driftfleet | enter if you dare (i'm kidding we're 80% approachable)

[ something hitches in her throat. but chief of all her reactions is the steady way in which she holds her ground. peggy is no longer the shrinking patient upon the bed, perturbed by his proximity. when he squares up to her, she seems to square back: spine straight and shoulders open. she looks him dead in the eyes and listens. ]

I'm afraid I still don't. [ know better. her jaw shifts. perhaps it's not the best place nor the best time to challenge him, but she can't help it. for every inch he gives her, she's eager to take a mile. to push and prod and engender progress. ] You'll have to do a better job of explaining it to me. My poor simple mind can't seem to keep up to your worldly logic.

[ her lip curls. he knew better? as if. ]

[He glowers. Is that what she's going to do? Play the fool?]

F'I'm some project for you to focus on instead of yourself, don't.

Figure it out yourself. M'going.

[He turns and starts away, this time quickly, ready to be done with this. There's no where to run. There's nowhere to go and it makes him feel frantic, makes his stomach twist. Where can he even go, that she won't follow? His best bet is the Iskaulit. The gym or bar. Anywhere there. He moves for the teleporter quickly enough.]

[ ...going? in earnest, this time, it would seem. and peggy feels that twitch in her gut to take action and stop him. but (once again) she resists it. his isn't the arm onto which you lay your hand and bid the better angels begin to listen. his peace cannot be ordered. peggy has learned that she must let him reclaim it himself -- alone, if need be.

she tightens a fist. loosens it. forces her feet to stay in place.

peggy carter doesn't say a word. she simply lets him walk away. ]

[Rock whines at Max's departure, limping over to Peggy, as if so completely in tune with such episodes already.

Meanwhile, Max hides. Or tries to, anyway. Sometimes this place is overwhelming -- too clean compared to home, too small, too cluttered, too populated. It makes his head hurt. He eventually will return -- three days later, and God knows where he was, but he's still got oil on his clothes and a messy head of hair and... He's tired, looks like he hasn't slept a wink.

He collapses to sit up against the wall, closes his eyes to rest them, and let's Rock plop his head in Max's lap while the wanderer runs fingers along the dog's gray and black fur. He dozes a bit, just a bit. He gets into these moods well enough; the longer he has a moment, the more exhausted he gets during them. Like a fish floundering in a net. He was bound to lose steam.]

[ a lot happens in three days -- you wouldn't think it, perhaps, given the staid nature of the fleet. but jim barnes left and therefore one more foundation brick in peggy's careful architecture tumbled away. it exacerbates the way she thinks on max's absence. she comes to wonder whether he, too, has disappeared.

but she (unlike him) does not wear her worries on her face. she tamps them down. they stew in her guts and put cracks in her walls, but they don't interrupt her poise. not, at least, until business brings her into the cargo bay on the third day.

rock but barely lifts his old doggie head to look at her as she enters. she hears the pleasant rumble in the dog's throat first, and second the lulling snores from the collapsed figure against the wall. jesus-ruddy-christ on a cream cracker. ]

You. [ she breathes. whispers, more like. and crosses the bay on hard-hitting heels. when she reaches him, the first thing she does is promptly nudge him with the toe of her shoe. and not softly, neither. ]

[He must've been preeeetty tired, to not hear those click-clacking shoes. When she nudges him a bit roughly with her shoe he startles awake, hands making fists and raised in front of him. Glancing up quickly provides him with a shot of Peggy looming (dangerously) over him, and his alarmed expression melts into an exasperated one as he collapses back against the wall again with a grunt.

Rock's ears perk and he stares up at Peggy from Max's lap, one paw lounging over the thigh of Max's bad leg.

Welp.]

Hrmph.

[A legitimate reply. Hello, Peggy, the most begrudging acknowledgement.

He's tired, you interrupted his nap.]

Finished with your strop, then?

[ -- no mercy. no quarter. perhaps peggy had expected him to be made of sterner stuff -- or perhaps she was simply piqued and pained that he should abandon them in any capacity, even if only for a few days.

her hands stay on her hips. and she stays looming. ]

[He rubs his eyes, then stares for a long moment, brow furrowed yet again.]

... Did you need me to leave longer?

[He doesn't sound bitter or sarcastic. He genuinely wants to know. She seems to be angry still, and he doesn't really want to bring about any of Peggy's wrath right now. It's not that he isn't... upset still. Not at all. As far as he's concerned, his words are still utterly accurate. It was a mistake to go to the doctor, a mistake to get any closer to this crew and have them... tend to him in any way to help him.

But Max, he's cooled down and he's too wiped out right now to fight it. This was perhaps the hardest week -- well, second hardest -- he's had outside of his world, in ways he isn't sure he knows how to articulate right now.]

