ZOMG
ZOMG, that was the Don/Peggy episode OF MY HEART. I...don't even know that I knew that I wanted that.
The thing is, I have this soft spot for female tv characters screwing up. I was a screwup, for a lot of reasons, in a lot of ways, and you'd probably never know it now, and probably no one knew it then, but I did and I still do. So one of my greatest pleasures of Mad Men (sometimes my singular pleasure) has been watching Peggy grow up. She screwed up. She still makes me wince sometimes. Often I want to tell her that she's doing the wrong thing and how she should do it instead, but when it all comes around to it, there is something comforting and heart-breaking and encouraging about watching her become someone she wasn't when the show began. It lets me think that maybe my own growth isn't just an illusion. That there's life after screw-ups. That past behavior does not predict future action.
In either the first season finale or the second season premiere, when Don went to Peggy in the hospital and told her to put it away, to come back and keep her secrets and her mistakes in a locked box, that was when I first thought, I don't ship them, but they are my favorite two people to interact on this show. And it felt weird not to ship them, especially because that would have been my default at one time. But I always thought that I could see them in future-fic, if I went looking for it, and I never did, because I wanted to see what the show did, first. (I was like that with Harry Potter, too - I would read Marauders-era fic but almost never fic about Harry and Ron and Hermione.) And yeah, last season's finale, when Don came to Peggy and asked her to join the new firm, that was fantastic, but this episode was even better. The fighting and the yelling and how they both get to each other and how they can each force each other into places they're too scared to go alone - and then how at the end of the day it's just them and how they can understand and forgive each other when no one else really can. And OMG, the hand touch. And the complete lack of fucking. Which was like Don's declaration of Victorian love right there. I am perhaps mildly incoherent.
I don't know that I even really ship them right now. But it makes my heart swell to see her growing into someone who can't be pushed around by Don and Don having enough respect and regard for her to let his mask slip in her presence and I think I believe that in the end, if there is an end, that they're the only people who can really make each other happy. Not now, and I hope not for five more years, if ever, because I don't think either of them are there yet. But wow am I going to love watching them go there.