driftfleet | play a jingle, it's a mingle!

"Darling, you don't know the half of it."

A drawl. A long-suffering sigh. Peggy, although nominally well removed from the dating game ever since she'd left her A-levels behind, had dipped her toes back in for one Captain Rogers. Principled and good-hearted, she'd taken to him with such quickness -- even if he had been hopeless with women, as she was soon to learn. And as for James Barnes! Well. Much of that was best left unsaid, even if he had been a dear friend of hers.

Still, Peggy reconsidered Rogue: her distance; her careful mannerisms; her pre-existing relationship with a megalomaniac man-child. Quickly, she corrected herself: "Or else you know more far more than your fair share. Who am I to presume, hm?"

Rogue shrugged, moving to pour the hot water into two mugs. She wasn't much of a tea person, herself, but it was growing on her. "I reckon we've all got our stories."

She returned to the table with the two cups steeping. There was no milk, and very little sugar, but it was better than nothing.

"So I guess it comes down ta what you want ta know. Do ya think it's important that they catch ya up ta speed?"

Important was a loaded word. In the wider scheme of life -- back home, in 1946 and in 2015, it wouldn't be such a sin to stay in the dark. Time could march on as it ought to, and there was no armageddon so dire that Peggy's intervention was needed. There was, of course, the matter of Zola -- but even then she wasn't precisely certain of those specifics, either.

There was one way in which it was all important, however. "Your advice is sound: to talk to Captain Rogers, and to listen to him. Likely, you're right about him needing to unwind it all from his thoughts and worries, as well. It's important he catches me up to speed if doing so helps ease all that tension he's brought with him to the fleet."

But was that worth the security and certainty of the future? And why, after all, should that be her decision? She hasn't founded SHIELD yet. It's not yet her responsibility. But oh, one day, it would be.

Rogue nodded. She could definitely agree with that. Plus, she found herself, liking Carter. They'd had a fantastic bar fight together, after all, and if that wasn't enough to feel vaguely responsible for someone else's love life, what was? Plus, she'd liked Steve, back in Luceti, and she didn't like the changes she'd seen in him here.

So she gave herself permission to be as free with her opinion outside as she was inside. "I think what you're sayin' makes sense. But also..." glancing down at the table for a moment. It wasn't normal for her to speak of such private things, and she knew that it was more than likely that Peggy was disapproving of the relationship anyway, but well... Rogue wasn't. She knew that she and Loki worked, despite how improbably it was, and she knew why. Rogue looked back up at Carter, "...I've learned how important honest is between people ya care about. How can ya be comin' into anythin' - real - an' have everythin' so imbalanced?"

Oh, it was almost laughable. Not Rogue's words -- not them, for they were sweet and raw and precisely what Peggy Carter needed to hear. But the sheer validity of that advice could have drawn a smile had it not pierced her heart so deeply.

Carefully, she answered: "Honesty isn't my strongest suit, I'm afraid," as though she was the problem -- and not the men and their half-confessions. As blunt a woman as she could be, she was ever-guarded and still secretive.

"Wherever you were before, however you might have known...another version of me -- did I or she or we ever tell you how I make my living?"

The question was clear and unambiguous because Peggy felt certain that if Rogue did not know, she would trade fairly with her in turn. And not press for details Peggy did not want to share.

Edited 2015-12-23 01:43 (UTC)

Rogue shook her head. She gaze her an honest answer for an honest question, despite knowing how it would sound. "We weren't that close. I..." a glance down at her gloves, a deliberate glance, trusting that Peggy would follow it before looking back up at him, "...I wasn't exactly the kinda person who reached out or was real open at the time."

She gave her a quick, flicker of an amused smile, "You were closer ta Loki, actually."

-- Bloody hell. Her surprise (and, perhaps, her dismay) was writ large on her face. Loki? Her association with the self-professed god must remain a mystery for another day, because she could not bring herself to put it under too dramatic a microscope. Rude, at best.

"Nor, I imagine, was I." She frowned. "Comes with the professional territory, I'm afraid -- but what changed?" The conversation rotated none-too-gently back into Rogue's court. "You say you weren't that sort of person at the time. What changed?"

"...well, I reckon I still ain't," she said honestly. This whole thing was highly uncomfortable for her, but, she determined, worth it. "I'm not really good at this. But I am..."

A pause, her gaze drifting up and to the side as she tried to find the right words, "...I am tryin' not ta let fear or hate take anymore of my life away."

A nod and then she looked back at Peggy, "So there's a lot of little things an' big things that built up ta that, but I've had a couple of real harsh wake-up calls ta things, an' I'm tryin' ta walk out who I am in their light. That's all."

Admirable. Challenging. And, Peggy admitted (silently), a sort of pain she'd never had to contend with. She wouldn't try and fool herself and claim to have always tread in the light -- her work was shadowed, and often on the murky side of legal. But fear and hate had so rarely been a part of it, except to rear its ugly face in the HYDRA operatives she met with her right hook.

But in the end, she still understood that there was virtue in second (and sometimes third and fourth) chances.

"Whatever those wake-up calls have been, they've turned out a fine young woman. From what I can see."

From what she'd been allowed to see.

...and that was awkward. This was the kind of fear and hatred she felt most keenly -- the kind that was directed toward herself. "Well... thank you."

What else could she say?

She shook her head a little and then started removing her tea. "So... what were we talkin' 'bout?" A quick breath that was almost a laugh, "Ya know, that wasn't me?"

