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The smoking crater in the north meadow of Central Park hadn't been made by a weapon or a meteor.
It had been made by a woman.
She was hauling herself out of it when the SSR agents rushed across the from the 97th St transverse, guns drawn. Thompson and Carter were in the lead, Sousa limping at the rear. It was Thompson who called out, challenging.
"You get your hands in the air, lady!" He barked. He sounded good and looked very dashing in the dim lights, Peggy had to give him that.
The woman looked up at the dozen or so agents moving to ring her and the hole in the ground. She was dressed like some sort of circus performer or a burlesque dancer: her clothing was a long black trench coat, boots and a extraordinarily form fitting body suit of some dark colour with a white vertical stripe down the centre. When her coat swished open Peggy could see at least two holsters, one for a sleek black handgun and one for something else, long and thin against her thigh. The woman was armed to the teeth.
Carter checked back, intrigued, edging to one side to let more light fall on the woman's face and outfit. Did she have scars on her wrist? Was she one of Dottie's comrades?
The face that turned into the light was long, with a firm jaw and high cheek bones. It was regal rather than pretty; strong rather than sweet. Her eyes were a pale colour and her mouth was wide and generous. She had hair that gleamed errant gold, pulled back into a sleek pony tail which trailed down under her collar. Scars on her neck stood in proud relief in the lighting and from where she was Peggy could see the woman was missing the top part of her right ear.
She studied them all with little flicks of her eyes, back and forth across the line. Her face was frighteningly still and cool, giving away nothing. She lacked the gleam of madness that Dottie had carried but when she straightened herself up to her full, quite impressive height (only a little shorter than Thompson) her hands shook loose and spread to the sides, relaxed and ready.
Peggy Carter felt a chill go up her spine. This was no dancer. This was a warrior.
"Guys, chill. Anyone see where Thor or Falcon went? And I might have to borrow a car, I'll never catch up to them on...foot..." Her accent was pure American, her manner casual. She'd been searching the horizon while she babbled at them and something about the skyline seemed to freeze her words in her throat. She turned, ignoring Thompson's order to "stand still!", did a full transit back to the front.
"The skyline is fucked up. Half the buildings missing. Not anywhere near loud enough. You're all dressed wrong; but you're also all perfectly matching. Hell, it even smells--" She suddenly slammed her hands together and Peggy jumped in surprise. So did Thompson and half the others. "Loki, you fucking asshole!" That last was shouted at the sky.
"You watch your language missy!" Thompson brayed at her, his embrassment audible in his voice.
"Missy? I'm older'n you, pretty boy," she laughed. 'At least I think I am. What year is this?"
"1947," Peggy supplied.
The woman did a double take, leaned in to study her. "You're...you're Peggy Carter, aren't you?"
"You know this lady, Madge?" Thompson snapped.
"I've never met her in my life," Carter responded.
"That's true, buddy. I only know her from reputation." She wrinkled her brow, studying the sky again. "The question is, do i stay put and hope the white knights swoop in or try to find my own way home? I've got some ideas--"
"Yeah, well you can share'em in one of our interrogation rooms, get your damn hands up!" Thompson snarled, pointing his revolver at her. She smiled, long and slow, the expression creeping from one edge of her mouth to the other like a centipede.
Peggy jumped backwards, knocking over Sousa, as the woman exploded from her calm stance. She moved like a storm wind through the assembled agents, first taking Thompson's gun out of his hand as though he were a statue and then clubbing him on the side of the head with it. She scythed Kim and Allegro's feet out from under them with a single knee-level kick, them back flipped--one handed, she was still holding the gun--into two more agents. In the space of about four heartbeats the strange blond was the only person left standing other than Peggy.
Carter stared at her, both awed and frightened. She didn't move like anyone Peggy had ever seen...except for Steve. She moved like Steve--slower, yes. Not quite as overwhelmingly powerful. But it was the only comparison she had.
Peggy was very secure in her ability to hold her own against all comers but she suddenly didn't want to fight this woman.
