═《𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏》═

Amelia's last name held weight, she knew that, but sometimes she hated that it did. If it wasn't for her name, Amelia would be sitting at home, drinking her thoughts from the last mission away. But, alas, Nick Fury had other plans.

The gym wasn't like a new Planet Fitness or YMCA, it was old. Like the ones you see in a movie like Rocky. It made sense, Amelia couldn't picture Steve Rogers walking into Planet Fitness to work out. But, she never wanted to picture Steve Rogers in general. When she'd learned he'd been found, frozen like a popsicle for 70 years, she would have preferred to avoid him like the plague. It was moments like this when she wished that she'd never followed in her grandmother's footsteps. Nick Fury had to order her into this, she never would have chosen to go see him of her own free will.

Amelia sighed, pushing open the door and taking a step in. It was large, looking much bigger on the inside than it did on the out. The first thing she noticed was the sound of punches against a punching bag, they were aggressive and she could hear the shake of the chains that held the bag to the ceiling. She watched from the shadows a moment, watching as Steve Rogers hit the bag so hard that it broke, flying across the room. She never wanted to be on the opposing side of that punch.

"The world's gonna run out of bags if you continue to punch like that." Amelia saw Steve sigh as she walked closer. He didn't look at her before sending the first punch into a bag he'd just hung.

"Fury send you?" She nodded, though he wasn't looking at her to see it. She walked closer, the man glancing at her before walking over to his gym bag. "You here with a mission?"

"I am." Amelia clutched onto the file in her hand, the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo printed on the cover of the folder. 

"I'm surprised Fury didn't come himself."

"Yeah, well, he believed I would be more..." she thought of the right word for a moment before continuing her sentence, "persuasive." Steve stood up straight, Amelia noticing a slight look of panic in his eyes. 

"Look, ma'am, I'm sure you are a very nice woman but I'm not-"

"Oh, calm down, Rogers. That's not why I'm here." Steve cleared his throat, focusing on taking his knuckle tape off to hide his embarrassment. Amelia smirked as she saw the small blush on his cheeks, wanting to laugh but choosing to spare him from any more humiliation. She knew what she was doing, it's why she said it in that way. "I'll introduce myself-" She reached a hand out for him to shake, "Amelia Carter."

"Carter? You're related to..."

"Peggy, yes. She's my grandmother." Steve nodded and looked at her, trying to find the face of the woman he'd fallen in love with in the '40s, in Amelia's. She didn't have much resemblance in her facial features but her accent matched that of Peggy's- that was the only similarity he could see at the moment. Amelia cleared her throat and held out the file, letting him take it to look through.

"I believe you know this object." Steve sucked in a breath and nodded.

"Hydra's secret weapon."

"Howard Stark found it in the ocean when he was looking for you. Fury gave me a whole speech on what to tell you- that he believed it could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy or something. I don't care to know about all that and I suspect you don't either. All I know is that it's dangerous. I saw what it did to the base where it was kept. It's been taken and you, very much so, could be helpful in taking it back."

Steve didn't know Amelia, he knew her family relation and her name- that was it. She hadn't been overly serious the entire time she'd been there- she had started their conversation out with a joke. But the look on her face was serious and he knew she meant it. He flipped through the file, looking at the information they had on the situation. There wasn't much there, just some low-level details about the Tesseract.

"Who took it?"

"He's called Loki," Amelia rolled her eyes at the name, "He's... not from around here." Steve handed the file back, Amelia glancing at the photo of the Tesseract once more before tucking the file under her arm. "There's a lot you missed while you were asleep, Rogers. Fury wants me to catch you up- if you're in that is. The Tesseract doesn't even scratch the surface of weird that the world has discovered."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me." Steve got up, grabbing his gym bag and picking up a punching bag.

"$10 says you're wrong." Steve started walking towards the entrance of the gym, Amelia watching as he went. "There's a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your flat. Is there anything you can tell me about the Tesseract that is not already known?"

"You should have left it in the ocean."

《✧》

The halls of the helicarrier were bustling with people running around and moving stuff as they readied it for takeoff. This was the new S.H.I.E.L.D. base of operations and a massive one at that. It wasn't nearly as large as the last one, but it was still large enough for the entirety of the main organization to make base. There were size constraints with this one, something the one on the ground never had, but they somehow made it work.

Amelia had never been the fondest of large aircraft. She preferred quinjets or private airplanes- the helicarrier was one of the worst aircraft she'd been on. It wasn't that she was afraid of anything, she just got slightly queasy at the thought of an engine going out. It was irrational, Maria Hill had told her as much, but she still sometimes pictured it and shivered. It's why she usually chose to be in the control center or her room instead of the upper deck. And it's why, when Fury told her to go meet Steve Rogers on deck, she chose to sit at the desk in the control center and kick her feet up. He had glared at her for a moment before turning back to his screens. Natasha was perfectly capable of greeting Steve by herself.

Amelia turned to the door, watching as Natasha walked in with Steve and Bruce. She smiled warmly at Nat before smirking as Steve looked around in wonder. He stepped up to the railing, staring at the people working and at the large control center. 

