Nothing belongs to me. All to Marvel Comics.
Peggy Carter was the only girl who had waited for him.
She waited for him when she didn't even know she was waiting for him. That was the time when Doctor Erskine came out with the formula for a Super Soldier, is not that she didn't like the idea, but the thought of making men from a machine was anti-natural for her. But she kept her mouth shut.
Then, Colonel Phillips started training possible Super Soldier and she got involved by training them too. She started to believe in the cause, those Super Soldiers would end the war. But neither of those young men was fit for the task, the doctor kept rejecting them saying that they weren't good at heart.
Good heart? What does that means when you're fighting a war?
And Steve came.
And everything turned upside down. For her, anyway.
He was this scrawny kid from Brooklyn who enlisted five times in the army and got lucky because the mad doctor wanted him. That was absurd, she said. He wasn't big, strong or even special, just a kid with good heart and a little bit of cleverness. She liked him.
He wasn't big strong or even special, but he was gentle, caring and sweet. She started to fall.
She waited again when he became a hero. Steve, or Captain America as he was called now, was the people's hero, the hero they imagined when they thought about the war: all shiny in blue uniform and smiling. In reality, their uniforms where too dirty or ragged to be shiny and they didn't smile, there was no place for smiles in the battlefield. That was just Steve.
Colonel Phillips and her kept training and making strategies to destroying HYDRA's factories, they made new plans, new ways to attack them, but it was like the enemy just knew where and when they were going to attack, they suspected of spies at their camp, of course. So who was it between the dying men in the infirmary and the tired men in their beds? She was shaking.
The Shiny Captain America (that was the name she made for Steve when he acted in from of public) was a symbol for people, just that, but she knew Steve was more than that and he believed too. So they made a plan, a stupid plan to take Steve to the factory of HYDRA where many men were taken prisoners. It was a plan for mad people and fools, well, not for nothing Howard Stark was piloting the plane.
They came back; Colonel Phillips yelled at her, glared a few times to Stark and asked (when he was calm) about Steve. She looked at him, tensed her back and told him where he was and what he was doing there, the Colonel rubbed his face and watched her with resignation. There was nothing he could do if Steve Rogers wanted to play hero, he told her.
He didn't play hero, he was one.
When he didn't make it back after two days, the Colonel was ready to write a letter for his mother, missing in action, he would write with his bloody machine. She was not giving up, not now, not ever. She kept herself strong, Steve had to go back, even if that meant she would have to go there and drag him by his tight suit. And then, she thought it better, what was she thinking? 'Drag him by his tight suit'? She was starting to think like those girls back home.
At the start of the third day, the letter finally began to be written. Her heart felt like was being broken from the inside, that letter was the reminder that Steve was not coming back, dead, missing, lost. She held herself and tried not to cry. The letter was finished when, like a miracle, noise and people entered the camp, led by Steve Rogers himself. She felt like if a weight was being lifted from her shoulders. She ran to him.
"You're late," she said and everything was right again.
That was the first time Peggy Carter wanted to kiss Steve Rogers desperately.
From that moment, Steve was 'Captain' to everybody, but for her it was just Steve.
The last time she waited, she didn't stop. Steve now was the hero Erskine was talking about, the Super Soldier the Colonel wanted and the man she was in love. He was successful in every mission, exploding guns factories, HYDRA's bases and Nazi's camps, everyone was so proud of him. She just wanted him to be safe.
They found out via Doctor Zola that the main base of HYDRA was in the Alps, the headquarters of Johan Schimidt were there too. She winced when Steve offered him and his team to go first and attack the front, in that moment she didn't know whether Steve was a fool or stupidly brave. He looked at her, but she didn't return his gaze. She was not going to beg him to stay.
When the time was right, they headed to the headquarters of Schimidt. Everything was chaos, fire and sounds of weapons shooting. The soldiers and her found Steve in the middle of chasing Schimidt, he stopped abruptly and her face glued to his. He was safe and sound. He smiled.
That was the second time Peggy Carter wanted to kiss Steve Rogers desperately.
"You're late," he said to her, but something was so very wrong.
She cut him remembering him he was chasing someone and he ran off. The kept killing HYDRA's soldiers, those soldiers were like a war machine was giving birth to them, they were coming and coming there was no way to stopped them. She and Colonel Phillips found Steve again, this time he was chasing an airplane-like thing. The Colonel made a face and yelled him to get in the car they were in, she could have laughed.
The speed of the car increased and the only thought on her head was to kiss him.
And she did it. Steve jumped.
Steve's team, Colonel Phillips and she didn't know about him until his voice drifted through the main Control Room. He was in the airplane-like thing, piloting it and about to crash. She had never felt so hopeless before. Tears were running free on her face. She knew that making a date was silly and stupid, but she needed a promise to hold on in case that Steve…
"We'll have to tell them to play something slow or I'll to step on your-"
That was the last time she talked to him. An interrupted sentence and a promise to dance was the last she got.
The whole group waited in silence for several minutes before they went out, they didn't want to go in case Steve was truly alive and was calling for help out there, waiting for them. There was an air of sadness and hopelessness in the car when they got back, even the Colonel was quiet and Peggy could tell he cared about Steve.
She didn't cry, not even when she was waiting for him in Club Stork, Saturday night.
Her dress was green and she wore black high heels, all for the man that never came. She waited for him all night, people glance at her, wandering what was doing a young woman in a club at those hours alone. She didn't drink and she didn't eat, she just waited in silence. She came again next Saturday, wearing a brown dress and pale shoes, he didn't come either. She would said to herself that he would return next Saturday, that maybe he got the dates wrong and thought it was the next week, maybe…
She waited, waited and waited, but he didn't come like the other times.
Colonel Phillips asked Howard Stark to talk to her because he was much closer to her age and he felt awkward talking 'girl things' with her. She laughed when Stark told her that, but just a little. He convinced her to not go to the club again next Saturday, she agreed and never returned. She confined herself in the camp.
He didn't come back there either.
She sighted in resignation and decided that she would stop waiting for him.
She started living her life.