The blond leveled her stolen handgun at Carter and gestured towards the cars. "Let's go for a ride, Agent Carter, so's I don't have to do something drastic to your buddies here." Peggy went almost willingly, clues arranging themselves into a strange and dangerous picture in her mind.
Sousa snarled from the ground as the blond stalked past him "You hurt her, lady, and I'll personally put a bullet in you."
The blond looked down at the former soldier. "I believe you. Good. Agent Carter, keep your hands where I can see them at all times please. Or I shoot Agent Sousa first. Then Thompson."
"How the devil do you know their names?" Peggy hissed as she slid into the driver's seat of Thompson's car and started the engine. The other woman didn't walk in front of or behind the vehicle as she had hoped (she had intended to pop the gears into motion and run her over) but instead got into the back seat, the gun still trained on Peggy's head.
"I'll tell you in a minute, could you please drive somewhere safe?"
Suddenly the blond's voice had gotten weak and wracked with pain. Peggy looked at her in the rear view mirror as she pulled out onto 97th and saw that her face had relaxed into an expression of agony.
In the mirror, the other woman smiled at her, sad and soft.
Then she uncocked the gun and passed it over Peggy's shoulder, dropping it on the front seat. Carter nearly rammed the car into a light post in surprise.
"I'm supremely not your enemy, Peggy. In fact, we have a good friend in common. His name's Steve. Steve Rogers."
Carter jammed on the brakes in the middle of the thankfully empty street (it was very late), grabbed the gun and pointed it at the other woman. "You do not get to taunt me with that name! I knew everyone, every woman, he knew and you are not one of them!"
The blond stared her directly in the eyes. "When Howard Stark gave Steve his Vibranium shield the first time, he was flirting with a secretary in the war bunker in London. You shot at him to 'test' the shield and teach him a lesson. He never forgot it, trust me. Among his last words to you he asked you to go dancing with him. You were the first woman he kissed, because before he was Captain America no girls would give him the time of day; afterwords you were the only one he wanted. He loved you, Peggy Carter. He still does. In his name, Steve Rogers, I'm asking you to help me. In Captain America's name, Agent Carter, please."
Peggy stared at her, eyes wide and blurring with tears. Something deep in her heart believed this woman was telling the truth. Slowly, she lowered the gun and started the car moving forward again. There were places she could drive that the SSR would come looking for her, places where she could set up this woman for an ambush....
At the next major intersection she took a sharp left and started to drive randomly until she was sure she'd lost any pursuit there might be. She pulled up at an empty playground. "Shall we walk and talk, then?"
"Sure," said the blond. "But can we make that a talk and sit very still maybe? Everything fucking hurts."
"You have the mouth of a longshoreman," Peggy snapped primly.
"Good gods, you sound exactly like him," the other woman said with a hollow laugh. "Though oddly I don't feel like punching you in the face when you scold me. More like ducking my head and twisting my toe into the dirt."
They sat down on adjacent wooden swings, letting the warm summer night air wash over them both.
"Call me Ishmael," the blond said eventually.
"No," Peggy responded.
"Okay--call me Babs. Will that do?"
"Is that not your name?"
"Sort of. I'm a little at a loss here about what I can or can't tell you. I don't want to wreck my timeline, you see." The blond looked at Peggy with those shrewd cool blue-grey eyes; they held the kind of sharp intelligence she was used to seeing in Howard Stark. Peggy noted details of her outfit, the smooth alien fabric of her body suit, the expensive thick leather of her jacket. Her skin was pale and clear, with lines of pain and laughter ground into the corner of her mouth.
And there it was: the strange weapons and clothing, the casual manner, the odd speech pattern, the references to Steve as though he were alive. But it all seemed very...modern, not ancient history. Certainly this woman was like no one Peggy had ever met before.
"You're from the future, aren't you?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny my current temporal status but golly it would sure explain a lot, wouldn't it?"
"You are a very strange person."
That got a laugh. It was a nice laugh, clean and clear, inviting you to join in. "If I had a dime for every time someone said that to me...look, I'm being reasonably forthright with you here because...well, I trust you. Or, okay, I trust someone who trusts you and he's never wrong about that stuff."
