Peggy: I Feel Like Doing Something Stupid

Peggy: I feel like doing something stupid

Steve: I’m stupid, do me.

Peggy:

Steve:

Bucky, eating chips in the corner: You said that out loud.

When I tell you I snorted-

this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks

For those of you who’ve read this fic, first of all thank you, second of all I thought you might like to know I’ve updated it. You don’t have to, but feel free to go back and give it another read.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37088236

This one goes out to all my fellow Agent Carter fans, I’m low key obsessed right now and I just had to write something.

Daniel: Are they stupid?

Peggy: Yes, but they prefer to be called Jarvis.

Peggy doesn’t see the marks brighten with color so much as she feels it. After seventy years, she feels that familiar, comforting warmth spread across her shoulder blades, weathered with age but still carrying that residual strength of a woman who never stopped fighting.

Moments after she feels the marks reawaken, her boys come through the door, looking as young and hopeful as the day she last saw them together. Steve clutches a small bouquet of flowers in his fist, his fingers trembling in their grip. Bucky’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, a soft reassurance even as his own breath comes out shaky.

She smiles as best she can, knowing her aged state must be a shock to the system for both of them. Steve offers a shy grin in return, while Bucky’s lips quirk into his classic smirk. Some things have changed, they’ve both weathered several storms since she lost them, but deep beneath the surface, down in their cores, they are still the men she once loved with every fiber of her being.

Daniel and Jack both passed a few years ago, their marks fading alongside those final breaths, and Peggy knows she’ll be following them soon, but she manages to drag herself from her nursing bed to embrace the boys who first showed her what love could be. They take turns swaying with her, inhumanly strong hands ever so gentle when maneuvering her delicate frame.

Peggy finds her hand resting against Steve’s chest as he turns them in a slow circle, the words hidden just beneath his t-shirt are warm and inviting against her wrinkled palm. Bucky spins her under his arm and Peggy’s fingers press into cold metal where the letters she used to trace over during briefings should be. They’re gone, but strangely, Peggy can still feel them, can feel their presence. The little tingles that spread across her skin feel like she’s being greeted by an old friend; like someone is saying “welcome home” after she’s been away for far too long.

By the end, they’re all in tears, clinging to hands and arms and shoulders with a desperate sense of impending closure. Steve and Bucky both try to apologize for leaving but she refuses to hear it, won’t let either of her men try to reason why she should be mad at them for events largely out of their control.

Instead, Peggy fills them in on all they’ve missed. She tells them of her adventures with the SSR and Jarvis and Howard, S.H.I.E.L.D. in its early years, and perhaps most importantly, she tells them all about her loves. Meeting Angie at the Automat, moving in with her, those months of blissful happiness where they shared such a deep and fulfilling connection.

Stories about Daniel and Jack choke her up a bit, but Bucky’s holding her hand and Steve has tissues on hand so she tells them all about those first missions together and the fighting and eventual resolutions. She paints the full, beautiful picture of her wedding to Daniel and their celebration with Jack in the days proceeding. She tells them about her children, what they became, how they achieved it, and the beaming smiles on both men’s faces as she talks bring her an odd sense of relief.

They’re not upset that she moved on, on the contrary, they’re joyful, proud of the life Peggy built for herself. Her accomplishments are well detailed in all her files at S.H.I.E.L.D. and there’s no doubt in her mind that several of the older agents have talked her up to them both.

The realization hits her like a hard gust of wind. Peggy moved on, lived her life and loved again, but what about them? Steve and Bucky have hardly aged a day since 1945, they’re learning to live again in a word completely foreign yet so similar to the one they left behind, and she’ll likely be leaving it soon.

Knowing she’ll be leaving her boys to fend for themselves is a hard pill for Peggy to swallow, but seeing the softness in Bucky’s smile as he gazes at Steve across her bed, and the twinkle in Steve’s eye as he grins right back tell her that maybe, just maybe, they’ll be okay.

Peggy Carter’s Soulwords

Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes

Steve’s mark has faded, as has Bucky’s; loves long since lived and lost. The right partner and What are we waiting for? Decorate her shoulder blades, one for each, with Steve’s neat print in light sky blue and Bucky’s untidy scrawl being disguised by once shining, now dull silver.

