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SHIELD has many oddities; the SHIELD lab, even more so. The biopods were left on the outer rim of the lab — items for tinkering and consideration. Each of the occupants, however, have been put in makeshift rooms with equally makeshift walls. One in particular, however, was left in a more solid room. A letter had been written, considered, and rewritten. Many times Leo Fitz had drafted it. Many times he'd thought of it.
And then yesterday he'd had it delivered.
There had been an assumption that it would wait. He didn't officially resign for good reason: SHIELD needs an engineer. Being down one engineer, its Director, and with the Acting Director 'untrustworthy' (Simmons' word, not Fitz's), it seemed apt to drag his heels, even a little.
Which is why the plaid wearing scientist hadn't really thought he would be called into the room in question. He slides into the room with his hands tucked into the pockets of his khaki pants, and his chin pensively dropped towards his chest. A moment's lingering in the doorway has him rapping on the frame of the door — the quiet knock of knuckles against the metal has him drawing attention to himself as he slowly forces his eyes upwards.
Contrition writes over his features.
*
If they won't let Peggy Carter leave her bed, well, Peggy Carter has demanded her desk come to her bed. She's also filed at least a dozen protests at being kept laid up, even 'just until the final tests are back', insisting she's perfectly fine, all readings are normal, and this is all completely ridiculous. She bullied the staff into bringing her real food over the weekend, however, so that helped a lot. Still, it's like having a very stubborn bull strapped down in a china shop and all the lab staff are walking on eggshells.
Peggy has had an extra desk brought in along side of her hospital bed, to hold the various files and supplies she needs as she works on going through catching up literally everything she missed, marking actions her doppleganger did that she needs to reverse, look into more, or is actually alright with. She's being full director whether people like it or not, pretty much from a few hours after waking up. That meant she immediately read his letter, of course, and sent orders for him to br brought back in. So, it's no surprise as she hears that quiet knock.
"Come in. Shut the door behind you. Breath. Preferably in that order. You can switch the last one around as you please." Peggy clips out to him, finally turning vibrant dark eyes up from the folder she's half rested on rounding belly. She studies him head to toe from the moment he walks in the door.
*
The instructions draw Leo from his thoughts, and he manages a small, not-at-all-convincing never-meets-his-eyes smile; a brief twitch of lips representing a combination of emotion, thought, and regard. There's little question: he is no spy. But then he's never really had to be. "Right," he manages with another twitch of his lips. Evidently some things bear weight.
He closes the door behind him and issues Peggy a small nod in greeting. "Director," he greets, and trails into the room. His eyes study each of the folders, and brief articles stacked upon the desk. "Your powers of persuasion must be strong, yeah? Can't imagine the medical staff were keen to — " but he doesn't finish the thought. Instead he eats his words and his hands tuck deeper into his pockets. So awkward.
"Uh… I'm Fitz. Er… Agent Fitz." One of his hands drifts from his pocket to rub the back of his neck. "Glad to see you well enough, Director Carter."
*
"Let me work while I'm sitting here useless as a bump on the log? No. But, fortunately, I have a bit of clout in this organization, so I ensured that we worked it out." Peggy states with that smooth, clipped accent and a slightly tight smile that does actually reach her eyes, a touch of dark humor behind it and perhaps just a hint of amusement at how much she's kept the medical staff on their toes. It's revenge for them keeping her here, after all. She then looks him over again, with eyes that say she's reading every detail of his file in his body now. The way he stands, the clothes he wears, even the way he breathes and holds his shoulders.
"It also means that I am not accepting your resignation. Everything I've read about you and see now tells me that you're the exact sort of agent we need in this organization, so stop thikning about it. Understood?" Peggy watches his reaction to that statement even closer. It will tell her more so how he's *actually* feeling about resigning.
*
The Scott lingers along the edge of the room. His jaw tightens and he rubs the back of his neck again. Probably unsurprisingly, Fitz has a vivid imagination. He easily shifts his weight from one foot at Peggy's ability to do work despite the medical staff's objections. "I can say that you have a lot more leeway than anyone else still kicking around here, yeah?"
