That I would be your Girl - A Marvel Story

Chapter 12. Ponzan

A/N: I've been sitting on this chapter for a day or so 😅 Anyhow enjoy this one

**TW** mature content

I was equal parts angry and turned on as I stomped away from Steve.

I was also very relieved when I got back to my room to find that James was not there waiting for me. I needed a minute just to think about everything that had happened, from James to Steve and all of the things that had been said. Once inside I turned and locked the door and headed straight to the bathroom to shower stripping my clothes feeling naked before I even left them in a pile on the floor. My mind was swimming, not just because of the kiss with Steve and with what I had been ready to do with James, but one thing Steve said rang over and over in my mind. Those words filled me with a heavy trepidation.

I mourned for Peggy for years. Years! I still mourn her and here you are not days past your husband's death in bed with someone else!

His words had cut, and they had cut deep but I understood where they had come from. I too had been surprised that I had been so willing to give myself to James yet at the same time I was not ashamed that I had been so willing to. I was not ashamed for the connection that we shared or the emotions behind them.

I stood under the water, letting the scalding liquid pinch at my skin, the pain was welcome my flesh turning pink beneath the steaming water. Though my skin had been wiped clean while I had been passed out by most likely James, I still felt filthy from the battle with the demons and the grave injury I'd endured. The water felt like heaven, washing away my sins. I stood under the steaming streams for ages unwilling to leave the confines of the shower, like this place was my only reprieve from the world, like everything outside of these walls could not affect what was within. Here there was nothing that could hurt me, here there was nothing to regret, here there was nothing that I could wish was different.

I found myself no longer pining after my dead husband if only for the moments I was there in my solitude, much like when I was with James. I slid down the shower wall the tears that begged to fall I did not allow and for a moment I made myself feel numb to all the pain that I should be feeling. The only sensation that I let in was that of the steaming water pelting me.

Steve wanted those words to hurt, and they did, they cut deep, deeper than any wound I could have received in battle because there was a part of me that was screaming them too.

Betrayer.

It seemed to yell. I pushed away those awful thoughts deep down where they couldn't do any more damage.

Before long I was clean, and my skin was pruned, and bone aching wariness took me from my haven, and I emerged. Not newly born, but something else, something akin to a new sort of resolve flowed through me. Although firm decisions had not been made there were things that were abundantly clear.

I most definitely cared for James, that was without question. He was so like the man from my universe, yet he wasn't and that was a blessing, because we had gone through so many awful things together, he didn't see me as a witness to his crimes, and he was not a witness to mine. It was as though we could say I understand and that made everything better. It had made us being together a blessing rather than a curse or a reminder of what had been done to us... or by us...

When my James had been the soldier we leaned on each other, we used each other in every way possible and when we emerged from the other side there was times that we could barely look at one another. I didn't feel that with James here, all I felt was a kinship and I would never burden him with what became of my relationship with James from where I was from. Here I longed for his touch without the guilt of what us being pushed together had caused, and he was so different than my James, the man here was more mine than the one from my world had ever been. His eyes were even different, there was a softness in this man's gaze not a hardened gaze that held a modicum of blame when they looked upon me. Here I had found my friend.