[ she deserves this, she thinks: the way she feels suddenly raked across the coals. she had opened the door to this sort of retaliation the very moment she painted that day into this conversation. peggy had reached for a vulnerability and, in so doing, had left one of her own exposed. she'd warned herself he's quick. easily an equal, it seems, in conversations like this one.

yes. she deserves this. ]

Mmhm. [ she hums her reluctant acknowledgement. ] Because of him.

[ she once thought that the farther she got from the epicentre of that pain, the more ridiculous it would feel. but just now she feels herself toying with the same old hair trigger -- the one that inspired her to leave bullet burns on captain america's shield, and the one that brought her to the brink of treason charges just to protect a vial of blood.

pulling the glass back to her side of the table, she catches herself breaking poise just to rub a temple with the knuckle of her thumb. it's not often that peggy carter feels shame -- and maybe it's the whiskey facilitating the feeling -- but there is a kind of self-consciousness that creeps up her spine. to best master it, she lowers her arm and grips her glass with both hands. ]

It was all so terribly melodramatic. [ she makes excuses. she minimizes where she can -- squashing that pain into as small and compact a ball as is humanly possible. ] Steve Rogers. We might as well give the man the dignity of his name.

[ it's just a little white lie. peggy doesn't much care whether it's familiar to rip or not only -- only that if they keep calling him the american she's worried it'll start to sound a little too much like captain america. and, oh, she always did dislike the moniker. no matter how much she hurts, she'd much rather call him steve if she must call him anything at all. ]