text & video » open

[mucked]

Who: Peggy Carter, some rumours, and you!
Broadcast: text, then video.
Action: y, aboard the starstruck.
When: today!

[ a message materializes on the network around midday: ]

Peggy Carter's got a veritable guy-pile of suitors: Edwin Jarvis, Max Rockatansky, Jason Wilkes, Jack Thompson, Howard Stark, Stefan Salvatore, Steve Rogers, Sam Winchester, James Barnes, Clint Barton, Daniel Sousa, and counting! How many more can you name?

[ and not long after (in a state of utter pique and dismay), that same network registers a rather heartfelt reaction -- but this time with accompanying wide-eyed video. ] Jack -- Jack Thompson? Un-bloody-likely. The only thing he's ever got his eyes on is the next greasy rung on the ladder. [ peggy scoffs, disgusted. ] As pranks go, this one's been truly shambolic. The first of April was days ago.

[ in a few hours, she'll enjoy her meltdown all over again when she finds a box of sponsor gifts in the cargo bay filled with stickers, each with a different so-called suitor's name scribbled into the blank space. all of them are filled in except for an ominous pile with an attached note: in case there's so many you start to forget their names. blanks included for any others that we might have missed. ]

Comments

[winn]

[ he did tell her. steve's looking pretty good right now, isn't he? ]

Don't worry, I'm only a danger to myself. I do have limits, I mean, when my girlfriend tried to get Kara fired I definitely did not help with that, I helped Kara, I do keep some priorities and a sense of right and wrong, I did that for Kara because I also know her and what she was going to do with that information.

[ and if he's perfectly honest with himself, it's also a lot worse. it's not just beautiful women, it's anyone who shows any interest in him, in being his friend. ]

And I have Kitty now.

[mucked]

[ steve's always looking pretty good. oh, the curse of true love. ]

Then, by your own qualifying factors, your hopelessness isn't technically so hopeless.

[ it's not the most perfectly logical checkmate, but she's eager to rationalize him out of his funny little opinion on the matter. ] You may as well be inoculated. Immured, even, to the beautiful women of the galaxy.

[winn]

Yeah -

[ there's that hopeless goofy smile he always gets when he thinks about kitty. she's improved his life in so many ways. ]

Still do anything for Kitty, though, and Kara, and...all my friends. Basically I'm kind of a happy pushover.

[mucked]

I do know a little bit of how that feels. [ after all, she's copped to committing what could have been treason just to clear a friend's name. and it's no stretch to imagine her protecting a good friend as fiercely as a lion might. yet she wouldn't dare consider herself a pushover. peggy's loyalty has never been easily won -- and often people have it without realizing so. ]

We're no one without the people who've built us up and shaped us, after all. [ ... ] We owe them our help, if nothing else.

[ who would she be were it not for michael? for steve? for howard and jarvis and angie and even dottie underwood? ]

[winn]

You know, I bet if Steve wasn't Steve? You'd find a nice way to spin his fondueing too.

[ amused. not that he disagrees with her. his lack of boundaries with the kind of help he provides, however, is what lands him in the field with no protection, abandoned on a foreign planet by a glowing stargate to fend for himself. really not the best strategic move in any way, not to protect your one way home. ]

I don't like to think about it as something that's 'owed', score keeping is for games, not people...I'm happy to help. It's just that sometimes I wish I wasn't an idiot about how I do it.

[ like with james; he nearly got him and mon-el killed. and livewire. and all the people that nutty professor was gonna hurt. like with alex; he should have thought to ask for a weapon or a guard. like with kara, so many times. he knows when it comes to saving lives she thinks with her heart, he could have done more to try to balance that out with solid strategies. ]

[mucked]

[ she starts with a look -- impatient and long-suffering -- and a shake of her head. oh, no, there's not a sweet way to spin what happened with the fondue missteps. except, of course, to accept her own culpability in the matter. which she won't. how easy it's been to tease out the rougher edges of both steve and winn in this conversation, but peggy doesn't much volunteer her own stupid choices. she doesn't talk about the spark of jealousy after seeing captain america snogging private lorraine, nor the shots fired in its wake.

everything else, however! she can take in stride. ]

I'm afraid learning how to be less of an idiot takes time. As does learning how to discern the best course of action. [ she wets her lips. ] I'm glad you didn't have to fight a 'world war' to learn it.

