Sunset ^beta

At nineteen, Stephanie Rogers was four feet eleven inches, allergic to everything, asthmatic, and a weight of ninety pounds soaking if five of them were water. She had no chest, and no money for make-up or beauty parlours. The money that didn't go to her rent and tuition—she had scrimped and saved enough to pay for a class or two with the Art Students' League this year—went to buy paint for her canvas, not her face.

As of the World Exposition, she'd been rejected by the WAAC four times. She wasn't in a WAAC recruitment centre now.

It had been a joke, something one of the other girls in line had scoffed. Hey, look girls. There's a little boy trying to sneak in line with us! You lost, kid?

The look Bucky had given her in that alley had almost made her double over again, laughing this time. Even the jarring aftershock of a fist on her face couldn't dampen her elation. It had worked. She had fooled that jerk, anyway. And she'd have to learn how to take a punch sooner or later.

"Jesus, Stevie, what did you do to yourself?" Bucky recovered from his violent flinch of recognition and reached out the hand he'd snatched back in shock to help her to her feet.

Stevie flicked her short hair out of her eyes, still not used to it. One of her classmates who painted sets for a little theatre and helped out backstage had cut if for her. She hadn't really had the money for the slacks and shirt, but they'd barely needed alteration. Buying them hadn't looked suspicious, but trying them on would have. Apprehensively, she examined the shirt for stains.

Stevie knew what Bucky was seeing when he stared at her like that, because she'd spent a lot of time with her little unframed mirror this morning. The new haircut made her big ears annoyingly obvious. Her nose was like a blade sticking out of her face; she did almost make a more convincing man than she did a dame, except for being so undersized.

"Please tell me you're trying out for a play."
__ __ __

Stevie rather thought her sudden change in costume might have derailed Bucky's plans for the evening. She felt kind of bad, since it was his last night stateside, but he could've brought the girl along if he wanted. She owed him a whole lot more than that, if only for turning around and letting her try, one more time.

The doctor—Stevie assumed he was the doctor; he was a lot more scruffy-looking than the WAAC doctors, but he was an aging man in a suit and lab-coat—came in while she was still unbuttoning her shirt.

"Please—please don't."

Stevie's fingers stopped on the buttons, and she did not, did not glance back at the sign advertising how illegal it was to lie on your enlistment form.

The doctor closed the file in his hands and examined her over the rims of his glasses. When he spoke, his voice was heavily accented, and more than a little dry. "So, you want to go overseas, kill some Nazis."

"Excuse me?" Did she even sound like a guy?

At the other end of a long, measuring look, the doctor moved forward, extending his hand. "Doctor—" aha "—Abraham Erskine. I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

"Stevie—Steven Rogers." Stevie looked him in the eye and shook his hand, fighting down the heat that rose to her cheeks with the lie. Then, because she was distracted or to cover her distraction, she asked, "Where are you from?"

"Queens. Seventy-third and Utopia Parkway. Before that, Germany." Erskine had the file open again and answered without looking at her.

Stevie fought the urge to stand up and possibly run out of the curtained-off exam room. She should have just kept her fat mouth shut; it had been incredibly rude, and something strange was going on here anyway.

Erskine did look up this time. "This troubles you?"

"No," Stevie managed. Shook her head in case he hadn't heard, except he was looking down at the file again. Steie made an effort not to squirm.

"Where are you from, Mister Rogers?" And had he put any extra emphasis on the mister? "Is it New Haven," busted, "or Paramus? Five exams in five different cities." Absolutely busted.

"That might not be the right file—"

"No, it's not the exams I'm interested in. Or even the name on the exams. It's the five tries."

Erskine wasn't looking at the file anymore, and Stevie wasn't even pretending to look anywhere except at Doctor Erskine. Up on the exam table as she was, they were eye to eye.

"But you didn't answer my question. Do you want to kill Nazis?" Erskine asked, fixing her with a direct look.

Stevie had to look away. Her mental gears were spinning furiously. Excuses, pleas, explanations raced through her head. "Is this a test?"

"Yes."

And because he answered honestly, Stevie gathered herself and replied honestly. "I don't want to kill anyone," and this was almost familiar, this was the argument she'd had with Bucky a thousand times since the war started. This was what she'd waited for: the opportunity to serve. "I don't like bullies; I don't care where they're from."

Not the kids who picked on the odd one out, whether it was with fists or words or turned backs. Not the people who looked down on you because you were smaller or poorer or your best clothes were threadbare and mended and you had to fake your stockings with eyeliner. Not the wives and grandmothers who looked sideways at the unmarried girls with stylish 'dos and sometimes babies at home. And not the people who thought they were better than you just because of where you came from, that that meant they had the right to tell you what to do; the signs in shop windows, Irish and Italian need not apply. Only instead of huffing and turning you the cold shoulder, the Germans killed you and burned your home.

Erskine nodded a little, but there was still something in his face she couldn't read. "There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is—well."

The hope that had been growing perversely in her chest the longer Erskine stretched this interview threatened to halt her breathing more completely than any attack of asthma.

"I can offer you a chance. Only a chance."

Erskine pushed the curtain open, and Stevie scuttled after him, stuffing her shoes back on hurriedly.

Congratulations, soldier.
__ __ __

Stevie hadn't been sure at first why Erskine hadn't shuffled her over into the WAAC. There was a WAAC unit attached to the Strategic Science Reserve, and Erskine ought to have been able to requisition any personnel he liked. It was only when Stevie started hearing rumours about Project Rebirth that she began to understand that Erskine was trying to pull a fast one.

Erskine had called a nurse in that night to tape up her chest. He was spinning out some elaborate fiction about a recruit who cracked his ribs at the start of boot camp, just healed enough now to finish up. She'd only have to pass for a week, he said. He hadn't said what came at the end of a week.

Stevie packed her bag, set her teeth, and hoped this was going to be more than a short, ugly joke.
__ __ __

If it was a joke, it was definitely on Stevie, and it was the same joke she'd been living with all her life. There were plenty of things for a girl to do inside, plenty of ways to make herself useful, support the war effort, and never mind the asthma or coughs or any of it. No one would have looked twice if she hadn't taken it into her head to try this, like she'd shown up one day shaking with fever to play stickball with Bucky and the other kids on the block. Bucky had marched her straight back home, where mom had scolded her and tucked her into bed with hot tea and worry-lines deep-creased across her face. And Stevie had smiled and said, don't worry, Ma. Bucky, she had obviously made progress on since then.

So for a week, Stevie ate Camp Lehigh's mud and kept her feet pounding and kept hold of the damned rope, until there were blisters on her hands and on her feet. And when her muscles gave like wet noodles and her throat closed up and breathing in was like inhaling cold fire, Stevie remembered the look on that jackass Hodge's face when Agent Carter decked him, thought of Bucky on a battlefield somewhere across the ocean with no one to watch his back.

Peggy Carter was a hell of a dame and no mistake. Stevie found herself torn between finding excuses to spend time with her and keeping as much distance between them as she could to avoid the hazard of another woman's gaze. There had been a flicker of something besides amusement in her dark eyes when Stevie hopped into the back of the jeep, eyes that had held hers a moment too long.

The guys were generally less than welcoming. The tape around her ribs and chest excused her not showering with them, but they knew something was off about her, anyway, if not what. The fact that she was at least a foot shorter than most of them might have been a tip-off.

Colonel Phillips' introductory lecture had been vague, to say the least. Whenever Stevie pressed for more details, Erskine gave her this entirely bogus innocent look, the one that made Phillips' face pucker like he was sucking a lemon. The boys weren't exactly keen to pass along camp gossip to the 'little guy'; but on the other hand, it was easy to be overlooked. A girl could hear a lot that way.

At the end of a week, what Stevie had learned was this: the name of the project, Rebirth; that Doctor Erskine was in charge of it, which explained how neatly he'd slipped Stevie in despite Colonel Phillips' lemons; that they were all in competition; and that something would happen for the winner. That was the big question mark: it was an experiment, but that could mean anything.

And then she was chosen.

And then, Doctor Erskine told her everything.
__ __ __

The whole lab froze when they walked in; for once, Stevie didn't think it was Peggy they were all looking at.

Stevie stripped nervously, conscious that she'd removed the bandages this morning at Doctor Erskine's urging. An undershirt still protected her modesty, although Stevie wasn't sure that a procedure designed to produce a better soldier would do much for her bust line.

If she'd been less jittery herself, she might have noticed Peggy's normal armour of nonchalance slipping, but she was pretty distracted by being terrified. It was all happening fast, now. Howard Stark blew into the room. He was even more intense in person than when she'd seen him on stage, what seemed a million years ago at the World Expo. Stevie only heard about every other word he said and understood less than that, but when his butterfly-eyes landed briefly on hers, he winked.

Stark would be the only other person who knew, beforehand, Erskine had said; would have to, in order to fix the machines and everything up right. Stevie was pretty sure there were four of them, though, when Peggy glanced back over her shoulder at Stevie, now strapped firmly into the pod.

Erskine might as well have been speaking in tongues by the time he picked up the microphone, even though Stevie wished desperately for something, anything, else to focus on than lying here, being slowly swallowed by machinery. Her incipient claustrophobia was cut short by the searing pain of the injections, and she scarcely noticed the lid closing over her.

She'd like to say that she had too much class to swear in front of the Senator and everyone, but the truth was that she just wasn't that coherent. She felt like she was swelling, like a sausage splitting its casing, eugh. Stevie thought she understood now why Erskine had been so insistent that she eat double-portions since joining the SSR, though. Her bones ached, growth-pains, everywhere, all at once.

When it stopped, there was actually a moment where Stevie thought she'd died, that after all Erskine's work and faith in her, that insane spark of confidence, the voice saying I can do this, she hadn't made it after all.

Stevie didn't see anything, because her eyes were still scrunched shut, but she heard Erskine's voice and felt a tentative touch on her arm. Then she was being guided down, out, okay, Stevie was good with getting away from that thing, hunched over and unsteady as she was. About the first thing she saw, apart from the floor and a bunch of people's shoes and a pair of really big feet, holy cow, were those hers?—was Peggy.

"How do you feel?" Peggy's voice was soft as her face, which was about a miracle on two counts, and the best thing Stevie had heard in a long, long time.

Stevie was still getting the hang of breathing again, so it took her a minute to respond. Everything felt different. Off. "Taller."

Peggy darted a hand out, then snatched it back, but Stevie tracked down to where it had almost touched what was pretty unmistakably a breast now. Oh.

"You look. Taller." Peggy yanked her eyes up to Stevie's face with visible effort. Maybe she hadn't known after all.

"Erskine!"

Stark's head whipped up and, wow, he'd been staring at her chest, too. That was new.

Erskine was not looking at Stevie's chest, which was a relief. Erskine was looking at Colonel Phillips, whose face was not a healthy colour for a man of his years.

"Do you have an explanation for all this?" Phillips shouted from halfway down the last flight of stairs.

"I would call it a successful trial," Erskine replied mildly.

"A successful trial," Phillips was moving fast, and he was close enough to hiss it now, "does not turn a soldier into a girl in front of a United States Senator."

"The serum has done nothing of the kind. Miss Rogers was already a woman."

"Rogers is what?" barked an unfamiliar voice Stevie was sure, with a sinking feeling, belonged to the Senator.

"That is precisely what I would like to know. Erskine, are you out of you goddamned mind?"

"Colonel—"

Which was about as far as things got before the explosion went off. Despite the fading expression in Erskine's eyes, heartbreaking hope and trust, Stevie's last thought before she lit off after the man who'd done this was that she was up shit creek without a paddle.
__ __ __

The costume design actually started out as a way to disguise her figure. We don't just want another chorus-girl, Senator Brandt had said, although Stevie sure as hell felt like one. She had gotten a lot better at her guy-voice, though, and stripped the city almost completely from her accent.

