SHIELD was the only thread left to follow. The only consistency between this world and her own, if anywhere would have answers; especially about her, it would be SHIELD. She’d had worse plans in her time, but not many. The compound had been difficult to invade before, she couldn’t imagine it had gotten any easier. But what options did she have left? She was running on empty, looking over her shoulder at every turn. She didn’t know what believe or who could be trusted–– truthfully, she’d never missed Jarvis more in her life. Not the most adept agent, but loyal. He’d have followed her anywhere with only mild complaints.
She came business casual in stolen clothes, hoping to blend and approached a security guard with an unassuming smile. When he’d leaned in to direct her, Peggy had driven a knee into his kidney and an elbow into his throat, sending him sprawling as he wheezed, clutching the sides of his neck with watery eyes. “ Terribly sorry. Truthfully, ” She murmured, patting his leg once for good measure as she rummaged his pockets for his security card. He gagged an ugly noise that prompted her to look around erratically, shushing him like an irritable teacher. “ Now I’m going to need you to not cause a fuss for at least fifteen minutes, it’s up to you if you’d like to take the gag and do those conscious or not. ” He lunged for her, Peggy drove her heel into his face leaving a him in a heap.
“ Or not it is. ”
She’d dragged his limp form out of immediate sight in the lobby, progressing through the doors with his stun stick. She’d made her further than she expected by the time they caught up, but far from far enough. She’d barely scraped the surface when an agent grabbed her from behind, barring her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She rammed the baton against him, desperately trying to activate it but the button gave her grief, instead, she felt the stun hit own rib cage twice over as back up arrived and struck her with it, leaving her shaking on the floor by the time the agent let her loose.
Now she was here, waiting upon the director after giving them nothing. Sitting in deafening silence, the interrogation room utterly still. How many times had she stood on the other side of the glass? She’d seen Thompson break jaws and eye sockets, sometimes so brutal even Peggy with everything to prove averted her eyes. Hydra hadn’t gone soft with her either, she’d heard the snickers when they finally made her cry. If she had fear of facing such treatment again, she didn’t show it. Instead, she sat steely faced, waited for Director Johnson.
“Peggy Carter’s fighting style has none of the artistry of characters like Melinda May or Black Widow. She basically slams heavy objects into men until they fall over, which is very satisfying to watch.”
SHIELD was Peggy’s second greatest joy. Years of hard work, humiliation and grief had finally paid off the day Howard recruited her. He trusted her but much more than that he respected her. He deemed her worthy and elevated her to a position where she no longer had to smile through her dismissals. Granted her real power and believed her in ability to execute his vision whilst ensuring the lasting impact of Steve Rogers spirit would keep them from straying too far into corruption. As she was quickly learning, that dream had not lasted. Regardless, SHIELD had quickly become everything to her back then. Her chance at a legacy and to carve a path for herself and those who followed. Now, she felt like a stranger and a ghost all at once. Stuck, floating through unfamiliar halls, seeing her face in memoriam in unexpected places.
She looked at Howard’s photo, mouth in a tight uncompromising frown. He’d spent years looking for Steve, nearly bombed Manhattan in his madness to bring him home. How long had he looked for her, his right-hand man? She just wanted to tell him she was alright, that everything was alright. “ Agent Romanoff, ” She greeted, turning away as red entered her peripheral. Since her reintroduction to SHIELD, Peggy had been passed from department to department, attempting to bring her up to speed as rapidly as possible. She was a smart woman, but a proud one too. It was difficult to no longer be the most knowledgable in the room. Today, her humbling would come from Natasha, her guide for the morning. “ It’s a pleasure, I hope I won’t be too much of a distraction for you today, I’m sure you’re very busy. ”
“ That’s close enough, ” she warned, her hands steady and pointed at center mass.
Steve had watched him die. He plummeted hundreds of feet, an unsurvivable fall, even if you got lucky enough to hit water instead of solid ice. If there had been any chance of survival, Rogers would’ve had a team on the ground, inspecting under every rock until the soldier was found. So if Bucky Barnes died in 1945, who had she been tailing all afternoon? He looked like him, sounded like him too. A little older perhaps, but if that was all three quarters of a century had left on him perhaps there was something she should be adding to her evening routine. The longer she observed, the more her curiosity burned to anger. This wasn’t an uncanny descendent, this was an imposter.