[ the price for that lesson is one she's paid a hundred times over -- in part, she realizes, so that future generations might not have to pay out the nose with its young men and women just to figure out the best way to help someone without burning cities to the ground in the process. ]

[winn]

Me too - definitely - yeah, I would not be good at war -

[ as in he would surely die or become a trophy both sides fight over, and have people die in the name of protecting him. yeah, he'll pass on both options. ]

[mucked]

[ good at war. what a funny way of putting it -- peggy gives her head another brief shake. ]

No, perhaps not. But nor did I expect I'd be worthwhile to send into the field. Circumstances change us nearly as much as other people do.

[winn]

Yeah - I'm definitely feeling that.

[ he nods. being thrown into the field proved to him he's a lot stronger than he ever gave himself credit for. he didn't hesitate when j'onn led him right to what was going to be the epicenter of a massive explosion if he didn't manage to stop it - and he just did it, because he had to. only a few months ago he never would have believed himself capable of such feats. ]

[mucked]

By no means am I praising the war itself, but I came very close to spending all of it behind a desk. And, after that, I would have spent the rest of my life in some modest home in an up-and-coming London neighbourhood. Everything would have been utterly dull.

[ for once, she doesn't quite look him in the eye when she talks. it's not a proud opinion to hold, but it's an honest one: ] In many ways, the war was the best thing that ever happened to me. How maudlin.

[winn]

[ he's quiet for a moment. ]

I get it. I mean, for Supergirl to save the day - there has to be something bad happening to innocent people. And helping Supergirl completely changed my life.

[mucked]

Such a double-edged sword, isn't it? Forced to reconcile a benefit gained from a nasty problem. [ and that's putting it lightly; good lord, she doesn't even want to consider how steve must grapple with it. despite having both worked together through those years, they don't often talk about the war. so much seems best left unsaid. ]

[winn]

It's not like we're lighting the fire so we can extinguish it, though, we're trying to help. I don't think it's wrong to figure out that helping others helps you.

[mucked]

True enough. Of course.

[ but that skirts 'round the issue. she does hope, quite sincerely, that his work doesn't lose him sleep. but peggy will never escape the fact that her agency was integral to developing the atomic bomb. hell, howard stark was integral to it. ]

[winn]

[ plenty of things about the job make him lose sleep, but so far it's not his own creations. ]

What were you planning on being, before the war broke out?

[mucked]

Oh, Lord. I was eighteen. [ she puffs a sigh through her cheeks -- offers shrug of her shoulders. ] I was still in school, actually. Middle sixth, poised to take the entrance exams for Oxford or Cambridge. I had my eye on Lady Margaret Hall, much to my other's disappointment. Never had the chance, though. Bletchley recruited me before I finished the school year.

[winn]

What were you gonna study?

[mucked]

It was always going to be a toss-up between maths and linguistics. [ ... ] Luckily for me, the war effort needed both.

[winn]

It's a pretty perfect fit. I was never really into non-code related linguistics, but I gotta say I'm enjoying learning languages now.

[mucked]

I suspect the augments give us a boost in language learning even outside the handful of tongues that come pre-packaged. [ which isn't an attempt to downplay his recent enjoyment, rather an oblique celebration of it. ] Although most of what I can speak is part of that standard issue information dump.

[ she drains the last of her lukewarm tea. ]

Perhaps you can help me brainstorm something. I've been wanting to piece together a puzzle that can be delivered orally or textually, but which doesn't necessarily rely on a knowledge of English. I have two native Japanese speakers on board and I've promised them I'd try to include them in the 'fun', next time.