Stevie still wasn't sure about the costume and the movies and the tour. The girls were great, though. They gave her a lot of tips. Anne let her in on the secret of how to look like you were looking at the crowd without actually doing it, which was a life-saver, and Nell taught her how to project her voice when she didn't have a microphone. Martha and Maria told her dirty jokes to calm her down, even though the asthma seemed to have disappeared, and it was actually LaVerne, Patty, and Maxene who came up with the motorcycle bit.

It wasn't just on-stage, though. Stevie was pretty sure her hair had never looked better, despite being all but in an Eton crop, and she didn't think it was just the vita-rays. And then there was the matter of brassieres, which Stevie had never fussed over much before but were painfully necessary now. Someone had to help her tie all that down, too, before the first few shows, until Stevie figured out how to do it herself. They were a lot more welcoming, anyway, than her boot-camp comrades.

It was an odd sort of battalion, to be sure. Probably smelled better than most. Bucky would have guessed more high-minded, but he'd have lost that bet. There was enough casual nudity to satisfy him, too. Stevie found that she liked the girls, as over-dramatic, loud, and catty as they could be sometimes. She imagined this was what being in a family was like, a big, boisterous one, not just her and mom, before mom died.

There was always a line between them, though. Stevie had gone for the WAAC because that was the best she could do. But for one brief, terrifying, exhilarating moment she'd thought she might get a chance at something more. In that moment, her hopes had ballooned out to the horizons, and ever since she'd been having a hard time stuffing them back into reality.

Anything more Stevie might have been had died with Doctor Erskine. The most useful she felt nowadays was buzzing off fellows who got too handsy with the other girls, not that all of the girls minded. Even in the lowest heels she could find—it wasn't that Stevie couldn't handle heels; short as she'd been before, she'd tottered around in some honestly frightening ones; but she'd grown a foot and four-inch heels were overkill now, besides being hard to find large enough—Stevie was still as tall as just about every man she came across, not to mention capable of throwing them over her shoulder like they were pillows in need of fluffing.

Getting the go-ahead for the overseas tour was like pulling teeth, but Stevie was just about one more kissed baby away from going insane. London had gone well enough. They had finished with God Save the King, and afterwards in the pub, the English had sung God Save the King and the Americans had sung My Country 'Tis of Thee and they'd gone back and forth until four congenial brawls had sputtered out and everyone except Stevie had to be poured out the door.

Here, though—Stevie looked out at these men, five miles from the front, muddy and battered, and felt like the biggest impostor in the world. Which was probably accurate. These men didn't want to listen to her give this speech any more than she wanted to give it.

Stevie did sort of wonder where they'd gotten those tomatoes, though. She could still smell them lingering about her person as she sat scratching moodily on ruled paper. The rain suited her mood.

Even Peggy's appearance, unexpected as always, didn't lift her spirits. Over a year she'd been doing this now. What a joke.

Hell. Why were the jokes never funny?
__ __ __

Stevie had barely dared to dream about being able to serve on the front lines. She'd been so proud of Bucky when he enlisted, firmly suppressing that little twinge of jealousy. The only proper training she'd ever had had been before the serum, anyhow.

It had worked, though, she'd known it from her first steps up the stairs of that Brooklyn lab, steps she'd taken four at a time without even breathing heavy. Stevie had done it once; she'd do it again. She'd do it better. She'd damn well keep her friend alive, this time. Bucky, you better not be dead, you rat.

Being sneaky was surprisingly easy: meet resistance, apply force, no shouting. Don't think about the sound of bones crunching. Simple as jumping out of an airplane.

And God, she'd missed Bucky. Stevie surely did not give him a big, girly hug when she found him, looking like hell but alive. Still her best friend. Did it hurt? Is it permanent? You don't have one of those, do you? Johann Schmidt's exploding lab was neither the time nor the place to burst out laughing. The look on Bucky's face when she made that jump was either truly hilarious or truly not.
__ __ __

The look on Bucky's face when Stevie let out her bosom was definitely hilarious. He'd been so pale and haunted-looking lying on that table, Stevie had half thought he was a ghost after all. But personal amusement aside, now that they'd reached something like safe ground the stuff binding her chest was far more useful as bandages; and Stevie was far past worrying about people finding out she was a girl at this point anyhow.

"Well, that's a neat trick," said a grubby little Nisei.

Stevie flashed him a grin. "Just don't tell the guys where it came from."

"Oh, I don't think they'd mind, dumpling."

Stevie turned to look at the man who had just spoken: big, moustache, bowler, ray gun. "That's 'Captain Dumpling' to you, soldier."

Bowler grinned and cast an odd smile at Bucky. "You've got spunk, Captain Dumpling. Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan, put 'er there."

They shook hands. Stevie did not go easy on the super-soldier grip.

"Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader?" the Nisei asked incredulously.

"You got a problem with that, Fresno?"

"Jim Morita," the Nisei said, very pointedly to Stevie and not Dugan. "Thanks for the rescue."

They shook hands. "Stevie Rogers; Captain America."

"Really. That sounds like quite a story."

"Doesn't it though?" Bucky said, glancing around the crowd they were gathering. Stevie recognised his protective face. Things hadn't changed all that much, it would seem.

Stevie cleared her throat. "I'll just be getting these to the wounded, then. Can't stay put too long."

"Girl's got a point, anyway, whoever she is," Dugan grumbled.

Stevie took the opportunity of triage to assess their forces. Something over three hundred men, she thought, exhausted but mostly whole. The wounded were gathered around one of the Hydra trucks some enterprising spark had pinched. They hadn't been able to take more than the walking wounded with them, though. Stevie tightened her jaw and tried not to dwell on it.

It was obviously far more than just the 107^th she'd found. There were British, French, and Canadian soldiers, as well as a scattering of negroes and probably at least one other American unit. Schmidt had had them working on something; something big. Stevie thought of the little glowing box in her pocket.

The signal dohickey Stark had sent her off with had been shot to hell in the rumpus, so it looked like it was the long way home for them, armed only with Schmidt's ray-guns, for however long they lasted. The tank made her feel a little better about having so many unarmed men on the wrong side of enemy lines, though.

Stark. What was fondue anyway? Stevie scowled just a little, privately. Peggy had gone stiff and talked around Stark's comment, but Stevie wasn't sure whether that meant she wanted to punch him in the mouth, or she was embarrassed.

Mind on the job, Rogers, Stevie reminded herself. And the job was getting them over forty or so miles of rough terrain back to Colonel Phillips' encampment.

"We need to turn around," she told Bucky.

He wasn't injured, Stevie had checked that right off, but he still looked a little peaky for her comfort. They were sitting in the space between a few large trees (Stevie had seen more trees in the past twelve hours than in her entire life to date) and one of Schmidt's tanks. Several of the men, including Morita and Dugan, were nearby. Not much privacy in these circumstances; and nervous as it made her, Stevie could use the opinions of real soldiers.

You're a real soldier now, girl. The sun was rising in the sky, visible even through all these trees, and that was all she needed.

"You want us to go back? Are you bloody mad, girlie?"

"Hey." Bucky started to shoulder to his feet.

Stevie flushed. "C'mon, Bucky," she muttered quiet enough only he'd hear it, shooting him a pleading look.

"Stevie."

Stevie didn't let up on the Look. Bucky squinted back at her and finally sagged against the tree they were squatting under. His sigh sounded so tired, she immediately felt guilty.

"Well, Captain Dumpling? You gonna answer the Duke here?"

"Lord, actually," corrected the grubby British officer.

"Sure I am." Stevie's mouth was dry. She pointed upwards. "You see that?"

Her interrogator made a big show of squinting upwards. "I do believe that's the sun, now that you mention it."

"We were heading east in the dark."

"Oh, fine," inserted Dugan.

"We need to go south." Stevie rubbed her sweating palms on her thighs. "Now, I didn't get a very long look at the map, but I know where our lines are and where we are, and the problem is that it's all mountains. We're going to need to head back west again, towards the factory, before we can turn south through the right pass. Once we're past it, it's a little over forty miles to the American camp we're aiming for."

The Englishman had been listening carefully. "Captain America indeed." But his tone was considering.

Nobody else looked particularly happy with the plan—well, gee, folks—but once she laid it out, no one found much to object to. No one else had looked at a map in a while, either. But she had found them and got them out; Stevie allowed herself a small surge of triumph for her first real foray into leadership.
__ __ __

In addition to Morita and Dugan, who remained in each other's proximity despite obvious mutual antagonism, the Englishman, Stevie, and Bucky, there were a negro and a Frenchman within earshot in their little knot in front of the tank. It was an odd group, but it stuck together during the day's nervous march, skirting around the Hydra base.

Most of them had been in the first cell Stevie had opened. Partially, Dugan, the negro, and the Englishman were on point because they were manning the tank; but Stevie sort of thought they and the rest were sticking close mostly from a desire to see what happened next.

They ran into trouble not as they were passing the now completely wrecked Hydra factory, still crawling with Hydra personnel, but some ten miles past it. When all was said and done, they did have numbers on their side, despite being worked to the bone, starved, sleep-deprived, more than half unarmed, and lacking any sort of actual military order or direction. Raising her shield and shouting follow me! as she charged forward with a ray gun in her other hand was really lowest-common-denominator stuff.

From the brief glimpse she'd had of the enemy force as a whole, she thought it had only been comprised of about fifty men. Weapons that vanished the victims made it hard to count the bodies, after. They'd had some rations on them. Stevie felt her stomach turn queasily as she watched the men pillaging the dead, but they had no food. Three hundred men weren't going to march another thirty miles on her delicate sensibilities. There was no time to bury them all, either.

"It isn't decent," she told Bucky.

Bucky's eyes were cold, and harder than she'd ever seen. "They ain't worth it."

"We could at least, y'know." Stevie gestured with her ray gun. "We can't just leave them lying there."

"And what happens when we run out of ammo, or whatever the hell devil stuff those things run off, in the middle of the next fight?"

Stevie held his eyes, then deliberately turned and walked away. Wordlessly, she went around to each still, wrecked, pillaged form and gave them one last shot apiece until the last one was only a fading outline of blue sparks. Maybe it wasn't patriotic, but Stevie hoped Howard and the SSR didn't figure out how to reverse-engineer Schmidt's ray guns.

When she was done, Stevie looked up to see the escapees watching her. Dugan was quiet, for once, his expression unreadable.
__ __ __

They made it a few more miles before Stevie called a halt. No one had really rested since last night, and she didn't want people collapsing. And while she felt like she could go one forever, it was definitely time to eat. Better to do it now, while it was light enough to forage, and move on under the cover of darkness.

It wasn't a lot of food for what a less rushed count had revealed was actually more like four hundred men; something, anyway. Stevie supposed she could run down a deer and hit it with her shield. Did they have deer in Europe? But catching meat was pointless because they didn't dare risk fires. Besides, most of their weapons didn't leave anything to eat.

Stevie took the watch that night and asked for volunteers to stand in shifts with her. She said it was because of the serum, she didn't need as much sleep now, wanted to think things out and go over the map in her head. Both maps. Really, she just didn't want to close her eyes.

"None of us know, going in, this is what we're signing up for."

Bucky sat down next to her, back to the same tree. Close enough she didn't have to meet his eyes. Or he didn't have to meet hers.

Stevie thought of still, dead faces disappearing one after another. Their bodies hadn't even had time to go cold. She thought of Peggy and her unflinching, precise aim. She remembered Johann Schmidt, not his face but his eyes.

They will undoubtedly shoot back. Stevie felt tears leaking down her grimy cheeks.

"Guess now I know why you didn't write more," Bucky said after a while.

