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It's not until the war's over that Peggy asks.
She's drinking bourbon with Howard Stark; they've toasted Steve's memory, and Howard's trying to convince her to come work for him as Stark Industries' head of security. Peggy has already declined; she plans to stay with the SSR, it hasn't yet occurred to her that the SSR may not want her. Peggy likes Howard in spite of herself, but she doesn't trust him, or Stark Industries.
"That additive of yours, the one you added to New York's water supply--" Peggy circles her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand, and her nails leave little half moon dents in her skin "--what was it supposed to do?"
Because Peggy knows Howard well enough by now to believe that he wouldn't have started this soulmate claptrap on purpose.
Howard bares his teeth at her. "Better dental hygiene."
Peggy has to laugh at that, because she may well have stronger, whiter, straighter teeth, but she also has the name Steven G. Rogers encircling her wrist in a neat script.
*
There are two schools of thought: the first says that the names that appear on your skin are random and mean nothing, the second says that it's the name of the one person you are meant to be with. Your soulmate, as it were.
Peggy would have been firmly in the first school of thought, except... Steven G. Rogers, that was one hell of a coincidence.
They were supposed to have had bottled water for Project Rebirth, but supplies were short everywhere, and priority had to be given to the men at the front. One glass of tap water before bed on her first night in New York and Peggy had woken up the next morning with Steve's name etched on her skin.
Peggy would have noticed him eventually - how could she not? - but perhaps it had been Howard's ridiculous water additive, as much as the fact that basic training was so obviously failing him, that had prompted Peggy to offer to teach Steve how to fight herself.
It had been during those hours together - keep low! use your elbows! anything can be a weapon! - that Peggy had fallen in love with him.
She hopes that Steve knew that she loved him before the serum; that she loved Steve Rogers and not Captain America.
*
One of the things Peggy loves about New York is how quickly its people have adjusted to having something so personal displayed on their skin.
Some people - if they're married to somebody else, British émigrés, or just paid up members of the Howard Stark and his Bloody Inventions club - might wear long sleeves even in the height of summer, or try to hide the names with wristwatches, bracelets, or gloves. Others place advertisements in the newspaper, or even hire billboards, looking for the person whose name they bear.
Peggy tries to imagine the same thing happening in London; the city would collapse under the weight of all those stiff upper lips.
Even in New York it's considered bad form to stare at the name on someone's wrist; Peggy tries to be subtle, but she is a trained observer, and some habits are hard to break.
Chief Dooley has his wife's name on his wrist; he stops rolling his sleeves up at work at the same time as he starts spending nights on the couch in his office. Agent Krzeminski's skin bears the name of a woman who is neither his wife nor his girlfriend. Daniel, like Peggy, favours long sleeves and layers for the office. Thompson only rolls his sleeves up when it's time to strong-arm a suspect, which is usually when the Chief sends Peggy away, as though she hadn't beaten information out of men herself during the war.
Howard is as shameless about it as he is about everything else. He pushes his sleeve back and brandishes his wrist at Peggy. "Now all I gotta do is stay away from girls named Maria."
Mr. Jarvis's cuffs pull back while he's driving, and the name Anna is easily distinguished on his skin; the Hungarian alphabet is only a little different from the English one. Peggy wonders if Mrs. Jarvis woke up on her first morning in New York to discover the name Edwin on her skin; she rather hopes so.
Colleen had had the name of her childhood sweetheart who had shipped off to Europe to never come home. "Not like that, Peggy. He knocked up some French girl, decided to stay and put a ring on her finger. So much for soulmates, huh?"
The first time Angie had served Peggy at the automat she'd had the name Tommaso de Luca written on the underside of her wrist. The second time she served Peggy the name was Jack Brown, the third time it was Alfonso Lombardi.
*
In an odd way Angie reminds Peggy of Dugan. The other Howling Commandos like her, they respect her, some of them even hold her in awe - she'll always be Cap's best girl to them - but Dum Dum was the last person who'd decided he was going to be Peggy's friend, and set about making it happen, no ifs, no buts, no maybes.
