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Who: Peggy Carter and YOU.
Broadcast: Fleet-wide, from inside the Marsiva.
Action: Y, for any other newcomers between now and the Shuffle.
When: This Week.

[ let us not dwell too long upon the awkward silences and humiliating nascent moments of agent carter's awakening. let it only be said that she woke with a start (despite the afforded comfort) and the broadcast didn't quite zoom in close enough to adequately witness the depth of her horror when she first raised a tentative hand to her forehead only to find an empty glass vial still sitting there. steve's blood had been poured away: returned to his native lands by way of the east river. both guilty and triumphant, she pockets the vial in her blazer and tells herself it's a problem for another time. after all--- ]

Bollocks. [ mistaking herself for a person alone, she swears. loudly and colourfully as she crosses the bay and knocks her knuckles against the too-intact viewing window separating herself from the rest of creation -- and no familiar blue-and-green marble in sight. peggy swears again: bollocks, damnit, and hell. unable to peer into the void for much longer, she turns her back on oblivion and is confronted once more with the too-sterile hospitality deck. she may be a tidy and precise sort of woman, but this much tidiness and precision makes her stomach turn. where is the stink of new york? the heat? the mess? the humanity?

feeling charged with purpose, she springs into (moderate) action. feeling alarmingly comfortable with technology she swears she's never seen before, she plays her fingers across a panel she doesn't know will connect her to the rest of a whol damned fleet -- but she's left with the burning certainty that it'll connect her with someone. imperiously: ]

I would speak with the individual -- or individuals -- in charge of this operation. Believe me when I stress there is a whole bloody cavalcade of laws, both domestic and international, you're breaking by holding me here. I demand to...

[ some of the fire floods from her belly. a little desperate, she changes tactics: ] Is anyone there? Hello?

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How convenient an absence for these...Atroma. [ impatience slips into her tone. always a good sign. her frustration is normalizing.

that is, straight until she starts to pick apart precisely what barnes is trying to tell her. oh, the widening gap between his lines becomes terribly obvious. bugger presidents and election terms, she's much more concerned about another difference: ] And places, one presumes, where men don't always fall from such terrible heights. Don't get lost. Places like that?

[ The smile that was creeping on his face at her tone vanishes instantly. ]

Places like that, [ he says, softly. Oh, Peggy, the only person in the world who can match him for straight shots to the heart, and would outstrip him entirely if not for the serum. ] Steve.

[ He's gone. He can't say it. The words don't form around the deep chasm of grief that's torn him open, and does so every time he remembers. Breath catches, and he waits. ]

[ well, now she rather loses the plot in its entirety. is barnes just so intuitive that he could hunt out her silent secondary wonders? in an odd space where the rules of history didn't matter, and where a dead man could be alive, then she supposed she could hope for the impossible. and so peggy misunderstands why he should even name steve -- not for once thinking the captain could have fallen in his place.

no, his fall is fated to be a different one. she frowns. she wishes she could dare ask whether steve is... no. a hard swallow. a shake of her head. scratch that. ] Set Captain Rogers aside for a moment, Sergeant. [ brusque. god knows she hasn't reduced herself to pulling rank since the war finished. and yet. ]

I read the report. You died -- on the train, or shortly after. Are you telling me now that you [ this you, a different you ] survived that terrible tragedy?

[ Almost apologetic, perhaps the only person he'd apologise to about having the rank, ]

Captain. I got promoted.

[ She can probably feel him wince. ]

It happened in reverse, for me. Steve fell. I lived.

[ They are such small cohesions, these sentences, and the world within them shudders with its force. All of a sudden, fiercely, he wishes he could fall to the floor. ]

I wouldn't let anyone else take his shield.

[ 'Please understand.' ]

I just couldn't, Pegs.

What are you trying to -- [ say. so much spoken and so little understood. peggy's well-clung-to poise finally evaporates. she feels her throat become thick with an oddly passive sort of anger. how dare he claim such things. blasphemy, almost, to how she knows her history. his history.

got promoted, indeed. to ascend to high on the back of a man like steve. on back of his death. his fall. pinpricks enter her eyes. and peggy promises herself she will not cry. a smaller and less volatile voice tries to remind her that whatever the truth is, james "bucky" barnes isn't the sort of man to rejoice in his friend's demise. she ought not to paint him with an unfair brush.

and yet, she's angry. resentful. it locks her jaw and hardens her posture. ] No one had to take it. [ churlish. childish. a war had to be won. ] You ought to have left well enough alone.

[ her words shook. ]

[ No one had to. It burrows in some empty place, deep, unlit. Where grief lived, resignation replaces it. It's war. There are barely any good choices, and never any simple ones, save doing what one has to. ]

Yes.

[ But he's offered enough apologies, taken enough reckless missions that the debt now sits along with the shield, enough of it should have been me. He will not give one to her now, not yet. A soldier's mask wanders in, to finish his train of thought: — ]

Now if you don't mind, Agent Carter, I haven't finished my report.