Peggy pressed her lips together. "I would be greatly obliged if you did not taunt me like that. Either speak of Steven plainly or not at all."
Babs--or whomever she was--stared in surprise. "Jebus, I am such an asshole. Sorry, right. I'm sorta freaked out right now and Cl--my husband always tells me if I'm not stuttering I'm blathering. Not an excuse I know." She winced again, rubbing her left shoulder as though it pained her.
"Are you injured? Was it from your...journey?" Peggy said in a worried voice. Perhaps there was a first aid kit in the car?
"Oh, nah. That bit was just bright and loud. I'm injured because that fuc--because the person who...manoeuvred me into this...position did it in the middle of a battle. Which I need to get back to." She stopped and looked Peggy in the eye. "I'm Steve's tactical backup, you see. He's our front line right now--he and two others who can't be influenced by what our enemy is bringing to bear on us. His mind's too sharp, too focussed; the others are naturally immune from genetics and rage. But it means I have to call positions to keep them safe and moving forward. I think that's why our opponent bothered to care about me at all. I'm not much of a physical threat to him."
Peggy snorted. "You took out twelve men and myself in perhaps five seconds. I have trouble believing that."
"Beating up humans is not a challenge anymore, Agent Carter. It's more like practise for the day job."
"And your husband has no issues with that?' Peggy asked, trying to sound casual. This whirlwind of golden hair and violence was married? To what manner of man?
"He's usually the first person I beat up every day. Or he beats me up. Or we both beat up Steve, or another friend of ours. Or we get our asses handed to us. It's all up in the air, which is part of the fun."
"Are you ribbing me or something?"
"Huh? No, but I can see why you'd think it. The world moves ever onward and nothing stays the same, Agent Carter. And there in lies our problem. I have to get the ever loving fuck out of here, ASAP, so that I can be sure I have a place to get back to that's the same as I left it. Every damn breath I take around here is...dangerous."
"Yes, it would be. Well, this is rather far out of my personal experience so what do you suggest?"
Babs winced again while she shrugged. "I'm kinda lost too but I think...I think I remember being told something by a friend of mine that might work. It's just that I'm going to have to go back to Central Park. I need to go to the Museum."
"Oh, dear. Well, I hope you can find what you need quickly because that whole place will be swarming with SSR agents by now, looking for us."
"Hey, you don't have to come with me. In fact, it's better that you don't, that way I can't say anything stupid or incriminating. Tell your boss back there I dumped you out of the car at gunpoint and you walked home or something."
Peggy just looked at her.
"Yeah, I didn't think that was going to fly but I hadda try, you know?"
"By the way, why does your...suit there have buttons down the front side? It doesn't make any sense, they're clearly not holding anything closed."
Babs looked at her now. "And you bring this up now because?"
"Well, it's rather been bothering me since I got a good look at you."
The blond grinned. "Most people don't notice the incongruity. And they're not all just buttons."
"Goodness I wish we could have a lengthy chat over tea," Peggy sighed.
"It would probably just upset you. I take mine with milk and honey."
"You monster."
*****
In the car headed cautiously back to Central Park the blond suddenly turned to Peggy, her manner resolute and urgent.
"Look, Agent Carter, I've been thinking about something I know about...things that involve us both. Some aspects of...personal history that I never thought added up right. So I'm going to go out on a huge limb here and trust that you're smart and discreet enough to take what I'm saying for what it's worth.
"With our mutual friend--well, the story of himself never made sense. He should have been given up for dead and buried decades before I was even born. And yet...and yet a certain organization never stopped looking for him and the things that he took into the ice with him. Slowly, quietly, sometimes secretly and against fierce opposition, they never stopped looking. As though someone with influence and power were driving the search forward. As though they had never given up hope or faith."
The light in front of them turned red and Babs reached out, grabbing Peggy's hand off the wheel squeezing it. Her fingers were thin and powerful, like wire cables; the pads of her hands were thick with ridged calluses. "Have faith. Live with hope."
Peggy covered that strong hand with her other one. "Can you not...can you not tell me? Out right? I swear I won't--" and then she stopped for she could not swear it. She knew that.
