Chapter Text
Peggy Carter can’t believe her luck. Well, luck may be the wrong word bearing in mind all that has happened to her in the past week. Particularly considering that at the moment she’s sitting next to some old man in his pickup who just happened to be near where she crashed her plane. Also, the year is 2008.
First thing she remembers going wrong so to say, well the thing that really started this whole series of unfortunate events, is the ill-fated flight where she and her passengers had set off from Bristol in 1953 and found themselves in Cardiff in 2007. That had been a shock to say the least. She tried to give the impression to the others that it was no big deal, since she had already seen so many marvelous things happening in her lifetime, but inside she was rather shaken. No matter how many super soldiers she’d see, how many unbelievable experiments Howard did, no matter what happened, when it happened to you it was different. Plus, it was time traveling. Nothing she’d ever done in her life could have prepared her for this.
Secondly, well, it was the fact that she and her passengers had found themselves in the year 2007 for god’s sakes! If Peggy was totally honest she thinks she might have had less of a hard time if they hadn’t end up in the 21st century. Everything was so different! The people were the same, but the attitudes had changed drastically, the technology had taken huge leaps during their flight – Howard would have been in heaven here – and nothing just felt the same. There was very little that could remind her of home and the 50s. She usually considered herself a modern woman, but even she had trouble trying to blend in and reconcile with the fact that she was now more than 50 years in the future. It was no wonder that she finally snapped and tried to find her way back home in any way possible. And that brought her to the fact number three; the crash.
Bristol, UK
December 18th, 1953
The weather had been a bit unpredictable that day. The morning had been rainy and it had brought heavy wind with it, but now it seemed like it was a totally different day. Diane Holmes was making her last checks on the plane she was flying today, a de Havilland Dragon Rapide or Sky Gypsy as it was also called, a gift from Howard Stark that she would not part with. Yes, she was as unpredictable as the British weather and needed an experienced hand to fly – Howard had tried few times, but quickly announced her dear plane as a lost cause, she had clearly imprinted herself to Diane and wasn’t that a wonderful memory – but Diane loved to fly her. She had flown other planes and had at one time owned a different one, but the Sky Gypsy still remained her absolute favorite.
Diane, or Peggy Carter as she had been known a few years back, had really caught the bug for flying quite soon after the Second World War. When the war was over and Steve was no longer with them she had longed for something that would take her mind away from what had happened. She knew she could continue with the SSR and what they were doing, but she had become used to a certain kind of freedom and responsibility that she had during the war and knew that it would be unlikely that she could continue with such a role now that the men were back from the war to claim their positions. It had been Howard Stark, that extraordinary, but sometimes insufferable human being that had infected Peggy with the fever that simply would not go away. Howard and Peggy had kept contact after the war was over, even after she had left the SSR and it was he who gave Peggy her first flying lessons. Peggy had always known that she was a bit of risk-taker – how else would she had found herself in the middle of the war being a part of Strategic Scientific Reserve and an agent to boot – so finding her doing something else quite brazen was not really a surprise.
Peggy took to flying like fish to water. She loved it. Well, okay. She had quite a few reservations about planes and flying at first, especially right after Steve’s crash, but once she really got to try her hand in flying it felt like the most amazing thing she had ever done in her life. It allowed her more freedom than some would believe suitable for a woman at the time. The name change from Peggy Carter to Diane Holmes happened the same time when she finally received her pilot’s license, in 1948. She was 29 and already a bit jaded. Captain America had been quite well known across United Kingdom – and even somewhat known across the Europe and certainly well-known in America – by the time the war ended and she was known as Captain America’s sweetheart. She placed the blame mostly on those blasted news reels and reporters who wouldn’t mind their own business! Steve’s unfortunate fate and the constant pity and badgering from unknown persons made her finally change her name. The pilot’s license was just the final kick that she needed in order to finally do it. She chose the name Diane Holmes mostly because it was somewhat familiar – her great aunt was Diane and Holmes was her mother’s maiden name –that fact alone would help ease the transition phase where she did not yet feel entirely comfortable with this new alias. Howard and Colonel Phillips never stopped calling her Peggy Carter though – or Agent Carter in Colonel Phillips’s case, even after she resigned from the SSR – but to everyone else she was Diane Holmes. To put it in layman’s terms: Peggy Carter was dead, long live Diane Holmes.
