Chapter Text
Peggy stared into the freight box of glowing green Stark tech. Jarvis was right. She hated her current position, though it was of her own making, and hated that Jarvis was right even more.
The sound of footsteps told her that Jarvis had made quick work of his phone call to the SSR.
“That didn’t take long.” She spun on her heels, but the man she saw wasn’t Jarvis.
He was large and underdressed for the evening, with a sleeveless white T-shirt and suspenders.
“Oh.” She reached for her gun.
The smile he gave her was in no way comforting.
“I thought you were someone else.” She kept her voice casual, but the fact that he was here, along with his questionable attire, indicated he was no innocent passerby.
With a grunt, he charged her, more like an animal than a man, and body slammed her into rolling backward over the crates. Pain blossomed in her back as she hit the floor. The gun in her hand went skittering across the floor.
Why was it that the only man she’d encountered of late who didn’t underestimate her happened to be a brute working for the thieves who stole Howard Stark's technology?
“Brannis told me one of you would be coming.”
“One of me?”
“And I’m not afraid to kill a woman.”
Where was sexism when a woman really needed it?
She gave him a once-over, assessing his height and weight. It would not be an easy match. “Would it make a difference if I told you I won’t make it easy?”
“Yeah, he told me that, too.”
Lovely. It seemed the criminals were more astute than her fellow SSR agents. Just her luck.
He took a swing. She ducked just in time. His fist hit the metal wall, and she used all her strength to get in a few good blows, then a solid kick to send him stumbling backward. She had speed and training on her side, but he had the advantage of strength and weight. The blow he sent to her ribs stole her breath.
He sent her flying into metal canisters. That smarted.
He grabbed a pipe, breathing heavily as he swung. She kicked his kneecap, which slowed him down only enough for her to roll to her feet. His anger was palpable as she threw blow after blow into him. With a throaty half-growl, he lifted her and slammed her backward on top of the crate, pressing the pipe into her throat.
Clutching it desperately, using all her strength to hold it off, she glimpsed Jarvis swing a metal crowbar into the back of the man’s head. The pressure on her windpipe vanished, and she gulped air greedily as Jarvis and the brute traded blows.
Jarvis was faring poorly against his much larger opponent, pinned up against the metal wall in real trouble. She reached into the shipping crate and grabbed one of Stark’s constrictors. It might not work as a massager, but according to Jarvis, its unintended purpose would make it an effective weapon.
She activated it and pressed it against the right shoulder blade of the hired muscle. Strands of electric green energy snaked down his arm. His body shook as flesh and bone twisted, the wet crunches accompanied by screams and grunts.
She grimaced. When Howard’s inventions failed, they did so horrifically.
“What did you do to my arm?” he gasped, falling to the floor.
She worked on catching her breath as she watched in grim fascination. “Well, that worked.”
“Not if you want a massage.” Jarvis was just as out-of-breath, the right sleeve of his suit hanging off his shoulder and his hair uncharacteristically disheveled.
Footsteps outside had her scanning the floor for her gun. “Did you call it in?”
“Unfortunately, the phone box was out of order.”
She spotted her firearm on the floor near the far wall, but as soon as she made a run for it, the area was overrun by men just as large as the one currently writhing on the floor.
The man in front was even larger than the two-bit criminal with the disfigured arm. He wore his hair cropped unusually close to his scalp, and he barked orders in French at the men around him. She understood him, though she wasn’t certain if Jarvis could.
“Secure the Stark Tech.” He smiled at her. “I’ll deal with these two.”
She was only a foot away from her gun, but the men all had theirs leveled at her and Jarvis. They were sorely outnumbered.
”It’s an honor, Agent Carter,” the man said in English. “Taking you out of the equation should shape history in interesting ways.”
He aimed at her head.
“Now wait just a minute,” Jarvis, bloody fool that he was, stepped in front of her. “Surely, we can…”
The room erupted in flashes of sound and light, then filled with smoke. There were sounds of a struggle. She dove for her gun, coughing, her eyes watering as she searched frantically until her fingers brushed against metal.
She grabbed it, but if she fired, she’d be shooting blindly.
There were sounds of bodies being slammed at high velocity into the sides of the boat—bones snapping, terrified screams, and unsavory French with strings of profanity she hadn’t heard even on the war front.
“Shit!” Someone cursed, and instantly there was another explosion, much larger this time and alarmingly close to her. The sound of it made her ears ring, but something muted the blast.
A mass slammed the ceiling, then hit the floor with a hard, metallic thud.
As the smoke cleared, she blinked away tears, gasping for breath, and struggled to make sense of the scene. Jarvis was just getting to his knees near the door. Bodies and guns were strewn on the floor.
