Title: Unspoken
Author: Lemur
Pairing: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns all. I'm borrowing.
Feedback: That'd be great. Especially constructive criticism.
Summary: "Girl talk" at the boarding house.
"You wanna talk about it?" Southern Alice asked.
"Oh, no, no," Peggy said with a smile. "Truly, I'm just—well, we've all lost, haven't we?"
Author's Notes: This takes place right around the third episode, "Time and Tide," of the Agent Carter series.
Unspoken
By Lemur
Peggy saw the purpling bruise on her shin just in time to tug on her dressing gown before the other women noticed. She laughed as Angie nudged her shoulder, pretending she'd heard the joke that had all the others with their heads thrown back.
"So, he falls out my window and, my hand to God, he's naked as a jaybird!" the woman—whose name may have been Alice, but goodness, Peggy didn't recall now—spoke with a cackle, her dish-roughened hands with their chipped pink polish fluttering wildly about her head, equally like a jaybird. Peggy hadn't recognized the name of woman's hometown, but judging by her accent, it was south; so far south Peggy caught only every third word through her soft drawl. "And he's telling my father—my father—'I don't have any idea what might have happened to my pants, sir. You haven't seen any about, have you?'"
The girls around her howled and Peggy laughed, smiled, checked her bruise was still covered. It had been Angie's idea to join the others, to cozy up together, legs crossed over each other, heads resting on borrowed pillows in Susan's room. Southern Alice had snuck in what she called schnapps, which tasted nothing like what Peggy remembered tasting in Germany and was so sugary sweet it made her teeth hurt.
The girls talked about their jobs, complained about Mrs. Fry's rigid rules, and as was the way with women and too many drinks, inevitably they talked of love, of men, of those lost and those they wish had been.
It was Susan's story that changed the tone from bare-bummed boys bargaining with furious fathers. Susan talked of her husband, killed in Normandy, killed that first awful day. She worked in a factory now; she lost their baby to a miscarriage not two days after her husband died; and she said, her voice low, that she didn't quite know how to be what she was now.
"Always just figured I'd get married, raised a couple-a kids and then, I don't know, take up bingo and kick the bucket," she said, wiping at her big, brown eyes. Beside her, Alice gently squeezed her hand. "Can't figure what I should do now, 'cause I'd still like to get married and have kids and all, but—" She choked on a sob, and Margie handed her a tissue while Rachel put an arm around her shoulders. "But the idea loving anyone but Danny makes me feel wrong all over."
Her tears came in earnest now and Susan curled into Rachel's hug. In an instant, the women became a huddle of consolation, all of them so ready with open arms and gentle words. Peggy didn't move, just watched them from where she sat, let the square of carpet around her empty. It was something she'd come to like about women after the war, the way they each had a private pain that others could share and understand, and the embrace of friendship was always at the ready. Peggy never felt part of it; perhaps it was her English reserve, or maybe just her own particular brand of it. She never quite knew if she would want others to hold her through her tears, but watching the girls with Susan now, she admired how easily the closeness came to them.
And she imagined it, sometimes. With Steve.
She looked down to check her hidden bruise and the blue of her dressing gown blurred through the wetness in her eyes. 'Oh, perfect Steve,' she thought. 'Perfect because he never had the chance to be anything else.' She tried to blink away the tears, force her heart to be pragmatic, to understand that it was a girlish fantasy she loved, in a way. She and Steve never had a chance to dance, to argue, to realize it was all a mistake and part ways. Peggy was a practical woman; she had been in love affairs before and knew the odds.
Forget love gone wrong, it's "what might have been" that'll knock a girl down for the count.
But she imagined it, sometimes. Sometimes, when she lay down in her bed, she would close her eyes and imagine pressing a kiss to Steve's lips, just a soft touch, an unhurried good night to someone she was sure she'd see in the morning. And she'd talk aloud to her pillows, breathing in and imagining she could smell him close. She'd tell him about her day, about Dooley giving her his coffee order, about how her life had made more sense when the world was at war. She imagined Steve murmuring back, voice low and soft, telling her he understood. Because Steve would have. He knew what it was to be underestimated and dismissed, to feel that fire burning desperately, painfully in his heart that told him he could be so much more, if only he had a chance. He knew war; he knew the tidiness of the big picture, the "right and the wrong," while the trenches felt like chaos. He knew the strangeness of finding one's true strength somewhere suddenly in the thick of mud and fear.
Somehow, Peggy felt, he knew her.
"Oh, Peg, honey," a soft voice said, and Peggy looked up to see Susan's gentle, teary eyes on her. "You too, huh?"
Peggy felt Angie's curious, caring gaze on her, but couldn't meet it. "Oh, I'm quite all right," she said. She wiped at her eyes. "I'm just fine." She felt the arms of near-strangers curl around her just the same, though she tensed in the embrace.
"You wanna talk about it?" Southern Alice asked.
"Oh, no, no," Peggy said with a smile. "Truly, I'm just—well, we've all lost, haven't we?"
She didn't want to speak it aloud, not one word of it, and certainly no truth of it. Captain America. She didn't want to hear the cooing or the light-hearted envy, the playful skepticism, or even the sincere sympathy. She didn't want to hear one bloody word of it, because he wasn't Captain America, not to her. He was Steve.
It was Steve she missed, and Steve whose name she never wanted to speak aloud ever again, because if she spoke it, if she spoke his name and the room could contain it, it would make it feel small. She didn't want it to feel small because Steve had never been small, even when he had been; he had been courage and fire and foolish fearlessness and earnestly honest. Everything truly miraculous about Captain America had been Steve. And she wanted Steve—brave, infuriating Steve—to be a huge, gaping wound in her chest, an all-encompassing emptiness that she could never fill and would carry with her, alone, all the days of her life. She wanted to clear Howard Stark's name, save the world, and grieve Steve Rogers, a woman on her own. One Agent Peggy Carter and no one else like her, because there was just one Steve Rogers. And there would never be anyone else like him.
Peggy felt Angie's head against her shoulder, offering her comfort even if she didn't know the source of the hurt. Rachel handed her a tissue and Peggy dabbed at her eyes.
"He must have been a pretty special guy," Alice said kindly. "You loved him a whole lot, huh?"
Peggy smiled tightly, politely, wiped a tear that slid down her cheek, and wouldn't speak one word.