"I'm married, I said--green light--and I love my husband very much. More'en my own life. If some weirdo came to me, when I thought he was dead, and told me Nope, he's alive but you can't go get him right now cause it would destroy the future, gotta promise you won't okay? and then told me where he was, I would promise same as you would not to go get him. Then I'd go get him."
They both sighed. Peggy turned a corner and the Museum of Natural History slide into view, all marble and antique and muted in the soft street lighting.
And that was when Thompson stepped out from behind a tree and shot out the car's front tire. Peggy slammed on the brakes as the blond opened her door and...good god! Simply leapt out of the vehicle as it slewed in a wild arc, dodging the back end as though she knew exactly where it would go. In the brief flash Peggy caught of her charging through the headlights she was now wearing a pair of yellow lensed goggles and holding metal staff in her hands. The last thing Peggy saw as she wrestled the car to stop was the blond slamming the end of the staff into the ground and launching herself into a vault directly at Thompson who was still shooting at her.
No, Thompson who'd hit her at least once. Peggy gasped, wrenched her own door open and scrambled to her feet--
--Thompson flew past her in the other direction, completely off the ground. Babs came back into the light, grinning wildly, the staff now two batons moving in a wild dance of metal. (Ah! So that was where those calluses came from!). Peggy stared at her but she didn't look like a gunshot victim. She looked like a goddess, some wild creature of war and death.
Thompson hit the back end of the car and struggled to his feet, gasping. "Carter, run, I'll hold her till the rest get here."
"What, like hold my hand? Hold my coat? Sweetheart, you ain't got it in you to hold anything else of mine," Babs mocked him, moving forward, the batons in her hands singing and whining like hunting dogs straining at a leash.
Thompson, braver than Peggy expected him to be, snarled and jumped towards Babs with his fist raised.
She broke his arm. Well, she would have, Peggy could tell, but she pulled it. Calmly, slowly, beatifically, proving to Thompson that she could have crippled him with every strike Babs worked her way down his body, forearm, upper arm, shoulder, ribs, knee and then back up till in the end--seconds later--she was standing behind him as his legs went out from under him. The only thing keeping him up was the choking baton pressed against his throat. She was holding one end with the other braced behind her own neck. She leaned into Thompson's face, watching him intently over his shoulder as he struggled for air.
"Nighty night, pretty boy. I'll put her down next to you, don't roll over in your sleep."
His eyes rolled up and she held on a second longer, than released him. Looking up at Peggy she gestured at the car. "Lie down against there and tell them I choked you out too. What I'm doing here actually won't leave bruises since it's blood and not wind that puts you out."
"We can do that inside, once I know you have what you need," Peggy snapped.
"I'm not going to argue--"
"I should hope not or I swear Steven will hear of it if I have to stash a diary somewhere for him to find."
To her everlasting pleasure, Babs laughed, stowed her weapons and took off on a dead run towards the side door of the main building. Peggy followed her fast enough to see her gain entry by the simple expedient of just kicking the door in with a single blow.
"No, really, are women raised differently where you're from? Given special supplements or some such?" Peggy gasped. "Also, i know Thompson shot you so...how are you still standing?" She checked back. "Are you...like him?"
"Enhanced? No. I'm the end result of giving a smart, angry bored eleven year old combat training and unsupervised library access. I read all the books on physical fitness and nutrition before puberty. Worked out in my room with bricks and elastics--as a consequence I have higher bone density, stronger muscles, better ligament and tendon attachments, more joint flexibility...and as for the bullets--he hit me twice--the tac suit is bulletproof," Babs explained calmly as they dodged down dusty corridors. She was clearly looking for some specific storage room.
Peggy shook her head. "You should have broken ribs at least then, from the impact. Also, that suit is no where near thick enough to be bulletproof!"
"Ah, yeah, well not if I don't have to depend on kinetic absorption to take the bullet. Sheer fluid layer and ceramic plates under that--and maybe forget I said that?" She gave a triumphant cry. "There you are!"
