driftfleet | (no subject)

[ she nods, because the answer is easy. ]

Of course -- but like any city, it has its best parts and its worst parts. [ peggy considers him with a careful expression. ] I left London shortly after the war started, and went to Bletchley. And Bletchley led me, the long way 'round, to New York. I don't regret a moment of it.

[ I've lived a life, she told him and it tugs a smile from him now, too. it's a remarkable trait, being able to live without regrets, not one he had mastered himself. at least, not yet. ]

I remember these sort of schools. They were always 'round the Upper East Side.

[ Bucky always used to flirt up those girls when they were growing up ]

Plaid skirts and jackets and all?

[ not imagining it. nope. nope. ]

[ a hard, sudden laugh. ] Yes, Steve. Jackets and all -- at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, at least. Bletchley wasn't a school. Bletchley was where I went after I was...recruited. The dress-code was no less strict, but it did allow for some variety.

[ she words it delicately, because now they tread too close to dear old michael. ]

[ let him humor his dreams, Peg, it's not every day he gets all of these visual aids. ]

Just asking -

[ totally innocent. ]

what did you do? at Bletchley?

[ -- it's altogether too easy to overlook the details he doesn't know. peggy pauses for a moment, and has to remind herself that steve rogers wasn't a spy. more than that, he wasn't even a british operative.

she admits: ] Code-breaking.

[ and getting engaged -- that's the portion to which she doesn't confess. ]

Edited 2016-08-12 21:34 (UTC)

That's pretty interesting.

[ another piece of the puzzle, then. one he files away to be kept safe as every other little detail he finds out over time. ]

I mean, a good place to start from.

[ before Agent Carter came to be. He almost wonders what was she like back then, in his mind she's always exactly the same. ]

[ a place to start from? she can't help but smile. there's something tantalizing to the prospect of steve trying to puzzle her apart -- and she can't decide whether she wants to make it easier for him, or more difficult. both options have their appeal. ]

It was. Interesting. To a point. But desk work is desk work -- in time, I was chomping at the bit to get into the field. [ it's a lie. she doesn't like lying to steve, but she likes the notion of trying to tell whether he can gauge a lie or not. ]

I'd think they'd be smart enough to see you deserve it -

[ but then again, he's the one who also doesn't get who hired the SSR morons who would now give her lunch orders instead of missions, what does he know. ]

Back then, it wasn't they who had to see it. If you can believe it, there was a time when I doubted I was cut out for fieldwork. I might never have left that desk, had someone not believed in me.

[ and in time, she'd paid it forward with steve. life's funny like that. ]

You?

[ he can barely imagine it. Peggy Carter always seemed amazingly confident to him, sure and stable, strong enough to face the oppression of their time and just about anything else. He can't seem to think of her as anything but. ]

I sure am grateful someone did.

[ what would the world look like without agent Carter, brilliant as she was, future founder of SHIELD.

What would Steve's life look like without her to point him in the right direction? ]

Me. [ she dips her chin. ] Good heavens, I was practically mortified the first time I was called into the boss's office to talk about how I'd been recommended for SOE work. One of their captains had taken an interest. I would never have joined up without that push.

It's funny how the world works, sometimes.

[ she's reticent. but it's not like her usual secrecy, cordoned off and tied tightly by the bonds of confidential work. no, this is something personal. whoever's name she isn't saying -- this soe captain -- he'd left and indelible mark on her.

and she's not certain whether she's prepared to admit that aloud. ]

I'd say. I guess everyone needs that one person who would tell them they're meant for more than what they're doing.

[ a small smile. it is funny, in a way. ]

I'm glad one of them could see that. You deserve that.

[ one of these days, he'd like to think he could have a word or two with some of those SSR officers who don't see that.

A man can dream. ]

[ bless you, steve. bless you and your good heart -- picking out the silver lining with such remarkable accuracy. like bouncing a shield off the very precise point needed.

peggy's laughter is loud, sharp, and filled with a strange nostalgia. ] Deserved it? Hardly. It was barely a step above flagrant nepotism. [ she crosses her arms, but stays nearby to him. ]

The officer who'd thrown my name into the hat, so to speak? My older brother. Cheeky bugger.

You have a brother?

[ he smiles, the things you find out about someone. He tries to imagine the man, would he have the same colors as Peggy? Would they look the same or entirely different? ]

I never realized.

