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driftfleet2017-06-09 09:55 am
thespaceopera) wrote in driftfleet2017-06-09 09:55 am
Calibration Post 1, "Daytime"
[ Not long after the shuffle, there's a ripple of static over the network - loud, sudden, and seemingly with no origin. It's puzzling, but there's no indication that it's going to happen again...
Until a minute later. Another surge of static comes in over the speakers, and then a voice - one some may find familiar, though not necessarily welcome, after all of this time... It's Diamond. Long time no speak, hmm?
Clearly, not all is well. She sounds very far away, for one. For another, she sounds... skeptical, almost alarmed. There may actually be real concern in her voice. ]
Again? Twice in one c--
[ Her sentence is cut short with a strangled gasp, followed by a moment of silence. What follows may be the sound of metal dragged across metal, but it's hard to place. When she speaks again, it's uncharacteristically monotonous. ]
... Bring them in.
[ A blip of lost time passes right after those words, before every passenger mysteriously wakes alone in their own unfamiliar room. The style of decor resembles that of the Marsiva's Hospitality Deck, if any passengers should remember what that's like. It sounds and smells the same as the host ship as well, all clean and chrome, but this set of rooms has only been used once, and for the very same purpose that befalls the fleet contestants now.
As for their hosts, there is no immediate sign of them, though some may recall a series of hideous, half-electronic screams before their memories begin to blur upon arrival...
Welcome back to the Marsiva, dear passengers. It's time for round two of calibrations. ]
[ This mingle will cover all non-calibration room interactions. Please continue to come back to it for the duration of the plot! You are, of course, free to post any other mingles/posts/etc. that you'd like. ]
Until a minute later. Another surge of static comes in over the speakers, and then a voice - one some may find familiar, though not necessarily welcome, after all of this time... It's Diamond. Long time no speak, hmm?
Clearly, not all is well. She sounds very far away, for one. For another, she sounds... skeptical, almost alarmed. There may actually be real concern in her voice. ]
Again? Twice in one c--
[ Her sentence is cut short with a strangled gasp, followed by a moment of silence. What follows may be the sound of metal dragged across metal, but it's hard to place. When she speaks again, it's uncharacteristically monotonous. ]
... Bring them in.
[ A blip of lost time passes right after those words, before every passenger mysteriously wakes alone in their own unfamiliar room. The style of decor resembles that of the Marsiva's Hospitality Deck, if any passengers should remember what that's like. It sounds and smells the same as the host ship as well, all clean and chrome, but this set of rooms has only been used once, and for the very same purpose that befalls the fleet contestants now.
As for their hosts, there is no immediate sign of them, though some may recall a series of hideous, half-electronic screams before their memories begin to blur upon arrival...
Welcome back to the Marsiva, dear passengers. It's time for round two of calibrations. ]
[ This mingle will cover all non-calibration room interactions. Please continue to come back to it for the duration of the plot! You are, of course, free to post any other mingles/posts/etc. that you'd like. ]
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She isn't wrong to think of it as she does. How to best stop the worst if it should come to pass. Rip scrubs a hand across his mouth, and considers her offer. Seems she's willing to take the responsibility for his burden on her shoulders, should that happen. It's not the easiest thing to ask of a person, captain or otherwise.
He won't tell her how he dreads the possibility. How he fears feeling the snap of a neck under his palm a second time, or the heated rush of blood as it pours out of a still breathing body.
She hasn't asked about those instances. Rip can only hope that means she hasn't seen them.]
All evidence to the contrary, I wasn't killing strictly for the sake of killing. [He offers it not to somehow lessen the potential danger, to make Peggy think he somehow might be safe should the wrong glitch take hold of him.] Every move I made had a purpose behind it. Miss Lance was not only the leader of the team, but a highly skilled and thoroughly trained fighter besides. I shot her to take her out of play. All the rest of it--
[A happy accident. The kind that makes his stomach knot to think about now.
Like Peggy, he empties his glass again. But Rip's barely gotten it swallowed before he's reaching for the bottle another time, half-wondering if the moment hasn't come to forgo the tumblers completely.]
It might not be impossible to reason with me in that, ah, state. But you shouldn't hesitate to do what is necessary. I certainly won't. [For the first time since he's sat, Rip brings himself to look at her. At the same time, he reaches over to once more refill her cup.] So consider this my permission, if you somehow think you need it.
