Agent Carter Gothic

hardboiledmeggs

Another mission done. Another agent killed. The price of freedom is high.
The girls at the Griffith smell like the food they’ve hidden away in pockets and handbags: roast chicken and turkey sandwiches and gravy. Dottie Underwood smells like warm bread.
“There’s no segregation here,” every New Yorker says. “This isn’t the South.” But you can see that guilty Yankee gleam in their eyes. They know it’s a lie.
There are rows of agents’ desks at the SSR. If one should get kicked out of place, the night janitor will straighten it. No one will see him do it.
Your hands have felt the pull of a trigger; they have broken bones and wielded knives. Did those dead men have families? Did they have mothers or wives or children? You do not let yourself dwell on them. The price of freedom is high.
You move to Brooklyn because you think it will be full of ghosts. But a part of Steve Rogers is crushed under Arctic ice, and a part of him is in the East River, and none of him is left here. You move to Washington, DC.
Your nightmares are populated by visions of Angie Martinelli: bloodied, broken, dismembered, destroyed. You tell yourself it’s only your subconscious, but you know the truth. Your love precedes death. Your dreams are a prophecy.
Arnim Zola’s face is soft and colorless. His voice is high and feminine. You don’t trust him, but you sign his paychecks anyway.
In Steve Rogers’ name, you create a goliath, but something squirms under its noble façade. There are hushed whispers of unspeakable things. You no longer feel safe.
The city is humid. The city is freezing. The city is turned a sickly pink by blooming cherry trees. The city is evil.
The official cause of death is attributed to the car accident. But you’ve read the unofficial report, and you know about the bullet hole in Howard Stark’s neck.
There are some things you get back, there are some things that never return. But nothing ever stays the same. The price of freedom is high.