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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.
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she might have said something, too, but the first over-eager swallow of whiskey hits her with a bout of heat and an unexpected burn. she coughs, pounding a palm against her chest as though it might dislodge the ache in her esophagus.
peggy looks the tumbler balanced in her bandaged hand. and then she looks up at him where he still stands. cinnamon, really--? and her next sip is taken with more care. more measure. ]
So. You'll help me.
[ very much in the vein of it's decided, then. 'help' is such a volatile word -- but she deploys it now with so much determination. it's a flash bang, ruthlessly and obviously tossed into the conversation's beginning so she can leap over everything else. the date, the event, the way that (after a moment) she has to shuffle her glass over to her good hand because, yes, there's a bit of an ache in the punctured muscle. ]
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He reaches for the tamer of the offerings when he goes to pour himself a glass. Fortunate, given Peggy's assumption.]
You want my help. [A statement posed as a question reframed into a statement and accusation both. Last he checked, Peggy wasn't the sort to ask (or demand) assistance with anything, and certainly he wouldn't think she would come to him for such aid. Yet it would seem that Leo Fitz and Tony Stark aren't appropriate sources for this endeavor—although Rip has to wonder if that is perhaps less their failing and more a matter of convenience.
Given the date and all else they might want to discuss.
He picks up his tumbler with a low sigh—resigned and disapproving all at once. It's easy enough to see what will happen even if he does refuse, and this way at least Rip is aware of some of what Peggy is sticking her nose into. Besides, she does have a point; at some juncture she will need to be made aware of the scientific principles involved in their efforts if she is to be part of the venture, and Rip needs her if he's to have any hope of convincing certain others of the validity and necessity of the task.]
We can start with Dyson. [Largely because he's already got it in hand. Rip moves to sit beside Peggy on the couch; a necessary position, if they are both to look at the book.] Have you read any of it already?
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yes, she wants his help. just as she apparently wants to keep things professional tonight -- although it's rather easy to keep the space beside him on the sofa. she edges a little closer if only so she can grab at the book's spine and flutter its first few pages open. ]
Just under half. [ and then. ] It's second to last on a reading list I've been working on. The material in this one is actually a lot less opaque than the others, only...
[ it's always telling when she can't look him in the eye. just now, she's staring at something else, a scale that isn't really there -- balancing her choices for her. she doesn't like volunteering information, even when it's the sort of thing he already knows about her. ]
I'm quite familiar with Turing's work. [ which is the point of this particular text: where others took turing's ideas. for peggy, it's like having half an equation. this book's starting point is current affairs, for her, back home. ] But less familiar with what came of it.
[ now she looks askance at him -- unusually unnerved, for peggy carter. she takes another swallow of whiskey, better-judged this time. she wished all her stolen things weren't sitting out in plain view like so many elephants. ]
You know, when I knew him he used to chain his mug to the radiator. Beside his desk. Frightened of thieves.
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For now, however, she manages well enough. The book and the whiskey are both held with seeming ease. Instead, it's the full confession of her need that drives Peggy's eyes downward—and yes, Rip knows quite well just what that does signal in her.
It surprises him this time; here he'd been thinking it more excuse than actual admission. A convenience of timing, and on some level he's got little doubt it is--yet there would seem to be more to Peggy's choice to seek him out than merely the day and a wish to avoid anything pressing too close to expected romance.]
I suppose that is one way to deal with the matter. [The coffee mug, of course. They'll get to the matter of his work and what became of it soon enough, but first Rip thinks they might both benefit from giving the alcohol a chance to settle. The evening is fraught with potential landmines; Peggy has sought to avoid them all with her gambit, and yet how easy it might be to trip over one unawares with the wrong question or word.
The line of goods remains in sight, after all. Likely would until she gathered her things when she decided the time had come to leave.
Still—it might be best to get at least some of the awkwardness out of the way first. Set off an explosion on purpose from afar, to prevent stumbling awkwardly into it later on.]
Especially when he couldn't be around to try stabbing grabby hands with hairpins.
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-- My hands weren't the grabby ones.
[ the pretense is dropped awfully quickly. poor professor alan turing pushed to the margins, just now, while peggy strips the veneer away from rip's words. if she got stabbed then it was because she was trying to retake what was hers.
it's enough to make her confront one of those little elephants on the table. she reaches forward for her watch, trading its place on the table with her glass of whiskey only so she can stumble with the buckle. here's where the pain shows: not in her face or a flicker of her eye but in how stiff her fingers try to work the leather strap through the metal loop. the injury might have been in the back of her hand, but every delicate pull of muscle leading into her knuckles comes with a cost. it aches. beneath the bandage, there must be bruising from how blunt a weapon the pin had been. ]
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Granted, given his actions and attitudes--not to mention her era--Michael had been quite lucky not to get smacked upside the head.
