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Truthfully, it isn't all that difficult to hide her pregnancy from her coworkers. Howard takes it as a sort of challenge and, if only briefly, he’s the Howard of old. It’s nice, a relief, and an opportunity to escape.
She’ll never have those days back again, but with Howard bustling around with that familiar gleam, she can almost pretend.
"Just think, Peggy," he says, goggles pushed back on his forehead, busily working a needle and thread through the material. "You're pushing the boundaries of spy technology ahead by decades. Why just think what our agents will be able to do with what we’re discovering here today!"
The baby kicks as if in agreement and she rolls her eyes at them both. The very last thing she needs is Howard Stark corrupting her child while the poor thing is still in utero. "I'm hiding a pregnancy, Howard. As these things go, that's not a particularly groundbreaking course of action." But it is and they both know why it is. Having a baby out of wedlock is not altogether revolutionary, but the identity of the child is another story entirely.
Most children cannot claim a supersoldier as their father; this one can. There can be no question that this is Steve's child. She's had lovers before him, of course, but those are all years and a continent behind her. There's only been him for so long it feels as though they were another lifetime and another Peggy. She never imagined on becoming so wrapped up in someone as to become someone else, but that is what has happened.
She can’t regret it anymore than Steve would if he were in her place. She can’t regret it, but she also can’t ignore that plans must be made.
She hasn’t the access that she once had, but Peggy doesn’t need intelligence reports to know that the government hasn't ceased efforts at resurrecting the program. Steve was too great a success to let it go now. They'll try and try until they either succeed or fail in such fashion they dare not attempt it again.
If they thought, for even a moment, that Steve had fathered a child...
Merely imagining the thought is enough to keep her from ever allowing them near her baby, however unlikely it is that the little one will inherit Steve’s abilities. Without Abraham to consult, she isn’t certain, but that wouldn't matter to Washington.
"Hey," Howard is looking at her, frowning, when she blinks, "You know this will work, right?"
Peggy considers him for a long moment and the illusion of yesteryear fades. To truly look at Howard, there’s no pretending that he’s still the man she met just a few years and an eternity ago. While he makes a great play at pretending to be that man; she can see the sharp, brittle edges that have cut themselves into him. They’re an echo of the ones that she now bears.
"Of course," she says, trying for a jaunty smile. "With us behind it, how could it not?"
He grins. “Besides, this is the easy part. It’s hiding the little nipper after he gets here that’ll be the real challenge.”
*
It isn't as though they needed to have worried about hiding the pregnancy at all. Agent Flynn and the others are truly oblivious to nearly everything she says and does. She suspects she could go into the office in full maternity wear and they wouldn't notice a thing.
Still, she plays the part until working becomes impractical. Then a sick relative of Steve's is manufactured to provide an excuse for time off. Flynn makes all the right noises, of course, but she can see the truth in his eyes.
It's moments like that which make Peggy miss Colonel Phillips. It would have felt utterly lovely to punch Flynn just once and, knowing the Colonel, gotten applauded for it.
*
Jacob is born just after Christmas, although only a handful of people will ever know that. The falsified birth certificate Howard provides says August. They've decided upon Jacob being the child of a friend from England; adopted by Peggy after said friend's death during childbirth.
It should seem surreal to adopt one's own child, but as her life's gone lately, it's barely worth noting.
*
There's no hiding the truth from the Howling Commandos, of course. Peggy doesn't even dream of trying. She's very quickly besieged by them and it's wonderful and horrific in equal measure.
They're all lovely, of course, Dum Dum being especially taken with Jacob, but she never feels Steve's absence more than when she's surrounded by his team. It's difficult enough to watch Jacob toddle around her Washington apartment, as stubborn and dramatic as his father had ever been, but with the Commandos underfoot, the pain steals her breath.
The demands running SHIELD places upon her are a mercy and she embraces them willingly with the Commandos blessing.
Dum Dum is as happy chasing Jacob around the flat as he is running through an alley in Kiev and so are the others. Jacob is well seen to and Peggy adores them all.
