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IC Inbox - Entranceway
Obviously I'm not here right now, but leave a message and I'll--listen to it. Eventually.
Obviously I'm not here right now, but leave a message and I'll--listen to it. Eventually.
Obviously I'm not here right now, but leave a message and I'll--listen to it. Eventually.
dec 27th »
wednesday, and the mansion is quite itself again. although peggy remains convinced she can still catch a whiff of gumdrops and gingerbread if she shuts her eyes and tries really hard. she'd told rip as much when she'd arrived -- that first wednesday after christmas, although the paths of their intentions have certainly crossed within the last seven days. gifts, left outside doors. and peggy arrived tonight with the foolish little hope that he might have used the one she'd given him.
and then, upon seeing him once again in the flesh, felt an unexpected relief to find he'd done nothing of the sort.
on some wednesdays, there's preamble: talking, drinking, standing hip to hip while someone (her, nine time out of ten) selects some music. on other wednesdays, on wednesdays like this one, there's hardly any preamble at all. instead, it's embers in the eyes and heat beneath the skin and barely a mouthful of whiskey required before someone (him, this time) is pulling at the other and navigating them both back to bed. lipstick smudged and buttons undone well before they round the 'barricade' made by his shelf.
there's always some element of rush -- even if it's only one-sided, and something he's playfully trying to curb in her -- but tonight feels different. rip's behaviour is different, if only marginally. the decent thing might have been to grab hold and sit him down and ask, but the decent thing is a damned difficult thing to do when the man you're sleeping with has decided to offer up an earnest challenge to what was otherwise becoming almost routine: peggy, clawing her way to take most of the lead and dictate pace. he remains as generous as ever, she notes (barely manages to note!) between stifled gasps and scrapes of nail, but metered and measured in that generosity.
truth is, she rather likes it. and doing the decent thing might mean sacrificing. and, after all, it isn't as though they're each other's confidants. neither of them is under any obligation to spill details of any sort -- so if this is how he wanted it to be...
who is she to complain?
afterward, lying in his bed, she might feel a stab of guilt tipped with an edge of curiosity. it's been nearly a half hour since they'd found each other's release -- rounding on the time peggy might make her quiet dignified exit -- but that two-fold blade twists between her ribs and instead of leaving she hikes the sheet up to her chest and turns onto her side. with a flicker of her eyes, she indicates the thigh holster hanging jauntily from rip's headboard. inside, it holds the souped-up ppk he'd given her for christmas. this is the first time she's acknowledged the gift aloud. ]
It is safe to wear under a skirt, yes? I'm not about to go and burn my thigh off or turn radioactive or... [ she trails off with a yawn that ends in a snap. a tiny little stretch that ends in a shiver.
first things first: get him talking. ]
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Until almost everything had--at least for a time.
Now he lays in bed beside her, one arm tucked under his head as he stretches out on his back. He's been quiet as they each regain themselves; they usually are, save a few murmurs whispered into the otherwise still room. Only when Peggy moves does he, turning his head to watch her while she shifts and makes herself comfortable, rather than slipping of out bed to make her exit.
It's a touch odd; they've done this enough by now for Rip to know her habits, after all. Yet odd certainly doesn't mean unwelcome, even as Peggy takes the time to voice her concerns.]
It is quite safe, Miss Carter. [A touch of dry annoyance finds it's way into his voice. Certainly she has to know that Rip wouldn't give her something thoughtlessly dangerous as a gift--and if he were to think about it a moment longer, Rip would realize that of course she does, that this is some means to another end. Yet for all his care when they had been coupled, there's equally an immediacy to him tonight; patience, it would seem, is fleeting outside of those more physical pursuits.]
The only way you'll burn yourself is if you mishandle the gun, and I'll expect you know better than to be careless with it.
