Rhapsody in Blue (Captain America/Avengers) (5/12)

[mhalachai]

Rhapsody in Blue (5/12)
A Captain America/Avengers story
by mhalachai

At AO3

Summary: Steve Rogers died in the War. For Peggy Carter, the War was just the beginning.
Rating: Mature
Characters: Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Maria Stark, Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Original Characters
Pairings: Peggy/Howard, Peggy/Steve, Peggy/Natasha, Peggy/Howard/Maria...
Warnings: Canon character deaths, dysfunctional family dynamics
Words: 3,700 this part
Disclaimer: This is fanfic, I own nothing of the characters/worlds/franchises etc. All recognizable characters belong to their creators etc.
Note: Putting Howard and Maria Stark's death on Dec. 17, 1991, comes from some extras in the Avengers movie universe [ source].



Dec. 17, 1991

The Soviet Union was crumbling across Europe and Peggy hadn't slept in days.

After a week of constantly monitoring intelligence coming in from their operatives across Europe and Asia, the chaos was starting to die down, and it looked like they might just get through this without the world catching fire.

Needing to burn off some nervous energy, Peggy was on the firing range when the news came about Howard and Maria.

She was halfway through a clip of bullets when she felt a presence behind her; knew without turning that it was Nick Fury. She fired her last bullet and removed her ear protection before turning around.

The expression on Nick's face froze Peggy in place. Before he could say a word, she blurted out, "Sarah?"

Nick shook his head. "Your daughter is fine," he said. "But..."

Peggy closed her eyes. Nick knew there was only two people on earth other than Sarah who Peggy cared about. And only one of those people skirted death as much as she did, after all these years. "Howard."

Nick cleared his throat. "Howard and Maria," he said gently, and Peggy's eyes flew open.

"What?" she demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Ma'am—Margaret," Nick corrected himself. "A few hours ago, a car chartered by Stark Industries drove off an embankment in New York State. Howard and Maria Stark were the only passengers. They... well, there were no survivors."

Peggy felt as if she was going to be sick. This wasn't real. Howard, she could understand; they'd been in the War together, had been cheating death together for decades. It made sense.

But Maria? The last time Peggy had seen Maria, it had been in New York; they'd taken Sarah shopping for a dress for her college winter formal, then Peggy and Maria spent the afternoon walking arm in arm around the museum. They were supposed to meet up again at Christmas in New York, Maria had made Peggy promise.

Peggy took in a deep breath and let it out. "Was it a targeted attack?" she asked, pressing her hand flat against her stomach.

"At this time it appears to be an accident," Nick said carefully. "Because of Mr. Stark's role in SHIELD, we'll be conducting a full investigation. But it doesn't look like this was anything other than an accident."

"Accidents don't happen to people like us, Nick."

"Except when they do, Margaret," Nick said, voice quiet.

Peggy turned her back on him, picking up the handgun and dismantling it in a few seconds. "Has someone told their son?"

"The police contacted him an hour ago," Nick said. "He knows."

Peggy set the pieces of the handgun on the firing range shelf, pressing her thumb against a sharp edge. Young Tony was twenty-one; Peggy had last seen him at a party Howard threw in New York the previous summer. The boy had been on the edge of manic by eight o'clock, vanishing down to his basement workroom by nine and was back upstairs with a new robotic gadget by eleven.

And now his parents were gone.

Quickly, Peggy reassembled her handgun and slipped it into her shoulder holster. "I need some personal time," she told Nick. "Barring the Soviets starting a nuclear war, don't need me for anything."

Nick waited until Peggy was at the door before saying, "I'm sorry, Margaret."

Peggy didn't reply. To the world at large, Howard had never been hers to begin with. If Nick Fury knew otherwise, well, that wasn't any of his business.

When she got home, she didn't bother to turn on the lights, just dropped her keys on the counter and picked up the phone. She dialed Sarah's number from memory and sat, staring at nothing, until the other end of the line picked up.

"Hello?"

Peggy opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Hello?" Sarah asked again. "Is anyone there?"

"It's me, love," Peggy got out.

"Mama Peggy, hi!" Sarah replied, sounding excited. "You never call during the week, what's happening?"

Peggy rested her head against the wall, all alone in her darkened apartment. "It's your father, love. There's..."

Breathe. Just breathe.

"There's been an accident."

---

The funeral was held two days after Christmas. By then, they'd scraped together enough body parts to make a positive identification on Howard and Maria and the driver. Peggy had been told that Tony Stark tried to push his way into the morgue. It had taken three police officers to hold him back; to keep him from seeing what was left of his parents' bodies.

It was for the best. Peggy had slipped in after-hours the day before. There wasn't anything left of Howard or Maria in the burned-out remains on the coroner's metal tables.