"I feel like such a heel." She hadn't liked lying to him, was all. Joined the WAAC after all. Guess I finally wore them down, right. She'd been able to tell him about all the places she'd been, just not why. More often than news, she'd sent sketches: skylines, what she'd seen in the leaves at the bottom of a cup of tea, a mutt who'd chased the tour bus for three miles, the biggest cheese wheel she'd ever seen, with a little Stevie-figure under it, trying to push it uphill, a joke that maybe Bucky'd get now.

"Hey, no, I get it. Your best friend joins the army, despite the fact that she's a gal, turns out to be Captain America, and punches Hitler in the face. I can see how something like that could slip your mind."

"Hitler wasn't actually on tour with us."

"Oh right! And you go on tour for a year and a half with a busload of gorgeous broads. What a waste."

Stevie elbowed him in the side, lips twitching involuntarily. "Well, you know, didn't want to make you jealous."
__ __ __

Stevie was glad they'd decided to start travelling by night; the mountain terrain was brutal, and though they'd been able to drive through the woods until now, there was no way even the tank was getting down these slopes without a road. The road itself was scarcely wide enough. They moved at a crawl, headlights turned off and engines a loud-seeming rumble in the dark.

It took almost a week, nights of torturous descent or climbing with nerve-wracking days of waiting in between, before they reached the front lines. Dawn was breaking behind them, but Stevie's memory of Phillips' map must have been good, because the only Nazis they met had been well behind the line. Something more than half the men were armed now.

Stevie walked next to Bucky, costume muffled by her now-battered leather coat, which Bucky had refused despite not having any more cover than just his sweater. Stevie had to admit, the costume could use some muffling.

She heaved a sigh of relief once they crossed the line and met the first friendly scouts. They confirmed Phillips' position, for which Stevie was inexpressibly grateful: if she'd marched these men out of captivity and back to an empty field of churned mud, she'd have let Dugan run her over with that tank.

Stevie had been out with the scouts; the first night, she'd shadowed Falsworth, the English fellow who'd been giving her such a hard time about changing direction, but since then she'd been going alone. It was frightening how quickly it came to her, almost more like she was remembering than learning.

After meeting the American patrol, she made the decision to pull the scouts in and make with all speed for camp. She'd been glad of the coat, as it disguised more than just the costume, and spoken with the strangers in a feigned man's tenor.

This she did not try with Colonel Phillips, despite the crowd gathered around them. Bucky was subdued again but stood staunchly by her in the face of Phillips' Lemon Face.

"I'd like to surrender myself for disciplinary action."

Best to get it over with, Stevie figured. She hadn't disobeyed a direct order, exactly, but she definitely hadn't had authorisation and six days counted as AWOL. She'd gotten Bucky out, she'd gotten the prisoners out, and that was what counted. Whatever Phillips threw at her, she'd earned it, and she'd take it.

Phillips' glance around at the grinning crowd and that won't be necessary didn't fool her for a minute. Even if he wasn't going to dress her down in public, she figured she was due a monumental chewing out once he had her in private, if for nothing else than the fact that here were a few hundred men who could testify that Captain America had breasts the size of eggplants. Stevie was going to be kissing babies until she was ninety, she just knew it.

Peggy actually looked angrier than Colonel Phillips, which was a little unfair. It wasn't like Stevie had gotten the dohickey shot on purpose. And they'd have had to all walk back anyway.

Stevie was still kind of afraid she'd get slapped. Well no, that wasn't Peggy's style. But that look promised some sort of retribution, something unpleasant.
__ __ __

The reprimand didn't come until they were back in London, behind doors that would close and walls that weren't canvas. Stevie stood at attention on the other side of the colonel's desk, eyes fixed and shoulders back, like she was back at Fort Lehigh.

"What the hell did you think you were doing out there, Rogers?"

"Sir?"

"You heard me. Your little escapade endangered a hell of a lot more than just your life, which is no longer simply yours to dispose of as you see fit. However you and Erskine greased the wheels, you are in the army now, girl, and I expect you to follow orders just like everybody else. Howard Stark is one of the foremost minds we've got. He is quite frankly more irreplaceable than you, and you dragged him right into German airspace where he could have been shot down and killed; or worse, captured. And speaking of capture, did it even occur to you that never mind the opportunity we'd lose for re-engineering Erskine's serum if you went and got yourself shot dead, what do you think would have happened if the Krauts had gotten their hands on you, alive or otherwise?"

"Sir, I can't honestly claim to—"

"What? Possess the capability for rational thought? I'd about sussed that out on my own. And I suppose it is this deficiency that explains why none of this ever even crossed your mind, while yet you believed that, alone and unsupported, you could infiltrate a Hydra base and free an unknown number of unarmed prisoners, possessing no details about said base other than its location, which was at best thirty miles away from the nearest Allied forces."

"Sir—"

"I haven't given you permission to speak, Rogers."

Stevie's mouth snapped closed. Her fists almost did, too.

"All this you assumed, despite having practically no training, and no officer's training whatsoever. Do you know why you're standing here right now? It is sheer dumb luck."

"Permission to speak, sir."

Phillips eyed her, then nodded once. "Out with it."

"I didn't join up to be a recruiting poster, sir. I joined up because I feel a sense of duty to my country and to the men who are laying down their lives in her service. I—couldn't look any one of them in the eye if I weren't willing to do the same. Or myself either, sir." Stevie thought of the battered remnant of the 107^th on that field in Italy. "Sir?"

Phillips just kept staring at her. "I do believe you're serious. God help you."

There wasn't much Stevie could say to that.

Phillips shook his head and gathered up a file from his inbox, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache. "All right, soldier, follow me."

He led Stevie through a maze of corridors to a brick basement with vaulted ceilings, full of maps and busy-looking people. She'd expected the dressing-down. What she hadn't expected was being put in charge of a commando team.

Now, to convince the team.
__ __ __

Stevie really wished she didn't have to have this conversation dressed like a WAC. The men filtered into the pub, settling in the chairs she'd arranged around a polished table, keeping her expression as neutral as she could make it. She'd had their confidence in the field, rough, mud-spattered, and with no other options. Time to see how far it went.

It was impossible not to feel a rush of pleasure rising to her cheeks as all these disparate men agreed to follow her. Gabe Jones had French and German, Jacques Dernier knew explosives, Falsworth and Morita were tactics and intelligence-gathering, Dugan for muscle. Plus one more.

It would be a good team, Stevie thought, if she could keep them all killing Nazis and Hydra instead of one another. She grimaced, for the moment safely unobserved, and went to join Bucky at the bar.

"I told you they were all idiots." Bucky didn't even bother to ask how it went. He took a long drink while Stevie settled onto a stool.

"How about you? You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"

"Hell, no," Bucky told his drink. Stevie didn't think letting her find her own feet was the only reason Bucky was drinking whiskey alone instead of ale with the newly minted team. "That little shrimp from Brooklyn, who was too stubborn to know what wasn't her fight." He looked up, finally. "I'm following her."

Bucky gave her that brief half-smile he did now, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards; no more of the broad, teasing grins she'd grown up with. To the end of the line, Bucky. "But you're keeping the outfit, right?"

Stevie glanced over at the wall where a tour poster was hanging, all plastered over with cancellation notices. "You know what? It's kind of growing on me."

The singing was just starting to get raucous when Peggy walked in. Stevie had no idea how she did that: walk into a room and immediately have everyone's attention without doing anything else. Although that red dress certainly didn't hurt.

Stevie and Bucky were both on their feet before their brains were engaged in any capacity. Peggy didn't seem to find any of this unusual in the least.

"Captain."

"Agent Carter."

"Ma'am," Bucky added.

Bucky manoeuvred to keep Peggy in his sights. Peggy...prowled, Stevie decided was the word, up to Stevie. Ulp.

"Howard has some equipment for you to try. Tomorrow morning."

"Sounds good."

The singing, impossible apparently for even Peggy to suppress for long, drew her attention to the team's side of the pub. "I see your top squad's prepping for duty."

"You don't like music?" Bucky asked in the most normal tone Stevie had heard out of him yet. Oh, boy.

"I do actually," Peggy said directly to Stevie. "I might even, when this is all over, go dancing."

"Then what're we waiting for?" Bucky pressed.

Peggy replied, dark eyes doing inexplicable things to Stevie's stomach, "The right partner."

Stevie met her gaze, feeling all her insides scramble.

"0800, captain."

When Peggy swept from the room, it was like she took all the air with her.

"Yes, ma'm; I'll be there." But she was saying it to empty space.

"Okay, now I really am jealous."

Steve blushed redder than the stripes on her costume.
__ __ __

Howard Stark's lab was evidently in another section of the same brick basement where the maps lived. Stevie dodged the busy people with their ladders and sheaves of paper, finally coming to rest in a corner of the room half walled off by modular shelves full of file boxes.

She already couldn't wait to get back in combat boots. And the skirts on the WAC dress uniforms had definitely not been designed with a full range of motion in mind. Maybe Stevie should talk to somebody about that, sometime. Here was one thing, but these ladies were far too often in or near combat zones, after all. At least they were allowed practical fatigues. Did they even know how to defend themselves?

"I'm looking for Mister Stark," Stevie told a woman she thought she recognised from yesterday. She was sitting at a desk, reading a newspaper.

"He's in with Colonel Phillips," she said without looking up.

Stevie's nod got a brief flicker of notice, but that was all.

"New around here?"

Stevie turned around at the new voice. Its owner was a tall man, although no taller than Stevie was now, standing next to the rows of shelving. He grinned at her and cocked his head.

Stevie gave the WAC a last, uncertain glance; but it didn't look like she expected to be bothered anytime soon, and Stevie wouldn't really be going that far.

"You could say that. I was working with the SSR back in New York, but I've only just now caught back up."

"Welcome to London; I'm Leftenant Moore."

"Captain Stevie Rogers."

Stevie extended her hand, but instead of shaking it, Moore took it in his and kissed the back. His lips lingered, slightly moist. Stevie felt her eyes start to widen in panic.

This was naturally when Peggy arrived on the scene. Thank god.

"Captain. We're ready for you, if you're not otherwise occupied."

...or not. Blast. What had she done this time?

"Agent Carter, wait." Stevie hurried after her.

"Now I see what sort of partner you're looking for."

"Peggy that wasn't—" Wasn't what? Wasn't her fault? Wasn't, actually, improper?

"I don't really care what it was. Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"It definitely wasn't any worse than you and Stark...fonduing." Maybe she could ask Bucky what that meant; he'd been in the army longer.

If looks were anything to go by, that hadn't been the right thing to say.

"You really don't know a bloody thing about women," Peggy said, disappearing through a guarded door and leaving Stevie to hustle after.

"I am a woman," Stevie complained to no one.

Stevie could have wished she'd been slapped back in Italy. Whatever had gotten Peggy's garters in a twist back there was undoubtedly not helping matters now. She didn't hesitate at all firing that gun, and Stevie wasn't in any way reassured it was because she'd been briefed on whatever new material Stark had used in the shield.

It did not occur to Stevie either that she and Stark were staring hypnotised at Peggy's violent after-image for exactly the same reason.

"I had some ideas about the uniform," Stevie said numbly.

"Sure thing, hon."

Howard Stark was surprisingly easy to talk to, once you got past his habitual flirting, which seemed as natural a part of his speech as his wise-cracking and not so much like a serious attempt on Stevie's virtue. They retreated to a table tucked away in a corner so Stevie could sketch revisions as they conferred. Howard's own style wasn't at all bad, in Stevie's opinion, although he had a tendency to rely on compass and straight-edge.

"We'll have to deviate some from the standard design," Howard was saying. He made a vague gesture at Stevie and the obviously female figure taking shape on the paper. "Given the givens, and all."