Of course, Peggy and Dugan were comrades in arms, but perhaps she and Angie are too, against Miss Fry and her house rules, against an entire world run by men... and perhaps Peggy's had too much schnapps.
She sets down the teacup she's been drinking from on Angie's bedside table. It's almost like the war again, drinking to the memory of a fallen comrade, although Krzeminski probably wouldn't appreciate Peggy raising a chipped teacup of schnapps to his name.
They're sitting on the edge of Angie's bed. Angie squints at how little is left in the schnapps bottle, then leans across to rap her knuckles against Peggy's stocking clad knee. "You got a hollow leg in there, English?"
The name on Angie's wrist today is Richard Small.
Angie catches Peggy's look, and it's too late to pretend she wasn't staring. "Didn't that say--?"
"Gee, yeah. I paint over the real name. I am a maestro with stage makeup, Peggy. You cover your mark up always and people start to wonder why. Everyone peeks, but that's only cause they want to see if it's anyone they know, hardly anyone peeks twice, and I got bored writing the same fake name every day. Too clever for my own good, huh?"
"Perhaps it would be best to stick to names with the same initials, at least." All of Peggy's aliases have the initials MC. "Why did you start painting over it?"
It's an unforgivably rude question, it's the schnapps, and the grief, and a slow blooming pride in Angie's ingenuity talking; but before Peggy can take it back Angie drains the dregs from the schnapps bottle in a single pull and says, "It's a gals name, you see." Angie looks wide-eyed and scared and covers it up with an exaggerated cut glass imitation of Peggy's accent. "Have I shocked you, Miss Carter?"
"I went to an all girls boarding school." The army and Bletchley Park had been educations in themselves too. "No, Angie, you haven't shocked me."
"It was my nona who gave me the idea to start painting over it. Angel, she said, you and I both know it doesn't mean anything, but you'd best cover it up before your father sees it."
"You don't believe the names mean anything, then?"
Angie gave a half-hearted shrug. "It was alright for me, I already knew I was a violets kind of a girl. My cousin Freddie, he was in seminary school when he got the name of the boy who was his best friend from high school through. Freddie swears it doesn't mean anything, although maybe it does and that's why he was in seminary."
*
The next morning the name on Angie's wrist is John Smith, written in a wobbly hand; the schnapps hangover doing its worst.
"Ugh, Peggy. How come you're so bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning?"
If Angie didn't think she worked at the telephone company, and if it wouldn't have felt uncomfortably like bragging, Peggy would have told her about the time she'd jumped out of a plane over occupied France with aching muscles from doing 107 one-armed push-ups the night before and an aching head from whatever Dugan had given her to drink to convince her to participate in a push-up competition in the first place.
*
Peggy wears clothes like armor. Her skirts, blazers, and buttoned up blouses are her very own red, white, and blue shield.
The first time Peggy lets Angie see the name on her wrist, deliberately taking off her jacket and pushing back her sleeve, Angie takes Peggy's hand in her own and runs her thumb along the Rogers part of Steve's name leaving goosebumps on Peggy's skin.
Angie lets out a low whistle and says, of all things, "I guess this means I can't hate Arlene French anymore."
"I'm afraid I don't follow?"
"Well, I reckon it would have been a lot harder to convince you to like me if I'd been playing the airhead version of you on The Captain America Adventure Program.
*
"So who's the lucky lady?"
Angie had knocked at Peggy's door with half a rhubarb pie while Peggy was soaking her knuckles, which were swollen and sore after clocking Howard.
Peggy means the question in a jocular, I-showed-you-mine way, but she's forgotten how to have a friend who isn't a Howling Commando or Howard bloody Stark. Angie freezes with a fork full of pie halfway to her mouth; a piece of stewed rhubarb falls and lands on her skirt with a splat.
"Aw, heck!"
"Of course you mustn't tell me," Peggy says in a businesslike tone, on her knees, scrubbing stewed fruit from Angie's skirt with a handkerchief.
*
It's an unusual feeling, Peggy being more open about something than Angie. But Peggy's already keeping more than enough secrets from her friend, and it's a relief that Steve no longer has to be one of them.