*
Jacob never asks about his father. If he’s worked it out on his own, he never says or gives any sign. His interest in Captain America is no different than any other child. He reads as many comics about Captain America as Peggy has a mind to let him (she won't let him near the ones about the Soviets) and plays at being Cap with the boys in the street.
"I can't bear to watch, sometimes," she confesses over coffee with Maria. "He'll pick up that bloody shield and all I can see is--"
All she can see is Steve; her very own Achilles heel. She sighs and sits back. Maria gestures the maid forward to refill their coffee. The woman in question brings a plate of sandwiches with it and Peggy's stomach grumbles loudly.
Maria laughs, soft and warm, and it's a balm on Peggy's jangled nerves. "I'm sorry," she says, around a mouthful of sandwich, "I don't think I've much luck at motherhood."
"Nonsense," Maria says, mouth full as well. "Jacob is a delight. You've done a good job with him and don't argue it wasn't all you. It never is, but the best bits are and there's no convincing me otherwise," she says, gesturing with a sandwich in hand, bits of it crumbling to the table and decorating the papers between them.
There are reports littered across the table, forgotten for now, detailing the movements of what little remains of Hydra. Peggy drums her fingers against her mug and looks at the papers with disinterested eyes. Idly, she thinks that Hydra's dying too easily, fading almost immediately after Red Skull's death, but that's a thought for another time.
She pushes it to the back of her mind, allowing it to rest there, poked at by her subconscious.
If there's anything to be made of it, that's the only way she'll manage to root it out.
"Perhaps not," she replies to Maria, picking up another sandwich herself, "but it doesn't feel like it."
"It never will," Maria shrugs. "Parenthood or adulthood, it's all the same, we're just playing dress up with better costumes."
*
The first time she hears about the Stargate is just before the war. It isn't called that then, it isn't called anything at all, it's a vague note in an intelligence brief about a scientist by the name of Langford. A few years later, she meets Catherine at a conference in New York and hires her as a consultant with SHIELD.
Howard’s had some thoughts as to artifacts on Earth possibly being extra-terrestrial in origin and, somewhere along the line, it’s Catherine that Peggy finds herself directed to.
The intelligence that Peggy can access about Catherine is limited. She knows there was a project and she knows that there was an accident, but no one will tell her any specifics. She doesn’t ask, precisely, but she leaves the door open.
There’s a familiar look in Catherine’s eye that she knows well.
And it’s one quiet afternoon, when Catherine is pouring over a report Peggy has brought her, that Peggy leans over and says. “When you want to talk…”
Catherine’s gaze flicks to hers and there’s a faint glimmer of a smile as she nods, once. “I’ll find you.”
*
It’s years before Catherine can bring herself to take Peggy up on that offer. Years before Peggy hears about Ernest and the stone circle that will be the Stargate, but it’s a lifetime and her granddaughter before Peggy truly understands.
She finds the footage of Ernest’s failed mission misfiled in one of SHIELD’s vaults. She watches it once, shoves it into a box, and sends it off to the facility that holds what’s left of Catherine’s research.
There are some things better left buried and this just might be one of them.
*
Jacob has only visited her at the Triskelion a handful of times. He’s always called SHIELD’s security protocols a ‘goddamn pain in the ass, Mom’ and laughed when she swatted him. The last time he visits her office, however, neither of them are laughing.
Howard and Maria are dead. She feels every second of her years and more besides. It feels like she’s aged a century since the report came in.
She has her letter of resignation written and her bag packed long before Jacob can make it through security.
“I know,” she says, when he walks through the door, “It’s time to go.”
The relief that floods her son’s eyes is short-lived. It dies as soon as he reads the same report she did.
“You’re sure?”
“We never did find his body.” It’s haunted her for years. Steve had always intended on going back to look, but Hydra had stolen even that opportunity from him. She sent teams as soon as she was able, but it was years too late to be anything more than a fool’s errand.
Perhaps it always has been.
“Did Howard--”
“He was murdered, Jacob,” Peggy says, aging centuries with every word. Howard is gone. Maria is gone. Tony is alone and she’s only just beginning to understand just how far they’ve all fallen. “If he didn’t know, he was on his way to finding out.”