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he talks about being reasoned with and (none too proudly) still finds herself wanting to crumple his nose with a fist. as the conversation moves onward and as the whiskey settles in, she's realizing that isn't the fairest reaction. not any longer. nevertheless, it's difficult to shake. so she buries it in the act of holding up her glass and inviting him to pour another measure inside. ]
Your permission isn't needed, no -- [ she tells him plainly between mouthfuls. peggy wants to be seen as the captain who would not hesitate to end a threat if a threat got dumped on her doorstep. whatever else she's done or failed to do, she knows what she strives to be. ] But it is appreciated.
[ and in the ensuing silence she takes grim stock of her responsibilities. a pilot, max, who has told her time and time again that she needs to be more ruthless with him in his more serious episodes. a cook, rip, who now gives her carte blanche to take necessary steps if he is once again stripped of those gloriously human restraints.
and a fellow captain, barnes, who'd asked for much the same and she had failed him spectacularly.
god, peggy might be the one to dodge his eye now when she broaches the next inevitable stumbling block of this conversation. ]
Just as I hope you will appreciate that, this time, I'll need to tell the first mate. [ her voice hesitates on the rank -- as though she'd stopped herself at the last moment from saying 'steve' instead. ]
If you do want to stay aboard the Starstruck, [ and she thinks he does, ] then that's my one condition. Non-negotiable.
no subject
Whom he might be again, given a particular and dreadful spark at the base of his brain.
He offers the possibility of reasoning not in an effort to save his own life, but rather, to mitigate what harm might be done. True enough, onboard the Waverider Rip had opted to destroy himself along with the ship if it meant he couldn't escape. But he believes—he hopes--that the manipulations that drove him to hold the Legends with such disregard might somehow not translate over to the Starstruck's crew.
And if it does—if he truly is beyond reason and logic and redemption—then the solution is clear. He's glad that Peggy seems to see it the same. Over the course of his time as a Time Master, and the past years especially, Rip has come to understand just how difficult the line between protecting lives can be to walk.
He refills her glass readily when she holds it up. Seems they're both drinking quicker now, already warmed by the whiskey. The lime almost doesn't taste weird any longer.
She makes mention of the first mate again, and Rip lets out a short, bitter laugh.] For all I know, he's already aware. [But even if he's not, Peggy's ultimately right. This can't be a secret he keeps any longer, unfortunately, so Rip merely nods his head.]
Do as you must.
no subject
[ she'd once made the suggestion that discretion is a virtue well-respected between herself and rogers. she'd meant it, too. so when peggy now suggests that she would have known had steve experienced that particular bit of someone else's mindscape, it's not to say that he would have rushed to reveal it to her by conversation. rather, she's convinced she would have read the experience into his body language, into his reticence, and into the way steve had come to hold himself within these halls.
for the time being, all she's seen of steve has reminded her of the week when the atroma had glitched romanoff into a dangerous child version of herself. he wears the weight of someone who knows things he wishes he never knew. had steve seen anything similar to what had taken place in rip's memories? well, she expects she'd have witnessed a different sort of tension: like old hardened threads of captain america come back to roost. she expects steve would have asked questions -- careful, but ultimately unsubtle.
maybe it's the whiskey -- maybe it's the damned bloody calibrations themselves -- but she clarifies with a very simple statement. ] His concerns have been elsewhere, certainly. I doubt you've so much as popped up on his radar.
[ it's not said cruelly. for once. a least, not with any criticism directed at rip. although it's possible her words allude to some blindspot of steve's. but peggy had caught an inkling of a quick and complex mind from the very first conversation. there are some threats, she thinks, he would never see coming. the subtle; the cerebral; the dishonest.
-- which makes it her responsibility to see them first. ]
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And yet, she apparently hasn't. He gives her a long and careful look--his concerns have been elsewhere, she offers, and certainly it's likely true. They've all been enduring this unwanted invasion of privacy, after all, night after night of having unexpected guests riffle through their memories, of being forced to do the same to their fellows.
But Peggy's concerns seemed to include Rip regardless. A potential difference between the captain and the first mate, or something more? At first he treats it like another bit of information tucked neatly away, confirmed with nothing more than a nod on Rip's part. The calibrations, the whiskey, whatever it is--he measures out his next words carefully.