"It's Dottie Underwood."
"Hmm," says Peggy. She's sitting at the automat counter scowling at the list of Howard's recent conquests provided to her by Mr. Jarvis.
"You hear me, Peg? The name on my wrist, it's Dottie Underwood."
"I'm sorry-- What?"
Angie's face breaks out into a wide grin and she raps Peggy's knuckles with her order pencil. "Ha! I knew you weren't listening to me."
*
As the world goes grey around the edges Peggy tugs back Dottie's cuff; the circle of bruises don't quite obscure the Cyrillic writing on her skin.
Oh, Peggy thinks. Oh.
*
"There's something I gotta tell you," Angie says.
She'd been swooning over the furnishings, appliances, and sheer size of their new home, but now she looks fidgety and nervous, tugging a frayed thread from the cuff of her coat.
"It is too far from the theatre district for you," Peggy jokes, straight-faced.
"No, it's--" Angie swallows nervously. "The name on my wrist, it's Margaret Carter." Peggy doesn't know what to say, and Angie starts to babble. "It doesn't have to mean anything, you know. There are a dozen Margaret Carters in New York; I know because I looked them up in the phonebook when I was eighteen. It ain't like I've been pining for you or anything. I know you're not that kind of girl."
Peggy takes herself firmly in hand and tells herself that this is not the time to tell boarding school stories.
"I know that you and Cap... I'm happy to be your friend," Angie finishes.
"Is this why you were so determined that we should become friends?" Peggy is oddly dismayed by the idea that it was one of Howard's ridiculous inventions, rather than anything about Peggy herself, that had first drawn Angie to her.
"No! Gee, Peg, a mysterious, leggy, Englishwoman walks into the automat, you couldn't have kept me away." Angie blushes, and claps her hand over her mouth. "Pretend I didn't say that," she squeaks. "I didn't want to lie to you is all. Plus, it turns out that you're some kind of super spy, and I probably can't lie to you. I haven't given my key back to Miriam yet, if you've changed your mind about me staying here..."
"Angie, don't be ridiculous. I'm certain Miss Fry will have changed the locks behind me, and this place is certainly too large for me to rattle around by myself."
*
Angie quickly takes over responsibility in the kitchen.
Peggy's one attempt at preparing roast beef for Sunday lunch was met with Angie laughing and saying, "You're trying to cook that, Peg, not torturing it for information."
Right now Angie's standing over the stove, stirring a pot of sauce. The stage makeup she applies to her wrist is starting to run in the heat; if Peggy tilts her head and squints she can make out the M- in Margaret.
*
Gretchen from the Griffith is marrying an English soldier and moving to Liverpool; she calls up and begs a chance to pick Peggy's brain about England. Peggy meets her for lunch at the automat and tries to be generous about the particular charms of Liverpool.
Gretchen worries at the name on her wrist with her thumbnail. "My first beau," she explains, "he died in the war. But Billy--" Billy the Liverpudlian "--he's wonderful, and he's got my name on his skin, and if that's not a second chance then I don't know what is."
After Gretchen excuses herself to meet her fiancé Peggy waits for Angie to clock out so that they can go home together.
"You ever miss England?" Angie asks as Peggy holds the automat door open for her.
"Can I tell you a secret?"
"You know me, Peggy, you can tell me anything."
Peggy leans towards Angie, pitches her voice low and conspiratorial and says, "I don't miss England at all." Angie lets out a bark of laugher, and Peggy continues, "It rains all the time. Everything's still rationed; the last time I was there it was impossible to get stockings, I had to have one of the other girls on the base draw a line up the back of my legs with an eyebrow pencil."
"Well, gee, I sure am sorry I missed that." It's the most overtly flirtatious thing Angie has said to Peggy, and on this sunny sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon it has to be inadvertent.
Peggy finds herself thinking of Angie on her knees, maybe biting her bottom lip as she concentrates on drawing a straight line, her long fingers holding on to Peggy's ankle, and her breath on Peggy's bare skin.
