howard still made her feel decidedly off-kilter, sitting across from her like this, but she was far from losing her calm.

She'd convinced herself of that fact so thoroughly that when he put his fork down and said, "You should be getting home," she was almost confused by the disappointment she felt.

"Of course," she said. "I'll - yes."

He caught her hand as she stood and kissed her finger, over and around the ring. It was alluring in a strange way, one that kicked her heart rate up. It was also over almost as soon as it had begun.

"You're gorgeous," he said.

His voice had an element of wistfulness, as though he wished it weren't true. And, looking at him as he surveyed her, she couldn't help but sympathize. She didn't want to be this drawn to him. She didn't want to feel so desperate for his touch that she was honestly considering suggesting they go down the hall.

"I'll escort you out," he said when she didn't answer. He held her hand all the way to the door.

She didn't see him again for days. Six days stood between them and the advertisement, set to run in the paper on January 2nd - the day Peggy returned to work, and also two weeks to the date before the Senate hearing. Alone in her apartment on those fragile, solitary days after Christmas, she read novels and listened to music that seemed to occasionally suggest the existence of a divine power: jazz and swing, Bach and Mozart, a jumble of sounds that soothed her even as they made her heart beat faster.

She wondered if she could keep her record player when she moved to Howard's mansion. She supposed there was no reason she couldn't. Would she have a sitting room of her own? She would, surely. And occasionally, when she returned from working at SHIELD, she and Howard would eat a tense dinner together in some cavernous, cold dining room, before returning to their separate quarters.

But she'd get her funding, and the legitimacy that came with it, and she'd use that funding to try to ensure no more scrawny boys from Brooklyn had to go to war. That had to be good enough.

The day before New Year's Eve, Howard called her. "Peggy."

"Howard," she said, leaning back against her kitchen wall. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine."

'Fine' might mean 'drunk' in this context, but Peggy didn't ask. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Isn't that just the question."

Definitely drunk. Peggy waited.

"I'm hosting a shindig at my home tomorrow. I was hoping I could introduce you as my fiancée."

She didn't choke on air, but it was a near thing. Immediately after rescuing herself from imminent suffocation by tongue, she felt a strong desire to finish the half-bottle of wine sitting on her side table. "What?"

"I know we said we'd do it in an ad, but Morita was hinting at me like mad yesterday, and if we're not together during the New Year..."

"Of course." It would reflect on them poorly; it might even seem actively suspicious. Peggy was unattached and...unconventional was, perhaps, a generous way to describe her present social circle and occupation. But even so, the whispers about her social life would be exponentially more difficult to ignore if she and Howard weren't even slightly linked prior to their announcement. "I'll be there. What time?"

"The party officially starts at seven, but I'm having some buddies over for a little pre-dinner at five."

"By 'some buddies', you mean -"

"The Commandos, of course."

"Of course." Her mouth was dry. "I'll be there."

"Excellent." He paused as though he were about to hang up, but then he said, "God, I hope you wear red."

"I - excuse me?"

"Red, Peggy. You look gorgeous in red. Like a goddess."

His breath caught, and suddenly she had a very good idea of what he might be doing on the other line. "Howard," she said. "I'm aware that you have all sorts of innovations, but even you cannot guarantee privacy on a telephone line."

Howard laughed, more breath than voice when he said, "I bought parts of the grid. No one's listening in."

She shook her head. He couldn't see it, of course, but it put her in the right mindset to say firmly, "Howard. Goodnight."

She hung up before he had a chance to attempt to convince her to continue listening. Or rather, she hung up before she had a chance to be tempted to continue talking.

That night, she ate as well as she usually did: a carefully cooked meal of chicken and potatoes. It was all very ordinary, utterly within reach for any number of people in New York City now that the war was over. Nothing about this meal reminded her of Steve, of the Commandos, of the almost-home they'd carved out behind the lines in Europe. Perhaps that was why it felt so comforting. It reminded her that today, less than two days away from 1947, she still lived.

She rose the next day with an odd sense of trepidation lurking in her mind. Awareness of the tenuousness of her position was creeping back in as her two weeks away from SHIELD came to a close. She needed to be prepared for what the newspaper announcement in two days would do to her reputation, to her career prospects - not, of course, that they'd be harmed. But they would be changed. Who wouldn't be changed by such a strong connection to Howard Stark? She told herself she thought it ironically; it was the kind of sentiment he'd laugh at. Unfortunately for both of them, it was also true.

New Year's Eve wasn't really an appropriate time for introspection, though, so she finally set aside her concerns and laid out a dress. It was red - because she liked red, she told herself, entirely apart from Howard's preferences. She pressed the dress and hung it up, then drew herself a bath.

She kept her mind off work through the liberal application of novels. It was a more or less effective strategy; by the time she was due to dress and make her way to Howard's, she felt almost relaxed. That feeling persisted until she walked up to Howard's front door, having paid the cab driver, and the door swung open before she could knock.

"Mrs. Stark," Jim said, one eyebrow arched.

She raised her nose. "Not yet, Jim, and not ever, in the way you're thinking. I will remain Agent Carter."

"Just also rich as Croesus."

"And able to convince the Senate I'm not so weak as to be easily bullied."

Jim grimaced. "Good point," he said, and stepped aside to allow Peggy into Howard's foyer.

She took off her coat, and a butler appeared to hang it up. Jim looked different, she thought. Usually all the Commandos were a bit scruffy, but today Jim was polished to a sheen. "Are we entertaining a special guest, then?"

Jim did a bit of a double take at 'we', but Peggy supposed she had better get used to it. He recovered quickly enough, anyway, saying, "My wife will be arriving for the party."

"Next time, you should bring her to dinner."

"She's - not one of us."

"Where was she in the war?" In Peggy's experience, even American women had their own memories of war. They might not involve active duty, but they were unpleasant all the same.

She realized she'd spoken hastily when he frowned. "Ah," she said, as contritely as she could. Jim's wife had been in the American camps.

"Her family's Japanese," Jim said. "From Sacramento. But."

"Absolutely bring her, then," Peggy said, hoping to spare them both further embarrassment. "I should like to have another woman present, and we were all touched by the war."

Jim nodded. "I will. In the meantime, your fiancé is waiting."

"Is he drunk?"

He laughed. "No more than the rest of us will be," he said, and offered his arm to lead them to the dining room.

Howard was, indeed, drunk, but not terribly so. Tim and Gabe both sat with him, drinking whiskey from absolutely enormous tumblers. When Peggy cleared her throat, everyone stood. "Hello."

"My lady," Howard said. She couldn't tell if he'd meant it to sound sarcastic. "This seat is yours." He waved to the seat at his right hand.

"Thank you," she said, and went to sit down. Before she did, he kissed each of her cheeks. She imagined he thought it Continental, or perhaps he was being deliberately boorish. Either way, she doubted he intended to make her shiver the way she did, even as she pulled away and sat down.

"Bring the lady some wine," Howard said to the nearest attendant. The man obeyed. "The food should be out soon."

"I'm surprised I wasn't shown to a sitting room."

"Ah, well," Howard said. "Dinner was supposed to be served, but..."

"He fucked up the oven," Tim said. "His invention blew up half an hour ago."

"That's an exaggeration," Howard said.

Peggy looked at him dubiously.

"A slight exaggeration."

"I see," she said. "Well, I can't have that much to drink before the food's ready."

The footman set down a glass in front of her. It held what had to be at least half a bottle of wine.

"Well," she said, and took a drink.

"I'm just saying," Howard said to Tim, in the tone of one continuing a conversation begun before Peggy arrived, "if you wanted to run for mayor, I'd support you."

Gabe snorted. "This lug, mayor of New York? Are you kidding me?"

"Scared of a union man, Gabe?"

"Worried about another windbag who thinks being in a union is the biggest of life's problems," Gabe said.

Tim laughed. It was lucky that he was so hard to offend; Gabe didn't seem to be joking at all. "I'd make you my right hand man. The power behind the curtain."

Gabe smiled a little at that. "This city's not ready for that."

"You'll have to settle for your work with SHIELD," Peggy said. "Which, incidentally, largely bars you from other service."

They groaned. Peggy smiled, unable to help herself. "My apologies, boys."

"What about you?" Howard said. "Should I be burying the skeletons in my closet in anticipation of your triumphant mayoral run?"

"Me? I'd have to change rather a lot about myself first, Howard, starting with my gender." Peggy smiled as she said it, sipping her wine, but the barb stung a bit, even though she knew Howard had meant it as a joke. As a compliment, even. Unfortunately, it struck her too close, touched at ambitions she would absolutely have, were she unrealistic.

"Sure," Howard said. "Well, their loss is my gain." He lifted his glass to her, and she toasted him.

She was unsurprised when, after fifteen minutes of gossip (though all her companions would protest that definition), Howard pressed his leg against Peggy's knee. It was a risqué sort of movement, and Peggy's cheeks flushed just a bit as she continued the conversation.

In truth, she wanted to grab him by the necktie and drag him off to a secluded room. But just as she was certain she'd make a fine mayor, she knew her Howard-related urges weren't ones to be fulfilled. Instead, she exclaimed over the roast duck along with everyone else when it emerged from the kitchen, and they all ate a considerable amount of food.

They'd all had several drinks when Howard said, "We'd better get to the ballroom, it's going to be my job to greet people. And announce our engagement." Peggy herself was tipsy enough that the statement made her blush. It had been something of a pink elephant until right then, when Tim, Jim, and Gabe all looked at her with varying degrees of amusement or worry.

"I should join you," Peggy said.

"People will wonder why."

"Let them. Their questions will be answered soon enough."

Howard smiled, slowly and entirely too sensuously. "I like how you think."

Twenty minutes later, Peggy realized she had not thought this strategy through. The suspicious looks were easy enough to deal with; she'd handled far more insulting assumptions about her before, and likely would again during the Senate hearing. Howard's presence was considerably more frustrating. He touched her arm in a mostly appropriate way, and occasionally braced a hand on her lower back. It wasn't at all out of turn for a man she'd be marrying in a month. But it made the want she'd successfully ignored at dinner come back all the more strongly, until - an hour into the party, when they'd left off greeting people in favor of circulating - she finally gave in to frustration and snatched a flute of champagne from one of the trays servers carried around the ballroom.

"Nervous?" Howard said under his breath.

"Not at all," Peggy said, and took a very large gulp of champagne. Howard had been drinking the whole time, but he never became more than somewhat flushed.

He looked askance at her, then at the ballroom floor, the center of which was filled with dancing couples. "Want to dance?"

"Howard. Surely you can't mean we should dance instead of announcing our engagement?"

"Of course not," he said. "We should dance, then announce our engagement."

They were bold words. She half expected him to conclude them by sweeping her onto the dance floor. Instead he waited, looking at her, waiting for her permission.

She couldn't bear how badly she wanted him. "Yes," she said, and placed her champagne on the nearest table. "Yes, let's dance."

They danced a waltz. He held her close and didn't say anything. When they were almost pressed together, it felt half like a hug, and half like something that made her want him to back her against a wall, kiss her, lift her skirts. It felt, in short, like nothing she'd been taught to want. But Peggy had not been a good English girl in a long time, so she reveled in every feeling, until the dance ended and Howard bowed to her. "Great job, pal."

It was so unexpected that she laughed. "And you," she said. "Shall we tell them now?" More than one person was looking their way, speculation in their expressions.

"Are you ready?"

"I'll never be ready." She met his eyes, mostly to make sure he understood her. She'd never be ready, but their marriage was one of necessity. It wasn't a coming-of-age sort of announcement at all.

He squeezed her hand, his palm warm and dry. "Let's go, then," he said, and led them up the stairs.

The acoustics of his ballroom were superb. When he reached the balcony above where the band was playing, they could see almost everyone. The crowd murmured just loudly enough that when Howard said, "Your attention, please," the resulting silence was unnerving. Peggy stood next to him, hand tucked in his arm, doing her best to look serene and marriageable without looking weak.

It was an odd sort of balancing act, but she'd been doing a variation on it since she was very young. She held her head up and examined the crowd.

They examined her back. She felt a bit like she was stuck in a silent film, until Howard said, "Good evening. Thank you for coming here to celebrate the beginning of 1947 with me. A lot has happened in the last decade, including kicking Hitler right in the -"

Peggy elbowed him. Howard laughed. "Well," he said. "I entered this decade single, and I thought I'd leave it single, too. But then I met this dame, and everything changed."

The kind of clarity that came along very rarely descended upon Peggy just then. If she didn't stop him, Howard would spin out a long, alcohol-fueled story of their romance, in front of at least three reporters, full of details they'd both struggle to remember later. She took a step in front of him, even though the action necessitated half-leaning over the banister, and announced with a wide smile, "We're engaged."

For a moment, the tenor of the silence changed, and several hundred stunned people looked up at her. Then someone - Peggy's money was on Tim - whooped and cheered, and they were met with applause.

"Very nice," Howard murmured into her ear. He kissed her cheek, smiling at the crowd with an air of conspiracy. "Worried I'd say something I'd regret?"

"You're not a very good spy," Peggy said. "I've learned not to let civilians think themselves overly prepared for subterfuge." She smiled as Howard laughed against her cheek.

It only took a minute for the cheers to turn into happy chatter. The band started playing again, and Howard took Peggy's hand, walking with her - neither of them really leading - down the stairs.

As they re-entered the crowd, this time moving as a unit, Peggy became aware that her heart was pounding unusually quickly. Even taking on a mission didn't affect her like this. She did her best to ignore the feeling, because she needed to accept congratulations with as much confidence - real or falsified - as possible.

It wasn't until they'd made a full circuit of the room, and Howard handed her a glass of champagne with a performative flourish, that Peggy realized she wasn't just flustered or afraid. She was both, of course; any situation requiring courage involved a little fear. But she also wanted him. Their fingers brushed as she took the champagne, and she felt heat course to her face and down between her legs as she imagined him pushing her skirt up and kissing her everywhere he could reach.

"We're an early success," he said.

"No thanks to your attempt to spin a fine romance."

"We'll have to come up with one eventually."

"Yes, with details we can remember and have agreed upon."

She said it with some asperity, but Howard smiled at her as though delighted. She looked away, frantic for something else to focus on. Her eyes landed on the clock. It was only 2100, which seemed impossible.

Before she had a chance to say anything to distract either of them, Howard said quietly, "God, you're gorgeous."

Heat ran through her, pooling between her legs. Her reactions were entirely inappropriate, considering she was standing on the edge of Howard's ballroom, and yet she still, for a moment, considered pulling him into an alcove and having her way with him.

She came to her senses, barely, after a moment's struggle. "You look well yourself."

Howard smiled as though he knew what she'd been thinking. "Do I, now?"

"You'll suit."

"I'm surprised you haven't insisted I put on airs. I remember your meeting with the Prime Minister."

Howard and Peggy had both met Prime Minister Churchill, actually, last year at a government function. Peggy flushed, unable to repress it. She'd acted a bit posh. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Don't suppose you would." Howard quirked an eyebrow at her. "I'm just trying to say I'm glad you don't mind marrying the nouveau riche."

He pronounced the French with a deliberate East Coast affectation. She rolled her eyes. "Don't be dramatic. I grew up in a cottage."

"But you act like a queen."

She had no response to that. It made her feel odd, as though Howard were driving a wedge between them where none should exist. She pulled away a little, but he followed, expression immediately apologetic.

"Sorry," he said.

"Are you?"

"Sure," Howard said. "Isn't that the point of marriage?"

"Not really."

"I guess you'll just have to show me, then."

Peggy was smart. She had no interest in gauging if she was as smart as Howard - she knew most institutions, most men, would say no. But she was an excellent spy and could kill a man with a hat pin, and Howard didn't have a fraction of the skills she applied daily to her profession. As a consequence, she never really felt inferior, or as though Howard were outmaneuvering her. Right then, however, she felt almost dizzy with his mood changes. She was an expert at reading people, and yet she still couldn't work out what, precisely, he was thinking, and why he was behaving the way he was. It was profoundly disconcerting.

She didn't realize she was staring at him until he said, "See something you like?"

"Oh." She looked away. "My apologies. I was thinking."

"You're always thinking." Howard looked away from her then, surveying the ballroom. She wasn't sure what he saw; neither of them was tall enough to see above the crowds. "Want to take a break from all this?"

"Should we?"

He laughed. It was a sharp, uncouth sort of sound. "We're engaged, and you're employed. How much more trouble could we get in?"

It was a good point, even if her arousal disagreed that they couldn't make more trouble. She nodded. "Lead the way, then."

He took her hand, and they walked out of the ballroom. No one tried to stop them, though a few people smiled knowingly; she supposed that to them, she and Howard were two lovebirds. In America after the war, many people had adopted a somewhat permissive attitude toward such things.

The hallway was lit by electric lights in sconces below elaborate crown molding. Howard led them down the hallway and then around a corner, pushing open a door that proved to lead to an inner courtyard. It seemed extravagant even for a mansion in New York - domed glass kept the cold out, and plants grew in shallow holders on either side of a winding, cobblestone path.

"This is a greenhouse," Howard said. "The most efficient in the city, with warming systems designed by yours truly."

"It's lovely." Peggy reached out and brushed her fingers over a bush. Its leaves were shiny, and it had clearly been trimmed within an inch of its life, but it was alive. Real. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"I had an ulterior motive."

"You? I'm shocked." She turned to him. Her heels clattered against the cobblestones. She didn't stumble, but Howard reached out anyway, bracing a warm hand against the small of her back.

"I missed you," he said. "We should've talked, after Christmas."

"Technically, we spoke the day after Christmas."

"It's been days."

Peggy shut her mouth. Days. What kind of luxury was it, to become petulant at days spent not speaking? Days rather than weeks, or months, apart due to war or poverty? Days rather than forever, as she was slowly coming to acknowledge would be the case between herself and Steve? She thought she might be able to be angry with him, but really, that wasn't the case. He'd been in the war too, and his lack of military rank hadn't prevented him from going behind enemy lines. He missed Steve, just as she did. He was brave, just as she was.

And yet somehow, in just a few days, he'd missed her.

"Peggy," Howard said.

She shook her thoughts off and met his gaze. In the orange New York light, his eyes looked even darker than usual. "Yes?"

He kissed her.

The greenhouse was cooler than the ballroom, and shivers ran over her skin as his tongue touched hers. It was maddening how quickly her situational awareness fell away - or shrank, rather, so that instead of monitoring nearby footsteps, she memorized every slide and rasp of Howard's fingers against her skin or dress.

He only kissed her. He only gently bit her lip, stroked her shoulder, ran a single finger down her spine. He only fit his hand on her hip and pressed them together. He only brushed his lips over her jaw, feather-light.

She did more. She pushed him back until he stood flush against a wall. She pushed his jacket off, then unbuttoned his shirt. She reared back, breathing hard, to look at him - lit by street lamps, eyes glinting as he palmed himself, fitting his hand around his cock, fabric bunching under his fingers.

"What do you want?" she said.

She'd meant in the moment. Right then, in the greenhouse, before they became further obligated to one another, before they shared lives. But Howard didn't take it that way. He smiled just a bit and said, voice low and throaty, "I've got some time to work on answering that."

She kissed him again, threw herself against him and rutted with him, because she couldn't think about the implications of that statement. Or wouldn't, maybe. Either way, the result was the same; she got his hands on her, playing with her breasts as she curved a hand over his prick, sucking her nipples as she got his pants down.

She tried to get him off first, to distract herself as much as anything else. But he got the jump on her, dropping to his knees right there against the wall. "Brace your hands against the wall," he said, and put his mouth to her.

God. Oh, God. She didn't care about anything just then, nothing but his touch, his tongue against her. He pressed blunt fingers inside, moving them shallowly, causing her to half-laugh at her own wet noises. He sucked her clitoris, tongued it and fucked her until her knees shook and she came, thrusting against his face.

He shook as well as he stood, looking at her with almost comically wide eyes. She took advantage of the moment, shoving him back again and pushing her hand down his pants. He was so hard and so warm, and he jerked his hips against the air when she licked her hand and put it to him, jacking him hard and fast. It only took a few minutes before he threw his head back, swallowing down a cry, his fingers biting into her shoulders.

She watched him gasp and shudder, his movements slowing incrementally. She expected a quick recovery from him, a clinical assessment of what might indicate their activities to the guests: tucking her hair back, wiping sweat from his brow. Her anticipation was misplaced. He leaned against her for long moments, his entire body shaking. When he moved, it was only to drag his lips over her neck, then to kiss her square on the mouth, one sweaty hand cupping her shoulder, where he'd pushed her dress aside. The closeness was almost unbearable, overlaid as it was by Howard's near-desperate focus. As the kiss went on, Peggy began to understand that she'd need to be the one to bring order back to them both.

She stopped the kiss by placing a hand on his cheek and gently pushing. When he leaned back, she stepped away.

"It's late," she said. "We'll be noticed if we don't get back soon."

"We're engaged," Howard said again. Right then, it sounded different from before. It was more immediate. They were engaged, and soon it would be perfectly acceptable for them to be - indecent - together.

Though it probably still wouldn't be acceptable in this particular context.

Peggy put on a severe expression. "Do your trousers back up. Is my hair mussed?"

Howard smiled, a little grimly, and obeyed her. "Your hair's fine."

She straightened her dress and examined him. He'd put himself back to rights admirably. She felt odd about facing a large crowd when her knees still trembled from the force of her orgasm, but she wasn't about to run away in the night. She offered him her hand, and he crooked his arm. "Ready?" she said.

"Let's face the music," Howard said, and they walked out of the courtyard together.

Peggy had never been one for anniversaries or new year celebrations. People tended to give themselves over to sentimentality, and Peggy concerned herself largely with practical questions, problems, and aims. Milling about with Howard on her arm in a glamorous ballroom, however, gave her a different perspective. It was hard not to feel as though the new year signified something important when, in truth, she'd be the mistress of this entire mansion before the next year was out.

As 2200 wore into 2300, though, her idealistic musings gave way to more concrete concerns, like ensuring she and Howard didn't stick too close but also didn't ignore each other, and keeping Tim from starting a brawl with a communist. "Come with me, there are canapés," she said, and dragged him away from the slim young man who looked ready to stab his eyes out with a martini toothpick.

The canapés were, in fact, somewhat lackluster. Peggy was fairly certain Howard had paid no attention to quality control with his food - he'd probably auditioned caterers when he was distracted by an engineering problem. Of course, most of the guests were aware of his foibles, and conspicuously indulging in the alcohol more than the food. Tim was the exception, largely because he'd eat anything. She stood by him while he ate several crackers with various types of fish on them. When his face became less red, she said, "Good?"

He nodded. "Go back to your man."

The somewhat crude terminology made Peggy flush, but he obviously didn't mean anything by it. She nodded and went to mingle with another group.

The new years during the war had been tense and largely uncelebrated by anyone in Peggy's cohort. If she'd had to guess, she would have said Howard would be drunk by the time the actual new year arrived. She was partially correct, in that when he found her a few minutes before the clock struck midnight, he wasn't sober. He also wasn't beyond reason, though. His eyes held awareness when he looked at her, and his hands around her waist were deliberate, pressing down with strength.

"Happy New Year," he told her.

"Happy New Year."

"Here's to Senate funding."

For a moment, so quickly she almost didn't notice it, she felt a yawning loneliness that felt like it stretched from her throat to her toes. But then he smiled at her, waiting for an answer, and she smiled back. "To Senate funding," she said.

Someone started yelling a countdown. When the cheer welcoming 1947 went up, they kissed. Peggy was tipsy and lonely and excited all at once, and the mix of feelings buoyed her through an hour of goodbyes and a cab ride home to her dark apartment.

She fell asleep right away, deliberately, leaving no time for doubt or further introspection.

-

1947 dawned cold and clear, with a draft through her window that woke Peggy early. For a moment, she thought the warm, solid object pressed against her left shoulder was Howard, using her as a buffer from the cold. She came to her senses by the time she opened her eyes; she'd left Howard in his mansion, which would soon be her home, as well. She got out of bed and told herself she wasn't disappointed.

Most of the shops would be closed or catering to people nursing headaches, so Peggy made her own tea and sat down with a novel. She'd made the conscious choice to wait until she returned to SHIELD the next day to strategize in preparation for the Senate hearing. Right now, it was just her, her tea, and the travails of Virginia Cunningham, who didn't really deserve to be locked up in an asylum.

Eventually, she relocated from her kitchen to her couch, still in her dressing gown and feeling almost daringly lazy. For a moment she wondered if this was what life would be like with Howard, Peggy slowly descending into wealthy sloth - but then she thought of SHIELD and almost laughed. The Soviets were building their power, fascism was being reworked by those whose passion for the concept remained, and America had enemies everywhere. No; Peggy would not become an idle society wife. SHIELD was hers, and she intended to build it up, until any would-be HYDRA would think twice about crossing them.

She was preparing lunch when the telephone rang. She turned off the burner and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Peggy!"

She didn't recognize the voice on the other end. "This is Agent Carter," she said, as icily as she knew how. "May I ask who's calling?"

"My name's Clint Andrews, I'm with Action Comics - you've heard of us."

"I've seen children with your comics," Peggy said. "What's the nature of your call?"

"Well, you see, we've been working with the State Department for a year or so getting clearance to do some Captain America stories, and -"

Peggy would have liked to slam the phone down. Unfortunately, a man connected with comics most likely had the ear of at least one newspaper editor. She settled for interrupting, saying, "I'm not terribly interested in endorsing such a product. My apologies."

"Miss Carter -"

"Agent Carter."

"Agent Carter, let me assure you, we don't require your endorsement. I was hoping to get your input on the transformation of our hero into a real man, you know, what it was like seeing him suddenly capable of saving the world."

Peggy's hands were shaking. She noted it as an academic detail, alongside her anger at this man, who had no idea how brave Steve had been when he was small, much less how brave he'd been on the day of his transformation.

"I'm afraid I can't speak at the moment," she finally said. "My, ah - grandmother is here, she's very ill, I think she's slipped in the bath. Direct your inquiries to my office, please." She hung up.

She waited by the phone for a few long moments as her food cooled unappetizingly and her heartbeat slowed. He didn't call back. She half wanted him to, even though she knew she couldn't reasonably scream at him. Steve belonged to the ages now, just as other great men before him. Howard might still be looking for him, but he was widely regarded as killed in action. Just as a true hero should be, Peggy thought bitterly.

She eventually ate her lunch, which wasn't nearly as delicious as it would have been had Clint damn-him Andrews not called. Around 15:00, her temper finally faded - and even as she noted the fact, the telephone rang again.

This time, she picked it up with a tense, "Yes?"

"Peggy, everything okay?"

It was Howard, and in predictable Howard fashion, he'd determined she was upset from a single syllable. "I imagine you've had inquiries from Clint Andrews."

"I told him to go screw himself, yeah. Think he's a little unhealthily interested in Steve's procedure, if you know what I mean."

"He doesn't understand."

"Peggy."

Howard sounded uncharacteristically gentle, and she was still upset. "Yes?"

"No one will understand. The first comic is gonna come out on Independence Day, and maybe ten people in the country will understand like you and me."

"I know, I know, it's just -"

"Come to dinner with me," Howard said when her voice dwindled and she failed to finish her sentence.

It was a bad idea. She already felt so off-kilter, desperate and foolish and unwilling to concede that Steve's memory was not for her to hold close. But bad idea though it might be, it was also desperately tempting. Howard was distracting, and in a way, comforting.

"Where do you want to go?" she said finally.

"You ever had Chinese? I swear it's good, anyone who told you different doesn't know what good food is."

Peggy couldn't help but laugh. "I suppose you wouldn't realize I've eaten stranger, being a civilian contractor."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not a vet and never will be. Let me take you out to dinner."

In the end, she was really never going to say no. "Yes, okay. Good."

"Great. I'll pick you up at seven." He hung up without further comment.

She half expected a limo to swing around the front, and was thus surprised by the plain black car parked at her building's stoop. He had a driver, and the car was more expensive than any other one in the neighborhood, but by Howard's standards, it was restrained.

"Thank you," she said when the driver opened the passenger's side for her. She got into the back seat, next to Howard.

"Good to see you," he said. He lifted her hand and kissed it, and Peggy remembered that they were engaged.

"It's good to see you, as well," Peggy said. To her own ears, she sounded calm. A reasonable facsimile of calm, anyway.

"Take us to the restaurant," Howard told the driver.

He settled back with an arm over the back of the seats, just brushing Peggy's shoulders. It was a proprietary sort of gesture, one that Peggy felt she ought to protest. On the other hand, his arm was warm, and no one could see inside the car. After a moment's hesitation, she leaned into him.

They spent the short drive to the restaurant in silence. Peggy did her best not to look surprised when Howard helped her out of the car himself. He took a certain kind of pride in doing so, smiling at her as though they were co-conspirators as they walked into the restaurant.

Of course, they were co-conspirators in a very literal sense, so Peggy smiled back.

"Everything I've ordered here is good," Howard said as they settled at a table. The decor was odd, a mixture of beautiful paintings on the walls and shabby paper laid over the tables. It wasn't the sort of restaurant Peggy imagined Howard frequenting. Of course, he loved pleasure, and food surely played a part in that. "So pick whatever you want."

Peggy picked up a menu and perused it with pursed lips. "So you won't be ordering for me?"

"Christ, and have you throw me into the street? I'll pass on that, Agent."

Peggy laughed at that, both because he sounded entirely honest, and because he accompanied the sentiment with a foot hooked around her ankle. A shiver of arousal traveled through her, somewhat unexpectedly welcome. She examined the menu rather than acknowledge the movement, keeping her leg still so that he continued touching her.

The dish titles were, to Peggy, unpronounceable, but the descriptions were in English. When the waitress came to them, she asked for the chicken stir-fry. Howard ordered the same thing, plus a bottle of wine, wearing an awful smirk the entire time.

"I doubt the servers are terribly interested in our relationship," Peggy said when the waitress left. She meant it to sound like a joke, but her voice was far too sharp to allow for that interpretation.