Finishing her checks on the plane she moved to the hangar to wait for her passengers. After a few years of just doing nothing but enjoying her plane and seeing various exotic locations, sometimes with Howard, Diane had eventually found employment as a commercial pilot for a small airline. The company was so small that her plane was one of the two planes that the airline had and because Sky Gypsy was in fact her own she had quite a bit of freedom to choose her destinations. The company provided the upkeep and covered the expenses, but otherwise the plane was hers and would always be.
She only had two passengers today, Ms. Emma Louise Cowell and Mr. John Ellis. Their destination was Dublin, which was a little over 200 miles away, an easy distance for the Sky Gypsy which had a range of 550 miles on a good weather.
So, having made all the necessary checks and after loading the luggage and the passengers to the plane Diane took the course to Dublin.
Cardiff, Wales
December 29th, 2007
Even though the weather had been more than fine at the time they set off, not even half an hour had passed when they encountered some horrible turbulence. Diane was more than capable of flying in a storm, but the turbulence was making the passengers very uncomfortable, plus the visibility was minimal and Diane would not take unnecessary risks when she had passengers onboard. So she set the course for finding the nearest available runway or airbase where they could wait for the storm to calm.
Diane should’ve known it would not be that easy. The moment the plane’s wheels had touched the ground and the motors had been turned off they had a welcoming committee waiting for them. Welcoming committee that asked the most bizarre questions, like when they left, what date it was and the year. Apparently there had been something wrong with her answers as they were now on their way to some base with their luggage with them and their trip was cut short, at least for the time being. Diane could hear the mumbling coming from John Ellis and the soft inquires from Emma Cowell about when they could possibly head off again, but no answers were incoming from their companions. Something about this whole situation was making the warning bells in her head raise the alarm and she just hoped that if the push came to shove she could still find her way out of this.
The actual journey to wherever they were lead was quite bizarre. The transportation was like nothing she had ever seen before and at the times it seemed like the man who was driving the vehicle was having a conversation with himself. Finally they reached their destination and were led to a base. Inside the base, and it was clearly a base of operations of some kind no doubt about that, it was no different. Filled with weird technology and gadgets, the underground base was like melting pot of all these different things that Diane thought were impossible. To Diane all this reminded her ever so slightly of those early SSR bases they got when they took whatever was available – no matter if it was underground or not or if the building was nearly decaying before their very eyes – and after Howard filled it with his strange devises. Still, no matter the circumstances or even the scant familiarity, alarm continued to blare in her head making her be extra cautious of her surroundings. And a good thing it was as they quite soon discovered.
Nothing Diane had done before in her life quite prepared her for this. Sure, she was used to weird and inexplicable things occurring, like a man changing from a skinny lad to a muscle clad, but this. This was beyond her comprehension.
“But how can you travel fifty years in half an hour?” John Ellis asked disbelief clear in his voice. He was standing in front of the conference room table that they were situated in, Emma beside him and Diane herself slightly behind them trying to stay in the background and absorb as much information as possible out of this bizarre happenstance.
“Your aircraft slipped through a transcendental portal.” The man who had introduced himself as Captain Harkness, the man in charge of Torchwood, replied from the other side of the conference room table, his team beside him. Diane didn’t know if it was deliberate, this whole standing in different sides of the room, their welcoming committee on one side, they on the other, but it only made her feel more out of place than she already was.
“A what?” Emma said quietly.
Poor dear, she looked so frightened. No wonder. Diane herself was feeling slightly uncomfortable and was trying to stay on the background and gather as much information as possible. So far, it had been a dead end. Her unease had not evaporated in the least. She very much wanted to go back to her own time – if they had indeed jumped through in time – where she could feel more at ease or at least leave this place and get her bearings and take hold of the situation by herself in her own time.
“A door in time and space.”
“It's some kind of trick, it has to be.” John Ellis tried to counter and Diane wanted to agree with him. She, too, very much liked this to be some horrible dream or trick of her own mind from where she could wake up the next morning.
It wasn’t a trick. Not in the least. Or if it was, it was the most elaborate trick known in the history of mankind. After the briefing, which Diane still couldn’t comprehend properly, the three of them were escorted to a motel where they spent the night on moderately comfortable beds; she and Emma in one room, John Ellis in other.