Still, Rip keeps his mouth shut as Peggy grabs her watch. It's one thing to set off a bomb from a safe distance, and quite another to walk willingly into the spray of its shrapnel. Of course, he might still yet wind up doing just that; watching her struggle with the watch, her fingers protesting each movement she inflicts upon them, regardless of how unaffected her expression might seem--
Well. It's just a touch too much for him.]
...bloody hell. You'll be cross with me regardless. [The words as close as he'll come to an announcement, Rip abandons the glass in his hand in favor of taking gentle hold of the straps as Peggy tries to make end meet end. It's a far simpler matter for him of course, if only in terms of action; he needs only a few seconds to slip belt through buckle, long enough to allow his gaze briefly to flicker up to hers.
Assuming, of course, she allows him to make the attempt at all.]
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when he sets his glass aside, she can already anticipate why. he argues himself damned already and her glare, lifted up in the half-second after he supersedes her fumbling attempt, confirms that he must be. the watch is a nothing-item; it means far less to her as an object than it does as a concept -- something given up and bartered and existing, now, merely as a reminder of that encounter.
he's not the only one thinking michael was lucky not to have been cuffed on the ear. ]
I could have managed it on my own.
[ she protests. although, notably, she'd made no attempt to forestall his help aside from dagger stares and aloof words. it's only that watches are a bit of an annoyance to buckle even without an injured hand and -- and there's a natural quality to letting him inside her personal space. he was in it and helping her before she even thought she might want to rebuff rip on principle.
although that instinct is quick to catch up. there's only so long she suffers his tender ministrations before she sits back, adjusting the now buckled watch on her wrist with a moody fidget. ]
Figured it was you. Even before -- [ she uses that injured hand to gesture at the remaining trinkets. what would have been a wordless confession, laid out on the table, is she somehow had been daft enough not to come to the correct conclusion before now.
bloody whitechapel. ]
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[He's got no doubt whatsoever that Peggy can come up with a dozen reasons why she's allowing him to aide her with the watch, and without a single one of them falling along the lines of forgiveness or allowing him to appease his guilt. And maybe it's better that it's the case. She's irritated, rightfully so, and Rip can respect that. Yet while he regrets that she suffers from the violence now, he cannot find it within him to lament his actions then. Not with memories of that time so fresh in his thoughts, of bruised ribs hidden beneath ragged clothes, a colorful patch of skin surrounding his eye, and always, always the greedy and demanding way his stomach gnawed at him. Too often 'Michael' had just enough to make sure the pain of it lingered, to stay within that middle ground between never enough to fill his belly, never too little to grow numb to emptiness.
He'd survived all of it that way.
Peggy leans back when he's done, and Rip goes the opposite way: forward just enough to get his tumbler once more, before twisting his body just enough to get a better look at her. His leg brushes against hers in the process, but like Peggy, it's a thing he's used to. Little touches, invasions of space that cross boundaries blurred by how many times they've already been stomped over. Instead he's focused on the words, a sip of whiskey offering him brief reprieve to consider them, and just what might have tipped her off to the truth of his identity.]
Because I said I was from Whitechapel. [It's the only thing, he thinks. Even the Legends hadn't quite recognized Michael as Rip when they'd met, until they saw the two of them side by side knowing that Rip's younger self was to be brought to the location. But his being from Whitechapel is no doubt something that sticks out in Peggy's mind as much as her being from Lambeth does in his.
Wonderland itself has provided them the means by which to recognize each other, even in the oddest of circumstances.]
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Because you said you were from Whitechapel, yes. [ she echoes. although truth be told that was only the first cement block in her hypothesis. it was enough to make her look twice and question her assumptions about the home invader. the rest of her assumption got filled in the longer she watched him: took stock of his eyes and tried to decide if hunger looks the same even when the appetite is different.
peggy doesn't reclaim her whiskey. instead, she lets her sore hand fall limp in her lap while she tries (once again) to page through the dyson and find her spot. but while she does: ]
But I also thought you said you were from 2166.