Howard didn't roll his eyes, though. He also didn't laugh at her. Instead, he said, "What did I do wrong?"

She couldn't answer. He was a man, and he'd been rich before the United States had even entered the war. He'd most likely never been taken out by someone who treated him with casual disdain, someone who belittled him and acted as though his presence were a trophy, rather than the company of a person.

He didn't seem inclined to let the subject go, though. Knowing what she could say would be inadequate, she said, "You're proud."

"Of being with a girl like you? Sure."

"No, it's -" She curled her hands in her lap. "I am not a trophy."

"I know that."

"Do you?"

Howard screwed up his face and then said, in the attitude of someone attempting a foreign language, or a dog trying to balance a ball on its nose, "Should I not have ordered the wine?"

"It's not that. It's - an attitude. Howard, I can't describe it. I'm aware of the hypocrisy in complaining about something I can't describe, but -"

"It's fine." Howard smiled at her, the barest quirk of his lips. "Good thing we've got a marriage to spend on trial and error, right?"

She supposed some might consider that concession a letdown, but for her, it was a relief. She smiled back. "Yes. It's a good thing."

The waitress came with the wine. Howard might have been high-handed, but it was a good vintage, and sipping it as they waited for their food served to relax Peggy greatly. She'd almost forgotten their somewhat awkward engagement when Howard said, "You know, I keep thinking he'd know what to do."

Peggy didn't wonder for even a second who "he" was. "I understand the impulse, but really, Howard. Steve was horrible with women."

Howard snorted. "You would've taught him better."

"It's not as though I have a lot of experience."

"More than he did."

It sounded insulting, but Peggy knew Howard meant it fondly. She knew he also felt oddly fierce sadness when thinking of Steve. "Still," she said. "The war took a lot of things from a lot of people. It wasn't fair to anyone."

The subtext was obvious: they'd both gotten off lightly, with all their limbs, not to mention their lives. Of course, they'd both lost Steve, in a more personal sense than the country had lost him. And the Commandos had lost Steve and Bucky both, and Peggy had lost her parents, and...

Howard covered her hand with his. He looked sympathetic. "You're allowed to be sad, you know."

"I was," she said, without thinking. Having said it, she felt bound to elaborate, so she added, "I was so sad that I allowed them to shove me in a corner and give me paperwork. For months." Five months, to be exact. Five months of eight-hour days, five days a week, with no vacation. She'd been fighting to prove herself to men who would never, ever respect her, much less view her as a colleague. Howard, in contrast, was a blessing.

"I thought about blowing my brains off a few times."

She blinked. Howard looked at her steadily, his face more or less blank.

"I'm glad I didn't," he said, and smiled at her as though they were sharing a joke, before taking an uncouth gulp of wine.

She thought about berating him for sharing something with her that any sane person would find upsetting. She wasn't herself particularly upset, however, and she doubted Howard shared even this much with many other people.

"I'm glad you didn't as well." She looked around the room, hoping for a reprieve. They were one of only three couples in the restaurant, and the overall atmosphere was private. Luckily for her, the best distraction of all arrived before things could get too awkward. Their food was set down in front of them, and Peggy took the proffered chopsticks and ate a somewhat indelicately large bite, the better to avoid further discussion with Howard.

Howard, in a rare moment of self-awareness, took the hint. They ate in silence, their only point of contact Howard's foot against her ankle. It wasn't an easy silence, really; Peggy's mind raced too much for that, and emotionally she felt caught between tense anticipation of their changing relationship, and unhappy nostalgia.

Of course, as they ate, they also drank. By the time Peggy had finished her food, she'd also had two glasses of wine, and was well on her way to being a bit tipsy.

She was, in fact, far enough along that when Howard said, "Ready to go?" and threw an obscene amount of cash down on the table, Peggy said, "Back to your home?"

Howard froze. It was somewhat academically interesting; he was rarely completely still in front of her. His expression was somewhat rudely curious, as though he didn't understand what she was implying.

She finished off her wine. "It wouldn't be a good idea," she said, and stared at him.

He threw his head back and laughed. "Is it because we're not married yet? Don't lie, I know you helped him because you liked breaking the rules."

"I helped Steve because it was the right thing to do," Peggy said. "And I wasn't going to accept. I was just curious about what you'd say."

"Were you?"

She was almost positive that he meant to sound as though he didn't care about her answer. He failed. It was obvious to her that he cared, and that she was on the cusp of hurting him in a way that might actually affect their - God help her - marriage.

So she chose to be honest, even if her honesty embarrassed them both. "No. I was hoping you'd say yes, and I'd have a convenient excuse to go home with you."

"That old mausoleum's hardly home. If I could get away with it, I'd move in with you."

"I chose my apartment because it was strategically useful, in a clean building. I have no attachment to it."

"And yet, it looks like you live there. Lack of furniture and all."

Peggy weighed her options. They could part, and she'd go home and get herself off, wishing he was touching her. They could go back to his mansion, and Peggy would excuse herself early on, feeling crushed by the weight of who she was to become by marrying him. Or they could go back to her apartment, and lie to one another and to themselves, pretending they were two ordinary people, soon to be married, with boring jobs and few responsibilities.

The last option was by far the most foolish, but sometimes Peggy just got so damn tired of being practical. "If you like it so much, you should come home with me," she said.

He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth as though to speak. Peggy waited, but he opened it and closed it twice before finally saying, "You sure about that, or is that the wine talking?"

"A little of both, but what's wrong with liquid courage? Surely you're familiar with the concept."

"You're not wrong about that." Howard stood. "Let's get out of here."

Twenty minutes later, the car had dropped them off at Peggy's and they'd made it up her three flights of stairs. Peggy didn't realize, until she tried to grab her house key, that they'd been holding hands. The shock of just-realized contact made her fumble with her keyring, until Howard said, "You okay?"

"Fine," she said, and finally grabbed her house key. "Come in, then."

Her house was just as she'd left it; Peggy did a cursory examination of the space as Howard took his coat off. She wasn't really capable of not being at least slightly paranoid. SHIELD was a nonentity right then, a small afterthought as far as governmental bureaus were concerned, but Peggy didn't want to take any chances.

Of course, that meant that when she turned back to Howard, she was still wearing a full-length wool coat, and he had half unbuttoned his shirt.

"Really," she said. "Did you ever have a sense of romance?"

"I was gonna romantically lick your pussy on the couch," Howard said. "Why?"

She almost laughed at the coarse language. "We can do better than that," she said. "Go sit on the couch. Don't undress further. I'll join you in a moment."

He obeyed with remarkable alacrity. She hung her own coat up, took off her high heels, and unpinned her hair, so that the strands fell forward into her face. It relaxed her, reminding her that this wasn't business - even in the looser sense that included their marriage.

It helped that Howard gazed up at her appreciatively as she moved forward, his legs splayed in a way that displayed how hard he was. She felt an odd sort of thrill as she settled on him, digging her fingers into his shoulders until he flinched and jerked up against her.

"Do you enjoy this?" she asked.

She meant it to be - oh, arousing, she supposed. Or intriguing. But she wasn't expecting him to groan and arch against her, to stretch his arms to his sides like a supplicant. He was pliant beneath her, throwing his head back when she leaned down.

She took note of his silent plea and kissed his neck, bearing down on him with her hips. Clothing, in this position, was difficult, but she managed to push her skirt up and Howard helped with his pants. They kissed as she lowered herself onto him, and as he gasped, as he moaned, she tugged his hair and held him down.

The aftermath of sex was somewhat different, Peggy discovered, when it was done on a couch. She couldn't see any real way to disengage without engendering more intimate contact; in other words, it wasn't feasible to just roll over and go to sleep. She caught her breath still straddling Howard's lap, her hair falling around his face. He stroked her back, a rhythmic movement that made something within her stir. She wanted to go again, almost, but she wasn't sure if Howard would agree, or if she'd just embarrass herself. Peggy was not generally a self-conscious person, and she disliked the feeling, but she climbed off Howard all the same.

"I've got an early meeting tomorrow," Howard said when she stood up. "Guy who wants to talk to me about some gel he's formulated, says it makes fire or something. It could be useful."

Peggy blinked. "Ah," she said. "Well. I suppose you'd better be going, then."

He looked up at her. His pants were still down, his shirt askew. He looked messy, but also peculiarly comfortable. It was her couch, Peggy thought with no small amount of pique. How could he be more comfortable than she, even here?

"Guess I should," Howard said.

Peggy still didn't speak. Howard reached out and caught her hand. He'd kissed the palm and dropped it before she had time to even open her mouth to protest.

"Goodbye," he said. He righted his clothes and, as she continued to stand there, left.

She was still irritated with herself some time later, as she lay in bed and tried to sleep. She could, and had, beaten men in fights both fair and lopsided. She could fire any number of guns with considerable accuracy. During the war, Howard had hardly even rated as a minor distraction. Why, then, was she now adrift?

Eventually, she fell asleep, of course. She always did. The war had left them all with souvenirs of grief and trauma, but eventually, even her mind had to quiet. But she dearly wished she could escape the long minutes of painful reflection that preceded dreamless sleep.

-

The Senate hearing date arrived more quickly than Peggy would have preferred. Time, as it happened, passed quickly when what little spare time she had was spent fielding requests for interviews. She eventually consented to speak with Cosmopolitan magazine, the New York Times, and to do a dual interview with some men's magazine - all of which she said she would do after January 16th.

Integrity, Howard told her repeatedly, was for schmucks. But Peggy meant to go on with integrity, which precluded using the press to win sympathy for her project. SHIELD was a legitimate venture on its own, without using Howard's name or money, and she would make the Senate see that.

She certainly would.

She took a train down to Washington the night before. The day of the hearing, she put on her best suit and a bright red hat. Her lipstick matched, and her sensible pumps granted her another two inches of height. She slid on a bracelet and straightened Howard's ring, and then went to meet the car Howard had hired.

He'd initially intended to accompany her to DC, but she had prohibited it. She wondered, as she slipped into the backseat, if he was still angry with her - or angry again. Theirs was set to be an odd marriage, if this tension between two strong wills continued.

Hopefully, it would stay odd, and not become the kind of awfulness that made women leave. Peggy couldn't conceive of Howard behaving violently, but could any woman think of their husband that way in the beginning?

It was an ugly thought. She put it aside as the car pulled up in front of the Capitol.

She couldn't help but notice, as a solemn man in a suit directed her towards the Senate chamber, that security was somewhat appallingly lax. The agents on duty were transparently obvious, and aside from their conspicuously muscled forms, the hallways were deserted. Were someone to infiltrate this building, they could incapacitate the guards easily, and do whatever they wanted to the representatives in the main chamber.

She thought about mentioning it to the man leading her, but he hadn't given her a name, and Peggy had worked in espionage for too long to give away information quite so freely.

He let her into the chamber, escorting her all the way to her seat behind a table facing a tribunal of six men. They were all older and frowning at her. She looked around at the mostly-empty chamber for a brief second, smiling slightly, before sitting down.

From left to right were Senators Hayes, Johnson, Barefoot, Leigh, James, and Moran. All were white, married, and Protestant - except for Moran, who was said to harbor Catholic tendencies. Howard would have smirked and pointed out Johnson's toupee or the false teeth sitting next to James' right hand. Peggy, in contrast, simply leaned forward and said, "Good morning, gentlemen."

"Good morning, Miss...Mrs Stark?"

"I am not yet married." Peggy met Barefoot's eyes. "However, in two months' time, that will change. You're all invited to the ceremony, of course."

Barefoot laughed a little, clearly uncomfortable. Good. Peggy sat ramrod straight, careful to keep a smile on her face. She wanted to disconcert them, but she knew that an overabundance of inappropriate behavior would drive them away.

"Thank you," Barefoot said. "However, that is not the question currently at hand. You're in charge of Stark's organization, yes? The Strategic, ah - Homeland -"

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," Peggy said.

"That," Barefoot said. "Well, we're aware you want money. Stark's funding you. What do you want our money for?"

He sounded as though he thought taxpayer dollars were his money, personally. Perhaps he did. It wasn't really Peggy's business; she simply said, "As long as Stark bankrolls SHIELD, I will, of course, be somewhat beholden to him. I'm sure you understand how that sort of thing works."

"You're marrying him, girl," Hayes said. His voice was gruff and utterly hollow; he was a representative from Tennessee, and Peggy's research had indicated he'd have absolutely no respect for a woman in charge of an intelligence agency. Or any woman, really. "You're already beholden to him."

Peggy met his eyes. The moment stretched out, and eventually he looked away.

"I am marrying someone that I care about quite a bit," she said. "I suppose I should thank the Senate for refusing us funding to begin with, or I never would have worked terribly closely with him. But I must ask you, Senator Hayes, if you'd prefer I stayed a spinster. You'll find a statement of impact from all 10 SHIELD agents, plus 20 administrators, that my presence informs their excellent work. I cannot, at present, leave - and SHIELD is already involved in curtailing threats to this country, and the world. Would you deny me the right to marry, as a woman should? Or would you separate me from SHIELD, and give it over to someone who has not yet earned ten agents' loyalty?"

Hayes flushed. "See here. Loyalty -"

"Is central to an intelligence agency, or for that matter, a military body." She raised her eyebrows. "I know what loyalty is, Senator. I know how to earn it. And I know what happens when it doesn't exist."

"So you want us to just hand you some money and back off? See here, Miss -"

"Agent," Peggy said. "Agent Carter."

Hayes closed his mouth. His teeth clicked.

"I suppose my assurances are not yet seen as trustworthy. I understand: I will earn that trust. I am requesting a budget less than one tenth that of any comparable intelligence agency in the modern world. I've prepared documentation of my planned expenditures that your aides should have delivered today. Gentlemen, I intend to succeed at securing the freedom we fought so hard for during the war. Whether I do that under your purview or not is your choice." She folded her hands and looked at each of them, waiting.

Leigh breathed heavily through his mouth. Barefoot scratched his head. Hayes looked at her with pure hatred.

She looked back at him, imagining taking her briefcase and beating him with it. He looked away.

"Well," Leigh said. "I suppose you've made your argument, Agent."

"I believe you'll find I have."

"This SHIELD does good work, then?"

"In the past calendar year, we've neutralized six level one threats, along with a host of lower-ranked ones."

"I see." Leigh shuffled some papers. "Thank you for your time, Agent."

She inclined her head, then stood, and allowed herself to be escorted out.

The entire charade had taken fewer than thirty minutes. Howard's car was still waiting. He'd known this would happen, she thought - but she hadn't managed to work up any significant anger when she slid into the backseat and found Howard already occupying the car.

He didn't say anything. He simply looked at her. She swallowed hard and lifted her chin, doing her best to ignore that she felt more nervous here, with their legs inches apart, than she had in front of a six-man Senate committee.

She was not now, and had never been, more focused on marriage than other parts of her life. But just as ending an assassination plot filled her with a rush, so did the way Howard licked his lips and looked at her, before quickly looking out the window.

Those feelings were inappropriate right then, as well as uncomfortably overwhelming. So she, too, looked away from him.

"How'd it go?" Howard said as the car began moving.

"It's hard to say." Peggy clenched her hands together in her lap and told herself not to fidget. "They certainly weren't excited about meeting with a woman."

"Bribing them's still on the table."

Peggy half thought about rejecting the offer, just as she'd considered it many times before, at night, alone with her fears. But practicality took hold, as it always did. "We're reserving that as a last resort. Ideally, I'd obtain the funding legally."

"From those old codgers?"

"You know, if you hate the United States' governance so much, you could always run for a spot."

Howard snorted. "I'm nine kinds of unelectable and you know it, pal."

"Probably true. But still, I do want their funding. Hopefully my memos were persuasive."

"Your two-hundred-page memos?"

Peggy smiled. "Precisely."

Howard reached over. He did it slowly, giving her plenty of time to move. She stayed still. When his hand curled around her thigh, she traced his knuckles with a finger.

"You shouldn't have had to do this," he said. "But God, Peggy, you're gorgeous right now."

She didn't know how to reply. She felt crystallized, like a specimen suspended in a solution not of her own making. Howard's hand was cold, and she knew he had no real way with women. He was rough in a way most women - most upper-class women, who would be suitable for him now, or seen as suitable - disliked. And yet here, with his callouses catching on her skirt, she felt, if not perfectly safe, then at least no longer terrified.

The feeling couldn't last, of course. A bare moment later, the car accelerated, then crashed, rocking back and forth wildly. The roof tore open with a screech of metal as a blade pierced it. For the first time in months, Peggy heard automatic gunfire tearing at the air.

The whole thing took less than a minute. "Down," Peggy snapped, and kicked her door open even as a man reached into the car from the roof. She rolled onto the pavement, relieved when Howard followed. He looked terrified, which perhaps meant he was finally growing a sense of self-preservation. Peggy would contemplate it later. Right then, she reached up her skirt and pulled out a gun. It wasn't an AK, but if she sighted a target, she'd stop him.

Men swarmed the street, approaching from thirty meters out, sixteen of them, all with guns aimed to shoot. She grabbed Howard's hand and said, "Run," as the shooting began again.

They made it down an alley scarcely a meter away. The houses in that part of DC were pressed closely together, colorfully sided but otherwise identical. Peggy eyed a fire escape. Men were in pursuit, yelling, but they weren't shooting again just yet. She jumped and grabbed the stair of the escape, pulled it down, and said, "Climb. Climb like your life depends on it."

Howard obeyed. Peggy turned and looked at their pursuit: five men, all wearing armor, all carrying guns.

Five foreheads, barely exposed. Barely would have to be enough. She fired without giving herself time to think; five bodies fell to the ground.

"Peggy!"

Howard still stood on the fire escape landing. Right. "Go into the house. Break a window if you have to." She'd killed one-third of their attackers, but that wasn't enough. She only had a single extra clip. She jumped onto the fire escape as Howard broke a window with his elbow, and together, they entered the house.

The room was sparsely furnished, to the point that Peggy doubted anyone was in residence. Good. "Come," she said. "Upstairs. Go. Now." She could hear shouts and gunfire still, growing ever closer. It would soon be obvious where they'd gone.

Howard, to his credit, found the stairs and leaped up them. She followed, reloading as she ran, so that by the time they reached the third floor, she was ready to fire again.

"There should be an attic. Let's find it."

Howard nodded. "The roof?"

"Precisely."

The attic entrance was a pull-down door. Peggy heard their pursuers on the second floor as they broke the attic window and got onto the roof.

The roofs of DC stretched out before them, broken regularly by streets, alleys, and dilapidated buildings. It would have to be enough. She tapped Howard on the shoulder, nodded down the row of houses, and said, "Run."

Foot pursuits were never fun on either end, but this one was somewhat more terrifying, since a misstep could kill them both. But they made it to the end of the block, and then Peggy directed Howard to climb down. Their would-be assassins hadn't thought to close off the block, so Peggy threw off her fedora and borrowed Howard's jacket. Somewhat covered, she ducked into a shop, bullied her way into the back, cut through another alley, and hailed herself and Howard a cab on the other end.

She gave the driver the address of a safe house and scanned the street before and behind them, hand on her gun, until he delivered them.

It was only when they were safely locked inside that Peggy let herself slump against the wall. "Oh, God. I really hate heights."

"That didn't make you an atheist?" Howard scrubbed a hand over his hair. It had long since been mussed; now, he scrubbed at it till it stood up on on end, staring at her all the while.

"I needn't remind you that we've both seen worse," Peggy said. She shrugged out of Howard's jacket and threw it at the bed. "Were I to become an atheist, I suppose it would have happened already."

"That's not the kind of worship I'm thinking about right now," Howard said, and walked over to her.

He looked at her, then down her body. It should have been degrading. It wasn't. It never was, not with him.

"God, Peggy," Howard said. She wasn't sure if it was an entreaty or comparison. Clarification didn't really matter, because he immediately dropped to his knees.

Everything slowed after that, then sped up, an odd combination of feelings that increased to ecstasy almost frighteningly quickly. It was impossible to maintain her decorum, and so she didn't try. She twisted her fingers in his hair and thrust against him as she came, over and over, with his hands curled around the backs of her legs.

He stayed there until she stopped shaking, then lowered her skirt and smoothed it down. He kept his eyes down, staring at the wall, until she reached down and tilted his chin up.

"Are you," she said. She meant to finish her sentence, the better to not sound like an imbecile. But she couldn't quite make her brain work enough for that.

"I'm good," Howard said.

"Oh." She felt somewhat deflated. He'd seemed interested.

He blinked at her, then laughed. "I mean I came in my pants like a teenager, Peg, not that I wasn't having fun."

It was her turn to blush and look away. "I see."

"How long do we need to stay in here?"

"Given what happened, until we get an extraction team. There's a phone, I can call Jim." With the adrenalin fading, question after question began racing through her mind. "Who was the driver of that car?"

Howard grimaced. "He worked for a service. I didn't bring my people down here. I'll contact them, see if I can arrange something for his family."

"That's good of you."

He waved a hand. "Make the call, Agent. I want us airlifted out of here as soon as possible."

She dialed Jim's office number. Luckily, he picked it up directly. "This is Agent Carter."

"Peggy," Jim said. "How'd it go?"

"Briefly, and then myself and Howard were almost killed by sixteen armed men."

Jim swore. "Which safe house are you at?"

"F Street and New Jersey Ave."

"I can have a team over in twenty minutes."

Peggy thought of who the team was likely to be: strangers from a bureau SHIELD did work with. "I'd prefer a personal extraction."

"That bad?"

"Quite."

"You'll get it, then," Jim said. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Stay safe." He hung up.

"Four hours," Peggy said. "Give or take." Jim probably wasn't going to use much common sense in driving down.

Howard sat down heavily on the bed. "We almost died."

"Yes."

"I haven't - I don't -"

"Oh, come off it," Peggy said. "You flew me into German airspace more than once."

"I was younger then. I had less to lose."

Peggy waved a hand. "Marginally."

"I might not've thought I could die, or that it'd matter overly." Howard smiled a little. It wasn't a happy expression. "I seem to have changed my opinion since then."

"I am not going to let you die," Peggy said, "and that's that, so let's move off the subject, shall we?"

"Tell me about the hearing, then."

Peggy described it. There wasn't much to go over, really. When she mentioned the memos she'd sent again, Howard laughed. "They really hadn't read them, had they?"

"They have aides for that kind of thing," Peggy said. "The clerks will read the memo, and report on it. It's dazzling for a civilian. It will serve."

"And the testimonials?"

"Imply heavily that there will be a mass walk-out, without being overly aggressive."

"You're getting good at this."

"Everyone has a calling."

Howard tapped his knees. "I've been asked to sell my weapons, you know."

Peggy blinked. "Have I been wrong about the nature of your military contracts, then?"

"We're convincing the US of the efficacy of maintaining a robust defense." Howard spoke the sentence with enough sarcasm to put a cynical mob boss to shame. "But you'd be surprised by how many people have come out of the woodwork, now that the world's supposedly at peace."

"I probably wouldn't be surprised," Peggy said. "Six neutralized level one threats, remember?"

"Fair."

Peggy watched him. He stared off into the distance, still tapping his knee.

"Don't become one of them," she said.

He startled at that. "Christ, you think I would?"

"I think many great men have."

"Don't put me in that role, Peggy," Howard said. "Great man?"

Peggy raised her eyebrows.

"You're a damn hero, no matter what the Senate thinks. There've been a lot of businessmen. There aren't that many of you floating around."

"Yet."

"Exactly. The first of many. You're a titan."

It should have felt like flattery, but it didn't, possibly because he didn't sound particularly happy about it. Peggy sighed, moving to sit next to Howard on the bed.

"I don't suppose this room has books," Howard said.

It was an admirable attempt to change the subject. "Not as such. I should clean my gun."

Howard nodded. Peggy didn't move. She told herself to; she reminded herself that she and Howard needed to be alert, to not assume that this safe house was unknown to their attackers. But that reminder wasn't enough to make her stir. Not just yet.

Howard lay back, rolling onto his side. His head barely made a dent in the pillow; like her, he was too tense to fully relax. Peggy hesitated for a moment before calling herself an idiot and curling in behind him. He sank into the bed, then, and Peggy pressed her face against his hair. He was sour with old sweat, and she smelled a bit of gunpowder, but they lay together in silence all the same.

Eventually she did clean her gun. She had it reassembled by the time someone knocked on the door. She patted her hair once more, squashing the guilt that came with such a motion, before approaching the door.

"I'm afraid I've fallen," she said.

"Next time, call for help," Jim said on the other side.

Peggy opened the door. The sight of Jim and Tim made her laugh with relief. "Thank God."

"A little more humble than that," Tim said. "Let's roll."

Gabe was waiting for them, leaning against a bright red car outside. Peggy stopped when she saw it. "Really?"

"Really," Jim said, "and I'm driving. Get in."

The route from DC to New York City was well-traveled and wholly devoid of explosions, gunfire, fields of fallen soldiers, or anything else to remind them of the war. Still, her throat closed up a bit as she sat in the passenger's seat and Howard, in the oddly placed far-back seat, unashamedly harangued Jim for taking a full four and a half hours to reach them.

"You know, some of us like driving a car without feeling like we're about to flip it over," Gabe said.

"Where's your sense of adventure? My friend, if I had a car like this -"

"We took this from your garage," Jim said.

"There you go, then. You've got no excuse."

Peggy caught his eyes in the rear view window. He smiled at her like he was proud - of her, of them. Something twisted in her stomach, and she forced herself to smile even as she looked away.

Steve's absence felt rather a lot larger than the single empty seat in the far back.

Night had long fallen by the time they returned to New York. "Where should I drop you?" Jim said.

"My apartment," Peggy said. "I assume you know the address."

"Why don't you give me it."

Peggy didn't miss that he didn't confirm or deny his knowledge. It wasn't precisely public record, but Jim also wasn't the public. He drove her there easily, without a map or directions, and she let herself out of the car.

"Thank you, gentlemen," she said. "I'll expect to see you at work by noon tomorrow."

"Aw, c'mon," Tim said.

"No exceptions," she said, and made her way into her building.

She unlocked her door with her gun out; what she lacked in alertness, she'd have to make up in aim. Her front room, living room, and kitchen appeared untouched. She'd almost relaxed by the time she got to the bedroom - until she saw her hat, the one she'd discarded in the firefight, lying on the bed.

The room itself was empty. She secured it, heart pounding, before going over to her bed. Under the hat lay a note, which read, "You'll get your funding."

Well, then. Six senators had tried to kill her. What a thrilling development.

She thought about calling Howard, but the idea was...disconcerting. She didn't want to bother Gabe or Jim unduly, and Tim would make some incredibly poor choices if she told him who the culprits were. In the end, she checked the rest of her house, locked her door and put the chain on, and went to bed. She had a department to run, and after all, they'd said she'd get her money. She'd have to be content with that, and try to accept that six men, including one innocent, had died for a few million dollars.

-

The next morning, at 1000, Gabe laid a file down on her desk.

"You're not my usual secretary," Peggy said.

"This isn't a usual file."

Peggy opened it. It consisted of a sparse ten pages of bank drafts and telegraph records. It could have been almost anything, but - "Interesting that Senator Hayes would receive so many telegrams from Leningrad."

"My thoughts exactly."

"And a DC bakery paid him three thousand dollars twice in a month?"

"Must be some bakery."

Peggy believed in logical explanations. She simply also believed that logic, in many cases, included deceit and treason. "My wedding is in five months."

"Yep."

"I'll receive new funding by then, and will be well and truly tied to this desk."

"Can't argue with that."

Peggy nodded. "You, Howard, and I are going to investigate this. I want no one else on it."

"The Commandos -"

"No one else, Gabe. Jim has a wife now, with a baby on the way. If this is what I think it is, I want him well out of the way, for now."

"Howard's not a spy," Gabe said.

"No," Peggy said. "But he's got money and does what he's told. That's useful."

"Good. I already sent him a copy of this."

Peggy nodded. "I'll let him come to me, then. We'll meet at his house tonight at seven and go over the facts. Formulate a game plan, and so on."

"Good idea," Gabe said, and left.

The rest of the day wasn't exactly ordinary. Peggy had calls to field and administrative overhead to tackle, and on top of that, she had to plan how they'd investigate Senator Hayes. She couldn't imagine pulling a night shift in DC, which she'd more or less have to do if they wanted to investigate the bakery in person.

She put off making a decision until 1400. Then she got up and went to Howard's office.

"Do you have property in DC?"

"Hello to you too."

She raised her eyebrows and waited.

Howard glanced over her shoulder. Then he got up and walked over to her, leaning to kiss her cheek. Peggy held still and let him; she didn't think such a charade was necessary, but pulling away wouldn't exactly help their relationship seem legitimate.

"I have a house in DC," Howard said when he pulled away. "I bought it from a disgraced Congressman, so it's pretty nice. Central to the action."

"We'll need to let it. Starting tonight."

"Me, you, and Gabe?"

"Precisely."

"I see." Howard turned. "I'll make the call."

"Put in a vacation notification. I'll have it expedited."

Howard nodded without looking at her.

It was odd behavior; he usually expended quite a bit of energy on making sure everyone was aware of his charisma, and firmly in his thrall. She'd need to ask him what was wrong, but right then, she had too much to do. She said, "Thank you," and left.

After giving Gabe similar instructions, she went back to her office and did the same. The vacations would be buried in paperwork, and even Jim or Tim wouldn't ask questions. It was, Peggy supposed, impossible to keep them from suspecting something was wrong, after the extraction. But Jim would restrain both of them from acting on their concerns. He'd understand the need for secrecy.

Peggy hoped he'd understand, anyway.

She left the office that day with no indication that she intended to be gone a long while. She had just enough time to pack a few bags and ensure her office would continue paying her bills when Howard and Gabe drove up to the front of her building. She'd been watching for them in the lobby, so she was out and tapping on the trunk before Gabe had a chance to do much of anything but open his door.

"Gentlemen," she said, climbing into the backseat.

"Darling," Howard said.

Gabe snorted.

"Are you doubting the genuine nature of my affections?" Howard said as he sped down the block.

