On the morning of your sixteenth birthday, you wake up to a burning feeling between your shoulder blades. You curse under your breath because you have spent every night for months hoping against all hope that it will not happen to you, and that you won't wake up with a tattoo of those bloody words across the top of your back. The night before you had gone to bed rather early, before your room mate had gotten home from where ever she had been. You hadn't slept. But you had tried, anything to try and alleviate the worry, the absolute terror and mind numbing panic you felt. You had spent months trying to convince yourself that you would be like your parents, the lucky buggars, mark free with a choice.
It had happened any way. Muttering and cursing darkly under your breath you roll out of bed and move towards the mirror. It's barely dawn, and you don't have classes today but now you're awake you may as well get this over and done with. Your dorm room is freezing, not that you expected anything else, it is an english boarding school after all, but it certainly does nothing to brighten your sour mood.
You stand in front of the full length mirror, goose pimples running up your bare arms. You shiver, whether from cold or apprehension you're not sure. Slowly, you turn to face the opposite way. Your arm comes up and you pull down the thin strap of the slip that you're not supposed to sleep in, that you're not supposed to own because it isn't lady like, mind you, and you pull it down your arm. As the material slips you catch a glimpse of the newly formed words there and your heart jumps even as your stomach twists in a sickening fashion.
"What can I get for ya, Miss?"
Your stomach twists, not just because the words are so generic that anyone could say them to you, because they say that you just know, but because the script they are written in is decidedly feminine.
During the war, about a year before you met Steve, you were stationed in Paris. The city, although war ravaged and full of something akin to misery and hopeful optimism (a strange mix for sure), held a lot of its former beauty. Amongst this beauty was a dancer, Bernadette. You only met by chance, she was in a back alley one night with some company that she wasn't enjoying to say the least. By the time you had finished beating the man you had almost forgotten that she was there, but when you turned around to exit the alley, the man lying bleeding and unconscious behind you, you found that she was stood there still, watching you with something like fascination painted across her face.
You and her, although you knew that she wasn't your soulmate or your one true love, hit it off straight away, and your relationship flourished from there. Not once did it bother you that she was a woman, you had gone to an all girls boarding school in England after all. One night, as you waited for her in the wings behind the stage, if occurred to you that this wasn't a half bad life. With Bernadette you were content, even amongst the war.
It ended rather badly, you knew it was likely to happen, she was rather beautiful after all, but it still hurt. One night you waited for her in her private dressing room, you hid in the shadows in case any patrons were honouring her with their presence. You didn't enjoy having to watch all of those men slobber over her- she was yours, after all- but you knew that it was part of the custom. This time however, when she came back it was different, she was enjoying it as you just knew.
You left and never saw her again, you didn't want her pity or excuses. You were moved from your station in Paris less than a month later. You were stationed on a small camp in New Jersey and you were put. To work with the Colonel training soldiers until they were fit for fighting.
Six months later that was where you met Steve Rogers. Although he wasn't your soulmate, he was the first time you knew you wouldn't mind having one. He piqued your curiosity rather quickly, he wasn't like the other trainees. He was weak, for a start. Scrawny and small and you knew straight away that he hadn't passed the exams. Over time though, you started noticing that he had certain qualities. He was brave and kind and honest all of the time, he stood up for what he believed in. And even though you told yourself not to be so stupid, you started to care for him.
After he became Captain America, the feelings only grew stronger and by the time he died it was something close to love. It was as close to love as you could ever get to somebody who wasn't your soulmate, and you wanted desperately to love him. Mourning him was all the harder because you didn't quite love him, no matter how much you wished for it or wanted it.
For the next few months your grief for Steve clouded your head, it made the end of the war seem like a dream. No matter how much you tried you just couldn't wake up, you didn't want to accept it because it meant that he was gone for good.
By the beginning of 1946, although you were still very much closed off from the rest of the world, you were firmly back in reality. You found yourself in New York, working for the SSR. You hated it, during the war you had a purpose but now, to them anyway, you were nothing more than a glorified secretary. Working with them made your life bloody hellish, but as you supposed at least it gave you a reality to deal with day to day.
One evening, after a particularly gruelling day, you find yourself settling at the counter of an automat. A pretty waitress with a name tag that reads Angie stands opposite you. You meet her eyes and before she says anything to you, you feel a fierce burning across your back and you know from her shocked gasp too that she does as well.
Hesitantly, she licks her lips and a genuine smile flits across her lips. With her pencil poised above her pad she asks " What can I get for ya, Miss?" With a delightful smile plastered across her face.
You can't stop the smile that grows on your face as you watch her try and anticipate whether or not she has it correct. You feel nervous, as though she may be yours but you not hers, you gave you courage with a steadying breath and you reply with "Just tea thank you Angie".
You sit there for more than an hour, with your tea getting considerably cooler than you should let it and study as she moves amongst the customers with a smile plastered across her considerably pretty face.
You leave before you get the chance to talk to her again but you return every day and sit there for as long as is deemed polite and then maybe a little more on top of that. You thank God that your parents aren't there to see their little Margaret fall helplessly in love with another women, even if she is your soulmate. As the weeks go by you learn that her full name is Angela Giorgia Martinelli, she has four older brothers that taught her how to fight, she speaks fluent Italian and that she wants to be an actress. You also learn a lot about her nature, she's so alive and open that watching her fascinates you.