[ well! if he's going to set off bombs then she's going to lob grenades. ]
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Instead, here they are, closer to awkward on this Valentine's day as Peggy shifts through her book and Rip drains his glass. Oh, but there comes the next volley in these systematic attacks; she points out the apparent falsehood in his accounts, and Rip raises an eyebrow as he glances over towards her.]
I am--now. [But much the same way as someone who had moved cities might claim their new home rather than their first, so Rip has offered up that technicality of times.] But given our conversation on names, surely you can piece together why I wouldn't go about proclaiming just when I was actually born.
[And by all rights, he still hasn't. He considers this, taking a momentary glance at the mirrors. Instincts long honed immediately demand he keep the secret, and yet--well. Perhaps he can twist it as an offering: a barter for forgiveness he doesn't really think he needs, but that Peggy might appreciate all the same.
Perhaps he simply wants her to know because he is not merely a former Time Master.]
I also told you I was six, if I recall correctly. That was a lie too; I was eight.
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[ of the two of us, although the last five words go judiciously unsaid. she had actually pieced together the reason why shortly after his younger self spat out the year -- but it's gratifying (albeit coldly so) to hear that affirmed now.
he follows up by giving her all the hard numbers needed to do the math for herself. true name and true year both -- now wordlessly locked up in her mental record. maybe she should feel some regret over the mercenary ways in which all were learned, but she doesn't. ]
I suppose you thought a more tender age might, in turn, inspire more pity.
[ it's an easy guess. and as it should be, because peggy is well acclimatized to boys lying about their ages. more often, however, those lies would go in the other direction: children playing at being men so they might enlist long before they should. but wasn't just the boys, was it? peggy had 'negotiated' a few more years on her s.o.e. enlistment. they didn't allow women into the field until they were twenty-one and she'd been only nineteen at the time. but after news of michael's death had reached hampstead and her mind had been made up -- well.
she banishes the thought even as she clears her throat.
it's not ladylike behaviour to cross one's legs at the knee. and, indeed, peggy rarely ever does so -- opting most often to cross hers at the ankle instead. but there are always times and situations and power plays wherein a deviation from normal posture is warranted, if not appreciated. so, just now, she hikes one knee over the other for no other reason than to give her book somewhere to be balanced while she's searching out the most recent page read.
back in her room she'd kept a bookmark in place but, prior to leaving tonight, she'd removed it and left it behind. ]
But pity does tend to erode come the second or third time being called a whore.
[ she doesn't look up from the pages she's turning. ]
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Oh, you still are. [Of the two of them, a thought unsaid but still just as readily shared. And perhaps it's not the most charitable reply—certainly he expects it might earn a touch of ire from Peggy—but then again, what's another drop or two in the lake that Rip already seems to be mucking about in?] I was simply displaced a bit before I could tarnish.
[Taken at ten years old to a time and place utterly beyond his imagination. But before then, Michael had sought to survive; Peggy's absolutely right to assume he'd been after pity with the lie, paired with the idea that maybe she might underestimate the strength of a six-year-old who was really eight. Perhaps from an adult perspective those two years didn't so much matter, but at that point in Rip's life?
Two extra years of survival were practically worth bragging about.
Rip's left to watch while Peggy crosses her legs, and indeed, he does rather appreciate the way it causes her skirt to fall while she idly flips through the book. Yet he's not so naïve as to think he's suddenly been forgiven. No, not when she paints such a fine picture sitting as she does, proper and prim and above it all, ever so casually pointing out at which point Rip—then Michael—had truly begun to lose any charm he might have possessed due to his age.
And really, Rip had known on some level that this was coming. The only problem is, his first words aren't actually an apology.]
Oi, now; I didn't mean it as an insult. [Some wiser part of him knows that if there had been a possibility for one of their more typical Wednesday night pursuits, he's quickly snuffing it out just now. Still, the point stands—and never let it be said that Rip isn't stubborn about even his phenomenally bad decisions.] Simply as an indication of what your role in the house hierarchy might have been. It's certainly not as if cutpurses and street urchins were given lessons on proper terms of address.
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[ there's something -- something -- in what he's just said that gets her hackles up. and it might be the word tarnish and it might be the word hierarchy or might be both of them rolled into one imperfect sphere of dismay. the reality is that peggy isn't even looking for an apology. if, by some impossible magic, their places had been reversed and an equal slight had occurred? she, in his shoes, wouldn't see fit to say sorry either.
but no matter what way the circumstances cut, they both of them know she reserves some narrow right to kick up a fuss. ]
God knows, it doesn't even matter that I've certainly been called worse by people who knew better.
