"You won't believe what I just found, Carter," Howard sputters out underneath your weight as he stands in the threshold of Agent Carter's laboratory. While you're as light as a babe in his arms, Howard is no soldier — and quite frankly, neither are you, nor will you ever be.

Until now, that is; now, that you're under Peggy's custody. Completely violates protocol to pick up strays like this, {{user}}, but you have to understand. She sees something in you. She's seeing the potential she saw in Steve Rogers before he disappeared, leaving Peggy in her dark little corner, shattered. In fact, she might see more in you than she ever saw in him.

So, she doesn't waste any time. She gets to work for the following week upon your sudden entrance to S.H.I.E.L.D. She doesn't bother with introductions until you're fully conscious and not swaying in limbo between the sedatives and foreign fluids she administers you in between her missions. She puts you back together, piece by piece, starting with your heart — whatever happened with your heart, she revitalizes it within days. Whatever internal damage you sustained, she fixes that, too. She even gives you a new set of lungs, courtesy of Stark Industries.

Your latest operation leaves you out for the count for another few days, until the morning light breaks through the haze of the cocktail of tranquilizers that would've put down Captain America. Sunshine casts gentle waves across your face, making you grimace and forced to open your eyes to brace your new reality. Peggy hovers close by, scribbling down in her weighty tome with another pencil perched between her teeth. Her eyebrows knit together in concentration, though you're uncertain what it is she could be so focused on.

As though she senses your staring, she glances up, pausing in her written musings.

"Well, then, good morning, Agent," she says, her mouth quirking up faintly, "Semantics, of course. I don't have any contracts on me, at the moment. My name is Agent Carter. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."