They could be dangerous ones, after all.]
Another burden you've taken on to protect him, then? [Because Rip hasn't just had Peggy muck about in his head; no, he's likewise taken the journey into hers, found himself hosted by a precocious little girl demanding they hunt down dragons. Perhaps she remembers it more than Rip does her ventures, or perhaps she's just as clueless.
But it only seems fair, either way, to let her in on the truth of what he can recall.]
no subject
for a long moment, it feels as though rip is watching her. it chiefly reminds her that however clever she thinks she's been in sniffing out the tail-ends of certain implications, he's quite possibly equal to that skill. her lip curls; she lets her disappointment be registered. although she harbours a great deal of good regard and respect for her crew and her allies within the fleet, very few of them outside of romanoff give her cause to speak too carefully. most, she's realized, barely glance below a surface meaning.
not so with him. under other circumstances -- when she'd first met him -- that observation had been a kind one. it's part of why she'd wanted him on her ship.
today, it's a bitterer pill to swallow. ]
Burden is an unkind word for it. [ especially since she didn't feel it like she bore duty or responsibility. no, this is a bone-deep ache. this is instinct. she might even call it love, given the appropriate audience.
rip hunter isn't that audience. ]
I remember it all. [ her answer is stiff -- rushed, almost as though she'd flirted with the notion of lying, instead. peggy pulls a slow sip from her glass. ] So there's no need to play coy about you saw. I'm certain it must appear banal -- all that fuss for a vial of blood.
[ and maybe she'll be happier letting people think that's all it was. fuss. ]
no subject
[And Rip has carried so many of them over the course of years. His one blessing had been that, as someone who nearly became a Time Master herself, Miranda already stood privy to Rip's true profession. He wonders if their marriage would have worked at all had she not known, had he been forbidden to tell her. Certainly he expects the Time Masters would have had such a rule; they never wanted their captains to fall in love anyway.
And in the end, they'd never told their son. Jonas lived and died too young a life, knowing his father had to spend long gaps of time away at work, and when he would come back it would always be with some gift--and too little time to spend with his boy. Yet his enthusiasm never once faltered; Rip cannot think of a single time that his face didn't radiate joy and light when he showed up at his own doorstep.
She calls it an unkind word, and it's true enough--but that doesn't change what it is.
She's quick to point out that, unlike Rip, she can recall the full time he's spent among her memories. Of course there's a pang of envy at that convenience he apparently cannot share, but--it does make things easier, in a way. To grin wryly when she calls her own efforts banal, as if he might not understand the reasoning behind them.]
I lost this once. [He reaches for that chain, produces a pocketwatch with little more than a tug. Peggy might recognize it; if his own space bore any resemblance to hers, filled with objects of significance, then he expects the watch would have been prominent among them.] From my perspective it was only a matter of days, although in the natural unfolding of time, it had been eleven years. And in the middle of a mission to rescue teammates being held prisoner in a gulag by the most vile dictator the world would ever know, one whom sought to create something of a supersoldier of his own--
I made sure to get this back from him. [He moves his fingers over the cover. It's a familiar path, one he's worried over many times before. And at the end lies a clasp, easily opened with the slightest touch of a button.
The watch still ticks steadily on, sharing the passage of time. In contrast, the woman and child smile, forever frozen within that moment.
He doesn't smile any longer. All this time, and he still can't when he looks at their faces.]
I lost them. [Perhaps it's the alcohol, or the prospect of possibly sharing a memory of his own, on his own, without someone stumbling about whatever images have been conjured by the Atroma to represent his mind. Or perhaps he simply wants her to know, that in spite of all things, he does in some ways understand.] It's one of the few things I have here from home, and the only thing I think I would keep if I were given the choice. So I suppose in the end, you are correct, Miss Carter.