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but in moments like this one she prefers to dig past that instinct and see if she can't find a few adjectives of her own. she is (as yet) undecided. it's a mission in progress.
much like this new mission to unlace his mood and dig her fingernails into something other than the yielding skin and muscle of his back. peggy hides a smile in relation to his frustration when he replies, although to her it's a little as though she's struck a lead: his impatience makes her think she must be right to take a closer look at his behaviour tonight.
she props her head up on the palm of a hand. ]
Maybe you set your expectations too high. It's not as though it came with an instruction manual. [ but even she knows her carelessness in this quarter is a hard sell, so she switches tack. opens the conversation up just a little. ] Besides, I've seen good tech go bad before. Like a device contrived to give back massages but which was instead only good for breaking bones.
[ coolly, she tosses out a baited hook: ] I'm not certain I trust anything that comes wholesale out of these closets.
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I tested the gun thoroughly to ensure it operates properly, Miss Carter. [It's offered up as a token reply, really. Rip once more turns his head, his eyes focusing on the ceiling above them both--thankfully one no longer made of gingerbread, yet equally not part of the ship which inspired it's appearance.
There is nothing but silence up by the grey metal ceiling; no eyes but their own looking about the room.]
And while it's base components were taken from the closets, the mechanics that make it function were assembled by professional hands. [He'd gotten a touch of help to that end, courtesy of Raymond Palmer. So while the gun may be made from Wonderland's magic, he still would put his trust in it. Moreover, there's a fatal flaw in the pretense Peggy puts up. Considering she's laying in bed now covered only by a sheet, Rip would consider it obvious.]
More to the point, if you didn't trust it, you wouldn't have worn it at your only weapon tonight. [She no doubt still has possession of her more traditional firearm; the kind that fires bullets rather than blasts. Why not bring it along as a secondary sidearm if she were truly unsure?
Because the condition isn't met, of course; as so often happens, Peggy's picked this topic as a far off means to get to a particular end. Rip simply doesn't know what yet--though perhaps now that he's dismantled her position, Peggy might see fit to enlighten him on the matter.
Certainly one can hope.]
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[ she echoes those credentials with warmth -- the kind that might have been accompanied by an attempt to reach for said hands if only such a thing were in her nature. but peggy doesn't go grabbing at his hands merely for the sake of grabbing them. and the time to leverage such a grip against his or her pleasure has long since passed. still, she picks out those words and twists that double entendre. ]
Yours, I hope.
[ and when she watches him watching his ceiling, she can't even begin guess at what he's feeling. only that his powers of reason and deduction stay as honed as ever, despite the evening, because he's entirely correct to punch holes in her meandering logic.
it would be a pretty thing to tell him it's not the technology she trusts (not really) but rather those same hands that assembled it. but even in pursuit of another answer, peggy's not prepared to play that chit. moreover, if he wasn't so distracted by whatever is bothering him she suspects he might have intuited the difference for himself. ]
It must have taken some time.
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[For that he’d been forced to seek aid, though Rip had taken care to keep his reasons secret and outside involvement to a minimum. In truth he’s convinced that Raymond had been far more interested in the technology anyway, which works in Rip’s favor.
Thankfully.
He can sense her watching him. Peggy isn’t one to shy away from conversations, bold even in her avoidance of that which she doesn’t want to speak of. Still convinced that she’s not so wrapped up in the origins of her gun, Rip turns his head to look at her once more.]
It kept me occupied for a time. [Arguably a gift unto itself, given how days can stretch on between what Wonderland throws at them. But her questions have been answered, and before she can ask another—demand, perhaps, to know just whom Rip roped in to the creation of her gift, he asks one of his own.]
What are you after, Miss Carter?
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she'd love to know who helped him, yes, but she can guess up a shortlist and she can recognize that knowing the name won't matter much. this topic was only ever pursued as a way to get him talking. and she might have to accept that him asking her outright is as good a victory as she's bound to get.
peggy could play an unconvincing innocent. she could ask him why on earth he thinks she's after anything. but maybe a twinge of concern makes her just as impatient as anything else -- so without breaking eye contact, she levels her verdict at him: ]
Something has happened. [ vague, vague, vague. ] I don't know what. I don't know when. But I'm right, aren't I?
[ what peggy doesn't know is whether it's a good or a bad or a neither thing. it's all scrambled with how much she'd enjoyed this slight change of pace this evening. ]
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It’s not that he doesn’t miss those Legends that have come and gone from this place. Far from it. But Gideon had been unique in terms of her presence in Rip’s life. Singular and constant.
