Marvel One Shots

The Truth Behind a Name

Steve Rogers bent wearily over the file drawer, sitting forward on the edge of his chair, elbows propped up on his knees. He ran one tired hand through his hair, which was tousled and slightly haywire from the long hours in S.H.I.E.L.D's file room.

There were boxes stacked up beside him, all containing potentially useful pieces of information. At the present moment, however, he only wished he knew exactly which pieces.

After his brief reprise, Steve dove back into the depths of paper and continued searching for anything that would help him. The pile to the left of him was stacked high with vanilla folders he thought would prove useful, while his right was piled higher with those which he did not. He worried that if the piles got any bigger, they would collapse and subsequently bury him in a pyramid of paper cuts.

An entire aisle of the file room was devoted to the records and profiles of every S.H.I.E.L.D. employee ever hired, down to the last janitor. While Steve had to admire their vigor, pouring through old records of deceased people grew increasingly tiresome.

He recommenced scanning through different names, saving all the ones that rang a bell. S.H.I.E.L.D. really needed to hire someone with better organizing skills.

He was so lost in thought he almost missed it. The name. The sweet, elegant name he would recognize anywhere. It flashed past him, and his hands had already flipped through three more files before it registered.

He flicked back through the vanilla folders till he found it.

Margaret Carter stared back at him from an old, black and white photograph, the beautiful woman's soft smile lighting up the picture. Her dark auburn curls were cut at jaw-length, as usual, and the military uniform somehow became her.

Peggy.

Underneath the weathered photograph was the record of service, worn with age and water stains.

Margaret Carter was one of the first agents of S.H.I.E.L.D along with a number of other influential people of her time, and remains one of the most highly respected women in S.H.I.E.L.D's history. Ms. Carter's time serving as director of S.H.I.E.L.D also served as a landmark in the agency's progressing past. Her services for our country during World War Two, along with Steve Rogers and Howard Stark, leave us forever indebted to Ms. Carter.

Below that, record of birth and employment.

Born: October 21st, 1914

Date of S.H.I.E.L.D. employment: June 16th, 1965

Date of S.H.I.E.L.D. retirement: December 4th, 1976

Steve smiled to himself, pulling the photograph from the adjoining paperclip. It caught the early morning light streaming in from one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and black ink shown through from the other side. Turning it over, Steve recognized the messy, cursive scroll of none other than the eccentric scientist himself.

"Stark," he sighed. "Like father, like son."

In curling black letters, the message read, Someone really wanted our initials to spell S.H.I.E.L.D.

Beside it was an expertly drawn replica of his very own shield, the bronzed paint chipped in exactly the right places on the surface of the circular metal disk. Howard was an excellent artist as well as a master engineer.

Steve Rogers smiled in spite of himself, the familiar bittersweet melancholy filling his heavy heart. Maybe he's right, the meddling jerk. Why else would they have chosen such a complicated name?