Stevie cleared her throat. She could already feel the blush rising to her cheeks. "About...that."

Howard raised a singed eyebrow.

Stevie gauged his focussed expression. "They bounce around like a bag of jumping beans in a rubberised room," she blurted at last. "It can get...distracting."

Howard's eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline, but he won her friendship then and there by not saying more than an even-voiced, "I'll bet."

(The embarrassment was worth it, though, for the look on Howard's granddaughter's face sixty-eight years later when:

"Discovered the wonder of the sports bra, I see," Tony Stark said, watching Stevie thrash another punching bag, although she was trying not to break this one.

"S'good," Stevie agreed, "but I liked the one your grandad designed for me better.")

"There's just not enough structure in standard, um, brassieres," Stevie continued, ears burning. "The corseting in the costume I have now helps some, but there are obvious disadvantages to that." Breathing, for starters.

Howard was nodding; his eyes were distant. Stevie had the disturbing feeling he was running through an experience with brassieres which far outstripped her own. "Give me a few days to come up with something and we'll go from there."
__ __ __

The weirdest thing about working with the Howling Commandos, as they came to be called, wasn't being in charge, or the way things Stevie asked for tended to appear almost as if by magic, or flying all over Europe blowing up secret Hydra bases. It was being eye-to-eye with the team.

It was silly, but Stevie just wasn't used to looking people in the face instead of the clavicle. The girls from the chorus line had all been a uniform four to six inches shorter than her, but most of the Howlers were a lot closer in height. It was strange.

Stevie wasn't sure how the brass were handling Captain America's semi-public outing as a gal. Colonel Phillips couldn't be as mad at her as he'd pretended, or he wouldn't be keeping the heat off her on that score. The new costume was designed for function, not vaudeville, but frankly even the stitched-in armour chest panels didn't conceal Stevie's curves as well as the old binding-and-corset job. Stevie couldn't bring herself to care very much.

The weeks of preparation before their first sanctioned raid flew by. Stevie read all the reports Phillips would give her and every treatise on strategy she could get her hands on. Getting veterans from the last war to talk tactics with her was a little more difficult. She had much better luck kibitzing with Howard and his people as they rigged and tested the customised gear for her squad.

Stevie really liked the motorcycle.

Their first mission was in France, a small Hydra camp someone else had gathered the intelligence on. A trial run, of sorts, to see how they all worked together and give them a chance to iron out the kinks before tackling a larger target.

Peggy was speaking to her again, barely. Stevie still felt the strong urge to keep the shield between them, even when she didn't have it on her. But that would just be undignified.

It was just the seven of them this time around, although Stevie had vague thoughts about requisitioning a few additional units for taking down the manufacturing plants. It had been pretty obvious that it was Schmidt who'd blown up the one in Austria; and while Stevie had gone in alone, the men had more or less gotten themselves out and it had been a pretty big mess all around. The other bases were for the most part even further behind the lines, and they'd have to have plans for extracting any forced work-gangs in addition to the ability to blow things up on their own initiative.

Everyone was tense tonight. Morita and Dugan were bickering. Gabe kept trying to come in on Morita's side, but whenever Stevie told them to knock it off (it had been three times already), Dernier stole his attention. Only that kept degenerating into Dernier correcting Gabe's French, which made Gabe cranky, and so he snapped at Dum Dum while Dernier sulked because he couldn't talk to anyone else, and Falsworth and Bucky just egged everyone on until Stevie told them all to shut it. Again.

"We're supposed to be dismantling Hydra, not each other," she said firmly.

"Well, then what do you suggest we talk about?" Dugan asked snidely.

Heck. That was a valid question. What did fellows do when they were alone together? Besides drink and tell bawdy stories?

"We could go over the mission plan again—" this won groans all around; Stevie's brain spun wildly "—or, hey. Does anyone have a pack of cards?"

"This was a terrible idea," Stevie complained bitterly an hour later.

"Cap, and I mean this," Morita told her, "you have the worst poker face I have ever seen."

"I should play with the mask on," she grumbled.

"Wouldn't hide the blushing," Gabe said placidly, scooping the pot towards him. Again.

"I can't believe I'm getting the pants beat off me by a—"

Stevie shot Dugan a warning look.

"—college boy," Dugan finished, throwing Stevie a pointed glare.

"Yeah, but you've seen him play pool," Bucky pointed out. Stevie was actually a lot better at pool now, aside from an occasional tendency to send the balls flying across the room. But Gabe was hopeless.

"Last hand," Stevie said. "We're moving out bright and early tomorrow."

The plan was to get the rest of the way to their target tomorrow and do reconnaissance until sundown. Move in after dark. Set some charges, grab anything interesting and portable: nice and simple.
__ __ __

It went okay, except for the fact that the Hydra camp was about five times bigger than it was supposed to be. Also, they were going to have to work something out with the language barrier because Jacques Dernier was a madman, and if he and Stevie could communicate directly, then at least maybe she'd have some warning the next time he jumped in front of a tank and jammed a rock in its cannon. Jesus Christ, he was quick.

Still, though, they got out alive; and massive destruction was the name of the game, Stevie supposed. Not exactly low-profile.

"I vote we go for the one in Greece next," Bucky opined when they were all back in (under) London.

"Hell, I'll second that," Dugan agreed.

Falsworth sniffed, but Morita put in, "Suppose I have to agree with you about something after all."

"You're all just saying that because it's cold," Stevie told them absently, mind still turning over terrain and active fronts and troop movements. "We've got more intel on the one in Luxembourg."

Bucky heaved a sigh, possibly just so Stevie would elbow him in the ribs. "Do you even get cold, anymore?"

Stevie frowned, considering. "Now that you mention it." She flashed her team a maybe slightly cruel smile. "Come on, are you men or babies?"
__ __ __

The first (intentional) take-down of a full-blown Hydra facility meant a lot of prep work, and so a lot of time with Peggy and Phillips. Stevie had pulled Peggy aside after their first very business-like session in an effort to fix whatever it was she'd screwed up.

"Was any of it true? Or were you just playing the part?" Peggy asked. She seemed to have calmed down somewhat; her tone was nowhere near that inhuman disinterest she adopted when truly furious.

"Wha—? I don't—are you talking about New York? Are you actually mad at me for not coming clean before the test?" Stevie asked incredulously. "I barely knew you back then."

Stevie barely knew her better now; it was just that Peggy was so vivid a few weeks in her company felt like much longer. It felt like forever, actually.

"I just want to know," Peggy had a habit of standing just a little too close to her; she was doing it now, arms folded and jaw raised like it was stubbornness and not Stevie's height, "if what you said in the car was true."

"I really never have been dancing," Stevie said slowly, searching Peggy's face for—she didn't know what for. "Bucky tried to teach me once. About the first thing I did was step on his foot."

It was the right answer, apparently. Peggy's posture relaxed a little, from iron to simply challenging.

"I used to wear these," Stevie lifted one foot and gestured with her fingers to approximate the height of her pumps. "He ended up loosing the toenail, actually. Besides, Bucky and me—we're not like that."

Damn the blush; why was she blushing? Was it just the short laugh and the smile she'd surprised into Peggy's eyes?

"Okay?" Stevie asked nervously, when Peggy continued not to say anything.

Peggy drew her mantle of professionalism back around herself. "Thank you, Captain."
__ __ __

They didn't make it to the Grecian base until late summer. Bucky's dry look said everything. Stevie just shrugged.

That mission got really messy. Halfway up the mountain, they met a woman who introduced herself, eventually, as Logan. Stevie wasn't entirely sure whether Logan caused the mess or eliminated the mess, but Stevie was definitely reporting the encounter to Colonel Phillips.

Actually, the thing that stuck in Stevie's mind was an exchange between Logan and Dernier, not the patrol she'd just helped them take out. Logan dressed even less like a dame than Stevie in costume: man's trousers, leather coat, and a battered Stetson that looked truly strange on top of her Asian features. Although she was almost as short as Stevie had been before the serum, she was solid and obviously muscular, with rough, callused hands that spoke of hard work. Morita said she was half-blood, but he couldn't say if that was Japanese or Chinese or what.

"Like the suit," she told Stevie in a voice heavy with sarcasm. "Just the thing for playing it sly and sneaky."

"I'm supposed to be a symbol," Stevie replied a little stiffly, dropping the hand she'd proffered. The Howlers were spread out around them, waiting for a cue.

"Never met one of those before. C'mon." Logan wrinkled her aquiline nose like the smell of the carnage she'd caused offended her and started up the slope in the direction the Howlers had been headed when Falsworth, scouting on ahead, had run into the patrol. "Got anything to drink?"

Logan was Canadian, of all things, which was about as much information as she'd give. The odd thing, the one that caught in Stevie's mind, was what happened when Dernier offered her a pull from his flask. He said something in French that Stevie didn't quite catch, still being new to the language, but guessed was an offer to pull something else as well. She figured it was a safe bet, since Gabe snickered, and Logan growled something back at him in French so heavily accented Stevie couldn't make head nor tails of it.

Dernier smiled weakly, and Logan sniffed the air again. Her narrow-eyed glare grew knowing, and one corner of her mouth curled up in a truly terrifying grin.

"Salut," Logan said, swiping Dernier's flask and taking a long drink from it.

Gabe looked as baffled as everyone else, and every time Stevie tried to ask Dernier about it (she still didn't entirely trust Logan), he pretended not to understand her French. Since he wasn't listening anyway, Stevie took the opportunity to point out again that the rest of the Howlers learning French wasn't actually more practical than him learning to speak English. Unless they started operating in France, she supposed.

It was strange, was all. And more disturbing than the bullet Stevie could have sworn hit Logan storming the compound but saw no sign of later, because Dernier was on her team and Logan disappeared before the dust had even settled.
__ __ __

The Howling Commandos finally pried Stevie's story out of her late one night. They were camped in a bombed-out building with enough wall left that they could string up some tent canvas and risk a fire, which had meant catching and cooking meat to supplement the canned beans. The catching was okay, but Stevie was more than happy to leave all the steps between that and eating to Falsworth and Morita.

They were sitting around the fire, waiting for it to burn down and passing around a flask. Stevie didn't say anything, because tomorrow night was just more humping it through enemy territory.

It was a dull, grey dawn seeping over the horizon. The birds were coming awake, low, unfamiliar cheeping. Somewhere, a crow cawed.

"So what's your story, Cap?" Morita asked.

Stevie accepted the flask from him and took the requisite pull. It burned going down, but her head stayed clear. She started talking anyhow.

Gabe was watching her with a strange look on his face when she finished.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Just trying to picture you in heels."

Which had been Bucky's cue to snort and roll out the embarrassing childhood moments, and the atmosphere had relaxed considerably.
__ __ __

Stevie had not gone into the army with unrealistic expectations about the amount of profanity she'd encounter. Well, okay, no, there had been no way to anticipate how much cussing went on in a war zone, but Stevie was under no illusions about reforming anyone's behaviour. It wasn't like she never swore herself. She flattered herself that she was getting pretty good at it, in fact.

But Dugan had been spitting bad language with every other word for a week now, and it was wearing on her nerves. This wasn't the pre-engagement jitters Stevie had figured out months ago made them all crabby waiting for the order to go. The weather had been decent the past few days, and no one was shooting at them. But last time they'd had a night in a proper town, he'd gotten so boiled he'd forgot to, well, find a date. Or stay awake for it, or something; Stevie really wasn't interested in the details.

It had put him in a foul mood, and he was taking it out on the rest of the squad in about the most immature way possible. They were sneaking through Poland. It was night and it was hot and it had just started raining this infuriating drizzle that seeped in everywhere and made everything slippery. Finally, Stevie snapped.

"Let's watch the language if you don't mind, Dugan."

Stunned silence had fallen. Stevie thought Peggy's aura of authority must have been rubbing off on her after all.