They'd had to use dental records to identify the bodies, in any event.

The interment had been painful. Sarah cried as she held Peggy's hand, far back from the burial plots. Peggy was too busy watching the closed coffins being lowered into the ground to pay attention to much else, but the SHIELD agents undercover as private security later told her that it didn't appear as if anyone suspicious attended.

Now, Peggy stood in the entranceway to Howard's New York mansion, still decorated for a Christmas the Starks would never celebrate, and wished heartily she was already drunk.

"Obadiah," Peggy called after a tall man. Obadiah Stane, Howard's business partner, turned at the sound of his name. "Have you seen Tony?"

"Not since we got back from the cemetery," he said. "Look, if you don't mind, I need to talk to Malcolm about the preparations for the wake, people will be arriving soon."

"Go," Peggy said, dismissing the man with a wave. She turned to Sarah, who was sitting on the inside stairs. "Are you going to be alright if I go find Tony?"

Sarah sniffed. Her eyes were still red, but other than that, she appeared composed. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Peggy didn't believe her. After dropping a kiss on her daughter's hair, Peggy squared her shoulders and went to brave the lion in its den.

Tony Stark was in the basement. Rather, Tony Stark was destroying the basement.

Peggy stood on the bottom step, watching as Tony flung a piece of machinery at the wall with enough force to dent the concrete. Then another. On the third piece, he noticed Peggy standing there, and his grip on the computer monitor slipped, sending the thing crashing to the ground in a shatter of glass and plastic.

Tony kicked the monitor, then stumbled to a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table by the wall. "And it's Queen Margaret, keeper of the dead," Tony said, hoisting the bottle. "Saw you at the funeral. Thought you'd be whooping it up in a red dress."

Peggy picked her way across the cluttered floor. "You need to sober up," she told Tony, reaching for the bottle. He tried to evade her, but he was drunk and she had decades of experience on him. "What's wrong with you? People will be here in under an hour."

"What's wrong with me?" Tony demanded, flinging his arms wide. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, fueled by grief and alcohol and God knew what else. "In case you hadn't got the memo, Aunt Peggy, I'm an orphan now. Last of the grand old House of Stark." He grinned, sharp and horrible. "Unless my father's got any other bastards lying in wait for the reading of the will."

Peggy jerked around to stare at Tony. He glared back, expression ugly. "Don't speak about Sarah in that way," Peggy said evenly, capping the vodka bottle and putting it on a shelf beside some motor oil. "She's no more responsible for her parentage than you are."

"She's not responsible, but you are," Tony said. He reached down and picked up a pipe wrench, turning it over in his hand before flinging it down into a pile of junk. "Did you and my father really think I wouldn't notice what you were getting up to when my mother wasn't around?"

"Tony—"

"Do you know how he'd talk about you when he got back from all those business trips? Did you think I wouldn't have figured out that you weren't my parents' friend, that for all these years you were just my father's whore?"

Peggy bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. Tony turned and stumbled, going down in a pile of splintered metal, and for a moment, Peggy contemplated leaving him there, Howard's angry, spiteful, hurtful son.

Peggy could barely hear Tony's labored breathing over the roaring in her ears. She thought at first Tony was speaking, but the whispers grew harsher, twisted. When Peggy thought about leaving Tony there, just walking away from him, all she saw was darkness.

Then the moment passed, and Tony was still on the ground, trying to find his way out of the mess.

Peggy walked over to Tony and took his arm, pulling him up and marching him over to the far wall. She shoved him onto the bench and reached for his hands. There were glass slivers embedded in his skin, blood dripping onto the floor.

"Hold still," she ordered, pulling the well-used first aid kit from under the bench and opening it between them. Tony just stared at his bleeding hands. It took Peggy a few minutes to remove the slivers of glass, bandaging the worst of the cuts as she went. Tony was unresponsive, but Peggy couldn't tell if that was the fault of the vodka or something else.

Finally she finished patching up the last of Tony's wounds. Pushing the first aid kit under the bench, she sat beside Tony, contemplating the wreckage.

"Don't give your mother too little credit," Peggy finally said. "She knew exactly who your father was."

Tony groaned. "Are you actually trying to tell me that everything's fine because my mother knew Howard was screwing around on her?"

Peggy ran her tongue over her teeth, wincing at the tender spot. It would be so much easier just to tell Tony the truth; but there was so much about Howard and Maria's life that their son didn't need to hear right now. Maybe not ever.

"Is there anything I can say that's going to make you not hate me?" Peggy asked.

"I highly doubt it," Tony snapped. He put his head into his hands.

"Are you going to be sick?"

"No. I need another drink."

