...And also these.

[thespaceopera]

[ Calibration Rooms ]
( for N-Z characters )

Before you post your topcomment, please:
1. Check the first letter of your character's name as its written in our tags. A-M names go to the other post, and N-Z names comment here.
2. Make a note in your topcomment if anything especially triggering or graphic might show up in the Calibration. If you're not sure if something's worth noting or not, we suggest listing it anyway, just to err on the side of caution.
3. Put your character's name (it can be shortened or different from the tag, this time) in the subject of your comment. This will help visitors find you easily, and help us update the list below.
4. Post your comment! It's fine if everyone's Calibrations end up looking and reading very different from one another. As long as you're having fun and following our guidelines, you're good to go. :)
5. If you have any questions or concerns during Calibrations, you are welcome to send them towards the mod team at any time, as always.

ROOMS BY CHARACTER

N - Q Nami Natasha Romanoff Nelkeila Tarid Nux Nyssa al Ghul Octavia Blake One Peggy Carter Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève

R - U R. Daneel Olivaw Rapunzel Remy LeBeau Riku Robin Redbreast Rogue Santanico Pandemonium Shawn Hunter Stefan (Alesci) Salvatore Steve "Orion" Rogers Steven Quartz Universe Souji Seta Stiles Stilinski Syeira Tadashi Hamada Tekhetsio

V - Z Vash the Stampede Vima Sunrider Vision (The) Wanda Maximoff Wrath Yamanaka Ino

Comments

[redactions]

[ Has anybody thought heels hurt? Because they do. He's shorter. His left side is abruptly lighter. Jim breathes, and methodically separates himself from Peggy's emotions piece by piece — anger, he keeps, because it's shared. But she's upset about something he can't pin down: jealous of Private Lorraine? That's not it. You wanted to be a soldier. He puzzles over it just as she shoots, and his momentary cry of horror transmutes into an undignified snort of laughter. ]

I think it worked.

[ Helluva dame, he'd said to Steve, all those years ago, hearing about her right hook. His first thought, still grinning as he hands her her sidearm, is that he should really tease Steve about — oh. That's right. Steve's gone. Jim's face falls abruptly, but he pulls the corners of his mouth back into a smile for her. ]

[mucked]

[ here standeth margaret carter: stocking'd feet and dressing robe, her proverbial orb ans sceptre a radio speaker and a gun. she matches his sorrow -- brief and tumbling, only to be left feeling just bereft enough to experience kinship with this man, but only to a silent point.

silence, incidentally, does reign. without the need for gunplay or smashing, the radio has taken its psychological cue to go quiet. they can hear their breath on the air.

awkwardly: ] He really was rubbish with women.

[ -- past tense, despite what she knows of the future. ]

[redactions]

In his defence, they weren't exactly giving him time a'day.

[ Too many people thought if Steve stood too close or coughed in their direction they'd come down with everything he had. It's a miracle no one slipped him tainted milk, but they stopped going to hospitals as soon as they could. When Peggy came along Jim had his best man speech all written up, and wrote to Rebecca to ask her if she knew where Aunt Sarah's wedding ring was. He was so sure. And so happy, that at least Steve'd have a life after the war took Jim, because the War was always meant to take him. ]

I don't think he was ever jealous, but it always felt like he thought that was the score.

[ Where Jim knew the real one: Steve was going down in history as somebody great, not him. He was always meant to be a footnote. ]

[mucked]

Their loss.

[ some days, peggy feels almost self-conscious about how readily she would trip over herself to give that man any hour of any day he needed -- but then again, such devotion has been stoked by loss. she can remember being a cooler customer before the valkyrie went down. gunshots, and all. ]

[redactions]

S'what I always told him, but you know how the world wears good people down.

[ He falls quiet, noticing the silence grow heavy on their shoulders, then shifts out of it before it has a chance to make its grip vicelike. ]

Where are we? Is this where you live, in 1946?

[mucked]

[ she doesn't answer for a long moment -- and then, with a blink of an eye, the moment resets itself much like a record player's needle being set back to an old well-worn groove. gone is the gun, and the radio has found its proper place back on the floor in the no man's land between the 'office lockers' and the 'apartment'.

hands on hips, she turns to face the bedroom. ] Something like that. The Griffith Hotel -- I lived here only a span of a few weeks, but so much happened...

[ she squints at the wallpaper, and wonders whether the hole is still there. ] There was a curfew. A curfew, Jim.

[redactions]

[ He gives her a look of mock-horror. ]

A curfew.

[ Can't help it — he rocks with laughter. The thought of a landlady who can cow Peggy Carter into keeping to a curfew makes him almost want to meet this wonderful, mythical creature. ]

How'd your job take that?

[mucked]

My job had me working the phones nine-to-bloody-five.

[ step by step -- moment by moment -- she leaves the radio behind. this odd amalgam of a room hasn't left much in the way of entertaining guests, but she gestures to jim in a broad fashion (take whatever seat you can find, if you like) ]

But I still found reason enough to sneak in by the dumbwaiter or to precariously climb a few walls.