Stevie's sense of accomplishment was short-lived, because they met Schmidt again on that raid, and halfway through the fight, Stevie fell into a pit like an idiot, and that was when he started talking.

"So, Captain America is a woman. I almost could not believe it. Tell me, did Doctor Erskine think a female would be gentler? More biddable, perhaps? Or did he have something else in mind?"

Stevie broke away from Schmidt's mad gaze. It was compelling, like trying to see to the bottom of a well. Focus, Stevie reminded herself. The walls were sheer, the pit narrow and easily three times her height. Schmidt was squatting at the edge, ranting down to her.

"It would gall him to know he has done me a great favour. I can only hope he's spinning in his grave." Schmidt laughed. Stevie would throw the shield at him, but what if he dodged it? Or worse, caught it? He'd already knocked her gun across the room.

"We have an opportunity, you and I," he continued. "What concern of yours are the petty squabbles of the human race? They are weak. Unworthy. Your future lies with me."

"Thanks but no thanks," Stevie shouted up.

There was that laugh again. "As Nietzsche once wrote, 'Man is for woman a means: the end is always a child.' I will father on you a true race of übermenschen. You shall be mother to a dynasty that will rule the world until Hitler is only a smudge on the appendix of history."

"Not a fucking chance!"

Schmidt smiled grotesquely. "There is no point is resisting; it is your de—"

Abruptly, Schmidt disappeared from the lip of the pit. Gunshots erupted; from the opposite side of the room, Stevie thought, because that was where the door was. And there, that could only be Schmidt returning fire.

Stevie itched to be out in the fight, but she was pinned down until the day Howard made her a vibranium full-body suit. She grit her teeth and waited until Dugan's ugly mug peeked over the edge of the trap.

"You ought to watch that language, Cap," he told her piously.

"Did you hear what that pervert wanted? You can talk when Nazis start trying to breed with you."

"Dum Dum, breeding?" Morita's head appeared next to Dugan's. "Even Hydra isn't that evil."

"Are we clear?" Stevie asked, impatiently.

"For now. Monty chased Schmidt through a secret door. I think I saw some—woa."

"Thanks." Stevie grabbed at Dugan's arms to keep from tottering back into the pit. "Now, what are we waiting around for?"
__ __ __

It wasn't actually waking up from the dream about Peggy's lips that twigged Stevie to it in the end, embarrassing as that was to admit in hindsight; it was a sleepless night in an abandoned French inn near Dernier's home town. Stevie glimpsed them through a half-destroyed door. It wasn't that they weren't careful; inside was dark enough no one but Stevie could have seen anything.

They were standing close and not saying anything, but it still came as a shock when they kissed. Stevie could see he was the old friend of Dernier's who'd smuggled them supplies earlier. She could see the way Dernier's hand shook, and the unshed tears in the corners of his friend's eyes. Dernier had told the Howlers' improving French that he was going to see the fellow off and catch up on old times.

Stevie backed away and didn't remember to start breathing again until she was the rest of the way to the front room where she was supposed to be relieving Morita on watch. In the morning, Dernier was standing his turn, and the other man was gone. But Stevie could think of nothing but Peggy.
__ __ __

Stevie was back in the WAC uniform, and she'd never really minded women's clothes before—high heels were your friend when you were only as tall as the average ten-year-old, and a lot of skirts gave you decent freedom of movement, though not much insulation in winter—but she was starting to feel more like herself in the suit.

Let's be honest: it's not the shoes that are making you uncomfortable. Stevie was still trying valiantly to convince herself she did not need the shield for this meeting when Peggy got there. The team was back in London, which was getting to be a rarer and rarer occurrence; but Peggy showed up in the field sometimes, with instructions or intelligence, as fierce and fearless as any of the Howlers.

Stevie spent a lot of late nights in the map room, familiarising herself with terrain and intel, or sometimes just looking at the little black humps of Hydra bases scattered across Europe. At some point after everyone else had gone to sleep except for Howard Stark, whose presence was more often told by violent noises from his lab than his visible appearance, Peggy would wander in. Sometimes it was Bucky or Howard, either of whom would pry her out and demand she stop brooding and put her down time to good use. But mostly it was Peggy. They would sit together and maybe talk or maybe fight, but more and more, Stevie got the feeling there was something neither of them was saying.

Which was why, tonight, when Peggy interrupted her own frighteningly sincere discourse on taking stupid risks in combat (the Howling Commandos had come in late last night; and Peggy had of course got her hands on Stevie's mission report, not that she hadn't seen the bullet holes in the motorcycle earlier), which was to Stevie's way of thinking hypocritical, to ask Stevie what was wrong, Stevie leaned across the space between their chairs and kissed her.

Stevie's heart was hammering like she was in the middle of a fire fight, but her body was frozen, one arm still across the back of the chair she was sitting on, her other hand on Peggy's hair, face so close she could tell when Peggy started to breathe again, even with her eyes squeezed tight shut.

Peggy stood. Stevie looked up at her, letting her arm fall to her lap. Peggy's eyes were burning, and there was a lovely, triumphant smile hovering over her perfect lips.

"About bloody time," she growled, seized Stevie's face in both hands, and planted one on her.

One kiss was nowhere near enough. Two left Stevie gripping the chair back like she was going to fall off. It took a second to reorient herself enough to realise that Peggy had moved away again. Stevie stared and she stared back, something unreadable behind the fire in her eyes before she turned and walked away.

After several minutes, Stevie got up and left, picking out the short way through the blackout dark to her quarters. She didn't think she could fall asleep after that, but she did. The smile tugging at her lips wouldn't go away; really, that could have gone worse.
__ __ __

Peggy had been running this thing on her own schedule from day one, Stevie decided after long thought. But the idea of rushing whatever timeline they were on barely occurred to her. The kiss in the map room had opened, well, Peggy to her. All the personal things she'd kept behind a door of professional reserve. Stevie, who had never done any of this before, found it almost as exhilarating as the necking.

Peggy had been holding back, waiting for her. Waiting maybe for Stevie to make a different choice, so it wouldn't hurt as bad if she chose different. That seemed so cold; but Peggy hadn't had an Erskine to sneak her into this male preserve; she'd had to fight her way in on her own with as much doggedness as Stevie had ever shown. Stevie figured there was more than one reason to maybe count getting her out on that first mission as the biggest favour anyone had ever done for her.

It was only by how much more easy Peggy was with her now that Stevie realised the extent of that reserve. Peggy wasn't demonstrative by nature, but she'd allow herself more than the ghosts of expressions, her voice lower and less controlled. Peggy at work used words as tools, choosing them precisely and with care. Stevie hadn't anticipated how intoxicating it could be, just listening to the foreign cadence of her words as they tumbled spontaneously from her lips.

This first time, they had only three days of dinners and long walks in the evenings after all the meetings broke up, followed by lingering, covert kisses before they parted. Captain America and the Howling Commandos were going to intercept a Hydra supply convoy, something the army proper often didn't have the time or resources for.

Bucky kept throwing her weird looks. Stevie ducked him and tried not to blush, because how was she going to explain this? She felt more than a little guilty, keeping secrets from her best friend again. But Bucky was even more fiercely protective of her than ever, if that was possible, not to mention trained as a sharpshooter now, and Stevie had no idea how he'd react.

The upshot was that Bucky did not back her up when Morita caught her staring up at the cloudy sky instead of down at the map as they jounced along a dirt road towards enemy territory and asked her who the fellow was she was mooning over. In fact, while Dugan put his two cents in from the driver's seat, Bucky gave her a reproachful look and stole her map.

"C'mon."

"You are clearly too distracted. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to take over."

Stevie reached for the map, but told herself she had too much dignity to lean across him after it when he yanked it away again. "You know I'm taller than you now, right?"

"Does that mean you've found a tall 'un, or are you giving some little fella a break?" Dugan asked, and Stevie didn't need to see his face to hear the shit-eating grin.

"That's it, I'm riding with Monty this afternoon." And Howard had better have her motorcycle fixed by the time they got back.

"Dernier's turn to drive," Morita remarked blandly.

"Then I guess you'd better put your foot down."

"You do have the shield, I guess."

"Says the man who volunteers to ride with Bucky." There were very good reasons they didn't let Bucky and Dernier both drive at once anymore. It probably said something that Dugan wasn't their worst driver.

"I take exception to that," Bucky objected. "Ah ah ah!"

Stevie sighed and sat back in her seat. Let him have the map, then.

"What can I say? I enjoy living dangerously."

Keeping at least half an eye on her team, where they all were and the terrain around them, was something Stevie had noticed herself doing even in the London pub they'd adopted. It didn't really take a lot of her attention most of the time, which was a good thing because no matter how hard she tried, Stevie couldn't stop thinking about Peggy and dreaming up tactics to get her to repeat that wonderful belly-laugh Stevie had surprised out of her two nights ago.

She turned her head, and Bucky was watching her with amusement and that odd distance he had so often now. Stevie used his distraction to swipe back the map; enough was enough, she decided. She'd tell him when she got a chance but not, dang it, in the back of a jeep with half the Howlers listening in. Stevie would like to think—well, it wasn't any of their business, anyway.

She'd need a lot more than the shield to protect her if the Howling Commandos became privy to Peggy's personal life, that was certain. All things being equal, Stevie would much rather face another fistfight with Schmidt in a burning building.

Thankfully, neither was on the agenda this mission, not that the boys could take a hint. Really, Stevie thought, it would be nice if they kept their minds on business for once.

"Down!" Stevie ducked and covered as Bucky's shot went over her, dropping the man sneaking up to flank, then sent the shield flying at the jeep-mounted machine gun and operator pinning down Gabe. "Seriously, you're not gonna give me anything?"

"Can we talk about this later?" Stevie asked, catching the return swing and continuing to advance.

"You're not sweet on Colonel Phillips, are you?" Bucky asked warily.

Stevie did not warn him before throwing the shield past his head. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw it was Dernier, Falsworth, and Morita clearing the Hydra convoy and scattering.

"Ew, why would you even think something like that?"

"Just tell me you don't, Stevie."

Stevie grinned toothily, watching Gabe and Dugan pop out of the trees, distracting both the Hydra soldiers following her explosives unit and the ones heading for the trucks that had just been sabotaged. "All yours, soldier."

"Christ, the army's given you a dirty mind."

"Blame it on my company. Hold!"

There went the explosives. It was a good thing they always brought extra: the convoy was half again as large as they'd been led to believe, nine trucks instead of six, but no actual tanks, thank god. Probably an important shipment, too, judging by the size of those explosions.

Stevie raised one gloved hand and waved, signalling to pull back. Half a mile down the road, they all met up and crossed over. Pursuit was confused, but they had to keep moving. There was no time for more chatter.

There wasn't any time for conversation for several hours and a few hundred miles. Stevie was pretty sure that Bucky had noticed her getting into the other jeep, but Bucky had been first back, whereas Stevie usually got into the second jeep if she was riding with the group and propped her shield up in back. When she had the bike, she'd take rear guard with the shield slung over her shoulders.

On the whole, Stevie really would have preferred to have the bike this mission, for the obvious reasons and also because the bike was wicked and she was almost as attached to it as the shield. She liked the flexibility it gave her.

Howard did all the repairs on the bike himself if it was at all possible. Stevie had told him it wasn't necessary, although the way she'd been caressing the fender at the time might have undercut her sincerity. But Howard insisted he liked doing it; the simple mechanics were relaxing, apparently. There just hadn't been time; their turnarounds were getting pretty short. The war was going almost as well as the assault on Hydra, but you had to keep the momentum up. And it was increasingly worrisome, not knowing what exactly Schmidt was up to.