In turn she learns more about you than anyone else in America (other than Howard) ever has. You tell her about your time in boarding school (at which she looks at you suggestively, though she doesn't comment, thank god) and you tell her that you served in the war and briefly, although you omit the Bernadette shaped details, about your time in Paris.
After you move in the Griffith things between you become more awkward. You try to avoid her, you're dangerous and you just can't deal with your feelings for her. The last thing you want is for her to get hurt because of you and so you come up with reasons to not be near her. It hurts like hell, far more than losing Bernadette did, but you want to protect her so you stay as far away as possible.
Angie stops trying after a while, the late night knocks at your door stop, the talking to you at breakfast ends and her offers to go out dancing and to the movies become less and less frequent until they're all together gone from your life. You feel more miserable than you have since you met Angie and you feel immensely guilty for doing this to her too. You try to console yourself with the knowledge that it's in her best interest, and that its all to protect her but you can't manage it.
After a while you start seeing Angie with a girl called Evelyn, a lounge singer downtown. Whenever you see her they're together, sat far too close for your liking. One night as you pass Angie's door, you hear a girlish giggling that isn't Angie and the sound of a person being hushed. Peggy pauses and presses her ear against the door, making sure not to stand on the creaky floorboard outside of the door. You can hear a voice that is distinctively Angie's murmuring and you're not a fool, it sounds intimate.
You retreat to your room and pace up and down until you hear the door open and close well after curfew. You crack open your door to see Evelyn hurrying past with mussed up hair and you crumple in on yourself, it hurts far more than you were prepared for and far more than anything you've ever felt before. You manage to get the door closed before your knees give way, you slide down your door until you land with an undignified thump at the bottom. For once you can't control your emotions, you stay there on the floor all night sobbing in a heap. When the morning comes you can feel the space between your shoulder blades burning so your rush to the mirror to see why, this time when you repeat the actions of your sixteen year old self you don't feel worried or panicked, just very nervous.
Nothing has changed, but the words are becoming bolder and you're not quite sure what that means. You wonder if Angie heard you last night, but you don't think she did, or at least you hope she didn't. You decide to get ready for work, you have hours yet, but you want to be gone before Angie and her friend come downstairs. You idly wonder what sleeping with someone who isn't your soulmate after you found your soulmate feels like, and you regret it when sharp pang shoots it's way through your body. It hurts so much that you double over in pain. It ignites something in you, something that hasn't been present since you caught Steve with that woman more than two years ago. It's jealousy, or envy and it's more potent than the type you have felt before.
You realise you look like hell washed up, so getting ready for work takes a tad longer than it should have, but it's still far earlier than you need to be when you head downstairs towards the lobby. So it is to your great surprise when, upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, you find yourself face to face with Angie. The mask you had forced yourself into for the day momentarily falters when you see her, and you know that she sees. Of course she does and from the guilt that you see on her face, you just know. You were right, and she knows. You study her face for a second longer but as her kissable (apparently a tad too much so) lips open to give some form of excuse or explanation, you brush past her.
She doesn't really owe you anything, not with the way you have been treating her. It was foolish of you of course, damned bloody foolish, but you know why she did it. That doesn't stop you from being intensely jealous though and it definitely doesn't stop it from hurting, on the contrary, knowing that her actions were some what justified hurts all the more.
As you storm out of the courtyard, more because you're in a hurry to get away from the place than because of your anger, you hear her call after you. It's barely dawn, so not many people are around and you can hear the footfalls of Angie hurrying along behind you.
You keep a quick pace and manage to make it two blocks away before she catches you with a comment of "Geez, could you slow it down a tad English".
You don't reply and you don't look at her, although you want to. She studies you as you walk, but she doesn't say anything. You want to ask her about Evelyn, about what made her so special and why Angie did it, but you don't. You're sure that if you look at her, she'll see the love in your eyes or the urge you feel to kiss her and that's not something you can do out here.
During work that day you get no less than twenty five sexist comments and fourteen requests for coffee. Not to mention the monotony of the filing, the bloody endless filing. You're beginning t think that you should start being addressed as Secretary instead of Agent.
When you get home you find Angie leaning against your door, holding cookies and schnapps with a somewhat hopeful grin in her face. You let her in, of course you do. You're worn down from hurt and anger and jealousy and just loneliness. More than anything you want her to love you so you let her in because you wouldn't deny her anything else, you can't do that again.
She sits on your bed and for a long moment you just look at each other before she scoots closer. She looks nervous but determined at the same time. You're not quite sure whether she's going to kiss you or explain what happened. It's the second option, you find out only seconds after you wondered about it. She speaks so fast that it would be difficult for anyone else to understand, but you hear the cadence behind every word and each syllable pronounced with clarity. She sounds so nervous though, you want to take her in your arms and reassure her.
"Listen, English. I ain't got an excuse for what happened with her and I know that you know about that, I heard you crying last night. I'm sorry, she was there and you weren't and I thought that if you didn't want me, that at least I could have her. Turns out though that I can't cause I kinda said your name at the wrong time which she didn't like-"
She's rambling by the time you cut her off, the only reason you let her go on for so long was because you got distracted by the way her lips moved as she tried to explain herself t you. You cut her off with a kiss, a kiss that is long overdue and her words are swallowed by your mouth. It's very tender, and you know she can feel the love in it, but if your guess is correct her tattoo will be as bold as yours by now, so it's not exactly like its a secret. Though, if you think about it, the whole point to soulmates is love, so there's no point in holding it back.