"Not at all," Gabe said. "Why would I do such a thing?"

"Oh, knock it off, both of you." Peggy tapped Gabe's shoulder. "We need to go over what evidence we have."

"We all got the file." Howard yanked the wheel and rubber screeched as they careened onto another road. "What more is there to discuss?"

"Quite a bit, actually," Peggy said. "We're acting only semi-legally; we can't exactly saunter into the bakery and show them a warrant, and any applicable judge is likely under Hayes' influence, to some extent."

"Cops don't always need warrants," Howard said.

"And we're not cops," Gabe said. "No, she's got a point."

"What if I offered to buy the place?" Howard said.

It wasn't as lousy a suggestion as Peggy might expect, coming from a civilian. Well, a civilian with an office at SHIELD would know more than most. "You can't just waltz into that shop specifically," Peggy said.

"Why not?"

"Well, for one, you're famous. And it won't seem legitimate."

Howard met her eyes in the rear view mirror. "Ah. You want to be the buyer."

"I'm not terribly well-known."

"Your name's all over the news."

"My name," Peggy said, "but I haven't done any interviews yet. No one really has pictures of me. I'm interesting to those who are interested in Howard, or Steve, but most of my record is still classified. I'm a much safer choice."

"I'm guessing I'm the busboy," Gabe said.

"On the contrary," Peggy said. "It's your job to find and join the criminals the bakery is helping."

"I can do that."

"We're just poking around for now," Peggy said. "I'd like for us to have more defined mission parameters, but..."

Espionage always had so many variables, and Peggy had never really been confident of her ability to manage all of them. She was a more than capable soldier and great in a firefight, but faced with a criminal conspiracy, she still felt fairly green.

"It's okay," Gabe said. He'd picked up on her insecurity, and reasonably so, since she'd been doing a poor job hiding it. "We'll figure it out."

"You've got a lot of ammo on your side," Howard said. "Relax. I'll let you know when we're in the capital."

Peggy wasn't going to relax. She'd gotten plenty of sleep, even if she'd been in the office hours before the others. She didn't need to relax, she was perfectly fine, and it was presumptuous of Howard to -

She fell asleep before she could work even a semblance of a rage up.

When she woke, Howard was quietly repeating, "Peggy. Wake up."

He didn't touch her, for which Peggy was grateful. She wasn't sure how she'd react; a normal reaction seemed as likely as a violent reaction or, worse, an amorous reaction. She opened her eyes and sat up. "Yes," she said. "Are we here?"

"Jarvis is a little worried," Howard said.

Peggy peered past his shoulder. A man stood on the sidewalk, looking somewhat stuffy and concerned, haloed in the darkness by a street lamp.

"Very well," she said. "Let's go in, then."

Howard's property was a townhouse a stone's throw away from the Capitol itself. The butler, Jarvis, who was the sort of English Peggy's family had hoped she'd marry into, directed them to two rooms. Gabe gave Howard and Peggy a look laden with meaning when he disappeared into his bedroom. Peggy did her best to repress a flush when she and Howard went in together.

Surely if Gabe disapproved, he wouldn't be so glib about it? He'd told her once, before the war ended but after Steve died - he'd told her that she'd be able to move on someday, and have some fun again. Of course, they'd all been drunk, but it was the principle of the thing. The thought.

It hadn't occurred to either of them back then that she'd be moving on with Howard. But Peggy wasn't, really. The marriage was political. The sex was entirely separate, and had nothing to do with her emotions being engaged, or not being engaged. And it wasn't like they'd announced to Gabe that their relationship had a carnal component.

As she stood still, thoughts racing, Howard closed the door and approached her. She didn't move, her back to him, as he put his hands on her hips and kissed her neck.

It felt lovely. Her shoulders slumped, the tension fading from them. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, and she leaned back against him, just a bit, his body heat warming her.

"We should go to bed."

"I'm not -"

"Not to fuck, Peggy. To sleep."

She winced. She could practically feel the threads of complication in their relationship drawing ever tighter around them. When one of them faltered, was snappish or unfair to the other - what would happen? A fight with Howard that didn't involve hurtful things didn't seem possible to Peggy. And they were not-saying so much right then.

"I should sleep." That was safe to say, because it was true. "Is this the master room?"

"Toilet's through there," Howard said.

Twenty minutes later, she was lying next to Howard, whose method of attempting to sleep appeared to be tapping the backs of his hands with his fingers and staring at the ceiling. The room was dark, with heavy curtains blocking out most of the light from outside. There was just enough for Peggy to see the glint of Howard's eyes and know he wasn't resting.

"You know," Howard said, "if you really want to stare at me, you could just lie on your side."

Peggy frowned. "Don't be absurd."

"I can tell every time you look at me."

"You wouldn't if you were asleep."

"Hard to sleep when a woman keeps lifting the covers and letting all the cold air in."

"For God's sake, Howard."

Howard didn't respond. Peggy had almost relaxed into sleep when he said, "Is this how marriage will be?"

Peggy almost answered laconically, the better to not allow her temper to control her. But something in Howard's tone spoke of fear. "Marriage doesn't have to be a trap," she said.

"Kind of funny how it's set up that way, then."

"What do you mean?"

"You say vows, go through all kinds of legal rigmarole, and then you're stuck. They don't call it a ball and chain for nothing."

"Men call it a ball and chain," Peggy said. "Women call it an obligation, or a privilege. And I'd thank you to remember we have fewer rights than you do."

"I'm not gonna -"

"I know you won't," Peggy said. "But someone else might. Someone else likely is, right now. Having his wife committed, striking her, stopping her from - from -"

"Hey." Howard appeared in her line of sight. It happened suddenly; she hadn't heard him move. Or, more accurately, she'd been too upset to listen for it. "That's not what I meant."

"I'm aware."

"You know I'm a jackass."

"It had occurred to me."

"So you know I'm not - I mean, it's not on purpose. I just didn't think."

"Is lack of thought a justification for poor behavior? You have an interesting moral code, Howard."

"Okay, now you're just being a prick for the hell of it."

The insult made Peggy smile in spite of herself. "Probably true."

"I'm sorry," Howard said.

"Apology accepted," Peggy said. "I am as well."

Howard's gaze dropped. The small amount of light in the room barely illuminated Peggy, but he must have found it sufficient. He looked at her lips and at her bare shoulders. He lowered himself, so slowly, until he was close enough to kiss her.

He kissed like some young buck who'd just proposed to his girl. There was no cynicism in his kiss, no need to pretend it didn't matter. He pressed against her, cradled her face, and made her feel as though the world had entirely fallen away from them. She'd never felt as optimistic as she did when he kissed her.

It was terrifying. She pulled away before the kiss could become more.

"Not now," she said. "Not tonight."

Howard pulled away. "Sleep well, Agent," he said, and rolled over, his back to her.

She lay awake for much longer than she'd have preferred. Howard appeared to sleep soundly.

-

When she woke, Howard was fiddling with a gun.

"You're sure you're safe with that?" Peggy said, sitting up. Her nightshirt clung to her in a way that wasn't, she thought, quite comfortable. She pulled the blankets up to her chin.

Howard didn't look at her. "I designed it." He shut the barrel and aimed it. "I don't want to leave anything to chance."

"Gabe will be exposed to more danger than we will." And chance could still kill someone, even someone who was armed.

"The gun's not for me." Howard held it out to her, and Peggy plucked it from his hands. It was neatly made and well-balanced. She had several like it, but none with her initials engraved on the butt of the gun.

"How long have you been planning this?"

For a moment she thought he wouldn't answer, which wouldn't have surprised her. When he finally did respond, he didn't meet her eyes. "The gun? Awhile. All the ones you carry are generic."

"They're government property."

"Well, this one isn't."

Peggy, still under the covers, set the gun on her side table. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

Howard sounded sincere about the platitude, and with that somewhat harsh statement, the mood was broken. Peggy said, "I'd better get dressed," and slid out of bed.

The washroom was immaculately appointed, with an outfit for her hanging in an adjoining closet, and blessedly Howard-free. She wondered, as she splashed water on her face and applied her lipstick, if this was how every morning of their marriage would be, or if she'd get her own toilet, her own vanity. Howard could certainly spare the expense, though there were the practicalities of plumbing in an old mansion to consider.

She was trying to distract herself. She'd been behind a desk too long. She found this entire saga with Hayes unnerving. She'd have preferred a great many smaller missions to warm up before attempting to expose a Senator.

Unfortunately, then as always, life had failed to cooperate. She straightened her skirt and exited the washroom.

Howard was already dressed and sitting at the table in the corner, reading what looked like SHIELD files. "Did Gabe give you more information to go over?"

He shook his head. "This is stuff Jarvis delivered to me. The bakery's financials, mostly, plus some observations about Senator Hayes' comings and goings. We weren't looking for espionage at the time, but it might still be useful."

Peggy blinked.

Howard looked up at her. He immediately winced. "I would've told you, but you had your own method of prep, and this was more in case you didn't win 'em over - which I knew you would, of course. But I like having a Hail Mary in my back pocket, you know? And it's not really a surprise that a senator's up to something shady. I knew where to look."

She couldn't fault him for wanting certainty, though of course she also knew he could hardly fault her for wanting full disclosure. At an unacknowledged but very clear impasse, they looked over the papers together.

Ten minutes later, Peggy said, "Senator Hayes is really very dull, isn't he?"

"He's not exactly the star of the show," Howard said. "Of course, good spies usually aren't."

Peggy thought back to the hearing, and Hayes' dull-eyed rancor. "He doesn't strike me as particularly intelligent."

"He's got, what, ten aides? There's a chance someone else is communicating with Leningrad. Hell, there's a chance someone else set all this up. At this point we don't really know - we just know what his bank statements say."

"I can get more information from the bank if necessary," Peggy said. Though of course such a request would require some maneuvering. "Has your tail picked up him going to the bank at all?"

Howard shook his head. "And it's not terribly practical to tail all the aides. Harder to keep a secret when you've got ten guys watching people all at once."

Peggy nodded. "Of course, there are ways around that."

Howard raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Any deposit has an origin, as does any wire. We can have one man - you - watching the bank. As long as we know what his aides look like, identifying a potential culprit shouldn't be a problem."

"I get stakeout duty and you get the infiltration job, huh?"

"I'm much more qualified for infiltration."

She bit it off in a manner that could easily have been interpreted as insulting - because it was, really, and she wasn't in the mood to spare his feelings. But Howard just laughed, slowly, a sort of unmanly titter that became a full-on laugh.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

"Thank you," Peggy said.

Her intention was to close off the rapport between them, to bring their relationship back in the realm of the professional. Her consciousness of the high stakes of the mission never really faded, and every reminder that they were going after a United States senator set off her inner alarm bells again. But instead of taking her thanks and backing off, Howard leaned forward. Literally. He physically leaned in, propped up on his elbows, looked her in the eyes, and said, "I'm going to try not to let you down."

She didn't speak, largely because she couldn't. Her mouth simply wouldn't form words.

"I probably will," Howard said. He quirked his mouth in a slight smile. "But I'm going to try."

"Do better than try," Peggy said. "Live through this. With me."

"That's the plan."

Howard still looked at her like he intended to touch her, which meant Peggy had to move away, unequivocally. She stood and paced the room. "Do I look like an investor?"

Howard leaned back and surveyed her. She did her best to ignore the heat that flushed her cheeks at his perusal.

"It's not Wall Street," he said. "It's a small-time bakery. You'll do fine."

"Such a vote of confidence."

"Something tells me you don't want to know what I really think."

Men had, in the past, acted threateningly towards Peggy - many times, in fact. Army privates had sneered and suggested a rut against the wall, and wealthy bureaucrats had tried to force her in dark hallways. Howard's posture, his look, should have alarmed her. But of course, the difference between him and those men was that he wouldn't push, if she didn't want him to. She knew him. He looked at her with heat because she herself was incapable of ignoring the attraction between them. It was mutual, with them, mutual and knowing, in a way it had never been with anyone else. Not even Steve, who'd been sweet and a bit naive to the end.

Peggy found it somewhat terrifying.

"Yes, well," she said. "Let's be on our way, then."

Howard looked away. His mouth quirked in a near-smile. It didn't look particularly happy. "Let's," he said.

A world of dissatisfaction lived in that syllable. But he followed her out silently, and that was what Peggy needed from him.

After a brief rendezvous with Gabe, during which they clarified each of their jobs for the day, Peggy made her way to the bakery. She had a briefcase of Howard's cash and was sure to look somewhat disdainful as she entered the shop.

The facial expression wasn't difficult to maintain. Two rough-skinned Frenchmen stood behind the counter; from Howard's dossier, Peggy identified them as LePont and Devereux. Their counter was next to a smudged case of pastries that couldn't possibly be fresh for the day. The shop itself smelled of dust and hint of mold, and the lighting was wan and distasteful.

In short, it was very obviously the kind of store that existed for purposes other than selling the shopkeeper's wares. But Peggy couldn't let on that she was aware of that.

"May I speak to Mister LePont?" she said.

"That's me, madame," LePont said. His French accent was heavy - too heavy, by Peggy's judgment. He was either putting it on entirely, or at least layering a false accent over his lighter real one. "How can I help you?"

"I'm new to the area, and well, you see - my husband's left me all this money. I was hoping to engage in a project, something to occupy me."

Greed sharpened LePont's eyes. Peggy supposed he must be unscrupulous, to have caught Hayes' eye.

Devereux, however, was considerably more cautious. "Madame, I do not know if we can be of service to you," he said. "We are, after all, only humble shopkeepers."

"I don't wish to displace you." Peggy smiled, careful to still look relaxed. "I'm only one woman, after all. I merely wish to investigate my business opportunities. I would so appreciate a consultation, were you gentlemen amenable."

They still didn't look convinced.

"Nothing is required of you but allowing me to invest in you." Peggy smiled, doing her best to project modesty. "That's what my husband would have encouraged me to do. He was in finance, you see."

She was laying it on thick, presenting them with a narrative that she privately thought they'd have to be a bit thick to fully believe. Of course, she'd learned in the past few years that men were generally not as intelligent as one might assume, where women telling them stories they wanted to believe were concerned.

Sure enough, as Peggy fixed a doe-eyed, hopeful expression on her face, LePont said, "I suppose you could take a look around."

"Oh, thank you ever so," Peggy said. "I'm sure it will be most educational."

LePont smiled, as though he imagined all women spoke like radio ingenues. "This way," he said, and let her behind the counter.

That was the only opening Peggy needed. She asked well-placed, slightly stupid questions, fluttering her eyelashes and showing a bit of bosom. By the twenty-minute mark, she had both men utterly enchanted by her. They'd clearly decided they could carry out their business with Hayes behind her back, and earn more money from her "investment" on the side.

She'd worry about what sorts of stereotypes she was perpetuating later. Right then, she closed the deal by scribbling Howard's telephone number on a napkin and blowing them a kiss. "Do phone me," she said. "I have so much to offer, I'm just sure of it."

Twenty minutes later, she was back at Howard's. Both Howard and Gabe were still out. She imagined they'd need more time to get home; Peggy herself hadn't particularly worried about being followed, but she'd still engaged in standard avoidance maneuvers a few times.

Being alone was more of a relief than she expected. The ability to take her heels and hat off, sink into a comfortable chaise lounge, and take a few deep breaths, without anyone interrupting or commenting on her actions, was simply wonderful.

Her peace didn't last long. She wasn't really capable of lying back on her laurels in such a manner; almost as soon as she'd relaxed, she was planning her next move at the bakery. Hayes's money-processing operation looked to be fairly small, as it was, but of course that was no guarantee it would stay small, or continue to be a minor threat. Peggy had once been fairly pragmatic and assumed people broke the law in predictable ways, but HYDRA had disrupted that perception for her. HYDRA had not been sensible, or small-scale, or easily tracked. None of them, at the time, had expected someone - something - like Red Skull. She wasn't keen to make that mistake again.

She didn't mean to fall asleep. The British and Americans had both worked to instill situational awareness in their service members, and Peggy had been no different. Apparently, she'd had enough excitement in her life recently to override training. She low awareness before she even realized she was tired, and didn't wake until a familiar voice said, "Peggy."

She opened her eyes and sat upright, so quickly that Howard leaped back.

"My apologies," she said, and smoothed her hair. "I -"

"Easy. It's been a long day. Gabe's already gone to his room. We ate - I didn't want to wake you."

"Were you going to bed?"

Howard shrugged. "If you want."

"We need to debrief. Gabe -"

"Told me he has an in with some guy named Peaches, and will have more information tomorrow." Howard looked her up and down. It wasn't a lewd look; he was evaluating her, like he would a broken-down car. "Come to bed, Peg. You look like crap."

"Precisely what any woman wants to hear."

"You wouldn't want something that wasn't the truth."

Peggy looked away from him then, because he was correct, but in ways that he didn't understand. She wasn't frightened of going to bed with him, but she did feel a certain kind of reluctance that blended in with another certain kind of insecurity. Both felt very feminine, and slightly resembled those pamphlets that warned of the consequences of profligacy. She worried every day that the investment she had in Howard would turn into love and destroy her. His congeniality only made that worry worse.

Part of her also hoped that the transformation into love would be sustained by a long, happy life. But she knew that was considerably less likely. The pamphlets might have created the concern in a much younger Peggy, but Howard's own personality made her very certain that a long, happy, loving future was not in the offing for the two of them. "Friendly" would have to suffice, and for that, she needed emotional distance.

She returned her gaze to him. He was still waiting, uncharacteristically patient. "True. Let's go to bed, then."

He offered her a hand, but she shook her head and stood under her own power. Twenty minute later, Howard was asleep, lying on his side in their room. Peggy, on the other hand, lay awake, in a heavy nightgown, staring at the ceiling.

She was hungry, but unwilling to seek out the kitchen. A kind of inertia pinned her to the bed. Worry filled her mind until she felt as though her skull were made of cotton. SHIELD had done important things, good things, in the months since Howard had handed her the charter. And yet -

And yet, they'd never set their sights on a United States legislator of any kind, much less a US senator. Peggy couldn't be confident they'd succeed in taking Hayes down, and unlike Howard, she had a good deal to lose in the attempt.

No, that was unfair. Howard also would lose quite a bit, in the event that Hayes out-maneuvered them. But he would most likely be left with at least part of his wealth, and Peggy could well be deported, stripped of all titles, with her work experience classified. She felt as though she were walking a tightrope, with no crowd even to encourage her.

She was about to get up and go to the kitchen, inconvenience and inertia be hanged, when Howard rolled over and plopped an arm on her waist. His body was overly warm, and he breathed roughly enough that it bordered on snoring. Peggy felt pinned, and while it wasn't entirely unpleasant, it also wasn't perfectly comfortable.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, being pinned did have an effect on her. Howard's physical presence distracted her enough that her mind began to drift. She stopped twiddling her thumbs, and her eyes drifted shut.

She fell asleep just like that. If she'd thought about it too much, it would have been embarrassing.

Despite her insomnia, she woke fairly early. The sun was just beginning to stream through the curtains, wan winter light that made her cringe when she opened her eyes. Howard still slept, face buried in the pillow. It was an odd pose, childlike and undignified. She found herself smiling without intending to as she watched him. As soon as she realized what she was doing, of course, she fixed her expression to neutrality and got out of bed.

By the time Howard stirred, Peggy had gotten dressed and was sitting in their suite's main room, sipping tea Jarvis had brought her. Since it was Saturday, she knew going back to the bakery would look pushy. She'd need to wait for a call. In the meantime, Jarvis had brought her the paper.

Newspapers, in her line of work, generally served as a sort of mirror. Most of the information she dealt in wasn't going to be publicly reported, but that didn't mean public perception didn't matter.

Her own actions were well hidden. The paper reported a bit on the rest of the world, largely the sort of perfunctory information that wouldn't distract from American concerns. Peggy, of course, had letters from her cousins to tell her of England's affairs; she skimmed the articles about how the Continent was recovering, and moved on to politics.

Congress appeared focused on the incipient threat posed by the Soviets. That was considerably more relevant to Peggy's immediate work, but the papers didn't have any information she didn't - some of which she herself had gathered and sent to the appropriate parties, weeks ago. Her Senate hearing wasn't even a footnote, though talk of her engagement was on the society page.

In short, the paper did not prove to be particularly educational. Ten minutes after she'd begun the process of reading it, she was left staring at her half-full cup of tea and wondering what levels of awkwardness this mission would eventually reach.

Unfortunately for her optimism, Howard chose that moment to wander out into the sitting room, wearing loose striped pants and a robe that somehow billowed in the still air. His chest was hairy and not, she told herself, particularly attractive.

"Peggy," he said.

She knew complaining about his smile being too open was the height of absurdity. She was perfectly aware. And yet, when he smiled at her and sat down across from her at the table, she had to look away.

"Good morning," she said, as calmly as she could without sounding too distant.

"Morning." He tapped the paper. "Anything interesting?"

"You may be surprised to hear that the Post is not reporting Hayes' treason just yet."

Howard snorted. "That's too bad."

"Quite."

"You okay?"

Peggy blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"You're doing that whole 'God save the Queen' persona you do sometimes." Howard quirked an eyebrow at her. "What's got your girdle in a twist?"

"Howard!"

"Sorry."

He wasn't, really - or at least, he'd do it again if it would make her divulge what was wrong. She sighed. "Nothing, really. Just stress. Spies aren't supposed to experience it, and yet, here we are."

"Anything I can do?"

The image of Howard kneeling on the plush carpet and parting her knees flashed in Peggy's mind. She blushed in spite of herself, but said only, "No. Thank you."

"If you say so. I'll ring for breakfast."

"That would be lovely, thank you."

It wasn't until Peggy had scrambled eggs and scones with jam that she said, "I don't see matters at the bakery proceeding with any great speed. It might be beneficial to go to Leningrad directly."

"You think we can pull that off?"

"Not as Russians, certainly," Peggy said. "My skills don't lie in that direction. But it's fairly straightforward to affect an appearance of Soviet sympathy. My being British will help with that."

"You don't think some KGB creep will recognize you?"

Peggy waved a hand. "My work is classified. I might have given Steve surveillance information, but I wasn't famous."

"You weren't Steve."

She didn't flinch. She was beyond such reactions - not due to any kind of inherent superiority, but due to her own history, which was one of self-denial and repression as a matter of both habit and national identity. No, she didn't flinch; she did, perhaps, tighten her hand on her fork, and clench her jaw just a bit more tightly.

"I'm sorry," Howard said.

Peggy met his gaze. She hoped she looked calm. She felt brittle more than anything else. "Are you?"

"Sure," Howard said. "I forget sometimes. I've got a big lab and multi-million-dollar weapons contracts, and these days we're not testing with materials we can't easily get more of. If I want to understand how something's ticking, I blow it up. But it's not smart to do that with people, y'know?"

She did know, and that alone frustrated her. She felt a bit like she was betraying someone when she was instantly empathetic with Howard. Steve, she thought, had been irritated by Howard from the beginning. They'd reached an understanding after a time, but -

"Peggy?"

"My apologies. You're correct, of course."

"That wasn't really my point."

Howard was still watching her, so carefully, and thinking of Steve made her throat close up. She said, "Let's drop it."

"Good thing to do in a marriage."

She bristled as his sarcasm, but before she even had a chance to object, he'd moved on. "What do we need to travel, then?"

"We have an agent in Kiev," Peggy said. "He can get us into Leningrad. We'll need an interpreter, but we can hire one. I know enough Russian to get us by before then."

Howard nodded. "And once we're there?"

"Spend some money, set ourselves up in a nice apartment, behave like lavish Westerners with more money than firm ideals. If we alter our appearances and hire someone to ferry messages for us, we shouldn't fear discovery. We know Hayes was working with an A. Travkin, from the bank statements. I have every confidence we can find him."

"Or her," Howard said, arching an eyebrow.

A pang wound its way through Peggy, as though he'd struck a gong at her center. Her social circle hadn't consisted of many women since before the war; she wished it hadn't changed her outlook quite so much. She picked up her tea. "Yes."

"It's a solid plan, not that you need my approval. What about Gabe?"

"We'll need to talk with him. I'd like for him to come with us, but if he feels his talents are better spent here, I'll trust his judgment."

Howard nodded. "Let's get going, then."

"Perhaps you should change first."

He looked down at his robe and laughed. Her cheeks warmed. "Maybe I should."

Gabe, as it turned out, was not keen on the idea of going to the Soviet Union.

"If you need me, I'll go," he said. "But the criminal element here isn't exactly as on their toes as they could be. Give me another two weeks, and I'll have some useful information on Hayes."

Peggy herself recognized that way of talking around a superior's request when you hadn't a lot of leverage. He wanted to stay, but he knew she could easily gainsay him. "We won't be able to communicate terribly easily," she said. "But if you send messages to Salenko in Kiev, he'll pass them on to me."

"I can do that."

"Thank you." She met his eyes and held his gaze. Not for the first time, she wished she could communicate without needing to find the proper words to shape her thoughts. "Stay safe, Gabe."

For a moment, he looked worried, as though he recognized her goodbye for what it was. Then he smiled. "How could I not, in a house as nice as this?"

"Don't trash it, either," Howard said, but that statement was delivered with a wink.

Gabe snorted. "You two need a ride anywhere?"

"I've got Jarvis making arrangements," Howard said. "He'll take us in a few hours."

"I'll go to work, then." Gabe stood. He rubbed his hands over his coveralls, then tugged at the collar of his shirt. It was a coarser ensemble than Peggy had ever seen him in, but the clothes didn't hide the same discomfort they'd all had during the war. No one liked saying goodbye when it might be permanent.

"We'll be in contact," Peggy said, as coolly as she could.

That was Gabe's out. He took it, nodding to them both and leaving silently.

"Do you do that to everyone?"

"Mmm?"

"Go all prim schoolmarm, until they fuck off?"

"I was doing us both a favor."

"I think you don't want to let people get close."

"Nonsense."

"Maybe." Howard paused for a moment, then opened his mouth again, with an expression on his face that spoke more to mischief than anything else. Fortunately for them both, Jarvis picked that moment to let himself into the townhouse.

"The preparations have been made." He looked at them both with the sort of grave look that made him rather resemble a turtle. "I assume your bags are still packed? If they are, we should leave as soon as possible. Mr. Rockefeller is doing us quite a favor."

On impulse, Peggy grabbed Howard's hand. "I'll take care of him."

To Howard, the remark probably didn't seem particularly out of place. He was an effusive sort. For Peggy, however, it was an embarrassing outburst, and she assumed Jarvis, having been raised more similarly to her, would understand why she'd done it.

He did. His shoulders loosened, and he said, "Thank you."

"Hey," Howard said. "Who says I need taking care of?"

"Nearly everyone, sir. Your bags?"

Two hours and an unemotional parting from Jarvis later, they were on a plane, flying to Paris. From there, they'd hire a car - or, rather, steal a car. They'd wired ahead to inform Salenko of their arrival. Peggy was rather doubting her own ability to get past various border checks, but she and Howard both had current falsified identification. It was her policy, as director of SHIELD, to be prudent.

The Atlantic stretched out beneath them, placid - or at least, appearing placid from as high up as they were. Peggy watched it until she realized that the monotony was contributing to exhaustion. She raised her head and looked straight in front of her.

"You okay?" Howard said.

The plane was moderately sized, with two four-person booths on either side of the cabin. Rockefeller had sent them without an attendant, so they were alone. Yet somehow, still, Peggy couldn't bring herself to be honest. "I'm fine."

She wished the plane was less well-constructed. This sort of plane surely couldn't be purchased by the public yet; the normal rattles and roars were barely evident in the cabin. The absence left more room in her mind for Howard's consideration. She didn't find it pleasant.

"You look tired."

Peggy closed her eyes, very briefly. Why did he have to say such things - and in a tone that implied he cared, beyond the realm of practicality? She'd always hated wanting things, even as a child. Oh, wanting sweets and a new dress, those were fine. But her father had been distant and then killed in the Great War, and she'd joined up with the Army reluctantly - resentful, really, of both the need to fight and kill, and of the fact that she'd never be respected for it the way a man would. Since then, for her, the world had gained wrinkles. Wrinkles like Gabe, who still hated how his own countrymen treated him, especially after having been deployed elsewhere. And wrinkles like Howard, who reminded her of that awful emptiness in her heart that she'd felt her first few weeks in the Army.

She'd wanted normalcy, for the bombs to stop. She'd wanted to be able to go home and wear a nice dress and forget she'd ever known how to kill a man with the nearest handy object. For someone who'd long since resolved to stop wanting what she couldn't have, she was doing a piss poor job at remembering she'd never have a loving marriage with Howard.

The man himself broke into her reverie. "For the record, you look more tired now."

"I am tired," Peggy said. She knew there was no sense in lying - not to Howard, who hadn't the sense to let a white lie stand. "It's been a long week."

Howard glanced around, as though someone might be lurking outside the plane, watching them. When he'd secured the plane to his satisfaction - so, to Peggy, not at all - he moved over to her side of the booth.

"Put your head on my shoulder," he said. "Are you warm enough?"

"I'm fine," Peggy said. "And you don't look like you'd make a terribly comfortable pillow, actually."

"Peggy. Let me help you. Please."

She couldn't hold out any longer, so she leaned against him. His shoulder was awkward, both in terms of height and relative lack of softness. And her curls were being crushed. But he slouched a little and raised his arm, and then the position became...nicer. Comfortable.

Waking up was a shock. She couldn't identify a stimulus that had awakened her; they were still over the ocean. Their position in the booth, however, had changed. Howard now leaned against the outer wall of the plane, his body angled towards Peggy's. She'd slumped more completely against him, so that her entire torso was pressed against his chest, his hips cradling hers. It was shockingly intimate, and no amount of remembering that she'd had him inside her could defeat her blush.

An attempt to straighten and pull herself away from him resulted in him tightening an arm around her. Peggy sighed. "Howard. Wake up."

"And here I was having such a nice dream," he said, opening his eyes.

She kept her expression smooth, but just barely. "You're only a man. I'd expect that would be the natural conclusion of all this."