But no longer.]
Gideon’s been sent back to our world. [It’s confirmation and confession both. Something, an absence that’s weighed heavy in his thoughts ever since he made the discovery.]
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Good God. [ her first words are on instinct. ] I'm terribly sorry.
[ so too are the third and fourth and fifth.
peggy understands that these are the appropriate things to say in a situation like this. she's heard others say them -- she's trod around the topic with jane this past week, although her husband has only been sent back temporarily. or so jane most certainly claims.
but the truth is that she can't really feel bad about the prospect of someone going home. isn't that what they're all after, no matter what companionship is sacrificed in the process? this is the brave front she forces herself to wear in the face of every friendship and partnership. that these are and must always be associations born out of convenience and circumstance. these are not forever things. she almost follows up with the suggestion that he'll meet his funny little artificial consciousness again, someday.
instead, she combs her fingers through a mess of undone curls. ]
When did you find out?
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She could say those things; she’d be right to. And yet, he’s rather glad when she doesn’t.]
Saturday before last. [Now at last he turns as well, uncaring of how she may warp his pillow in her quest to be comfortable. He catches the last trail of her fingers through her curls, and idly, Rip feels a subtle curiosity as to what the locks might feel like between his fingers instead.]
I suppose I managed to hold out some manner of hope before the week had passed. [It’s selfish, he knows, to wish someone sent home would be pulled back in short order. Yet Rip stands guilty of the crime all the same.] It’s really quite—odd. Not having her present.
[Odd. Empty. For over a decade Gideon had been his constant companion. For too brief a time, she’d been that here as well.]
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[ she picks that word out of the rest -- stretching her voice around it with a soft incredulity that betrays every last one of those cold and logical thoughts she'd had a moment prior. maybe she's a touch shaken that he's owned it aloud; maybe she's made uncomfortable by even the suggestion of such sentimentality.
it is selfish. and it's a selfishness that peggy herself hasn't yet felt. not properly. even when steve left, the twisting complications surrounding her relationship with him had not let her access anything honest about her reaction. even now, she tells herself that the only reason she'd want him back is to spare him the indignity of a future that doesn't deserve him. it's not a pretty position to hold. so she's kept it to herself.
peggy adjusts the sheet around her body. had this been a few weeks ago, she might have felt at a disadvantage without her clothes or her underpinnings. but, since this all kicked off, it's become remarkably easy to be naked or near-naked in his company. after sex, the rush has always been to leave -- not to get dressed again. those were two very different defense mechanisms, and peggy's only been guilty of the former.
she shakes her head, too, and tries to remind herself it's not her job to slap him on his wrist for feeding his hope in the wrong direction. he is, after all, a person all on his own and free to allocate his feelings as poorly as he'd like. ]
I didn't realize you were so -- [ close? is that the word she should use when talking about what amounts (to peggy) as just as many zeroes and ones as tony stark's f.r.i.d.a.y.
peggy clears her throat and tries again. ] What's so odd about it?
[ it's not like they talk to each other about who else is important to them, or why, or for how long. and that unfamiliarity shows in the way her voice catches -- uncertain -- over the question. ]
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Another word with oh so many judgments lurking beneath it's layers.
He doesn't expect her to understand. Few would, given that Gideon's existence is hardly human. It doesn't keep him from filling in the gap that she leaves unspoken, nor from realizing the truth of it. Out of all of his associates, Gideon is perhaps the last one he would expect to have met within this world.
Equally, she's the first he would hope wouldn't leave without him.]
It will likely come as no surprise when I say that as Time Masters, we were encouraged to keep our attachments to a minimum. [Marriage discouraged, forbidden between two of them. Children seen as a terrible mistake. It was extremely rare for a pair of Time Masters to work together on any given assignment; most whom Rip knew he knew only by reputation, and nothing more.]
Our partners instead were AIs: programs designed to operate major ship functions, and to aide us as needed with diagnostics and research and whatever else we might need. [Able to think and reason and learn, so much more than Rip had ever thought possible before he'd met the one who would become his constant companion.]