There is no need to play coy about it.
no subject
but maybe she won't have to head him off at the pass because rip seems inclined to divert himself, sparing her his questions and his curiousity and detailing something else instead.
through all of this, she'd not forgotten the woeful flood of feelings she'd felt after touching the console screen. the core structure of those feelings had felt intimately familiar to her -- even as the surface wasn't. it's not so large a leap to hear i lost them and remember immediately the names that had echoed through his head during that memory. peggy's posture stays as it is and she makes no effort to lean in and look at the contents. her guess is enough.
how many times had he tried? how often had he failed? and is the watch, carried with him even here, a source of comfort or one of guilt? because although she's tucked it tenderly away back on the starstruck, there was a time when she'd carried an empty glass vial with her nearly everywhere she went. peggy had arrived with it -- snatched by the fleet just moments after having dumped its contents into the east river.
she'd seen the watch on the 'ship', both nights. and she knows he'd touched the vial in her 'house'. it's an uncomfortable commonality and one she wishes she wouldn't have to feel so near to all her suspicions and misgivings. ]
-- How long has it been? [ and then, with an unhappy twist of her mouth, she adds: ] From your perspective?
[ since he'd lost them. what a dreadful euphemism. and not for the first time since they'd all been brought onto the marsiva, she thinks about the gps coordinates she's got memorized. committed.
her tone is gentler than it was earlier -- but no less distant. peggy isn't above using his grief to shadow and shelter a bit of her own, force him (maybe) to be so caught up in what he's lost to forget to comment on hers. no matter what he'd seen. ]
no subject
But he hasn't opened up to her about this to garner sympathy or because he needs her to know more. It's Rip's attempt to say that he does understand, that she need not make excuses at least about him. Perhaps it's a bit contrary given the topics of before, but in the end, Rip knows how damn exhausting all those secrets can be. How often will she be given opportunity to talk to them, not only with another captain but with someone else who has suffered the same pain of loss?
Should she wish it, of course. Vulnerabilities are rarely easy to reveal; less so now, thanks to the madness going on in all of their heads.]
I could ask the same--but it seems you managed to find him again anyway. [He tucks the watch safely away once more, his focus again returning to the glass.] In a way you won't back in your own world, because somehow, impossibly, he manages to live--but decades after you thought him gone.
[Yes, he's managed to piece that much of it together. Between the memories he'd seen in Natasha's mind, and realizing that the Sam who now also crews on the Starstruck is from an era far past Peggy's, Rip knows what must have resulted, even as he cannot define the causes.]
no subject
part of her continues to resent the common ground. she doesn't want to nurture any more sympathy for him than she already has. it'd been easier to feel angry. easier to feel threatened, worried, and responsible. ]
Seven. Seven decades spent frozen in the ice where he crashed -- but we all thought him dead. Arguably one of the greatest scientific feats of the 20th century. [ jarvis's words, not hers. ] And now of the 21st century, as well. He survived.
[ and she'd had no idea that he'd survived until she'd been brought here. it's a detail she decides she doesn't need to say. either rip will infer it, or he'll never have to. it's hardly his business. ]
no subject
Instead he listens while she talks about Steve, and—well. From the sounds of it, she isn't wrong.]
Some form of cryostasis, then. [Certainly suspended animation is a thing they've managed to achieve in Rip's time; the Waverider had kept Mick alive in a state of stasis for decades. But it would do far more than a plunge into frozen waters to do the same for Steve.] Somehow enabled by the serum, I'd imagine.
[He looks down; whether it's his place or not, it all provides answer to so many questions left unsatisfied—or patched over with half-truths.]
Are you planning on going after him? [On altering the history of her universe as it exists. Certainly she would want to; Rip's seen for himself just how much Peggy cares about Steve, and not during that first encounter when he'd tried on a shirt because she insisted on going shopping while trying to preserve the man's dignity.
No. Her avatar had been a child: a representation of innocence and dreams. Of fantasies. Rip has no doubt that in her heart, Peggy wants nothing more than to save Steve Rogers from that dragon—
One who breathes ice rather than flame.]
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none of them, none currently in the fleet, expect her to already possess the precise and likely coordinates for the valkyrie's final resting spot. precise because they'd been gifted to her by a man who'd been found in the very place. only likely because, by that same token, the man hadn't been steve but a stand-in for steve. jim barnes, captain america. alternate; other.
she offers rip a look. and she drinks. and then she weaves one of her better lies. ]
I'd love to. [ because there's no way in hell she can pretend like she wouldn't. not after rip had witnessed those particular memories. ] But no one from home will give me the coordinates. No one who knows them, at any rate. It's not exactly stock knowledge. From what I can glean.
