If they deserved it, then fine. Hill had been right – he’d sleep fine if these were two assholes with only evil in their hearts. But he didn’t want to terminate two kids – and they were kids – because some junior agent hadn’t worked hard enough to sway two idealistic idiots off of the path toward destruction. It was the hardest part of what he did, taking a kill order on faith. It happened more with SHIELD than it had back in the Army, where most of the time he or his unit had been a target of his target before he’d gotten to turn the tables. But SHIELD had a different mission and a different method and the first time Clint saw most of his targets was through the scope of his rifle when it was time to take the shot. Coulson had always given him details, more than needed to do the job, because he’d understood what he was asking Clint to do and what kind of cost it came with. His handlers since had tended to be younger, hadn’t come from either the armed services or SHIELD’s field division, and Clint had occasionally felt like they thought that they were playing a video game for all that they understood about the price of taking a life. And that in turn had made him feel like the weapon instead of the one wielding it, which made it easier to pull the trigger, but harder to keep the faith in the mission and with himself. The Hawkeye who ran on full automatic wasn’t someone he especially wanted to be around.Freezer Burn the series | Freezer Burn the story (not required for comprehension)
Nick showed up at nine and Peggy knew it was bad news because he showed up without dessert. (Sometimes the secrets kept between spymasters was that one of them had a sweet tooth and it wasn't her.) She still made tea because, despite more than sixty years in America, the British approach to trouble was still her default.
"We've found Captain Rogers."
Preserved
72K words | PG-13-ish | Bucky Barnes, Peggy Carter
After the rescue of the 107th, Steve Rogers cashes in all of his favors and makes what deals he can to get Bucky a medical discharge from the Army, sending him home to Brooklyn and far from enemies and curious scientists both. But Steve’s war goes on until it ends badly, in an exploding plane over the Black Sea. Captain America is presumed dead, his shield recovered and returned to a grieving America while his body remains undiscovered.
Seven years later, a new danger is threatening to unbalance the already-roiling Cold War: a Soviet assassin let loose from behind the Iron Curtain. Peggy Carter isn’t sure she wants to believe that the assassin is a super-soldier because of what it could mean, but she does know that whoever it is, she’ll have to break her promise to keep Bucky Barnes far from danger.
(direct link to Chapter Five for those of you reading along as a serial)
Preserved: After the rescue of the 107th, Steve Rogers cashes in all of his favors and makes what deals he can to get Bucky a medical discharge from the Army, sending him home to Brooklyn and far from enemies and curious scientists both. But Steve’s war goes on until it ends badly, in an exploding plane over the Black Sea. Captain America is presumed dead, his shield recovered and returned to a grieving America while his body remains undiscovered.
Seven years later, a new danger is threatening to unbalance the already-roiling Cold War: a Soviet assassin let loose from behind the Iron Curtain. Peggy Carter isn’t sure she wants to believe that the assassin is a super-soldier because of what it could mean, but she does know that whoever it is, she’ll have to break her promise to keep Bucky Barnes far from danger.
Preserved, Chapter Four: Bucky
34K words/65K total | PG-13-ish | Bucky Barnes, Peggy Carter
"We can use our own resources to find him and we will, but once we do, what happens after that… You are the best option we have, the best option we could hope for to bring him back alive. Not only because you are the best equipped, physically, to survive an encounter with a super-soldier, which matters more than you realize. But also — more importantly — because you are going to be the one who waits the longest to say that it can’t be done."
It took Bucky a moment to realize what Stark was saying, but when he did, he looked straight at Peggy, who looked straight back and let him see the fear and the grief she’d been trying to hide.
"You want me to bring him back if I can or kill him if I can’t," he said softly, his anger bleeding out into something like horror.
Peggy nodded once. “We will get only one chance to bring him home,” she answered, a faint smile on her lips before it disappeared. “Once the Soviets know we’ve figured out who he really is, they’ll hide him where we’d never get to him again. Keeping him active behind the Iron Curtain wouldn’t be enough; we’d find him eventually. They’ll do something more drastic. I don’t think they’ll kill him, not when they haven’t cracked the serum, but they can make him — and us — wish they had. If they’re capable of doing what they’ve already done, imagine what they would do to keep from losing him and the potential of his body, losing the punchline to the best joke of the Cold War. What they would do to keep from getting caught.”
"Tony said that you were Army Intelligence," he finally said, gesturing behind him with his chin to Girardi, who was looking nervous. "They don’t investigate burglaries in civilian hotels. CID does, maybe."
Ah, the peril of trying to fib in a country that had had the US Army crawling all over it for years. But she was a pro and instead of looking afraid that she’d been caught in a lie, she arched an eyebrow meaningfully.
"It depends what’s being taken, doesn’t it?" she asked, taking a healthy sip of her beer. "And I don’t need you enough to tell you any more. I’ll pay for what you have, but in currency, not in kind."
Max accepted that the game had been played out; he’d won enough to save face and, if he worked it right, a story, which amounted to the same thing.
Peggy was gracious in her victory and asked him what he was drinking.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterfish
