Chapter Text
Cold, lifeless, heartless. White brick walls climb up as far as the eye can see to meet with a similarly white ceiling, staring down onto the the thin linoleum flooring laid in cruel concrete grey.
A flash of scarlet, a charge of electric, a slash of a knife, a solemn thud; then finally the chink of a blade dropping to the ground echoes ominously. The white-washed walls now splattered with a telltale spray of blood. As swift as the wind, a black blur shoots out of the room with lethal efficiency. Seemingly impossible.
Almost 5000 miles across the globe, in New York City, a dull, imposing building looks derelict to any unbeknownst onlooker, but on the inside it's a hive of activity like no other.
Cold monochrome floor tiles are the only cold thing about this base; except maybe a temper or two at times; with rich wooden furniture and warm but slightly limp window drapes, this office looks almost homely; in a strange sort of way.
"We've got another kill, gentlemen!" A stocky, moustachioed man with an unnerving smile calls out from his office, "Where's Agent Carter?"
A murmur fluctuates around the office amongst the men at their desks.
"She's probably off powdering her nose or something else just as frivolous." A tall and handsome Agent Thompson seethes, with his large hands running through his blonde hair.
"Hey hey Jack, what if I broke your nose? How would you feel about me then?" Peggy Carter hums from the doorway, tapping her scarlet-glossed fingernails on the window pane.
"You couldn't even if you tried, Miss Carter." He retorts with a roll of his piercing blue eyes.
"That's AGENT to you, Thompson!" the moustachioed gentleman spits with a surprising air of discontent.
"Thank you for that Dooley, but I can in fact take care of myself!" Peggy almost laughs sarcastically, smiling through her rouged lips as she finishes securing her hair into place with a final bobby pin.
"Anyway guys... and you too Carter, we've got another kill just outside Moscow." Dooley explains, addressing them as a group now, "Apparently there's no evidence save for the victims blood splatter and also a blade discarded just away from the body."
"Well our killer is clearly getting careless, sir." Thompson chirps up with mocking amusement in his voice.
"Oh yes of course, because a blade from a knife is so incredibly easy to track to its owner, Jack." A seemingly quiet gentleman who goes by the name of Sousa adds dismissively, rousing another smirk off Agent Carter that she quickly hides.
"Anyway, we've got no way to track down this son of a bitch but they can't escape our grasp forever." Dooley concludes as he slinks back into his office without another word on the matter or otherwise.
The sway in Peggy's hips as they're hugged by her tight, A-line skirt draws Agent Thompson's prying eyes towards them as she walks over to the office. This doesn't go unnoticed by Peggy but she has more self-respect than to let him irk her further so she simply grits her teeth and continues on.
"Sir, is there any way I could look at all of the files on these similar cases, sir?" Peggy is as polite as ever as she asks Dooley this and he simply sighs disheartened, so she regretfully adds, "For... aiding administrative purposes only, of course."
"Thompson and Hutchins are flying out to Moscow in the morning and whilst I appreciate you want to help, we have next to no evidence for you to look over anyway, Carter." Roger Dooley replies, with a slightly out of character anger in his voice.
"Well if it's okay with you I'd like to look anyway, you never know, we might have missed something before in our haste." She smiles sweetly, it's sickening for her to do but she's willing to do it if it'll help her get a look at this case right now.
"Fine Carter, fine! You know where everything is, just don't make evidence where there is none. Okay? It's not your place after all." He ensures that she nods her agreement before turning his back on her.
A mahogany desk, usually neatly covered in papers, several pens and pencils and a typewriter is now strewn with files on their mysterious Russian assassin. Peggy flicks through reems of scrawled notes and typewritten papers and poorly shot photographs. As she glances over a photo for a fleeting moment something catches her eye; what looks like a small burn mark on the shoulder of the most recent victim. Furrowing her neatly plucked brows, Peggy picks up another file, that of what they identified to be the Russian assassins first known victim. Carefully ensuring not to muddle up the contents of the files, she takes out the full body shot of this man and looks straight to his shoulder. There it is, a small round burn mark on his left shoulder. As she looks at the next she sees it again.