She pushed to her feet, swaying as she struggled to clear her head and her vision, and made her way to Jarvis, keeping her gun at her side. “Are you all right, Mr. Jarvis?”
“I believe so.” He took her hand and got to his feet.
She moved over each body, getting a look at the faces of the men, but the leader was not among them. The body in the middle had gotten the worst of it. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit that had barely survived the blast. A piece of sheet metal lay on the floor next to him. His hair was singed and torn sleeves revealed a glint of gold. The side of his face was coated with blood.
She knelt beside him, putting her gun back in its holster. “Jarvis,” she tore the sleeve further, inspecting the oddity, “have you seen anything like this?”
Jarvis dropped to one knee beside her and studied the unusual prosthesis. “Not even in Mr. Stark’s lab.” He touched one of the gold lines. “I believe he took the brunt of the blast. Had he not, I’m afraid some of the items in those freight crates would’ve created quite a situation.”
She rifled through his pockets. Her fingers found a rectangular object, hard, smooth. She retrieved it. It was a device of some kind, with a glass surface that was cracked, no doubt damaged in the explosion. She saw no obvious buttons, but as she felt along the edge, she found two minuscule protrusions on one side and a smaller one at the top of the opposite side.
She held it up and gave a quizzical look to Jarvis.
He shook his head. “I’ve not seen anything similar to that device either.”
Very curious. She looked back down. “Who is this man?” Pondering the oddities, she pocketed the device. “Help me.”
Together they turned the unconscious man over.
His black and gold prosthesis flopped on the metal floor, but she barely noticed. It was the face that stole her breath. Even coated with blood, she recognized him.
“Sergeant Barnes.” The name escaped her as barely a breath. How was this possible?
“Sergeant James Barnes?” Jarvis inquired, eyebrows flashing in surprise. “Leading member of the Howling Commandos. Captain Rogers’ best friend? Are you referring to that James Barnes?”
She blinked down at the man and took a moment to breathe. “Indeed, Mr. Jarvis.”
“Isn’t he dead?”
“Apparently, not, unless…” She swallowed and reached out, feeling for a pulse, and gave a relieved sigh when she found it. “It appears he’s adept at evading certain death.”
Azzano, a few close calls with the Commandos, the train in the Alps, and now this explosion. How was it possible?
The glimmer of a chain around his neck caught her eye, and she reached for it, pulling until the pair of dog tags slid from beneath his collared shirt. The name on them confirmed it.
Oh, James, where have you been? What’s happened to you?
“We need to call this into the SSR.”
“Is someone gonna help me?” came a pained voice.
Peggy looked over at the T-shirt thug with the broken arm. “Help will be on the way shortly.” She looked back to Jarvis, who was staring down at Barnes as though he were trying to solve a puzzle. “I’d normally say we need to get him to a hospital as soon as possible, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea with the prosthesis he has on. That’s no ordinary civilian prosthesis.”
Jarvis pushed to his feet. “Do you think he’s involved in the theft of Mr. Stark’s inventions?”
Peggy remained kneeling, her fingers probing the side of Barnes’ bloodied skull for any deformities. It all felt normal, except for a slight bump that she was sure would be uglier tomorrow. “I can’t imagine he would be involved in such an endeavor. I knew him to be an honorable man, and Steve trusted him implicitly.”
Steve.
She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and felt a quick flash of shame as a wish presented itself to her despite the admonishments of her conscience.
Why couldn’t it be Steve lying here, impossibly alive, instead of Sergeant Barnes?
“We need to move him before we call the SSR, but we can’t leave this technology unguarded.” She assessed various options.
The French man was still unaccounted for.
“Help me get him back to the sewer tunnel.” It would be a difficult journey, but the tunnel the thieves had made to Stark’s mansion wasn’t far, and the SSR would be unlikely to discover it. She hoped. “Once we get him hidden there, perhaps you can look for another phone box in the area and call it in.”
Jarvis nodded curtly and gave a surprised huff as he moved to lift Barnes. He cleared his throat sheepishly. “I’m afraid he’s quite a bit heavier than he looks.”
“I’m sure we can manage together,” she said.
-000-
Thirty-two hours earlier….
Bucky felt it in his bones, inhaled it with each breath of air that carried subtle tones of sea salt, sewage, and…hot dogs. He smiled. He was home.
Home! In 1946 New York, if all worked as it should have. Steve was in the ice, and his parents were still alive.
His folks… His sisters. They were a few miles away. So close, and yet they might as well be on a different planet because a social visit wasn’t in the cards.
