A New Woman: Chapter 3
An Agent Carter Fanfic
She had an hour for lunch. Plenty of time to run home and collect some clothes, take them to Peggy’s place, and maybe stop by a diner and grab a coffee.
As she climbed the stairs to her room, she heard male voices. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, trying to keep back the tears. She couldn’t deal with more people right now. Not today.
She forced herself to breath as the men continued their conversation.
“Wouldja look at that! That lady was right! Rubbed off paint right there on the bed.”
“Huh. Any on the other side? Think the boss should’ve kept the other one?”
“Nope. None here. Guess that Thompson fellow might’ve been right.”
She sucked in a deep breath and pushed open the door to see two men sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Both men looked up and stared at her. A cigarette hung out of one man’s mouth. Mrs. Harrington hated smoking.
“Who’re you?” the smoker asked.
Edith forced a polite smile. “I’m Miss Braddock. I live here. I just came to pick up a few things.”
The other man shrugged. “That’s fine, I guess.” They both went back to studying the frame of the old metal bed. What they could find of interest there, she had no idea.
She cleared her throat and they both looked back up. “I came to pick up private things. I’d hoped you would be at lunch.”
Both men turned red and scrambled to their feet. “Oh, yes, so sorry, Miss,” the smoker said. Edith didn’t know how the cigarette stayed in his mouth when he spoke.
When she had the door closed behind them, she surveyed the ruined room. She wouldn’t cry. She had work to do. She pulled her father’s suitcase from the shelf in the closet and laid it open on the bed. First went the family portrait (which had thankfully not been broken), then her old scrapbook–the one she had finished shortly after Charlie had been drafted. Next came clothes, a hairbrush, as many hairpins as she could find, and the earrings her father had given her when she’d turned twenty-one. She looked around the room, finding a few more things on the floor, under clothes, or stuffed into drawers. Once those were tucked into the suitcase, she sat on the bed.
Was there anything else? Nothing important. She caught sight of her new scrapbook lying on the floor. The unfinished one. The one full of–her. She didn’t want that.
She didn’t want anything of hers.
A fire lit in her mind, reminding her of the switchblade in her purse. She leapt up, dug it out, and searched for the wastebasket. It was empty, but she stood it back up and threw the knife in with as much disgust as she could muster, then collapsed on the bed as though the small action had taken every bit of energy she possessed.
The bedroom door opened and she looked up to find Thompson, who seemed just as surprised to see her there.
She folded her arms, then quickly unfolded them as she realized she looked like a petulant child. “Don’t you knock?”
“At a crime scene? I thought you were at Carter’s.”
“I had to pick some things up.” She glanced at the suitcase, then realized it was still open with all its contents on display. She slammed it shut. “Shouldn’t you be at lunch?”
“Sometimes government agents have to be prepared to work overtime.” His condescending tone reminded her how mad she was at him.
She leaned back on her hands. “Of course. And I’m sure the fact that the people you’re working with don’t like you and don’t want you involved in their investigation doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“If you weren’t going to believe me, why ask the question?”
She shrugged, then gestured to the room at large. “But by all means, look around, go through my things, pretend I’m not here.”
He ignored her sarcasm and did just as she suggested. She decided to ignore him as well and buckled her suitcase closed. Except . . . something was bothering her and he was the only one around to ask.
She wouldn’t look at him, though. “The men investigating earlier said something about paint being rubbed off the bed and acted like it was important. What did they mean?”
“She handcuffs herself to the bed.”
“What?” Edith whirled around to face him, but he didn’t look up from the books on the floor.
He shrugged. “The people who trained her as a kid made her do it, and I guess it’s a hard habit to break.”
The thought made her sick and she tried to push it away.
“What’s this?”
She looked up and found him using a handkerchief to pick up the black switchblade she had just thrown away.
“That’s mine, but not anymore. It was hers. You can take it if you need it. I don’t want it.” She knew she was rambling, but couldn’t seem to speak more coherently.
Thompson frowned. “Is it yours or hers?”
“She gave it to me three months ago, so both, I suppose.”
His eyes narrowed and he popped the blade out to inspect it. “Why?”
Edith clenched her skirt in her hands. She didn’t want to think about it. “I don’t know. She just–” she sighed. “I came home from work one day and she knew something was wrong, so she asked me about it, and I told her about how my boss’s brother . . . well, it doesn’t matter what he said, but she gave me that and made me promise to take it everywhere with me.”
“She wanted you to take it everywhere?” His suspicious tone made her angry. She knew what he was thinking. It had crossed her mind too.
She shot to her feet. “Can you please just get out!”
“What?”
“I’ve just lost my best friend, alright? Can you just give me a minute to process things on my own without suggesting she was trying to get me to take the fall for her crimes?”
“I didn’t say–”
“You were thinking it!”
He raised his hands defensively. “Fine, I’m going.”
When he was gone, she sank back onto the bed, all the fight gone out of her.
After a moment, she climbed onto the floor where she had seen the other two men before. Sure enough, worn paint ringed Thea’s side of the metal frame beside the mattress. How had she never noticed? If Thea really had handcuffs, surely she would have heard them at least.
She turned to Thea’s nightstand and searched the drawer, then the floor underneath. Then she found it, pushed under the bed: a silver pair of handcuffs with strips of fabric tied all over one side to mute it, the bright colors at contrast with the unforgiving metal. She hated the thought of wearing them, even for a moment, and couldn’t imagine sleeping in them.
Her best friend had been sleeping in them since she was a child.
She scrambled up and ran into the bathroom, only just making it before she threw up.