[ and with a simple sentence, agent carter's frosty facade splits into pieces. her cheeks puff with a long, suffering sort of sigh. and (tell no one!) she slides down the wall so she might sit with max. it's a choice she most certainly would not have made were she not wearing wide-legged trousers. ]

I never needed you to leave in the first place. You left for you. Not for me.

[ she folds her arms over her knees. ]

[He nods in agreement. He did leave for himself.]

This place... it's... exhausting. All these faces. Voices.

[He thumbs a spot on the dog's scalp, old raggedy bracelet flicking left and right. He tucks his chin a bit, into the imperator's scarf he'd been given, before Furiosa and the girls drove off into the salt flats.]

So you sought out solitude. [ but why did it have to come at the expense of our concern? peggy swallows the sharper retort. seconds ago, she'd watched how poorly he'd reacted to her aggression. her disappointment. perhaps she could keep it in check for a day or two, before she inadvertently chases him off once again. ] Only...I wish you didn't feel as though you needed to run so far to find it.

[...........

He blinks, is quiet for a moment. Quirks his brow.

Points toward her, turning slightly. Sounds coolly confused.]

You were worried.

[ she doesn't much care for the ease with which he reads her. deceiving others has always been a skill she's possessed, but it's hard to lie to a man who understands social cues in an entirely different dialect. he reads the smaller indications, and lays her true concerns bare.

stiffening, peggy must accept his assumption. but she doesn't let it go without her own particular spin: ] I am the first mate aboard this vessel. It's my duty to worry about absent crew.

[He still looks utterly confused, scratching at the dog's ear still.]

Ran further than this before, in this ship. You didn't seem to mind.

[Yes Peggy, please do answer, he's interested.]

[ for a moment, her jaw works without a sound. and peggy begins to feel the particular heat of being in the very same position she so often thrust upon him -- the limelight, with questions lurking behind full-stops.

she does him the courtesy of looking into his eyes when she answers. ] Ordinarily, that's not after parting on such...tense terms.

[ not exactly an apology. ]

[Lucky Peggy, he never expects one.

He considers what she says, tries to think of a way to say what's in mind.]

... Shouldn't waste so much worry on what our parting terms are.

You'll go gray.

[ thoughtful, she touches a curl. ]

There's product for that, you know. [ peggy doesn't smile. but then again, she's not hostile either. ] Besides. Some -- people are worth a few silver strands.

[ she nearly said some things. but all she could hear, still, is the echo of him proclaiming himself a person and not a thing. far be it from her to bulldoze that opinion. ]

[Can you make him anymore confused? Because... really.]

Don't understand why so many people —

[He huffs, biting his tongue. He wants to be invisible. And that's impossible. And for some reason, people talk to him. Ask if he's okay. Offer to patch him up, or offer him booze, or offer their services as a doctor. Snap him out of his episodes, are willing to cook with him, work with him, pilot next to him —

Why?

What did Furiosa see in him, to offer him refuge with her people?

What does anyone see, when they look at him? Why doesn't it match up with what he sees?

The ghosts always knew better.]

We invest our energy wherever we want to. Perhaps it doesn't require your understanding -- only your respect for someone else's choice.

[ for whatever reason, she's latched upon him as someone worth fussing over. worrying about. hell, even her inclination to argue raw with him carries with it an ounce of affection. she's a spy, after all; she could always deflect if she wanted to. ]

[He shakes his head, a smile ghosting his mouth.]

Can't tell who's crazier.

[How's that for respect, you rattling nuts.]

[ a snort. a laugh. ]

I assure you, I've passed every psych eval they've ever thrown at me. Flying colours, even. [ ... ] They don't let just any old regular lunatic into the S.S.R.

[ a slip of the tongue, perhaps. or a rare gesture of honesty for which she requires no return. no quid pro quo. ]

[And fortunately for Peggy and any and all concern for privacy, Max doesn't bat an eye -- he doesn't care what people did. What they do. Nothing really holds any weight anymore, once you live in a society where so little exists in the way of occupations. She's not a slaver, or a cannibal, or a dictator, and for that he rests easy and accepts the rest.

Of course, he does file it away. But that's that.]

Mm.

[His mildly pleasant expression relaxes.]

If I leave -- f'I vanish for a while. It's not anybody.

Just need to clear everything out.

...Even this time?

[ cagey, and her guilty conscience surfaces. peggy does have one of those. but she doesn't trot it out except for on special occasions. ]

[He shrugs.]

Left because I was — [He stumbles on the word, bites it back, clears his throat.] worried.

Staying places like this, um. I know m'not... right.

[You know. Not of sound mind. To put it nicely, as far as he's concerned.]

... I mean, I was mad at you, too.

But I'm usually mad at someone for something. Everyone makes it easy.

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