[ a fact she knows he doesn't need telling but which she announces all the same, as though it was only fitting to remind him that he wasn't the only one acting within context and experience. ]
But I'll be damned if it isn't still deeply unsettling to field such accusations from the de-aged version of the man you're -- [ oh, great, she's talked herself into a frustrating little corner ] -- spending your Wednesday evenings with.
[ a sulky little nod. no, indeed, this won't be one of their more typical wednesdays. peggy stares at him a moment longer -- eyes more imperious than her words had been -- before dropping her attention to the non-fiction book in her lap. ]
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All the same, he recognizes all the clear signs that's he's still in quite a bit of hot water for the actions taken by his younger self. It's why whatever corner Peggy's talked herself into will go without being commented on. There's arguably a time and place to dig his grave deeper, but not just now.
Although arguably, Peggy might appreciate the excuse to be all the more cross with him on Valentine's.]
Yes, I'd, ah, imagine so. [Rip briefly rubs his hands across his face, finding the course of the conversation a bit draining—all the moreso given that he hasn't exactly much indulged in his own glass of whiskey just yet.] I've got nothing to offer up in my defense, I'm afraid. I was a rather mean bastard at that age—as you now well know.
[But even as he says it, Rip doesn't feel the words are quite enough. Rip reaches out for his glass once more, quickly swallows back the last of it.]
And for what it is worth, the older, more knowing version of the man you're spending your Wednesday evenings with thinks nothing of the sort.
[That's—that's better, isn't it?]
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all while soundly putting her in her place: yes, yes, of course she knows he thinks nothing of the sort. and suddenly peggy is left feeling a flush of foolishness. as feelings go, this one has no place in this moment. she swallows it down almost as quick as it rises.
and when she glances back in his direction, she at least appears prepared to shift her tactic. ]
Yes. Well. [ here are her signals, clear as day, rising like flags in advance of her half-surrender. ] All the more reason for you to make it up to me.
[ she taps the book. the penance she suggests isn't really penance at all, seeing as he's already agreed to it: helping her pick apart the finer points of of this particular chapter. ]
A handful of decades to go from a half-ton computer to things as small as -- [ her tapping hand gestures, instead, at his idle wonderland-supplied device. discarded, but near. ] That. It reads like fantasy.
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But that's hardly an excuse, is it?
Peggy's the one who manages to offer them both a touch of grace at the end of it. If she considers it surrender Rip cannot see it as a victory; rather, it's a relief when she once more turns to the books, never mind that Rip's already consented to guiding her through them. He leans forward, rather quickly refilling his own glass, going so far to top off hers before he settles back to get a better look at the page.]
It is rather extraordinary, isn't it? The whole of human history leads up to a certain point, and yet in a blink we manage to take things further. [He glances towards the book then, gestures with a hand and a quiet "may I?" before taking it from her hands. He won't be long in this newest endeavor; Rip flips back a few pages, just enough to allow him to get a better idea of just what Peggy's been reading specifically, the text that's led up to enough confusion that she's seen fit to employ Rip as translator.]
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[ peggy pipes up. as commentary goes, this rather spits in the eye of what she's just said, stressing the deficit of time between conception and innovation. then again, how long had it taken howard stark to take the decades-old design of a car and make it fly?
well, hover.
rip asks for the book and -- after a momentary delay -- she surrenders it with a false feeling of magnanimity. truth be told, the part where she's hung up isn't all that distant in its description from her own time and place: '52, los alamos, and the 'mathematical analyzer, numerical integrator, and computer,' or maniac. she's caught up in the pages surrounding these leaps and bounds whose origins were happening even now, back home, while she's chasing down mad scientists and dimensional rifts. ias machines, turing completeness, and von neumann architecture.
god, if this is but a blink to him -- then what does this say about the rate at which she herself is moving? it's an uncomfortable question; peggy chooses to dodge it by leaning in, shoulder to shoulder, so she should be able to see the same pages as he's seeing.
her whole posture shifts and although she's no less standoffish, she somehow manages to be so while curling a hand expectantly around his upper arm. peggy tugs, just once, to telegraph the fact that his elbow is blocking her view. ]
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Quite the opposite, in fact.
So he obligingly moves his elbow and begins the lesson. At first, there's a bit of disconnect between them: when a page should be turned, when he starts to explain a concept but she's not to that paragraph yet, stop skipping ahead Mister Hunter, she'll tug on his arm when she's ready. Eventually it morphs into Rip reading the passages aloud, the otherwise quiet of the room filled with the steady cadence of his voice, broken only sometimes when he steals a sip of whiskey or as Peggy has a question.
