Chapter One

Okay. Look. She's a big fancy actress. She's got awards. Accolades. When she goes to events she's got a fella on her arm. When she does interviews she's intoxicating and alluring.

Officially she's single. Officially the boys are all clamoring at her door. She goes to enough parties and appears in a enough rags that straight girls want to be her and straight boys want to do her.

She is, if this is just between her and the mirror, an icon.

So she's not gonna admit this next part to just anyone. Fact is she's not gonna admit it outside of that closed door over there. But the thing is, if Angie Martinelli is gonna have to choose, if it's between being out there and sitting in a bed half-naked with a script in her lap and her girlfriend beside her with work files in her lap and the only contact between them is their feet. If she's gonna have to choose—well than she'd choose lazy footsie and work reading on a Sunday morning with her gal every damn day of the week.

There's nothing so special about it, she supposes. At least in the grand scheme of stuff. It's all painfully ordinary. The reading material's different but Angie's pretty sure her brother does the same thing with his wife before they hustle the whole family off to church.

But that's gotta be part of the appeal right? The gooey domesticity of it.

Bet Cap never got his lazy Sundays with her—

There's a rush of fluttering paper and she sees Peggy's files fly through the air before she's being tackled back into the mattress by a long warm body. Peggy looms over her and stares down thoughtfully. "You're thinking too much."

"Am not?"

She rolls her eyes and kisses Angie's forehead. "Are too."

She drops onto Angie, but she's careful not to smother. Really she's more a blanket that smells like heaven. Angie wraps her arms around her neck and kisses her cheek.

"Thinking 'bout you."

That gets a dramatic groan and Peggy buries her face in Angie's shoulder. "That's awful," she says—voice still muffled.

First meeting Peggy Angie thought she was all this tightly wound grace and sophistication. Nearly ten years later, three of which have been spent practically attached at the hip, she knows that Peggy is only sporadically graceful and rarely, if ever, sophisticated.

She pokes Peggy's side and goes into a real sappy rendition of her big love confession from her last picture. The one that was so bad Peggy got the giggles in the audience and had to leave.

"I love you like sun on the grass and wind in the leaves and tomorrows that can never die!"

This time Peggy just keeps groaning and laughing before rolling off of Angie so she can cover her ears. "That's wretched," she cries.

Angie, dating a fighter, knows how she's not supposed to give 'em an inch when they back down. So she quickly straddles Peggy and pries her hands off from around her ears.

Peggy stops laughing.

But mainly because Angie's leaning down to kiss her. It's the real long and languid kind that she knows Peggy goes crazy for. The kind that get her mewling.

God the mewling. It's so silly. So ridiculous. And Angie knows no one, not ever, got to or will get to here it but her.

But instead, today, Peggy starts laughing again. Little guffaws against Angie's lips. "Tomorrows that can never die," she snickers.

####

"Don't look now, but I think the boss man's about to blow his face off."

Angie is, naturally, alarmed by the statement. Both because her girlfriend is currently standing beside Howard Stark and peering into the same tail end of a jet engine and because she's not really used to Stark's employees talking to her.

It must be the clothes. She's just come from a meeting about shooting a Captain America sequel with a whole new director and a whole new angle and a whole new bunk and she thinks it's an awful idea but the studio said she had to take the meeting or they'd have her ass for contract violation (she's been too choosy lately according to them). So she's dressed down from her usual fresh off the runway wardrobe. In fact she's pretty sure her skirt is out of one of Peggy's Talbot's catalogues.

There's also her hair. She's been experimenting with darkening it. (That's a lie. Really she's experimenting with not coloring it for the first time since 1943.)

She must not look like herself or otherwise the woman in the coveralls next to her wouldn't be making that kind of crack under her breath.

People just don't talk to Angela Carter that way.

Not tall gangly kids that have to just barely be out of school.

It's a refreshing chance of pace. She crosses her arms and dramatically appraises the proceedings. Peggy's got her serious work face on as Howard tries to sell her on whatever the hell it is. "We talking Howard Hughes face skating across Beverly Hills or a drunk working at a munitions factory?"

The woman watches Howard reach into the engine and break something off. "Definitely the former. And technically only when he takes it for a spin. His girlfriend should be okay if she stays on the ground."

"You won't if you keep calling her his girlfriend." The girl blushes and Angie grins. "She's always said that's right up there with calling her a Nazi."

The glower that darkens the girl's face tells Angie that maybe she's one of those folks that you don't make Nazi jokes around.

That's the problem with canoodling with too many spies and soldiers. That lot makes jokes so dark you need a flashlight to find your way out.

"So why's he gonna finally scorch the mustache," she asks. Better to distract than apologize.