They got back to their own lines only about four hours after they'd shaken the last of their pursuit—people kept noticing Hydra chasing them and joining in and then the next checkpoint would notice and call reinforcements, until they'd finally managed to mow down all the tagalongs at once and exchange all-out flight for a less conspicuous retreat. It was brutally late, but at least the weather was holding fair. At about the third MP checkpoint Stevie had to Captain America their way through, she made the executive decision to bivouac for the night.

Stevie always got her own quarters back in London, for obvious reasons, but in the field they all shared tents, when they had tents, even when Peggy was out with them. Nudity wasn't usually an issue, since they slept with their boots on half the time and frequently didn't bathe until they were back at base. There were times Stevie could really do without the enhanced senses.

"I don't want to see any of you until you smell like human beings and not a pig farm," Stevie told them when they stepped off the plane, back in England. "Don't forget to wash behind your ears, children. Bucky, you got a minute?"

Bucky stopped and turned like Peggy had just walked by in her red dress. "This wouldn't have anything to do with the guy you're not sweet on, would it?"

Stevie pushed him on down the ramp. "Just keep moving, soldier."

Stevie wrapped her leather overcoat more tightly around herself, covering the uniform, although the shield probably blew her cover a little. Bucky fell in and didn't say anything when she turned the opposite direction from the city, out across the landing field.

"It's not a guy," Stevie said when they were out of earshot of the air crews. "It's Peggy."

"Did you two get into an argument or something?"

Stevie shook her head, crossing her arms. She could already feel the blush. "No. I mean I'm—sweet on—Peggy."

Silence. Stevie gave in to the impulse to look at Bucky. His brow was furrowed and he, too, had his coat pulled close around him. Summer was fading, and England was never what you'd call balmy.

"Say something."

"Not what I was expecting," Bucky said at last. Another silence. "But it does make some sense."

"Yeah?" Stevie's voice was pathetically hopeful, even to her own ears.

"Well, she definitely likes you better than she likes me. She isn't going to shoot me because I know now or anything, is she?"

Stevie choked out a laugh. "Well, I wouldn't go around telling anybody."

"Wasn't planning on it."

Stevie allowed herself a cautious breath of relief. "Does it bother you? I mean, I know it's not, not normal..."

Bucky threw back his head and laughed out loud. The dirty look Stevie threw at him had no effect whatsoever.

"Hey, come on, I'm serious here."

"Stevie." Bucky reached out and rapped on the shield slung across her back. It rang a muffled, musical hum. "We left normal behind a long time ago."

Stevie chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, I guess."

"Hey."

Bucky's voice was oddly soft. Stevie looked at him curiously.

"You never were normal, you know."

"You mean you thought, before—"

"No, no." Bucky shook his head. "I just—there's something special about you. I got that first time we met. That doc fellow must have seen it too, sneak you in the programme like he did. I'm just glad someone else's finally cottoned on. At least, she better have."

"Bucky."

"Can't expect a guy not to look out for his best friend." Bucky punched her on the shoulder.
__ __ __

Of course, once the reports had all been handed in and the debriefings taken care of, and Stevie had stopped in to check on her bike, and she and Peggy had gotten their coats and stepped out to have a completely innocent-looking dinner together, Bucky had to show up.

"Good evening, ladies." Bucky was smiling.

Peggy turned to look accusingly at Stevie.

"He's my best friend! He deserves to know."

Peggy raised an eyebrow at this.

"I trust him with my life."

This had marginally better success. Peggy turned to Bucky, who was smirking back, albeit not as smugly as he was capable of. Peggy's posture was never anything short of perfect, but she at least didn't freeze back up to working levels.

"Sergeant Barnes."

"Agent Carter. Would you mind if I join you two fine ladies for dinner? I figure I ought to at least be on speaking terms with my best friend's gal."

"Only if you can be more discreet about it."

Stevie flashed a nervous smile. "Now that's settled, I'm starving!"

She flung an arm around both their shoulders, incidentally also separating the two of them. Bucky meant well, at least. Stevie really did hope the two of them would learn to get along.

Dinner didn't go too badly, despite half of Bucky's jokes sinking like lead balloons. It wasn't really his fault: even for a Limey, Peggy had a weird sense of humour. Stevie kind of liked it, but Bucky still had trouble parsing Falsworth's jokes. Also, Stevie was prepared to admit to being somewhat prejudiced.

It was going all right, anyway, until they were almost done. Only Stevie was still eating; Peggy and Bucky were lingering over their drinks.

"I've had a rule about Stevie since the two of us were kids," Bucky said into a lull in the conversation, looking Peggy straight in the eye.

"And what is that?" Peggy asked, looking straight back, mild as milk.

"Aw, Bucky, please don't—"

"She gets hurt, and the gloves come off."

Peggy didn't turn a hair. "I understand. So long as you understand that the policy is mutual."

Stevie buried her face in her hands. She should've kept her fat mouth shut.

"So," Peggy said a little later, stepping close in the protection of a dark alley. "I'm your gal, am I?"

Stevie felt her face going red. Peggy reached up to brush a finger across her cheek.

"What?"

"You're lovely like this."

That made her blush even harder. But then Peggy was kissing her. She pulled Stevie's head down and kissed her burning cheeks, her forehead, finally her lips. Peggy's body crushed sweetly against hers, their bosoms pressing together more with every breath.

Stevie's hands drifted down to her waist, solid and slender. Peggy's arms were around her neck, and it was so stereotypical and so not, all at once, that Stevie had to laugh a little against Peggy's mouth.

"You're amazing," Stevie murmured, because it was true.
__ __ __

Peggy did not visibly warm up to Bucky, but the next time Phillips sent the team on a mission, Stevie found a small photo of Peggy, clipped from some newspaper article or other, in her kit. She taped it into her compass and grinned like a fool whenever she saw it for about a month.

Some things had changed, since Normandy. It was a lot easier getting places, for starters. But a few of the divisions they came in contact with had reporters; or worse, camera crews. And somebody in the brass had definitely been telling tales out of school, because some of them got sent in looking for Captain America, and Phillips told her to let them get a look.

Stevie guessed she didn't mind the cameras on principle; she was still a symbol, after all, and she hoped not so phoney a one as she'd been Stateside. They just got kind of...pushy. Stevie had liked being on tour the girls all right, she supposed; but the movie sets had been different. She tried to wear an overcoat when they were around, which some of them complained about. Tough luck. Interviews were one thing, but people getting underfoot while she was trying to work were another, and she had more important things to do than have the you're-a-girl fight with the brass and the government and the press.

Well, and one of them got a shot of Peggy's picture in her compass, which was embarrassing on more than one level. Stevie wasn't certain until Peggy reached into the pocket where she kept it, over her heart, pulled it out, and flipped it open.

"I'm flattered."

"I'm so sorry. You're angry, aren't you?"

Peggy regarded her a minute, then shook her head.

"Not very. I believe Colonel Phillips thought it was a joke." She handed Stevie back the compass. "Besides, it's good press, Captain America having a sweetheart. And you obviously couldn't go around with Bucky's picture in your compass."

Stevie snorted. "Definitely not."

Peggy shared a knowing little smile. Stevie's stomach flip-flopped.

"Come up."

Peggy didn't, always. Stevie had realised from the start that Peggy was working off some timetable of her own, maybe waiting for Stevie to be ready. Maybe waiting to be ready herself: Peggy didn't trust easily. It had to be difficult for her to bare so much of what she kept private. Stevie did everything she could to make sure Peggy knew how much she treasured every piece of herself Peggy chose to share.

"All right," Peggy agreed.

It was cold out tonight, autumn giving way to winter. Peggy shed gloves and heavy wool coat, leaving them on the chair by the door.

Stevie's room was a bit of a closet, but at least it was private. A bed, two chairs, a small writing desk, and an even smaller bedside table. Peggy had her own quarters in a barracks on the other side of the SSR; as Colonel Phillips' right hand, she came and went as she pleased. Stevie had only seen the place once or twice, though. She wasn't sure if that was because Peggy was still protective of her private space, or if they both wanted Stevie as close to the costume (and shield) as possible in the event of an emergency.

Stevie folded her own coat over the back of the chair, feeling abruptly like a big, awkward cow as clumsy as she had been before the serum, only now with more bulk to knock into things with. She froze in place, inhaling the scent of Peggy's hair. They were standing closer than was strictly proper.

Peggy broke the moment by turning around and reaching out. Her fingers skimmed the pocket where Stevie had replaced the compass in a gesture very like the aborted one she'd made just after Stevie staggered out of the capsule. This time, she pressed on the hard circle of metal. Stevie's breast gave beneath it.

"I wish I could stay so close to you."

Stevie covered Peggy's hand with her own. "I'd love to have you with us all the time. But that's what you get for making yourself so invaluable at HQ."

Peggy was rubbing her breast, squeezing it gently. Stevie's breath hitched, and Peggy took her parted lips in a deep, searching kiss.

Stevie was already addicted to these kisses of Peggy's, slick and rousing, but they'd never done much, um, petting before. Firmly, she held Peggy's hand where it was, wondering how far she could push this time. She definitely wanted more of Peggy's hands all over her.

In furtherance of this, Stevie grasped a handful of Peggy's posterior and gently scraped her teeth over her lower lip. Instead of decking her, although they were mostly past that part of their relationship, Peggy made a sound like a growl and pinched Stevie's nipple through the fabric of her blouse.

A wild spark went straight to the building warmth between Stevie's thighs. She moaned straight into Peggy's mouth, and Peggy's fingers were suddenly slipping first her tie and then her buttons.

Stevie caught those capable hands between her own and gathered them to her heart. Peggy pulled back, looking up at her questioningly. Still holding her hands loosely, Stevie leaned in to touch their foreheads together.

"I love you."

Peggy closed her eyes and hid her face in the curve of Stevie's shoulder. She trailed her lips up to brush a kiss behind Stevie's ear, exposed by her bent neck.

"I love you, too."

Stevie shivered to hear it out loud. She let go of Peggy's hands to hug her close. "It's okay."

Free, Peggy's hands slipped lower to untuck her shirt and start on it again, from the bottom up. Her teeth scraped almost delicately over Stevie's earlobe, and wow, that was new. New but good; Stevie was sure all of it would be good.

This was really happening. Peggy pushed shirt and jacket off her shoulders, leaving her standing there in just her brassiere. Then Peggy's hands were on her, nothing in the way. Stevie had learned a thing or two about kissing in the last couple months, but she felt it all deserting her already, technique going sloppy, messy, desperate.

"Touch me," Peggy breathed.

God. "Yes." The word was crushed against her lips.

Stevie threw away Peggy's own uniform jacket with a carelessness that wasn't like either of them. Peggy was responsive under her hands, making little noises Stevie breathed in like air. Daring a caress over one breast inspired Peggy to palm hers.

With an effort of will, Stevie unclenched her hand from Peggy's shirt before she ripped it. She couldn't just—rip off Peggy's clothes. Stevie flushed with guilty arousal at the thought.

Buttons, Stevie reminded herself. Tiny, delicate buttons held on by fragile thread. Light touch, soldier-girl.

Peggy pushed her down onto the bed—when had they got to the bed?—and straddled her. Stevie tried not to dwell on the soft kisses Peggy was pressing to wonderfully sensitive places on her neck, taking the buttons one by one.

Peggy's breasts were pale and full. Stevie buried her face in them, moaning sinfully, hands by some miracle still working on the last few buttons.

"Stevie," Peggy half-laughed.

She pet Stevie's back, suppressed laughter jiggling her bosom. Finally finished with it, Stevie pulled the shirt off impatiently, kissing the soft skin next to her cheek.

"I don't think I ever want to leave."

"Try a little lower," Peggy suggested, and then she was wriggling around in a way Stevie finally realised meant she was unhooking her own brassiere.