Sam was staring wide-eyed at the head of the alley, and Bucky mustered a grin even as a pressure built behind his eyes that threatened to turn everything misty.
“Holy shit!” Sam exclaimed slack-jawed. “It’s like out of a movie.”
An older woman passing by gave them a curious glance.
“Yeah, and we need to get appropriate attire and, uh,” he tapped Sam on the shoulder to ease the sting of his next words, “you should shave that beard.”
Sam’s head whipped toward him. “What?”
Bucky tilted his head and shrugged, offering an apologetic smile. “If we’re gonna blend in, that thing you call a beard is going to have to go.”
“I don’t—”
“Look around.” Bucky pointed to the pedestrians on the city street. “See anyone else with an overly manicured goatee?”
Sam straightened and rubbed at his beard. “What about Dizzy Gillespie?”
“I think they call that a soul patch, but hey, if you want to be turning heads everywhere you go.”
“Like being black in 1946 isn’t going to do that. Damn. Martin Luther King hasn’t done his thing yet. He’s just a teenager, I think.” Sam huffed and crossed his arms. “Fine, I’ll think about shaving for the sake of the mission, but if you’re yanking my chain, there will be payback.” He punctuated his threat with a pointed index finger. “Where are we gonna find clothes?”
Bucky grimaced. Sam was right, and race was no doubt going to be an issue at some point. New York wasn’t anywhere near as segregated as the South, from what he’d read of the civil rights movement, but it was nothing like 2024—not for black people and not for women.
Bucky knew where he was and, if he took a cab, he could be at his folks’ place in thirty minutes. His mom would wrap him in a big hug, cry her eyes out, and then feed him to within an inch of his life. He lost the battle against the mistiness and blinked, turning his face quickly away from Sam in a pretense of peering down the street.
“Follow me.”
First, they needed clothes, then they’d work on locating Batroc, who surprised everyone by surviving bullets from both Sharon and Karli. Their biggest issue was making sure they completed the mission before they burned through all their cash. With the nature of time travel, they had time to prep for this mission, but still less than either of them would’ve liked.
Fortunately, it was a hell of a lot easier to print 1940-era paper currency using 21st-century methods than it was to make fakes of the real stuff circulating after the turn of the millennium, with all its anti-counterfeiting features.
-000-
On the dock….
“Bucky, goddamnit.” Sam stifled a groan as he stuffed the binoculars into his pack. He hated being the lookout. He missed the suit and wings.
When Sam saw Batroc take off, he pursued. They tussled, and the asshole had gotten the better of him. Again.
Which meant Batroc knew they were in 1946. He hated to admit that his hand-to-hand combat skills needed an upgrade. They’d lost the element of surprise because of his screw-up. He could just imagine the ribbing he’d get from Bucky if he asked the guy for a few lessons, but if he kept finding himself in these situations, he might just have to swallow his pride.
And where the hell was Bucky? SSR agents were canvasing the place, and with the cluster of injured bad guys and mountain of recovered Stark Tech, they had their work cut out for them.
He saw no sign of Bucky among the men being carted off the boat, but his vantage point wasn’t the greatest, and the cover of darkness interspersed with headlights made picking out facial features difficult.
The makeshift walkie-talkie transceiver of Bucky’s cell phone wasn’t working. Either the phone was off, broken, or he wasn’t in range. Sam wished he had Redwing, but he couldn’t exactly fly a drone in 1946 without catching a whole lot of attention. Hell, bringing their cell phones had been risky, but even without cell service, they were useful—acting as a camera, notepad, calculator, and a walkie-talkie, thanks to the blue-tooth enabled, radio-transducer earbuds.
Unfortunately, Bucky wasn’t answering.
-000-
“Howard, you came back to New York City risking notice from every American intelligence agency. Why?” Peggy was so deep into her double agent role she scarcely saw a way out. They were still no closer to clearing Stark’s name of treason for the black market sale of his technology to America’s enemies, but at least the bulk of that technology was now in the hands of the SSR.
She hoped one Sergeant who was presumed KIA was still alive and resting in a bed back at the Penthouse. Leaving him unattended was inconvenient, but Stark hadn’t exactly scheduled his clandestine return to the U.S. with convenience in mind. Someone needed to extricate the fugitive inventor from the clutches of his benefactor.
He was lucky to still be alive.
Howard Stark crouched in the back of the car. “Let’s get back to my place. We’ll have some sherry. I’ll explain everything.”
She hadn’t yet told him about their guest. Jarvis had astutely determined that the least known Stark property was the safest. It was leased by a dummy corporation that itself was owned by another dummy corporation. The SSR was so busy interrogating the prisoners and going through the Stark tech that, for now, they had a modicum of breathing room to get Stark safely behind private doors. Hopefully, the SSR wouldn’t come pounding those doors down any time soon.
