driftfleet | 084.1 Video

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084.1 Video

Who: Lance Hunter and yourself, should you choose to engage!
Broadcast: yes
Action: Marsiva
When: no time like the present!

[ the comm seems to be haphazardly leaning against something, and the image you get is crooked. a sleeping man, who almost instantly awakes with a start. no scream, mercifully, he's quite over screamer videos, and besides, it wouldn't really be that surprising under the circumstances, now, would it? his eyes dart around the room, his feet flying off the cot and touching the ground. the moment he speaks, his accent undeniably and unapologetically identifies him as an englishman. ]

Not again - [ he groans, looking around him. the first time he was knocked out and kidnapped happened because he was foolish, he trusted a friend when clearly he had overestimated the bond, bloody spies, he's had his fill of bloody spies. but this time - he has no idea what happened. one minute, he's in a pod, sailing to freedom and the next - he's in this bed. he must not have deactivated something. do they have a blasted tracker beam on these things? so paranoid! ] Oi, @therealshield, you forgot to paint your eagle - I'm gonna have to deduct your merits - [ no answer. the room really doesn't seem like anywhere his previous captors kept him in, and that's rarely a coincidence. he gets up, and the comm seems to slip off whatever it was leaning against and end up in a new position, one that shows the back of the man, as he walks towards a window. ] ...you have got to be joking.

[ and a moment later ] Bloody aliens!

[ the man comes in and out of the frame, as he's clearly examining his surroundings, before he heads back to check on what he's got by his cot, and notices the comm. picking it up, you now get a close up of his face - ] Little red light - you're either going to explode or - [ that sure looks like a camera, doesn't it? he holds it directly in front of his face. ]

Take me to your leader.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ oh, perfect. here, she thinks, is the best way to try and catalyze the conversation. she can pretend it's accidental if she's smooth enough in her wording. ]

Not in the least. The Starstruck's first mate -- my ship's first mate, that is -- transferred over from another one. Man by the name of Steve Rogers. He used to belong to the Pathstone before we poached him.

[ ahem. she doesn't like bringing steve's name up, least of all like this. but it's a means to an end. ]

[ oh, smooth, that is one hell of a namedrop. he would maybe brush it off as a coincidence, if he hadn't just seen black widow's face come up in one of those video replies. ]

If you have something to say, say it. It's been a long day.

[ is she trying to come out as shield, by namedropping captain america? he's far too tired of mind games. and if she is shield - which shield is it? because he cannot stomach another pitch from the we-don't-understand-the-chain-of-command club. ]

And if that thing happens to be where they keep the alcohol around these parts, all the better.

[ because he needs a stiff drink. ]

Give me your frequency first. [ ... ] Put that augment to use, find the number, and give it over. I'll do the rest.

[ peggy sighs. ]

And I'll make sure you've got a bottle of space whiskey waiting for you once you've got your billet.

[ how's that for coming out and saying it? ]

[ it's about as good as he could hope for, he supposes. at least it exists at all. it had better do the trick, though, because if he has to spend a week on this ship, sober - he is going to need one hell of a compensation when he gets out.

he's about to argue with her request when, as naturally as his phone number, it comes to him and he recites the frequency. ]

Oh hell, putting us through this dry has got to contradict some sort of intergalactic convention. Where're the Asgardians when you need them. [ odin sent lady sif to earth for one solitary kree, surely this warrants their attention. ]

[ thanks to the atroma's sick sense of humour, a private feed is somehow a little more...crackly. a little less clear. these conversations are prone to dropping, peggy knows, so she's got cut to the chase. ]

The whole fleet can see your conversation with Agent Fitz. [ ... ] Tell me, are you with SHIELD?

[ oh for the love of - you know what? good. he's sick and tired of secrets. had enough to last him 10 lifetimes. ]

Ladies first.

[ crumbs. ]

I'm not a SHIELD agent, if that's what you're wondering. [ but perhaps that's cruel without context. ] SHIELD doesn't exist in 1947.

[ 1947. he can't believe she just told him that as if that's supposed to make any goddamn sense.

she's not shield. 1947. steve rogers. english. if he weren't so adapt at maintaining an ignorant expression, she could practically see the wheels turning. ]

What's your name?

If you're with SHIELD, then you already know my name.