"This?" Howard quirked an eyebrow. "Peggy, I was dreaming about letting you beat the crap outta Hayes, not fucking you."

"Letting me? Why on earth would I need you to let me?"

"At first I held you back so you wouldn't kill him."

He painted an absurd mental scenario torn straight from an old dime novel, the sort an older woman would deny ever having read. His apparent love of melodrama shouldn't have been endearing, and yet she had to fight down a twinge of humor.

Professionalism, she reminded herself. She'd kept herself relatively distant from all of them in the war, distant even from Steve, and that -

No. She had no regrets. They'd all done their duty, and Steve's death would have brought her even more pain, had they ever allowed themselves to make promises.

More promises than a last-minute date, anyway.

"Peggy."

She looked at Howard. All traces of sarcasm were gone from his expression now, and in their place was sympathy. "I'm sorry. I'm making this harder than it needs to be."

"Don't be dramatic," she said. "I just need to freshen up, that's all, and we've hours left in the air."

"Just a few," Howard said. "I can't offer you much more than a bucket in a closet, but if you want a drink..." He got up and went over to a cabinet. "Port? Sherry? Christ, Rockefeller's above a nice gin, apparently."

"Brandy, if he has some." Peggy had rubbed shoulders with enough posh men to know he would.

"Here we go." Howard pulled out a bottle and two glasses. The concept of one or two fingers was, apparently, lost on him; he filled both of them to the brim. "No ice or water," he said, and handed Peggy a glass. "The perils of travel."

Peggy took an unwieldy gulp of the liquor. "Thank you."

"Here to help."

"That much is evident." She took another sip. "This will most likely be our last petty freedom."

"Leningrad's that bad, huh?"

"Not, perhaps, for Brits with money," she said. "But I still doubt it will be what either of us is used to."

"You can say it, you know."

"Say what?"

Howard took a drink that rivaled Peggy's for indelicacy before saying, "I'm profligate. A pig. I wouldn't know deprivation if it bit me."

"I rather think you have known it, and that's why you work so hard to avoid acknowledging it yet exists."

Peggy only meant to be honest, but Howard winced as though she'd struck him. He looked away from her and took another drink, so that his glass dipped below half full.

"Anyway," he said, "we should take advantage of this freedom."

"Oh?"

Howard downed the rest of his brandy. "C'mere."

"I'm not going to sit on your lap," Peggy said. "Credit me with some dignity, Howard."

"That's not -" Howard shook his head.

Peggy, at a loss for anything useful to say, took another sip of brandy.

It was stronger than she was used to. Touching down in Paris with a hangover would do none of them any favors, and yet she felt more than a little temptation.

"I'm sorry," she said, before she could think better of it. "You remind me of Steve, almost more than any of the others do."

"Why's that?"

He got up and poured himself another drink. Peggy waited until he'd sat down again, and affixed her with a serious gaze, to say, "He showed up at that camp as a hero to them. Tall, strong, and ready to fight Nazis. He wasn't like that to us."

"No," Howard said. "He was a shrimp. And a pain in the ass."

"You believed in him."

Howard waved a hand. "I met the kid for five minutes."

"You didn't turn the machine off when he told you not to."

"I like completing my experiments."

"Stop being a prat, Howard," Peggy said. "You liked him as much as any of us did. You watched him, same as I did."

"He was easy to like."

"To love. I think of him, and I think of all we might have had. All we might have done."

"Fat babies and a nice home with good neighbors."

"Change. Real change."

"And I can't do that for you?"

"That's not what I mean. Of course you can. But it's not the same. It's not the future I'd hoped for, the few times I thought of it." A sham marriage to a man who preferred weapons and drink to genuine affection. If he could remake the world, she thought, in whose image would it be?

Howard stared at her then, the kind of stare he hardly ever applied to anything that wasn't mechanical. "You know what I thought of during the war? I thought about how I couldn't compete. How Captain fuckin' America had more than I'd ever have. Now he's missing, none of my men can find him, and I've got you. Should I be happy? You're not."

For all the wrong reasons. Peggy's stomach twisted. "It's not that simple."

"Sure it's not. That's what Steve would say if he was here. He'd tell me it was all right I'd stolen his girl, because we both deserved to be happy."

Somehow, even with an alcohol-thickened accent and petty jealousy sharpening his tone, Howard's paraphrasing approached a closer truth than all the damn radio shows had managed. Peggy's throat caught. "Howard -"

"Peggy." He got up, surprisingly smoothly, and fell to his knees. Only a few inches separated the booths; his feet were flush against the other side. But he didn't seem to mind. He looked up at her, bracing his hands on her knees, and Peggy went utterly, completely still.

"He'd do so much for you," Howard said. He kept looking at her, his eyes dark and unfathomable, utterly unlike Steve's. "He'd treat you better than I ever could."

"Don't be ridiculous," Peggy said.

But Howard knew too much about her body's reactions to be fooled. "You think he ever ate pussy?"

She laughed at that. "Of course not. He could barely talk to women."

"So you'd show him. You'd put a hand in his hair."

She didn't pretend to be ignorant of his meaning. She took one last gulp of brandy, draining the glass, and set it down on the booth.

His hair was softer than she expected, unburdened by product. He tilted his head a little, pressing into her hand.

"He'd be careful," he said, and pushed her skirt up slowly. "So careful, to make sure you wanted it."

"Of course I'd want it," Peggy said. "How could I not?"

"He'd doubt it. But he'd know." Howard unhooked her stockings and pulled them down, then did the same with her drawers. "All he'd have to do would be to touch you." His hand dipped into her, just a little - but in the state she was in, that was more than enough. "Feel you."

She shifted her hips. This time, Howard's breath caught. She could feel his hand shaking the tiniest bit, a tremor that felt like a tease.

It took her a moment to realize he was waiting for her to continue the ruse. "I'd need to show him what to do," she said, and reached down, gently placing her fingers over his. Her own warmth was so close, and Peggy knew that she was blushing. But she felt safe here, in an odd way. Howard's hand were shaking and he, too, was flushed. The safety of mutual blackmail could feel a lot like the safety of trust, apparently.

"He wouldn't want to hurt you," Howard said. He pressed a little more, the tips of his fingers sliding inside her. "He'd tell you how gorgeous you look, how nice you smell."

Peggy desperately wanted more contact. "I - I'd ask him to touch me. Here." She reached down and pressed against her clitoris, giving herself enough firm pressure that she shuddered, warmth flooding her.

"He's a mouthy little guy," Howard said. "I bet he'd know exactly what to do. He'd tell you it was wonderful, lean in..."

He followed his own instruction, licking around her fingers. It was barely a tease, just the tip of his tongue as he moved his fingers in slow, shallow strokes. But Peggy felt like she was on fire. She reached out with her free hand and rested it on the back of his head. The cloth of the booth felt scratchy against her thighs, but that sensation paled in comparison to Howard flattening his tongue and licking her, bobbing his head as he slid his fingers in just a bit further and rested them there, curled up.

He was so close to something else, but Peggy knew he'd make her ask. She said, "I'd ask him - a little more. A little harder. He was - he's so strong, but he'd know how to be gentle."

"He'd..." Howard turned his head, pressing his forehead against her thigh. The sudden rush of cold air against her was disconcerting, but when his thumb slid up and rubbed her clitoris, she felt still closer to being undone. "He'll tell you he'll do anything for you. He'd tell you he'll hold you as long as you need." He slid his fingers in, past the first knuckle, until the heel of his hand was cradling her. Only two fingers, but not particularly slim ones; they stretched her, and as he curled them, the sensation wrung a gasp out of her.

"Oh, there - more." She thrust her hips, unable to get much momentum from the present angle, but incapable of stopping her own movement. She'd been bracing one hand on her thigh, but now she moved it up, squeezing her breasts, feeling her nipples harden even through her undergarments. "I'd ask him - I'd ask him to fuck me. Just like this."

"He wouldn't like the word, not for you," Howard said. He thrust once, hard, hitting that spot inside her again. "He'd tell you he wants to make love to you. Worship you."

She tightened her hand until her fingertips were digging into his skull, then pressed him forward without hesitation. He went, licking her, up and down, against his own fingers and then back up to her clitoris. And God help her, but she wasn't thinking of Steve at all, not right then. She couldn't think of anyone but Howard, not when he persisted with her, cradling her as she moved against him, glancing up occasionally and moaning against her as she played with her breasts. She didn't even have the wherewithal to unbutton her shirt; he brought her to the edge and then over so easily, thrusting his fingers so hard her whole body jolted as she fought not to cry out, her mind going blissfully blank.

When she calmed she opened her eyes and looked down at him again. He was resting his cheek against her thigh, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, his accent sharpened and his voice rough.

"He'd tell you he loves you," he said, "and he'd hold you until you fell asleep."

Peggy closed her eyes again. She had to. "Are you...that is, should I..."

"It's taken care of," Howard said. "Somewhat serendipitously, I might add." He removed his head from her thigh and slowly pulled his fingers out. "Luckily there's a towel by the bar."

She looked away while he rearranged himself, busying herself with straightening her clothes while he took a pair of trousers from Rockefeller's own little closet. They didn't fit terribly well, but Howard balled up his soiled clothes and shoved them in his suitcase as though he hadn't a care in the world.

Howard sat back down across from her and checked his watch. "Two hours to Paris."

"Yes," Peggy said. "I think I'll read now."

Howard's smile dripped with irony. "Enjoy yourself. We're going to be busy soon."

Burying herself in a book wasn't particularly enjoyable, but it served as a distraction. They didn't speak another word to one another until they landed.

-

Peggy had never been particularly comfortable in Paris. She was too English for the women with their free and easy ways, and too American for the men with their casual liberties. With Howard at her side, however, what had been a difficult city immediately after liberation became a puzzle to solve. They needed a vehicle, and any driver they hired would most likely be unwilling to drive to Kiev.

"It's not really stealing if you leave a stack of bills," Howard said as they walked down Rue Boissonade.

"It absolutely is. What if they need the automobile the next day? One can hardly procure a vehicle at a moment's notice."

"These aristocrats can handle it." Howard examined a townhouse. "It's got a garage. Let's go."

Peggy didn't bother pointing out the hypocrisy of a man like Howard displaying class resentment. He was bound and determined to steal a car, and she wasn't going to cling to the law enough to deny that they needed one. Someday, she thought, SHIELD would be big enough that an agent could meet them in Paris, too. Right then, she just slipped inside the garage and watched as Howard spliced a few wires and started the car.

"Let's go," he said, and Peggy helped him throw their luggage from the trolley into the car. They drove out with the ease of ownership. Peggy felt a juvenile thrill that she expressed only with a tight smile as Howard found a road that would lead them west.

"Did you do this a lot growing up?"

"My mother would've had my hide," Howard said. "And there weren't a lot of cars just lying around in the city back then."

"I see."

"But you learn things, you know, for contingencies." He swung a corner and brought them over a bridge. They were already on their way out of Paris. They'd be sleeping in hotels, if they could find them, and the car itself, if they couldn't, for at least two days.

Two days in a car with Howard. She could only hope she wouldn't do anything too stupid. The experience on the plane alone demonstrated that she was prone to stupid decisions where Howard was concerned.

She didn't speak again until they'd gotten out of Paris proper and were well into the French countryside. "We'll need to stop for lunch."

"I brought some Stark Industries MREs."

"How charming," Peggy said. "That absolutely won't reveal who we are when the Soviets search our bags."

"I was going to dump them out before then."

Someone like Howard, who was both a genius and thoroughly convinced of his genius, most likely thought that an appropriate response. "I see," Peggy said. "Well, in that case, by all means, enjoy your military rations. I'd like a sitdown meal every now and then."

Howard, to her surprise, laughed. "We can find a place to stop tonight. This is a major road. There'll be something."

"Thank you," Peggy said, and settled into her seat.

"I can't believe you thought I was a car thief growing up."

"Your past is something of a mystery."

"For all you know, my father owns a brewery and I grew up with luxury and all the beer a growing boy could desire."

Peggy snorted. "Please. I know how those who are born posh act, Howard, and you're not one of them."

"I'm hurt." He placed a hand over his head. "Wounded mortally, right here."

"You'd better pull over, then, if I'm to continue the journey."

He laughed again and reached out, but pulled his hand back before he reached her knee. "It's a damn shame those lousy schmucks didn't give you more funding."

"They will," Peggy said. "I intend to make us the most efficient covert department in the world."

"I have no doubt you'll succeed."

"And you'll be in the shadows, making sure SHIELD does plenty of business with Stark Industries."

"Aw, pal, I can't believe you'd think of me like that."

Peggy let her silence serve as commentary.

"It's not just me, you know," Howard said. He didn't sound angry, precisely, but his words had a bit of bite to them, as though Peggy's silent judgment had struck instead of sliding off him. "You want SHIELD to be a monolith. You want it to be powerful. And I doubt you're planning on stepping down as director anytime soon."

"I want to protect the world, not build myself ten houses."

"And my weapons are going to do what, exactly? Hard to protect the world with a bunch of guys holding billy clubs."

Peggy nearly reminded him of his yearly earnings before remembering that soon, their households would combine. Or rather, she'd be absorbed into him, her few belongings moved from her cozy apartment to his lavish mansion. "Never mind," she said. "Let's go over the information we have on Travkin."

"We don't know anything about the bastard."

"Unknown: gender, date of birth, place of birth, early life. Known: current residence - Leningrad. Party sympathies - Stalinist. Pays Hayes in increments of three thousand US dollars every six weeks."

"You think Travkin's a dame?"

"I think we shouldn't rule anything out."

"Your call."

He seemed to mean that, so Peggy said, "We don't have an apartment or house, either, and asking around will have to be done very carefully. I hope you've memorized your communist talking points."

"Sure I have."

And again, they were too close to Howard's money and Peggy's desire for power. "Good," she said. "Do you know, France is recovering more quickly than I'd have expected."

"Did you ever go here before the war?"

"Once, on holiday with my grandparents."

"Must've been nice."

"I thought that would be my life," Peggy said, before she could think better of it. "Marriage to a good man, a house in the village, and holidays on occasion."

"Quit pulling my leg. There's no way a girl like you could end up like that."

"But we do, every day."

"You're not -"

"Like who, Howard? The models you take to dinner?"

"Boring," Howard said. "You're not boring, and that life you just described? That's boring."

"I used to be." Peggy did her best to sound uncaring. She knew she wasn't succeeding. It was a silly fantasy anyway, that Howard might have loved an English village girl. "If the girl I was could see all this, I assure you, she'd be most disappointed."

"You're getting married, at least."

A sham marriage. "But not to a shopkeeper in an English village."

"Thank God for that."

Peggy didn't know what he meant and didn't want to ask. They rounded a slight curve, coming upon a long stretch of road, the dirt pounded-down and no other people to be seen. Howard accelerated so that the car rattled and lurched, and Peggy didn't object.

They had Howard's MREs for lunch. "The trick," Howard said through a mouthful of dehydrated peanut butter-flavored protein, "is to make 'em generic. Soldiers won't eat stuff that tastes like their favorite foods at home. It's too easy to remember."

"Are you going to launch a food branch of Stark Industries?"

Howard smirked. "I've already got stock in Monsanto."

Of course he did. "Good for you," Peggy said, and finished hers. "Now get back to driving."

The sun set, and still they drove. They continued until nearly 2000, and Peggy got the feeling Howard would have driven still further, had they not happened upon a building that advertised itself as the last inn for thirty miles. Howard swung the car into the grassy lot, and they went inside.

"Evening," Howard said in French. It was horrifically butchered, and the innkeeper - if that was who she was - immediately looked tense. "I'd like a room for myself and my wife. The more private, the better."

She opened her mouth, clearly preparing to object. Howard dropped several coins on the front desk. "I assume that will serve as a sufficient deposit."

The woman recovered admirably, tucking the coins into a small purse and plucking a key from the wall. "Follow me, please."

Howard dropped the terrible French as soon as they were alone in a room together. "You know, the thing about Europe is, everyone's just so damn stuffy."

"Perhaps we see you as uncivilized."

Howard kicked his shoes off and waved a dismissive hand at her. "You hardly count. You've been rubbing shoulders with Americans for years, and soon you'll be married to one, too."

"I'm glad I'm excused from your xenophobia."

"Funny."

Howard looked at her, lips curled in a sly smile as he loosened his necktie. The atmosphere in their room went from jocular to tense, in a very specific way that had Peggy saying, "I'll just go down the hall to the toilet," and exiting hastily.

This was one of the old inns that had been clumsily fitted for plumbing. Baths would need to be drawn in the room, but the women's toilet had a large sink in addition to the commode itself. Peggy closed the door and rested her forehead against it for just a moment. She was surrounded by old wood - likely older than most of what she'd encountered in New York. The room smelled of lavender. It was just a bathroom, but it was more comforting, more steady, than any of Howard's lavish, newly appointed rooms.

Unfortunately, it was also semi-public. She could only spend a few minutes in there if she didn't want to disturb someone else's plans. With that in mind, Peggy relieved herself, scrubbed her teeth, and removed her makeup.

Howard was sitting up in bed when she returned. He had a sketch pad, and he was working on something with a good deal of intertwining lines. "I suppose you'll want me to ask what that is," Peggy said as she slid into bed.

"It might, someday, be a different kind of lightbulb," Howard said. "That's a long time in the future, though."

"I see."

She reached over and turned off the light. If asked to guess, she would have anticipated Howard attempting to hug her. He didn't. They slept side by side, arms to themselves, until the crowing of a rooster woke them both at dawn.

The rest of their trip to Kiev passed quickly, with few surprises. Peggy and Howard stopped being prickly at one another midway through the second day, and by noon the third day, as they arrived in Kiev, they'd fallen into an easy partnership. If Peggy hadn't been busy ensuring they survived the trip, she would have been disturbed by it.

Getting into Kiev itself proved surprisingly easy. The border was guarded by men who were happy to accept lumps of gold. After that, they weren't bothered. Peggy did her best not to over-examine the workers in the fields and the road they took, unevenly maintained at best. Her concern was bringing down Hayes, and more broadly protecting her adopted country. The Soviets could manage their own lives.

Sofiya Salenko met them at the Kiev apartment they had on file for her. She didn't look like an agent to the United States at all, which Peggy supposed was the point. In contrast to Peggy's assertive suit, Sofiya wore a plain grey dress. She looked nothing like the coverall-sporting workers in the older, pre-Stalin files, but she also scarcely resembled the newer propaganda of happy, fashionable women. Mostly, Peggy thought, she looked tired.

"How may I help you?" Sofiya said. She stood in the doorway of her apartment complex. She tapped her hand on the door frame three times, looking absent-minded.

"My name is Maggie Smith, and I'm here to participate in the Soviet effort. I wish to be a communist!"

"The spires of capitalism rise high," Sofiya said.

It was their code phrase. "And we will topple them one by one."

Sofiya glanced from her to Howard. "Come in," she said.

They climbed the stairs to her apartment in silence. It was only after they closed and locked the door that Sofiya said, "This room is protected by technology courtesy of your friend, here." She nodded at Howard. "Any surveillance will be disrupted. They will hear only ambient noise."

"That's very clever." And Howard hadn't told Peggy a bit about it.

"Yes," Sofiya said. "And needed, right now. I thought that telegram you sent me was a joke. You're going after Travkin?"

"I know very little about Travkin - SHIELD's records are a bit bare," Peggy said. "But Travkin is the person who appears to be funding Hayes, and so we will hunt him down."

"Her."

Peggy blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Travkin is a woman," Sofiya said, "and right now, she's largely only influential with Stalin himself - that is to say, she's not interested in America. As far as I know."

"That can't be correct, given the payments we saw."

"Well, I can't pretend to know everything from my post here. I'll accompany you to Leningrad. You can't play this particular role without a sponsor."

"And you're well-placed?"

"Well-placed enough to be under surveillance."

Peggy had rather thought most of the Soviets were under surveillance, but she held her tongue. "How long is the trip to Leningrad?"

"We have to go through Moscow. By train, perhaps a day and a half. The trains aren't particularly pleasant, but we should arrive safely."

"I don't suppose you have a first class."

Sofiya arched a brow. "The military travels separately."

That was enough of an answer. "Very well. Do you have a brief for me on Travkin? I'd like to review it, but we should leave as soon as possible. Two and a half days on a train provides plenty of time for study."

"Agent Carter, we will be in a car with dozens of others. An English-language brief on a high-ranking Soviet operative might not give quite the correct impression."

Peggy winced. The lapse in time since she'd last been in the field had never felt so significant. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Howard beat her to it, saying, "Sorry, she's been spending too much time as a desk jockey at my behest. We'll review the files for an hour, then set out. Sound good?"

Sofiya nodded. "The files are on the table over there. I'll fix some tea." She turned her back on them to walk the length of the apartment. It was scarcely ten feet, but when she turned on the stove and put the kettle on, she kept her back to them.

Privacy in small quarters, or at least the illusion of it, was something with which Peggy was familiar. Together with Howard, she inspected the files.

Travkin was, apparently, something of a mystery. Like one of the many senators Peggy attempted to keep tabs on, she kept careful control of her public image. Apparently, a society organized by democracy wasn't terribly different from a society organized by Lenin in that respect.

Why she might be in contact with Hayes was, as far as those files were concerned, a complete mystery. But it was a start all the same. Peggy at least had some idea of who she was dealing with - a trained soldier, a woman who'd risked everything to rescue a fellow pilot, and a woman with an unusual ability for codes.

"Thank you," she said after ten minutes with the file. Sofiya brought tea over. It was still steaming; Peggy sipped it before saying, "Have you ever spoken with Travkin?"

Sofiya shook her head. "The information I gather is more lower-level. She's above me."

"Yes," Peggy said. "I've read your reports."

Sofiya raised her eyebrows. "Aren't you the Director?"

"Of a very small organization, yes," Peggy said. "The Soviets are, presently, our primary concern. I'll be very happy to have you with us when we go to Leningrad."

Sofiya smiled. It softened her face considerably; Peggy understood why so many people trusted her. "Thank you."

Peggy had never particularly been looking forward to the trip from Kiev to Leningrad, but the reality of it was even more vexing than she'd imagined. They traveled first to Moscow on a rattling, smoke-filled train, then to Leningrad on a bus. She knew that lower class transit elsewhere wasn't better, and was often worse, so she held her tongue. But when they stepped out of the bus and into the clear air of Leningrad, she couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief.

"Time to put our masks on," Howard muttered beside her. "It's occurring to me that if I get dumped in an alley with ten bullets in me, I won't see home again."

"Welcome to espionage, Mr. Stark," Peggy said, and strode forward. "Sofiya! Where will we be staying? I do so wish to immerse myself in this exotic city. Marxism in action, how exciting!" She tittered and threw her head back, ensuring her voice would carry.

Sofiya's expression was smooth as a river stone. "If you'll follow me, we have quarters at a hotel."

"Thanks ever so." Peggy picked up her bag, adding the sort of dismissive sniff that would indicate she wasn't accustomed to carrying her own luggage, and followed Sofiya down the street.

In her time during the war, she'd seen all manner of horrific things. The streets of Leningrad didn't reflect the propaganda posters the United States had begun disseminating, nor did it resemble the paradise Stalin himself would have people believe it was. It was only a street, and the people walking past them were only people. If their manner of walking was furtive and their clothes were odd, well, Peggy had seen bombed-out streets and men whose skin slipped clear off their arms. This was not the same world of terrors that fighting the Axis powers had shown her.

Still, it was a relief to get inside and go through the mundane work of searching the room for bugs. The hotel was clearly meant for foreigners, since it had a separate room with a hot plate and a couch, and two wide beds. Sofiya placed a device under the desk, affixing it to the wood beneath. It was, to Peggy, clearly Stark Industries tech, but Sofiya only said, "No one will assume anything other than that Stalin has an interest in all foreigners. But this will prevent listening in, similar to my home in Kiev."

"Well, then," Howard said. "What's our next step? Cozying up to Travkin? What do Soviet women like - flowers? Beads? Tracts on the evils of capitalist swine such as myself?"

Sofiya sighed. "Please, Harold. Patience."

Howard affected a shocked expression. Or perhaps, Peggy thought, it wasn't an affectation. "Harold?"

Sofiya raised a single brow. "Yes. Harold."

"Christ."

"Here, that is not blasphemy - though it is an empty statement." Sofiya sat down on one of the beds. "One of Travkin's roles is to hold readings for women in the area. A kind of improvement to facilitate further intellectual and physical equality between the sexes."

"Only women?"

"You'll be left out from this one," Sofiya said. She looked somewhat smug, but since Peggy herself often had that reaction to Howard, she didn't object. "Maggie, you'll be invited. They're exclusive, but I'll be spending some time telling people about my English communist friend - and her money and connections."

"Equality, eh?" Howard said.

"The very same," Sofiya said. "Now, if you've no further objections, I'll take my leave."

"You're not staying here?"

It took only a moment's look from Sofiya for Peggy to realize that was a foolish question. "I'm a citizen of the Soviet Union. I will stay with my sister."

And then she left. Peggy felt distinctly outmaneuvered.

"Well," Howard said. "This is cozy."

Outmaneuvered on more than one front. "Watch it, Harold. We're here for a reason."

Howard waved a hand. "I'm the moneybags no one talks to and I know it."

"They can still kill you."

"Which is why I'm looking for the vodka." He followed up on his words by wandering the room, looking in every cupboard.

"For God's sake, Howard." Peggy put her hands on her hips, instantly felt like a shrew, and put them down. "Take this seriously."

Howard turned away from the bookshelf he'd been investigating with a bottle of clear spirits in hand. "I am taking it seriously, Agent. Like I said before, why do you think I'm drinking?"

Slapping the man would be too good for him. Peggy took a deep breath, closing her eyes and then opening them to the unappealing sight of Howard drinking directly from the bottle. "You drink under stress."

"Among other conditions." He winked. "Want some?"

"Not right now, thank you."

Peggy sat in silence, reviewing what she might say to Travkin as Howard sipped the spirits in between making vulgar spitting noises. After a quarter hour had passed, Peggy said, "I do wonder when this invitation will arrive."

The door blew open, a heavily booted foot following it.

"Holy mother of God," Howard said. He stood, drink in hand, as two armed men entered the hotel room.

They were both heavyset, with bulging muscles and stomachs. Howard looked alarmed, but he didn't relinquish his drink. Instead, he scuttled behind Peggy. Peggy sighed and pulled a gun out from her thigh holster. "Gentlemen. I'd like to ask you to leave, please."

The man on the left laughed and, before she had a chance to get a shot off, leaped forward and knocked the gun out of her hand.

Right, then.

"Do try to stay out of the way," she said to Howard, and rolled to her feet, aiming a kick at the left man's knees while lifting a chair to bash the right man over the head.

"Oh, I plan to," he said. He skipped back, somehow managing not to spill his drink. Peggy caught a glimpse of him sipping it as she turned with the chair and used it to break the man on the left's nose.

He caught her ankle, unfortunately, and she almost went down. She crossed her feet and broke his wrist, then hit him one last time. His head flew back at an awkward angle, and he fell unconscious. She turned to the right man and dove for his legs. It didn't unseat him, but when she kicked up and connected with his crotch, he howled and bent over. She leaped upright again and grabbed the lamp on Howard's side of the bed, smashing it over his head. He, too, fell to the ground.

Clapping filled the air. "Oh, come off it, you prick," she said, turning to Howard.

He sipped his spirits, raised an eyebrow, and pointed - with his middle finger, lifted off the glass - behind her.

Wonderful. She turned.

A young woman stood in the doorway. She couldn't be more than twenty-five - younger than Peggy herself by a not insignificant amount.

"Lovely," she said in Russian-accented English. "Just lovely. My dear, you are a powerhouse."

For a moment, Peggy wanted to whack this woman over the head with her lamp, too. But of course, they hadn't come to Leningrad for such an action. "Travkin, I presume," she said.

The woman - Travkin - inclined her head. "My apologies, but I wanted to see what your mettle was."

Peggy remembered the role she was meant to be playing. Or, rather, she remembered that she wasn't meant to be a pugilist.

She tossed her head back and laughed. "My apologies. It's only that I've done my turn in the military, you see, during the war. I was surprised, but, well - you never truly forget, do you?"

"Of course not. You served?"

"Only as a, ah, supply truck driver," Peggy said. "I don't like to talk about it all that much. But of course, we occasionally encountered trouble, same as anyone."

"I was with the Night Witches."

Agent Peggy Carter knew who the night witches were. Maggie wouldn't. "Oh? You were a nurse?"

Travkin's smirk was entirely off-putting. "Never you mind. You've traveled a long way."

"We have," Peggy said. "We wish to join the cause." She paused, screwing up her face deliberately. "Comrade."

"Oh my dear, you don't need to engage in the theater. I have the ear of our dear father himself. The problems that we're solving are much greater than forms of address."

Travkin was a con artist, then. Oh, she might not think of herself as one, but that certain type of true believer who was willing to gloss over technicalities and inconsistencies in favor of money or time for the cause was almost inevitably a con artist. Peggy smiled. "That's a relief. Thank you so much. May I introduce my husband, Harold?"

"Lovely to meet you," Howard said. His accent was, to Peggy's ears, a bit of a mess. Travkin didn't seem particularly alarmed. Peggy'd had a story ready if she was alarmed, one that placed Howard in America for boarding school at a young age. She needn't have worried, apparently.

"You as well," Travkin said. "How long do you plan to stay?"

"The men at the border seemed to think we could stay as along as we wanted - as supporters of the cause, of course," Peggy said. "We've no real currency, but we've gold. Jewels."

"So crass."

"Practical." Peggy met Travkin's eyes with a firm expression. "Even revolutions need money. I won't have my inheritance going to the service of capitalist exploitation. My children will not be robber barons, sitting on thrones of corruption."

"I see you've done your research."

"My mother was beaten by my father. She couldn't leave because she had no way of making a living. I understand the structure that leads to oppression."

