driftfleet | Open | A Monthly Starstruck Mingle!!

"I can ask, but... hn, fine."

He pauses, narrowing his eyes as if he had just imagined throwing someone into the sun.

"... Not a Stark."

"Not a Stark," she agreed. "Not least of all because I'm not convinced Tony will even deign to step aboard the Starstruck, now."

Things had been...difficult. Of late.

His eyebrows raise.

"... Trouble?"

"Maybe." But then she shakes her head and commits to a better answer: "Yes, trouble's likely. Something happened back home between Tony Stark and Steve. An argument. A big one."

"Mn. And it's a... dangerous argument?"

He considers the rather discontent way Peggy's responded.

"... Do I need to hit anyone?"

Max has great solutions. Mostly he figures he'd be hitting Stark, what with Steve being Peggy's punching bag to bear if he truly needed it. That said, Max is only half serious. He's pretty sure she'd punch anyone she needed to without his help.

"Best to not," hit anyone. But Peggy's smile is grateful. Deep at heart, she's a raucous person. She solved her problems with her fists -- and she can't fault him for feeling the same way.

"Things got heated, back home. Their whole bloody crew got split and pitted against each other. Ideally, that won't happen here."

She'll do her best to stop it.

He hums.

"Seen that a lot... Dissension."

When the world ends and everything turns to radioactive ash, you have a lot of, hn. Disagreements. You know. He leans heavily against his table, selected specifically because it can handle him and his sturdy frame.

"Any hope of it, ah, resolving?"

Because that's gonna be a pain in the ass to deal with, if these disagreements persist on the Starstruck. He's too grumpy and too solitary to listen to bickering; then he might really try to boot them.

What a kind soul, he is.

"Hard to say. Stark's as delicate as his father was, I feel, and Steve's -- well...Steve is Steve. He once gave me a tour of Brooklyn via all the alleyways he got pummeled in as a kid. All because he'd refuse to back down. Even so, I don't think them butting heads would ordinarily be such a problem.

Only it's over Barnes."

And she believed she didn't have to explain to Max why the man with the metal arm might be a problem. He'd witnessed for himself the mighty damage he could do. Had done. Peggy had found an mentally acrobatic way of forgiving him, but she had the benefit of knowing the man before HYDRA had hollowed him out.

He blinks.

"The battle fatigue man. Mm."

The one we had some pretty deep conversation over, the one Max spoke with in the cargo bay before. He's not particularly bad, not evil, but Max can only imagine what could have caused a rift here. The man had a lot of baggage, lots of issues Max could understand.

"Why him?"

She peels the bandage off, so to speak, with little tact but a lot of sympathy. Best to tell the story quickly:

"He fell into enemy hands. During the war. And they -- changed him. Changed the very workings of his mind so that a switch inside of him might be flipped and he would do their dirtiest work for them. That's the switch that was toggled when the Atroma hijacked him and he attacked me, and others, on the Iskaulit.

Barnes did a lot of terrible things -- but none while he was in command of his own faculties. But now I'm intimately familiar with the desire to hold him accountable for those things, regardless."

But she doesn't. Couldn't. Tony, on the other hand, seems determined to leave the asset out in the cold.

Max cocks his head slightly, interest clouding his features - in quiet thought. He can already tell there's so much more to this than just falling into enemy hands and doing a lot of terrible things; it's become personal, in some way. More of a wound.

"He did something someone here can't forgive."

Not necessarily Peggy, because she doesn't seem... malicious about it. Conflicted, but not malicious, not angry or battling something she can't contain inside her.

But it's enough to cause a fight between the beard and the brawn.

"Guessing it's Stark."

Because -- well. Steve seems to really care about Barnes, as he cares for Peggy.

"I don't know the specifics. But -- yes, it's Tony. Worse yet, he can't abide by Steve defending his boyhood friend. It's a muddy mix of hurt feelings and clashing principles. I've only heard hearsay from the others: from Barnes himself, and -- Natasha, the red-head who comes by sometimes."

Peggy can guess at what crime was committed, but she'd rather not. It puts an ice in her veins and she begins to doubt she could properly abide by Barnes's defense, either.

Ah. He knows Natasha.

Most importantly, Max uses his own experiences to try and suss out why Stark would be hurt — Barnes did terrible things, the worst things perhaps, if 'dirtiest work' was anything to go by. Immortan Joe used the warboys to pillage and give their lives, to kill, to destroy. He imagines what someone like Barnes could do under someone's control.

"You don't know what he did? To make Stark angry."

He bites his cheek.

"... Maybe you should know. Should ask."