[ this marks the first time -- the first -- where she's embraced a legacy as-yet unlived. it had taken all the others who'd arrived before him to normalize, for her, the understanding that her name doesn't stay locked up in confidential files. hers becomes a name recognizable, and that there are moments (like this one) where perhaps she ought to embrace it. ]

[ embrace it might be going a bit far with him. he hasn't been at shield long, hasn't memorized its history like coulson. but he does know one thing from recent research - peggy carter had werner reinhardt in her sights, and let him live to become daniel whitehall. it's everything that's wrong with shield, in his mind. when you have the big bad in your crosshairs - you eliminate. ]

Carter. [ he'll give her that much, that recognition, that confirmation. he's not one for games, after all. ]

Peggy. [ might as well. ] And you're -- [ a moment while she consults the other conversation. ] Lance Hunter, was it? Seems as though you're from a far jaunt down the timeline compared to Agent Fitz.

[ -- good. she wants to know what happens. ]

We've yet to determine the distance, but unless he got himself one hell of a plastic surgeon I'd say far closer than yours.

[ bad things, peggy. so many bad things.

simmons would be so excited to fill his shoes. coulson may just die again. but right now what hunter sees in front of him isn't the face of peggy carter: founder, but the faces of isabelle hartley and idaho: deceased. ]

Thing is -- as far as I've heard from other sources [ and one can imagine that steve rogers is chief among them ] SHIELD is no longer in operation. Agent Fitz isn't far enough along to confirm or deny that claim.

[ but you might be... ]

[ now there's a crossroad. he knows what bobbi would do - lie through her teeth. shield isn't supposed to exist. and he can do that easily enough, play it off as if the real shield is a rogue faction that tries to linger on, that he tangled with them while working with some other, legitimate agency. that should be a clear indicator that it's the wrong path to take - and yet. he does feel a commitment to coulson, to the team that will remain the real shield to him. ]

What's in a name, that which we call by an acronym is no less a band of never-been-merry crusty old arsholes with a stick up their backsides. [ let her make of that what she likes, he's having a hell of a day and it is time to pay it forward. he's not even sure he believes any of this - time traveling nonsense. ]

[ cryptic -- or at least a ham-fisted attempt at it. only peggy suspects that tells her more than what she'd bargained for.

instead of pressing, again, for the information she wants, peggy sighs. ]

I always hated Romeo and Juliet. What a load of bollocks.

[ says a fellow starcrossed lover. ]

I always found the part where she dies along with him unrealistic.

[ a betrayal is far more what he's come to expect, in his love life as well as his professional career. die for nothing and no one but yourself, and you won't die in vain. ]

Not to mention maudlin.

Not everyone can play with the hand they've been handed.

[ really, he's the sort of man who has no business being high up in the shield food chain; he'll keep coulson's secrets, but the organization itself to him is the personification of madness. oh look, here's something or someone exceedingly dangerous! let's keep them! ]

That's what happens when you expect fourteen year olds to have poker faces.

[ look, he's the one who brought up romeo and juliet. she's just following the analogy through. ]

[ shield's problem is more an overabundance of exceedingly good poker faces, but he'll give her that, his is not one of them, not when he isn't entirely invested which he isn't. ]

I like to see it as more of a cautionary tale on the destructive nature of secrets.

Sounds like you might be in the wrong line of work. Mister Hunter.

[ agent hunter? she's not certain. she'll wait for a correction. ]

[ not officially, not yet. well, no one's official anymore, not really. he has a lanyard?

no correction comes. being an agent was never an aspiration of his, he just grew attached to coulson and the team, liked being close to bobbi again - though that's out the window as a reason to stay now, now it's more about sticking it right back to her and mack. mister is fine with him. ]

Crosses my mind at least twice daily. [ okay, that's an exaggeration, again. most of the time he loves his job, and he can't pretend like having a steady employer, a steady team doesn't have its perks. but there was a reason he liked the private sector so damn much. things were so much simpler there. ] I could open quite a good pub, I reckon, serving the classics - none of these fancy master chef creations - good home cooking, bangers and mash, mushroom soup, Yorkshire pudding with a nice jug of gravy. [ there's definitely an underlying tone to his voice, though the alternative is one that pops up in his mind every now and then, on particularly bad days. it's a very particular type of person who sticks with this life forever - and that type is definitely not him. ]

It certainly sounds safer. Leagues more cozy. [ and she can't argue with a man's choice to leave the career, should it come to it. although seeing as she doesn't know hunter all that well, she admits he might be putting up a 'brave face' so to speak. ]

Add a decent cottage pie to the menu, and I'd be sold.

[ he's well aware that this job isn't one he can do forever, but he's not quite done with it yet, either. ]

The secret to a good cottage pie - mince your own meat. Putting it through a mincing machine is no more than mutilating the carcass into inedible stodge.

I'm sure you must be right. Unfortunately, the advice is lost on me -- I absolutely do not cook.

[ well. except when captain america coaxes her into helping him in the kitchen, but that's a secret worthy of fort knox. ]

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