Howard stiffened next to her. Peggy would need to clarify later that that was fabrication. She'd really have thought someone with Howard's history, not to mention reputation, would be better at hiding his reactions to prevarication.

"I see," Travkin said. "I'm hosting a social event tomorrow night. Normally I largely host for the ladies, but this one's a bit more mixed. I'll send over instructions. It will be an opportunity for you to meet others of a...similar mindset." She winked. "And background."

Peggy smiled, then schooled her expression, as though she were young and idealistic enough to let Travkin see through her sophisticated mask. "Thank you. I can't thank you enough. Truly, this is all I've dreamed of, all I want."

"But of course," Travkin said. "Be well." She nodded and left. The men Peggy had felled also left, looking rather the worse for wear.

Peggy let out a breath, relieved, feeling the muscles in her back and legs loosen after being tensed and ready for action with Travkin. That relief was short-lived, though. Howard sauntered over to her, set his now-empty glass down on the side table, and wrapped his arms around her.

"Howard." She did her best to inject annoyance into her tone; she wasn't sure she succeeded. "Now is really not the time."

"You sure about that?" He lowered a hand between her thighs.

Truth be told, she wasn't. His chest was warm and firm against her back, and she'd been wet even before he touched her. Now she felt as though her skin were aflame. She knew it was unwise, but their room wasn't bugged - or at least, Howard's tech would keep them from being recorded. They were alone in this country but for Sofiya, and Travkin was considerably more threatening than Peggy had let herself consider, prior to crossing the Atlantic. She was frightened, and Howard was with her, and she wanted to take her pleasure as insurance against the coming hard times.

Then, of course, there was the fact that she was falling in love with him. That alone should be reason to say no. He was unsuitable, and she was unsuitable; together they were very little aside from a horrible idea.

She knew she didn't lack moral strength, because the memory of Steve's radio going to static weighed on her every day, and every day she pushed it aside and went to do her work. She knew she had principles, because she'd helped coordinate the Howling Commandos' attacks on HYDRA, and they'd adhered to the Geneva Conventions even when HYDRA wasn't.

She knew she was strong enough to resist him. The problem was that she didn't want to. She pushed his arms away only enough so that she could turn around, wrap her arms around his neck, and kiss him.

He kissed her back, tugging her hair and bending her half over. She pushed back, of course, muscling him over to the bed and shoving him onto the mattress. It was lumpy and he barely bounced, but she didn't care; she could bend over him, straddling him and clutching him with her thighs as she continued the kiss.

They copulated there, somewhat uncomfortably, moving with mutual desperation. It felt - intense, Peggy thought, as though she'd given something up without quite being aware of it. He held her on top, leaning up against her so that when she orgasmed, she fell forward into his embrace. His fingers bit into her hips as he followed her, and his teeth marked her shoulder. The sensation it send through her was such that she didn't even admonish him after.

Unfortunately, oblivion didn't take her. What hadn't occurred to her until she lay in the dark on the too-small bed with Howard snoring and drooling on her shoulder was that they had a good 24 hours with nothing to do before Travkin's party.

They had a decent amount of gold, and of course, Sofiya could get them more if it was needed. What they lacked were rubles, or really, any non-conspicuous way to get them. On her own, Peggy could easily spend a day in a small room such as this. She suspected passing the time with Howard would be a more difficult proposition.

It wasn't until Howard tapped her hip that she realized he'd stopped snoring. "It'll be fine," he mumbled into her shoulder. "Stop worrying."

"That's not what I'm worrying about." She tried to make it sound casual, but failed. Her voice was crisp and intolerant.

She expected Howard to fall back asleep, if only because he'd seemed so dedicated to the action a few minutes before. Instead, he propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her.

"What?" she said after a few minutes, well aware of how rude she was being, but utterly incapable of summoning manners.

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

She arranged her expression to be quizzical, unwilling to speak. Despite being a director of a damn international espionage organization, she wasn't at all confident of her ability to lie to Howard.

"We're juggling a lot of potential problems right now, Howard."

"You think I don't know that? I had some vodka, I didn't sell my brain to the commies."

"Howard -"

"Peg. Give me some credit, here. I'm not just the drunk you're dragging around for his money."

He wasn't, and that was the problem, really. He was a genius. She didn't want to care about - to be in love with - a genius.

"I still wish you wouldn't."

"Make you worry?"

"You're not predictable."

"No," Howard said. "Neither are you, you know. You sell that image of the buttoned-up Director, but we've got more in common with that. You like danger just as much as me."

It might be true; in fact, Peggy felt fairly certain it was true. But she didn't want to have that argument right then. Or ever, really. "Maybe," she said. "Let's mutually agree, then, as similar people, to go back to sleep."

That made him laugh, warm and boisterous, just a few inches from her. "Whatever you say, Peg." He lowered himself again, placing an arm over her waist.

She ought to have removed it. She didn't.

-

During the war, Howard had exercised a certain level of restraint, gleaned more from necessity than genuine self-discipline. He'd had to sit in bunkers, still and silent, just like the rest of them. But of course, since being pulled onto the Manhattan Project, he'd been able to leave the need for that type of patience behind. That was somewhat obvious now, at barely ten in the morning, as he paced their small apartment.

"Howard." Peggy rubbed her temples. "Truly, I sympathize, but wearing yourself out before the party will do no one any good."

"She hasn't even sent over the details yet. It could be a trap."

"She'll probably throw us in half a dozen traps just to see how we react, so that hardly signifies," Peggy said. "Conserving your energy is still wise."

Howard stopped dead halfway across the room, turning to glare at her. The glare held no real spite, but Peggy braced herself anyway.

"When was the last time you did this?" Howard said. "When was the last time you were undercover, no cavalry on the way?"

"A year ago," Peggy said, "right after the war ended. I was gathering intel on Germany, as you'll recall. You were the one paying me."

"I never would've if I'd realized what it felt like." Howard turned away from her.

It was, as these things went, a valid complaint. But there was one difference between that horrible mission - when she'd still been mourning Steve, back in Europe for the first time since that last awful attempt - and now. "You're not alone. Neither am I."

Howard snorted. "Sofiya's in over her head and we both know it."

"I wasn't referring to Sofiya, Howard."

"Oh, sure." Howard waved a hand at her. "You're here. You can fight for me, watch my back, and it'll be the hottest fucking thing I've seen in my life. But what happens if you die, exactly?"

"You'll get out. You always do."

He glared at her. "I'll lose you."

Peggy threw up her hands. "Then you lose me. The other option is going back to New York and losing our progress on Hayes entirely. Perhaps he'll continue to vote on funding for SHIELD, or perhaps he'll have me killed. Is that the future you want? Creeping around in the dark?"

"We just got done with the war, I just - I'm just tired." He sat down on the bed, glaring at the floor. "How long's it going to go on?"

Peggy thought of the Soviets, the Germans. She thought of the way North America had hastily relocated its Japanese citizens. There were Nazis in Argentina and atomic weapons in God knew how many silos across the world, and Peggy wouldn't - couldn't - just bow out and join the private sector. Not now, when she had a chance to shape the world's laws and bring it order.

"Forever," Peggy said. "Or close to it. Didn't you argue as much for Stark Industries' current federal contracts?"

"That was cynicism. I thought you were more optimistic."

"Because I'm a woman?"

Howard met her gaze then. She'd tried to avoid it, but right then she was caught, utterly incapable of looking away. "Because he loved you."

Steve. Always Steve, hovering over Peggy's own reputation, hovering between them even now, when they'd been alone for hours and hours. Peggy finally found the strength to look away.

"Yes, and I loved him. But we weren't the same person."

"No." She couldn't tell what emotion lurked in Howard's voice just then. "No, you weren't."

They sat in silence then. Peggy used the kettle on the burners across the room, then sat at the room's only table, flipping absently through the lone English-language book in the room: a rough translation of Volume 2 of the Soviets' new version of Lenin's collected writings. She knew she was reading a product of censorship, scrubbed clean of human contradictions and doubt. It was still a powerful work, the thoughts of a man who'd exorcised the sorts of doubts that now drove Peggy and held her back in equal measure.

They didn't have any food, and around noon Peggy was finally getting ready to give in to her stomach's growling when someone knocked on their door. Peggy stood and walked over to it before Howard could move, keeping her gun in one hand and holding it behind her, out of view.

When she opened the door, though, the hallway was empty. A woven basket sat on the ground, with a card on top of it.

Explosives were possible, but Peggy had no means of disarming them. She picked the card up and skimmed it. "Travkin sent instructions."

"That's good news, then."

"Yes." She gingerly lifted the cloth covering the basket. "Oh. And food."

"Thank God. Bring it in before she changes her mind."

The bread was still warm, the cured meat cold. They ate the food - including cheese - and Peggy explained the details to Howard. "Provisions have only been made for the two of us, so we can't bring Sofiya. She wants a token at the door. Can we shave a bit of gold off our supplies?"

"We've got some coins," Howard said. "Solid gold. One should be enough."

Peggy nodded and took another bite of bread. It was denser than she was used to, but she knew enough about Soviet rations to know this was food of the privileged, regardless of how they'd deny such a thing. "Good. You'll follow my lead, of course."

"I'm the silent, dumb one."

Peggy couldn't help but smile a bit. "We're playing to Travkin's sympathies. She's climbed quickly for someone so young - one might say suspiciously so."

"Maybe not so suspicious," Howard said. "She'd've been born after the revolution. Indoctrination's got to be easier for people who don't know about any alternatives."

"It's not impossible for others, or we wouldn't be here."

Howard's shrug said nothing of his own history and experience with New York's decidedly capitalist, and deadly, underbelly. "Sure."

Peggy looked down at the card again. "The party appears to be at Travkin's home."

"She's trusted us awfully fast."

"Perhaps," Peggy said. "Or perhaps it's a trap. I'd like to think she assumes we're too naive to require trust."

"She didn't strike me as a rookie."

"Any amount of experience at her age might lead her to become overconfident." Peggy forced a smile. "We should be prepared for a trap, though."

"Just tell me what to do."

She did. They went over the plan several times. Peggy was to distract Travkin, and Howard was to bug her home. Peggy would have preferred to bug Travkin's home herself, but Howard was proficient with his own tech, and Peggy would return later to search Travkin's home for more tangible evidence of ill dealings with Hayes.

Chance governed too many of their possible actions just then. It wasn't particularly surprising. They knew very little compared to what they'd need to do, in theory, to bring down Hayes.

Soviet parties were apparently held early; the card instructed them to arrive by 1800. They stood on Travkin's doorstep two minutes early, and Peggy rapped her knuckles on the door, attempting to convey brisk efficiency.

Travkin pulled the door open almost immediately. She was dressed up, for a Soviet operative, wearing an almost modern-looking dress. No one of a lower station would be able to afford such a thing, even in a union that was ostensibly all that was equal and fair.

"Maggie," Travkin said warmly. "And Harold. May I call you Harry?"

Howard smiled - greasy, endearing, a smile that looked entirely natural - and nodded.

"Wonderful. Do come in, both of you." Travkin stood aside and ushered them inside. Her hand brushed Peggy's as they came close, and Peggy pressed the gold coin into her palm. The first step of their mission was complete.

Travkin's front door opened directly into the living room, already full with five people; at the far end of the room, Peggy saw a hallway with two doors, and a kitchen beyond that. It wasn't that much bigger or nicer than a New York City tenement apartment, but it was shockingly luxurious compared to how Peggy knew nearly all Soviet citizens lived. Of course, Maggie the moneyed British aspiring Marxist wouldn't know such a thing, so she looked around with an expression of vague distaste. "How homey."

"Do hang your coat up here," Travkin said. "I'm afraid there's no butler to wait on you." She laughed, high and brittle.

As one, the five people lounging in the living room laughed as well. It produced a somewhat disturbing effect - not entirely accidentally, Peggy suspected.

"It's lovely to be here," Peggy said, hanging up her coat and turning. "Won't you introduce me? I simply must meet more English speakers. The cause of the revolution cannot remain isolated."

The last sentence was all but gibberish; judging by the way her eyes narrowed, Travkin was well aware of that fact. Peggy widened her eyes and hoped she looked acceptably simple-minded.

"Let's go around the room," Travkin said. "Everything, this is Harold - Harry - and Maggie. Harry and Maggie, this is John, Adam, Frank, and Mary."

They were such aggressively bland Anglican names that Peggy couldn't help but suspect at least some of them were false. "Hello," she said, waving a hand. She cast her gaze to the floor shyly. "I'm so excited to be here."

"Maggie is a bit of a martial arts expert," Travkin said. Her hand landed heavily on Peggy's shoulder. "She's a worthy addition to our group. Harry as well."

"Maggie, you must come sit next to me," Mary said. She patted the empty spot on the loveseat, looking at Peggy with wide eyes. "Please? I'm simply desperate for more feminine discussion."

"Am I not good enough?" Travkin said. She punctuated it with a booming laugh.

No one in the room, save Howard, seemed to take it as amusing.

"Oh, of course you are," Mary said. She twisted her hands together, gaze on the floor. "My apologies."

"All is forgiven." Travkin removed her hand from Peggy's shoulder and offered her a slight shove. "Go keep our dear Mary company, comrade."

Peggy needed to do more than that. She walked over, as confidently as she could, and took Mary's hands by way of greeting. "Lovely to meet you, Mary. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance. I haven't had such an exciting time since the war."

Mary raised her eyebrows, clearly interested. "Were you in the war? The Soviet women do love reminding us their participation wasn't nearly as limited as our own."

"Oh, I admire them greatly." Peggy angled her body slightly away from Mary, so that her voice would be more difficult to ignore. "They could be who they were openly, you see. The cause of equality is so important for that exact reason."

"How do you mean?"

She was lying. She was lying, and yet speaking of equality, even seeing how thoroughly the Soviets had failed to truly achieve such a dream, made her stomach twist in knots. "I dressed up as a man to join the British effort."

Mary gasped and grabbed Peggy's hand, as though she thought the whole thing were a good game. "You didn't!"

"Oh, but I did." The quiet chatter of the room had died down. Everyone was focused on her, even Howard. She told herself - for her own peace of mind, as much as anything else - that Howard couldn't possibly divine her conflicted feelings. And anyway, her loyalty was true, even if it wasn't without reservations. "It was the only way, you see. I didn't want to be a nurse. That wasn't the role for me."

"You must have been so frightened."

"Only the first few days. You can get used to anything, even that."

"What a thrilling tale," Travkin said.

Peggy looked up. Travkin was focused entirely on her, her eyes flickering from Peggy's hand - still being clutched by Mary - up to her face. "Do tell us more."

"There's not much to tell." Peggy looked between Travkin and Mary. "I was a soldier, and that's about it. I was small of stature, so I drove a supply truck, as I told you. I rarely killed people, but I did what I needed to do. I can't say I would have enjoyed being under Hitler's thumb."

"We were on the same side during that war," Travkin said.

"Of course." Out of the corner of her eye, Peggy watched Howard bend his wrist and press his fingers under the side table next to the couch. A moment later, he was a good foot away from it.

Well done, she thought, and turned her attention back to Mary. She swallowed hard and tensed her muscles a bit, as though overly disturbed by her memories. "I don't like to talk about it. Dealing death is unpleasant." That, at least, was true. Or as true as any of her statements would be while they stayed with the Soviets.

"Of course." Travkin's face was the very picture of sympathy. "I don't blame you. Adam, why don't you come help me bring out drinks."

The rest of the night was spent chatting. Everyone was very casual, and no one gave any indication that they were aware of how uncharacteristically generous the refreshments were. Travkin, then, had all the connections Sofiya had advertised. SHIELD's reach was still narrow, its consequence considerably less than Peggy would prefer. Saving the world with a handful of agents and limited capital was easier said than done. The fact that she was investigating a woman who had the ear of Stalin himself was exciting, even as it was terrifying.

As they were leaving for the night, Mary touched Peggy's shoulder. "I live just down the street," she said. "I'll get your telephone number from Travkin, yes? Having another woman, another comrade, from abroad, is just so delightful."

Her eyes were steady on Peggy's face, and Peggy felt reluctant to say no. She smiled, affecting grace. "Of course."

"Wonderful," Mary said. She pulled her hand away from Peggy's shoulder. "Off you go, then!"

Howard didn't speak until they'd gotten back into their apartment, and Peggy was getting ready to sleep. "That went well, I feel."

"How will you monitor Travkin?"

"The radio, of course." Howard nodded at the lumbering old radio in the corner of their apartment. "I've already tuned it. We can listen at our leisure."

"Leisure doesn't really come into it," Peggy said. Howard didn't react, but of course she'd sounded rougher than she intended. She modified her tone and said, "Thank you."

"You worked just as hard as I did. What'd you think of Mary?"

"What did I think of her?"

"She came on a bit strong."

"She was lonely."

"Is that it?"

Peggy paused in taking off her stockings. "What else would it be?"

Howard tilted his head, then smiled in understanding. "You're suspicious too. You want me nice and simple-minded, like a civilian."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She laid her stockings over the back of the chair, then rummaged through her suitcase for a nightgown.

"Sure you do. You think there's more than one player, because how could there not be? But if you talk to me about it, I'll let on that we know more than we should, because I'm the village idiot when it comes to espionage."

"I'd never call you an idiot." Though the rest was accurate enough. "She could just be lonely, that's not a lie. But of course, someone that interested might also smell a rat. Or want my money for a different object."

"That's a lot of options."

"It's a difficult business."

"Can't say I'm sorry you're behind a desk most of the time."

Peggy paused in the doorway to the bathroom, looking back at Howard. He sat on the bed, shoulders slumped, hair mussed. She'd considered his over-developed love for danger and his lack of experience in the field before bringing him. She hadn't considered how it might wear on him, no longer being the weapons mogul whose money and name could open any door in any city he deigned to visit.

"I suppose you have an interest in keeping me safe, now," she said, trying for a quip.

His smile was too sad for her joke to have carried off. "I suppose I do."

She nodded once and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

They turned the volume on the radio down to sleep. Peggy woke first, at half past five, and turned it back up. Howard, she thought, would learn how to cope with the noise. She didn't want to miss anything important Travkin might say.

Howard stirred as she was frying eggs. "Good morning," he said, tone more lascivious than eggs really warranted.

"I've been thinking." Peggy tilted the completed eggs onto two plates and brought them over to him. "What exactly are we going to do if Travkin does let loose with incriminating information?"

"Write it down," Howard said. "We're excellent character witnesses."

"No, but really."

Howard smirked. "The signal's also going to tapes, don't worry. It's a radio signal that can reach halfway around the world."

"You thought of everything."

"Jim pulled me aside and gave me the tech requirements. I figured you had enough on your mind."

It wasn't a blind spot, precisely, but she had been shaken and not thinking terribly clearly. "Thank you."

"Not a problem." Howard stabbed his egg with a fork, freeing the yolk to run and fill the plate, soaking the bread Peggy had included. "Travkin?"

"Hasn't stirred yet. She appears to be a late riser."

"Well, she lives in the lap of luxury compared to most of these sadsacks. I'd sleep in too."

"That's a bit rich, coming from you."

"I worked my way up. I'm still working."

Peggy didn't want to have that particular argument - then, or any other time. She ate her own egg in silence.

She was rinsing the dishes when the radio crackled to life. A door closed, and a rustling noise announced people in the living room.

"Mary really took to her," a woman - Travkin - said.

A man replied, in the Queen's English, "She has money that we need."

"I can't be happy, can I, conspiring with Anglos."

"We are a difficult breed, to be sure."

His voice was familiar, but there had been four men of similar age and build at Travkin's party last night. She opened her mouth to ask Howard a question, but paused when Travkin spoke again.

"I won't need to conspire with Anglos soon. The West won't be able to hold against the Program."

She imbued enough importance in the last word to send a chill down Peggy's spine.

The man just laughed. "You're so dramatic, darling. We'll have our day in the sun."

"Mmm. You'd better get going." Over the radio, the two kissed, and a door slammed.

"Well," Howard said, looking over at Peggy. For once, he looked wary.

Peggy had been expecting something cataclysmic, or at least dangerous and highly incriminating. Hayes' steady payments and Travkin's own outsized power both pointed in that direction. Still, her hands were shaking. "This changes nothing. We need more evidence."

"Of course."

"It's entirely possible she suspects a bug and was performing for us."

"Doubtful," Howard said. "Well, maybe not the suspicion, but the bug I placed isn't branded. It doesn't even look like a bug. It's a patch, thin wires, the transistor's engineered to be flat. She won't find it unless she hires an army to hunt for it."

"While that's very impressive, it's beside the point for me. We need to consider all angles."

"Including the angle that Travkin really does have a weapon that can bring down the West?"

Peggy nodded.

"What do you think it is? Soldiers? Bombs?"

"I'd be surprised if the Soviets managed to amass enough atom bombs to debilitate the West."

"They had the capability. Give them two or three years."

"Why would Hayes be funding that?"

Howard shrugged. "Why does any man go to war?"

"Because his country tells him to, generally, and because the men directing the troops have never known death like those on the ground."

"Poetic," Howard said. "Are we calling in the troops?"

Peggy shook her head. "This is my bust."

"Peggy -"

"She spoke of something in progress, not a complete plan. Even if we somehow got - commandos, or special ops, in here in time - what happens to Travkin? What happens to Hayes? He'll lie and pay some lawyer and slither out of it." Peggy pressed her lips together so she didn't say more. She was already acting like an overly emotional fool. "I won't do it, Howard. Steve - this should have been his job, but he's gone. I'm not going to act rashly and make things worse."

Howard raised his hands. "Okay. I'm following your lead, you know that."

His hand twitched a little, as though he'd strained a muscle. Peggy blinked at it, distracted suddenly by the gleam of metal on his right hand. "What's that?"

"This? Oh." Howard lowered his hands, one finger brushing over the ring Peggy had noticed. "I figured you wouldn't wear your rock to Russia, but I like a reminder, you know?"

"Is that a wedding ring? On the wrong hand?"

He turned it so she could see it better. The band was silver, with an odd engraving. "It's an engagement ring. Of a sort."

"I...see." She didn't, really; why Howard would need a reminder baffled her. She wasn't demanding monogamy, or anything that would require such a thing.

But something in Howard's expression kept her from commenting. Instead, she leaned back and said, "Sofiya won't be contacting us for another day. I propose we go to Travkin's home and attempt to understand her schedule."

"You want to tail her?"

"On the contrary," Peggy said. "I want to explore her home when she's not around to ask us what we're so curious about."

"Can't argue with a little breaking and entering," Howard said. "Let's go, then."

Travkin's basket of food had included some biscuits, and Sofiya was bringing them rubles the next day, so they were set for food. They set up shop across the street, in an abandoned apartment Peggy had noticed last night. They had food and walkie-talkies tuned to the station Howard was hijacking for Travkin's bug. She'd done stakeouts before; they were typically dull and time-consuming, but not any worse than the other meticulous work required in espionage.

Howard, however, lacked her patience. His pacing would have been irritating enough, but the third time he grabbed her knee, she decided she'd had more than enough.

"Are you done?" she said, batting his hand away.

"I'm bored. Has Travkin come back yet?"

"Not yet." She'd been gone for three hours; soon, they'd need to leave and get supper.

"We could hire someone to watch out for her, you know, and burglarize her tomorrow."

"If she leaves at the same time tomorrow afternoon, we should be able to go through her things with little impediment."

"I've got a camera, three times as small as anything on the market. We'll need photos of the files, unless we want to bring Sofiya."

"Good. We can't bring her. Two people is enough of a risk as it is."

"What's our story if we get caught?"

Peggy paused in her study of the building to glare at Howard.

He just shrugged, blatantly unrepentant. "I've burgled a few places in my time."

"Our story is that we're hiding from my father," Peggy said. "He found literature in my room and hied after us."

"How'd he get here?"

"He's been following us for days." Peggy widened her eyes, her voice catching with faux fright. "He's never approved of us, but since I formed my own opinions, he's been determined to stop me, no matter what he has to do."

"Very nice. We should be okay, then."

"Good," Peggy said. "Lord knows I don't want to be thrown into some KGB jail because I didn't have a story lined up."

To her own ears, she sounded droll. Howard must have disagreed, because he leaned forward and kissed her, his momentum causing her to lean back until they were out of view of the window.

There was nothing unusual or particularly interesting about kissing Howard, except that he was Howard and Peggy's emotions overruled her sensibilities. He didn't muss her hair or her dress, only skimmed fingers along her shoulders, making her shiver. When he pulled away, he smiled at her with a kind of tenderness that Peggy told herself must have been put on.

"A worthwhile distraction," she said. "But now, of course, we can't tell if Travkin is home or not."

Howard held up his walkie-talkie. "We'd know."

"Unless she's being quiet."

"Well, gosh, I guess we should just go home, then." He winked at her.

She understood suddenly, with no shortage of exasperation. "You wanted to leave."

"To go home. Eat dinner. Plan our next move." Howard shrugged. "What can I say? I'm not suited for stakeouts."

Home was a tiny Soviet studio, far from New York. And when home was New York, Peggy was still far from the countryside of her youth, and her parents' graves. "Let's go, then," she said, and stood up. She was in no mood to share her thoughts.

Attaining privacy was difficult in a tiny studio apartment. They ate bread and cheese together, but Peggy avoided Howard's gaze, and answered his inquiries as briefly as possible. She could tell that her cool response wasn't exactly making Howard happy, but she was conserving her energy with regards to prevarication until they came across Travkin again.

They spent the evening in silence. Travkin wasn't in her living room, if the radio was anything to go by; they occasionally heard voices from a distance. At nine, Howard turned off the radio and they climbed into bed.

"I always worried marriage would be like this," Howard said into the darkness.

"Quiet?"

"Like strangers."

Peggy clenched her left fist, away from Howard, careful not to make a sound. When her anger - sudden and unwelcome - subsided, she said, "We're hardly strangers."

"Sometimes I wonder."

"We're on a mission."

"You kissed Steve on a mission."

"Are you jealous?" Peggy propped herself up on one elbow. "For God's sake, Howard!"

Howard rolled away. "I'm not jealous. I'm tired. We'll talk tomorrow."

Peggy thought about pushing it; the idea that Howard could possibly want the sort of marriage she'd half-hoped to have with Steve seemed absolutely preposterous. In the end, though, she didn't particularly want to find out which of them was the more stubborn one.

Sofiya stopped by the next morning, bringing cash and more information on Travkin. It was older intel, taken largely from school records; she'd graduated from university in Saint Petersburg with a degree in economics four years ago, at age 21. The records were still interesting in that they betrayed a dearth of activities, political or otherwise. Whatever Travkin had been doing during that time, whatever connections she'd been making, weren't of the official sort.

They thanked Sofiya and made their way back to Travkin's, dressed in plain coveralls, hats pulled low over their faces. Their entrance into Travkin's apartment went unnoticed by the few people hurrying up and down the street. When they were in, they both went straight for Travkin's bedroom.

Files of the sort that Peggy was looking for could be anywhere in the house, of course, but Peggy doubted Travkin was more sophisticated than the average Soviet agent. It was simplest to store files in the one room guests would be least likely to enter. She and Howard walked into the bedroom and began investigating.

But Travkin's room was clean, devoid of anything to capture on Howard's tiny camera. Peggy pushed down the frustration that rose, predictably as rain in the fall, and nodded towards the door.

A cursory search of the rest of the apartment yielded nothing. They didn't speak until they were on the sidewalk. "That was a wash."

"So it was." They began walking back to their apartment. "Is Travkin too smart, do you think?"

"She's certainly intelligent." Peggy caught her lip with one front tooth. She bit too hard and, smarting, let it go. "I don't know. It's almost impossible to tell without getting closer to her."

"Maggie, is that you?"

The loud, extremely English voice made Peggy halt and turn immediately. Other people walked down the sidewalk, but none were wearing a bright red coat. Mary, however, was. Her eyes were made up more than Peggy had seen since they'd entered the country, and she was waving with a hand covered in a luxurious-looking mitten.

Peggy smiled right away, doing her best to remember she was Maggie, naive British socialite who aspired to Marxism. "Oh my goodness, Mary! What a surprise!"

"Were you trying to speak with Nina?"

"Oh, yes," Peggy said. "We knocked, but she didn't appear to be home?"

"She's always out at this hour, hob-knobbing with the Soviet movers and shakers." Mary winked. It was an exaggerated, almost comic expression. "Not like us, you see?"

"Oh, I do miss England sometimes, though," Peggy said. "I can't help but feel that English culture, with the sensibilities of the proletariat, will be a beautiful place."

For just a moment, Mary's expression faltered. Howard was right, then; she was up to something. She recovered remarkably quickly, however, linking arms with Peggy and saying, "Of course, my dear, but first we must do the work here!" She looked between Peggy and Howard. "Are you going back to your - hotel?"

Peggy glanced at Howard, who said, "Food?"

"We were going to grab a bite to eat," Peggy said. "I'd be delighted if you'd join us."

Mary caught hold of Peggy's hand and squeezed tightly. "That would be wonderful."

The meal wasn't as stilted as it could be, largely because Peggy was a good liar and Howard could make conversation with a fence post. He might not be his full self right now - moneyed and famous - but a short conversation with him made it very obvious just how he'd gotten all that money to begin with.

They parted with Mary after a nearly two-hour luncheon, shockingly slow and leisurely compared to the workers they saw come and go. Of course, people had leisure time, too; it wasn't that different from London or New York in that sense. But the way people looked at them, giving them sidelong glances, the uniformity of dress, the propaganda on the walls...

Peggy missed New York, in spite of everything. She missed running SHIELD and feeling as though she had some influence, however small, on the world's destiny.

But maybe that was all an illusion, and in reality fat cats like Howard would end up running everything anyway. Certainly, being a woman had done her no favors.

"Peggy?"

Peggy blinked. They'd been walking back to their apartment. Now, they stood outside the building, Howard with his key in hand.

"Apologies," she said. "Let's go inside, shall we?"

Once the door was safely shut behind them, Howard said, "I'll be honest - I trust Mary about as far as I can throw her."