"Love you," Stevie whispered, because it was wonderful and it was true.

The way Peggy clutched at her when she kissed one nipple told her she was onto something good. The little pale pink nub was already drawn up tight. Stevie darted her tongue out to taste, but it was breathing out that made Peggy wind her fingers in her hair and drag her closer.

"Oh god. Christ," she swore.

Stevie was more than happy to continue. She slid them properly onto the bed and set to work on the other side. Absently, she kicked her shoes off.

This was definitely better: she could press herself down against Peggy while she delivered wet, open-mouthed kisses to her sensitive flesh. But true to form, Peggy didn't stay passive long. Nimble fingers undid Stevie's brassiere and dragged it off with teasing friction.

Stevie groaned, and Peggy shivered again but pulled her up, flipped her over, and kissed her stupid. She felt fantastic, all smooth skin over wiry muscle. Stevie couldn't get enough of it.

And her voice, warm and husky in Stevie's ear. Peggy squeezed her butt, possibly to emphasise what she'd been saying, and oh, maybe she should have been listening.

"—you think we're still wearing too many clothes?" Peggy was asking when she tuned back in.

Well, that wasn't an invitation that had to be issued twice. Shoes, skirts, undergarments vanished in a pell-mell flurry Stevie's belaboured concentration had a hard time keeping track of. All she knew was that Peggy was kneeling over her again, raking her with eyes like embers.

"Lovely," she murmured, and leaned in for a kiss. Stevie tried to deepen it, but she pulled away. "You've always been so lovely."

Stevie blushed. Sure she was naked, but she'd never been so bare before. If Peggy hadn't had her pinned by the shoulders, the urge to cover herself might have been overpowering.

Stevie reached up and cupped her cheek, finding no words. Peggy, curls in charming disarray, shifted slightly so their legs were slotted together. She let Stevie guide her back into a kiss as her hands drifted down, down.

"I love you, Stephanie Rogers," Peggy said, dropping kisses between phrases. She leaned forward, and oh. Her muscular thigh rubbed against Stevie's throbbing sex. Stevie's hips jerked up on their own.

"You're completely mad," Peggy ground down against Stevie's thigh, "and stupidly brave," a short, fierce press of lips, "and so honourable it breaks my heart."

Stevie was just coherent enough to be relieved when this didn't degenerate into another argument about sidetracking from her mission and getting those French working girls to help her capture that SS colonel instead of letting Peggy shoot him. But that thought was fleeting with Peggy's fingers slipping down to replace her thigh and touch something that sent a sudden, sharp surge of—something quivering through her loins.

A finger dipped down to stroke ever-so-lightly over the wet and swollen lips of Stevie's sex. It was only when she swallowed that Stevie realised that high, keening sound had been coming from her.

"Please, Peggy."

Peggy's thumb never paused circling, circling over whatever it was that was driving Stevie wild. "Are you certain?"

"Yes," Stevie panted. "Jesus, Peggy, want you so bad."

Peggy rubbed up and down a few times more, then pressed inside, paused.

"Love you," Stevie breathed, permission, promise, pleading.

Peggy watched her face minutely as she rubbed her thumb again, building the pleasure until Stevie thought she might finish right there. One finger thrust in a little further, in and back. When Stevie was rocking up into her hand, desperate for more, she added a second.

That was a more noticeable stretch, but things still felt good. Of course, Stevie probably wouldn't have minded having her foot sawed off so long as Peggy kept looking at her like that, all determined and flushed and hot. She had the lingering presence of mind to curl her bruising fists into the thin, scratchy blanket below them.

"All right?" Peggy asked.

"Super," Stevie panted.

"Super-soldier," Peggy hummed into her collarbones.

She mouthed a kiss on the side of one breast, then sucked suddenly. Stevie cried out.

"Shh," Peggy hushed her, then in complete contradiction with herself grazed her teeth over one of Stevie's nipples.

"I'm getting mixed messages here."

Peggy was working her slow and steady, while Stevie rolled her hips. Her body was demanding harder and faster, but Peggy refused to be rushed. She teased her way down Stevie's body, apparently hell-bent on making her wail like an air-raid siren because all of a sudden there was her mouth between Stevie's legs.

When she looked down, Peggy's eyelashes were dark fans against her flushed cheeks. She looked up, as though she'd felt Stevie's eyes on her, deliberately holding her gaze as she closed her lips and sucked. Inside, Peggy's fingers touched something that made her back arch and muscles clench. Stevie barely managed to swallow a shout as pleasure made her body spasm.

Gradually, Stevie's vision cleared. Peggy snuggled up against her, gently stroking her hair. Stevie sighed contentedly, releasing her tearing grip on the bedding so she could hold her.

Peggy was moving against her, a slow, unconscious rocking. Stevie shifted her leg to increase the friction.

"C'mon, Peggy. Tell me what you need."

"You," Peggy said, so softly. "Just you."

Stevie trailed a hand down to rest hesitantly on Peggy's rear. "Tell me how."

Peggy took her hand and guided it around between her legs. Stevie felt the little nub; more, she felt the hitch in Peggy's breathing when she touched it.

Stevie kissed her softly, rubbing her fingers in those small circles that had worked her up so well. Peggy made soft sounds of encouragement as she let Stevie's taste be licked out of her mouth.

Daring, Stevie dipped her fingers into Peggy's folds. They slipped in easily; soon, she found a rhythm that had Peggy grinding down against her hand. Her inner muscles clenched around Stevie's long fingers, which curled and probed, experimenting to see what made her squirm.

Peggy was working herself so forcefully on Stevie's fingers Stevie was worried she'd hurt herself. But she was still shocked when Peggy stiffened and finished, clutching Stevie tight and gasping her name.

"Got you, I've got you."

Peggy sighed heavily and let herself be gathered into Stevie's arms. Neither of them slept, although after a while their slow caresses stilled.

It was so late it was almost early when Peggy left. Stevie wished she could have stayed, although she knew it wasn't possible. Still, it would have been nice to wake up with Peggy in her arms.
__ __ __

This thought often occurred to Stevie when she woke up in the field on bare dirt with two snoring men in a musty-smelling tent. She hardly ever slept after Peggy left her; she'd sit up sketching until reveille.

The only good thing about squeezing in three to a tent was that it helped them keep warm. Stevie didn't feel it like she remembered, the cutting cold of a New York winter in a skirt and a too-thin coat, but she'd discovered she wasn't entirely impervious either. The uniform, with all its protective armouring, was probably warmer than any coat she'd ever owned. Still, when it was her turn on watch, she'd wrap up in her overcoat and hunch over her gloved hands, just like everybody else.

That was the closest she and Peggy ever came to sleeping together, wrapped in their own sleeping bags laid out next to each other, the handful of times she joined the Howlers on a mission. HQ sent her to the mainland with intel and instructions for them, sometimes, and occasionally those instructions included her. Privacy was pretty non-existent, though, and they barely dared touch.

It was a good thing Stevie didn't need much sleep anymore; made it easier to switch between day watch and night watch, depending on whose territory they were operating in. The western fronts had bogged down some again, but the Red Army was making serious headway. Schmidt's main Hydra base, the one the SSR still couldn't get a bead on, was a fish in a shrinking barrel.

There was frustratingly little intel to be gathered in the Hydra factories: just things to blow up and prisoners to free, and not many of those, this time around. It was cold and blustery, and the snow that was falling was falling in loose, dusty drifts. Stevie sat in the back of a jeep and watched the snowflakes swirl madly behind them while Morita splinted up her arm. Bucky had better be being careful with her bike, and not driving the way he usually did.

"How's that feel, Cap?" Morita asked, tugging the last knot tight.

"It'll do. Thanks, Jim." The bone would heal in a day or so. The fact that she'd let Johann Schmidt get the drop on her would smart a good while longer. Stevie had got him a good one with the shield in his cartilage-free face; but she still felt that if he went out of his way to present himself outside his secret hidey-hole, she ought to hold up her end and take him in, finish it here and now.

"So, what did the Red Skull want this time?"

Stevie shrugged and immediately regretted it. "To propose marriage. Or maybe world domination; hard to tell with that guy. I told him I wasn't interested."

"He is persistent. Lousy prospects, though."

It was a bad joke, but Stevie laughed anyway. "I could wish the first fellow popped the question to me wasn't a delusional psychopath."

"If I'd known you were looking, I would've asked sooner," Dugan chimed in from the front.

"Would you?" Stevie asked Morita out of the corner of her mouth, gesturing to her splinted arm.

Morita grinned and twisted around to punch Dugan in the shoulder. Medium-hard from the sound of Dugan's hey!

"You might want to leave the fact that Schmidt's still trying to father the master race on you out of your report," Bucky suggested later, when they were alone. "Peggy might be tempted to go after him and shoot Hydra's Pride off."

"I would take her in a fight against Schmidt any day," Stevie replied with a wholly appropriate degree of reverence. "Still, maybe not the best idea. You know what they say: cut off one head..."

Bucky cracked up, which was gratifying. He was pretty cocky for the guy Peggy was going to blame for the broken arm. That wasn't really fair, but Stevie had come to learn that there were actually a few things about which Peggy was not reasonable.

Bucky never denied the guilt, which was worrying, although it probably did more to reconcile Peggy to him personally than anything else. Considering he was otherwise his usual wise-cracking self around her—he was very good about keeping the show up.

He never gave away he knew something the rest of the Howling Commandos didn't, except when he caught her mooning and gave her a knowing look and kissy face. Stevie retaliated by mentioning in a deliberately insulting manner that he wasn't so horrible he couldn't get a girl of his own if he just made a little effort, which went one of two ways. Either Bucky would shrug and say he already had enough women in his life, or the rest of the team would be around and the conversation would devolve rapidly.
__ __ __

When Phillips got the news that Armin Zola, Schmidt's right hand man, was on the move, it was the best lead they'd had all year. Winter in the Alps. Bucky gave her a dirty look.

Stevie had jumped out of a lot of planes, off of a lot of buildings, and over a lot of tanks this past year. Sliding down a cable across a river gorge and onto a moving train was a new one, though. The setup had involved some fairly strenuous climbing to find a good vantage—on both ends—and get in position.

Stevie felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, staring down at the track with Bucky by her side. This was nuts, but she had to admit she kind of liked it.

It was just her and Bucky and Gabe: their window was too short to get everybody aboard, and this was a minimal force operation. Stevie and Bucky went in to grab Zola; Gabe stayed up on lookout until they made the tunnel. Everybody else was hoofing it for the extraction point, or they'd better be.

And then she and Bucky got separated. The compartment doors clanged shut and there was another of those godforsaken mechanical suit things. Went down easier than the last one; Stevie chalked it up to experience. She used its ray-gun to blast the compartment door open and ran to get Bucky's back.

Went down, but didn't stay down. Stevie took its first shot straight in the shield, but it blew a hole the size of a jeep in the side of the car and knocked Stevie on her ass.

Bucky picked up the shield and laid down cover fire. When the next shot landed, Bucky bounced in the opposite direction she had.

Right out the hole.

Panic clutched at Stevie's heart. She knocked the damned suit down again and sprinted over to the gaping metal maw and out onto the precariously attached skin of metal hanging off the side.

"Bucky! Hang on!"

Of all the times to wish she still weighed less than ninety pounds. Bucky tried to inch closer along the handhold he was hanging from; Stevie edged out.

"Grab my hand!" Stevie shouted, but the handhold was already giving way. Their hands missed by so few inches. Stevie stared down blankly at the river streaming by far below until she realised she couldn't hear him screaming anymore, that it was just her. It was all she could do to make herself hold on.