The girl goes into explaining a lot of very smart sounding technical stuff that Angie has only the barest grasp of—conceptually. The gist seems to just be fiery death.

She finally has to hold up her hands. "So I think you've officially shot past my understanding of things."

The girl frowns, "Aren't you…?"

"I mean, give me a carburetor and I can rebuild it with my eyes closed, but the planes and trains and all that are strictly Stark's affair."

"You're not…" The girl's got a real open and honest and innocent kind of face. So the frown makes her look young. Real young. "You're not his assistant are you?"

Angie's honestly surprised anyone would think Howard would hire a personal assistant with a nuanced grasp of aeronautical engineering. Usually the requirements involved waist to chest ratio. "Definitely not."

The girl blushes furiously. "I'm so—geez I'm so sorry. I just though—how you're dressed! And you seemed interested in what they're doing and—"

"I'm here for her," she nods at Peggy's backside, which is looking excellent in that skirt. "What about you? You build the planes?"

"Cars actually. Well car suspensions." She runs her hand through her hair, leaving a streak of grease on her forehead. "I'm an engineer—" she hisses, "apprentice. I'm an apprentice engineer."

Angie glances around the hanger before leaning in and saying conspiratorially, "I don't see any cars."

There she goes again. Blushing like she's just met a boy.

"You're not supposed to be in here are you?"

"I have clearance," she says weakly.

Angie's pretty sure clearance isn't the same thing as "supposed to be," but she's also pretty sure that if she keeps razzing the girl the kid will explode all over the hanger floor.

Across from them Peggy climbs into the plane and starts fiddling with switches and acting like she knows how to fly it. Judging from the look Howard gives her Angie's not the only one who knows Peggy couldn't fly her way out of a paper bag.

Which is…perfectly acceptable. She can kill a man with a spoon, triage a chest full of shrapnel and successfully talk down a fella who can turn himself into fire. She's very capable.

"Out of everyone here I'm probably the only one that doesn't have clearance," Angie tells the girl. "So car suspension huh?"

"Sure. I mean, the Hotchkiss drive has banana great suspension—"

"Big fan."

"But I'm working on something fully independent."

Angie gets what the girl's talking about only a little bit more than when she was talking about planes, but, comparatively speaking, it's a helluva lot more.

So they go to a smaller hanger and Angie squats down under a car on a lift and gets lectured for twenty minutes on independent suspension.

Then the kid, whose name Angie still doesn't know, notices the way Angie's eyes keep wandering over to the engine.

That's something she can get into and so, apparently, can the kid, because before she knows it Peggy's hands are digging into the stiff muscles of her shoulders and she's leaning down so Angie can get a stellar whiff of her perfume.

"Having fun," Peggy asks.

Angie catches the way she stops herself from kissing her cheek.

She reaches up to cover one of Peggy's hands with her own. "You know it."

She and the kid have dismantled something Howard wouldn't want dismantled and are sitting at a workbench trying to put it back together.

The kid blushes again and Angie supposes she and Peggy might look more friendly than most friends who happen to be ladies.

Peggy does too, but she's more smooth about it. Keeps her hands on Angie but looks over at the girl—face that mask that can be cool or kind depending all on the weather. "I hope my colleague didn't distract from your work."

Colleague.

That's a new one. Her brother will get a real kick out of that one.

The girl takes it all in stride. "Oh heavens no. Honestly I was just happy to have someone to chat with!" She's so damn nice she makes Angie's teeth hurt.

"Boys down here can be a little," Angie shoves two fingers up in the air rudely.

"Ah," Peggy says succinctly.

They all chat a little more and Peggy pretends to be interested in the project that she's clearly not interested in and then it really is time to go because they're having dinner with the kids across town and are gonna be late if they're not careful.

Then this kid, this nice wholesome kid who sounds like she fell out off a train straight out of Chicago, calls out, "I didn't catch your name."

Angie, having not run into that issue in…ages can only blink and stare.

Peggy laughs and tries to immediately cover it up which results in an unladylike snort.

"Angela Carter," Angie says

And the girl smiles happily, "Maria Carbonell."

####

"I really don't think she knew who you were." Peggy's gone conciliatory.

"But how could she not! There's a giant honking picture of me outside the gates."

It's huge. Large enough that if it were photorealistic Angie could probably crawl into her own damn pores.

Peggy leans forward in her seat to look at the billboard. "They got the lips all wrong."

"You're such a wiseass."

Peggy feigns surprise and Angie hangs a right.

One of the best parts about work trips to LA is she gets to drive. She gets to drive in DC too, but LA's made for driving. The roads all have more lanes than cars and the weather's so nice she can leave the top down. Just let the wind tangle her hair and flutter the pages of scripts she leaves in the back seat.

"If it helps the girl did seem a little—" Peggy never ever ever denigrates other women if she can help it. Angie loves that about her.