"She could be Travkin's." That at least put all the espionage eggs in the same basket.

"You think she was tailing us?"

"I doubt it. Travkin might not trust us, but I'm not so far gone with desk work that I'd fail to notice a tail."

Howard didn't look completely convinced, but Peggy took no offense; she wasn't ever going to really believe that it was impossible for someone to get a drop on her, and nor should he. "We need to get closer to Travkin."

"Ah?"

"If we get her to confide in us, at the very least, I'll have a better chance of discovering if Mary is her plant, or someone else's."

"I'll be damn happy if there's no more players in this little drama," Howard said. "So how do we get close to her?"

"We up the ante," Peggy said. "Ring Sofiya, would you?"

Twenty minutes later, Sofiya stood in their flat, shaking her head. "No. I absolutely cannot. There's no chance such a plan would be effective."

"Do you have something more likely to facilitate action?" Peggy said. "Throwing you to the wolves isn't my first choice, either, but Travkin needn't know we're lying to her, and it's almost guaranteed to give us access we wouldn't otherwise have."

"Nothing is a guarantee," Sofiya said. "I work for SHIELD because my country has turned its back on its principles. That doesn't mean I'm qualified to maintain such an extravagant lie."

Peggy was standing, her eyes level with Sofiya's. Howard, in contrast, sat sprawled in their single chair, looking generally unconcerned with proceedings. Without looking directly at either of them, he said, "It's not that unusual, actually."

"Excuse me?" Sofiya said.

"People can be traded just like anything else." Howard shrugged. "It's wrong, but when has that stopped anyone before?"

For two months after he'd funded SHIELD, Peggy had made quiet inquiries into where Howard was getting his money from. The British in India had established the value of foreign guns and, sometimes, foreign men, to get the job done - to rule a region. She'd worried.

At the time, she'd found nothing. But now, the worry returned.

Howard met her gaze briefly, then looked away, in favor of fixing Sofiya with a level-eyed, I'm-not-screwing-around stare. Sofiya swallowed hard.

"I just have to say they tried to kidnap me."

"Yes," Peggy said. "And you'll stay with Travkin."

"A brute. A bully with Stalin's ear."

"Our chance at getting Hayes and stopping whatever plan Travkin has."

Sofiya looked a little less angry, but she still hesitated, hands twisted together in front of her.

"Sofiya," Peggy said quietly, reaching out on a guess. "What do you want?"

Sofiya dropped her hands to her side, her right hand clenched in a fist. "I want peace," she said. "I was raised to believe the government can provide for everyone - direct industry, win wars, furnish my home. I was raised to believe my honest work would uplift a nation."

"But?"

"But it doesn't," Sofiya said. "Maybe it could, but right now? People, men, sit at the top in lavish homes, and my neighbors and family die or are taken away by the police." She met Peggy's gaze with a resolute glare. It occurred to Peggy that belief in SHIELD's cause - ill-defined though that might be - was not what kept Sofiya in contact with them. "I want a life without fear."

"I can't give you that," Peggy said. "No one can. I could give you an identity in America, and a new life. But that wouldn't give you justice for your home."

Sofiya shrugged. "Is there justice anywhere? I know your organization wants to control the world. I disagree with how you choose to do it. But I don't agree with our leader, either. There are no choices for me that will bring me to the world I want, or that I was promised. But I'd like not to be in danger anymore."

"We can do that," Peggy said. "Give us Travkin, and we'll see that it's done."

"I'll sponsor you," Howard said. His voice was low and he focused his gaze at the wall beyond Sofiya. He looked, Peggy thought, as though he felt guilty - though of what, Peggy really had no idea. He'd fought the war like they all had, and how he had his contracts and his Senate contacts. She might have to tell him later he couldn't actually build a weapon to fix the world in the equitable way Sofiya wished it could be. She didn't want to see what would happen if they tried.

"Thank you," Sofiya said. "And I will tell Travkin this tale - though I dislike it, still."

"It won't be for long," Peggy said. "We have her apartment bugged, and my increased access to her should solve the mystery sooner rather than later." She met Sofiya's eyes and said, "Thank you. From the bottom of my heart."

Sofiya nodded, not looking particularly moved.

All that was left was to organize the kidnapping attempt - which, of course, meant disheveling Sofiya, ensuring she was bruised enough for a struggle to be convincing, and showing up at Travkin's apartment when she was sure to be home. The three of them agreed to leave all that for tomorrow, and Sofiya left for her apartment.

Howard didn't move when Peggy locked the door behind Sofiya, nor did he so much as twitch when Peggy turned and said, "All things considered, I think that went well."

"Sure."

She averted her eyes from him and went over to the stove, putting the kettle on. "I'd bet almost anything Travkin has a soft spot for young women in trouble."

Howard moved finally, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows. "We'll have to hope that's enough."

"You think it's not?"

"Hell, Peggy, I don't know what to think." Howard met her gaze, then, and she had to ignore her stomach twisting and fight to keep her expression clear. He looked hopeless. "We get Hayes, then what? The next threat?"

"Yes. That's why I sought Congress's funding, remember?" She didn't say, you made your living betting that there will always be a next threat. He'd proven he disliked that argument.

She thought he might have understood what she was holding back anyway. He slumped in the chair again, tilting his head towards the cracked, stained ceiling. "It seemed a lot simpler when my job was to build a machine to turn some sap into a strongman."

"We can't go back to that world, even if we wanted to. We can only work within our current limits."

Howard laughed, the sort of laugh that hurt the ears despite not being particularly loud. "He's dead. We'd go back if we could."

I'm gonna have to put her in the water. Peggy took a deep breath. "Be that as it may, we have a great deal to accomplish tomorrow. I'm going to go to bed. I'd advise you do the same." She went to the bathroom, taking slow, measured steps to avoid the appearance of an angry shrew. She was, at the very least, the former - and she feared becoming the latter more and more each day.

She exited the bathroom a few minutes later, fully prepared to deal with Howard's cold shoulder. He surprised her, meeting her in the middle of the room, dressed in his rough pair of workman's pajama bottoms and not much else.

"Howard," she said, raising her hands as he approached her. He only gently touched her waist, however, and she found herself touching his shoulders without consciously having decided to do so.

"I've been unfair to you," Howard said. "Don't deny it - you know it's true."

She wasn't weak; she couldn't be. The neighbors had thought her mother weak when she couldn't care for Peggy's father, wounded in the Great War, without weeping and growing visibly exhausted. They'd both been carried off by fever, and Peggy had applied her lipstick and fixed her hair, as much to show the town that the weakness hadn't been passed down as to keep her own morale up. She knew what that sort of emotion, expressed by a woman, indicated to the world - and to men. She could not be that person.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, meeting Howard's eyes and playing the lie off with her head held high.

"Don't," Howard said. "You know what I mean, Peg." He slid his hands up, fingers moving over her ribs and to her shoulders. "You'd carry me to England if it'd solve this case, but you wouldn't enjoy it, and I'm not gonna ask you to pretend."

"I pretend all the time."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"Bullshit," Peggy said. Howard flinched at the obscenity, actually flinched, and it occurred to her that she very rarely cursed in front of him. "You don't want a wife with a vocation, out of the house, a bully, an independent harridan who -"

Howard kissed her, and she shoved him away. He went willingly, not looking away from her. "I meant it. Why do you think I asked you out so many times on the damn front? Someone pokes at you like that, it's the only time you look even close to cracking. I'm not looking for an actress, Peggy. I've taken plenty of them home."

"How can you know?" Peggy said. "You've been wealthy for as long as you've been taking women out, Howard. Surely you know what that means."

He shrugged. "It means they do what I want. You think I'd've proposed to you if I thought you'd be like that?"

"It was necessary."

"Fighting Hitler was necessary. We could've found a way around getting engaged."

"This is what you wanted?" Peggy's waved hand took in the dented plaster, the narrow bed, their shabby clothes. "This? With me?"

"I wanted you." Howard didn't look away from her; he took another step forward instead. "Any way I can have you."

Possession. Peggy shouldn't have been surprised, and she wasn't, really. But some part of her - a less cynical part, perhaps - shrank at the statement, as though she'd been expecting better.

"Well," she said. "We're here now, at any rate. Let's get some sleep. Travkin will see through our pretense if we stumble even a little."

Howard looked like he wanted to protest - though what he could possibly say, Peggy didn't know. But he only shrugged and got into bed with her. They lay side by side, neither of them relaxed, both of them staring at the ceiling. Peggy detected no change in Howard's breathing before she fell asleep. In this, apparently, he could outlast her.

The next morning, neither of them mentioned the disagreement. They had canned beans and toast - Peggy ate hers listening for complaints from Howard that never came - and left to meet Sofiya. Travkin might or might not have a large number of spies in the area; Peggy wasn't willing to risk it. Consequently, Sofiya had engaged someone to falsify an abduction the night before. They went to the agreed-upon park, and within fifteen minutes, the tableau unfolded in front of them and half a dozen other park-goers. A man leaped from a motor vehicle, attempting to grab Sofiya; she fought back, tearing her clothes but getting away. She ran to Howard and Peggy, who exclaimed over her as she sobbed, not at all falsely. Within the hour, they all three stood on Travkin's stoop, ringing the doorbell.

Travkin herself answered the door. "Oh my goodness," she said. "What's happened?"

"A kidnapping attempt, I'm afraid," Peggy said. She was nervous enough in an honest sense that her discontent was obvious to an outsider and, she hoped, authentic. "Sofiya was meeting us in the park, and -"

"A man," Sofiya said, accent thickening. "A man, he spoke English, he grabbed at me. I - oh, please." She began to weep.

Travkin glanced up and down the street, then drew Sofiya closer to her. "Come inside," she said. "We'll discuss it there."

Sofiya recounted the story beautifully, slumped against Travkin on her couch. She switched between Russian and English, and Peggy did her best to look befuddled and concerned.

"This is our friend, you see," she said when Sofiya finished her story. "I'm so frightened for her. Those gangs - they're not honest. They're capitalists, and they'll know her face now." She widened her eyes. "Please tell me you know of somewhere Sofiya can stay."

"I could pay for her to fly to England," Howard said. "She'd be safe there."

"This is my home," Sofiya said. "No; I will not leave."

"She'll stay with me," Travkin said. "I've a spare bedroom and plenty of space, as you can well see. What would a comrade of the motherland want with England?"

The last seemed to be said as a test. "Quite right," Peggy said. "Sofiya? Will that suit?" She sat back, just brushing against Howard's arm laid over the back of her chair.

Sofiya widened tear-stained eyes as she considered the offer. Peggy wanted to warn her not to hesitate too long, and to appear properly grateful, but of course that desire for control over the ruse was utterly unrealistic at this stage.

Finally, Sofiya said, "I would like that. Thank you," and folded her hands in her lap.

"You can stay as long as you like, of course," Travkin said. She glanced at Peggy.

Peggy had been expecting it. "And of course, we'll contribute. I suspect it was our involvement that caused this attempt to begin with. I am dreadfully sorry, Sofiya."

"It's no matter." Sofiya sniffled one last time, then sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders. "What must be done?"

"I'll send people to your home to gather your belongings," Travkin said. "What is your assignment?"

"I'm a student, studying literature. Not terribly productive, I know."

"We need art as much as anyone," Travkin said. "Now hush, I'll go make a few calls. You all recover from your ordeal." She nodded at the pitcher on the side table. "There's more water if you need it. I'll return in a moment." She left them in the living room.

Peggy would eat her leather shoes if they were truly alone and unmonitored. She moved to sit on the couch where Travkin had been, putting an arm around Sofiya. "You were so brave."

Sofiya glanced at the hallway Travkin had disappeared down, then leaned very slightly against Peggy. "Can you find him?"

"All I have is gold," Peggy said, "and as you know, Leningrad is unfamiliar to me. But...I will try."

"Thank you," Sofiya said. She slumped back against the couch, closing her eyes.

Travkin returned quickly with a glass of some clear alcohol and a plate of dumplings. She handed both to Sofiya and perched on the chair Peggy had vacated. Howard removed his arm, looking vaguely alarmed. Peggy didn't know if that was for show or not; she'd be unwilling to guess either way.

"How did you two come to be friends?" Travkin asked, looking between Peggy and Sofiya.

Peggy had anticipated this question. "Our parents knew one another. My mother traveled to Odessa on holiday."

"An odd destination for a wealthy British woman."

Peggy laughed, doing her best to sound like a ninny. "My mother was odd. She liked adventures, and culture - not just going to the south of France, you see, but real culture. Odessa fit the bill."

"I see." Travkin didn't look suspicious, at least. "Sofiya is lucky to have such understanding Western friends."

"I am lucky to have learned from her." Peggy smiled, open and vacant. "And now I am lucky I can support her in some small way."

"Yes. Enough of this," Travkin said. "Unfortunately, I have a prior engagement. I'll need to leave you here." She handed Sofiya a key. "This will let you out through the garden. Given my position within the government, I do ask that the doors stay locked."

"Of course," Sofiya said. She took the key with a shaking hand. "Thank you."

"Think nothing of it," Travkin said. "I will return presently." She put on her coat and left.

The room could still be bugged, so Peggy didn't voice her irritation that Travkin had just as much as told them they wouldn't find anything incriminating in her house. Instead, she said, "Sofiya, we'll come back later. Does that suit?"

Sofiya said, "Yes, thank you, Maggie," and let them out through the back. Once they were on the street, Peggy tucked a hand in the crook of Howard's arm, and they walked together back to the park.

It was cold, but not unbearably so, and Peggy didn't want to be shut in their tiny apartment again quite yet. They sat on a bench and Peggy said, "We need to get closer to Travkin, but I don't know how. She didn't even blink when offering to let Sofiya stay."

"Give it time. It's only been a few days."

"If she keeps nothing in her apartment, if she never discusses business in her apartment - where does she go?"

"In a world with the KGB? Who knows?" Howard slumped on the bench, one arm curling around Peggy. She didn't want to consider it comforting, but of course it was; Howard was warm and familiar. She pressed against him, resting her head against his. "We could follow her."

"I don't know that that's feasible." Tailing someone in an unfamiliar city wasn't impossible, of course, but the thought filled Peggy with unease.

"Sure it is. I stay with Sofiya. You follow Travkin. She leaves through her front door; it's easy enough to hide in the shadows and tail her."

"I wouldn't call that 'easy' until you've followed someone yourself," Peggy said.

"It'll be easy for you. You're good at that kind of thing."

He wasn't wrong, her own doubts aside. She said, "Tomorrow, then?"

"That's the soonest we'll be able to do it. It'd be nice if we had more agents on the ground here. Someone who knew where she went already."

"That's a pipe dream."

"Is it?"

Peggy didn't respond, because she knew this gambit of Howard's very well. It was a salesman's trick: he'd get her to spin her own fantasy of a SHIELD with as much power and reach as she needed at the time, then manipulate her into attempting just that. He hadn't become a millionaire by being honest.

"Well, it was worth a try," Howard said when she stayed silent. "You sure we can't just call in the big guns? I mean actual big guns - I've got this little guy, we can stick a tracer on her and -"

"No," Peggy said. "This is still my case. No."

"Pride shouldn't get in the way of solving it, you know."

"How exactly do you plan to solve it using a robot with a gun? Will your robot drag Travkin off by the hair?"

"Peggy -"

"No. You listen to me." She kept her voice low, her tone pleasant, because attracting attention with a fight in the park wouldn't do. But she made sure Howard heard her, and heard her well. "This is my case. This is my fight. I will not have you turning it into a war because you don't understand conflicts that aren't backed up by Stark Industries guns. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Howard said. "And you might even be right, but the bug in Travkin's house is Stark tech and so's the scrambler in our room. Don't think you're above all this because you want to be the hero."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to. It's obvious."

Peggy took a deep breath. The air was cold enough that it hurt her throat, a bit - a reminder that she wasn't drinking as much tea here, and wasn't sleeping as much, either. Nothing was easy with Howard. She would have liked if he could just understand that she needed to not be overruled by him, that no one would look at a Soviet mystery solved with Stark guns and see that Peggy Carter, director of SHIELD, had led the charge. But of course he didn't, and she couldn't explain. Not here, and not now.

"Maybe it is," she said finally. "But until such a time as my methods fail, you will not direct our actions here. Do you understand?"

She braced herself for offense, but Howard didn't so much as twitch. "I understand," he said, and if he was angry - if he was anything but mildly flirtatious, as he'd been on that plane with Steve so long ago - she couldn't tell.

"Thank you."

"You could've just explained it."

The words hit a bit like rocks skipped directly over her heart - a clumsy simile to apply, but easier to acknowledge than that Howard Stark could surprise her, and make her feel like a girl at a village dance. "I don't know what you mean."

"Sure." Howard stood, hands jammed in his pockets. "You don't want to be forgotten like you were during the war."

"Some people certainly haven't forgotten." They'd just sent her to toady to Dooley, as though that would make her forget the freedom she'd only just had, and how much she preferred it, despite the looming threat of fascism.

Howard shrugged. "I didn't. Like I said."

It wasn't worth arguing that Howard's understanding was in no way a given thing. Peggy stood and took his arm again, and together they walked to a cafe, to while away the hours until they could return to chasing their quarry.

Twelve hours later, Peggy stood alone in the shadows across the street from Travkin's building. The temperature hovered very slightly above freezing, and the mist seemed determined to become sleet. Peggy, for her part, told herself that her irritation was with the weather. In truth, she couldn't help but be disappointed in herself: she'd been standing in place for twenty minutes, and already Howard's absence was disconcerting.

She didn't need him. Her decisions weren't directed by him, and while his technology was useful, he was still very decidedly amateur in terms of spying. Oddly enough, knowing those facts made Peggy resent her own emotions even more. If she'd needed him for something, that would at least make the feeling logical, or less embarrassing. But she didn't. She only wanted him there, because doing this without him felt a bit like missing the top stair. In the long view of things, it didn't matter, but at the time, it was disconcerting.

Damn Howard.

She checked her watch again. Ten minutes to Travkin's departure. Just enough time for her hair to gather a bit of frost if she wasn't careful - but even as she tugged her hat down more securely, Travkin's front door opened, and Travkin herself began hurrying down the street.

Peggy followed, of course, slipping through the crowd, occasionally ducking out of sight. Leaving early implied that Travkin knew she was being watched - or perhaps she was just paranoid, since Howard had called on Sofiya alone. But she wasn't making any particular attempt to confuse a potential follower. She walked down her street and turned, then walked down another, then another, until they'd gone almost half a mile. Then she glanced around nonchalantly and scaled the steps of an ordinary-looking three flat building. She knocked, three quick raps and then two slow ones. If it was a code, it was incredibly simplistic. The door opened and admitted her without anyone else showing their face.

Peggy stood across the street and said, under her breath, "Damn."

She hadn't expected anything more dramatic. Anyone who'd done any amount of spying on the Soviets knew that a good deal of their business was conducted in places that might as well be family homes. It made them harder to track; Stalin was good at that sort of thing.

But she'd hoped, a bit, that Travkin might slip, and lead them to a larger facility.

She'd scarcely processed her disappointment, however, when another woman stopped in front of the building Travkin had disappeared into. Even from behind, Peggy recognized Mary within seconds.

Well. Perhaps this hadn't been such a pointless excursion, after all.

When the door was safely shut and no one had approached the building for a few minutes, Peggy rounded the block and entered the alley behind the house. This street had no houses with back gardens; the house she was after held a fire escape and bins full of glass bottles outside, but the windows were boarded over and the only door had no outside doorknob. On a bleak street with any number of poorly maintained buildings, this one didn't stick out; to Peggy's eyes, however, it was clearly meant to be a fortress.

Any fortress could be compromised, given time and planning. Peggy lacked both, but she wasn't ready to give up. She checked to ensure the alley was empty, the windows free of watchers, and then grabbed the lowest bar on the fire escape. The first step was one story up, so she swung her legs until she had the momentum to pull herself up. Her knees landed hard on the fire escape, but luckily, the traffic and overall city noises served as cover. She made sure that the rest of her ascent was as silent as possible.

The roof was just as fortified as the back of the building - but the maintenance door still had its handle. Of course, it was covered in chains, but Peggy hadn't left the apartment with no tools. If her stomach twisted a bit when she used the Stark Industries laser to cut the chains, that was no one's business but her own. She entered the building silently, having piled the chains next to the door.

Luckily, the hallway at the bottom of the stairs was both dark and silent. She passed four closed doors, two on each side, before coming to the staircase. Exploration of those rooms might yield information, perhaps even evidence against Hayes - but that sort of work was for later. Right then, Peggy wanted to eavesdrop. She needed a lead, any kind of lead, that might allow her to move forward with Travkin.

She walked down the stairs, past a boarded-up window at the landing. The second apartment's door was closed and locked. Light shone through the crack by the floor, and she heard the murmur of voices even halfway down from the landing. By the time she pressed her ear against the door, she could hear Travkin speaking almost perfectly clearly.

"This is not a trivial issue," Travkin said. "The system is almost ready, but we lack dysprosium. Without it, the network will not work."

"I still don't understand the details of the plan," Mary said. "I'm to put a receiver in London?"

"On Big Ben, if you can manage it," Travkin said. "The purpose of this is to leverage radio waves, to give them wide enough range that I can scramble them. We'll disable everything. It will send a message, and in the aftermath, our people will move. Governments will topple. So on."

It was really quite a speech, in the sense that she clearly intended to do something awful, and had expressed the intention before. Peggy found herself more concerned, however, by the clear lack of concern Travkin had for her own plan. Peggy had supposed the plan involved soldiers and a good deal of deliberate, violent, AK-47 caused death. This sounded...not passive, but sophisticated. And Travkin didn't even seem impressed. If anything, she sounded bored.

She took a slow, steadying breath, careful not to make the slightest sound, and continued listening.

"It's what needs to be done," Travkin said, again in that tone of someone who'd made the argument before.

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." Mary sounded very posh, very petulant, and very, very obedient. She'd do it, Peggy thought, fighting to stay still through a shiver. The impact of boosted radio waves was beyond her expertise, really, but if Travkin believed it would cause chaos, then surely it would.

She'd heard enough. She backed up the stairs, careful to stick to the perimeter, where they were less likely to squeak and betray her. It wasn't until she'd put one hand on the ladder to the roof that she saw the scrap of paper, rolled up and jammed halfway into the gap between brick wall and floor, directly opposite the stairs.

She retrieved it, tucking it in her pocket and quickly exiting the roof. She didn't examine it until she was safely back in their studio apartment. Howard was due to stay with Sofiya another hour; she knew she ought to wait, knew he'd be interested as well, but she couldn't make herself exercise that much patience. She unrolled the paper as soon as she locked the door, not even taking her coat off.

It was larger than she'd realized. It looked torn from a full-sized notebook. The first half of the page was taken up by a blocky script: Mary Pickering. Mary Pickering. Mary Pickering. The script changed as the writing went on, becoming a little softer, a little more feminine.

Mary. Travkin's Mary? Peggy shook her head and squinted at the last half of the page. In the center of it, in tiny letters, was an address and a code. The address was somewhere in Leningrad, though Peggy didn't recognize the street. The code was unintelligible. Under it, Mary - presumably - had written, "Behind the brick."

Perhaps it was foolish, but Peggy had assumed, at the start of SHIELD, that espionage would be a good deal more practical than war, with careful steps. This mission in particular had served to disabuse her of that notion. She sighed and set about copying the message, the better to preserve any evidence on the original paper.

When Howard returned to the apartment, he had a lipstick smudge on his jaw and his tie was disheveled. He smiled sheepishly when Peggy raised her eyebrows. "Sofiya wanted some comfort."

"Of the adulterous variety?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Travkin came in and she kissed my cheek, all tears and thanks." He hung his coat up and sat down heavily on the bed. "Jealous?"

"No. I have information." Peggy passed her copy of the paper over. "This is a copy of a message I found in the building Travkin was meeting in."

"Mary - our Mary? The suspicious one?"

"The very same," Peggy said. "She's carrying out missions for Travkin; I honestly can't say if Travkin plans for her to come back from this next one." She described what she'd seen. Howard's generally dissipated expression retreated, to be replaced by concern. "She said it was radio waves? You're sure?"

"I was eavesdropping," Peggy said. "At any rate, they didn't sound ready to actually execute the plan. Not yet. But we need to keep an eye on Mary."

"Hayes funding them makes sense." Howard gazed over Peggy's shoulder, clearly focused on some kind of internal calculation. "If they're killing world leaders and shutting down governments, he can make a power grab."

"They'll have offered him protection," Peggy said. "A way in when everyone else is panicking, unaware of what's going on."

Howard nodded. "Inhuman. But smart."

Peggy felt somewhat removed from her body. Perhaps during the war, she'd been working in some small sense to stop civilization from toppling. Now, though - Soviet rule might be civilization of a sort, but Peggy neither wanted it nor thought worldwide destruction would bring about total Soviet rule. It would bring about chaos, and death, and those without money or connections would suffer most.

People like her cousins. People like Sofiya. Even people like Jim or Gabe.

"He'll go to jail," she said, "if even a fraction of that theory is correct. But before he does, we'll need to finish this. Do you know where this address is?"

Howard looked at it, then got up and pulled out a map. "Assuming it's only somewhat outdated...here. The other side of the river, northeast of here."

"I didn't bother looking it up." Peggy felt slightly chagrined - both at her waiting for Howard's input, and at her confession of insecurity.

Howard shrugged. "I wasn't spying. I've had a less strenuous day." He tapped the map. "Do you want to go now, or should we wait for the dark of night like responsible criminals?"

"Night," Peggy said. "I don't enjoy skulking about any more than the next -"

"Spy?"

"Person. But in this case, I think it's necessary."

Howard shrugged. "It's your call."

"Will you not be breaking in with me, then?"

Peggy had forgotten she was standing - or at least, she hadn't noticed it overmuch. She noticed it right then, however, because Howard looked up at her with an expression that made her think of him inside her, their skin sliding together.

"I follow your lead," he said, as serious as she'd ever seen him.

"Good," she croaked out, through an unbecoming and inconvenient miasma of lust. "That's good to hear."

He caught her hand and kissed it. "If we're gonna be out all night, we should nap now."

"Do you really mean nap?"

"Unfortunately for us both, I do." He smiled at her, expression just a bit crooked. "For now, anyway."

Practicality could be disappointing sometimes. Peggy changed into her pyjamas and slid in next to Howard. She thought she'd have trouble getting to sleep, since it was only mid-afternoon and the window, despite the curtains, still let in a bit of winter sun. But the bed was warm with Howard sharing it, and in spite of herself, she fell asleep within a quarter hour.

The alarm didn't wake her; Howard's arm on her shoulder did. "Peggy," he said, with the tone of someone who'd been saying it for awhile.

"Mmph," Peggy said. She opened her eyes. He'd turned on their light and was dressed to go again; he must have let her sleep as long as possible. "Hello."

For a moment he leaned in, eyes dropping to her lips and then lower, and Peggy thought he might be planning on touching her - or perhaps not planning it at all. She told herself that Howard's libido was notorious and it didn't mean anything, but that didn't stop her body from responding, a flush traveling through her as she pressed her legs together.

But of course he stepped away after that, pacing over to the window and tweaking the curtains. "It's past nine. Most people have gone to bed."

"When will you start using military time?" Peggy said. She climbed out of bed, shivering as her feet touched the floor.

"When I'm dead," Howard said. He tossed her a smile, his teeth bright in the dim light.

She shook her head and went to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she emerged, hair pulled back and clothes on, ready to burgle the building Mary had so kindly left directions to.

Presumably it was Mary. Peggy had no real desire to contemplate another option.

They took a cab to the river, then walked across a bridge a few blocks away from the address. Peggy had memorized the map and led the way, doing her best to look like a young woman out for a walk, not a young woman out to rob a possibly-government facility. She had rubles from Sofiya in her pocket, enough to bribe an official or two. She wasn't entirely sure of their efficacy, but it served as a kind of insurance nonetheless: she knew she was behaving much less nervously with money than she would without.

The building listed on Mary's paper was a beautiful four-story house, old-fashioned and European-looking, with a wide staircase leading up to French doors. Peggy had been expecting a warehouse, or a run-down, condemned building. Her surprise was such that she stood on the sidewalk for a moment, frowning up at the house as though glaring would produce answers.

"Peggy?" Howard said.

She pulled herself out of her reverie. "We'll need to circle the block. The windows looked all curtained, but I can't make them out well enough to be sure. With a house that big, there should be a side entrance of some kind."

"I wasn't expecting a house," Howard said as they began walking again.

"Nor I."

The house did indeed have a side entrance, under an overhang that Peggy assumed had once been used for servants. The door was a simple one, locked with a single bolt. She spent two minutes with lock picks - non-Stark Industries, to Howard's chagrin - and then they were in.

The second they stepped inside, the reason for the curtains became obvious. The first floor of the house had high ceilings and detailed molding, but that was the extent of its luxuries. Bare light bulbs hung from old fixtures, and dolls littered the ground. The wooden floors were scuffed and dusty. Every few feet, bolts protruded from the ground. Nothing was broken or moldy; the building wasn't derelict.

But something had happened here, and Peggy couldn't begin to guess what.

They stood with a staircase directly to the left. Inspecting the first floor might prove important, but Peggy would rather confirm the house was empty first. She nodded at Howard, and together they scaled the stairs.

She heard the mechanical humming when she reached the landing. The reason for it became clear when they got to the second floor. Like the first floor, it was entirely open, but it was also terminal: the third floor had been removed to make room for huge computing devices. They had metal chassis and glass-covered cabinets that revealed masses of tape. This close, she could hear tell-tale shuffling, as well as the humming that indicated just how much electricity was being fed to this place.

"Mother of God," Howard whispered next to her.

"Do you have any idea where a terminal would be?" Peggy said. She'd wonder about the scale of it, and the certainty that the Soviet government knew about it, later. Right now, they needed to get as much information as possible while - apparently - not a soul was in the building.

"Let's circle," Howard said. "If it was me, I'd put it in the center."