"You need no such thing," Peggy said sharply. "What you need to do is to sober up, clean yourself up, go upstairs, and fool the investors and the board of directors into thinking you're actually capable of running your father's company—"

"What the fuck for?" Tony demanded, sitting up and nearly toppling off the bench. "My parents are dead and all you can think about is the fucking company?"

Peggy grabbed Tony's arm, hauling him upright. "That's all they're going to be thinking about—"

"Fuck them!"

"—and about how you're not Howard!" Tony went sheet-white at her words, and she knew how this had to hurt, how much Maria would hate her for doing this to her little boy, but this was so much bigger than Tony's grief. "Tony, they're going to look at you and see the boy who lost his parents, not the man who owns a controlling interest in Stark Industries. And they're going to go away and do whatever they can to force you out."

Tony was breathing heavily, still pale, and this wasn't Howard's anger in Tony but Maria's, and that was so much worse. "What makes you think I want to run the company?" he demanded.

Peggy let go of Tony's arm and stood up. She had to give him space, because if he couldn't handle it now, he'd never be able to pull it off in a room full of his father's friends. "Don't you?" she asked, making it sound off-hand. "Getting a chance to improve on what Howard created?"

Slowly, Tony got to his feet. He didn't sway, didn't stagger. Maybe his fury was a sobering influence. "Why the fuck should I give a damn about the company?" he asked. "It was his, that was all he ever gave a fuck about, it sure as hell wasn't me."

A faint movement in the corner of Peggy's vision, a wisp of black fabric, warned her that Sarah was in the doorway. But Peggy couldn't stop, not yet, not until Tony could focus. "Because the other option is that Howard's company, everything that Stark Industries is and could possibly become goes into the hands of people who only want the money, Tony. They only saw what Howard presented at Board meetings, they don't know how much potential SI has. They never saw what Howard could see."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Because you see what your father saw," Peggy insisted. "The first time I met you, you built a robot just because you could. You understand that Stark Industries is more than just how many weapons you can build, what you can destroy. It's about what you can create!"

"That doesn't mean anything," Tony spat, spreading his hands. "Dear old Dad was pretty clear to tell me every single time I came home that I didn't know a damn thing about anything!"

Peggy took a deep breath and did something unforgivable. "If you're not going to do it for Howard, fine, I don't care. Do it for your mother."

Tony stared at Peggy, his eyes wide.

"Go up there and pretend that you're a reasonable human being who is capable of civilized behavior and don't embarrass your mother on the day of her funeral. She raised you better than that!"

Before Tony could gather his wits to respond, Sarah picked her way across the debris-strewn floor, and took his arm. "Come on," she said in a quiet voice. "Let's find you a clean shirt and some coffee before everyone gets here."

Still staring at Peggy, Tony let Sarah guide him towards the door.

Sarah never looked back.

Peggy was left alone in the destroyed basement, Tony's ruined experiments scattering the floor. She'd had to do it, she told herself. SHIELD couldn't run the risk of someone else gaining control of Stark Industries, not with the classified development work that was just finishing up. Without Howard's brilliance, the project might not succeed, but if an outsider came in now, finding out SHIELD secrets, that would be more disastrous than the project collapsing in on itself.

She'd had to do it.

Tony would never forgive her, that she knew. She had no idea what Sarah was thinking.

Peggy left the basement. On the main level, mourners were gathering, voices hushed as the gossip flowed. Peggy waited until there was a break in the traffic in the lobby, then slipped up the stairs to the second level.

Tony's bedroom was on the other side of the house, no doubt where Sarah had taken him to change his shirt. Peggy drifted down the hallway, the silence oppressive. At the end of the hall, Peggy paused in the doorway of Howard and Maria's bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the closet doors shut. The only sign that the maids hadn't been in here to pack away the belongings of the dead was the dressing table. Maria's jewelry lay strewn haphazardly on the surface, a lone diamond earring on the wood surface beside a long strand of pearls.

The room still smelled of Maria's perfume and Howard's aftershave and of them, and Peggy closed her eyes against the onslaught of memory, of her and Maria and Howard in this room, in their bed, just.... together.

She hadn't cried. Not since she'd been told of their deaths. At first, she'd thought it was just the shock, but now...

She wasn't right, Howard had said once. Not since the Tesseract. She didn't act like a normal person, not any more.

A normal person wouldn't have been capable of saying the things she'd said to Tony on the day he had buried his parents.

Opening her eyes, Peggy crossed the room and pulled open the small drawer on the dressing table, intending to put the earring away, but when she saw what was inside the drawer, she froze.