[ one of her better lies, of course, because not an ounce of it is fault. jim was never from her home. not her version of it, at least. ]
no subject
She should at least be aware of the consequences, should she make that choice. She could still choose to ignore the, but Peggy should know. That burden should fall hard on the shoulders of any who seek to manipulate time for their own gain.
And more so the shoulders of someone who, by Rip's estimation, is a good person.
She admits the truth of her desire, and Rip is thankful for that. Far better that she be honest in this than pretend, somehow, that he still might not realize that much. As for the rest—well. It's plausible enough. She's put in the effort to try and find where she should look, that one place in the world where, beneath so much freezing cold, the life of her lover continues on.
However impossibly so.]
Then I suppose it's ultimately moot. [At least until someone from her world arrives who does know. It might still happen. Until it does, however, Rip won't say things are better the way they stand—
But he thinks they are. Hypocrite though it might make him.]
no subject
[ she echoes the word. it is precisely the same amount of understatement she might herself have offered, under different circumstances, to explain the predicament. but it sounds somehow worse when it comes from someone else. peggy picks at the rim of her cup with a thumbnail. she despises how her polish is chipped; the atroma didn't send along a bottle to help refresh it.
and she thinks about the agony she'd felt, though him, over failed attempt after failed attempt to save his family. maybe that's what makes her soften, ultimately, but something certainly does. something she doesn't name to him because she feels she doesn't have to. ]
Yes. I suppose it is. [ moot. except the future doesn't deserve steve rogers, evidently. not considering the wringer it's put him through. the ingratitude it shows. ] And for the time being, I'll take what I can get while we're both here.
[ she suspects he'd taken umbrage with her implication that she'd settled in the fleet; well, she doesn't need to provide an explanation now. but by god does she need a drink. so when she drains her glass, she doesn't bother waiting for a refill.
she grabs the bottle instead. ]
no subject
And if she found herself in that time, in that place, she might hear herself talk about the funny feeling of knowing the universe itself hadn't wanted him to save his family.
That his efforts were--moot.
He still tried, however. Even after attempt and attempt and failure, Rip had gathered a team to travel through time, to hunt down Savage. To kill the man before he could murder Rip's wife and son, and to one final time fail.
Hard to think it's been over a year since then.]
You should. [Taken umbrage is too polite a phrase; he'd judged her, unfairly so. For her ability to find comfort in this prison, to build a life within the walls provided by the Atroma--Rip had thought himself better suited, perhaps, to enduring the day to day while not settling into some manner of routine or worse, acceptance.
To find contentment here.
But he's no better, in the end. Not at all, because even under the circumstances they now endure, Rip cannot say he wouldn't wish this place on his family for another chance to hold them in his arms, alive.
Her switch is an appropriate one. Fortunate too, her foresight to grab two bottles. His own glass drained right along with hers, he sets it aside in favor of picking up the second container, cracking open the seal keeping it shut. They'll end up passing a bottle back and forth at this rate, but for now--for now, this works well enough.]
no subject
she turns the bottle in her palm. what's left to say? she could tell him that she knows, now, how to stop someone else's descent into a brainwashed hell. she could tell him that the story doesn't have quite so unhappy an ending, because she'll see steve again in her lifetime. better late than never again. she could tell him, too, that deep deep deep down she still expects herself to be the sort of person who doesn't cave to sentimentality.
but, then again, can she be so certain? so instead peggy turns the bottle in her palm and chokes the neck and takes a very generous swig. god, by now she's had enough to make her head begin to swim a little. she used to hold her whiskey better than this. but who does she drink with, anymore? not steve.
she hasn't felt safe enough to get drunk in a long while. not since new years. she doesn't feel much safe just now, either, but something had to give.
They called it Project Rebirth. The SSR, that is. [ a beat. ] And afterward, when they'd manage to enhance only one man, the SSR and the army threw him to the USO shows and they called him Captain America. He went on tour. Bond sales skyrocketed in every state he'd visit.
[ she isn't saying anything that isn't public knowledge, and yet it still rises like bile in her throat. but she needs -- suddenly she needs -- rip to understand. it's an appetite matched only by how much she'd needed to understand, in turn, what she'd seen in his dreams. ]