Perhaps she reveled (just a little) in having caught the well-poised and well-guarded Rogue on the back foot by means of a compliment. But she was merciful and allowed the deflection -- after all, she'd twisted the topic in such a fashion as to recover from the awkwardness of having her alterna-friendship with Loki revealed.

Reaching for her mug, she put a fine point on the matter: "Intelligence. I work in -- well, intelligence. There never was a more pompous or pig-headed name for a profession."

A quiet laugh. "Well, at least ya can say you're searchin' for it?"

Get it? Searching for intelligent life?

"Believe you me, in the agency for which I work? That search is a constant and difficult struggle. And I'm not speaking of our assignments."

For the most part, with the exception of a few stellar stand-outs, she worked with sods and bastards. Idiots, Rogue might have called them. The department was something of a boys' club.

Rogue very likely would have called them that, yes. She took a sip of her tea and then prompted, "So ya work in Intelligence."

"Like I said -- not the most truth-friendly of professional fields." She tipped her mug. Took a drink. "Understand, please, that I'm telling you this for two reasons. Chiefly, I rather like you. And secondly, I'm lead to believe my involvement in the field becomes less and less classified over the following decades. And yet..."

She tapped her nails against the mug. "I started up with the trade during the war. Secrecy was as important as breathing, back then."

And Rogue did understand, and she understood precisely why Peggy was telling her the reasons - so she would understand just how important it was that Peggy was disclosing them in the first place.

"Then I guess I should say thank ya," Rogue said, and inclined her head a little. "An' I should also tell ya that I've got a lot of practice at keepin' secrets. Especially other people's."

So Peggy didn't need to worry about Rogue gossiping about this in the halls.

Edited 2015-12-23 02:41 (UTC)

"The S.S.R. should be so lucky to instill half as much discretion in its rawer recruits," she joked. Obviously, the agency was much finer than that. But a seasoned agent was allowed her world-weary humour. Also, it performed as an adequate segue:

"It was the S.S.R. that pioneered the project resulting in Captain America. That's how we met -- Steve, and I."

"Oooh," Rogue straightened up slightly, chin lifting, gaze going unfocused for a moment as several pieces clicked together rather rapidly. "I see."

And Rogue gave Peggy something very rare: a warm, warily approving smile. "That's somethin' pretty special, then."

To get to know the man without the distraction of the... man.

-- Rogue's smile cajoles a similar expression in Peggy. She dropped her chin and (reveling, a moment, in the memory) nearly tried to hide the unabashed emotion seeping through her filters. "Handfuls and handfuls of young men were put through their paces. Training, profiling, the whole bloody gamut. Even back then, he stood head and shoulder above the rest. In his own way."

What had this become? Some...sentimental recollection of a different time. Back in Manhattan, she'd been tight-lipped on her association with Captain America. But now -- here -- he lived again. Her sorrow had been tempered with hope. Talking came easier, and Rogue was a good listener.

Rogue smiled a little at that shared recollection. "That must've been somethin'."

And then, since this was girl talk and there was no point in hiding why they were talking about what they were talking about, really, Rogue added, "Is that when it started for ya?"

"Started? Oh, blimey. Somewhere between reading his personnel file thick with 4F rejections and later pointing out every dirty alleyway in Brooklyn where he'd been beaten up."

She chuckled. Warm, low, and inviting. Every line softened as she allowed herself to slip into a mode she'd long since abandoned. Before the fleet, talking about Steve had been a sore and sad subject. He still was, of course, but she could temper all that grief with fresh experience. New memories.

"The man never knows when to give up," she explained. As though it was as pretty an honour as any shiny metal pinned to his chest.

She gave Carter a small smile. "Sounds annoyin'," she said, though her voice indicated anything but.

"Frightfully so. And I don't expect the American government was wholly pleased when the S.S.R. went and backed a head-strong idealist as the best candidate for the project." She talked her way around the point that been her initial goal: she hadn't merely met Steve upon the assignment. He had been her assignment.

"But I was. So very pleased. But it was the war, you see. And certain things fall to the wayside at such times."

Romance. Sentiment. Going steady.

"Not that he didn't still strike a handsome figure in the newsreels, of course. They were always a welcome sight when I wasn't anywhere near the lines."

Rogue nodded. 'Certain things' certainly could fall by the wayside. Especially in the rather regimented era that Rogue understood World War II to be. "I think I see. Well. Much as I can, anyway."

Being, as she was, from a very different time and place. "So... it was between you, but never spoken."

That... was a lot. Going from that into... this. Rogue's eyes suddenly narrowed and she asked before reminding herself that it wasn't really any of her business, "Has it been? Now, I mean?"

Budding, blossomed, and barely begun when she'd grabbed him from the back of the jeep and kissed him goodbye. Too late to name and too frantic a battle to bother with discussing it, love had been left implied. Felt, but not spoken. And then he was gone. And then she was alone -- carrying a torch that burned so hot sometimes, even after the war, that she feared fresh scars.

"I mentioned actions speaking louder than words. Well -- his actions may as well have been shouting for all their volume." Clarification hardly seemed necessary, and yet nothing was settled. It wasn't a question of love, she didn't think. But more of all the history he'd skipped and she had yet to make. He knew of things she could never be told, and that put her at a severe disadvantage. Perhaps too much of one.

"You might as well get your chiding done with now, Rogue." Peggy managed a watered-down smile. "Snogging's no substitute for talking. I know it. You know it. But it likely needs saying all the same."

Problem was, they'd never talked before either. Love had been an unspoken fact; romance an impossibility. The war had allowed them their silence. But now...

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touchofrogue - 2015-12-23 04:09 (UTC) - Expand