“They’re going to come after you too,” Jacob says, grip going tight on her arm. “If they think you’re a threat--” He’s years from the little boy who’d refused to go to bed until they’d checked his room for Hydra agents, but she still hears the same fear in his voice.
Her son has always been one for whom the monsters were real.
“Then we’ll just have to ensure that I’m not,” Peggy says, gentle. “I’ve no intention of lying down and dying, Jacob.”
Not when, somehow, Bucky might still be out there.
*
It isn’t easy to conduct a search whilst playing doting great-grandmother, but Peggy manages as best she can. Caution keeps her from telling Tony any of it. She won’t risk Howard’s only child on the faintest possibility of hope.
If Bucky is alive, if he is in someone's hands, she doesn’t think finding him will be her miracle. She has her eye on a few SHIELD possibilities who stand a chance, preparing everything she can, but she must be sure and there are other matters pressing her attention.
It’s been years since she held any influence at SHIELD when a report is delivered to her door. She’s visiting Mark and his young family, enthralled with her great-grandchildren, so the delivery is truly a surprise.
She’s never hovered over her family’s careers. Mark’s stayed out of it all, showing no interest in SHIELD or the military, but she kept her distance from both Jacob and Samantha. They’ve both inherited her stubbornness (Sam, she thinks, got hers and Steve’s both) and the very worst she could do is interfere.
Now, that doesn’t mean people don’t bring things to her. General West is an acquaintance from years ago and a prudent one at that. She’s retired from her life, playing at the doddering old woman, but she might still be of use and she appreciates the effort.
Peggy doesn’t know precisely what to expect when she opens the report, but the giant stone circle that had swallowed Catherine Langford’s fiance whole is certainly not it.
She should not, however, be surprised that her granddaughter is attempting to resurrect the bloody thing. She makes an effort at pretending when Sam comes to tell her, but her granddaughter is no one’s fool.
“They told you, didn’t they?”
Peggy brushes wrinkles from her skirt, smiles, and demurely says, “I’ve known Catherine for a number of years.”
“She didn’t tell you,” Sam says, laughing. “She wouldn’t. It was the general.”
There’s no denying it, so Peggy just gestures for her to continue.
“I really do think we can make it work, Gran,” Sam says, eyes filling with excitement. “If it does, it’ll open a door to a whole new era of space travel!” Her smile is so much like Steve’s, her optimism so much like Steve, that Peggy’s heart breaks and soars in the same instant.
The next, however, she thinks of Red Skull, Hydra, and feels a chill go down her spine. “Doors open two ways, Samantha,” she says, quietly. “And some are best left locked; particularly when you don’t know what’s on the other side.”
Sam’s smile doesn’t even falter. “Better to know and be prepared for it, isn’t it? What happens if whatever is on the other side comes to Earth in ships? You and I both know SHIELD doesn’t have anything that can stop that.”
“Perhaps not,” Peggy agrees, reaching out to take Sam’s hand in hers, “but I’m not willing to sacrifice my granddaughter to rectify that.”
Sam answers that comment by pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’m not going to die, Gran.” Her expression could almost be called jaunty. “I learned from the best.”
That’s precisely what worries Peggy, but she’s wise enough not to point that out.
*
Sam misses the first mission, but not the second. Her granddaughter saves the world. Steve would be incredibly proud. Peggy is proud enough for them all, Jacob included.
“You know what she’s doing, don’t you?” Jacob puts a mug of tea into her hands, scowling as he does. “You always know.”
“Hazard of the job, darling,” Peggy says, smiling. “She’s happy.”
“She’s in a mountain,” Jacob grumps. “How the hell can that make her happy?”
Peggy spends days and nights terrified for her granddaughter’s safety, but her smile widens nonetheless. “Your father spent years brawling in back alleys and nothing made him happier.” She pauses, then laughs, “Well, perhaps nothing more than brawling in European back alleys.” With she and Bucky at his side. “Sometimes, what makes one person happy is an absolute mystery to another.”
“So I should just stay out of it?”
“Yes, but you won’t,” Peggy sits back with her tea, “You get that from your father too.”
The serum was never what mattered.
What did is what her son and her grandchildren have in spades.
Whatever it was Sam did find on the other side of her Stargate is to be pitied.
They don’t stand a chance.