The next day they received new IDs and some currency as a part of their introduction to this new society and era and took the most unbelievable, bizarre and at the same time the most wonderful trip. ‘This new world is so different’, Diane thought to herself. They even had bananas at the supermarket where everyone could buy them. And so many of them, too! It had been so long since she had the opportunity to eat bananas as they had been nearly nonexistent during the war and had just only started to reappear. And oh, did they taste ever so good! She had almost forgotten the sweet taste of bananas, because it had been quite a long time since she last ate them. She still remembered the first time she had one, her memory as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Her grandmother had bought them one time when she was visiting her and let her taste one. She remembered being about five and sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen, munching on a banana and savoring it like it was the sweetest candy there ever was. Her grandmother puttered around the kitchen, baking something, something with bananas most probably, and every once in a while looked at Peggy and smiled. Diane sighed. If they really were in another time now she supposed there was no chance of ever seeing her family again. They would all be dead by now, she reckoned.
She also couldn’t help but wonder if Howard was still around. The man was a menace sometimes and she was quite certain that if his unfortunate habits hadn’t killed him – and she had seen some manifest even during the war – nothing could. She also thought where all her however small number of friends were and if they mourned her. Captain Harkness had told them that according to the history they never made it back to their own time, so they must’ve. Still, most of her friends were other pilots and aviation being as risky as it was they all were certainly used to the fact that sometimes people just disappeared mid-flight, most likely taken in by the sea, Amelia Earhart being the most famous example, never to be found again. So when the Torchwood people had asked her about any family who she would want to know about she lied. She lied, because if someone connected her to Howard Stark and SSR and to all the things she did during WWII she knew she would be in trouble. She knew too much; too much of the super soldier program, too much of the Tesseract, too much of the Hydra. She had sworn to secrecy when she had entered SSR and again as she left and she would not break her promise. Her knowledge may not be on the bar with Howard or Colonel Phillips, but in the wrong hands she knew plenty enough.
Nonetheless, even after the wonderful trip to the supermarket, eating all the foods Diane hadn’t tasted in years – and some she had never tasted – and reliving all those memories she started to feel a bit restless. The institution that had discovered them – Torchwood they called themselves, what a silly name – didn’t tell them much about how they got here, only that there was some sort of door in the space that randomly took people and things and dropped them in somewhere completely different. She was dying to know more. For all her life she had always had something to do and even if they had only been here in this new time for nearly two days she longed for something that would take her mind off of the direction it was going. All this laying about and trying to immerse with this new society were doing nothing to calm her nerves. She needed something to do and quick.
Her restlessness continued, even after she went for a small walk trying to clear her mind. Diane had never been to Cardiff, had only seen pictures of it before, but what she saw was a beautiful city bustling with people dressed in multiple different ways, some wearing scandalously little to cover them. In her mind she knew that fashion changed, she had seen it herself, but still she wouldn’t get over the fact that it was completely acceptable nowadays to wear skirts so short in public that you could almost see the top of their tighs.
Owen Harper, Torchwood’s prickly doctor, finally suggested that she could go see her plane. Diane dearly wanted to see that she was taken good care of and that she was in tip top condition, so she enthusiastically agreed. The trip back to the airbase was quite boring compared to all that she had seen these last few days, but the relief Diane felt when she saw her plane once more was palpable. The Sky Gypsy had been moved to inside a hangar and some kind soul had even refueled it, not that there was any need for it, really. There had been almost whole tank of fuel left, which was no wonder if they had really been airborne only half an hour and the spare canisters were still there. It seemed like the same helpful soul had even filled them up for her, too. Combined it was more than enough for a trip to wherever she would want, should she have the opportunity.
When doctor Harper asked the question how she had gotten into this whole aviation business the lie came from her lips easily. She had been asked that very same question few times before and she very well couldn’t tell them the truth; the truth that she had been a part of the secret international institution and had been in close contact with the super soldier, Captain America, himself. She did have a niggling thought that this Torchwood institution was a bit like the old SSR had been, but she had no desire of actually confirming the fact. She was too suspicious of everything at this point to try and find out if that were true, because all she had was her instincts that said Torchwood was, if not completely safe, at least safe enough. But she was in foreign situation, she had no real reference point at this time and she had not seen them actually do anything yet. Plus, she had no idea how she would or could even approach the subject. It was definitely safer this way. You never knew what the others would do to you when they realized that you were an ex government agent.
“Ferried planes during the war. Of course, when it was over, we were supposed to revert to being dutiful wives and daughters. But I'd got the taste for it. No pig-headed man tells me what to do,” she replied.
It was close enough to be the truth anyway; she certainly had caught the flying bug during the war on her multiple flights with Howard – on those trips that required an agent to be present – when he was ferrying the planes and shipments from one base to the other, but she had actually gotten into flying right after the war.
