Hallow Earth Sanctuary – The Present

Her office was littered with photographs of herself with people who for good or ill influenced the course of history. Marie Curie, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Franklin, Teddy, and Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and so many others stared out from picture frames where anyone could see them. Each and every one a reminder of how long Helen had lived. The photographs in her private rooms spoke not of the length of her life but the value and quality of it. The faces that smiled at her from those frames were the faces of those she loved and cared about, her family and closest friends. Ashley, James, Henry, Will, and her dear old friend were some of the more familiar faces, but there were a few pictures in Helen's bedroom that no one quite knew the story behind.

Sitting on her bed Helen held one of those photographs in her hand. Two smiling women looked back at her from the black and white setting of a USO club in London. Though Helen fought throughout the war she was a civilian who took orders, when and if she took them at all, directly from Churchill himself, so she never wore an official uniform. She had, however, taken to wearing slacks and a button down shirt and tie. She'd also become rather found of wearing the dark navy blue trench coat worn by the Royal Navy. Her hair was red during that decade, sometimes it was just long enough to touch her shoulders and at other times it spilled across her back in fiery waves. The picture was taken just prior to Helen leaving for France in 1944 so her hair was at her shoulders. She smiled at the camera not knowing what lay ahead of her in the days and weeks to come, but it wasn't her younger self that Helen was looking at. It was the young woman beside her.

She wore the dark olive green uniform of the British Armed Forces Special Air Service, but the pins and badges on that uniform identified her as an agent for the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Her brown hair was an inch shorter than Helen's, maybe more but not much, and curled into the tight waves that were popular then. Her eyes were brown but full of light that comes from intelligence, compassion, and a zest for life that a lot of women still struggled with back then. A lot of women were tentatively stepping out of their homes and kitchens and into the world at large for the first time, but not her. She'd come running out with a shout of here I am world, this is me, this is who I am; now deal with it.

Helen let her thumb caress the glass as she continue to look at the photo protected behind it. They'd meet just after she'd finished her training. She'd been so young, younger than most realized. She was eager to begin not just her assignment or military career but her life. She wanted more and she was ready to go out and get it, but she was young, inexperienced, and stumbled often in those early days, but she always picked herself up, dusted herself off, and learned from her mistakes. She could be very prim and proper, the poster girl for being English, but she could also make a sailor blush when she dared to swear and punch a corn feed yank in the face with enough force to knock him on his ass.

Standing up Helen moved across the room to place the frame back where it belonged, among other frames that held photos of the same woman at various times in her life. Sitting at the counter of an automat restaurant in New York City with a grinning waitress standing behind her and a dapper looking Englishman sitting beside her, another picture of them together along with Katharine Hepburn outside a movie studio in Los Angeles, her wedding day, and the first time Helen had meet her infant children, all scenes from a long but normal life, a life close to completion.

Margaret "Peggy" Carter was one of Helen Magnus' oldest and dearest friends. One of the few outside the world of the Sanctuary who knew about Helen's secret, and in turn Helen knew more than a few of Peggy's. They had been in and out of each other lives for sixty plus years, and for Helen that was a rarity. If she allowed someone to remain in her life like that then that person had to be someone more than special because it meant in time she would have to mourn that person. She would have to mourn Peggy.

Turning away from the collection of pictures Helen walked over to her closest to pull out her suitcase. She would need to pack quickly if she were going to make it to Washington D.C. by morning. As she packed her mind drifted back to the first time she'd meet Peggy, and from there it didn't take long for the memories to come flooding in.