[ maybe the man was back in merry ol' England when Steve met Peggy and the others at the SSR. ]

And I doubt many ever will. [ her mouth quirk -- not yet deciding whether to smile or to frown. ] His -- Michael's name likely won't end up in any file that isn't heavily redacted. His work was so private that it was well above my clearance.

[ unfortunately, true. she may have tried to source that information in other borderline-treasonous ways. ]

But he would have liked you.

[ it registers after a moment that when she speaks of him, of Michael, it's in past tense. he would have liked you, she says and it reminds him of the way he talks about his mom.

he reaches and takes her hand. ]

I'm sorry, Peggy.

Oh, stuff it. [ her voice is a little too casual. flinty, because it protects a heart broken long before it broke again when steve went missing. it seems he wasn't the only important person to suddenly exit her life. ] It was war. Michael knew the odds better than most.

[ and yet she grabs his hand, grateful all the same. ] Besides, I meant what I told you in that burnt out building -- [ back then, in the wake of barnes's assumed death... ]

Michael made his choice to work with the SOE. And after I lost him, I made a choice of my own.

[ -- and they all of them had to respect these choices. even the ones that send star-spangled heroes into watery, frozen depths. ]

To go be agent Carter.

[ life and death shape everyone in different ways, it would seem. Steve lost a father to a war and wanted to follow in his footsteps, Peggy lost a brother and followed the path he wanted her to take and in the end, they met each other, loved each other and lost each other. ]

Well, I may not have had the honor but I think it's safe to say, he would have been damn proud of you, Peggy.

[ for what she has done so far and for everything Steve knows she is destined to do in her future. ]

Proud of me? [ her laughter is protective. and indulgent. it hides how happy she is with steve's proclamation. ] He'd never let me hear the end of it, I imagine. He'd have gotten a thrill out of those horrible radio programmes, too.

[ it's almost as though she can already hear michael teasing, calling her betty carver. and yet-- ]

Maybe it's selfish of me to hope I might turn some corner on the Iskaulit, some day, and see him standing there.

[ -- like she did with steve, the first time around. starstruck, indeed. ]

-- They did radio programs?

[ oh good grief. he could handle the captain america cards and the action figures but a radio program, that's - ]

did they get my voice right?

[ a bit of a tease there before he shifts to stand before her ]

Hope is never selfish. Especially not from you.

Never. Not once. [ they made his voice too loud, too brassy, too beefcake. and in the wake of the war, when she missed his voice most, it had been a paltry replacement. oh, how she'd hated that programme. ]

Even so, it's popular. Plays all the bloody time -- and it has fans aplenty.

-- At least the Atroma never got their hands on it. Tony wouldn't have let me hear the end of it. He keeps asking about the song and the - USO girls.

[ he shakes his head. ]

Anymore Captain America merchandise and people around here might start getting the wrong ideas.

[ that he's a show off of a kind. or enjoys this sort of attention. a moment later and something else registers - ]

what did those programs made of you?

[ that caused all this irritation ]

As far as the Everyday Person is concerned, they made nothing of me -- [ she would never allow anyone, not for a moment, to mistake her reality with that persona. those who'd lived through the war with her knew better. on occasion, howard got cheeky and called her carver. such moments often ended with her surly and him slapped.

with an edge of annoyance on her voice: ] But there's a velvet-voiced nurse named Betty Carver who manages to get herself kidnapped by Nazis nearly every week, you know. And our dashing hero saves her every time.

[ -- she buries her bitterness just long enough to needle and tease: ] She always sounds dreadfully grateful to him, you know.

[ there is a definite snort coming from his end that's followed by a rather pained ]

oh no.

[ because that does sound as if they made her into some disney princess of a sort. A damsel in distress and it makes him shake his head. A part of him is irked that their lives, love, story was warped into some sort of children fantasy but it still beats the hell out of them trying to tell it as it actually happened.

at least children tales have happy endings, absurd as they might be. Maybe in tales, captain America gets to keep his Betty Carver. ]

Don't think I would have liked her very much.

Oh, hush. Say that too loudly and you'll break the heart of every housewife in America. Captain.

[ has she handled it well? her flame -- her soulmate, of sorts -- commoditized and adored by great swathes of the public. even angie, sensible angie, had used a few choice descriptors when describing a man she'd never met. ]

Not that America's housewives are listening to us, I suppose. God only knows how the Atroma market us, if they market us at all.

[ -- if this whole 'show' malarkey isn't just some elaborate ruse. ]