Nobody quite knew how long she had been there. There were guesses and office wagers, made by those who watched her hover at the fray of another break-room birthday party or retirement celebration. She liked it that way—liked to be kept quiet, like a secret whispered to oneself in the corner of their bedroom. She's been here since I got here, they would say. And she hasn't aged a day.
Audrey was good at being invisible, and had always been good at it. It was why she had chosen to transfer to the archives after her injury. Career ending, a torn ACL, but survivable. That was okay. Her new life was very well-balanced: she rose at seven, worked at nine, left at five, and slept at ten. While the field agents went weeks at a time without a wink of sleep, she could count on a solid nine hours, plus three meals and five servings of fruits and vegetables. On Wednesdays, she went to physical therapy, and on Fridays she ordered takeout from Stan's.
On a Friday in late June, to-go bag in hand, Audrey arrived back at her apartment and found Howard Stark's son sitting with his back to her door. He held his own paper bag, though it carried only a bottle of whiskey. "Tony?"
She hadn't seen him since the funeral, and even before then, only sporadically every-other-Christmas and the occasional Thanksgiving. She hadn't even realized that he knew where she lived. "Hey, cuz," he greeted, grinning despite the tears staining his face.
Audrey blinked. Cuz? Peggy was his godmother, but it wasn't like they'd ever had a conversation longer than five minutes. Cousins was a stretch. "Are you alright?"
"Dandy as ever." He shook the bottle. "Want some?"
"I'm good." In the back of her mind, she considered whether it would be smart to take it from him. She could do it—all that strength from her dad meant it would be easy enough, but it risked pissing him off enough that he left, and she would rather he blackout on her couch than on the streets of Brooklyn.