Ten minutes later they walked through the front door of the Penthouse. Stark took off the hat he’d kept low on his face and hung it on the coat rack. Fortunately, the building was quiet given the late hour so they had few witnesses to deal with.
Jarvis locked the door behind them. Peggy set her purse on the entry table and hurried straight to the room. Sergeant Barnes had been unconscious when she left for work that morning. It had been a long day, culminating in breaking Stark free from the double-crossing goons of the smuggler, Mr. Mink.
She opened the door to see him wide awake, propped up in bed, reading a book. The wound on his head was already well on its way to healing. Remarkable. He looked up at her, closed the novel, and gave her a succinct nod. “Hello, Carter. You’re still Agent Carter, right?”
“Yes. It’s nice to see you awake…and alive.” She closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. Just looking at him reminded her of Steve. They had truly been inseparable until that damn mission, and seeing Barnes alone with Steve gone felt wrong in ways she was only just discovering. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Where have you been all this time, Sergeant?” She tried to keep the quiver out of her voice, but the way his eyes softened told her she’d failed.
He got to his feet. “It’s just Bucky now. I’m not in the army anymore. I have an associate that I need to touch base with, but I don’t have my, uh, communication device and we hadn’t settled on a place to crash, so I have no clue where he is.” He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, looking at her with an expression she’d never quite seen before on his face.
So, he’d opted to evade the question. Odd. And what on Earth was he talking about? Was the item she’d confiscated a communication device? Did he mean a radio? If so, it looked like no radio she’d ever seen, and it was far too small to have any significant range. It didn’t even have an antenna.
She studied him for a moment before answering. He looked older than she remembered, as though the past fifteen months had been extraordinarily unkind to him. Given what she knew happened on that train and the changes to his left arm, that was no doubt true.
“Peggy, I had a rectangular device on me with a glass face. Where is it?” His words were flat, but there was an intensity in his gaze that told her the item was of the utmost importance to him.
“What is it?”
“It’s a communication device.”
“It was damaged.”
He took a step toward her. “Where is it?”
She tensed. Where did his loyalties reside? She’d known him to be an honorable man, and Steve trusted him without hesitation. Still, a lot could change in fifteen months.
“Come on, Peggy!” He sighed, rolling his eyes and plopping down on the edge of the mattress. “Look, I know this is weird. Just…I need the damn device. I can’t explain what’s going on. You’d never believe me, anyway. I was there to stop those guys from killing you and Jarvis and taking Stark’s tech. I messed up.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders rocking with something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Story of my life.” His tongue rolled in his cheek. “I was supposed to be in and out. Instead, I got captured. Sort of. Again .”
She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “You sustained quite a nasty wound on that block head of yours. Remarkable how well it’s healed in just a few hours.”
He grimaced and shook his head. “Wow. You'd think a guy who almost died to help save the world would get a slightly warmer reception? I forgot how much fun you are, Carter.”
Sudden anger sharpened her words. “You don’t get to be flippant with me, Sergeant! Do you have any idea how devastated Steve was after—” her voice quivered again. Damnit, she wouldn’t cry. “—he watched you fall. He thought you were dead. He blamed himself.”
Bucky’s head dipped. “I know.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is there a reason you’re so hesitant to explain your whereabouts for the past fifteen months? Your family no doubt grieved you.”
His head shot up and his eyes glistened with sudden tears. Instantly, she felt like a cad. Best to keep her mouth shut for the next few moments and let him mull over whatever turmoil was brewing behind those expressive eyes.
He said nothing. Rather, he got to his feet, found his shoes in the corner, and put them on. Without a word, he walked out of the room.
She couldn’t let him go.
“Sergeant…Bucky…I must insist…”
He spun to face her. “The device isn’t in the bedroom. I already checked. I searched the apartment, too, so I’m guessing you stashed it someplace, or you kept in on you.” He headed toward the living room. “I don’t want to have to search your purse, but I’ll—”
“Holy Lazarus back from the dead. Barnes?!”
Bucky stopped inches away from Howard Stark at the head of the hallway. They were looking wide-eyed at one another. Howard’s jaw was slack and, for once, he seemed speechless.
Bucky, on the other hand, lost most of the color from his already fair complexion. “Howard.” He took a breath and dropped his gaze to the floor. “It’s, uh, good to see you.”
Hmmm. Howard and Bucky had always gotten along well, and the sergeant had usually been gregarious and almost as cocky as Howard. His was a curious reaction.