His eyebrows lift at the last, however, and he swallows hard. A sharp inhalation of breath has him steadying himself. "Ma'am… all due respect, but I don't…" his eyes flit about the room. "…this place. What happens here, I'm not…" his eyes finally turn to Peggy's. "…nothing more than a quartermaster. I was never meant to… I don't…" his shoulders tighten. "I am not equipped. Not remotely, ma'am."
*
Peggy gently nods towards the one chair that she's had rolled into the room for the numerous meetings and visits she's had since she woke up. Despite being in a hospital gown with at least two different monitors still hooked up to her rounding frame, Peggy still manages to hold the air of a commander at the head of their troops. Or, like she's behind a huge old desk in a proper leather chair, conducting important meetings of business from a position of power. She doesn't let her surroundings change the way she conducts herself.
"You are a genius. Hands down. The work you've done in miniature robotics alone, not to mention the theoretical matters you've managed to encompass, and then your work on the prison — Whether we should have built it or not? It was brilliant. You are far more than a quarter master, even if your own brilliance scares you sometimes, hence your being prone to downplaying it. Especially around superior officers."
*
The mention at being a genius has Leo's eyebrows drawing together. His posture stiffens further, but he does manage a flicker of a smile at the notion. He inhales a deep breath, "But what I've done, ma'am, it's not… I stepped outside the confines of my position. Many times over, yeah?" His eyebrows lift and he takes a few steps towards the chair, finally choosing to enter the room properly.
He slips onto the seat and runs his hand through his hair. "When we learned you and Director Weaver weren't — well, you, Simmons and I made a pact. We relied on ourselves. And a place like SHIELD doesn't work that way. I put a weakness in the prison's design. I chose to do that." He swallows hard. "I took on a mission for your rescue and kept it from my superiors. I didn't consult. I relied on hunches and intuiting organization. I saw patterns and I followed them. And I may have lost my best friend in the process." His gaze cuts downwards. "I am not cut out for this spy stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who to trust. I'm up at night tinkering instead of sleeping — thinking about the escape from the prison and how that's on my shoulders — and that was all so it couldn't be reappropriated. If SHIELD was compromised, my design was compromised, my efforts could be…" he frowns.
*
The dark haired woman listens to those words quietly, the calm, almost proud look on her face only slightly pressing back a smile that threatens to come out. Peggy doesn't interrupt. She lets him pour his heart and sins out to the director of the whole organization. Some details she knew from reports, some she might not have. None that seem to surprise her. When he finally trails off and frowns, she tilts her head slightly, "…Your efforts could be…? Do you want to finish that paranoid theory, or are you done for the moment, Leopold?" Peggy asks simply, settling his file aside and now neatly folding her hands in her lap. It's clear she has things to say, but not until she's certain he's done. Occasionally, she is director and psychologist.
*
Fitz inhales a deep breath. "Einstein said that we are responsible for what we bring into this world. Shelley's 'Frankenstein' made that abundantly clear, and yes, I do read fiction sometimes, despite what everyone thinks." His lips twist to the side. "What I make, what I create, I am responsible for that. I am responsible for the way it is used. And, in this case, it would've been more than blood on my hands, yeah? I could've been key to bringing about a successful alien invasion."
He swallows hard. "And to do all of this, I lied to my best friend, had her ID revoked, and let someone replace her because she was too important an asset to send in on her own. Because if they got Jemma, I couldn't — " his eyebrows draw together and his hands clench into fists at his side. He coughs, " — she could've derailed everything. All of it. They had Simmons, they could put people away at will. She was the biochem link. She was the one responsible for coming up with a test, and all they needed was a test to confirm everyone of note was alien. It could've given them an excuse," which may or may not be the reason Fitz took Jemma out of the equation.
*
A slight bow of her head comes in turn. "Yes… You are right. We are responsible for these things. I am responsible for the fact that I did not see one of my own associates had been switched, and I was switched out myself. For the fact that I have put the fear of god into so many people they were hesitant to call out my replacement when she acted out of character. We all have regrets in this. We all made mistakes. Withdrawing from the work… stopping what we all pledged to do — Shield, protect this world — because we made mistakes? That would be the biggest damage the aliens did. The rest of this.." Peggy motions to the stacks of files beside her bed, "It can be cleaned. Fixed. We go forward. Figure what we can work with, destroy the rest. Our agents, our people… That… that we cannot replace. Neither you nor Simmons. Which is also why you… did what you did, I suspect."
