The night in Washington was adorned by the lights of countless mansions of the powerful, looking like an inverted galaxy.
Lynn sat in his temporary office.
The flames in the fireplace danced quietly, casting flickering light on the company asset valuation report in his hands.
After Senator Brandt fell, the vast network woven by his interests was falling apart.
Those factories that once relied on him to obtain Military orders had now become panicked fat sheep in the capital market.
Stock prices plummeted, and assets were sold off.
And Lynn's "Vanguard" company was a shark lurking in the shadows.
Using the first "clean" money he earned, it precisely and greedily devoured these blood-stained, high-quality assets.
A future business empire was quietly growing, feeding on the wreckage of war.
A wonderful feeling.
"Sir."
The secretary knocked and entered, footsteps light, and respectfully placed a letter on the table.
"It was sent from London, and the recipient is you."
Lynn's gaze fell upon that familiar, graceful handwriting.
Peggy Carter.
The beginning of the letter was a polite congratulation.
Congratulating him on the "glorious victory" achieved on the home front.
Congratulating Captain America on becoming the spiritual symbol for the entire Allied forces.
But starting from the second paragraph, the sharpness between the lines cut to the core of the matter.
"... Lynn, I have no intention of questioning your achievements; it has indeed greatly boosted the morale of the home front. But I often wonder, if Dr. Erskine could see Steve as he is now, would he feel gratified?"
"He hoped Steve would become a symbol, but can a symbol born under stage lights truly bear the weight of war?"
Lynn's eyebrows twitched slightly.
He continued reading.
"London's intelligence department reviewed the fall of Senator Brandt. They believe that for a politician who had operated on Capitol Hill for twenty years, the end of his political life was suspiciously smooth. Rather than a failure in a political struggle, it was more like the curtain call of a carefully choreographed play."
"I am just a soldier on the front lines, perhaps I don't have a thorough understanding of the complex situation at the rear. But the Steve I know is a good man, not an eloquent orator. The words he spoke at Independence Square were not the voice of a soldier, but a dagger."
At the end of the letter, Peggy Carter's tone turned gentle again.
"Please forgive my presumption, perhaps I am overthinking it. Please give my regards to Steve."
Lynn put down the letter, the smile on his face already gone.
This woman...
Her sharpness and intuition were far more terrifying than that group of pot-bellied politicians on Capitol Hill.
Lynn picked up the letter and slowly rubbed it between his fingertips.
He could not respond directly.
Any explanation in front of someone like Peggy Carter would only make it look like he had something to hide.
To extinguish this searchlight, one cannot rely on blocking it; one must let the Master of the light willingly turn it off.
And there was only one person who could do that.
The next day.
Steve Rogers had just finished a set of limit bench presses.
Seeing Lynn walk in, he put down the barbell and wore a bright smile on his face.
"Lynn! Are you here to watch me train?"
"I came to see our national hero."
Lynn handed him a bottle of Water.
But the expression on his face carried a hint of worry.
"What's wrong?"
Steve noticed the change in his mood.
"Is there more trouble?"
"No, it's not trouble."
Lynn sighed, as if he had encountered some difficult dilemma.
He took the letter from his pocket and handed it to Steve.
"It's a letter from Peggy Carter, she... she has some misunderstandings about what we are doing."
Steve took the letter.
He read it word by word, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter.
When he read "carefully choreographed play" and "dagger," an expression of hurt and confusion appeared on his handsome face.
He even subconsciously took a step back, his eyes filled with disbelief.
"How... how could she think that?"
Steve's voice was somewhat bitter.
"Does she think we are acting? Does she think the words I said at Independence Square were all fake?"
His first reaction was being deeply stung by one of the people he trusted most.
Then confusion welled up in his heart.
"Don't blame her, Steve."
Lynn stepped forward and gently patted his shoulder, his tone full of understanding and comfort.
"She is in London, facing artillery Fire and sacrifice every day. In her eyes, war is just killing the enemy with bullets and bayonets. That's not wrong, it's just... incomplete."
"It's hard for her to understand that what we are conducting here is another war, equally important and perhaps even more cruel."
Lynn did not directly refute her, but switched angles to guide Steve's thoughts.
"Do you remember the mother in Philadelphia who held her child and cried while buying war bonds? Was this a play to her?"
Steve was stunned, and that face filled with tear stains but overflowing with hope appeared in his mind.
"Those workers in the Detroit factories who worked two extra hours because of your broadcast, are they watching a play?"
Lynn's voice was gentle yet full of power.
He cleverly twisted Peggy Carter's questioning into a limitation of understanding that a "frontline soldier" has regarding "rear-echelon strategy."
"She still treats you as a weapon, Steve. An invincible sword. She wants you to return to the battlefield and prove your worth with the enemy's blood."
"But she forgot that Dr. Erskine's final wish was for you to become a shield. Not just for soldiers, but a shield providing shelter for millions of families on the home front."
These words struck the soft spot in Steve's heart.
He was not a weapon.
He was the embodiment of hope.
This was the sacred mission the Dr. had personally shaped for him.
Yet this sense of mission was being questioned by Peggy Carter, whom he had once trusted implicitly.
"She doesn't understand..."
Steve said in a low voice, his eyes showing some disappointment.
"She thinks it's you... that you turned me into a puppet."
"That's not important."
Lynn shook his head, a bitter smile appearing on his face.
"What's important is that she doesn't understand you, Steve. She doesn't understand how much grievance and torment you have endured for this cause."
"She thinks you look glorious standing on stage, she doesn't know that you would rather use your body to block bullets than face those flashlights."
"She thinks you are enjoying the cheers of the public, but she doesn't know that you blame yourself every night for those fallen soldiers."
Every word of Lynn's inserted a wedge called "estrangement" between Steve and Peggy Carter.
He bound himself and Steve together.
Shaping them into "the only comrades who could understand each other."
While the female Agent far away became the outsider who "didn't understand their great cause."
Steve gripped the letter tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force.
A sense of grievance and anger at being misunderstood by the person closest to him surged in his chest.
"No, she is wrong."
Steve raised his head.
"I must tell her, I must make her understand how important everything we are doing here is!"
This was exactly the result Lynn wanted.
"I want to write back to her."
Steve looked at Lynn.
His eyes were filled with the determination to defend their shared ideal.
Lynn didn't speak, just gave him a look of encouragement and support.
He watched Steve walk to the table nearby and pick up pen and paper.
This simple super soldier was racking his brains, trying to use the most sincere language to explain his "faith" to the woman far away.
He poured out his journey from confusion to determination to Peggy Carter.
He described with great passion how "hope" ignited one desperate family after another on the home front.
He even used a tone bordering on worship to describe how Lynn, like an older brother and mentor, guided him to find the true meaning of Dr. Erskine's dying wish.
Every word in this letter was filled with Steve Rogers' most sincere emotions.
It would become the most perfect answer.
The most irrefutable evidence, sufficient to dispel all of Peggy Carter's doubts.
Because this was a testimony written in the own hand of a "hero."
After Steve finished writing the letter, he looked up at Lynn gratefully.
"Thank you, Lynn. Thank you for always believing in me and supporting me."
"We are comrades, Steve."
Lynn responded with a smile, his eyes gentle and sincere.
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