IC Inbox - Entranceway

[directed]

Obviously I'm not here right now, but leave a message and I'll--listen to it. Eventually.

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[directed]

[Settled in as comfortable as he's likely to be, Rip is indeed about to crack open the book once more when Peggy speaks up. For a moment, Rip almost mistakenly attributes what she says to a carelessness brought about by fatigue and comfort both; that Peggy is simply too tired to realize what she's saying, and to whom, and just where it might lead.

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.]

[mucked]

[ remarkably, she remembers to breath. although a dose of exhaustion and relaxation likely both have something to do with what she reveals, it was still calculated all the same. a way to dig under the surface sweetness of this moment. a way to draw out something a little harder, a little challenging, from rip so that she doesn't need to fit her body against his and stew (humbled) in how gentle he's being, how comforting, how lovely.

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. ]

[directed]

[He wonders for a moment at the meaning of her non-answer; the truth is that is doesn't matter, certainly not so far as Peggy should know. Were the knowledge gained from the agents then they would be off-limits to Rip's reprimands thanks to his and Peggy's prior arrangements—and Tony Stark is as likely to listen to him as Mick Rory had been on most days. So why hide the truth then, if there's nothing Rip can do beyond know it?

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.