Peggy then stops a heartbeat or two, taking in a deep breath, still reading that doubt and guilt in his eyes. She sighs quietly, "…Leopold. The actions you took… the secrecy? Going against orders, keeping things quiet… Those are the very sort of calls which founded this entire organization." Peggy admits with a half wry smile. "…Do you know how Captain America formed the Howling Commandos?" She asks with a slight chuckle. "…I snuck him out of a USO show and onto one of Howard Stark's planes, completely against orders, so we could drop him behind enemy lines. Phillips nearly strung me up right there. I went against the entire US military all the way to General… on a hunch."
*
Fitz's lips turn further downward. He inhales a sharp breath and his gaze turns downwards once more. The found of SHIELD, however, causes his expression to change — it eases some. There's no easy erasure of his thoughts or emotions, but it does help knowing the history. He issues her a vague nod, but his expression turns strangely shy. His cheeks flush slightly, and his head wobbles uncertainly. "I'm not like that though." His eyes soften, "I'm… I'm not a hero, ma'am. I'm just an engineer. A scientist." He inhales a second sharp breath and releases it slowly. "You, ma'am, are a hero."
*
This draws a long smirk to her pale mouth, not having been given her lipstick back yet, and she folds her arms across her chest for a moment. It looks a bit ridiculous with the bump of her belly and in that hospital gown, but she's not wavering in the stubborn confidence of her frame. "…At the time, they'd have called me a traitor and did call me little more than a secretary. When the war ended and we became the SSR, I was not much more than that either. SHIELD formed because myself… Daniel, Howard, Phillips, Dugan… several of us *saw* the cracks in the SSR, the strings being pulled by the war council, the betrayal of the things we'd sworn to do in order to hunt down American citizens for being communists… and we decided not to stand for it." Peggy gives a tired little laugh. "You may say this entire organization was built on sedition. I'd prefer to say it was built on good people with good hearts and better hunches, following their instincts down some very frightening paths to try and make things better. That's how I hire as well. It's not… about the best scores, or passing all the physical military requirements, or being the 'best spy'. It's about having instincts and brains and courage enough to follow them. Which you clearly do."
*
There's another flush of Fitz's cheeks. THere's a long pause as he considers each of the words. Pensively, his hands fold lightly on his lap. Finally, he nods. His lips purse. "I.. thank you," he breathes rather than speaks. "I… the prison," he finally lands on. "The disaster it turned out to be. That's my fault. Entirely my fault," it's not quite the truth and it's not quite a lie. "But. If you still want me here despite all of this, despite every single thing I've told you, I will stay." He swallows hard. "I will endeavour to be better." He frowns slightly. "I would've endeavoured even outside SHIELD."
*
"I know you would have. Which is why I still want you here." Peggy sighs quietly, looking down to a few of the files in the middle stack. The stack which needs MORE investigation. Much of it is about the prison. She sinks back a bit deeper in the bed, now some of the exhaustion of a woman who hasn't stopped since she woke up, it creeps through the settle of her body. "Tell me why you started work on the prison in the first place? It wasn't simply because my… replacement was pushing the issue, was it?" Peggy asks, a slightly grim look on her features. "…While I cannot support how we all went about it, I also cannot say it was a complete disaster of an idea. There… there are things we won't know how to contain."
*
The simplicity of the question earns an equally simple answer: "Because I believe in justice." Fitz manages another smile and a shrug, "Without it we have few options when it comes to powered people. If people commit crimes they need to be duly processed; they need to have fair trials, and we need a means to hold them in the interim." He looks squarely at Peggy, "I believe in what it can do. I believe in what we need it for." His lips twitch, "It was a thought project at the Academy. How could it be done? Could it be done? Simmons and I, we worked on it together. The only power source at the time would've been nuclear, but the risks were too high. So we cut that out of the plans — how to actually power it." He smirks. "We didn't want anyone making it without us."