It was Gabe who captured Zola. He stopped the train in the tunnel, and by the time he got back to her, Stevie was something like functional. She could walk, anyway.
__ __ __

Peggy found her drinking alone in a bombed-out bar. Stevie had bought a bottle of the strongest stuff she could find, traded to their regular publican by a Russian pilot transporting someone or other, and who'd claimed he'd distilled it himself.

Stevie had drunk, moderately, before; it had never affected her, but then, she hadn't really been trying. She'd always been grateful to keep her wits about her. The bottle was about three fingers from empty when Stevie peered morosely down into it and realised it was no good. She poured herself another drink anyway.

Peggy peeled off her gloves and pulled up a chair to the other side of the little table, keeping her distance. Stevie had just come from Bucky's funeral, and she didn't think she could have handled anybody close to her right now. Peggy was always just too good at reading people. That was really why she'd never wound up with the commandoes on a permanent basis: she was a spy more than a soldier.

Stevie couldn't even look at Peggy. She hated her just a little right now. "It isn't your fault," Peggy said, her voice honest. Neutral. Safe. But—

She gets hurt, and the gloves come off.

I understand. So long as you understand that the policy is mutual.

But who was she kidding? Bucky hadn't needed Peggy's encouragement to take stupid risks looking after Stevie. Some dark, angry place inside, the place where the memory of seeing Bucky's hand slip away the one time he'd needed her to catch him was stuck on repeat, really wished he hadn't had the help anyway.

"Would you have died for him?"

Stevie looked up at her sharply. The soft concern had gone from Peggy's eyes. Her look now was the one that encouraged the recipient to stop giving her crap.

"You think I don't understand?" Peggy pressed. Stevie looked down at her glass again, swallowing tightly, but not soon enough. "Give him the respect you would wish for."

And then Stevie really couldn't meet her eyes, had to clench her jaw and just not think about it. Because Peggy knew that the worst thing to say right now was that she'd have done it, too; but Stevie heard it anyway.

"I'm going after Schmidt," Stevie said in a voice that sounds harsh to her own ears. "And I'm not going to stop until all of Hydra's dead or captured."

When Peggy said, you won't be alone, it was the closest she ever came to admitting Bucky had been her friend, too.
__ __ __

The scheme was desperate, but all Stevie really wanted was to get within arm's reach of Schmidt. From there she already knew what to do. For this, there would be no trouble diverting troops already within striking distance. Phillips could dismantle Hydra. She wanted Schmidt for herself.

As Stevie had noticed before, it was surprisingly easy to get inside a Hydra base. It was getting out that proved tricky. She was going to miss the bike, though.

The plan was to let herself get captured, and they'd take her to Schmidt. Schmidt was still trying to seduce her instead of shoot her about forty per cent of the time, but either way Schmidt's own security would take her right to him.

"A daring manoeuvre. You may be fit to be my consort after all. Is that why you have come alone?" Schmidt's eyes trailed over her, like they always did, in a way that made her flesh creep.

Stevie didn't shrink. "Erskine was right; you are insane."

"Ah." A look almost like regret crossed Schmidt's deformed face. "He resented my genius and tried to deny me what was rightfully mine, but he gave you everything. And in doing so has given me the greatest gift of all." Despite the grotesque little smile, Schmidt's soft tone grew dangerous, "Tell me. Why did he choose you?"

Stevie smiled, too, although she wasn't good for much of one right now. "I don't know. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

Schmidt struck her a blow with the back of his hand, and the two men holding Stevie kicked her legs out from under her, shoving her roughly down.

"I can do this all day," Stevie said, like she'd said it to that first punk she'd fooled back behind the movie theatre in New York, with victory in her eyes.

Schmidt didn't understand, yet, so he ignored it. "But can you do it," he caressed her face, "all night?"

A wave of loathing and fear roiled through Stevie's gut. Schmidt's smile spread wider at her recoil.

Maybe because she was expecting it, Stevie heard the clink of the anchors sinking into the rock. Schmidt, immersed in his moment of triumph, did not. Stevie bared her teeth in something like a grin, holding to the promise of that sound. She was not alone in here with this madman.

"Go to hell."

Stevie swung one of the guards around into Schmidt as the tiny shadows erupted through the windows and into the figures of Falsworth, Gabe, and Dugan, large as life. As soon as he got his feet back under him, Schmidt turned tail and ran. Pausing only to catch the shield when Falsworth threw it at her, Stevie lit out after him.

There. Schmidt had picked up a really big gun someplace. He was disappearing around a curve, through what Stevie could barely make out as a set of doors. The shield ricocheted, missed Schmidt, but wedged them open.

Stevie hadn't stopped for a gun, though, and she was pinned down and defenceless when a Hydra soldier came up behind her with a flamethrower on each arm. With every second, Schmidt was extending his lead; she'd have to wait for the guy with the flamethrowers to come up where she could take him down, hand-to-hand—

The rattle of machine gun fire was followed by an explosion, some clanking, and a grunt. Stevie poked her head out to see a squad of friendlies moving up the corner, Peggy in the lead.

"You're late," Stevie said and then abruptly lost track of whatever else she'd been about to say or do. Peggy's hair was tousled, and for a minute, all Stevie could think of was the sweet, desperate kiss she'd snuck this morning that had ended all too soon.

"Weren't you about to...?" Peggy trailed off diplomatically, although there was an answering flash of heat in her eyes that drew Stevie in close enough she could have stolen another kiss.

"Right," Stevie said instead and started running again.

The monstrous plane was already taxiing by the time Stevie reached the hangar. She could make it, though, she could. She bulled her way through the running battle sweeping across the hangar. Halfway, she spied a chain dangling and scrambled for it, swinging clear of the melee just as Schmidt's plane started picking up speed.

Too late, too slow, Stevie ran down to a stop and stared at the end of the world getting further and further out of reach. It couldn't end this way; not after Erskine and Bucky and—

"Get in!" Colonel Phillips shouted from behind the wheel of Schmidt's own goddamned car.

Stevie didn't need telling twice; Phillips hit the gas on the ridiculous convertible before her butt touched seat. Peggy was in the back, and Stevie was not even going to ask where they'd found this monster.

There went the hangar doors, but Phillips sent them into overdrive, and they were doing it, they were catching the plane up. Stevie started to rise, preparing to jump. Just a little bit closer now...

"Wait!" Peggy caught her as she turned and pulled her into a kiss, right there in front of Phillips in a rocket car underneath a plane full of death. It was a moment of grace, and Stevie took it. "Go get 'em."

Stevie gave her a brief nod. She glanced down a little apprehensively at Phillips, who looked back with that face like he was sucking on a lemon.

"Get out of here."

Stevie laughed and gave him a peck on the cheek before slinging her shield across her back and slipping around to the outside of the car. There was no avoiding the propellers: there were something like eight of them on the plane. Stevie flattened herself and let the shield absorb the beating, pretty sure none of her ribs had actually cracked.

Phillips was trying to get her to the landing gear. Standing up a little, Stevie gauged the distance. A little bit further...

With an almighty heave, Stevie leaped towards the wheel, sailing abruptly through sunlight. She connected just as the runway fell away below, heart dropping suddenly from her throat to her stomach. God, Stevie hoped they'd stopped in time.

The landing gear folded right up into a large, open space. A bomb bay, only those were pilots headed towards the short, oblong capsules. Four cities, one name painted baldly in white on the nose of each aircraft, four soldiers—it added up too neatly. She couldn't let a pilot get away in one of those: anything Schmidt had made would cause too much destruction, wherever it went off.

One down, two down—one in. Stevie jumped on the cockpit, number four dropped on her, and then the pilot opened the bay doors and launched himself.

There followed a short, scrabbling fight where Stevie's brain kept running an unhelpful marquee of Jesus Christ, what am I doing? Stay in the goddamn plane next time, until the Hydra pilot fell into the propeller and became so much red mist.

Firmly squelching her panic, Stevie moved deliberately to open the cockpit from outside and throw the pilot out bodily. Piloting was not a thing she'd done before, especially not with people shooting at her, but these things had apparently been designed to be operated by morons and the joystick did what Stevie thought it would do.

Stevie wasn't really interested in keeping the larger ship intact, anyway, so she aimed for its ass and prayed. By some miracle, the ship/bomb didn't explode on impact, although at least then it would have been all over. Stevie squeezed herself out, retrieved her shield (she was glad the shield hadn't fallen out, too), and went looking for Schmidt.

Stevie entered the cockpit cautiously; no sign of Schmidt. Maybe he was in one of the big chairs by the big windows. Stevie advanced quietly as she could, craning her neck to see what was up there.

It was the tell-tale whine that saved her. Stevie heard the sound of Schmidt's Hydra ray-gun powering up to blast and swung her shield around.

The shots bounced harmlessly off the shield, and then Stevie had closed the distance. Gun and shield went flying, and soon the two of them were hand-to-hand.

Schmidt reached the shield first, yanked back and forth between the two of them, crashing into things Stevie couldn't identify and things that were apparently the controls, because the plane started losing altitude.

G-force knocked them around like currents in a river as they continued to batter at one another. Schmidt broke free first, making a beeline for the controls while Stevie was disoriented. He'd obviously lost track of her once they'd levelled out, though.

Stevie, of course, went right for her shield. Schmidt was ranting again, about her squandering her gifts and how everything she believed in was meaningless. You sure know how to sweet-talk a girl, you son-of-a-bitch.

Stevie waited for her opening. The shield took Schmidt in the solar plexus and knocked him through the incomprehensible hump of machinery in the middle of the cockpit.

Blue-white light flared up, like the bolts that came from the Hydra weapons, but snaking out like lightning. It expanded wildly for a few seconds, then dispersed.

Schmidt scrabbled to his feet, furious. "What have you done?"

He grabbed something that had been inside the mechanism, a cube the size of his fist that glowed almost too brightly to look at. Blue-white afterimages flickered in the air around him.

Then the sky opened up, only it was no sky Stevie had ever seen. There were strange mauve and creamy clouds that floated over a band of stars that seemed oddly too far away. This was definitely not the sky outside the cockpit. What is going on here?

Stevie watched in horror as a column of white light like water rushing out of a busted hydrant punched through the cube. It started to grow, spreading until it swallowed Schmidt up, doing...something to his body. He screamed. It was a horrible sound.

And then the light faded and all of it was gone except the cube. As Stevie watched, that too burned a hole through the hull of the plane and fell away into the ocean.

Time for that later; maybe Howard could explain it. Stevie went to the controls. Holy cow was this thing moving fast. She fiddled with the radio until she thought she had the frequency she wanted.

Peggy's voice was like balm on her ears, even as her heart sank. They'd stopped in time, at least. The plane was headed to New York, and there was still a lot of ordinance aboard, she could see it now, more than half the payload. "I gotta put her in the water."

Peggy was unable to smooth out the catch in her voice. Stevie was as matter-of-fact as she could be; she had never heard Peggy beg before, and she didn't want to—if she had to go out, she wanted Peggy with her. "Peggy. I know you understand."

It was a far cry from the real thing, but Stevie propped her compass with its little colourless picture of Peggy's face, the one Peggy had clipped for her out of an old newspaper, up against one of the dials. She knew enough German by now to unlock the autopilot; nothing left but to take her down.

"Peggy," Stevie said, watching the clouds rush up.

"I'm here." Her voice sounded so small.

"I'm—gonna need a rain check on that dance."

It wasn't enough, wasn't what Peggy deserved, but it would have to stand in for all the things that couldn't be said over an open line. She was through the clouds, could see the ice now. Ice or water? Did it matter?

Ice it was. Stevie had been crying for a while now, though numbly. She tried to think about the softness in Peggy's voice, about the impossibility of dancing with her; she couldn't make her eyes close against that vast field of ice.

"We'll have the band play something slow." And then, thinking of Bucky, "I'd hate to step on your—"

That was when Stevie lost consciousness. But her last memory was of the water.