Gideon was mine, obviously. We'd been cohorts for well over a decade.
[And that is why it's odd, in the end. Even now, staring up at the ceiling, there is part of Rip that would expect Gideon to dim the lights without him even having to ask.]
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except -- except! -- peggy had met gideon. spoken to, saw, experienced. at outset glances, one might never anticipate the 'program' was anything but human. suspicions only settled in after a bit of conversation and careful observation. but by that point, she'd already been offered the explanation that even the body was an unanticipated vessel here in wonderland.
she breathes in. and just about manages to refrain from saying that it's a rather sad commentary on him that he speaks so fondly, so longingly, of something that wasn't really real. so far as peggy is concerned. perhaps she would have felt differently had she gotten to know gideon. although, repeated encounters with f.r.i.d.a.y. hasn't done much to make her appreciate that system.
-- and for all her bedtime reading, peggy would still struggle distinguishing between an artificial intelligence and a cable tv guide. for this reason and many others, she recognizes that she mightn't be the ideal candidate to support rip through this loss.
for one, she barely characterizes it as a loss. ]
I imagine that rather cut down on cases of cabin fever. [ unhelpful, carter. she takes a moment to frown. she tries again: ]
She -- [ she? ] -- and I met only twice and only briefly but...for what it's worth, I do believe the majority of us are better off not being here. Artificial intelligences included.
[ this is a conversation she'd never have imagined herself having before coming here. and for a great many reasons. but at least she knows what the letters a and i mean when they're jammed together. ]
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But Rip had gained a reputation among them for being unexpected--one that stood well-earned for a number of reasons.
Peggy continues on, and Rip recognizes her attempt for what it is. Perhaps not comfort, exactly, but the logical reminder of the truth of their situation. And she isn't wrong; very few can likely truly say they benefit from being present within this world.
He knows all this, and more. Gideon had confessed difficulty adjusting to her circumstances within Wonderland; in their world, she once more as she should be, rather than walking about as Rip has often imagined she might appear were she made manifest.]
The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief. [To find goodness in the tragedy that is Wonderland: Rip has come to believe that if they have but one power over this place, that might be it. And isn't that why his Wednesdays are filled as they are? He can endure this place and it's losses; he's known such hardship before.
Better for them all to be sent home, he thinks, even as he stretches out a hand to brush aside an errant lock of Peggy's hair.]
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(she might be surprised to learn that dusty old drama is no longer the staid presence in an adolescent's curriculum that it once was.)
but the academic exercise of identifying play and act and speaker is quickly aborted when -- quite off-script -- rip trespasses that funny little no man's land between their bodies. it was never surveyed and charted off by formal agreement, maybe, but there had persisted an unspoken understanding that here, afterwards, wasn't a time for idle affection.
peggy doesn't stop him. but she does watch him with a flicker of reproach. ]
Your quotation cuts both ways, you realize. [ she suspects he's trying to make some pretty argument about stripping wonderland of what little value it's got. not letting its amorphous powers-that-be rob them of what's good. peggy, meanwhile, makes it her business to make a far more prosaic argument. ] Because here you are -- robbed of something. Someone. And yet I don't see you smiling.
[ it's a rather obtuse observation. peggy knows it. sometimes, a smile isn't a smile at all -- but a heated and eager embrace, qualitatively different from the ones that came before it. harder and needier and with a more commanding grip than she'd come to expect. and, much like his smile (rare as it is), she wasn't disappointed in it. ]
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But Peggy isn't so incapable of deeper perceptions to not realize what's happened. After all, her observation of his actions earlier is what has brought them to this point.]
If you are so concerned about the state of my accounts, Miss Carter—then perhaps you can be persuaded to help balance them a bit further still. [She is still there, after all. Still beautiful and stunning and sharp-witted as she's always been. Once more Rip crosses that canyon between them, violating borders with deliberate intent as this time he kisses her. It's a dangerous proposal, he understands all too well—and yet isn't so much of their reasoning for these Wednesdays to separate themselves from the world beyond his door?
He would do so again, should she let him. The question is in the kiss now, slowly and deliberately asked.]