The door she busted through read 'Western European Document Storage'. She dove for a case along one wall and pulled open a long flat draw in the middle. Inside were a small stack of what looked like sheepskins with one side cleaned off--arcane symbols and words covered them all. She flipped down to the last one and pulled it out. It smelt of old farm animal and it was crumbling at the edges. On the centre of the grey surface a geometric set of lines and runes made into a complex round maze pattern. Nordic symbols were etched around the edges.
Babs pulled a small flat chunk of glass and metal out of a pocket, then looked up at Peggy. "Um, you should probably not watch this bit. This is...proprietary tech so to speak."
Peggy turned her back. There was a flash, exactly like a camera going off and oh, dear, this was all getting a little too much for her...
Babs was replacing the parchment in the exact same spot when she turned around. "This is great, actually. You can tell the SSR I was trying to break into the Museum but I ran off after you attacked me!" She pulled out a bunch of drawers, messing up papers and jumbling up displays.
"You ran away while I was choking out Thompson, then followed me in here, interrupted me ransacking the room. I panicked and sprinted off. Perfect!" Babs grinned at her.
"They won't believe it," Peggy commented.
"No, they'll assume I stole something. But nothing'll be missing so it'll just be a fun mystery."
"What was that thing you took a picture of?"
"Kinda like an express elevator to...somewhere else. A...friend of mine and I were touring the museum...at some point...and saw it in a display case. He went white as a sheet and hurried me off to the Director of the museum and then it wasn't on display anymore. But I remembered it was part of the unsorted collection in the early forties--it had been salvaged from Sweden."
"Well, what now?" Peggy snapped, listening for any evidence they'd been noticed by a night watchman or the SSR had found them.
Babs pursed her lips. "Yeah, that's the question. I need to...um...activate this somewhere outside where it won't leave a mark. And it always leaves marks..."
"Does it leave marks in water?"
"Turtle Pond! You genius!" Babs grinned, clapping Peggy on the shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. "Let's go!"
They ran down the corridor together...straight into Souza, limp-running in the opposite direction with his gun out. For the second time that night, Peggy bowled him over by accident. As he was falling, Babs grabbed Peggy around the throat and snarled, "I'll kill her if you follow me! Don't think I wont!" And dragged her in the opposite direction, towards the stairs.
In the stair well, the two women looked at each other. "Bloody hell," Peggy said in a calm voice.
"Yeah, place has got to be surrounded," Babs said. "I have a crazy terrible idea that depends on you acting like a helpless prisoner a little bit longer so I totally understand if you veto it."
"Goodness me, why should we stop now?" Peggy responded. "We're on a bit of a roll."
"Dry British humour, gotta love it."
*****
Thompson was rubbing his throat angrily when Souza staggered out of the side door again.
"Yes, they're in there. The...blond whatever said she'd kill Peggy if we followed them."
"I ain't going to follow her, I'm going to shoot her," Thompson snapped.
"Yeah, not if it gets Peggy hurt you're not," Souza snapped back. The two men glared at each other as the other SSR agents looked at them uncomfortably. Then, from the inside of the building, a woman screamed.
The men from the SSR boiled into the front doors of the museum in a clot to see the blond woman and Agent Carter struggling on the mezzanine balcony. The two women wrestled back and forth, the blond clearly getting the upper hand. In the blink of an eye, she gripped Peggy under the shoulder and threw her off the edge of the balcony. Wildly, Peggy flailed out and caught the edge of the marble bannister with one hand.
Souza yelled in horror.
From where she was dangling, Peggy screamed "She's getting away. The left, she's run to the left!"
And indeed the blond was gone.
The SSR men streamed up the stairs to either side with Thompson in the lead. Souza struggled up to where Peggy was hanging and grabbed her arm, hauling her back up to solid ground.
At the door of the museum, over Souza's shoulder, Peggy saw a woman-shaped shimmer in the air resolve itself back into Babs, grinning wildly through a nose bleed.
She had been telling the truth when she told Peggy she could disappear instantly. She'd gone over the balcony after she'd thrown the other woman, jumping the two storeys as though skipping down some stairs.
Their eyes met one last time. Peggy put every ounce of hope and good will she had into her expression, the tiny wave she managed behind Souza's back.