[redactions]

[ He waits for her to sit before he does so himself, on one corner of the bed, near the vanity. ]

Peggy Carter, living dangerously. Who'd've thought.

[mucked]

[ she claims the vanity's stool. it keeps them near, but not too near. she reaches for a trinket from the desk -- nothing important, really -- and turns it between her fingers. ]

I do what I have to do -- [ she as good as reiterates. peggy shrugs. ] I didn't live here long. The landlady didn't appreciate one of her tenants being perp-walked out the front door.

[ and who could blame her? ]

[redactions]

[ His expression softens. ]

Well here's to findin' a nice new place in New York. The rent's more'n robbery, especially in the future. You know a place in Brooklyn costs 2400 dollars a month?

[mucked]

[ her mouth opened -- and her jaw works soundlessly. peggy had been about to explain the generosity shown on howard stark's part when he offered one of his lesser-used houses to tide her over until better accommodations are arranged (and, briefly, the whole half-apartment around them seem to flicker and shudder into a dual existence, with finer fixtures and better walls) but his claim shocks her psyche straight out of that betrayal.

with muted disbelief: ] That's ludicrous.

[redactions]

[ The finer house is where he expects her to live — so he pays the sudden change no heed. Where else but her own mind is she allowed this comfort. ]

I couldn't make it up if I wanted to.

[mucked]

[ -- the yearly income necessary to sustain such a lifestyle? bloody hell, her face goes blank while she runs sums behind her eyes. it would require a city full of howard starks. and what a chilling thought that must be. ]

Your SHIELD -- [ his, and she remembers the name ] -- must compensate its Captain handsomely.

[redactions]

[ His shield. Oh, if she only knew. He doesn't want to say anything. Not after knowing what happens to her beloved agency. ]

Inflation, and the economy improved. [ but, they're getting off-track. ] Wait til I introduce you to my iPod. Thousands of records, Pegs. All in your hand.

[mucked]

[ two months in, and she must abandon her constant disbelief. she passes her fingertips over the line of her brow -- as if banishing a headache. or another memory. ]

Science, and research, and development -- all turned towards convenience instead of war. [ perhaps the future isn't so awful. ]

[redactions]

[ Not everything. It's always war first. He doesn't want to burden her with this, so he offers, ]

Can you imagine Stark's face, if he weren't responsible for all of it?

[mucked]

[ a quiet hum. and she allows for a smile -- thinking fondly on that man, despite the betrayal he'd set upon her. peggy reaches for a silver-capped bottle of nail polish and turns its shape around in her fingers. a minor distraction while the room pitches once again towards finer decoration. a room fit for a mansion, really. and with stark on her mind, it stabilizes. every bit of furniture is the same, only of a higher quality. more ornate. ]

It hits home how once again we walked with giants, Buck. Movers and shakers of the twentieth century. How strange to have known them so well.

[redactions]

[ All the movers and shakers. (He's sitting with one right now.) The room shifts — the changed smell hits him first. The furniture is the same, neither of them have moved from their positions, and he's still with Peggy, but he feels out of place in opulence, and draws himself out in harsher lines to offset his discomfort. ]

You know, [ soft, ] no one really calls me that anymore.

[mucked]

No longer de rigueur, is it?

[redactions]

No.

[ a pause. ]

It's nice, though. From you.

[ It's not like when some TV announcer or some actor playing Steve says it in the HBO TV series or all the films they made about the Commandos. From her it holds affection, purpose. ]

[mucked]

-- I suppose it makes me something of a ghost. [ she doesn't say it with sorrow. there comes a point where she must accept her place in someone else's history. ] A friendly one, for you. And so well dressed.

[ a meagre smile. she glances up (perhaps to banish a threatened tear) and finally takes note of the room's new fixtures. the softness drains from her voice: ] Oh, bloody hell. Stark's place.

[redactions]

[ How ironic. He's the ghost in her story; him and Steve, and this Peggy haunts him when he goes to visit her. He always remembered her as young and capable. The woman she is in the future is no less of the latter, but no more of the former. ]

[ His attention snaps to her line of sight. Following her gaze, ]

Did you uh — [ fondue ] move here?

[mucked]

[ after more than her fair share of deflecting assumptions surrounding her friendship with stark, peggy can almost taste the hesitation on the air. or perhaps it's the 'calibration' doing its work, sewing knowledge into her heart.

but barnes does her the courtesy of circumnavigating what might otherwise be an obvious conclusion. ] Temporarily, [ she insists. ] And with a -- friend. A girlfriend, I suppose. [ she speaks of a platonic friendship, but sounds almost...frightened to admit it. angie's a friend, of course. but the friendship hadn't blossomed easily. ]

One of Howard's less-frequented properties, you see.

[redactions]

[ She has never spoken of the people she knows. In the war they didn't need her secrets, and in the future she's dying with the most carefully guarded of them put out for the world to see. Jim pauses, and then, very hesitantly, ]

What's she like? Your friend.