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Who: Peggy Carter and YOU
Broadcast: Audio + Text
Action: Aboard the Starstruck.
When: Evening

[ it's been a long day. long week. long bloody month. and tonight, in the rebuilt space of a bedroom now properly shared, peggy carter is reading a book. not just any book, really. but that's a story for another time. for now, she's prepared to proceed publicly as though nothing is amiss.

in the handful of hours before bed, she takes to the network with a brief puzzle. ]

VHOILVKQHVV PXVW DOZDBV EH IRUJLYHQ, BRX NQRZ, EHFDXVH WKHUH LV QR KRSH RI D FXUH

[ and attached to the text is an audio messsage. ]

I know it's been a little while since the last one -- and some of you lot who most enjoyed them have gone and left. So we'll ease back into it with something simple. Simple, but no less fundamental. Solving it is all well and good but, as always, there are bragging rights up for grabs for anyone who names the source. Fair warning -- English is the native tongue.

And while I've got your attention, I suppose I ought to do my due diligence [ however reluctantly ] and ask whether anyone else has purchased the upgrade which merges two rooms together. It may be worthwhile to swap notes on how those changes came into effect.

[ and that's that. although she'll be awake for a little while yet -- answering messages and putting on a brave face. truth is, things have gone pear-shaped and she's only just realizing how much recovery yet required. those aboard or visiting the starstruck can find her at her desk, hatch left open, in her and steve's newly merged room. ]

( ooc: and because not everyone has the out-of-character time or inclination for codebreaking, here is the quotation peggy's posted using a caesar shift. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's hardly funny.

[ he warns, he warns. far too used to this flaw, to the mindset of the soldier even after abandoning the title of captain america and the leader of the avengers. it's the group that matters, its fragile stability. if he's purposely missing the mark ( and he does ), it's out of a terrible habit.

none of the avengers ever done personal. in that matter, steve is even worse than peggy in knowing how to handle any of this. that part of him has been muted time and time again. he sees her walls come up, he doesn't even sees his own where they stand. ]

that's all we could do. you know that. we have no choice.

[ him and his. ]

This isn't about them.

[ him and his. their fugitive state, however unfortunate, is not on the menu at this moment. and they can talk for hours, if he likes, about the tricky ins and outs of the position he's put his team into over the accords and over bucky. hell, they had talked for hours after he'd woken the last time and remembered it all. she'd held him on that very bed -- the one a few feet behind him -- and she'd tended him through his own grief.

and now, faced with hers, he seems to stumble. somehow, peggy hadn't anticipated that failure. not on his part. she ought to be sympathetic but it only gets under her skin.

her best friend is dead. and all steve can do, it seems, is make it about his. it hadn't been easy to admit to her discomfort surrounding barnes, but steve had trampled over that confession in his rush to feed her the same line she's already accepted. she's on his side -- bucky's side -- but she nevertheless needs an opportunity to process what she's learned and how it chills her blood.

peggy cuffs at her cheek and walks past him. she feels a fierce desire to leave -- to flee -- but she tamps it down. ]

It's about Howard.

[ it takes him a moment, a long, silent one to understand what she means at all. it's a sort of an emotional process he feels entirely foreign to. they had moved past so much the last few years. steve never really faced his grief over the body of pietro, over the fact he was the one who instructed them to walk it off, if they get killed.

he never mourned the men he knew at the war or the men he lost at the war or bucky or - or her. there was always something. another mission, another war.

he finally sees it, the truth behind ultron's words, pretending you could live without a war. here he is, far from one as one can get and yet when the time is right to say something about a friend who died -

steve doesn't know how to. he frowns, sits down and considers. ]

Howard.

[ he says. tries to look past the next step, the next mission, the operatives of a soldier. he had abandoned captain america to try and find out who steve rogers is. steve rogers should be able to be the sort of person who helps her instead of adding more burdens onto her shoulders. ]

you know, I never learned much about who he was after the war. Tony would only say that he made him want to punch me in the teeth.

[ he's quiet for another moment. ]

and there weren't many people to ask.

[ so he's asking her, now. it would seem. ]

[ her chest is tight. peggy doesn't know where sadness ends and anger begins -- they dovetail and spiral into one another. they make her breath short and her eyes misty. steve's silence is almost unbearable and she's about to walk straight out the door, indeed, when he brings her up short with a name.

howard.

her head tilts; her lip trembles. ]

He is -- was -- insufferable. Selfish. He lied, he philandered, he used. [ and maybe that's half the problem; it's so difficult to reconcile the man with the wellspring of affection she feels for him. peggy scrubs at her arms. she walks back by a few steps, raising her attention back to steve's blue eyes. ]

Oh my God, Steve, did you know he keeps a portrait of himself in every bloody room? Try sleeping under that.

[ but that's not the point. peggy takes in a great shuddering breath. ]

You heard it. You heard me say it. [ she draws his attention back to the calibrations and to the radio conversation he'd overheard at the very end -- peggy giving way to tears as she tried, desperately, to talk howard down from fenhoff's hypnosis. steve had witnessed in that moment (maybe) how much panic she'd felt at the prospect of losing him. ] He was the only one who believed in me. After the war. The only one left for a long long while.

