As it was, Peggy got the distinct feeling that Jack and Daniel were going to treat her as much like a soulmate as they did one another, and though she had halfway expected something like that, a part of her was still hurt. It occurred to Peggy a few days later that it was like a cruel joke – fate making her trade Steve and Bucky's near perfection for Daniel's mousiness and Jack's meanness when the two boys wouldn't even acknowledge their bond, platonic though it may have been – let alone the one they had with her.

She had been wrong; some things were worse than being alone… things like not being wanted in the first place.

Daniel didn't like it. He'd spent the first weekend in December mulling over what he wanted to do about Agent Carter, how he wanted to proceed, and in the end he ended up feeling like he needed to discuss things with Thompson before they went into work Monday morning. So he purposely caught up with the other man a block away from the telephone company.

"Hey," Thompson said, glancing back at Daniel and slowing his gait as he heard the crutch on the sidewalk even before Daniel spoke.

Daniel nodded half-impatiently before he asked bluntly, "What are we going to do about Carter?"

"You've got words from her too then?"

"Of course; we've already figured out that all our soulmarks have the same writing. What are we going to do about Carter?"

"Me?" Thompson nearly kicked his foot against the concrete as he walked slowly along, declaring, "Nothing. I was a jerk and she hates me."

"Nah."

Thompson gave him a disbelieving glance and asked, "What about you?"

"I think she's still grieving over Captain America."

"Yep."

"So I – we – should give her time to get over him."

"Maybe; it's been two years, right?"

"Yeah… but we'll give her more time." Daniel refused to acknowledge that Thompson was trying to dissociate himself from one of their soulmates, and before either one of them could comment on it, Daniel asked a different question that had been eating at him. "Was Captain America her soulmate?"

"Nobody's really sure, from what I've heard."

"What do you think?"

Thompson looked around, trying to downplay the conversation and their implications before he replied, "Probably. I honestly can't figure any reason why she'd be treating us like she is unless he was."

"I heard Captain America and his friend Barnes were soulmates too."

"Uh-huh."

Daniel paused before asking carefully, "Did any of your words fade around that time?"

"Nope."

"What do you think that means?"

"Look, Sousa, I don't know," Thompson snapped, his at ease façade snapping with his tone. "I don't know what to do about any of it, and until I do, I'm just gonna leave it all alone."

Leave it all alone. Probably a wise course of action, Daniel would grant, and he would try to follow suit – but he didn't like it.

December 31, 1945

Peggy hated New Year's Eve with a burning passion – or at least she had since the last day of 1943. Now it was that god-awful anniversary of Steve's death – the last day of 1945 – and she really hadn't felt this low in a long time. She'd woken up that morning feeling like the nerve endings of her emotions had been scraped raw, and then she'd had to go to work and endure being around Thompson and Sousa – but not around them, because they barely acknowledged her – while memories of Steve and Bucky swirled in her head. What she'd had, what she didn't have, what she was being denied, what she wanted. All day long these things – these four men – had consumed her thoughts and she hated it – and she hated the fact that her soulbond still drew her to her two living soulmates.

She'd fled work at the earliest opportunity, for once not caring about what would be said about her and just went. She was trying to outrun her misery and she knew it, but it wasn't working. It was cold, it was raining, her umbrella had flipped itself inside out on her way to work this morning – because that was the kind of day today was, so why not? – and if she got any more miserable, she was going to start considering doing something drastic with the gun in her purse.

Feeling drained on too many levels to count, Peggy eventually gave into the sane side of her brain that was screaming at her to get out of the elements and ducked into an automat, shaking rain off of her coat and useless umbrella. She dropped into a booth, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering as a waitress came up to the table.

"Hot," Peggy managed while she shivered. "Tea."

The cup placed in front of her didn't contain real English tea, but she'd come to expect that in America, and it was steaming hot, which was all that she cared about at the moment. She drank it quickly, feeling the liquid heat spread throughout her body as her shivering slowly subsided. She should go home now and change into dry clothes, but the idea of stepping outdoors again was just too unappealing as of yet, so she caught the eye of a passing waitress instead, deciding to prolong the inevitable for a little while longer.

"Can I have some more tea?"

When she heard the words that were scrawled across her right ankle, Angie bit back a sigh, silently berating herself for becoming a waitress in a place where she was asked that exact question at least three times a week and turned to look at the customer who'd spoken. The question had come at Angie from a despondent-looking British woman and she wasn't even sitting in Angie's section, but she looked so sad that Angie nodded and went ahead and got the order before going so far as to plop down across from the woman and ask, the smallest sliver of hope running through her that maybe this beautiful tea-drinker would be her first soulmate, "Bad day, English?"

To Angie's growing horror, the woman paled, blinked a couple of times, and began to sob.