"Ditzy?" Angie also does not have the same noble streak.

"Distracted," Peggy corrects. "Like she's got too many ideas."

"Wonder if all of Howard's hires are like that."

Peggy laughs. "God, can you imagine the staff meetings?"

They both shudder.

She pulls onto Mulholland and gets a little heavy on the gas. The drone of the engine fills the whole car.

"How was your meeting," Peggy shouts over it.

"Lousy," she shouts back.

"Lousy you mucked it up and have to do it or lousy you mucked it up and don't have to."

"Don't have to!"

The grin she gets is worth the set up.

She lets off the gas just a little. Enough so they won't go hoarse just trying to have a conversation. "And I was thinking since I don't have to sell my soul doing jingoistic American propaganda—"

"Careful. HUAC could have the car bugged."

"I'm being serious English. I was thinking—"

Peggy shoots her one of her inscrutable looks.

"This might be the time to take the Milan offer."

The "Milan offer" as it is discussed in their home, is the offer for Angie to do a four week engagement at a club in Milan with the understanding that Peggy and the kids would be there for at least half of it and they'd use the Lake Como house as their family's base of operations.

Peggy has been…less that excited about this opportunity. The "Italy Incident" (everything regarding the country seems to be stuck with quotation marks now) is never openly discussed, but even after three years it has her edgy about them going back. It's been sort of sweet. Up to a point.

Peggy doesn't say no.

And she doesn't say yes.

And Angie lays back on the gas.

And the engine drones.

And the only reason she doesn't get real mad is because when they're stopped at a light she looks over and Peggy's all glowing in the red of it and looking like some kind of painting that makes you just start tearing up right there in the museum.

So she takes one hand off the wheel and holds it out and Peggy's fingers lace between her own and neither of them says a word until they're at the valet stand.

####

The next day they're on the plane and Peggy leans across the arm rest and says she's sorry. Says she's got to stop being a worry wart.

Angie chooses not to remind her that it really is unnecessary. At least where Italy is concerned. While they haven't been together they've both been back to Italy half a dozen times since then.

She gets why Peggy can be silly about it though. Watching someone get kidnapped is never easy—even if the person doesn't remember it. "In fact it could be good," Peggy still talking. "A bit of a reclamation if you will."

Angie smirks. "You just want to reclaim my bed," she says in a voice low enough that others can't hear.

Peggy leans in closer. "Sure we should bring the kids?" Eyebrow raised coy enough that she could be an actress herself. Maybe Joan. She used to be able to sell a line like that.

"Maybe they can come over later." Angie's real smooth.

Peggy just nods. "Sure."

"A lot later."

"You're insatiable."

"After every damn surface in the house is reclaimed."

####

The problem with everything coming up Angie is that eventually everything's gonna come down on Angie. Living with a spy she really ought to be more pessimistic. She ought to expect the bad stuff. See it coming before it hits her in the nose.

But she doesn't.

Peggy says her optimism is one of the things she loves about her. "You see good in everyone," she always says.

"Except Dottie," Angie always says back.

"Except Dottie."

Peggy loves it so Angie tries to love her optimism too. Tries to embrace.

Until they're coming back home after six weeks in LA and the house doesn't have that stale and unlived in smell it ought to have. It smells like toast and coffee and Peggy sends the kids back out to the car and pulls a gun out of her purse and Angie goes with her because she shouldn't but she has to and her hand is a ghost on the small of Peggy's back and all she can see is the broad stretch of Peggy's shoulders as they move efficiently through the house quiet and in tandem like they've practiced (they haven't).

There's a sixteen year old girl sitting in their kitchen stuffing her face with marmalade and toast and she's got a gun too. It's just casually sitting on the counter.

But she doesn't reach for it when the two of them come into the room.

She doesn't even swallow. Keeps chewing.

Her eyes get bright like she's happy to see Angie. Then she's nodding at Peggy. One of those soldier to soldier sort of nods the Commandos do.

Three years and Natalie hasn't aged a day.

Peggy's gun is aimed at her and it's steady as that big rock in Spain.

That's when Natalie swallows. Then washes her toast and marmalade down with some coffee.

"Good, you're finally home."

"What do you want," Peggy asks, growling like the dog the kids have been begging for.

"Help. We have a problem."

"Coming in from the cold are you?"

She grins, "Not on your life Carter. But someone's about to make it a lot chillier."

Peggy bristles.

But it's Angie that asks, "The Soldier?" Saying the name leaves her all conflicted. Makes her feel funny. She wishes she could remember the fella. Wishes Peggy didn't tense up when Angie said his name.

Natalie shakes her head.

"Worse. His old bosses."

Peggy spits the word out like a curse.

"HYDRA."