gotta get down for a mingle

[redactions]

Who: The crew of the SS Heron and visitors.
Broadcast: nope.
Action: Aboard the SS Heron.
When: After returning to the ship.

[ finally back on the right ship, except the corridors are all mysteriously cold and the ship seems smaller. Thanks, Atroma. New crew, visitors, starters in comments ]

Comments

[mucked]

Captain. [ stiff, but playfully so. she waggles her fork in his direction. ] Do outline precisely the sort of situation where a penchant for marmalade becomes at all exploitable.

[redactions]

​[ With gravity, ]

Tea-time.

[mucked]

I will rough it and go bare with my baked goods if I must, you know.

[redactions]

Oh, I've no doubt. Not such a bad idea to call a truce.

[mucked]

[ plate pushed aside, she briskly brushes crumbs off her palms -- and wonders (briefly) how they ever got there to begin with. all for show and friendship, she offers him that hand to shake. ]

My white flag is flying, Captain.

[redactions]

[ It's shaken, warmly, and he's not smirking, just smiling, soft and wistful. ]

The terms are agreeable?

[mucked]

Quite. We may need an addendum from time to time -- but... [ it takes great inner grace and far too much character to admit even this much, but she knows it's for the best. ] I've grown a lot more accustomed to you, Jim. You were such an oddity at first.

[redactions]

So, nothin' different.

​[ They'd had to get used to each other in the War, too. It's no jealousy, just the shift of the two party state of Steven Rogers and James Barnes to accommodate Margaret Carter. There's always an adjustment period. ]

[mucked]

Nothing different. [ she echoes, and smiles. ] Frankly, I'm not sure which of you through me for the largest loop.

[ you, or the winter soldier. ]

[redactions]

Glad ta know I can still surprise you.

[ Not in cruel ways, that mean a spy's death. Just keeping her the sharpest he can. ]

[mucked]

[ speaking of surprises... ]

The Stark boy is back. [ only peggy could casually call tony 'the stark boy, perhaps. vestiges of her association with his father. ]

[redactions]

[ He snorts. ]

I heard.

[mucked]

[ in many ways, she'd feel better if it were howard here amidst their number. not that that she wishes kidnapping on anyone, but she has more reason to trust howard's skills than his son's. she barely knows tony stark. ]

Spoke with him, yet? [ peggy knows he has -- but she asks all the same. ]

[redactions]

[ Funnily enough, he'd rather Tony only because Tony is more of a known quantity, and they're at an equilibrium. Howard is largely an unknown aside from the time period, and Jim doesn't feel like Bucky anymore. ]

Yes. Enough to establish that he never changes.

[mucked]

I never asked, but -- whose timeline does he belong to?

[ she sees it as terribly black and white: her timeline, or jim's. she'd rather not entertain other options at the moment. ]

[redactions]

Yours.

[ There's no trace of emotion, no hint of regret or the nostalgia for something missed. He and Tony aren't close. It would have been nice, but he can live without it easily. ]

That reminds me Peg... I know a few things about our future. Now I ain't sure if they're the same or if it's right to be tellin' ya — it could save people or it could make the whole world a lot worse. Guessin' you're already in the Cold War?

[mucked]

[ she grimaces -- jaw tightened, and she looks as though she's been expecting this conversation. there's a reason why she hasn't asked too much: she could guess at what jim's just said. people could be helped, or a whole bloody world could be mucked up beyond belief.

she's done research of her own, but only in the most broad of strokes. she knows what the cold war is. ] Things are certainly beginning to frost over, [ peggy concedes. ] I've had some...run-ins with Soviet operatives in New York. Nothing pleasant.

[redactions]

[ His brows draw together, and he breathes. ]

If you ask, I won't lie. I'll find some way to tell you.

[ On the surface it sounds like a reassurance, a need to steel himself. Jim reaches across, to carefully touch her hand. So much has always gone unspoken between them, this is no different. He'll use code, for something this valuable, and private. ]

[mucked]

[ her wrist twists. she raises her palm against his fingertips -- a haunting, intimate sort of touch. it's not the manner in which she usually interfaces with those around her, but she must understand that jim is her best viable link to the future. asking steve comes with too much pain and baggage. steve, as honourable as he is...she's not convinced she can trust him to be so honest as jim barnes.

some things are heard better from friends than from sweethearts. ]

Bloody hell. Where do I start? [ the easiest question is also the most selfish: when do i die? but she doesn't ask it, because it's so damned navel-gazing she's nearly ashamed to wonder it at all. ] I've read what I can about the Cold War when we were on the Marsiva, Jim. But I can't trust the Atroma's wayward libraries, and even if I could...

[ the true details never make it to print. they both know this. so instead of stating an outright question, he looks at him with a plea in her eyes. she wants the gritty details behind the chilly conflict -- the spycraft bits and bobs. ]

[redactions]

[ Where does she start? What's been weighing on her and for how long, and why didn't he see it right in front of him? Jim swallows. ]

You'll need t'be a bit more specific.

[mucked]

The S.S.R. [ she puts a fine point on an inelegant line of questioning. ] Is is handling its place in the intelligence community with aplomb?

[redactions]

[ There's an inhale, like the breath after a bullet has met its mark. Trust her to be a sharpshooter. ]

Yes.

[ A beat, and his fingers press lightly on her palm, this time, urgent. ]

Do me a favour. Kill Zola, wherever you find him. He's of no strategic use. None. Don't believe what the others tell you.

[mucked]

[ she watches him -- gaze careful, and guarded. kill zola: it's not so impossible a directive to follow, although some kicking-and-screaming part of her rejects that he should give her any directive at all. the rational rest of her acknowledge the wisdom in his plea (because that's what it is, she soon-after realizes. not an order, but a plea.)

but most troubling of all is how swiftly the onus is set upon her shoulders. don't believe what the others tell you -- she's chilled, down to the bone, by the realization that whatever jim's plea is intended to avoid is pinned down to a decision she makes. ]

I fetch coffee. I answer telephones. Jim -- [ hard swallow, her head tilts. ] However easily I might agree with your assessment, it isn't as though anyone's listening to mine. I can bend a rule or three but I'm not the one calling the kind of shots that would rid the world of a worm like Zola.

[ not back home. not in the s.s.r. of 1946. even now, thompson's the head-and-shoulders of the new york office. fighting for credit simply wasn't worth the wounds. ]

[redactions]

[ She's said as much before, and the reality sinks in now as it did then, slowly, then all at once. Part of him wants to blurt it out: the institution you work so hard to build will be taken over by HYDRA. That's cruelty, even if it's honest. There's something else he'd rather she realise first, and he smiles, suspiciously mischievous. ]

You ever think about what kinda person would call an organisation SHIELD?

1/2

[mucked]

[ at first, it sounds more like a riddle than a helping hand. it's a bizarre name to begin with -- shield -- and his mention of it only recalls to mind that strange storage-room found like a fixture in jim's dreams: from s.s.r. to shield, and the badges themselves only variations on the same.

oh, she scowls. ]