Operation Paperclip was something Peggy had to live with on her ledger ‘til the day she died but it had yielded them crucial information. The experimentation of twins and the progress towards the engineering of clones. It had been crude technology in the 40′s, but who’s to say what had become of it. Hydra had taken Barnes before Steve’s intervention, all they would’ve needed was a blood and cell sample to be churning out remakes to this day. What else could he be? Even if Bucky survived the fall, made it out intact, he’d be over a hundred years old, not thirty.
She’d waited patiently for him to move away from the crowds and the watchful eyes of civilians, the moment he was alone, she was at his heel demanding he stay where he was and was very careful about what he did next. If Hydra was trying to lure her out using nostalgic faces, here she was. But she wasn’t about to take it easy on them.
“ James Barnes died in 1945, ” she snapped, taking in the whites of his eyes as he stared back at her. She didn’t flinch, keeping the gun steady. Not another step. “ Which begs the question, who exactly are you? ”
Moral alignment (chaotic good, lawful neutral, etc): Neutral Good
Biggest Advantage: Peggy is highly intelligent and ruthless when needed, she often uses her underestimated position as a woman to better position herself strategically and adapts rapidly.
Biggest Vulnerability: She can be arrogant and bullheaded, wishing for independence to her own detriment at times.
Mental Ailments: Survivors Guilt, PTSD
Physical Ailments: N/A
Addictions: N/A
Phobias: Unknown
► misc;
First Book They Read: The Velveteen Rabbit
Favorite Book: Frankenstein
Favorite Music Artist: Etta James
Favorite Film: The Wizard of Oz
► BACKSTORY;
TLDR; peggy got transferred to the year 2021 via unstable darkforce matter and is now evading hydra while attempting to piece together where she is and how to return home in a world she does not understand or know.
𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄:
Peggy was always a touch unruly. She was boisterous, assertive and certainly not a child that was timid with the word no. She wasn’t a tomboy growing up, in fact, she loved her dresses and when her mother would put her hair into pretty pin-curls. She just also didn’t mind if those curls ended the day with a few twigs nestled in and if the dress had a little dirt on its hem. She liked to play, and for a time that was indulged. She would toddle after her brother Michael, wrestle and sword fight with sticks until she bruised and breathless. Her father had found it cute and scrappy even. But her mother knew the world would do no favours for a woman who could not learn her place. By the age of five, each time Peggy would attempt to bound off after her brother, Amanda would bring her to heel.
Her brother had still been playing with action figures the first time his younger sister had been spoken to about marriage in earnest. What man would put up with you, Peggy Carter? She’d only been eight and otherwise unbothered by the thought, but it planted a seed. Each time Peggy found herself straying outside of expectation, the words came back to her in a rush. Who would want you? As she grew up, the idea moulded her and the rebellion slowly faded from her eyes as it did many young girls who did not quite fit in. Peggy was still perhaps a dash more blunt than her mother’s sewing circle, put for all intents and purposes the girl was fast becoming declawed.
At fifteen, she snuck into her headmasters home, with a gaggle of other girls hellbent on proving there was life in them yet, she’d attempted a getaway with a pair of his wife’s knickers and a bottle of brandy, her friends had egged her on from the window, only to abandon her when the lights to his office switched on, catching her red handed. She contributes to her ability to withstand torture largely to sister Agnes, who broke three rulers over her thighs while doling out her punishment, Peggy did not give her the satisfaction of punishing her friends, not even to make the lashes stop. It made her a hero among her peers for a week or two, but her mother had been horrified. That night, she’d broken a switch or two on Peggy’s fresh bruises herself, furiously begging her to take life seriously. It broke something inside her that Peggy hadn’t known was still holding on.
