( video )

[mucked]

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?

Comments

[mucked]

[ lovely names, she thinks. ]

I wish I could say any of it sounded familiar. But it doesn't.

[ and it makes her feel so...disparate. distant. lost at sea. ]

[openhands]

There are quite a few from my world presently in the Fleet. [A beat.] Or at least variations of it.

[Her tone conveys that it's Very Complicated.]

I can't imagine I will have heard where you are from either. It seems there's a...[How to put this?] variety here.

[mucked]

Earth. America. New York. In descending order of importance, of course. [ ... ] Not that I should fancy telling any New York son such a thing to his face.

[openhands]

I've heard of Earth and America from some of the others.

[She may have heard New York in passing, but that's very specific in trying to remember, man.]

But to my knowledge, nothing like that exists where I'm from.

[mucked]

Think of your great sprawling cities of industry -- of glamour overtop the gloom. That's New York.

[openhands]

[She makes a small noise of disgust. Cassandra comes from a family that would be part of the glamour and she still openly despises it.]

Then it seems there are some universals after all.

[mucked]

More kindly disposed to the country, are we? [ ... ] Not that I can blame you. Urban life has is trials.

[openhands]

More disposed to anything other than the nobility. The disparities between them and the poor of my world become all the more obvious in the cities.

[mucked]

[ aha. ] Yes, well, I fear that's very evident regardless of the world. My birth-country still clings to its titles and nobility where it can, but even places which claim to have done away with a ruling class still find new and fresh ways to be unequal with one another.

[openhands]

That does not surprise me. Families like mine continue to cling to legacies they have no right to claim at this point. They pay lip service, nothing more.

[mucked]

Not many born to such privilege see it the way you do, you know. It's admirable.

[openhands]

[...Oh. Compliments. Cassandra is bad at taking them.]

I... I believe that was mostly my brother Anthony's doing.

[mucked]

Bit of a social activist, is he?