[ and it seems she can forgive a great many sins for that blessing alone. ]

Sounds like he was very human.

[ flaws and outstanding qualities, all mixed into a person. he sounds so much like tony. for all their disagreements, steve's faults and tony's, steve knew, in the end, tony would have made a fine leader to the avengers. even more so than him. he dared look his mistakes in the eye. much like his father, it turns out. ]

Like he had his heart in the right place.

[ seeing the value of a friend. sticking by them. ]

I wish -

[ he lets his shoulder slumps. there are so many things he had wished for in the life that he lost but - ]

I wish I had more time to spend with him. we never got that much.

[ ... ]

he gave me a lot of advice about women, though.

-- And every word of it would be rubbish. I assure you.

[ but oh, her heart stays constricted. as much as she could malign the man's character, howard is still the person who'd dropped everything to help her on the isodyne case. he opened his doors to her on more than one occasion. he owed her a dozen favours, each one bigger than the last, but she didn't mind the score going unsettled a little longer.

and steve begins to feel it: the loss of him. cruel as it is, she's relieved to feel it alongside someone other than jarvis. she feels too drawn to play the protector, in jarvis's case.

peggy cards her fingers through her curls. she shakes her head. ]

He wanted more time to spend with you too, you know. [ ... ] And he was just about the only one with whom I could stomach talking about you.

[ -- no one else understood. none except the howling commandos. and she saw them so infrequently, these days. ]

Not all of it.

[ surely not all of it ]

--- he did say never to assume I knew what a woman is thinking. I find it true to both genders, though.

[ but still! solid advice, right there. he watches her for a moment and sighs. ]

well, he's your friend. I'm glad you have each other. sounds like you balance one another just fine.

[ he makes certain to use present tense. the man is dead in her future, he's alive and vivid back at her end of the timeline. ]

[ they're platitudes. all the same, she appreciates the attempt. it's clumsy -- it doesn't quite plug the hole in her heart -- but that would only ever be a patch job, anyway. and she loves him so dearly when he tries.

peggy sits heavily on the bed's edge. anger subsides into weariness. she's raw -- having argued with everyone, it seems, and made peace with so few. ]

I'm not certain that 'balance' is ever the right word for -- for what we've got. [ friendship. a partnership, in its own right. ] He's made himself indispensable back home. [ -- him and jason wilkes. ] I'm not the most popular agent at the SSR just now. Without their resources, I've had to lean on Howard's.

[ a steadier voice. talking about the present helps. ]

[ steve may have spent a stupid amount of time back at the war being jealous of howard stark but thankfully, that was nothing a few glares and bullets couldn't fix. fondue's just cheese and bread, my friend, he had said back then, making steve feel like the idiot he was. ]

I'm sorry about them.

[ the SSR. ]

I guess Howard really is a genius, seeing things as they are.

[ being able to recognize people's worth had always meant more to steve than science, anyway. ]

Don't be. [ sorry. ] It's not a problem with the SSR -- not exactly, at least. There's something more insidious at play. A cabal, of sorts, masquerading as a private club.

[ -- she hasn't told him much about what's happening back home. ] Whoever they are, they've got the agency in something of a choke-hold.

[ and howard's doing what he can to help her win it back. including, it seems, flying to peru at a moment's notice. ]

Howard, Mister Jarvis, a -- a rogue physicist, [ she avoids his name, ] and a few good agents are all that's left who can be trusted.

Well, if you have to take some - all powerful council of corruption.

[ what. that's what it sounds like in a very...literal way. ]

that doesn't sound like a bad team to have.

[ he nudges her with an elbow. ]

[ he's not out of the hot water -- not completely, not yet -- as evidenced by a grimace and a glare. but the nudge is allowed. ]

The Los Angeles branch's chief is a good egg. [ she admits. ] And that helps. Lord knows, he's got more sense and integrity in his little finger than the current New York chief has ever known.

[ still, her head shakes. ]

No wonder we eventually take it apart and salt the earth. Christ.

[ the ssr, she means. to make way for shield. and what a great idea that was. ]

It's what good people do.

[ he reasons. steve had joined shield only because of his founder and he took it down for her sake, too. because he felt it's what she would have done if their places were reversed. ]

They try to make things better.

[ it's all they can do, in the end. ]

[ so optimistic. it's that same optimism -- that same dedication to goodness -- that she'd touted as a fine example while dressing down howard for his more selfish tendencies.

-- suddenly, jarringly, she changes gears. ]

I can't help wondering about his wife. [ maria stark. also a victim, it seems. peggy frowns and flops backward on the bed, her knees still bent over the edge. ] I wonder when he meets her. How he meets her.

[ a glance. ] You'd probably never tell me even if you knew.

I'd tell you but I really don't know. What I know about - home, is mostly what I've learned from some of the files and the Captain America exhibit down at the smithsonian.