Her brother loathed it, the soft demure tone his sister now sported full-time. Only eighteen and engaged to a man who told her which way to turn her head half the time. Half the reason he’d recommended her for the position of field agent was to get her away from Fred, before she signed her life away to him. Peggy met his offers with resistance, even outright hostility, insisting he had no right to meddle in her affairs. He knew what she was though, better than anyone. Of the two, she’d always been the tough one. As children, he’d almost broken her nose playing on a swing set and not once did she make a move to go crying to mother, she let him fuss over her and took it in stride. When they wrestled, even though she was littler, she’d drag him to the grass mercilessly. She was a creature made for adventure, she always had been. She was too smart, too ruthless to become some weak mans house mouse out of fear she’d never find another.
It was only when Michael died that Peggy had the strength to come back to herself, to reject the mould she’d been trying to fill her entire adolescence. She left Fred with his ring, and accepted her recruitment with MI5. From there she progressed at a rapid rate, taking to espionage like a fish in water. She was personally headhunted by the SSR, eventually coming in as an advisor to project rebirth where she met Steve Rogers.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐕𝐃𝐀𝐘:
The field brought out the best and the worst of Peggy, still grieving the loss of her brother and the overall devastation of survival throughout war made her resentful and angry. She was liberated, seeing things and doing things she otherwise would never have dreamed of and it breathed life into her in a way she could not describe. She had been born for this life, for better or worse. The rest of the world, however, could not see that. It didn’t matter how she toppled her classmates, how many successful missions she completed on her own; she was still just a girl.
Steve Rogers changed everything. He treated her with respect and did so without intention or assumption. Beyond that, he cared whether or not she was respected. He listened to her instruction and even prioritised it at times. She was a true advisor and friend, for the first time since her brother died, it felt as though she was understood. She understood him right back, skinny and sickly, the world humiliated him almost as thoroughly as it did her. Together they rose, a formidable team. She hadn’t meant to fall for him, she’d given up on that aspect when she’d chosen the battlefield over Fred years prior, but she did. Hard. Steve was a good man, an honourable man and loving him was easy. Losing him, however, was devastating. When Steve Rogers went into the ice, it felt as though part of her died with him, left out in the arctic to freeze in its depths. Only Howard and his commandos did she ever share her commiseration with, to the rest, Peggy kept her misery at arms length. Life continued, even if she wished it hadn’t.
The SSR brought back old humiliations, no longer at war these men did not have to follow strength, only bureaucracy, which was not on her side. At war, she could sucker punch these men and the rest would fall into line, if they trusted you had the nerve to not spook during a firefight, they could follow you. Strength was the rule of the jungle while the bombs dropped all over the world, when the firing ceased, the status quo crept back in and she was the worst thing she could be: a woman. They ridiculed her, spoke to her like a child or a floozy and expected her to fetch coffees and file reports, knowing full well that her file was padded with victories the likes of which they would never see. It didn’t matter. She was cap’s old girl. A wounded puppy left on the doorstep that they humoured. She hated it, but she persevered. She kept her grief for Steve locked in a little draw, far from their prying eyes and got to work.
Eventually, they relented they criticisms, if only lightly. She became an agent in their unqualified eyes. Slowly ascending the ranks, her eye on the position of Chief until the day Howard Stark approached her with a better offer. To build something new with him, something impregnable, with only those they trusted within its ranks. SHIELD came to be. She’d only expected to help Howard, to be at his side and advise quietly as she’d come to expect. Instead he made her director, entrusting it to her care. She knew she’d remember that moment until her dying day.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐉𝐔𝐌𝐏:
Darkforce, or at the time, known as Zero Matter was and remains both a highly unstable yet extremely powerful element. To this day its compound make up is still a mystery, leading to volatile and unpredictable effects. In the wake atomic testing, a portal opened, swallowing a military personal team into the void. They were never heard from again, nor could their location ever be discovered, no matter the attempts to recreate the “accidental” experiment.