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he kisses her. and they've kissed before (and often) but never quite like this: with no space left for wits and different fires to stoke. peggy deflates, sinks forward, and ignores an explosive chorus of better angels that would shout her down if they could. truth is, she reads this new indiscretion as a mere continuation of what had already been different tonight. he's being that little bit more brazen -- pushing limits and taking liberties.
it's not the worst. at least he's got the good sense to keep it all carefully locked up beneath metaphor and abstraction. nothing gets said of sentiment or his sad heart -- nor anything else about how much he must miss old comrades. instead, things are once again a transaction. a negotiation.
-- so peggy returns it. his slow, deliberate kiss. although her hesitation had felt like an eternity inside her head, in reality it lasts all of two seconds. maybe three. she reaches for his neck and presses her palm there so afterward, after the first, she can hold him back from the second. ]
Rather depends. Are you after alms or after a loan?
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He might, except she asks a question of her own then. A fair one, in light of each selfish stroke Rip has painted the evening with.]
Never alms. [Never pity, because Rip does not seek charity from Peggy Carter. He refuses to let such a thing taint what they've found, to have it all become some matter of obligation somehow, that which needs must rather than what might be mutually enjoyed.
His forehead rests against hers. Rip shifts his gaze between each of her eyes, too close to look at her properly.]
A loan I can repay. [But isn't it a horrid promise to make! That he would make good on whatever debt he incurs, unless this world sees fit to send him away? The words catch in his throat then; he cannot make such a vow with any manner of honesty.
They both know this.
They both have suffered too much loss not to know.
And yet. And yet.]
Plus, I expect you'll keep after me until I do. [So he would stay, and so would she, until whatever they now barter for had been settled. It's a silly dream, a tragedy waiting to be written—a bad barter of the highest order. Yet somewhere between the ache of absence and the warm press of his skin to hers, Rip finds himself saying the words all the same.
His gaze turns downward; perhaps he should have picked pity after all. It would be fitting for the fool he's suddenly become.]
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it wasn't personal, back then, but it certainly is now. peggy has built up her indifference to people departing as a kind of bulwark to her sanity -- something she's made no secret of, especially with rip. it's bad enough she lets herself look forward to next wednesday, and the next, and the next after that. she'd rather make her plans beyond a week, but here he is hinting at a longer timeline.
maybe it's her fault. maybe she should never have twisted the conversation down that particular corkscrew. a loan, indeed. peggy doesn't frown -- doesn't flinch -- but she doesn't go chasing his gaze either.
and when she speaks her voice is cool and careful. ]
I expect I will, yes. [ she agrees because it's easier. and she shuffles backwards, too, because it's easier. it's a slow and languid motion, no different from any other instance where she's slipped out of his bed and left him alone while she got dressed. she could have argued; she could have pointed out his mistake; she could have laughed. as callous as her flight seems on the surface, the truth is that she wouldn't be fleeing at all if she thought for a moment she had a leg to stand on in refuting his foolishness.
her evasion might actually be more revealing than her temper. she buttons her blouse and clips her stockings as though nothing's changed. if she works very very hard at it, nothing has. ]
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He does not blame her for it. He cannot. And equally, he makes no effort to stop her when she abandons her place of rest in favor of chasing down stray clothing, of perching herself on the edge of the bed while she rearranges the buttons on her blouse and the clips on her garters, and all the other pieces Rip sees undone each time she wanders into his room.
He stands in violation of their agreement. Not sweethearts she'd said from the start, and here he's gone letting sentiment carry him away.
He watches her back while she dresses, props himself up on an elbow to do so. This mistake is his; to compound it by taking apart the full meaning of her choice now would be greater folly than he can afford to entertain. Even so, part of him can't help but piece it together, to know by observation alone what it means when she withdraws. He's seen it before, of course. During the event that led to their consummation when she asked him to leave, the Wednesday that followed when she hadn't shown up at his door like so many weeks before.
If she doesn't show up this time, could he even bring himself to chase her?
Her temper would be easier to bear in so many ways. Instead, Rip merely leans over the edge of the bed, fishes up her knickers from where they'd landed, holds them out for her to take.
All of this, in silence.]