"So that's how they're being killed, the neck is just showmanship; just to make totally sure they're dead." Peggy says aloud to an empty office. She rearranges the papers back into their appropriate files and stacks them to one side. Turning her head now to face a small photo frame claiming pride of place on her desk, "What would these guys do without me? Glorified secretary my arse!" She hisses, somewhere between anger and amusement, even she doesn't know what she is feeling. Peggy reaches out and carefully touches a slender finger to the glass of the photo frame where a small black and white photo sits.
"You'd show them what's what, Steve." She finally whispers. The small photo is of Steve Rogers, the departed man known to so many as Captain America, but known to Peggy as so much more. He still holds a firm place in Peggy's heart, but most of all he's her motivation when the guys she has the misfortune to work with don't think she's good enough.
With a nonchalant smile to the photo she picks up her things, throws on her coat and tries to quiet the click of her heels as she walks across the tiles.
9pm EST, in a small automat cafeteria about 10 minutes from the cold SSR base, now sits a pensive Peggy Carter. Sitting waiting for Angie to get off shift in this peculiar café is one of the calmest and most constant things Peggy ever does. Between the SSR and Howard Stark's various shenanigans, Peggy's life is never quiet, but the time she sits and watches bustling diners insert nickels into machines and be repaid with strange looking wax-wrapped meals is her quiet time; it's her time to think.
"Hey sweetie!" Angie calls as she sits down dramatically opposite Peggy and shakes her chestnut hair down as she takes out its final pin. Her perfume makes its way directly to Peggy's nostrils rather overwhelmingly.
"You smell like a salon, Ang. Who are you impressing?" Peggy asks with her first genuine smile of the day.
"Hopefully I'm impressing everyone, my sweet... but I was supposed to have an audition and then the assholes go tell me they've already chosen their girl." Angie huffs in frustration, fiddling with the collar of her cotton blouse.
"They don't know what they're missing, you're great Ang, you really are." Peggy reaches over the table and clutches her friend's shoulder reassuringly, with a smile.
"You wouldn't lie to me Carter, would ya now?" Angie stares wide eyed at her friend across the way, with a slight smirk dancing on her lips.
"You know I'm a dreadful liar," Peggy almost whispers, lying as she speaks.
"Why d'you bother Peg? You know I've got ya sussed." comes the waitress' reply mockingly.
"I'm not meant to tell people things about what we do at work, it's a secret, you know that!" she replies rather too defensively and then immediately feels a wave of regret wash over her. "I wouldn't lie to you Ang, not unless I absolutely had to... I promise."
"I take your promises very seriously lil miss secret agent, so ya better keep that." Angie smirks as she fiddles with a strand of dark hair and forces it to stay behind her ear and out of her face.
"I'll do my best my dear, I really will." Peggy responds followed by her sincerest of smiles.
A mere two days later a big wig banker type sits tied to a chair in a dark, grimy warehouse trying to wriggle his way out of his ropes with little success. A knife held to his throat doesn't quell his squirming. 'This guy's got guts' thinks the assassin with a mixture of amusement and boredom. Nobody likes prey who put up a fight. A buzz of electricity finally stops the man who had given up no information whatsoever. Stops him... dead. With a slash of the knife, blood spurts from his neck and the assassin is gone...
"Sousa, Carter, we've got a suspicious death out in the centre of town. Reports say it's hostile. Watch each other's backs at all times." Dooley crows from his desk, "And Carter, you touch nothing and you speak to no one, you're just there to observe the scene." and he barely even waits for a response before going back to his work.
With Thompson and Hutchins on their way back from Russia after what seems to Peggy like the biggest waste of resources she's ever witnessed, she is regretfully being allowed out into the field for what must be the first time since she was appointed to the SSR.
"Come on Carter, before he changes his mind." Daniel laughs, noticing only now that his partner was already stood propping the office door open waiting for him. "No flies on you, is there?"
"Indeed there isn't Agent Sousa." she smirks kindly, he being the only SSR agent she holds a vague amount of respect for and by far the only one she could trust if she needed to.