You have no idea how to talk to a woman had printed itself on Steve’s left pectoral, as red as Peggy’s lipstick. When he first came out of the vita-ray chamber it stood out glaringly against his glistening skin. She had tapped it with a finger, a bit stunned by its appearance, the action was brushed off as her simply being in awe of his new form.

The words Bucky received marked the inside of his left wrist; I might, when this is all over, go dancing. Peggy used to trace each delicate line with the tip of a crimson nail when they were sitting in strategy meetings, Steve always on Bucky’s other side, ankles locked together under the table where ‘til the end of the line mirrored itself across their skin.

Angie Martinelli

Angie’s words are the color of blooming violets, a shade befitting of royalty. Coming right up English! winks back at Peggy from the skin above her knee, similar to Angie’s playful wink upon taking her order. Her handwriting is neat, a result of having to make all the food requests she jots down in quick succession legible for the chef to read.

Rounded ruby script marches down Angie’s right arm, spelling out I thought I might tell you about my day. The sleeves of her uniform don’t quite cover it, and Peggy can’t help but grin every time her eyes land on the mark while she’s having her morning coffee at the Automat.

Then Peggy moves to Los Angeles, and somewhere along the way Angie’s words fade. She already knows they’ve both moved on when she calls back to New York; Angie’s engaged to a man named Thomas, he frequents the Automat and listens to her monologues, a sweet guy according to Angie.

Peggy is happy for her, because Angie deserves someone stable, someone whose job doesn’t take them all over the world at the drop of a hat. And for as much as she’ll miss New York, Peggy loves L.A. and its dry heat and horrible traffic. The Jarvis’ are here, and Howard, and the SSR L.A. branch needs more experienced agents. Sometimes, people just grow apart, and life has other plans; it’s a much happier end then Peggy could have hoped for them.

Daniel Sousa and Jack Thompson

The words Daniel leaves on her body are deep blue and match the hastily scribbled notes she finds in the margins of all his paperwork. You deserve it more peeks at Peggy from just underneath her jaw whenever she looks in a mirror; a constant motivator, so innocent and earnest even without a face to match the phrase.

Jack’s mark is warm grey, with large hand writing snaking around her wrist like a thick bangle. Truth be told, I like the kid’s yeti story better; the first time Jack didn’t seem eager to drink up his glory. It’s only later, on the flight back to the states, that Peggy would learn why. After that mission, they began trading the occasional nod of greeting, not quite friendly, but understanding.

A perfect copy of Peggy’s loopy handwriting curls itself below Daniel’s ear. It spells out one word: Congratulations. Singular, but still poignant in its simplicity, speaking volumes of her respect for him even then. The vibrant shade only serves to further highlight the bold disregard for normal that decorates their history.

Her mark on Jack has painted itself across his right hip, the vivid red almost as jarring as the words Snap out of it mate, c’mon, get your arse into gear. Hard to forget, even harder not to recognize. He came clean about the mark at the same time he came clean about his cross, claiming to not want to hold anything back.

There are extra long tails on all of the y’s and g’s in his writing, taupe-colored words stretching across the back of Daniel’s neck; Don’t sell yourself as short as that stump, you’re better than that. The compliment was so lost in a sea of more degrading remarks that he didn’t put two and two together for weeks. It wasn’t until one of Jack’s reports ended up on his desk by mistake and the lengthened letters caught Peggy’s eye that the dots began to connect.

Now that had taken some explaining.

But one comparison between the blue mark circling Jack’s ribcage (Sure, can I borrow your forehead?) and Peggy’s You deserve it more has all three of them sitting in Jack’s hospital room in stunned silence, the resounding question of “what now?” goes unsaid, but not unheard.

Things are far from perfect, but with Jack on the road to recovery, and Daniel and Peggy on the case for justice, the path ahead is starting to look a bit less daunting.

If I had a nickel for every time I became deeply invested in a fictional power couple consisting of an incredibly compassionate and also thoroughly sarcastic veteran who lost part of his leg in battle, and a badass warrior whose fighting style mostly consists of smashing objects and/or people repeatedly with a great deal of force, all the while calling her significant other “Chief” in tones ranging from indignant to flirty depending on the moment… I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?