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Steve and Sharon were holding hands as they walked into the London law office.
Steve was breathing shallowly while Sharon kept herself in check.
They had to wait over forty minutes before they saw Peggy’s lawyer.
“Our records indicate that you are unwed,” the lawyer said.
“Does that matter?” Sharon asked.
The lawyer hummed while flipping through paperwork.
“It is very important, now that SHIELD has fallen.”
“I don’t understand.” She glanced at Steve who shrugged.
“Mr. Rogers.” Steve flinched at his lack of rank. He’d stripped of his titles and honors after accidentally killing two German police officers. “Ms. Carter left you her memoirs in the unlikely event that you were still alive. She asks that they not be released to the public.”
“Of course.” Steve nodded as the lawyer handed over a box of well-preserved books.
“Her memoirs go up to 2009. She stopped writing when her illness took hold.” Steve felt a lump in his throat and Sharon took his hand. “Young Ms. Carter, you have been bequeathed with all of the deceased’s capital, but it has its conditions. I was there when she wrote this letter in a moment of clarity four years ago.”
The lawyer slid a letter over.
Sharon recognized Peggy’s lovely handwriting on the envelope.
“I’ll leave you to read it. Please let me know when we are to continue.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s alright,” Steve said to her even though his eyes were on Peggy’s memoirs.
Sharon slid her finger under the envelope flap and Steve tensed up beside her.
“What’s wrong?”
“That smell… I guess Peggy never changed her perfume.”
Sharon hated when he did that, when he brought Peggy up. Sharon had her last name redacted in her paperwork when she entered SHIELD because she didn’t want to be compared to Peggy. It looked like she was always destined to be in her shadow.
Sharon’s eyes flitted over Peggy’s beautiful script.
“She wants me to use her money to start SHIELD back up,” Sharon whispered, still reading. The letter fell out of her hand a moment later.
“Did you know about this?!” Steve asked while storming into Tony’s lab. It was the first time he’d been in the Avengers Compound since Peggy died. “Is this one of your sick jokes?!”
Tony didn’t react, not even standing from his seat.
Steve marched over and slammed the crumbled letter down.
Tony gave Steve a weary look before picking it up. His eyebrows raised in surprise, but Steve didn’t believe him for even a second.
“SHIELD fell apart because Howard and I drifted apart,” Tony read. “A Carter and a Stark built SHIELD and it is only right that they are the ones to rebuild it. I won’t let you two fall into the same trap Howard and I did. You are to wed Anthony Stark.” Tony gave him back the letter. “That doesn’t sound like Aunty Peggy.”
“Cut the bullshit, Stark. There’s no way she would have written that.”
“You need to back off, Rogers. We haven’t spoken in two years and this is how you greet me? I don’t know what Peggy was thinking, but this was written in 2014. When I went to visit her last she thought I was Howard.”
“You… What is your angle?”
“I have no angle. If you were here, you would have known that SHIELD is already up and running.” Tony turned back to the machine he had been working on. “Now get out of my home.”