Calibration Post 1, "Daytime"

[thespaceopera]

[ 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. ]

Comments

[directed]

[Something about two years doesn't seem to settle well with her, but aside from a cursory glance Rip doesn't ask. Not now, at least. Give the dust and ire and the concern a bit more time to settle—the whiskey a bit more time to warm them—and maybe Rip would find the appropriate moment to ask just what it is how long ago he'd lost wife and son that has her wearing such a rueful grin.

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.]

[mucked]

[ she resents the question. how could she not? it is intimate -- and none of his business, she'd ague, however beholden he might feel to this or that timeline. but perhaps she resents it most because it's a question no one else has bothered to ask her. either they expect her to do as the history books say she's done, or they expect her to rail against the inevitable.

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. ]

[directed]

[She can resent it all she wishes; whatever sympathies he feels for her plight (and there are many, tucked away in his pocket, heavy as his watch), Rip equally knows the dangers of the scenario he's proposed. He's been inside the minds of others from that same world, that same timeline. Natasha's memories had featured Steve in several of them, and in no way that would lead Rip to think that the super soldier created to help win a terrible and vicious war plays no less important a role in the future he finds himself in by mix of heroism and circumstance.

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.]

[mucked]

Moot.

[ 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. ]

[directed]

[For as many moments in his life that Peggy has seen--and not just seen, but endured--there are others that remain locked away in Rip's mind. Perhaps the Atroma would see fit to send her back a third time; perhaps not. Perhaps Peggy would have opportunity to find herself standing over a fire barrel, archaic for 2166, but the only warmth available for the survivors of Vandal Savage's ruthless conquest.

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.]

[mucked]

[ something settles unspoken between them. for peggy, it's the preexisting understanding (or else the hope) that he might empathize with her position. it's a gamble; just because he's lost a great deal, it doesn't mean he's naturally inclined to relate to other mourners. but she's always liked a bit of a gamble. and, after all, it's easier than outright explaining herself, her thoughts, her feelings.

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. ]