[Jack Thompson] (The things they don't know about) Miss Tonya

[ 2 6 : i n t e r e s t i n g - w e e k s ]

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Warnings: just big sad tbh lol what a great comeback

Spoilers: Agent Carter Season 1

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Ana Jarvis had been experiencing some of the most interesting weeks of her life and yet, on the surface, nothing seemed to have happened. For many, it would have been an experience that they looked back on later, questioning how on earth they didn't realise something was up, but Ana was not like many people: she was very good at noticing things.

The first interesting thing was that one of her husband's closest friends and employers, not to mention the brother of her best friend, was currently being considered a fugitive from justice and she knew as much about it as the average Joe. If the press had known of her existence, they surely would have come to her for all the inside gossip and she would have sorely disappointed them. Not that she was complaining at all – she didn't particularly mind not knowing the ins and outs – it was just interesting, especially since Tonya would usually leap at the opportunity to discuss a good scandal and Edwin was not averse to a good bit of gossip. However, were it not for the very noticeable absence of Howard, the lack of discussion of the matter would have convinced her that nothing at all had changed.

The next interesting thing was regarding her husband and her best friend. The two of them had always got along, a fact she was eternally grateful for. She'd technically met Edwin first, though she'd known Tonya through letters for far longer. From Tonya's very first letter and the moment Edwin walked into her shop, she'd known the two of them were going to be particularly important people in her life, and so it was particularly important to her that the two of them should get on. On paper, it seemed a rare chance; Tonya was not dissimilar to a crackling firework, threatening to vibrantly shoot off to infinity at any given moment, whereas Edwin was an anxiously, overcautious safety officer, reluctantly chasing after the firework with a bucket of water. Despite this being an amusingly accurate reflection of their dynamic, making it seem as though they really shouldn't get along, something about it just seemed to work.

Perhaps it had been Howard's friendship with her husband (wherever that itself had come from) that had made it so easy for her husband to befriend the female version of the playboy billionaire. Ana liked to believe there was always something more to things like this, something people could recognise but never properly explain, something that just was. Like how Edwin seemed to be the only person in the world that could get through to the Starks when their egos became too dense for them to acknowledge much beside their own genius, and in turn, the Starks were the only people – beside herself, of course – that she had ever seen make Edwin genuinely laugh.

Therefore, however unlikely it might seem to an unknowing onlooker, it was not unusual for Tonya and Edwin to spend time together; in fact, it was something of an obligation given Edwin's duties as the Starks' butler and, of course, Tonya being his wife's best friend. What was unusual was them purposefully going to unexplained places together or else carrying out some kind of scheme where one of them remained at home while the other went out on an excursion of sorts.

The only bit of sense that had been added to it was the mention of some Peggy Carter, whom Ana had initially believed to be one of Howard's 'associates'. She had noticed, however, that Miss Carter seemed to be involved in some attempt to exonerate Howard, which was no doubt the same attempt Tonya and Edwin were carrying out so mysteriously. However, she knew exactly why they weren't gossiping about it: to prevent her from worrying about any of the dangers they no doubt faced, and so she found she was not annoyed but rather touched by their dishonesty.

and so she did not tell them that the same night Edwin had informed her of Miss Carter's involvement, she had heard Tonya returning at an ungodly hour (her friend didn't seem to have mastered the quiet stealth that butlers seemed to universally embody), being greeted by Edwin who informed her that Ana was asleep and so they needn't worry she overhear them; she did not tell them that she had seen two unfamiliar men driving away from the house moments before Tonya informed her that her husband had gone to run a mysteriously urgent errand; and she did not tell them that she heard them both waking up extremely early one morning for her then to later find when she got up that her husband had disappeared yet again and her best friend, who usually enjoyed her company, seemed only too eager to follow him to wherever he had gone.