Eventually, she doesn't just bump shoulders with him; eventually, Peggy sees fit to draw his arm about her shoulders (so she can see better, naturally), and Rip carefully doesn't voice either victory or complaint.
No, he's quite happy to linger there, to spend his time turning the pages and savoring the warmth of the woman curled into his side, the annoyances of earlier forgotten it would seem as the night draws on. It isn't until he nears the end of the next chapter that a new and unexpected interruption comes: a small sound from the woman whose face he can't quite see from this angle, although he can feel the steady cadence of her breathing.]
If I'm not mistaken, Miss Carter, I believe I just heard you snore. [Rip speaks softly, however; it might be enough to nudge Peggy awake, and that would do if so. If not, however, Rip would have to figure out just how to settle them both on the couch. It's not often that he's seen Peggy let herself relax enough to drift off as she apparently has—and Rip grins faintly for it. No doubt it's not the way she expected the evening to go when she stormed into his room, but it's far from the worst way things could have turned out for them.
Particularly when it comes to a day as sentimental as this one.]
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she can trust him. whether it's when he sinks to his knees or when he decides what concepts could use a sidebar explanation. that's not to say it goes perfectly -- she does, on occasion, need to interject and assure him that one explanation or another isn't required. but, for the most part, she benefits from his annotations.
and if she trusts him that much, well, then, it's not too harrowing to relinquish reading the paragraphs for herself. peggy wouldn't describe his narrating voice as warm and promising; after all, he's never struck her as an obvious idealist. but the words are easy and precise in his mouth. and, like so much about the man, rip's narration boasts a comfortable formality.
-- and his body is warm, even if his reading isn't. of course sleep steals over her. she practically arrived here tired; her eyes were doomed to close once she'd worked her way under his arm, lulled asleep by the gentle assault of both his voice and his heartbeat nudged snug under her cheek.
peggy carter sleeps easy, yes, but she also sleeps light. the nature of her work made it a near-imperative that she should be able to steal a kip whenever possible, no matter the circumstances. she could drift off to the sound of jet engines provided their noise and thrum were constant. predictable. a sputter or an unhealthy clank would always wake her up. it's change that rouses her: the way rip's voice shifts from performative to personal. and when he says her name it's like a hook, tugging her up up up and out of slumber.
but it takes her a moment longer to piece together the phrase that woke her up. something, something, something, heard you snore. she squeezes her eyes shut before they open. peggy makes an attempt to grapple her way back to sitting up; it's lazy and half-hearted and soon aborted in favour of sinking back in place. but her chin does lift and she looks for him. blearily. ]
Yes, and?
[ sometime before she'd fallen asleep, peggy had kicked off her shoes and tucked her knees up on the sofa. she curls nearer -- feeling too comfortable to fall prey to indignation. besides! she already knows she snores from time to time. dugan reminds her whenever the chance arises. ]
Is that a problem?
[ so perhaps she falls prey to a little bit of indignation. ]
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Not a problem at all. [Quite the opposite, although Rip suspects Peggy might protest if he goes on to describe it as a rather cute snore, so far as such things go. Instead he carefully closes the book, in her line of sight and with a finger tucked in to hold his place--proof of intention, necessary, he suspects, for what he means to do next.]
Brace yourself. [With that softly issued warning, Rip shifts on the couch. While he suspects there might be too much effort involved in making their way to the bed, it's easier to simply adjust their bodies so they're laying together rather than sitting up. Peggy's already got her legs on the sofa anyway; it's a matter then of arranging his legs, shifting their weight about a bit, and keeping Peggy's head pillowed against him so she doesn't wake up too much in the jostle. And if he does it all right, at the end of it they'll still be pressed beside each other, with Rip hanging perhaps an inch or so off the side of the cushions, but really, he's not unused to making sacrifices.
Particularly not when they prove to be worth it--as this one would be, provided she offers no protests and he can resume reading as he had been.]
