The attacks on Sicily by the Allied front continue to remain at a stand still.
The wire cutters were poised delicately over the thin black wire. This was crucial. Focus. Focus. Cut the wrong wire, and have to start over…
Allied and Italian troops have both suffered heavy losses, but morale has never been higher.
Lies. All of it. Focus. Focus on the small wires. Just two more and it would be finished. Just avoid the red and blue wires…
The high casualties include those of both sides, as well as some civilians on the island…
My hand jerked, snipping the black, red and blue wires, causing a puff of smoke to blow in my face as the engine gave out completely. Frustrated, I shoved it aside, and turned up the volume on the dinky, squat radio that sat next to my worktable. However, to my faint annoyance, it had moved on to talk about the Pacific theater. Tired, I shut it off. If anything changed, I would hear it later. They would eventually round back to Europe. Maybe Captain Rogers would pick some bit of information up…
Snap out of it. Focus. I reproached myself. War first. Personal life when it was over. Maybe she wasn't on Sicily, maybe she'd moved to the mainland before the fighting started.
Oh God, please let this war be over soon. I was tired of it; it seemed like we as a nation were swimming in an ocean with no coast in sight. We may be doing well now, but it would easily change.
I rifled through the pile of papers and letters on my desk. Bills, arms requests, Manhattan (I tucked that off to the side and made a mental note to write Mr. Oppenheimer back ASAP) but the paper I was looking for was not there. I remembered where it was…I had left it in my office back in the States. Colonel Phillips, Agent Carter and I had gotten our orders to ship out here to England so suddenly, I hadn't been thinking straight when packing. Between the success of Operation Rebirth, and then the death of Dr. Erskine, then Rogers' reappearance back on the map after a couple months of fundraising for the government…things were crazy. I realized with a flash of guilt that I hadn't thought about her in while. Reports came in like crazy about the dealings in Italy, but I had paid little attention to them.
It was okay, while I could still write to her. But now, with everything being censored, it was an impossibility.
When she had written to me about the coup staged by Mussolini, I had told her not to worry. I made arrangements to have her brought to America, but then the government had denied her visa, because at that time, the war had begun, and nobody wanted more Italians in the U.S.
While tinkering, my mind drifted back to when I'd first met her. We were kids, my father was on a business trip to Rome, and had taken me with him. Meeting Maria Collins Carbonell had been an accident, but every great discovery by inventors is an accident. She had been my happiest, my best. She lived in Sicily, but had been visiting Rome. And she probably wasn't alive anymore.
Thinking about it brought me back to Italy, the sights, the smells, the beauty of it despite the fact that it was recovering from war. It had been the twenties, though. A good time, even for Italy. Jazz just taking a foothold there, disco…things that had vanished with the rise of the fascist government. Then Rome was only less than an hour drive from the coast. That had been my favorite part. The sun, the sky, the sea…Maria…the sun in her eyes, her dark hair against the blue sky, the sea around her and part of her, her kind face…
It was a good place to live, to grow up. If we ever won this war, I realized, I wouldn't mind going back. Maybe living there. But even as I thought it, I knew I wouldn't. I wouldn't give up my company, even if it meant getting away for a change of scenery. My father and I had worked too hard for it for me to give it up so easily. No, I knew that whatever happened after an Allied victory, my life would be back in New York. I liked my work too much, I liked building and inventing, creating something that would be part of a future America. No matter whom I ended up sharing it with…
I had last seen her in 1936, and we had written frequently between then and when I left with my father. We had been kids when we became friends, and when I saw her in 1936; I knew that it was something more. That there was no one else I loved more. Then, in the waning days of our correspondence before the war cut it off completely, I knew that I wouldn't be able to leave her a third time. Life was too unpredictable, and I told myself now, that as soon as the war was over, I would find her, and I would marry her. It was something I felt I had known for years now, but had only just recently admitted to myself. I told her so, in the last letter I sent to her. I never got a response.
Maybe I had scared her off. Maybe she was smart, and knew not to send letters that could be traced back to the enemy. Maybe I had gotten her in trouble by sending it. The doubt sat like a cold rock in my stomach.
After the war, I would go and find her. Just make sure she was okay.
An electrical shock from the parts I was tinkering with brought me back to Earth. I looked down at the mess I had created without thinking about it. Grimacing, I unplugged the piece of equipment that had gotten too close to the piece of metal, then looked at the mess of oil, cleaning fluid and scrap metal and tried to remember when I'd pulled some of the stuff out. Then I looked at the engine that I should have been fixing, but had shoved aside.
Damn.
Colonel Phillips was not going to be a happy camper; I'd told him I would have it ready to go by Rogers' next mission. The commandoes would need an airlift, and the plane's engine had given out on the way back from dropping Rogers off on the Italian border. I had always meant to fix it the part of it that broke, but there were more immediate demands. Then suddenly the engine became a priority. And I had to start over on it because of the damaged wires.
Phillips was going to get on my case about this, I was sure.
Sighing, I returned to work on the engine, but my head was still miles away, on a small island off the coast of a country that I built weapons to destroy, with a woman that I missed, loved, and could do nothing to help.
I'm sorry, Maria. I'll find a way. I promise. Just stay safe. Just promise me you'll stay alive. I stared at the pieces in my hands, wishing that people worked the same way. Wishing that there was a way to make people work the way pieces of a machine fit together. To make them run together to make one thing that worked. But it seemed like our world was like a broken engine, one that was doomed to never run right. There would always be a glitch, something that broke pieces, pieces that were irreplaceable.
I turned the radio on again, and the news of the Pacific flooded around me, drowning out further thoughts.
Just another day. Just a few thousand more irreplaceable pieces.
A/N: All characters belong to Marvel.