*
A slightly softer smile actually comes across Peggy's features. "…I cannot disagree. It's… something we all have to consider. Still consider. Will have to manage in the future. Just because this… ended up being a disaster, we cannot back down from the work we need to do. So… now more than ever, we need you. And Simmons. I will need to talk to her independently. Have you two… spoken, since everything?" While files have a lot of information in them, the details of her agents' friendships aren't one of them, and Peggy hasn't been around the office enough to hear the gossip
*
The mention of Simmons causes Fitz's lips to turn downwards. He emits a soft sigh. "Jemma is angry with me." He rubs his face. "Jemma sees it as a betrayal. That I don't think she's competent. That I don't trust her." His lips press into a thin line, "But it's not like that. It's the opposite, actually. I couldn't tell her because she wouldn't have let anyone else take her place. She would've made us vulnerable." He sighs again. "We've been a set for some time — since the Academy when we chose to join forces."
*
"…Have you apologized?" Peggy offers quietly, not seeming to say whether she agrees or disagrees, but she does offer that possiblity. Her brows arch, taking him in for a few heartbeats, though she looks more gentle than she did before. Now they are leaning more towards the psychologist part of the conversation. "It is hard to be a woman in this world. Especially this field. Science as well, I imagine. When men keep things from us to protect us it… It sounds like they find us incompetent."
*
"Profusely," Fitz admits. "She's the strong one. Everyone knows she's the strong one. She's the brilliant one. She's the better scientist. She has the strong stomach. She was the asset." His hands clasp each other tighter; he almost believes the byline he's reiterated time and time again.%
*
"That is an awful lot of insistance for someone whose file I've read already. From everything I've read about both of you… She is not. Nor are you. YOu are a *team*. Together, as a team, you are the strongest. Your minds work better that way. And you broke that team in an attempt to protect her. That… will take time to fix, Leopold. But… it is worth fixing. You will just need to give it the time." Peggy reassures him gently, though there is no doubt in her voice that he can do this.
*
Fitz can believe that. He manages a flicker of a smile. "We are a team," he concedes. There's a long pause as eh finally allows himself to rise to his feet, following which his hands retreat into his pockets once more. "You think it's fixable?"
*
Peggy has partially disconnected.
*
"Doesn't matter what I think, really. Do *you* think it's fixable? All I have is a few folders to go off of, a hunch, and what I can tell about the young man in front of me from twenty minutes of conversation. You tell me, Doctor… you have far more evidence on which to build your case." Peggy states, though there is a touch of amusement and an encouraging, softer smile behind her words.
*
"I think if it's not that I can't stay," Fitz returns as he rubs his face. "But," and it's an important but, "if I don't try, I'll have regrets. Jemma is an incredible human being in every sense of the word." His eyebrows lift and he nods lightly. "Thank you, Director. I will be staying on. I can fix this. I hope."
*
"Some days that is all that keeps us going — hope. Hold onto it. Everything else will fall into place." Peggy reassures him quietly. Even if this meeting started all bluster and command, there is a clear care behind her words at the end of it now. SHe then nods towards the door, "Go on, if you wish. That is all I wished to discuss. If you truly like me, you can put in a good word to get me out of this place, yes? I think there is no reason to keep me after so long. They'd trust your recommendations." Peggy flashes him a little, almost imploring grin.
*
Fitz actually chuckles at the last, "Well, you don't disappoint, Director Carter. When I met your doppelganger, she did. It was upsetting." He cringes slightly at the memory. "I'll chat with the folks on the other side and see what I can do, yeah?" He issues her a one-shouldered shrug. "I'm no physician. I think they're being cautious because yours was pinched," in the prison fiasco. "I'll have a few chats and see if we can't move things along." With another reassuring smile, he issues Peggy a nod and takes a few steps towards the door. "Thank you, Director. I really needed this."
*
The dark haired woman gives him a little wink, "Come now, Fitz. Pull some strings. It will make me feel a touch better about working with a Scotman. As is, I feel a bit dirty for almost liking you." Peggy calls after him, *clearly* teasing, but it might be nice to get a proper smile on his face. "Dismissed, Doctor. I expect full follow up reports by the end of the week." And with that, she sinks fully back into her bed with a slow sigh, her eyes moving to the ceiling. It's been a long time since she felt this simultaneously exhausted and stircrazy.
*
"If I've got any to pull." And Peggy is rewarded with a smile in turn. "Jemma feels the need to declare you British at every turn. So we'll see how that goes long-term, Director." With that said, Fitz disappears into the hallway.
Some time later, however, Peggy is rewarded with another treat: release from care. Maybe Leo had a few more strings than he'd thought.
*