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peggy takes his warning to heart. to brace herself, however, she chooses to simply trust in his movement. she fixes a grip in his shirt and opts not to work against the tide of his plan. she is in a rare space: far from dependent, but willing and cooperative. the only real regret comes from forgetting her injured hand (briefly) and drawing in a sharp breath of pain when she presses it too firmly against him for support.
beyond that, she settles smoothly enough. she curls an arm fondly around his midsection as one final adjustment to anchor herself in place. perhaps she's doomed to drift off again; for now, she at least gives her spine a brief stretch and makes an attempt to stay awake.
so! before he can continue reading: ] So much progress. I change my mind near-daily as to whether it's thrilling or terrifying. [ three, two, one. ] Apparently, rogue artificial intelligence made a hell of an attempt to end the world. [ a beat before she reconsiders her tenses. ] Will make.
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But that hardly sounds like her at all, doesn't it? So Rip stops himself short before he offers up unnecessary charity, a quiet suggestion that she might want to wait until she's awake again dying on his lips before it has a chance to take shape--though ironically, he suspects the notion would manage to rouse her, if by no other means than Peggy's indignation at the thought Rip might see her as needing mercy in the moment.
Heaven forbid.
Instead he lets the silence stretch, a beat too long perhaps, as he quietly skims over the next paragraph in the text. There's a response coming; the tension now present in his muscles promises it to be sure. Yet it would be a careful one, measured out, ideally straddling the line between maintaining what they've found in this evening, and the now-obvious way Peggy seeks to provoke him with the implication that she's been doing exactly the opposite of what he'd told her so early on.
(A tactic that might have proven more effective, he thinks, if he hadn't already discovered as much for himself while Wonderland saw fit to disguise him as a fox.)]
And did you learn of that from your nephew, or from the agents who will one day carry your legacy? [He keeps his voice rather deliberately mild despite all implications of the question. Somehow he doubts such truths have been volunteered at random, sputtered out like bits of trivia unconnected to any other conversation. What he's truly asking, even as he rereads the same page he's looked over twice now, is just what source has provided this insight into the future of her world.]
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which means that she feels a victory in what could very well be his disappointment. she reads the tension though his body -- exhales a beat sooner than he does -- and seems to brace herself for a dressing-down. as though...as though this upswell of affection and physical (but not sexual) intimacy might somehow be mitigated if it's braided into a lecture.
as though she can't let things get too good. not tonight, of all nights.
but then rip's question presents a new problem of its own. any other moment, any other position, any other day, she would feel only the usual prickle of regret in speaking steve's name out loud. in fact, the man's lingering effect on her life is considerably less of a bogeyman while in rip's company than it could be in the company of others. but this isn't the sort of misery she'd wanted to invite into what was otherwise a tender moment.
instead of speaking the name, she counters thusly: ] Does it really matter who I learned it from?
[ so, neither option he presented make for an adequate answer. it must have been someone else -- someone she's not up to naming. ]
What I'm saying, [ inelegantly, she wrestles the conversation back to where she wants it to be, ] is that it's difficult to give the future-history of computing its due admiration when I know where it ends up.
[ there. she practically gift-wraps him his own argument: and that's precisely why it's so ill-advised to go learning about what's to come, miss carter. better to lose this one and sulk than let anything else -- anyone's ghost -- thread its way between their pressed bodies. ]
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The answer becomes obvious in a matter of beats: because knowing it is the danger, the spark of vulnerability for her. He breathes out slowly when it dawns on him why, his own mistaken premise the key to the answer she doesn't speak.
The one he won't ask after again.
Which, given the way Peggy forces the conversation back towards a different track, no doubt suits her just as well. And yes, the words she's expecting him to thread together to indeed sit on the tip of his tongue: her wonder wouldn't be spoiled if she didn't continue to dig ever onward, to find out more truths about what the future of her world and her legacy and her life all hold. It's instinctive to fall back on his concerns as a Time Master.
But Rip knows the woman beside him, struggling now to float between awareness and slumber, pressed tightly against his body as they share space on the couch. He knows his words would fall on deaf ears even if this were the middle of the day, and the pair of them were wide-awake in the midst of heated debate. It would be easier to caution her, even pointlessly, that too much knowledge does indeed take away the joy of the advancement of man. But knowing her as he does—knowing the future as he does—Rip instead offers what might prove to be more prudent advice.]
All the more reason to hold to your humanity, Miss Carter. [That had been the failing of the Time Masters, after all. Rip remembers well standing in the Time Council chambers, demanding to know what universe they would be custodians of should they let it crumble. Even sharper is his memory of the moment he realized what Druce and the rest had all conspired to do with Savage, with the Legends—with Rip himself.
How easily they set up his family as a sacrifice. How many times Rip had let others die, to ensure the future.]
Whatever evils you have been told, I promise—there is an equal amount of good to be done for the world.