"All engines operating, S.H.I.E.L.D. emergency protocol 193.6 in effect, we are at level, sir."

"Good. Let's vanish." Amelia stood, walking to the front of the table as Fury turned around. She watched Steve's face as the helicarrier vanished, becoming invisible in the sky. He came to stand next to her, pulling out his money and handing Amelia a $10 bill. Her smirk stayed on her face as she pocketed the money. "Gentlemen."

Steve walked past Fury, making his way further into the Control Room. Amelia followed him, standing beside him as he stopped at the front.

"It really is impressive, isn't it?"

"It is." He turned to look at her, her eyes fixed on the sky in front of them. "How is she?"

"Alive."

Amelia knew Steve would ask about Peggy, it was inevitable and she felt a little bad that she brushed it off- but, while she loved her grandmother, she was asked about Peggy more times than people asked about herself. 

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops- if it's connected to a satellite, its eyes and ears for us." Coulson spoke to the group- Natasha, Banner, Steve, Fury, and Amelia. 

Amelia sat down on the edge of the deck, looking at a screen as it scanned cameras across the world, a photo of Clint Barton switching between a photo of Erik Selvig next to the scan. 

"That's still not gonna find them in time." 

Amelia shared a look with Natasha, both of them knowing that Clint was smart enough to avoid capture. They'd both worked with him for a long time, all three of them close, which meant they all knew each other's tactics. But that was both a bad thing and a good thing. At the moment, it was bad. Clint knew just how to avoid them.

"You have to narrow your field." Everyone looked at Banner, "How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?"

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places." Amelia raised an eyebrow as she looked at Banner, impressed and confused at the same time. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff, could you show Dr Banner to his laboratory, please?" 

"You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys."

After Natasha and Banner walked out of the room, everyone got back to work. Amelia stood, walking over to Fury. Amelia and Nick Fury had a complicated relationship. They respected and trusted each other, Amelia more so than Fury, but he had trouble trusting in general. If Nick Fury had to pick people out of a room to trust, he would choose Maria Hill and Amelia Carter. Amelia had earned that trust and respect, and, in return, Fury had done the same.

"What do you want me to do?" He gave her a look, his eye moving to Steve Rogers before moving back to her, she knew instantly what he wanted her to do. "No. No way. I already found him at the gym, I'm not gonna be his tour guide on casa S.H.I.E.L.D."

"It's not a request, Agent Carter." Amelia glared at him, taking a step back and taking a deep breath. She bent the rules sometimes, but she wasn't stupid enough to disobey Fury twice in the span of an hour.

"I really hate you sometimes." She turned to Steve, putting a fake smile on her face. "Rogers, I'll show you around."

Amelia and Steve walked through the helicarrier, Amelia pointing things out like where the living quarters were, and the mess hall- random things that would be relatively useful. They stayed in silence for the most part, something Amelia was thankful for. She knew that Steve's questions would be ones she either didn't have the answers to or didn't want to answer.

Over the course of her life, Amelia was constantly asked questions about her grandmother. She was only ever asked about her life in relation to Peggy's. It was something that she came to resent. Nobody wanted to know Amelia Carter. They saw her last name and suddenly she was constantly in her grandmother's shadow. 

The halls were crowded, but Amelia expertly weaved between people, Steve not having as much success as his shoulders brushed against everyone they passed. It was something Steve noticed about Amelia. Her movements were smooth, like the flow of water. She was a spy. He had figured as much, and seeing her now confirmed it. Peggy had been a spy, though her movements were nothing like Amelia's. Peggy moved with grace, but she could never have blended like Steve imagined Amelia did. 

Amelia sighed, stopping in the hallway. She stepped to the side, out of the way of people passing by. She looked up at Steve, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Just ask your questions." She was tired of dancing around the elephant in the... hallway.

"All you told me was that she was alive... how is she really?"

"She's old and sick." Amelia shifted from foot to foot, wringing her hands together. "She's lived a long life and it has caught up to her."

"Did she have a good life?"

"She got married to a great man, a man she loved. She had my father and raised him to be a great man just like my grandfather. She spent her life building S.H.I.E.L.D. into an excellent and respected organization. She looked after me when my parents died. So, yes, she did have a good life. A life that was filled with people she loved and people who loved her. A life where she was able to fulfill her dreams and make way for new generations of women like her. It's why I admire her so much."

"That does sound like a good life." Steve smiled sadly, noticing the look in Amelia's eyes. Amelia hid her pain well, but she couldn't hide the way her eyes dimmed with sadness as she talked about her grandmother. 

Amelia straightened, clearing her throat. "Anything else?"

"Are you okay?" Amelia tilted her head, thrown off by the question. She wasn't sure if anyone had asked her that question- at least, not since she was a child. She didn't know how to answer so she went with the easiest reply.

"Yes." Amelia looked around the hallway, the thinning crowd of people glancing at the two but quickly moving on. "I think that's all you need to see. Feel free to wander on your own." 

Steve went to say something to her, but she was too fast. Before he could even open his mouth, she was moving down the hallway. Away from Steve, away from his questions, and away from his judgements.