The lights of countless powerful families' mansions dotted the Washington night like a galaxy hanging overhead.
Lynn sat in his temporary office.
Flames danced quietly in the fireplace, casting flickering light over the report in his hands assessing the company's assets.
Since Senator Brandt's downfall, the vast network he had woven from vested interests was falling apart.
The factories that had once depended on him for military contracts were now panicked fat sheep in the capital markets.
Stock prices were plummeting, and assets were being sold off.
Lynn's company, Foresight, was a shark lurking in the shadows.
Using the first "clean" money it had earned, it devoured those valuable, bloodstained assets with precision and greed.
A future business empire was quietly growing, feeding on the wreckage of war.
It was a wonderful feeling.
"Sir."
His secretary knocked and entered, walking softly before respectfully placing a letter on the desk.
"It came from London. It's addressed to you."
Lynn's gaze fell on the familiar, elegant handwriting.
Peggy Carter.
The letter began with polite congratulations.
Congratulations on his "glorious victory" on the home front.
Congratulations on Captain America becoming a symbol of the spirit of all the Allied nations.
But from the second paragraph onward, the sharp edge between the lines cut to the heart of the matter.
"...Lynn, I don't mean to question your achievement. It really has done a great deal to boost morale on the home front. But I often wonder: if Dr. Erskine could see Steve as he is now, would he be pleased?"
"He wanted Steve to become a symbol, but can a symbol born beneath stage lights truly bear the weight of a war?"
Lynn raised an eyebrow slightly.
He read on.
"London intelligence has reviewed Senator Brandt's downfall. They believe that the end of a politician who spent twenty years building his position on Capitol Hill came about a little too smoothly to be normal. Rather than the defeat of one side in a political struggle, it was more like the final act of a carefully staged play."
"I'm only a soldier on the front lines, and perhaps I don't fully understand the complicated situation back home. But the Steve I know is a good man, not a gifted orator. What he said at Independence Square wasn't a soldier speaking from the heart. It was a dagger."
At the end of the letter, Peggy's tone softened again.
"Please forgive my presumption. Perhaps I'm worrying too much. Please give Steve my regards."
Lynn put the letter down. The smile had vanished from his face.
This woman...
Her perceptiveness and intuition were far more formidable than those of the fat, bloated politicians on Capitol Hill.
Lynn picked up the letter and slowly rubbed the paper between his fingertips.
He couldn't respond directly.
Any attempt to explain himself to someone like Peggy Carter would only make him look more suspicious.
To extinguish this searchlight, he couldn't simply cover it up. He had to make its owner willingly switch it off herself.
And there was only one person who could do that.
The next day.
Steve Rogers had just finished a set of bench presses at his limit.
When he saw Lynn walk in, he set down the barbell, a bright smile spreading across his face.
"Lynn! Did you come to watch me train?"
"I came to see our national hero."
Lynn handed him a bottle of water.
But there was a hint of concern on his face.
"What's wrong?"
Steve noticed the change in his mood.
"Is there more trouble?"
"No, it's not trouble."
Lynn sighed, as though faced with some difficult problem.
He took the letter from inside his clothes and handed it to Steve.
"It's a letter from Peggy. She... she has some misunderstandings about what we're doing."
Steve took the letter.
He read it word by word, his brow furrowing more deeply with every line.
When he reached "a carefully staged play" and "a dagger," a look of hurt and confusion appeared on his handsome face.
He even took an unconscious step back, his eyes full of disbelief.
"She... how could she think that?"
Steve's voice was somewhat bitter.
"She thinks we're putting on an act? She thinks everything I said at Independence Square was a lie?"
His first reaction was to feel deeply wounded by one of the people he trusted most.
Confusion followed close behind.
"Don't blame her, Steve."
Lynn stepped forward and patted him gently on the shoulder, his voice full of understanding and reassurance.
"She's in London, facing shellfire and sacrifice every day. In her eyes, war is about killing the enemy with bullets and bayonets. That's not wrong, it's just... not the whole picture."
"It's hard for her to understand that the war we're fighting here is just as important, if not more brutal."
Lynn didn't refute her directly. Instead, he guided Steve's thoughts from another angle.
"Do you remember that mother in Philadelphia, holding her child and crying as she bought a war bond? Was it a play to her?"
Steve froze. The face streaked with tears yet full of hope appeared in his mind.
"Those workers in the Detroit factories who worked two extra hours because of your broadcasts-were they watching a play?"
Lynn's voice was gentle but full of conviction.
He skillfully twisted Peggy's doubts into a "front-line soldier's" limited understanding of "home-front strategy."
"She still thinks of you as a weapon, Steve. A sword that can cut through anything. She wants you back on the battlefield, proving your worth with the enemy's blood."
"But she's forgotten that Dr. Erskine's final wish was for you to become a shield. A shield to protect not just soldiers, but millions of families back home."
His words struck a tender spot in Steve's heart.
He wasn't a weapon.
He was the embodiment of hope.
This was the sacred mission the doctor had personally fashioned for him.
Yet that sense of mission was being questioned by Peggy Carter, whom he had once trusted so completely.
"She doesn't understand..."
Steve spoke in a low voice, disappointment in his eyes.
"She thinks it was you... that you turned me into a puppet."
"That doesn't matter."
Lynn shook his head, a bitter smile appearing on his face.
"What matters is that she doesn't understand you, Steve. She doesn't understand how much unfair treatment and suffering you've endured for this cause."
"She thinks you look impressive standing onstage. She doesn't know you'd rather take a bullet than face those flashing cameras."
"She thinks you're enjoying the crowds cheering for you, but she doesn't know you blame yourself every night for those fallen soldiers."
With every word, Lynn drove another wedge called "estrangement" between Steve and Peggy.
He bound himself and Steve together.
He made them out to be "the only comrades who could understand each other."
Meanwhile, the female agent far away became an outsider who "didn't understand their great cause."
Steve gripped the letter tightly, his knuckles turning white.
The hurt and anger of being misunderstood by someone so close churned in his chest.
"No, she's wrong."
Steve raised his head.
"I have to tell her. I have to make her understand how important everything we're doing here is!"
This was exactly the result Lynn wanted.
"I'm going to write back to her."
Steve looked at Lynn,
his eyes resolute as he defended their shared ideals.
Lynn said nothing, merely giving him a look of encouragement and support.
He watched Steve walk over to a desk and pick up a pen and paper.
The naive super soldier was racking his brains, trying to explain his "faith" to the woman far away in the most sincere words he could find.
He told Peggy about his journey from uncertainty to conviction.
He passionately described how "hope" had been kindled in one desperate family after another on the home front.
And in a tone that bordered on worship, he described how Lynn, like an older brother and mentor, had guided him to the true meaning of Dr. Erskine's dying wish.
Every word in the letter was filled with Steve Rogers's most heartfelt emotions.
It would be the perfect answer.
The most irrefutable evidence, enough to dispel all of Peggy's doubts.
Because it was testimony written by a "hero" in his own hand.
Steve finished the letter and looked up at Lynn gratefully.
"Thank you, Lynn. Thank you for always believing in me and supporting me."
"We're comrades, Steve."
Lynn replied with a smile, his gaze warm and sincere.