The data banks were arranged in a grid, but as they neared the middle of the room, Peggy realized Howard was correct. The two machines in the center broke for three meters, and in the open space stood a tall, heavy terminal with a blank screen.

"It's not a radar screen," Peggy said.

"No. It's how we'll talk to the computer."

"I don't see how that will work," Peggy said, but she approached the computer nonetheless. Howard was the one who turned it on, flipping the switch nearest the keys. They looked to be repurposed typewriter keys, scuffed and ugly. They were also, she noted, using the Roman alphabet.

"Hello," Howard muttered when a green line began flashing on the screen. "Well - why not." He typed, "Hello."

The words appeared on the screen, but nothing happened.

"Wait." Peggy pulled the piece of paper from the hidden compartment in her coat. "Try this."

On the computer, the code looked stark, colder and more threatening than it had scrawled on paper. "Hope this doesn't blow anything up," Howard said. The idea hadn't occurred to Peggy, but she had no time to protest: he pressed 'Enter' immediately after speaking.

For a moment, the green line disappeared. Then, the screen flashed completely green. Peggy took a step back, almost reflexively, and said, "Can you tell what it's doing?"

The hum in the room increased in volume. Howard narrowed his eyes as the screen went black again and said, "I think it's getting us information."

A moment later, lines of text appeared. They were delineated by straight lines. It looked like an accounting book.

"Ah," Howard said. "Here we go."

"What is it?"

"Let's find out." He looked back at her. "At least I didn't launch a missile."

Peggy mustered up a weak smile, and together they reviewed the text. It took Peggy only a moment to recognize what they were reading, at least partially.

The computer had given them a list of girls' names, ages, and locations. Most of the locations were in Russia; a few, however, were in England. One was in France. Peggy was about to ask why the Soviets were collecting information on those women when she saw the last column on the screen: TRAINING SITE.

"Soviet agents?"

"They can't be," Howard said. "Look at these birth dates. Thirty-eight? Forty?"

Peggy would remember that moment as one of horror and chagrin. Horror, because whoever the people were in the database, they were children. And chagrin, because she hadn't done the math. It hadn't occurred to her to.

They could be wrong, but Peggy would be surprised if they were. The simpler answer was that the Soviets had begun using children.

"What's the name of this list?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Howard said.

Peggy surveyed the room again. Her answer was closer than she'd realized - on the side of the screen, taped just inches from her elbow. FILE INFORMATION: /I.

"Howard," she said, and showed him.

He typed the command. The screen went blank but for one line: BLACK_WIDOW_PROGRAM.

"Black Widow," Peggy said. "I've never heard of it. How can this be happening without us knowing?"

"They're good at keeping quiet," someone said from behind her.

Peggy whirled around. Howard straightened from the computer, but when he tried to move in front of her, Peggy held out an arm to stop him. She hadn't seen if Mary was one of the agents, but she didn't really need to. The simplest explanation was that she was. It was backed up pretty strongly by her military outfit and gun.

"Are you English?" Peggy said. "Truly, I mean. We didn't get the chance to check. We didn't know to look for you."

"You wouldn't find me in there," Mary said. "I'm too old. My records are paper."

"Easy to get rid of," Peggy said. "I suppose they will, later, when they need to pretend you never existed."

Mary tilted her head. Damnation, Peggy thought. She still looked sweet and friendly, even stupid; her face was a little chubby, and even pulled back, her hair was curled and carefully styled. But her hand did not shake holding the gun. Mary planned to execute them.

"Are you trying to get me to question my loyalty?" she said. "It won't work."

"I didn't think it would," Peggy said. "And anyway, I employed no artifice. I don't need to. They'll erase all knowledge of you and everyone like you, because that's what governments do with their most shameful tools." She shrugged. "My work isn't public either. I'd know."

"How did you find this place?"

"You know the paper is missing from Travkin's hideout."

It was a guess, but an accurate one. Mary's lips peeled back in a snarl. "On your knees."

"Of course," Peggy said, and sank down. She leaned forward a bit so that her jacket rode up. The gun she'd tucked into her pants dug into her skin, but only for a moment. Howard grabbed it and fired, and Mary fell dead.

"You could have left her alive," Peggy said. "I had questions."

"She's too well trained for that." Howard handed her the gun back as she stood. "Also, I was aiming for her shoulder."

"Thank you," Peggy said. She tucked the gun back in. "Someone will have heard that." She looked over at Mary, lying glassy-eyed in a small, but increasing, pool of blood. "We should -"

Howard kissed her.

Scattered bits of thoughts about near-death experiences flew through her mind. She wasn't above those impulses, though. She kissed back for one amazing, intoxicating moment before stepping away. "We need to leave. Now."

They hastened out of the building, exiting through the same servant's entrance and then walking along the shore until they reached the bridge. To anyone who asked, they were a young couple out for a stroll. Peggy even held Howard's hand, and ignored that they were both shaking.

When they were safely behind their locked apartment door, Peggy said, "I know it's not - I know these things happen. I witnessed...we had intelligence in Germany telling us terrible things. I know that. But -"

"It's not wartime, supposedly," Howard said. "I know, Peg."

"Those are little girls." She thought back to the first floor of that house. Dolls and bolts in the floor. They'd been held there. Were they given beds? Were they chained? How did one turn a seven-year-old into a government agent? "Children. I can't - how -"

"Peggy." Howard stood directly in front of her then, holding her hands. She wasn't naive, she wasn't young. She didn't need comfort. And yet, when he stroked her hair, she rested her head on his shoulder and let his shirt catch her tears.

Howard didn't speak at all. When Peggy stopped crying, she straightened and pulled away, saying, "We'll confront Travkin tomorrow. I have the original paper, and we've overheard all kinds of malarkey. I'd prefer more written documents, but if we get the jump on her, we can force her to produce them."

"Torture?"

"We'll offer her a deal." Torture was ineffective; Peggy knew that. If it had been effective, she might have - but there was no sense in speculating. "She'll take it, or we'll kill her. She's an opportunist. She'll want to stay alive."

"You'd know more about it than me." Howard glanced at the bed. "We've got a few hours 'till dawn."

"I don't know if I can sleep," Peggy said, but she let herself be drawn to bed.

She did sleep, of course, and soundly. She didn't wake until Howard shook her shoulder and told her it was half past nine.

"Do you ever sleep?" she said, stretching.

Howard smiled at her. It was warm and entirely without conflict, which made her think it might also be false. But just as he'd stayed silent the night before, she kept her own counsel then. "Sleep wastes time."

"I see. You'd better hope not doing so doesn't age you prematurely." Peggy rolled out of bed. "Let's get this over with."

Twenty minutes later, Sofiya was letting them into Travkin's home. Her eyes widened when she saw that Peggy had her gun drawn, but she retreated to a corner of the living room without a word. Travkin came out of the kitchen to meet them, and Peggy pointed the gun squarely at her head.

Travkin didn't look surprised. "My, my," she said. "I'd hoped you two were genuine, but you must admit, your cover was a bit thin."

"Rather like yours, then," Peggy said. "This shouldn't take long, though. The Black Widow program. What do you know of it?"

Travkin didn't so much as twitch. "Maggie, I'm not privy to even a tenth of the programs that our leader carries out. Why in the world do you think I'd know of this one?"

"Because Mary was part of it."

"Mary worked behind enemy lines as a radio operator for England. She was part of no program. She could barely carry out simple directives for me."

She couldn't be telling the truth. It was impossible. But to get her to admit her lie, they'd need to move her. "Come with me," Peggy said. She guided Travkin out of the house, one hand tucked under her coat, her gun pressed against Travkin's back. "If you move or try to summon help, I'll kill you."

Travkin didn't respond. She looked over at Sofiya and said, "I'm disappointed in you."

Sofiya stared straight ahead. They made an awkward tableau. Luckily, the cab driver Peggy hailed didn't seem to care.

Last night's building was still standing and looked abandoned, but the servant's entrance door was unlatched. Someone had been in, and might still be there. Peggy made Travkin go first.

"This is really unnecessarily dramatic," Travkin said as they went up the stairs. "An empty warehouse is of no interest to -"

The humming had become audible. Travkin didn't speak again. They reached the top of the stairs and crossed the room to the terminal. The red stain between the two data banks nearest the terminal was the only sign that Mary's body had ever occupied the space.

"Do you recognize this sort of machine?" Peggy said.

Travkin looked away from the blood stain. "I've used one before."

"Pull up information, then."

Travkin navigated the machine with a fluency neither Peggy nor Howard could lay claim to. She pulled up the file easily, read it, and paled. "No."

"We didn't see Mary's name, but -"

Travkin typed. The lines of text became one line: Mary Pickering. Yorkshire. Status: Deceased.

"This cannot be true," Travkin said. "I don't - no." She typed again, and this time the names appeared in order. The youngest was born in 1942.

"Children," Peggy said. "Young girls. Mary was one of them. Her loyalty to the Soviets was unquestioned. I tried to make her realize she was making a mistake, and she repudiated me."

Travkin shook her head, but Peggy could tell her objection wasn't denial. Travkin didn't want to know it, and didn't want to think about it. But she believed in the existence of the program.

"Did you explore further?" Travkin said.

"We ran out of time," Peggy said. "Can you navigate the system?"

"Yes," Travkin said. "And I will."

Somehow, Peggy hadn't been expecting that. "The Black Widow program -"

Travkin cut her off simply by straightening, and turning to look at her. "I will not hear your condemnation or defense. I will not explain myself to you. You will take this proof back to your government. I don't answer to you, and a bullet in my head won't change that."

She looked ready to fly apart, so Peggy just nodded, keeping the gun trained on her. "Give us that proof, then."

Travkin typed into the terminal again. Peggy almost jumped when another humming noise started, growing steadily until it roared. A machine she'd assumed was part of the terminal began blinking green lights, and paper flew out of it. "What is this?"

"The contents of those files you were looking at." Travkin picked them out of the bin they'd been flying into. She glanced down at the top sheet, almost absently - then froze, going pale.

"Travkin." They needed her sharp - they needed to all be sharp.

"Verusha," Travkin whispered. She tapped the paper, midway down. "Vera Travkin. Born 1935. Facility: Leningrad." She looked up at Peggy. "She disappeared during the war. They took her. They're holding her, for this program."

"I need to know who Vera is," Peggy said.

She already knew, of course. But Travkin responded anyway. "Vera is my sister."

Peggy closed her eyes. No one spoke for a moment; the utter silence of the building was only broken by the hum and shuffle of the computer containing, among other things, Travkin's sister's location. Finally, Peggy said, "We will go our apartment and we will plan."

"My home -"

"Is bugged, by myself and Howard," Peggy said. "It's probably bugged by others as well. You don't sweep as well as you should."

Travkin just bowed her head.

This time, she didn't need to be threatened to obey their directions. They made it back to the studio apartment without incident. The papers Travkin had produced amounted to a book-sized bundle; sorting through it was no small task. Peggy was ready to announce they had to do it anyway when Travkin said, "The Leningrad facility - they moved it from that house."

"Yes," Peggy said. "That does seem to be the case."

"I know where it is."

"Do tell."

"We had Mary followed, of course. She was staying at an old hospital. I thought it was some sort of conceit, you see - squatting illegally in the manner of those in a capitalist system, those with no homes."

"Your people never went inside."

Travkin shook her head. "She was very convincingly non-threatening."

Not for the first time, Peggy wondered just how old Travkin was, and how prepared for espionage she'd been before assuming her current position. But then, to some extent, the same could be wondered of she herself. She said, "We can go. But - I should warn you. Mary was an adult when they caught her, or close enough. There was no part of a British servicewoman in her. She was wholly loyal."

"Understand me when I say that I do not support all the actions of my government," Travkin said. "Any more than you do yours, I suppose. But I cannot just leave my sister in there. I know we've been working with - behavioral modification. I have contributed to the ideas behind it. But we were told our subjects were volunteers."

Peggy thought of Howard's company and of her own SHIELD advocacy. She had no right, even as she was sure - had to tell herself she was sure - that the Soviets had crossed lines the Americans would never consider approaching. "Then we'll go," she said. "This is your mission to plan."

"Thank you, Maggie."

"Peggy," Peggy said. She ignored Sofiya and Howard's tell-tale uncomfortable movements. "Call me Peggy."

Travkin smiled a bit, but the tears stayed in her eyes until she turned away. "Right," she said. "I know where the building is, at least."

Peggy had tried not to think of Steve during this mission, largely because she knew her own behavior would hardly live up to his standards for himself, much less what he'd thought of her. But as they planned their assault on a building whose innards they were entirely ignorant of, she couldn't help but think of their strategizing before attacking HYDRA bases. Steve, whose moral uprightness would shame Peggy even now. Steve, whose ability to protect his country had, in the end, been limited, and demanded his death.

She loved him. God, she loved him still, even as she accepted that he was dead. But she was still going to rescue Travkin's sister and leave without looking back, because she wasn't in Russia to bring down a child soldier program. She had the evidence they needed, and Steve wasn't here to be disappointed in her.

Travkin tried to make Howard stay home. She almost succeeded, too, by putting him in a headlock and saying waspishly, "Tell me any one of those girls wouldn't render you useless." At the last minute, though, Peggy said, "He's our weapons and explosives expert; we don't have guns he doesn't know well," and Travkin relented. They brought Sofiya, too, as a lookout, though her fear was obvious and filled Peggy with guilt.

Peggy hoped somewhat fervently that Travkin wouldn't make the somewhat obvious connections between a weapons expert and a short New Yorker named Howard. Or at least that if she did, the tenuous, conditional trust between them would keep her from acting on that knowledge until they'd left. It had been foolish to extend the trust of their real names, but Peggy couldn't maintain pure cynicism in the face of the Black Widow program. It was all too much.

They departed the apartment at eight PM. The streets were still full of people, ranging from happy children to adults whose laughter dimmed when they passed clusters of policemen. Peggy kept her attention on her bag, which contained too many weapons and burglary tools for any kind of plausible denial. However, no one stopped them; they arrived at the program facility at quarter to nine.

"Don't suppose we can knock on their front door," Howard muttered.

"As always, we'll circle round back," Peggy said, and led them through the nearest alley.

But the back was a courtyard with a ten-foot-high, barbed-wire-protected wall. Peggy could scale it if she had to, but Howard almost certainly couldn't. Time for Plan B, then.

"Howard. The C4."

"Not with Vera in there," Travkin hissed.

"We're taking down the wall," Peggy said. "We'll still do your best to get your sister."

Travkin stepped away as Howard laid the explosives.

"This will attract undue attention," Travkin said.

"Calling it C4 was for your benefit." Howard winked at Travkin. It was a bit insensitive, but Travkin took it in stride. "It won't make a sound." He pulled a remote out of his pocket and pressed the button. A chunk of the wall lit up for a moment, then turned to vapor.

"I see," Travkin said. She sounded somewhat faint, and more than a little annoyed, but either attitude was vastly superior to, say, throwing up in a corner. Or screaming about Howard Stark's capitalist excesses and drawing the KGB to them. Given that they were rescuing Travkin's sister, Peggy was willing to give her some slack. When the dust from the wall dissipated, she lifted her gun and stepped through.

The wall protected a courtyard, about the side of a squash court. It was paved over and otherwise unadorned. Luckily, the door at the far end of the yard looked normal: it had a doorknob and was thus, presumably, a door Peggy could easily get through.

They'd all previously agreed not to increase their chances of getting caught with superfluous conversation. Now, Peggy picked the lock, then eased the door open just enough to peer inside. She half feared encountering rows of brainwashed little girls, but all she saw past the door was a dark hallway. She opened the door and motioned for the others to follow her inside.

The hallway appeared to stretch the length of the building. No directory or map guided their way. After circling the first floor once, Peggy motioned for them to retreat.

Once they were safely outside the hole in the wall, she said, "We have no hope of finding Vera with a simple door-to-door search."

Travkin closed her eyes. In Peggy's experience, she wasn't a demonstrative woman. Her upset was as clear now as sobbing would have been from someone else.

"We will find her," Peggy whispered, a bit sharper than she needed to be. "We're going to trigger the fire alarm. Howard will bar the front door. They'll come out through the back, and we will find her." Dealing with a stream of children trained to be killers wasn't exactly Peggy's idea of a good time, but that seemed unavoidable right now, with Travkin near tears.

They executed the plan quickly. Peggy was hyper-aware of the fact that even in the dead of night, the streets weren't totally empty. Getting caught would land them in more trouble than she thought she could extract them from. Scarcely a quarter hour had passed before Peggy triggered the fire alarm and ran out of the building, joining Travkin and their barely-a-sentry Sofiya at the back exit.

Travkin's description of Vera could have applied to any number of children in St Petersburg: brown hair, green eyes, thin and short. She'd be prepubescent, too, since it had been years since her kidnapping. But Travkin wasn't the sort to be disabled by fear or emotional turmoil. The little girls went filing out, eerily calm. None of them looked left or right, and thus none of them saw the three women in the shadows. But midway through the evacuation, Travkin reached out and grabbed a girl, pulling her into the darkness, clubbing her over the head, hoisting her body, and running.

Knocking Vera out wasn't part of the plan, but the rest was. Before the other agents could mobilize, Peggy and Sofiya ran to follow Travkin. Howard was in their stolen car, as planned, and they all piled in as the first shots from the house whizzed past. He pulled away with a speed that made the tires shriek.

"That was interesting," Howard said. "I blacked the license plate. Should buy us a little secrecy."

"There will be no secrecy for an act such as this," Travkin said. "Not for you two, at any rate."

She was still clutching her sister, who remained either unconscious or pretending to be so. "Ah," Peggy said. "You mean to call us traitors."

"I can't stop the program." For the first time since they'd met, Peggy heard the bleakness in Travkin's voice. "I can try to keep it from growing, but this investment, the amount of secrecy and time..."

The Soviets would do almost anything to retain power. Peggy felt a chill down her spine, even as a traitorous part of her thought of Howard's weapons and wondered if the United States wouldn't do the same. It was not a kind or forgiving thought. It frightened her.

They left Travkin and her sister at Travkin's home, then drove the car near to their apartment, abandoned it, and let themselves in the back way. Peggy didn't realize until Howard clutched her to him, leaning against their front door, that she was shaking. Howard was, too.

"What are we doing?" Howard said.

"Fleeing," Peggy said. "Travkin will summon us at first light tomorrow. Then we're going home."

He lifted a hand and touched her hair. His callouses caught at the strands of it, an uneasy sort of combination of textures. Peggy didn't move away. "Home. To get married."

"And get Hayes."

"Possibly even in that order." He smiled at her, ever so slightly sarcastic. "Life with you has been exciting so far."

"If you want to court peace, I have to think you've chosen the wrong business."

"Turns out there's not a lot of money in flying cars. Not yet." His expression turned distant. "Maybe someday."

"And in the meantime, more guns?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Howard pushed himself off the door and went to the bathroom. He tossed her a grin as he went inside. "Bombs too."

Peggy did not sleep well that night. Of course, the night itself was shortened. She felt as though she'd scarcely closed her eyes when Howard woke her. Twenty minutes later, they'd packed and made their way to Travkin's. The train tickets and money were expected. The folio Travkin handed Peggy, on the other hand, was a surprise.

"This is the evidence I have against your Hayes," Travkin said. "I'll ask that you don't deploy it for a brief time after you return."

Peggy supposed a few weeks' delay didn't matter that much. "I won't."

"Thank you," Travkin said. She hesitated, then stepped in and hugged Peggy. "She's not awake yet. But when she is...I'll fix it. Somehow."

Peggy knew that sort of determination, and if she found it terrifying, she also respected it. "Stay safe. Keep working."

"I will." Travkin's smile held more than a little irony. "Against you, even."

There was nothing more to say. They left quickly after that.

Travkin had given them both train and plane tickets. They scarcely talked on the trip home, which took only twenty-eight hours. Peggy wanted nothing more than to relax in her apartment when they finally touched down in New York; almost as soon as they got off the chartered plane, though, Howard said, "Will you stay with me?"

He didn't phrase it manipulatively, nor did he make the question sound like her acquiescence would be doing him a favor. Somehow, his apparent willingness to be turned down made her want to go with him all the more. "Of course," she said. She took his hand and they flagged down a taxi together.

His mansion was cold and empty. New York was warmer than Leningrad had been; the air bit against Peggy's cheeks still, but it didn't make her ache like she had walking outside in Russia. But still, when they got to Howard's bedroom, she shivered.

"I don't want to call Jarvis at this hour," Howard said by way of apology. He went about building a fire, more capably than she'd have guessed he could.

Peggy could, of course, build a fire herself, just as she could turn her sheets down and fetch her own dressing gown. But she let Howard do those things, because he seemed willing to, and sometimes - right then especially - she just wanted to rest.

Howard ended up curled around her, his head on her shoulder. They'd tucked the blankets in around them firmly, and Howard's breath was warm on her chest. They didn't have sex; he only kissed her once. She felt the seriousness of the past few days overly strongly, as though she'd been ambushed and had to fight her way out. That had happened with Steve a few times, though without the physical contact; the thought, oddly, didn't make her chest twist the way it normally did.

Maybe she was just tired.

"I'll have Jarvis start the wedding plans tomorrow," Howard murmured into the darkness. "We'll need food, flowers...the works."

Peggy felt vaguely that she ought to protest - to say something about how she should be able to plan her own wedding, at the very least. But she didn't really care. It wasn't a true wedding in any sense; she was not wedding a man she loved in her home church in England, or even marrying Steve in his - well, wherever he'd have wanted to be married. It didn't matter in this context how they put the show on, only that they did.

So she said, "That sounds lovely," and rolled over, shrugging Howard off and forcing herself to sleep.

Jarvis, Peggy quickly discovered, was a singularly efficient wedding planner. Within a week, he had a preacher booked, caterers and flowers arranged, and Peggy's dress measured and pressed, hanging in the closet at Howard's mansion that was to be hers from the moment of their union.

The dress was pale green and lovely. Jarvis had wanted white, but Peggy overruled him. When he'd attempted to press the point, she'd been beaten to admonishing him by Howard. He understood; how could he not? The ghost of Steve hung between them even then, six days before the wedding.

She'd written to her cousins some time ago about the upcoming wedding. She telegrammed them upon their return to America to give them the exact date. But of course, they were all married and had responsibilities of their own; to the woman, they wired back congratulations and didn't mention attending. She kept the missives in a folio on her desk at home and didn't mention them to Howard or anyone else.

On the day of her wedding, she lurched out of bed at 0930 and tweaked the curtains open. The sky was heavy with clouds and a haze had settled over the skyscrapers. New York had apparently chosen to represent itself according to stereotype. She made a face, pulled the curtains shut again, and went about getting dressed.

Howard had a ballroom in his mansion, and in the end, they'd decided not to waste it. She would be dressed and coiffed for the ceremony itself in her soon-to-be-permanent bedroom. As the reception carried on into the night, workers would arrive at her apartment and remove her belongings. The morning - until eleven thirty, when the car would arrive - was hers, to use to say goodbye to her space, and the solitude it implied.

She made herself eggs and toast, sitting down at her kitchen table with the morning paper. It took her only a few minutes to arrive at an article discussing her wedding - or, more precisely, discussing Howard Stark's voluntary entry into legal matrimony. After that, she binned the paper and sipped her tea without distraction.

She meant to go about her apartment and say goodbye, but instead she sat at the table until she needed to be downstairs to meet the driver. An odd sort of terror had taken hold of her. It wasn't fear for herself, her body or soul; it was fear for her ideals, for her hopes. She trusted she'd be safe. She didn't trust that the path she was sending herself down would result in a life she could be proud of.

Upon acknowledging the thought, she shook herself. It was a silly thing to imagine. She picked up her coat and exited the apartment, not looking back.

Two hours later, her hair stiff with styling, her undergarments more constricting than usual, and her dress draped over her so intricately she doubted her ability to remove it alone, she walked down the aisle. Jarvis had outdone himself. Howard's ballroom shone with hothouse lilies and roses. The chairs, arranged with military precision, each carried a bouquet with a gemstone at its center. The aisle Peggy walked down was lined with velvet. A custom-built cherry wood dais awaited her, with her bridesmaids - hired - and Howard standing with the priest. It was beautiful. Peggy was overwhelmed.

She didn't notice Hayes in the audience until Howard slid the ring over her finger, and she kissed him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man stand. She turned and noted that the man was Hayes himself - and then the ballroom plunged into darkness.

Peggy didn't panic, because panic would be entirely inappropriate. But even as she reached for Howard, she felt as though her chest was squeezing so tightly her heart might pop straight out. The feeling redoubled when her fingers only met air.

"Howard!" she yelled. She ran to the side of the room, to get her back against a wall. The ballroom had windows and glass French doors, but her eyes hadn't adjusted well enough for the watery light coming in from them to be of much use.

Worse, no one responded to her shout. He'd gone to ground, surely. He must have. She was making her way through the shouting crowds, doing her best to stay anonymous and reach an exit, when the lights came back on.

The room was in a shambles, with chairs knocked over and half the decorations askew or torn to pieces. When the lights had come back on, everyone had paused for a moment, surprised into silence - but only for a moment. Peggy scarcely had the time to look over the room before people started talking again - or, more accurately, screaming and running for the doors.

Howard might be outside, but Peggy wasn't risking the crowd at the main set of doors. She smashed out a window and climbed out; they were picture windows, so she didn't even have to jump to reach the ground. She picked up her skirts and ran to the front of the mansion, but the only people she saw were fleeing guests.

She hated to think of the onlookers these guests would greet on the street, past the drive - she hated to think of what the papers would say. Of course, that was a distraction, a way not to think about where Howard might be.

Was he hiding? He wouldn't abandon her on his own, but then, in the past she'd ordered him to do just that. Perhaps he'd anticipated her direction this time.

"Miss Car - Mrs. Stark!"

"Agent," Peggy said automatically, then frowned. "Jarvis?"

It was he, in a tux with some yellow substance spilled on it. "I can't find him." He sounded calm, but in the stiff-upper-lip way Peggy herself did, British and panicked. "Mr. Stark has disappeared."

"Would he have gone to ground? Run upstairs, perhaps, or hidden somewhere outside?"

For a moment, Jarvis's mask slipped and he looked at her with clear disbelief. She blinked and his expression returned to its unreadable norm. "He would not have left without you, I don't think. Not under his own power."

Peggy couldn't stop thinking of Hayes, sitting and watching them marry with a smug look on his face. Another culprit could have caused the disruption; certainly, Peggy had already done enough work at SHIELD to foster any number of enemies. It was possible that Hayes hadn't taken Howard.

Possible. But not likely.

"I think I know where he is," Peggy said. "Or at least, I know how to find him. You'll put the house to rights?"

"Of course."

"Excellent," Peggy said. "In that case, I'll be off."

"Wearing that?"

Peggy looked down. Her dress was torn and dirt was smeared over the hem. But if she stopped to change and coif herself more appropriately, she might lose the trail on Howard entirely - if, in fact, the trail she thought existed truly did.

"Yes. Wearing this," she said. "Can you have a car brought round?"

"Absolutely," Jarvis said, and left her standing in the driveway.

The car he picked was black and relatively nondescript, though it gave off the impression of costing a good deal more than even the military vehicles Peggy had driven. He'd stocked it with zip ties, two guns, and a tape recorder. She got in without hesitation and took herself to Hayes' address. His house looked empty, and no one answered when she knocked on the door. Typical, she thought, and set about breaking in.

Hayes' office was easy to find: it was on the first floor and was also the only room with a light on. She let herself in silently. Hayes sat at his desk, his back facing the door.

Idiot. She knocked him out and tied him up, tucking the tape recorder into her bodice and turning it on as she moved to stand in front of him.

He came to a moment later. He immediately tried to scream for help, so Peggy slapped him.

"Where's Howard?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, lady," Hayes said.

"My name is Agent," Peggy said, "And I saw you at my wedding. I know you took him. You can either tell me where he is, or I can kill you. Your choice."

Hayes sneered at her. "I was imprisoned by the Germans for two years in the Great War. You don't scare me."

Peggy kept her face blank. "I said nothing of torture. It's ineffective and, in your case, unnecessary. You gave money to Travkin to save your own life. If you don't tell me where Howard is now, I'll kill you."

"And if I lie?"

"I'll find you and kill you. Believe me, if Howard's dead, I'll have little better to do with my time."

For a moment Hayes looked terrified, gratifyingly so. Then his expression shifted to cunning. "You really don't understand, do you?"

Peggy knew better than to let herself be drawn into conversation with the man - or at least, she normally did. But she didn't have a confession of his conspiracy yet, so she said, "Understand what?"

"I gave Travkin information and took her money so that my family would be safe." Hayes spat on the ground next to Peggy's foot. "You sympathize with her, don't you? You helped her. You're scum just like all the rest, trying to take away everything that makes America what she is."

"I'm not sure how giving her sensitive, confidential information isn't helping her," Peggy said. "For myself, I did my job: I navigated a tense international situation and stopped her from completing an attack on the free world. You didn't do much of anything, Hayes, except spy - treasonously, I might add. It hardly befits a senator."

"I'm not asking you for forgiveness."

"That's good," Peggy said. "But your time has run out. Tell me where Howard is." She cocked her handgun. "Or I'll shoot you."

"This is what you want? This is your America?"

"If it has to be. Now tell me. I'm not going to ask again."

"He's in Brooklyn," Hayes said. "Three blocks from the river, the abandoned house next to Sal's Deli."

Brooklyn again. Peggy pursed her lips, turned off the tape recorder, and ripped some of the dirty cloth off her dress to serve as a gag for Hayes. "If you're lying, I can assure you you'll regret it."

He attempted to mumble a response, the idiot. Peggy ignored him in favor of barricading the door, turning off the light, and leaving out the window.

She did not want Hayes to summon help.

Brooklyn was as she remembered: dirty and busy in the middle of the day, with too many poor folk for a woman in a filth-streaked dress and large jacket to be even particularly noteworthy. The first two people she asked couldn't locate Sal's Deli, but the third could. She walked the five blocks and stopped in front of the abandoned house.