Babs saluted Peggy with her batons and ran off into the night, unseen.
*****
MODERN DAY
The extremely exclusive nursing home was set on several peaceful acres of land in upstate New York. The sleek purple motorcycle pulling up to the front entrance looked desperately out of place; the woman riding it even more so. She was tall, had the build of a professional athlete and long golden hair that spilled down her back when she took off her helmet. She was wearing riding leathers in very dark blue, nearly black, with white trim.
The nurse at the front desk did a double take when she presented herself with a small smile and another one when she asked to see "Agent Carter".
"Is she expecting you?" The nurse asked, primly.
"She's been expecting me for about eighty years I think," Bobbi Barton, the Avenger Mockingbird, responded. "Just tell her Babs is here to see her. Finally."
The room didn't look like a hospital; it looked like someone's bedroom or sitting room. The colours were rich and muted, the window treatments expensive. The flowers on the dresser were fresh. They sat next to a picture of a handsome man with two children on his arms; that stood next to a picture of Captain America in his formal uniform.
The woman lying in the bed was ancient, her skin sagging and dull, her hair white, but you could see the bone deep beauty she had been, the strength of character etched in her face. She still looked strong and capable, despite clearly not being able to get out of bed anymore.
Her dark eyes opened as the blond woman took a chair at her left hand.
"Hello, Babs," whispered that beautiful voice, with the accent that always thrilled Bobbi's ears. "Took you long enough."
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't know till just a few days ago that we knew each other."
"I wondered for years if you'd gotten away, gotten home all right. I saw a strange flash of light by the pond that night, just after you made your escape and I thought perhaps yes but...I wasn't sure until I saw you on the television with Steven. Well, I suppose I was more sure when they dug Steven out of the ice like that."
Bobbi winced and looked away. "I'm sorry, Agent Carter. I really am. If I could have led you to him I would have but...I just couldn't risk it."
"How did you make it back? Something to do with that blond fellow they call Thor?"
"Yeah. I wound up in Asgard's...waiting room, kinda. Heimdall and Frigga met me there, more than a little unhappy that a mortal knew how to use that image to travel the Bifrost. I had to shuck and jive something fierce but they believed me...eventually. Helped that I have Asgardian magic on me, and it's Frigga's own. She healed me, once, her and Idrun (1). Sent me back to the moment after I left and never told Thor or Loki or Odin about it. I felt nearly as bad about that as I felt about not being able to help Steve...and you, Agent Carter."
"I understand why. It was hard sometimes but...I understand. And you will call me Peggy, my dear. Shall I call you Mockingbird?"
"Bobbi. Bobbi's my name."
"Hmm, yes, well. You're married to that archer boy, aren't you? I see the two of you making moon eyes at each other in the news reels."
"Yeah."
"He's a pretty piece. Lovely arms."
"Oh, Peggy you got no fucking idea."
"Still the mouth of a longshoreman," Peggy said with some asperity.
"Had to make sure you knew it was me," Bobbi laughed. "You have something of mine, I think."
Peggy looked at the side table. Bobbi opened the top drawer and found a single dark blue button. It had been ripped off her tactical suit during their final fight in the museum. She held it up to the light, grinned, and replaced it.
"Well, glad to know it you after all. Just my luck to lose a button in the past and cause temporal causality to fold apart around me."
"I was glad of it. During some rather...dark times...I would hold it and think about what you had said and find the strength to go on. Let me take a good look at you."
Bobbi came closer to the bed and stood still, then turned around in a circle.
"I thought I had imagined you so tall and strong and golden but you're all that I remember and more."
Reaching down, Bobbi touched Peggy's hand, the skin like paper under the tubes and sensors hooked up to discreet machines. "Peggy, not to steal anyone's lines but if I'm tall...it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants. On your shoulders, mostly."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"SHIELD was the only special forces unit that's been gender blind from conception. The only one that took women into all branches, as long as they could pass the fair, standardized testing. Directly, 100% because of you. Because of every ounce of shit you took from those assholes through the years, I had a safe place to learn, to train, to grow into this person I am now. I am an Avenger--I am alive--because of you, Peggy."
