driftfleet | gotta get down for a mingle

[ 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. ]

[ 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.

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. ]

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?

[ 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.

[ 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. ]

[ 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. ]

[ 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.

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?

[ 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.

[ 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. ]

[ 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?

[ 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. ]

Bollocks.

[ all the other possible answers to his question are inconceivable -- unlikely as all hell. but now that it's been traced out so carefully by jim's almost-reveal, she wonders how she never saw it before now.

realization takes a moment longer to dawn on her face. ]

[ He laughs; boyish, and cheerful. ]

Only reason I stayed.

[ Because her dream built it and her hands guided it for so long; he kept looking for something to like, something that felt like home in a world that had nothing. ]

I've never before heard anything quite so foolish. [ stiff -- and embarrassed, really -- she tugs at her sleeves. she does anything (it seems) but allow herself to feel the full force of affection and good faith that jim's confession truly inspires.

she wrangles each of these feelings and she tamps them down tight. ]

What a ludicrous reason to keep with any organization. [ she announces, more than a little aware of how hypocritical it sounds. after all, why else did she relocate to new york except to lead by a dead man's example? ]

Would it help if I said there were plenty a'French dames?

[ He waggles his eyebrows, suggestively. He doesn't need to remind her of the value of having or keeping faith (he'd laugh if he heard it from himself, anyway, when he lost his own in the War) and the person who carried their belief with him on the front line. ]

-- Bless their little Gallic hearts. [ idle chatter. it's the sort of sly remark that buys time and builds armour. her soul and intellect still reels from the barrage of bombshells left at her fingertips. she curls her fingers into jim's. shield! were she not a creature in better control of herself, she might've wept. instead there's a twitch in her jaw.

there's power in names, and more power still in being the sort of person positioned to give a name. what, she wonders, does that make her? and what happened to the s.s.r.? ]

Jim. [ a soft sigh. ] What you said -- your warning about Zola being kept alive. Was that a call I made?

[ mucked, it sounds like. ]

I don't know, [ he says, soft, and honest. In the end that's all he's ever had for her. ] I didn't get to that section of the files; I was workin' my way through 'em. Just know — you would have been in a position to decide. And whatever you or the others thought was needed, Peg, I don't think it was worth the cost.

[ Jim doesn't want to tell her how to run her own organisation or save the world when she's carried it by herself for so long, but he can't abide by Zola being alive, let alone safe in SHIELD's hands. ]

[ gently -- and oh, ever so carefully -- she withdraws her hand from his. it's not a rejection of his censure, because she does feel his concern is reasonable. but rather she suddenly feels a lot smaller than she ever perceived herself capable of feeling. to be discounted and underused by the new york office is one kind of slight, but to suddenly feel helpless in the face of her future actions?

agony. thinking on this pain, she pretends to straighten a curl. ]

Which others? [ her voice is strained, but polite. what's worse, perhaps, is the way in which she finds herself confronted by every other possibly ill-made decision. ]

[ He lets go; hovers just outside her personal space. ]

Don't do this, [ soft, nearly pleading. The list of causes for which he'd plead is empty, the list of people fewer, but this, this costs him nothing. ] it was just you, saving the world, and the rest of us goin' about coolin' our heels, [ he swallows. there's a reason he deliberately never survived the War and it stings now ] ain't no way you wouldna done everything you could. Ain't no way. So don't do this to me.

Edited 2015-12-09 14:13 (UTC)

[ she recalls the hard advice she'd given steve in the wake of bucky's death -- that if he loved his friend, he would not take upon his shoulders all the blame for a risk that was, ultimately, bucky's to take. but who else can she blame but herself for risks not-yet-taken?

he pleads with her to reconsider some future decision, and then pleads with her not to take the responsibility so heavily into her hands. and peggy feels torn between the two. but for his sake, she nods. ]

But it wasn't just me, was it? Whose advice are you cautioning me against?

[ He doesn't know who whispers in her ear. That's the bottom line: she's alone. Phillips is a good man but he sees the War first. Howard sees the future in every weapon he builds over the century; to Jim he is too much of an unknown to be trustworthy. She was with them all throughout the worst days of the War, and she goes on alone. ]

Whoever persuades you that making certain compromises is necessary. You and I both know what compromise is, Pegs, we did a hell lot of it, and it's followin' us. Some things, you gotta do. It's just [ he exhales ] hard, sometimes, when it ain't clear what's worth the cost.

[ not alone -- never quite alone. but she doesn't breathe words about mister jarvis: not yet, and not to anyone. he remains a certain sort of secret. like a confidential informant, too precious to risk. ]

Jim. [ ... ] Will I even remember any of this conversation?

[ she doubts it. ]

I don't know.

[ It feels like a helpless refrain. ]

I'm willing to take the chance.

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