It was precisely due to its unstable nature, that Agent Carter and Dr. Wilkes sought to remove it from the hands of Isodyne Energy. As the director of SHIELD, there were plenty of people Peggy could send on the mission, but no hands she trusted more than her own for such precious and horrendous cargo. It should’ve been a standard extraction, even under extraordinary circumstances and it would’ve been had it not been for Whitney Frost. The woman held Wilkes at gun point, bargaining for the vial of stolen dark matter. Peggy arrived on the scene, out of ammunition from her fight with Ryan Hunt but not ideas. She moved behind Whitney, silently communicating for Wilkes to set the vial down, with the intent to grab her from behind when her guard lowered. Only the woman’s guard didn’t lower at all, she went to shoot the doctor for assured measure he would not try to take the vial back once she lowered the weapon. Peggy charged her from behind at the last second, sending them both sprawling to the floor as she yelled for Jason to get the vial and run. Whitney got her hands on it first, Peggy quickly on top of her attempting to pry it from her finger tips. The moment the vial hit the ground, there was darkness.
Darkness was all Peggy saw, all she felt, all she could think about until suddenly it dispersed. She had no idea where she was- or as she quickly pieced together, when she was. Where she was: a hydra base where they had been experimenting on what was now known as Darkforce. She remained captive, tortured and interrogated for information pertaining to her identity and knowledge surrounding the Darkforce. They knew who she was, but no one could figure how she’d got there. Carter offered them nothing not that she knew herself, only able to escape two months later during another Darkforce experiment gone wrong that sent the base into chaos. At no point had there been any sign of Whitney or Wilkes post darkness and it remains that Peggy has no idea what became of them. Truthfully, she doesn’t know exactly what had become of herself. She was in the year 2021, but it remains to be seen whether this is her future or the future of an another reality she has accidentally been transported to. Peggy is currently laying low, attempting to understand the world around her while sticking to the channels she knows. She fears being tracked or traced, friendless and unsure of what to do next or where to go.
So the thing that came with being awful at combat and having a really good teacher, was that there was a middle ground. A middle ground in which Deke learned one move really really well, so he could incapacitate the attacker and call for help. That move itself was the nose, at least it’s objective was the nose. His hand shoved up, bottom palm, and all force in his elbow behind the impact. He surprised himself with it actually working. Now, this was the part where he called for help. The only problem was his smashed phone on the pavement. His attacker remained on the ground with their face contorted in pain, and Deke wondered if he should just run. But… what if this guy went after someone else? Dammit. “Hi,” He said, his eyes continuously darting toward his fallen attacker. “Could I possibly borrow your phone?”
@thephoenixstart
He was swift and competent in his take down. Not the swing of someone frightened and unsure, that much was certain. Even at the academy, you rarely saw someone throw a first time strike without some hesitancy, it wasn’t human nature to break a nose without blinking. Peggy should’ve kept her hat on and kept walking, but she lingered in the alley mouth for a moment too long. “ No... no telephone. ” She stammered through, a heavy russian accent to obscure her polite tone as he looked at her through an erratic nervous gaze, bouncing between herself and the groaning heap of man on the cobble stone. It wasn’t unheard of surely, who would purchase a telephone just for travels, surely they’d have them here? All she knew, was there was not a chance in hell nor high bloody waters she was handing anyone her phone. Speaking to him was stupid enough; he could be anyone. He could a Hydra operative. How would she know until it was too late? If he was, he likely knew who she was already. Once he had that phone, who knew what he could track? Technology was a far cry from the 40′s, even with the advancements she had access to within Stark’s perimeters. He knew far more about her phone at a cursory glance than Peggy who had learned everything from a lovely if not slightly too talkative young man. It had an application for the radio, which was quite interesting, but not entirely useful to her. She only got the thing because apparently the world had outgrown its need for pay phones. Otherwise, it was just another item that could be used to find her and even one of those was one too many.
What if he is no one, however? What if he truly did need help? She couldn’t just keep on walking, nor could she be here when the police arrived. During the war, it was where you were most likely to find Hydra Operatives hiding in plain sight. It also allowed them to be armed at all times. If she could get him to run for help, she could run too and let the devil decide what happened next. “ Prostite, ser. Police... go police? I stay and wait. ”
