driftfleet | did somebody say mingle

[ that's actually a very good question. ]

Ah — I think so? He's an android of some kind. Tony and Dr. Banner built him. I haven't met him in my timeline yet, but he's around here.

[ his timeline. she hides her bare reaction behind a sip -- eyes bright and sharp, besides, and never leaving barnes's behind. ]

An android. [ she tastes the word in the aftermath of scotch and lime. it rings vaguely familiar: like old forays into literature and bizarre french fiction. a brief flirtation with works on simulacra. but nothing that should ever suggest the word as more than fancy.

more than fantasy. ]

What's he like?

[ For one of the very few times in his life, words fail. Jim opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again, then closes it, and cants his head, trying to catch the words in the air between them. ]

I think you should meet him.

Should I? [ her glass tilts. she replaces all her hesitation with a sudden wryness. ] It's beginning to feel like all I do is meet people. And most of them have these truly bizarre names. [ like, come on, vision? is that a name? ]

One young woman was calling herself Rogue of all things.

[ peggy isn't naturally inclined to gossip. but it's been a while since she'd had a strong drink, and her constitution hasn't necessarily adjusted perfectly to space-habitation. the lime and liquor has loosened her tongue, and she shows a little spirit when she recalls this name -- if it can be called that. ]

Well, there's also staring at the walls, or the ceiling, if you want a little variety.

[ There's nothing to do on these ships and it's driving him to actually socialise. It's terrible, Peggy. ]

[ He does, however, immediately brighten at mention of Rogue. ]

She's a sweet gal, ain't she?

[ it's a brightness she notes -- catalogues, and commits to the archives of her mind. ]

She's certainly practical. I don't know about sweet. [ but the way peggy says it? well, it almost sounds like she's trying to pay the young woman a compliment. practicality trumps the saccharine any day.

although a great swathe of her doubts barnes had meant the word quite that way, regardless. ]

[ Hey, he's just happy she's found someone to think well of, and all the better that it's a friend of his, although he's still figuring that one out. ]

There's stranger names to have.

[ Captain America. ]

[ she knows, of course. and she can guess the name he has in mind. and if she had the heart to refute it, she'd tell him how that moniker had been different. given at the behest of propaganda, but never in a way that obfuscated who steve had been.

but in the end these are mere quibbles. semantics. and peggy has far more interesting things to learn. ] Friends with her, are you?

[ Ruefully, ] You know me, friends with everybody.

[ The words ring hollow the way they never did, years ago. ]

Once upon a time. Perhaps.

[ -- he'd been a friendly sort. she can't deny it. won't deny it. ] But you call yourself Captain, now. The word comes upon the shoulders with weight and difference.

[ she isn't scolding him. nor is she quite begrudging him the appropriation of the name -- not in the way she wanted to from the very outset. instead, she's only declaring her comprehension for the difficult position it's put him in.

she can still remember the sound of rain on olive-drab canvas while she watched steve's loneliness weave itself through his sketchbook. weight and difference, indeed. ]

The world's changed, and none of us can go back.

[ Her own words to him, albeit years later, with a sweet and sour taste. ]

They treat him more like a general now, you know. Seventy years and — [ his expression twists into an ugly snarl ] you remember the mission we had, just before Paris was liberated?

[ Only them, and knee deep in blood. They never got cyanide pills the way he suspects Peggy did, but it was on all their minds: death before failure. They never talked about it after, but Steve? Steve would never let them do what he wasn't willing to do himself, ten times over. That's what nobody ever got right. ]

Its records are all gone. The rest are the same, or can't be declassified, to protect his memory.

[ What memory? Who is this Steve, who never cut a throat or threw a shield into a man hard enough to shatter his ribs and puncture his lungs? The table creaks, as Jim realises he's gripping the corner of it with his metal fist hard enough to pull a chunk out of the wood, and he lets go. ]

[ Soft, ]

I don't recognise him, Pegs. I don't know him at all.

[ peggy carter doesn't flinch in the face of his snarls. can't flinch, perhaps, or else refuses to. but her eyes stay trained on him evermore, and her jaw is set so she might avoid the telltale twitch of discomfort. she doesn't want to believe in the possibilities he begins to outline: a captain rogers whose shape has been bent once more to the purpose of propaganda. a memory, protected?

even today, she carries the vial in her pocket. and its weight is all she needs to remind herself that the men in charge don't know what to do with steve's memory, nor how to protect it. ]

Under whose orders? [ at last, she shifts in her chair. disquieted. feeling hollowed out by dread. ]

[ Peggy Carter, unflinching, stony in the face of the grief that's broken Jim apart. ]

[ Wearily, ] I don't know.

[ I didn't care to look. ]

How could you not -- [ her protest splinters, cracks in half, and she aborts it long before it reaches its most temperamental peak. all at once, her cheeks betray a flush of unhappiness. this isn't a flinch -- even now. more like the tremble of a volcano that's decided at the last minute that she doesn't want to erupt.

peggy must remind herself: barnes (this barnes) lives a different truth to hers. he doesn't survive on the blade-edge of spycraft and subterfuge. he doesn't thrive by tracing back the lines of power to find the very silent roots. barnes lived by the rifle, once. and now (if she's to take him at his word) he lives by the shield. it makes perfect sense why he shouldn't have searched out the reason why those facts had been buried.

she swallows more scotch and understands that she'll have to set the glass aside, soon. ]

They do this bloody awful radio show, about Steve, [ she starts again, more softly and far more sad. ] I'd like to meet the pillock whose idea that was. I'd love to poke him in the eyes.