The quiet car journey with Daniel in the driving seat leads to a not so quiet crime scene in the centre of town.
"I don't understand why we're here, surely the general force can handle a suspicious death themselves." Daniel mutters, almost to himself as they walk up to the police tape where a few people are gathered.
"It all depends why they're calling it suspicious." Peggy replies just as quietly as the statement had been made, and is met with a "Hmm" from her partner as they approach the warehouse.
"A few... undesirables called it in this morning when they came here to score some drugs and found a lot more than they were banking on." A seemingly mild mannered police officer informed them, although he did direct all this information towards Agent Sousa but Peggy gives him leeway on that this one time, especially seeing she isn't supposed to speak. They're led into the dingy room where Peggy's eyes are immediately drawn to the chair in the centre, toppled over, with a mans lolling body lying there. Teamwork forgotten, and the fact she is just to observe, she darts straight over and kneels down on the cold concrete and then stands straight back up and tugs at her skirt.
"Have the crime scene photos been taken?" She asks sharply, wanting to get straight down to this.
"Yes, yes course they were." replies their mild mannered cop.
"Okay then, well can we stand this gentleman back up on his chair so we can take a proper look?" This is much less a question and much more an order.
"Yes, we wanted to wait until your team arrived before moving him... and he ain't no gentleman." was the reply she received. A little confused by this, Peggy beckons Sousa over to assist her in standing up the deceased to a more suitable position.
In Peggy's head she checks for time of death because, of course, she has grown to gain a slight knowledge in that area. 'Lividity still present along the right hand side of his body where he's been over turned. Putting time of death anywhere in the last 12 hours.' Agent Carter begins gesturing at the purple-ish discolouration to the deceased's face then remembers she isn't speaking.
"That slash of the neck is terribly like our Russian assassin, Peggy." Daniel whispers, leaning in so the others don't hear this comparison. This is simply met with closed eyes and a sigh as she whispers, "How? Why would they be here? Why now?" before she goes over to the body again. Whilst she's stood there, Peggy almost smirks to herself about the perfect timing of this situation, as Stark has assigned her to keep covert tabs on this assassin and feed back to him anything she discovers yet it's incredibly difficult to do so when she's stuck in the office every day. "Time of death was in the last 12 hours, gentlemen." she finally adds, almost too confidently.
"In that time, who could have gained access to this facility?" Agent Sousa asks the police officers present, keeping one eye on Peggy the whole time to make sure she doesn't get embroiled in some sort of drama or other.
"The security is atrocious, practically non existent, so I really can't help you on this one. Basically anyone or anything could have been through here in the last 12 hours."
"Oh how wonderful, what a way to ease the stress on us." Peggy mutters to herself as she debates wether undoing their victim's shirt to check for a scorch mark was appropriate at this time, finally deciding under no circumstances it was, especially seeing she wasn't a crime scene investigator or anything of the sort.
"This guy was considered scum by the majority of people he knew, narrowing down suspects will take you an eternity, half the city could be responsible. Half of them will want to claim it's their doing. It'll take almost too long for it to be worth it." Another officer chips in, met by a deadening glare.
"Everything possible will be done to find the killer responsible for this crime." Peggy huffs, turning her back to exit the warehouse and wait until the body is removed from the scene. Out of the corner of her eye she sees something, a shadow at best, but she turns to see an area that couldn't be more exposed. There couldn't be anyone or anything hiding, no matter how hard they tried. Peggy rubs her eyes a little with confusion and exits with her jacket thrown over her shoulder. Moments later Sousa and the other officers leave too, with the crime scene officers following behind, removing the body of the wealthy banker under a sheet.
A slender figure drops down from an awkward rut high up in a dark corner of the warehouse. Red curls are strewn at odd angles due to the swift ascent to avoid Agent Carter's line of sight. It couldn't be known that their Russian assassin was a woman, not yet at least. She runs her fingers through her wayward curls to gain some sort of control over them. There is a smile on her palid face, not crazed in any way. Controlled. Maybe she's scheming but if she is there's more of another interest there aswell. Something calculated. Something personal.