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

[ 3 2 : r e m i n i s c i n g ]

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Warnings: Mentions of World War 2, slight mention of trauma, mention of minor explosion (but not serious/fatal)

Spoilers: Agent Carter Season 1

IMPORTANT Author's Note: so as I started writing this chapter I realised that I missed out an important bit from the previous one that I had already published rippp I went back and added it in (it is the bit in bold if u want to find it easily). It just makes this chapter link to the story better tbh. 

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Even when he was thousands of miles away, Jack found he still couldn't escape Tonya. Not that he particularly minded her being brought up during their campfire storytelling, because it was all useful intel for the investigation, of course: every day was a day at the office for Jack Thompson. It seemed she and this Dugan guy had been close during the war after she'd rescued him and the Howling Commandos from a tight spot.

Peggy was, at present, chuckling at one particular recollection. "I still cannot believe she forgave you after you made it blow up in her face – literally!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know it was that volatile?" Dugan defended himself, as everyone else laughed at the memory of Tonya going ballistic at him when he messed with a machine she was working on and caused a minor explosion in the workshop. "Still makes me shudder thinking about it... I didn't step in that workshop for months after that! I preferred frontline fighting to facing her wrath, I can tell you that."

Peggy hummed as she shook her head with amusement. "Yes, you don't want to get on the wrong side of Tonya Stark."

"So, Tonya was in Europe with you guys for the whole war then?" Jack asked. Their discussion of the war – which seemed to be all these guys talked about – had reminded him of something he'd seen with Dooley in one of Tonya's files. It had been nagging in the back of his mind ever since he'd pushed it there when the Chief declared it irrelevant to the case. He wasn't sure why it bothered him so much; he didn't particularly like digging around in old war files for reasons of his own, but something about it wouldn't let it leave him alone, and if he was gonna get answers from anyone, it would be these guys.

Dugan and Peggy looked at each other as though they were both telepathically working it out between them. "Yeah, more or less, amongst it all," Dugan nodded. "She and her brother were employed in the workshop, of course, but as the fighting got busier, Tonya was more than happy to be pulled out into the field when she was needed. She and Peg here made quite the dynamic duo."

Peggy smiled, though her heart had twinged slightly at this comment. She'd been starting to feel bad about what she'd said to Tonya after Jarvis had told her she'd had nothing to do with Howard's plot. It had just felt so obvious at the time that she'd have been in on it, but maybe she'd jumped to an unfair conclusion after all.

She was so deep in her own tumultuous thoughts that she almost missed Jack's follow-up question.

"Did you go out further east with her then, Marge, after she and Stark terminated their contract with the government?"

There was a noticeable pause that made the other S.S.R. agents look around slightly warily as everyone else glanced at each other knowingly. The Starks' termination of their contract had been a rocky patch of the war for them, and everyone else had struggled to help them through it; the pair wouldn't tell anyone the exact reason they'd pulled out of it, and then Tonya had been sent away to work elsewhere (which everyone realised was an unofficial punishment from the army for the Starks inconveniencing them) while there were discussions of Howard being drafted into regular service. Peggy had argued strongly how ridiculous this suggestion was as Howard was not only invaluable to the war effort on the technical side, but also had less combat experience than his sister, so why on earth should he be drafted if she couldn't?

It had turned out to be more of a bump in the road in the grand scheme of things when Tonya returned after a few months and the pair of them continued to contribute to the army – under different terms, of course – but no one had ever forgotten how different Tonya had seemed the first night she returned from wherever the hell she'd been sent. She'd been practically a shell of the woman they remembered, eerily quiet with a hollow look about her, and clearly some kind of trauma that the best actress in the world couldn't have hidden. However, the next afternoon, she'd stunned them all when she was so completely back to her old self that some of them began to question whether they'd imagined seeing her the night before, as if some kind of ghost could have been impersonating her.

"Er, no," Peggy finally answered. "No, she got sent out there just her."

Jack frowned slightly. "What for? What did she do there?"

He looked around and found that the commandoes all looking uncertainly at Peggy, who answered for them again. "Not sure, just standard stuff, I suppose. She never really said, so must have been boring." She laughed, and everyone else copied, rather eerily, like one of those automated crowd laughs they add to comedy programmes.

Jack smiled briefly, to join in, but let it fade as the topic of conversation was quickly changed by another funny memory being recalled. He knew now he wouldn't get his answer here, he wasn't close enough to this group for that kind of talk, but something told him that they weren't really sure of the answer themselves. Maybe it was irrelevant, anyway, so he dropped it for now. But they certainly knew something he didn't, that was for sure; he'd been feeling that way about a lot of people recently, and it was really starting to unnerve him.

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Author's Note: holaaa lol sorry I underestimated how soon I'd have free time and have tragically been busier than I expected oof. I'm hoping by next week that I'll have sorted my life out a bit so hopefully I will be updated much more frequently (especially as we are getting to the good episodes hehe). sorry this one is kinda short even tho it took ages oop - I might just extend it in the next update depending on what I actually include in the next part lol

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