Her improved mood turned somewhat somber when doctor Harper informed her that she couldn’t fly the Sky Gypsy. Not legally. Seeing as her license had expired with what it suddenly being 2007 and not 1953. Bugger! She’d have to consider her choices of what to do more at a later date, but now she was off to a dinner with doctor Harper, apparently. Nothing more that could be done here, so she should just concentrate on something else and enjoy the rest of her evening.
Diane regretted leaving Owen behind sleeping so peacefully on his bed. He was a nice man underneath that grouchy exterior, but Diane couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was not right and that she should be on her way to somewhere. Well, to be frank that feeling hadn’t abated since they arrived to this time period and she was quite certain that it would continue if things didn’t change.
Diane debated for a while on whether to leave a note for Owen or not, but in the end she decided it was the most courteous thing to do when breaking up with someone, even if they had been together – or something resembling it – only less than a week. Last night had been wonderful; Diane had still been quite sullen about the realization that she would have to get her pilot’s license again and all the time that would be wasted for something that she could already do. The plane was hers; she knew how to handle it, that hadn’t changed in a week so why couldn’t the people at Torchwood just fake her pilot’s license like they had their IDs she would never know. Owen had cheered her up by bringing her to the rooftop of his apartment complex after a dinner together, had bought her the most beautiful, elegant looking dress and simply put, seduced her with good music and dancing. The only thing that had put a bit of a dampener on the otherwise perfect evening had been the fact that the dress had been red; she still associated a red dress with Steve and she had, at the time, planned on using that one red dress again on a date with him if he ever got the nerve to ask her out. But all in all, the evening with Owen had been most wonderful and they had ended up in his apartment after all the dancing and found themselves making even closer contact together.
She collected her clothes from the floor where they had ended up in their haste to undress each other, re-dressed herself, took a cab and went to the housing they were supposed to reside in for the time. When she arrived there Diane saw no sign of Emma. She must’ve been out with that Gwen girl, making friends and being all friendly and outgoing. Diane put on the clothes she arrived in this decade and had a silent debate, but soon came to a conclusion that she should just leave behind the red dress. She didn’t have many memories associated with that dress and no idea why she even took that dress with her, only the memory of few wonderful nights with Owen, but still it didn’t feel right for her to depart with it, so she gently folded the dress and left it on the bed. So with her meager belongings neatly folded in her suitcase Diane exited the room she had shared with Emma, headed outside to catch a cab and told the driver the address of the airbase that housed her plane.
The ride to the airbase wasn’t long and sooner than she realized she was there. Diane paid the cab driver and left. She had no idea how much money she gave to the cabbie, but it must have been enough as the cab drove away leaving her momentarily standing in front of the airbase building.
Diane was just making her last minute checks to the plane when she saw and heard Owen’s car screech to halt next to her plane. She paid him no mind, even though her heart yelled her to stop.
“No! I'm not letting you do this.” Owen shouted.
“I'm not a possession, Owen.”
“You can't do this, it's madness.”
Diane sighed and continued making her preparations for the flight.
“If I listened to everyone who told me that, I wouldn't have broken any records. “
In her mind she added ‘I also wouldn’t have ever met Steve, seen the wonderful things I’ve seen and experienced all the things I have.’ Even her own family had been wary of her joining the SSR, only her grandmother had embraced her and encouraged her to follow her heart. She had always been Peggy’s most loyal supporter in all the things she ended up doing and when Peggy had told her what had happened to Steve and after she had poured her heart out to her and told her that despite everything she still wanted to be a pilot and fly planes her grandmother had opened her arms and hugged her tightly with her weak hands.
She kept on arguing with Owen. He tried to make her see that this is madness, unsuccessfully; she tried to make him see that she has to do this. She can’t just wait here and do nothing. It’s making her stir-crazy and as much as she likes Owen, she feels like he thinks of her as a possession, not a person and she just can’t handle that. Not again. The weather conditions are the same as they were when they first arrived, maybe that will help her on her path and take her someplace new.
He grabbed her arm, but she moved out of his grip and finished her last checks and entered the plane. Dear Owen tried to come with, and if she believed he really meant it and that his place was not here she might actually accept. He’s almost desperate and tried to prevent her from leaving. She took off her white scarf and put it around Owen’s neck and kissed him one last time.
“What memories I'm taking with me,” she said to him and caressed his cheek trying to imprint him to her memories even more clearly. His face was heart breaking and Diane could see how he was trying to keep the tears at bay. He nodded, took a few steps back and she saw walls coming down on his face. She started the engines, looked out of the window and threw him a kiss and then took off.