Maria had tucked a photograph away in the drawer. Battered and unframed, it showed Peggy and Howard and Maria, together, in Howard's old apartment, two years before Sarah was born. Howard was on the couch, Maria in his lap and Peggy curled up at his side, one of her hands on Howard's shoulder and the other on Maria's knee.

Howard had said he was testing a new timer for his camera, Peggy vaguely remembered. They'd piled together on the couch and taken dozens of increasingly scandalous pictures and the next morning Howard had sworn he would burn the negatives. Peggy had flown off to Europe for a classified mission and hadn't seen them again for months.

They had been so young.

It was hard to breathe. Carefully, Peggy picked up the photograph and slipped it into her pocket. She didn't care about the house or the inheritance or any of it, but this photograph was hers. Howard and Maria; she was the only one with any right to them like this.

"Mama?"

Peggy turned her head. Sarah was standing in the doorway, looking seven types of angry. "Is Tony downstairs?"

"Yeah, he's cleaned up and putting on one hell of a show," Sarah said. She dug her fingernails into the doorframe. "What you said, in the basement..."

Her voice trailed off as she struggled for the words, and Peggy just waited.

"That was horrible. What you said to Tony."

"Yes, it was," Peggy agreed. She slid the drawer closed and faced her daughter straight on. "But someone needed to say it."

"No, they didn't," Sarah objected. "Not you, and not today."

"This isn't a game, Sarah," Peggy said. "What happens with Stark Industries—"

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Sarah demanded. "Who cares about the company? If Mom and Dad died, I sure as hell wouldn't have give an damn about their jobs!"

Peggy thought about explaining as best she could, trying to mend this rift with her daughter, but the words were like stones in her stomach.

So she just crossed the room and put her arms around Sarah, a hug that the girl hesitated before returning. Her daughter; Howard's daughter. Peggy remembered how tiny Sarah was when she was a baby, so helpless and delicate.

Now she was all grown up.

Peggy pulled back, smiling faintly as she brushed the hair back from Sarah's forehead. "I should go," she said. "I'm pretty sure Tony won't have any use for me remaining."

Sarah sniffled. "I'm going to stay for a few days, in case he needs anything," she said warily, as if Peggy might object.

"Good. Try to make sure he doesn't drink himself to death."

"I'll try." Another sniffle as Peggy kissed Sarah's cheek, then turned to go. "Mama?"

Peggy stopped.

"Why didn't Howard want me?" Sarah asked in a rush. "I know, there's the thing about bastard children, but why didn't... I mean, Maria liked me, right?"

Peggy took Sarah's chin in her hand, making the girl look at her. "Don't you ever call yourself a bastard again, do you understand me?" Peggy said, feeling the familiar anger in her gut, at Howard, at herself. Sarah nodded. "And yes, Maria loved you so, so much, ever since the first day she met you."

Tears filled Sarah's eyes. "But Howard..."

Peggy sighed. "I know, love. I know."

Sarah wrapped her arms around Peggy and clung to her. Peggy patted Sarah's back, waiting for the tears to slow. "I need you to remember something," Peggy said into Sarah's ear. "That your Mom and your Dad, the ones who raised you, they love you so much."

"I know," Sarah mumbled against Peggy's shoulder. "I do."

"And I love you too," Peggy said, with a final squeeze. "Always. Forever. Okay?"

"Yes, Mama Peggy," Sarah said, sniffling. Her eyes were red. "I just... you know. I miss them already."

"I know, love."

With one final hug, Peggy left the room, leaving her daughter behind. Sarah was young and she was smart and moreover she was practical. She'd deal with her grief and her anger at Howard, put it away, move on with her life.

Not for the first time, Peggy sent a silent thanks to her brother and his wife, for giving Sarah the love and support that Peggy would never had been able to give.

The crowd on the main floor had grown, both in size and in volume. All of Howard's friends deep into the liquor, to toast the dearly departed couple.

Peggy shook her head, and walked out the front door.

She nearly tripped on Tony, sitting on the front step. "Leaving so soon?" he asked. His voice sounded stronger than it had in the basement.

"I shouldn't be here," Peggy told him.

"Not going to disagree," Tony said.

With a sigh, Peggy headed down the steps. She needed to get away from this house, from these people.

"Was Dad happy when he was with you?" Tony called after her. She turned back to him. "More than with me and Mom?"

Peggy wondered what he was thinking, this young brilliant grieving boy. She could feel the press of the photograph sharp in her pocket, and so she gave him the truth. "You and Maria made Howard as happy as I've ever seen him."

Tony made a noise in the back of his throat. "That's really too fucking bad," he muttered.

Peggy left, walked out of the gate to the street and caught a cab back to her hotel.

In an hour, she was at the airport, buying a seat on the first plane out. Nine hours later, she was in Hawaii.