Presumably, Hayes had employed guards. He was an idiot, but Peggy doubted a single soul in New York would be stupid enough to leave Howard Stark alone and unguarded, regardless of how well he was trussed up. She kept her guns in her jacket, instead picking up a large branch that lay in the front yard, and ascending the stairs of the house.

The first man greeted her when she kicked the door down - or, more accurately, he stumbled from the force of her kick. He turned around ready to fight, and Peggy knocked him over the head with the branch, shoved it in his eye, and grabbed his baton.

He stopped screaming when she knocked him out with three whacks of the baton. She stepped over his prone body and continued into the house.

The house itself was reminiscent of the facility where they'd found Travkin's sister. The biggest difference came when, walking down a long hallway, she kicked the first door down. She saw Howard prone on the floor and rushed forward, but of course then his two guards grabbed her.

Shaking the one off was easy: he'd gripped her only loosely, so she yanked her arm away and kicked him in the crotch. The other man attempted to pin her against the wall, so she brought the baton up and hit him with it. He showed no sign of moving, at first, until Peggy found the button on the side of the baton. Pressing it made electricity spark from the tip of it, and when she hit him again, he fell to the floor. Even as she pulled away, he continued to shake.

"That was really something else," Howard croaked from his position next to the window.

She turned to him. Feeling angry would be inappropriate; he had two black eyes and was clutching his ribs, and she'd not been hurt at all. But that didn't stop the emotion from surfacing.

"I'd ask what you were thinking, but I suspect the answer is that you weren't. At all."

Howard sat up, wincing as he did so. "I was grabbed, Peggy."

"You invited Hayes."

"Months ago. Before all this."

"And it didn't occur to you that might be an issue now?"

"Since we have yet to make a move against him -"

"We consorted with Travkin! He knew!"

"You dealt with him, then?"

Peggy had to stop and literally bite her tongue. She was being unfair, and she knew it; her anger was simply a reflection of her worry over Howard. She'd been afraid he was dead, and seeing him alive but injured only made her feel more helpless.

"Let's go," she said finally. "I took a cab here, but we have loose ends with Hayes to tie up."

Howard lifted his right arm. "A little help?"

His wrists showed shadowy bruises. His tux coat was nowhere to be seen. Peggy pulled him to his feet and said nothing as he leaned on her. They walked outside and hailed a cab like that; only in Brooklyn, Peggy thought, would one stop for two such individuals.

When they got into the cab, Peggy gave Howard's address. "We'll send people to deal with Hayes," she said. "SHIELD will no longer be lenient."

Howard leaned into her. "I meant what I said back there."

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"It was very, very attractive." He leaned in and kissed her ear.

Part of her wanted to give in to the attraction. It was so clear, so strong, and required hardly any thought to participate in. But that part was overwhelmed by another feeling: that fear which quickly turned into anger when mixed with knowledge that Howard would keep taking risks, and that she herself, as director of SHIELD, would let him.

She leaned away. "Not right now."

Howard raised his eyebrows, but he didn't argue. He sat back in the taxi and tapped his foot all the way back to Manhattan.

When they returned to the mansion, Peggy had Jarvis call Gabe, and the two of them went to Hayes' to place him under arrest. Peggy herself guided Howard into their shared sitting room and helped patch him up. He had two cuts that required stitches, along with a number of bruises, and - as far as Peggy could tell - two broken ribs. For the stitches she handed him prohibitively expensive scotch and used hydrogen peroxide and a needle from her own mending kit. He had no ointment for bruises, but she managed to wrap his ribs with bandages from a first aid kid prominently featured in his first-floor workshop.

It was only when they were both changed, clean, and patched up that Peggy said, "Inviting Hayes was stupid."

"Peg -"

"No. As a SHIELD associate, you should have known better."

"Oh, I see. You're gonna bigtime me with talk about espionage." Howard waved the hand not clutching his third glass of scotch. He wasn't sober. "Go ahead, then. Can't wait to hear it. Bet Steve would've done better during your wedding."

"I didn't marry Steve. Don't be ridiculous. I married you!"

"We both know where your preference is." He tossed back the rest of the scotch. "With the guy who always did everything right."

"I'm angry because you invited Hayes - and you're right, Steve never would have. He wasn't mired in politics like you. But you did, and I was frightened!"

"And I wasn't? I was the one he kidnapped!"

"I'm the one who loves you!" Peggy shouted, and immediately regretted it.

Howard recoiled as though she'd slapped him. Doing so might have created less damage than that confession. When he didn't say anything - when he didn't even reach to refill his liquor - she said, "I don't know how you didn't know."

He did refill his glass then, as well as smiling with a twist of sarcasm. "I know who you're in love with. It's not me."

"I'm grieving Steve," Peggy said. "He's dead. I know there's no future for Steve and myself. I should have known there's none with you too."

He drained his drink, not even wincing as he did it. Then he set it down on the sideboard and said, "Yeah. Two people on the same page, even then it usually doesn't work out."

"Howard -"

He turned away from her, heading for his bedroom. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and went into his room.

She, too, had a bedroom that adjoined this sitting room. She'd hoped not to have to use it - not the first night, at least. Perhaps she'd been lying when she told Howard she had no illusions about their relationship. No: she had been lying. For all intents and purposes, she was a liar. She'd told herself that hoping wasn't the same thing as lying. She was, after all, in the business of enacting hopes. She hoped for a better, freer world every time she sent one of her agents to carry out a mission in the name of the President. She'd told herself that was no different from hoping that Howard would come to love her, and that they could live in harmony.

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was a liar on more than one front. But she'd certainly lied to Howard.

She went into her own bedroom. She didn't want to; her belongings were there, but she'd have preferred to sleep on the chaise lounge in the sitting room and pretend the whole episode hadn't happened. That wasn't feasible, though. She didn't know how many servants Howard employed, but she wasn't willing to risk one of them catching her there, sulking alone on her wedding night. The resultant gossip wasn't likely to matter to her or even reach her ears, but the embarrassment of discovery might kill both her and the hypothetical maid.

She was overthinking the issue, standing in front of her now-closed door. She shook her head and readied herself for bed.

While she expected Howard to avoid her the next morning, she found herself surprised by the fact that he'd abandoned his room so early that it was empty when she knocked at eight. Surely he'd needed sleep, since he'd been kidnapped and injured. But a maid came in at nine in the morning to bring her breakfast, and on the tray next to her ham and porridge was a folded-up note in Howard's hand.

"Miss," the maid said, and left quickly. That settled the question of whether or not there'd been gossip, then.

She opened Howard's letter before she even touched her food. It was short and simple. He was going away for awhile, to "process things", and she should consider doing so as well. Money to travel - "your legal right, Peg, so don't argue" - had already been wired to her account. He suggested she see her relatives in England, though Egypt was apparently nice that time of year as well.

She itched to slap him before she'd even half finished the note. Of course, that urge went a long way towards justifying his leaving to begin with. She had no desire to see her cousins, nor did she think they'd happily host her. Did Howard imagine she had closer relatives? She'd mentioned the deaths of her parents, hadn't she? She must have. She couldn't imagine not having done so.

Self-doubt was an uncomfortable feeling. She gritted her teeth and set the letter aside.

England. Maybe she would go. The sum Howard had named as residing in her account was more than enough to book a hotel in Ealing - close enough to her cousins to be easily accessible, but not so close as to be intrusive. Her parents' graves were in Cambridge, but Peggy had no desire to visit them. They were dead, and a gardener saw to the graves. That was enough for her.

In three hours, she'd already made most of her travel arrangements, including wiring her cousins to let them know she'd be staying in England for a time. No one, including Jarvis, was willing to tell her where Howard was. He could be halfway to Ibiza by now, or he could be a few blocks away. She thought about trying to track him down, then decided against it. He was right, in his own impulsive way. They needed time apart.

Her SHIELD honeymoon leave didn't end for another three weeks, so stepping away from work was simple. She packed a bag and boarded a private plane at 1500. She'd be in London by next dawn.

The matron of The Feathers in Ealing clearly disapproved of Peggy traveling alone, even after she introduced herself as Mrs. Stark and provided a hefty bank note to substantiate the claim. She was allowed up to her room, however, and provided with a hot meal, brought to her via an in-room dumbwaiter. She'd slept on the plane - not enough to be well rested, but more than enough to not be able to sleep in the middle of the day. After debating trying to nap anyway, she gathered herself enough to take a walk outdoors, going in search of somewhere to have lunch.

She found a large tea shop three doors down, housed in a tall building that was clearly attempting to look quaint while just as clearly being new architecture. The street was somewhat noisy, filled with horses and pre-war cars that didn't even approach the quietude of Howard's creations. When she ducked inside, however, the sound was almost entirely muffled. A phonograph in the corner played Bach, and the proprietress greeted her with a cheerful, "Welcome, miss! Oh, but you look tired. Do sit down."

"Thank you," Peggy said. "I'll be alone today."

"Of course, of course." The woman led her over to a window seat. "Shall I bring you lunch?"

"That would be lovely," Peggy said.

She was left alone then, blessedly, as the woman put the kettle on and began assembling a sandwich. The hotel had disguised England's post-war austerity well, all things considered. The tea shop, in contrast, did little to hide it. Peggy's chair was upholstered in worn-out fabric, and the shelves that she assumed would normally display tea or other products were empty.

All in all, the atmosphere was dreary. Of course, as soon as she acknowledged that, she felt guilty. Everyone who worked at the shop was undoubtedly doing their best, and who was Peggy to gainsay them? Peggy, who'd made her home in the States, where they'd exuberantly abandoned austerity practically as soon as the treaty was signed - she surely had no right. But still, when the woman brought her the sandwich on plain bread, and the cup of weak-looking tea, she had to force a smile and remind herself not to complain.

England had suffered much, and England was still - in some capacity - her home. She hadn't changed that much.

The girl she'd been briefly traveled through her mind. That girl wore pastel dresses and dreamed only of marriage to a quiet boy with a vocation. Perhaps she'd changed a bit, then. But she was still Peggy Carter, English citizen, first, not Mrs. Howard Stark. Regardless of what the Times might have announced.

She took a sip of tea. It wasn't as bad as it smelled; certainly, it was better than the coffee at SHIELD's offices. She'd picked up the sandwich, preparing to eat it, when someone said from the doorway, "Oh my good God, it's Peggy!"

Arranging one's expression into a neutral mask was a skill that Peggy considered strictly familial in nature. She did it without realizing when she heard Cousin Beatrice's voice, turning as she did and saying, "Beatrice! It's lovely to see you."

"We heard you were coming, but you didn't wire us to tell us where you were staying! Oh my dear, it's so good to see you." Beatrice bustled over in a cloud of perfume and kissed Peggy hard on her cheek. "I see you have a free seat," she added, and sat down across from Peggy, banging their knees together. "You simply must tell me everything."

Peggy had planned to notify them when she'd gotten herself together a bit more, and on top of that, really had no idea how to construct an 'everything' for a relative who didn't have any security clearance to speak of on either side of the Atlantic. Beatrice, however, made it easy. When Peggy didn't immediately reply, she said, "Oh come now, Peggy, you married Howard Stark! And it was a scandal, from what I heard! Do give me the details." She clutched her necklace and leaned forward, eyes bright with anticipation.

"Oh, well, the wedding was...ah." Peggy licked her lips. "The power went out, you see."

Beatrice raised her eyebrows. "And that caused a mass panic?"

"Well." Oh, to hell with it. Peggy would just tell her a good story. She leaned forward a bit. "You mustn't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. We've worked hard to keep it from the press."

"My lips are sealed, darling. Now tell me!"

"A man broke in with a team of armed thugs," Peggy said, "in order to steal one of Howard's inventions."

Beatrice gasped theatrically, as Peggy had known she would, and demanded more details.

Peggy spun Beatrice the sort of tale she knew she wanted to hear, one of daring escapes and odd-but-thrilling inventions. Beatrice gasped at all parts and, at the end - when Howard rescued Peggy and Peggy leaned on him as they returned to his mansion - she said, "Oh, Cousin, your life is so thrilling."

Peggy would have been repulsed by a story similar to the one she'd just recounted. Then again, Peggy wasn't Beatrice, and Beatrice had a husband and a home. Peggy supposed in comparison, she really had no room to judge. "It is. I'm very fortunate."

"You must visit us," Beatrice said. "I live here in Ealing now with William, and Rose is just down the lane." Rose was Beatrice's younger sister. She was two years younger than Peggy herself, and thus must have already been married. "It's a lovely town, and so much quieter than London proper." Beatrice folded her hands and looked at Peggy expectantly.

Peggy had somehow forgotten this, in the five-and-counting years since she'd lived among English civilians. If Howard or any of her wartime friends wanted her company, they'd simply tell her to be a pal and make time for them. This calm consideration made her distinctly uncomfortable, even as she knew how unfair it was.

She'd wanted to be like Beatrice once, not so long ago. It was unfair of her to then blame Beatrice for not having changed as much as Peggy herself had. An all-too-persuasive voice might be whispering to her that Beatrice's attitude, her general outlook on life and her presentation of said outlook, was shameful, second-best to Peggy herself and her comrades at SHIELD. But hadn't she been raised by someone like Beatrice? Of course she had been. The tiny splinter of resentment within her was as irrational as her long-ago distrust of Howard.

Oh, fine, it was considerably more irrational. Any reasonable person distrusted Howard, at least in the beginning.

"Peggy?"

She realized with a flush of embarrassment that she'd once again let her thoughts run away on a tangent about Howard. "I'd be delighted to visit."

"Wonderful. Let's just take care of the bill and we'll be going, then."

That was a not-terribly-subtle hint that Peggy knew what to do with. She paid the proprietress, and together she and Beatrice exited into the watery afternoon sunlight.

Beatrice told her about her housekeeping as they walked the mile and a half to her home. It was, Beatrice said, a humble cottage, befitting of a postman and his wife. But to her, it was heaven.

Peggy had her doubts. Beatrice's tremulous insistence of her own happiness seemed to Peggy more bravado than truth. But when they crested the hill and turned to let themselves into Beatrice's gate, she found herself drawn to the cottage. It stood on the outskirts of Ealing itself, a humble building surrounded by signs of more ambitious growth.

The sitting room was clean and simple. The worn cloth cushions, Beatrice explained, would be replaced as soon as such things went on sale again. "It has been terribly difficult," she said. "I wonder sometimes if the Americans will forget."

Peggy was both unwilling to be loyal to her adopted country, and unwilling to express the solidarity Beatrice clearly desired. She settled for saying, "Some will and some won't, I imagine," and taking a sip of her tea.

Beatrice hesitated, clearly put out, before smiling and busying herself ensuring Peggy's comfort.

Peggy did not see the mysterious William before she had to leave. By then, they'd moved to the kitchen, and Peggy sat in a corner as Beatrice boiled potatoes. She clearly wanted Peggy to stay for dinner, but the thought made Peggy's stomach clench unpleasantly. She traded heavily on Beatrice's perception of her as a worldly jetsetter; doing so was distasteful, but she was able to leave well before William would have returned.

She kept her thoughts deliberately clear on the walk back to the hotel, reflexively utilizing the sort of repression and deflection that had been so useful to her in the past. It was only when she was again alone in her room that she let the heaviness settle on her, manifesting itself as an odd catch in her chest and a prickling sensation at the corners of her eyes.

She missed Howard, of course, and doubted herself greatly. But loneliness and self-doubt were both familiar enemies. She'd been lonely and doubted herself during every day of her military service, and that tug in her chest made itself known nearly every day at SHIELD, too. Feeling loved, or perhaps being loved, was not the same thing as feeling confident. Howard's angry semi-confession could not replace the grounding of self that occurred when Peggy knew her place in the world.

It had been so long since she'd experienced that knowledge. She hoped to have it again soon, even as a cynical part of her wondered if that hope was pure fantasy.

Eventually, she got herself together enough to take dinner downstairs in the inn's main room. When she got back up to her room, she drew a relaxing bath and changed into pyjamas. She'd almost drifted off in bed, book in hand, when the telephone rang.

Peggy had assumed the telephone existed for emergency calls, as well as to contact downstairs. For it to ring out of nowhere was more suspicious than anything else. When she picked it up, she didn't say a word, wary of confirming her identity to whoever might be on the other end.

"Peggy. Peg...Peggy. You there? They told me this was the number."

Howard. Damn it and hoorah - in equal measures. "Howard," Peggy said. "I wasn't aware you knew where I was staying."

"Someday that kind of thing'll be easier to find than what I did," Howard said, "which was call every hotel in the area. If you'd used a false name I never would've found you."

He sounded very clearly inebriated; to his credit, he was also very clearly picking his words carefully. "May I inquire as to why you were so eager to reach me? Is everything okay?"

That question got her a bitter laugh. "Hardly. But nothing's blown up, if that's what you mean. No Russians are trying to break down the White House door."

"Given the guns you've provided the Secret Service with, I'd be surprised if they got that far."

It wasn't meant to be flattery or even flirting, but somehow, it sounded like both. She rolled her eyes at herself even as Howard laughed and said, "Please, Peg, I don't make guns. Well, I make 'em, but that's not where the real innovation is."

"The innovation's in bombs?"

"In ease of transport," Howard said. "In logistics. In tracking. And of course, in ease of transporting and tracking bombs."

"I see."

"I'm not in this for complete peace. I never have been. But neither of us thinks that's possible right now, anyway."

Peggy wanted to protest her own ideological purity, but she knew how disingenuous it would sound. She settled for saying, "Either way. You're calling me. It might not be an international crisis, but is there a crisis? Generally speaking."

"No crisis." Howard sounded as though she'd dragged the words out of him. "I just didn't like the idea of you disappearing during travel."

"I won't run off to be a bigamist with an English shepherd, if that's what you mean."

He sighed heavily. "Peggy, c'mon."

Flippancy was both crude and rude. She was aware. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry. It's just - difficult, I suppose. We didn't exactly part on good terms."

"I was afraid."

Had she known him less well, she would never have realized what such an admission cost him. As it was, she raised a hand involuntarily, clenching it in a fist over her chest.

"Jeez, Peggy, say something."

"I'm sorry," she said immediately. "I was scared too, of course. How could I not be?"

"I always figured you planned to do this. Courting, marriage."

"With a plain, working-class man," Peggy said. "In England. Living as an anonymous housewife."

Howard snorted. "You'd be bored in a week."

She almost didn't tell him. In the past five years she'd become so accustomed to failing to share information about herself. It was easy, in a way, to let people assume what they liked about her and her life. Such assumptions only rarely influenced her own behavior, and if the person making them wasn't a superior, then in the long run they didn't matter. But Howard was - her husband now, yes. But beyond that, he'd been honest with her. She didn't feel as though she owed him, but she did want to extend a hand in kind.

So she said, "As I am now, I would be. As I was, it would have been heaven."

He was silent for so long that she started to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. She was about to inquire to the point when he said, "We all change. You're not worse for it."

She wanted to tell him it was worth it, because it had brought her him - and Steve. Or now, at least, the memory of Steve. She wanted to tell him that having the power to shape the world was as exhilarating as it was horrifying. She wanted to tell him to come to her, to end this self-imposed absence. She wanted to tell him she missed New York.

Of course, she said none of that. Neither of them were ready for it, and her own Englishness curbed her original impulse. Instead she said, "Thank you. I will admit I find your presence comforting."

He laughed a little, sounding not quite cynical. "Did it cost you to admit that?"

She chose honesty again, though it was difficult. "No. I'd like for it to become commonplace with us, or at least not unheard of."

"Your optimism knows no bounds."

"I wouldn't be where I am if it did." She sighed. "Enough bravado. I'm tired. Am I going to see you again soon?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know," Peggy said. "That sounds like a loaded question. I want to snap at you for asking, even though I know you're being genuine."

"I'm not particularly suited for marriage."

"I might not be either!"

"Not to me, anyway." Howard sighed. She heard him shifting and imagined him rubbing his temples. "I had to get away. I care too much. I thought about doing a grand gesture, but luckily it occurred to me that you'd hate that."

"You weren't wrong there."

"I know." Howard sounded pleased, then - close to the sort of lazy pleasure he displayed after they had sex. For once, the pleasure she felt at the association almost didn't frighten her. "So instead I just hunted down your hotel information."

"I can't imagine that took less effort than, I don't know, hiring a plane to write messages in the sky."

"No. But it's less public. You're British, after all."

"English," Peggy said, but she was smiling.

"Come home next week," Howard said.

"Will you be sober? Polite? Reasonable?"

"I'll be here," Howard said. "And I will do my best."

If anything, that was him telling her that he wouldn't change, or couldn't. She thought of Leningrad and how he'd followed her orders there, hands shaking later as he poured himself a drink. He wasn't particularly good or heroic, but he was brilliant, and she was drawn to him. And he was good to her, which had to count for something.

Good to her, and a killer to America's enemies. She knew she was a hypocrite. She knew it even as she knew that the war she'd slept soundly during was one where Jim's family had been locked away. She could end her marriage to Howard, and that domestic hypocrisy would be curtailed. But stepping down as director of SHIELD would contribute far more to such a cause.

But no. She couldn't do that, of course. If she stepped down, she'd be replaced - or SHIELD would be replaced in its entirety. She was in charge, and that meant she was a hypocrite, and would likely continue to be one. It was her only defense against something worse. Having spoken with members of Congress, she had every faith that worse would be on the table sooner or later. Stepping down would only hasten that.

Still, she loved Howard. And he made her laugh.

"I suppose I can't promise more than that," she said.

He let out a heavy breath. "Thank you."

"No," Peggy said. "Not like that. It's - I'm not a nurse putting a wet cloth on your head. I'm the woman you married."

She worried even as she said it that he'd ask for elaboration she wasn't prepared to offer. But somehow, he understood her. "Of course. In that case, come home so I can dine out in style."

"Howard!"

He laughed. "Goodnight, Peggy."

"Goodnight," she said, and hung up.

It occurred to her as he fell asleep that for him, it was the middle of the day. That twisted something in her gut. She didn't like this distance between them. To her knowledge, that was a condition of that sort of love - for her, anyway. She'd missed Steve, too.

Steve would want her to be happy, even within the hypocrisies. She had to remind herself of that. The alternative - forgetting, being alone, all of it - was too much.

-

In the end, her trip to England only lasted four days. Beatrice was a dear and Rose was as lovely as ever, and they both brought her parents up every hour or so. She loved them, but she felt she'd love them more with an ocean between them. On her third day, she arranged her flight home.

She'd taken a chartered plane; the man next to her wore an oddly bright blue suit and seemed to see Peggy as his plane-provided conversational partner. "Soon these things'll be all over the place," he told her with an expansive wave at the inside of the plane.

"Oh, I can't wait," she said. She forced a smile and devoutly hoped she could avoid that particular aspect of the glimmering future.

She had no particular expectations for landing. Certainly she didn't expect to be greeted by Howard and -

She blinked.

"Hello," she said, walking forward on the tarmac. "You have a tape recorder." 'You' was a woman with elegantly coiffed red hair, wearing a pants suit not unlike Peggy's own. "Is this a post-honeymoon interview, Howard?"

Howard, hands shoved in his pockets in a decidedly gauche manner, cocked his eyebrows. "Someone leaked audio of Hayes' confession to the press," he said. "SHIELD's famous Director Carter."

"Allow me to introduce myself," the woman said. "Lorraine Everhart." She stuck out a hand. "Don't blame your husband, Director Carter; he didn't know I was coming."

"With respect, Ms. Everhart, I'll blame him for whatever I like - though I agree this isn't his fault." She was tired and her eyes felt gritty with exhaustion, but something about this Lorraine's direct gaze made her want to sustain the relationship. Good Lord, if she was in the papers, she'd probably have to do interviews anyway. She shook Lorraine's hand. "May I ask what publication you're with?"

"Once I have this interview, I expect it'll be the Times."

Howard was making an odd face over Lorraine Everhart's shoulder, something that seemed to combine pride at Peggy's imminent notoriety with...

Well. He'd hosted two women together more than once, to Peggy's knowledge. Peggy gave him a look to let him know that wasn't an option, and nodded to Lorraine. "Let's go somewhere we can talk at length," she said.

Lorraine smiled, a mix of elation and pure smugness. "I'd be delighted, Director."

They settled in Howard's sitting room. If Peggy had been asked for a prediction, she would have said she assumed Lorraine would ask puff questions - or rather, that someone like Lorraine would see it fit to ask puff questions for a piece to sell to the New York Times.

She would have been embarrassingly, egregiously wrong. Lorraine opened by saying, "Leaked confession tape from Senator Hayes' department seems to indicate that you, Director Carter, carried out unauthorized international missions in the Soviet Union very recently. How do you respond to this interpretation of evidence?"

Peggy opened her mouth, then closed it again. She was in no way prepared for a reporter on the offensive. In fact, she really hadn't encountered a reporter on the offensive yet - certainly, the news had covered Steve's death, but her role in that affair had been kept confidential. Faced with a young woman who seemed very determined to pry quotes from her, Peggy was at a loss.

Howard cleared his throat. "You don't want to start with an intro, or something?" he said to Lorraine.

Lorraine blinked, her expression all that was innocent and utterly false. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're scaring my wife."

For a moment, the facade slipped. "Please," Lorraine said. "As though I could scare Peggy Carter."

"You can, actually," Peggy said. "And I'll answer your question. Yes, I was in the Soviet Union recently. My operations were not unauthorized. My charter with SHIELD has been to carry out missions to protect the United States. I do not require the approval of someone higher than myself to do so, within reason."

"And Senator Hayes?"

"Senator Hayes was working with the Soviets on the basis of self-preservation," Peggy said. "But as with many acts of cowardice, his own attempts to save himself doomed him."

"That's a very persuasive argument," Lorraine said. "But how am I to know that you're not to blame? How are Americans to know?"

Howard opened his mouth as though to object, but Peggy stopped him with a look. This, her look said, was her fight. In response to Lorraine, she shrugged, a crass gesture made charming by a carefully timed smile. "I work hard," she said. "As Howard Stark's wife, I could of course live a life of absolute luxury. But instead I go to an office, I train, I stay physically and mentally fit...you see where I'm going with this. I have no motivation to lie. Hayes, on the other hand, has every motivation to protect his own interests, even at the expense of his country."

"Persuasive," Lorraine muttered. Peggy couldn't tell if she meant it as an insult or not, but that really didn't matter. The next question Lorraine asked was, "Are you and Mr. Stark a love story, then?"

Peggy attempted to respond and failed, finding that her ability to articulate how she felt about Howard - and what she thought of him - was all but absent. Lorraine waited for long moments, carefully groomed eyebrows raised in a near-sarcastic inquiry. Peggy didn't want to give her the satisfaction of backing away from a question, but she felt quite trapped.

She'd known fear in her life, of the visceral variety. She was very familiar with the sort of fear that made one certain one was about to die. But this was a different sort of fear. This fear wound through her like a thread, tugging at her, making her aware that the longer she fumbled with Lorraine's question, the more likely her relationship was to be called a sham in the New York Times.

"Have you ever loved anyone?" she finally managed to say, hoping to buy herself some time.

"Once or twice," Lorraine said. "But I'm younger than you are, of course."

"Of course." Peggy's hand itched to slap her, but that was a juvenile reaction of the highest order. "Well, then, you should know. Even looking at him now I know what he's thinking, and what we're both worried about. What could be a truer expression of love than that?"

Lorraine arched just her right brow, a clean and insinuating movement. "Just so," she said, and made a note on her pad.

They spoke for forty minutes after that, covering a wide range of topics. Lorraine didn't call her a liar again, and in fact didn't so much as imply it. Peggy was torn between feeling grateful and feeling annoyed that the girl had chosen to open her interview in such an off-putting fashion. When the hour was up, Lorraine stood, posture perfectly straight, and shook Peggy's hand. "I'll be sure to contact you when I know what paper will run the piece," she said.

She shook Howard's hand, as well. Howard restrained his natural lasciviousness until Jarvis escorted Lorraine to the door, at which point he cocked an eyebrow at Peggy in a way she knew meant he was thinking of being with them both again.

"No," she said, a bit more severely than she really needed to.

"C'mon, it was just a thought."

Peggy rolled her eyes, though there was no rancor behind it. She said, "You're a cad."

"You love me."

The words fell like stones in a still pond, making them both flinch with their effect. She thought again of his obedience in Leningrad, of his trust in her, and of everything that had come from it. She'd be testifying before the Senate next week about the arrest of one of their own as Howard's wife. She had so much to lose. "I do."

"Scares the hell out of me. You, too."

"Yes."

Howard looked at her closely. "Peg -"

"We're married," Peggy said. The words came out considerably more severely than she meant them to. "I don't intend to change that anytime soon."

"And you're a working woman."

"You can spend your days in SHIELD's basements, inventing God only knows what."

"I do have government contracts legitimizing me these days." Howard winked at her.

She smiled, charmed, and for once not in spite of herself. "You do at that."

"I was just thinking -"

The telephone rang. Peggy walked over to pick it up. "Stark residence."

"Peggy," Gabe said. "I'm glad I got you. There's been a disturbance at HQ."

"A disturbance?"

"Three girls, none of them old enough for prom, all of them speaking Russian, and trying to kill everyone they see. We chased them off for now, but -"

"Say no more," Peggy said. "This sort of briefing is best given in person. I'll be right over." She hung up.

"Trouble?"

"More Black Widows."

"You sound almost pleased." The smile at the corners of Howard's mouth belied the 'almost'.

"I -" Peggy closed her mouth on an instinctive denial. She was pleased, of course. Apprehending these girls would bring them one step closer to ending the program. Travkin would want that, if nothing else - and that could be a valuable alliance in the years to come. "I'll see you tonight."

"Damn right you will." He went to her and kissed her, with the sort of ardor that sent a shiver down her spine, and that made her respond in kind. His expression was soft when he pulled away. "Go get 'em, Agent."

"That's Director, to you," Peggy said, and left for SHIELD headquarters with Howard's laughter in her ears.