[ he grimaces, as if he realizes how sad that is. both the fact that he learned a fair bit from the smithsonian exhibit and the fact that he still thinks of that time as home. ]

It was never mentioned there.

[ home.

it's noticed: the way he calls it his home. thing is, she thinks of it as his home too. she doesn't imagine him as settled and at peace in the 21st century -- and altogether too easily can she imagine him fitting in back in '47. ]

Is there anything else you haven't been saying?

[ of course there is. the vase. she remembers it. but notably, she doesn't ask what he hasn't been saying -- as though she may yet let him reserve the right to withhold some of it. ]

There's so much that happened in four years. It's -

[ it's hard to think about what to tell and what not. shield, hydra, other worlds, six infinity stones, thor's vision - ]

Nothing like that.

[ like death of close friends by the hand of other, brainwashed friends. ]

You can ask. Whatever it is, I'll tell you. SHIELD, Hydra, all of it.

[ what does she need to know about shield and hydra and all of that? arguably, she knows more than he does -- she's pieced together things he's yet to figure out. fenhoff, for one. although most of that is gut assumption rather than hard fact.

she stays where she is -- slumped on the bed -- and formulates her question with a modicum of care.

it's one she's danced around before. ]

You're certain there isn't anyone--? Back in 2016, I mean. [ ...it's not jealousy, exactly. but peggy'd been chewing on this thought since calibrations. something she'd seen in natasha's memories... ]

There's nothing serious in 2016.

[ that's the big question now, is it? he expected something more on the professional line. ]

I'm not a hermit but nothing -

[ awkwardly, he gestures between her and him. nothing like this, he wants to say but he has a sure feeling it'll come out weird. ]

You know.

[ clearing his throat, he shakes his head. ]

It's - I've been there for four years now and I'm fine, all in all but it's not. It doesn't feel like home and I'm not sure it ever will. It makes these things difficult. There's a lot that I still need to figure out.

[ nothing serious. and that's a fair enough assessment, she decides, because she could only ever answer in the same spirit. but the steve goes on to try and put a sharper point on his explanation -- and only manages to blunt it further.

peggy sits up, but only by halves. she's propped on her elbows. he gestures between them before offering him a look -- there would never be, she thinks, anything like this. that's not what she's worried about. not exactly.

so the vase must have been something else. ]

I imagine there's no rush. [ hell, she's not rushing. ] But if there had been -- if there was someone -- I wouldn't be upset. I'd understand.

[ just so long as it's not a blood relative, please. ]

Peggy - that's -

[ unnecessary, he'd like to say. it's absolutely unnecessary. but instead, he gives her a little look, well she asked. ]

I know. At the same time, you know, this isn't home either.

[ not for any of them and yet, unlike the 21st century, this is where steve rogers found something more valuable than anything else he ever had. ]

Waking up here wasn't that different than 2012, not at first. but it's the closest to home I've gotten and that's just because of you.

[ without her, the experience would have been much of the same. foreign, alien, distanced. ]

You know that, right? you've seen it.

[ though he would have preferred she wouldn't have. we can go home, imagine it. ]

[ it isn't as though she could justify any claim on him -- not before his arrival, at least. in truth, they hadn't had more than impossible plans and a last-ditch kiss. peggy hums her reluctant agreement.

reluctant only because it's so damned unfortunate. in moments like these, she feels the weight of lost opportunities. ]

I've seen it. Certainly. [ and what a maudlin show that had been. ] And so I can also understand why you might -- [ she huffs, not quite eyeing the book back on her desk. the ring's not in it any longer, mind. but it stands like a reminder. ] Why you might now find yourself in a rush.

Edited 2017-08-04 21:11 (UTC)

--- Peggy, it's been there since February.

[ he reasons, surely she must see the logic. ]

I'm not in a rush. This isn't about rushing. It's.

[ well. ]

-- are you sure you want to talk about this?

Not at all, actually.

[ not in the least bit sure about anything. except she's sure of him. always. she'd called it faith, once upon a time. and even living in close quarters with him she's maintained it. ]

But we can hardly continue on day-in and day-out with this particular elephant looming in the room, can we?

We could, if you really wanted it.

[ he imagine he would be able to. but she needs this said and done and steve tilts his head, considers and decides to go with the simplest version of the truth. ]

When you and I - met again those were the only times when things made sense to me. People were friendly, everyone wanted to help but nothing felt familiar and there were conversations that were just yours. Half of the time you've poked fun of me but - it felt right.

[ and he needed things to make sense, to be set right, more than he realized. ]

there wasn't a time, not at home and not after when I wasn't proud of you, when I didn't feel grateful for what you've meant. So many of the things that I knew were right and true were things you taught me. I chose that compass for a reason and that never changed. There's not a lot of things I'm sure of but I'm pretty sure it won't change either.

[ much as she is sure of him, he's sure of her. ]

That's what that ring means to me. It was true back in February, it was true before that and it'll stay true. That's what it is. It has nothing to do with rushing, it's simply something that I was always very sure of.

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