She watches him with care. Sounds out the depth of how willing Max is to becoming involved in this conversation. Months ago, he wouldn't have bothered offering advice -- let alone advice that suggested she ought to get even more tangled up in it all.

"I could," Peggy admits. "But there's no guarantee they'd tell me. Even Steve can be choosy about which parts of the future he 'spoils' in telling. Not even Stark is willing to say it to me. Which, ironically enough, tells me all I need to know."

I'll say. Max hardly sees the progress, but at least Peggy's perceptive. As always.

"... They should tell you. Shouldn't even be a choice for them," he says, quite sure of himself. "Gonna involve you in some way whether they mean to or not f'they haven't already; only fair you know why you're playing, hmm, referee." He glances over it her, cocking his head to the side, studying her carefully. "... R'you nervous about what they'll say?"

"A little," she admits. Just to him, maybe. There's a certain brave face about the contents of the future that she must maintain and meet. Should she prove herself fragile, they'll never tell her anything again. But Max is removed from all of that.

"Whatever happens, it's serious enough to drive a wedge between their teammates. Serious enough to risk being labeled a criminal and fugitive. I know for certain that Steve would always take that risk for his best friend. For Barnes. But Tony Stark -- I haven't figured out his motives. Maybe I shouldn't try. I'm not certain I want another reason to be uneasy around Barnes."

Max sits, patient and listening. He really has no stake in this, in the end, but he knows this is one of Peggy's greatest concerns in the fleet - keeping things in line, keeping people from home relatively on good terms. Bucky's rampage had only proven to him that she was willing to quite literally throw herself into the fray. So he considers what he says with more care than usual from the likes of him.

"It's better to know what you're dealing with. What if something happens and you're... uninformed? Could cost you,hmm... reaction speed."

If someone or something showed up, or if relationships grow especially sour.

He looks at her for a moment.

"You're an agent, aren't you? Information's... priceless."

"Priceless, maybe, but not costless."

She cards her fingers stiffly through her hair. It's difficult, now, to juggle an agent's instincts with the rest of the muck flying about. Sentiment. A sensitivity to timelines. An understanding that none of it will mean diddlysquat once she leaves the fleet.

"Take you, for example. I could work a lot harder at getting information out of you, couldn't I? But I don't. It's a cost I'm not willing to pay."

Something similar could be said for Steve Rogers.

He huffs something almost a laugh.

"Sure. But my information's not worth a damn."

The costs are much, much higher in this, aren't they?

Higher than some sob story from a desert wanderer in some other world he thinks, anyway.

Peggy shakes her head. She understands why he might think so -- and, in some very basic ways, it's true. The intel she might glean from him has no impact on larger world events in her lifetime. The realms and scales are markedly different. And yet!

"It's worth something to you. Or you wouldn't guard it."

He quiets at that, unsettled by the thought. He doesn't want that sort of thing to hold any value - but it does. And the idea of someone looking at him and seeing potential secrets to break into doesn't do his asocial behavior any favors. It's only lucky that Peggy has already sunk her fingers into his head a little, that he doesn't grow somber and surly at her.

Besides, she does attempt some level of space for him, to let him pace himself.

He could appreciate that, even if he has his gripes.

"That why you don't talk about yourself?" He looks at her, cocking his chin slightly. "There's a big cost?"

Peggy nearly lies. It's so easy to lie -- especially with someone like Max, who might begrudge her a bit of artifice but would rarely call her on it so long as it didn't threaten him. But in the end, that's just enough of a reason to tell the truth as it is to lie.

"Many of my secrets aren't actually my own. I signed a -- an oath, of sorts. Not to disclose anything that might somehow harm King and Country." But now, even back home, that oath felt hollower and hollower every day. "Beyond that, I don't like telling anyone anything they might use against me."

It's hard enough to keep her job as it is.

He studies her for a moment, thoughtful.

"That's not all of it."

Leaning back, he studies her, almost uncomfortably, the silence holding the space together.

"I think you're scared of a different kind of cost."

He's hardly one to sugarcoat, least of all to Peggy.

"I haven't any idea what you could mean."

Except (of course) she knew exactly what he meant. And had it been anyone else who'd insinuated the same, she might have been leagues more abrupt and dismissive. But punishing Max for showing interest -- any interest -- would run counter to her agenda. So instead, she lies without any real attempt to pass it off as truth.

He hardly looks swayed. In fact, he hmph's.

"M'not completely oblivious. No king and country here. No oaths. But you like to learn about everyone else — y'like getting under people's skin and knowing how they wear it. But you don't want anyone to get under yours and know how you work."

He shrugs.

"... Not like I'm unfamiliar with the idea."

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