Day 4: Song - "I'll Walk Alone"

(Author's suggestion: for best effect, look up the version on YouTube sung by Martha Tilton and listen as you read.)

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I'll walk alone

But to tell you the truth, I'll be lonely

I don't mind being lonely

When my heart tells me you are lonely, too

...

I'll walk alone

They'll ask me why and I'll tell them I'd rather

There are dreams I must gather

Dreams we fashioned the night you held me tight

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London, 1944

"Pity such a swell dame has t'be alone tonight. Sure you don't want company?"

The soldier was undoubtedly drunk, and very young. Peggy side-stepped him without a second glance, stepping briskly homeward. Well - towards the tiny flat she shared with three other typists who worked for the war effort. It wasn't much like the home she'd grown up in, but it would do temporarily.

"Ain'tcha lonely?" howled the young private as she passed. "I c'n help with that! C'mon 'n dance with me - I'll buy ya a drink..."

His voice faded as she continued on, but his comments stuck with her.

It was true, Peggy acknowledged to herself, in the rare honesty that occurs in us all at one point or another. She was lonely, in a way, though it wasn't a sad loneliness - merely a sense of something wanting. Blue eyes, an honest smile, a wry sense of humor - all somewhere in Poland, at the moment. At least, she hoped they were in Poland. They'd better be in Poland. If they weren't, then that meant she had bigger things to worry about.

Cool wind ruffled her hair, and Peggy hugged herself as she rounded a corner and pressed on towards the cup of hot soup and a shared mattress that would mark the end of her day. Paper crackled in her pocket, and it took her a moment to realize she was smiling at the sound.

A letter.

It had come with the latest report, sealed securely, and with her name dashed across the front in a hurried scrawl that was quickly becoming as familiar to her as her own. Phillips hadn't commented aloud as he'd handed it over, but the amused eyebrow he'd aimed her direction had sent the blood rising to her cheeks and Steve's letter quickly into her pocket.

She would open it tonight, and read it in the dim light of the lamp as the other girls got ready for bed. They would probably be miffed when she didn't tell them what it said - they always gleefully broadcast the contents of their own letters from the front - but this was all Peggy had, and she wanted to keep every word of it to herself, hugged close to her heart.

He meant a lot to her - a great deal now, more and more the longer they'd known each other. By the time the war ended, well… She had her own set of dreams, carefully cherished, and she knew that he shared them too.

Peggy hugged herself more tightly and then paused on the front steps that led up to her lodging house. The full moon shone overhead, and she looked up at it. Surely, surely, it must be shining down on her captain at that moment, connecting them in some way.

He was out there, somewhere - probably thinking of her. The thought made her thrill to the depths of her soul.

"Good night, my darling," she whispered aloud - and then, shaking her head at her own foolish, sweet sentiment, she hurried up the stairs and slipped through the front door.

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Washington D.C., 2014

Everything had gone to pieces. Everything he'd fought for, worked for, died for - it was all for nothing.

Steve sat on the cold cement and bowed his head, ran both hands through his sweaty, gritty hair, mind whirling. Nowhere to go, no resources, no backup, nobody to trust except the woman curled up on the ground behind him - and she wasn't in much condition to help at the moment.

Even as he thought about her, Natasha shifted and coughed in her sleep - a dry, rasping sound. Despite his best efforts, she'd inhaled a lot of smoke and dust after the SHIELD-sent missile had blown up the old SSR base around their ears. The shock of the explosion had left her struggling to breathe and only semi-conscious, so he had avoided their hunters, abandoned their borrowed vehicle, and holed up under an overpass to spend the night. Barring any more sudden unpleasant revelations, they wouldn't be found - at least not tonight.

The old man still knew a thing or two about avoiding pursuit, even if he couldn't tell anymore which side was the right side.

With a shuddering breath, Steve tilted back his head and looked up into the night sky, elbows propped on his knees, hands dangling.

What now? Where do we go from here?

It was times like this that brought back to him just exactly how alone he was, how terribly he missed his best girl.

He thought he'd done a pretty good job lately of not dwelling on thoughts of what might have been, done his best to move on with the rest of his life around all the shattered pieces of the dreams they'd once built for their future. Seeing her picture hanging on the wall at Camp Lehigh, though - that had brought it all rushing back with the force of a sledgehammer to the heart, and now as he sat in the shadow of the overpass, there was nothing he wanted more in all of creation than to see her again, talk things over with her.

She would know what to do. Peggy had always known what to do. His heart throbbed and bled within him; he closed his eyes against the hopeless pain.

Oh, Peggy - what am I supposed to do now?

When he opened his eyes again, the moon had peeked over the edge of the building opposite, filling the street with a cool, white light. Despite the added danger of discovery it posed, Steve felt himself slowly relaxing. It reminded him of all those nights during the war when he'd watched the moon wistfully, knowing it was shining down on her somewhere or other. Sentimental, sure - but it had helped more than he could say.

Unbidden, his last memory of her arose in his mind. Go get him, she had ordered, and then kissed him with all of her heart. She had always been his compass, his true north, his star to set sail by - and that had been her last command; to take down Hydra.

Could he do any less now, now that he'd learned it had survived?

The edge of his despair faded a little, now that he had a direction - and for the most fleeting of moments, the captain could have sworn he felt her presence beside him, her magnetism, her strength…

...her love.

Go get them.

All right then - he would. And surely he wasn't the only man in America who would stand up for freedom. There would be others, and he would find them, and then see this thing through to the end, whatever that meant. She would expect nothing less of him.

With a long breath, Steve swiped a hand across his face, and then looked up into the moonlight.

"Thanks, Peggy," he breathed - and if the moonlight blurred a little, or his eyes were wet, his heart found some relief and was all the lighter for it.

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I'll always be near you wherever you are each night

In every prayer

If you call I'll hear you, no matter how far

Just close your eyes and I'll be there

...

Please walk alone

And send your love and your kisses to guide me

Till you're walking beside me

I'll walk alone

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WWII era songs always make me think of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter. At that time, the boys at the front only wanted to hear songs about home and family (think I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas, I'll Be Home for Christmas, When the Lights Go On Again, etc). It actually drove the US war department crazy, since they wanted martial songs that everyone would rally under - but the only songs that anybody would buy were all about the war being over and getting to be back with their loved ones. To this day, some of these songs still top the best-sellers list.

This song is "I'll Walk Alone," by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, 1944. Copyright owned by Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd. Used without permission.