[ as far as she could discern, a memory protected is little more than a memory besmirched. ]

[ Because he was angry, too, at losing a whole world — and didn't need to look too long or too hard at everything around him to know that he hated it down to the very atoms that made it up. That he still does, because the more he uncovers the uglier it looks. ]

[ He scowls, but not at her show of stillborn temper. ]

The Captain America Adventure Hour?

That's the one. [ months -- nearly a full year -- of resentment and dissatisfaction, like a disease in the heart, bubbles up in her sigh. ] God, I hate it.

[ she is raw in this moment. polish peeled back and the powder wiped away. peggy isn't smudged -- isn't sloppy -- but merely bare. honest and naked in her disappointment for the post-war years and to where they'd relegated some of its most integral cogs. the hollowing out of a hero's legacy, and the marginalization of all the other heroes whose unconventionality no longer fits into society's puzzle.

the world doesn't want peggy carter anymore. she's under the impression that the world would much prefer miss betty carver instead. ]

[ And like that, the pieces slide into place. Peggy Carter, who once commanded their strategy room as easily as Phillips himself, now not even a voice in something she goes on to build a mountain out of. Quiet, and out away, sent to know her place when the war's got no use for her. ]

Oh for fuck's sake.

[ Not even a pardon my French at the end of that. ]

They think you're like Betty Carver?

[ his indignation ignites a whirlwind within her: relief, hesitation, and a mild triumph to hear someone else express such deep disappointment in a world that could ever sideline her so easily. it's like dust kicked up in the soul, and if she wasn't so already displeased with the topic at hand she might have mustered a smile. ]

Not everyone. Only -- [ she shuts her eyes and presses a finger against the bridge of her nose ] only most, if I'm honest. Not the public, of course. They don't know a fig about me and rightly so. But the agency...

[ her expression is rueful. it feels self-indulgent, this: to decry what she can't change with words alone. she isn't proud to share the truth with barnes, but she supposes he might be the only one to truly appreciate the absurdity. ] It's been said a few times that my appointment with the New York office was little more than a courtesy given to a fallen hero's sweetheart.

[ ridiculous for so many reasons, and not least of all because she's not certain she could ever be called steve's anything. not with any certainty. everything was over long before it could properly begin. ]

[ Not everyone. Only the people that should know better, should have watched her to know better. Who thought she was a widow when she'd not been anything other than herself. He mirrors her gesture: pinches the bridge of his nose. ]

It's bullshit, [ he says, eventually, when the anger's gone out of him and replaced with utter, absolute weariness. ] I'm sorry.

[ bullshit is precisely the word. and yet still, her nose crinkles at the sound of it. somehow, it's as dirty a word as ever. it didn't matter how long she'd spent bumping her elbows (metaphorically, of course) with rough-edged shoulders. the language remains a sticking point. ]

Among other things. [ bullshit. bollocks. whatever-have-you. but-- ] It isn't my story alone. It's the story of anyone who found their utility yanked out from under them by so many returning GIs. Not that anyone can blame them.

[ soldiers have no easier time of it than anyone else. but she holds a particular disdain for those who merely wanted a return to a life that could never exist again. the world has changed. war has changed it. ]

Doesn't make it right.

[ Alas, the world isn't predicated on what's right or what's fair. He finishes his not-scotch. It's not easy to lose the whole world and back then they lost it perhaps not as violently as he did, but as suddenly. ]

No. No it doesn't. You're quite correct.

[ behaviour has loosened under the influence of her drink. gently, she taps the back of her thumbnail against her bottom lip. lost (briefly) in her own thoughts. peggy doesn't want to admit it, but she can feel the weight of the world's disadvantage in losing this man to the ice and to time.

funny how she'd never felt it before now. not for barnes, at least. not beyond the sorrow for a friend. ]

Heavens, you're...different. [ or not different at all, just boasting the same strong personality within a different context. she's quick to add: ] Not in a bad way, mind you.

[ His mouth twitches, on its way to a smile, but it ends stillborn. ]

Why Agent Carter. Was that a compliment?

[ They don't sit so easy with him — not that they ever did. Kindness or goodness should be kept in the smallest places -- he always hid Steve's new pencils where the supplies were and pretended not to know about it. But hers.. this doesn't sting, or prod in the wrong places. It just seems nice, to be sharing it with her. ]

[ Everyone can use a little nice. ]

God, no. [ her hand drops to the cup, where that same thumbnail curls against curved glass. he's teasing her (she thinks) but she rather likes to hear her proper title toppling out in his native accent. ] Little more than a keen observation, Captain Barnes.

[ but a keen observation cuts as well as a compliment, in the end. ]

Wouldn't want you goin' soft on me.

[ The smile reaches his eyes, as he says it. He values that about her, that she won't treat him (or anyone) like glass and never has, though she no doubt has ways of being gentle, they aren't for him. She only knew him after everything changed. That's the man she's always known, and he's closer to Jim than the carefree and reckless Bucky before war came for them. ]

So, ah — you've read Time Machine, right? I don't know how much I should tell you about the future.

[ This — is perhaps a chance to build anew on something old, and he'd rather it be a foundation of trust. ]

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cw: war gore

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