Oblivious to the turn that Peggy's traitorous imagination has taken, Angie slips her arm through Peggy's and starts talking about today's customers, their lousy manners and even lousier tips.
*
"Peggy, that guy from the phone company called again." Angie knows about the SSR; at least, she knows as much as Peggy can say without facing a treason charge for revealing classified information.
Angie squares her shoulders, holds the message pad out in front of her like it's a script, and in an uncanny impersonation of Acting Chief Thompson's condescending drawl says, "C'mon, Carter, you know you miss us." It's much more charming coming from Angie.
They want Peggy back in the SSR; Howard wants her to go and work with him, and not at Stark Industries this time.
"Aw, honey," says Angie, squeezing Peggy's arm. "Still haven't made up your mind?"
"I suppose it's nice to be wanted."
Angie's lips curl into a small, forced smile. "Yeah, so I hear."
*
Howard has invited Peggy out for martinis to discuss his, for now, hypothetical job offer, and Peggy has come to the depressing realisation that Howard is her best and only option for advice regarding Angie.
Jarvis might actually explode, it would be cruel to ask Daniel, and Dugan is thoughtlessly somewhere in the Polish countryside.
After his eyes have glazed over, and after Peggy has explained that she is quite capable of killing him with a martini olive, and to kindly never think of her in that context again, well, he's proving surprisingly helpful.
"Do you believe I loved Steve?" Howard asks.
"I know you did."
"And this--" Howard brandishes his wrist with the name Maria on it under Peggy's nose "--doesn't meant that I didn't."
"The name on Steve's skin," Peggy says sadly, "it wasn't mine."
"I know, pal," Howard says gently. "I've been trying to bottle New York water to sell out of state; it doesn't work, the names only appear if you drink it straight from the tap right here in good old New York City."
"Your point being?"
"That even I don't know what the names mean or why they appear. But I do know that Steve loved you and that you loved him, but he's gone now, and if you think you can love this girl then you owe it to yourself to try. Also, if you want to take some photographs for your old pal Howard then you should feel free."
"Ugh." Peggy digs her elbow into Howard's kidneys.
*
Angie is just about to go up to bed when Peggy arrives home, Peggy catches her coming out of the library on stockinged feet.
"Hey, English. You have a good night?"
Because there's no time like the present, and because if she sleeps on it she'll think better of taking Howard Stark's advice about women, Peggy says, " I'd like to kiss you, if I may?"
Angie cocks her head. "Why?"
"Because I've been thinking about kissing you. I've probably been thinking about kissing you for longer than I've wanted to admit it to myself."
Angie pinches the skin on the inside of her arm. "Okay," she says, "I'm awake. Let's do this." She steps close, takes Peggy by the shoulders, and slides her hands down Peggy's biceps. She circles Peggy's wrist, the one that doesn't have Steve's name on it, with her fingers, pushes up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to Peggy's.
It's different from kissing Steve, not least because neither of them are about to leap from a moving jeep, but it's nice; it's really rather wonderful, actually.
Peggy pulls back and says breathlessly, "I'm not going back to the SSR; I'm going to work with Howard, I probably won't be able to tell you much about it, but I wanted you to know."
"Anybody ever tell you that you talk too much, English?" Angie asks with a smile, and then she's kissing Peggy again, pressing flush against her and twining her arms around Peggy's neck.
The kiss goes on for a long time, and it's Angie who breaks it off. "Well, I gotta get some shut-eye. And though I've been wrong about what kind of girl you are before, I'm pretty sure you ain't the kind to jump into bed with someone on account of a nice bit of kissing."
"Not in peacetime, at least," Peggy says, feeling a twinge of loss as Angie steps out of her arms.
"Goodnight, Peg." Angie presses a quick peck to Peggy's lips. "We'll talk in the morning, don't change your mind before then, okay?"
There will be no shortage of things for them to talk about. Peggy knows she isn't the easiest person to be with, even without the added complications of them both being women, and she doesn't want to make Angie any promises she can't keep. So she touches her fingers to her kiss-swollen lips, smiles, and says, "Sleep well, darling."