"I didn't--"
"Peggy," Mockingbird interrupted gently, "I can literally out fight, out run, out last the SEALS, Army Special Forces and the combined academies of the FBI and CIA. I know because the Avengers train all of them in combat and infiltration and Steve won't do the sims unless Natasha and I are out in the field with the guys. Most of the time he won't even bring anyone else with him, or participate himself. Says he's making a point to the top brass, who apparently didn't want women out there."
"You and the Black Widow are a little special, my dear."
"Yeah, we are. And other women deserve the same chance to be special that we both got. Which they won't get unless we fight for their chance to just be in the field. Those of us who want it should be able to at least try. I got my chance because of you, and your courage and your ass-kicking and your relentless will."
Bobbi looked away. "I never came to see you before now because I was afraid of seeing you like this. You've always been a hero of mine, since the first day I knew about you. The real story, from the SHIELD archives, not the serials and movies."
"Good lord those made me...pissed off."
"I'm a bad influence, I can see."
"Mouth of a longshoreman," they said simultaneously.
Bobbi stepped back to the end of the bed. "I'm not a soldier, Agent Carter. I hope you won't think I'm being disrespectful but--"
And she drew herself to full attention and presented the most polished, perfect military salute Peggy had ever seen.
"I am ashamed I didn't come sooner--"
Now Peggy interrupted. "I think perhaps it was good you didn't. So I didn't have to worry about keeping the secret. My mind is not what it was; I drift sometimes. I doubt I have much longer to live now. You were rather the last thing I was waiting to see, in many ways."
Bobbi was crying openly now, quiet tears welling and dripped onto her shirt. "I thought that too. Time likes a closed loop, Bruce and Tony tell me. Theoretically, anyway. I was just so scared you might die before I could get here and never be sure...never be sure what you meant to me. To the world."
"Bobbi, come here." When the younger woman was seated directly at her right hand, Peggy reached out and laid her fingers over the other woman's hand. "I remember these hands, so strong and sure. I remember that smile, so bright. I remember the whupping you gave to Thompson and gracious was that I memory I treasured over the decades. I have lived a long and good life. It was hard and painful and joyous and triumphant and filled with all manner of things I could never have had any other way. I got to see Steven again and that was more than anyone could have guessed or imagined. You go now and keep living your life. If I helped make it better at all, in any small way, then I am more than content."
Peggy squeezed her fingers a little and Bobbi felt that ghost of the power that had been in those hands all those years ago. "Go and exasperate my Steven a little every day for me--I've seen how he looks at you and your man. He loves you and wants to punch you both at the same time. But he needs people like you around to make him stop taking everything so very seriously all the time. Go fight and love and live and laugh, my Babs. As I did, and with as much joy."
Her hand fell back to the cloth. "I have to rest now. Send Steven in for a few moments, will you? And if we never met again, I have always thought of you as my friend. I always will."
Bobbi blinked in concern. "Steve's not...ah, yeah, well, let me go get a nurse."
Out in the hallway she ran straight into...Steve.
He was sitting in a chair reading a magazine and looked up without surprise when she exited the room. "She still awake?"
"I...uh...yeah...how....ooooooohhhhhh, right. You found the button."
"I found the button," he confirmed with a nod. "Months and months ago. She told me the whole story. I'm proud of you for making the hard choice and sticking to it."
"You're not mad at me?"
"For what? Not jeopardizing reality for me? Nope." He looked at the door in concern. "Look,I want to go see her for a minute, wait by the bikes? There's a really nice sandwich place the next town over. We can have lunch and you can tell me your side of the story." He ducked into Peggy's door and shut it behind him. Bobbi just heard the start of Peggy's rapturous greeting.
She made her way back down to where Steve's Harley was now parked next to her road bike. Looking up into the sky, Bobbi let the bright sun dry the tears on her cheeks.
She would never mourn Peggy Carter again, not even at her funeral. Instead, she would rejoice in that brief few hours they had been team mates, partners in crime.
Agents Carter and Mockingbird, together at long last.