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“Grenade!”
The scream shot through the night air and hit Peggy’s ears with full force. She had no memory of when the battlefield had become covered in darkness, only survival on her mind. Her head whipped back and forth as she searched for the source of the shout, unsure of which direction was safe to run. In a flash she was face down in the dirt, her ears ringing from the blast she had just been warned of. It had seemed so distant and now she scolded herself for not listening better.
Pain radiating through her body as she rolled from her stomach to her back. Her breath came out in rapid succession, and she stared up into the stars. How long had she been out on this bloody field, who was she fighting? The agent struggle to remember such basic things and she spent a moment worrying for her memory, but then Steve was in front of her, bloody and small and shouting. What happened to him, had the serum stopped working? His mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear him, her ears still ringing from the blast. She gasped his name, shocked laced in the word as she tried to understand what had happened to his body. He grasped her hand and began to pull her to her feet, with her hearing coming back to her she could hear her name falling from his lips, but it wasn’t his voice. Who voice was that?
“Steve, where are we” She shouted the question, standing in front of him in a haze.
When he opened his mouth to reply, no words came out, instead a cry of pain as a bullet tore through his chest
Peggy scrambled to grab him as he fell into her arms, quickly dragging him into a crater for coverage. Tear streamed down her face as she applied pressure to the wound, desperate to stop the bleeding. She screamed for help for what felt like hours, but nobody came. She felt his hand on hers, but it didn’t feel like his. It felt so much smaller, but strong. He was whispering her name, saying something she couldn’t make out over the gunfire around them.
The ground shook with another explosion and Peggy shot up in bed, her eyes darting around the moon lit bedroom as gun fire sounded in the back of her mind. Where was Steve? She had to make sure he was safe.
She opened her mouth to call his name, but her voice came out horse. She finally gets the name out between gasps, her chest heaving with ragged breath. She registers something squeezing her hand and she looks down in a panic. The brunette stares at the slender hand holding hers, trying to make sense of the noise she can hear around her. Gunfire, screams, explosions, and her name, someone is calling her name. Glancing up, Peggy meets the blue eyes staring into hers and the noises start to melt away until all she can hear is Angie’s soothing voice.
“Pegs, you’re safe. It’s me, it’s okay” Angie cooed softly as she slowly reached up to push a loose strand of hair behind her girlfriend's ear.
The spy exhaled for what felt like the first time in days, and sweat dripped from her brow as she calmed her breathing. Angie continues to whisper reassurance to Peggy while she calms herself, wrapping an arm around her to rub soothing circles on her back. The agent let’s her love hold her, slowly leaning into the touch, silent while the tears roll down her cheeks.
“I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t save him Angie.” She sobs, finally losing the composure she was trying to gain.
The actress pulled back slightly, placing her hand under Peggy's chin and forcing their eyes to meet. Once she held her gaze, Angie smiled sadly, wiping tears from Peggy’s cheeks, even as they continued to fall.
“English, it was just a nightmare. You’re okay, I’ve got you. I ain’t gonna let anything happen to you.”
Peggy smiled and laughed, but there was no humour behind it, “Darling, I believe I’m supposed to be the one keeping you safe.”
Angie’s smile softened as she stroked a thumb across her back, “You protect me from the big things like war, and assassins, and world domination. I protect you from the little things, you know, bad dreams and jerks at the office… your cooking.”
The jab at Peggy’s cooking works just how Angie hopes, and the english woman chuckles softly but can’t stop the new tears that form from the younger woman's words. Peggy wipes at her eyes quickly, doing her best to stop them from falling. She hated crying, it made her feel weak and she spent her whole life trying to be strong.
Clearing her throat, and squeezing Angie’s hand, she smiles softly, “Thank you, my love. I’m sorry I woke you, and... I’m sorry if scared you.”
The actress shrugged, letting go of Peggy’s hand and sliding out of the bed, she wandered over into their overly large ensuite. Peggy could hear the tap running as Angie began to speak.
“When my brother got back from the war, I’d wake up to him screaming some nights. He’d cry and shout, and you know me I’m a light sleeper.”
Peggy sat and listened, taking the water from Angie as she crawled back under the silk covers.
When she tried to hand it back, Angie shook her head. “No that’s for you, English. You screamed for a long time before I could get you to wake up.”
She said it like it was nothing, lounging on her side, head propped up on her arm so she could look at her girlfriend, but Peggy felt guilt. She hadn’t meant to wake Angie, she thought she had a handle on her nightmares. They had been so few and far between ever since she started seeing Angie. It wasn’t until the water was in her hand that she realized how raw her throat was, and she muttered a thanks and downed the majority of the glass before placing it on the nightstand. Laying down slowly, she mimicked Angie’s position meeting her gaze, and once Peggy was comfortable, Angie continued softly.
“Our rooms were right next to each other, so I was always the first to hear him and I’d run in and wake him up. It was hard seeing him like that, you know? Tony was always the kind of guy who never showed his emotions, but here we was, a blubbering mess. He’d get so mad that I saw him like that, he’d kick me out of his room, shouting about privacy. The fifth or sixth time I woke him up, I guess it had been a real bad one because it took him longer than normal to snap out of it, and when he did he just couldn’t stop crying. He couldn’t even get enough words out to tell me to leave, but I could tell he wanted me to.”
At some point during the story, Peggy had stopped crying and her breath returned to normal. Between the soft tick of her bedside clock, and the lull of Angie’s voice her troubled seemed to melt away.
“Maybe ten minutes passed and I could still hear him sobbing into his pillow, so I grabbed a glass of water and stormed back into his room and said ‘drink this right now or I go wake ma and pa.’ His eyes went so wide I thought they were gonna pop out of his head. “
At that Peggy chuckled, “what did he do?”
“Oh, I’ve never seen someone drink a glass of water so quickly. By the end of it, he was so focused on the water that he’d stopped crying. Then he asked me to tell him a story, so I just talked and talked and told him every story I could think of. Eventually, he fell back asleep. From there on out that’s what we did, I’d bring him a glass of water, he’d drink it, and I’d talk until he fell asleep.”
Smiling, Peggy took Angie’s hand in her own, “Is that what you’re doing right now?”
Angie chuckled lightly, a soft blush beginning to colour her cheeks, “old habits die hard.”
A soft silence fell over the couple, and after a few moments Peggy leaned forward to press a light kiss to Angie’s lips.
“Thank you” she whispered with a smile that Angie brightly returned. The older woman hesitated for a moment before pulling her hand from Angie’s, but before the waitress could protest, Peggy wrapped her girlfriends arm around her own waist and snuggled into her body. Resting her head in the crook of her neck, Angie quickly pulled her closer. They laid like for awhile, and Angie basked in holding Peggy in her arms. It was moment like this that got her though long nights alone when Peggy was working or out on a mission, and she wanted to remember every moment of it. Eventually, she could no longer keep her eyes open, the moonlight streaming into their room slowly turning into sunlight.
“Ready to go back to sleep,” she questioned softly, unsure if her partner was still awake.
There was a pause so long that she thought Peggy must have already fallen back asleep before she heard the soft reply murmured into her neck.
“I must admit, I’m a little scared to fall back asleep.”
Angie pulls Peggy closer, kissing the top of her head. “Don’t worry English, I’ll keep you safe.”