Edited 2015-09-02 15:29 (UTC)

[ snapped-to and faux-respectful. she knows that tone. and she knows the mercy hidden behind it. haven't finished his report? well, that merely means he's still willing to give it: a courtesy she doesn't necessarily deserve after laying the ruination of steve's very identity at his feet.

her cheeks puff. she leans nearer the communications interface. ] Continue. [ ... ] Please.

[ from the fall or from the crash, steve is still dead. but she's left thinking painfully on how the same man in barnes's experience never lived to be kissed. never lived to make a date at the stork club. ]

[ She's not wrong, though, not to him. They have both closely guarded Steve, almost jealously, especially after the myth of the symbol spun out of control, into something more than war propaganda. ]

[ Evenly, ]

There's another James Barnes here. Two inches taller than me, broader in the shoulder. He fell. HYDRA found him. They took his memories — I don't know how. They call him the Winter Soldier.

[ He takes a breath. ]

His current mission is to kill Captain America — his Steve — but he's been here a couple a'weeks, he doesn't honestly seem that keen on it. More like, they tell him who to kill and he does it. Or else.

[ And both Barneses live for that sense of purpose. He empathises too much. ]

[ another james barnes. two of them -- whose existences she must take upon faith and the slim evidence of her ears. two of them, and neither strictly the sergeant she'd known during times spent attached to the howling commandos. where is that james barnes? the one to whom she might actually like to speak, grieve with, and clasp his shoulders with some measure of camaraderie? ]

I'm afraid you'll both have to do a lot better than not that keen. [ churlish, still. prickling and unhappy. ] Where is he? Belly of the whale or in one of the little fishes besides?

[ this big ship or one of the little ones? ]

[ It cuts, that she thinks he wouldn't value Steve's safety, that this is the best anyone can do when they don't know what roiling hell lives under that other Barnes' skin. He clenches his jaw, but his tone remains even, ]

He's with me.

[ Again, the note of command slips back into his voice. It means he's watched and also he is protected. The Winter Soldier's target is Captain America, not Steve Rogers. This Bucky has that name. If it comes down to it — ]

[ convenient. so hisses her less-than-better nature. and yet she can't truly blame a man for looking after himself, however fractured an identity that self became. peggy might indeed be the fortunate one: unsplit and uncomplicated because she is wholly herself.

again, she reads between his lines. and again she cuts to the heart of the matter: ] I'm not here to take vengeance for something that's not even happened, Ser--James. Bloody hell, I don't even know why I am here. Only I..

It's a lot to swallow.

[ She wouldn't take vengeance. But she's like Steve in the best and worst ways, and they are both reckless. This process is tedious, messy. It takes patience — the slow, inescapable kind. The one that might compel a spider to build a web, again, and again, and wait for as long as it needs. Steve and Peggy simply do not function like that — their path has always been clear. He won't lie; he's envious. ]

I know. [ I'm sorry. ] I'd rather you heard it from me.

[ If she was hurt, then he'd rather he was the one to do it. ]

I suppose there's a kind of nobility in that. [ she admits. begrudges. gives him his thin little ledge to grip and cling to 'cause she can't afford to give him anything else. ] Knowing is better.

[ just don't expect her to invite either of you over for tea anytime soon. ]

[ he's #american Peggy they don't do tea!! ]

[ But he stifles a bitter laugh. ]

Knowing is better.

And had I learned of it from anyone else -- yes, I probably wouldn't have been all that impressed.

[ translation: she would have shot you. tried, at least. maybe. a little. ]

[ Dryly, falling back into the ghosts of old banter exchanged in foxholes and on watch, ] Didn't know I was trying to impress. I might've thrown in some song and dance.

[ Who's strong and brave here to save the American Way? ]

Oh, shut it. [ equally dry, which is a telling sign that she's calming down as her mind continues to process all this information. ]

Maybe I shoulda said Shakespeare.

[ A soft, stifled chuckle. ]

I'm on the Heron, and I've got a gym set up on the other large ship you can see the shadow of if you look outside.

[ If you want to see me — ]

Heron? How appropriate. [ the determination and grace of a heron well-suits a sharpshooter. bloody hell, did barnes even still think of himself as such? or is he now a shieldbearer only. her nose crinkles.

she adjusts her attention to the other large ship: ] What's it's name? The other big one.

The Iskaulit. She's recent, the entire ship's empty and being claimed for extra space.

And you decided to furnish a gym with that extra space. [ she isn't surprised -- but it's telling the sort of impetus she can expect from this new situation. it's the sort of long-haul disaster where setting up a gym is an acceptable use of one's time. ]

[ Wryly, ]

Everyone needs something to hit once in a while.

Even the noble Captain Barnes?

[ she'll match him for his wryness, yes she will. ]

[ He expects no less, but it hurts, somehow. ]

Especially him.

Uneasy lies the head. [ that wears the crown. ]

-- Or shall we say the arm that carries the shield? Tell me, what happened -- after.

After Steve fell?

[ heartache chokes out her voice. ]

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