directed | IC Inbox - Entranceway

[There's more than one obstacle, truth be told. Perhaps the weight of the event would feel heavier on his shoulders if Rip didn't also carry all that had come before it, the burden of other memories that had been first lost and then twisted to cruel and violent ends. When considered as a whole sum, there's much less guilt to be felt in a fictional attraction over the very real betrayals of those closest to him, right down to a pair of deaths. Perhaps it's unfair to Peggy to think in such ways, but—

Well. There's only so much one can process at any given time, isn't there? And really, Rip hasn't exactly been doing a bang up job of it.

She walks in with confidence enough, leaving Rip to shut the door after. It depends on him, she says, and Rip in turn crosses his arms, one eyebrow hitched up as he takes her in.

Along with her terms, and indeed, she's right—it is selfish.]

Which in turn depends on what you’re after.

[ she smiles. not for him -- not one whit, considering she's still steps ahead and has her back turned. and by the time she turns around, the old schooled expression is back in place. but for one brief moment she's allowed to feel a spark of amusement to have her conditions rerouted back to her.

and maybe that's another reason why she'd taken so long to try and make this peace. she doesn't expect it'll come easy, if at all -- and for a long while she'd been in no place to make the attempt with her best foot forward. not so now.

what a wonder and difference a bit of friendship will do. what a miracle in how it makes a person crave stability in other quarters. if she thought long and hard enough about it, she'd realize ray palmer was to blame for every step of this conversation. he'd dared to be friendly and now she wanted to patch up scorched earth. ]

Oh, it's a very simple request. [ or it should be. ] I thought we could have a drink.

[ nothing but good intentions and generous spirit. ]

We don't even need to talk, really. But what I had here in your room that first day I arrived still tasted better than anything I've managed to cajole out of the closets.

[He's got no idea of her amusement, of course, the way she smiles as he turns her framework back round, quietly refuses to accept the onus she would otherwise see on his shoulders. Rip has plenty enough he stands guilty of, thank you, he needs no more simply because she wishes to reason her visit as such. Help me help you may have a nice ring to some, but to Rip it's far too saccharine to appreciate on this day.

Regardless, her request is a rather simple one on its face. A drink, and though Rip's eyes widen a fraction while he recalls where their last shared drink had led, that was then, and an event, and not truly them--or so the mantra goes. The promise of no conversation needed sweetens the pot, and Rip only considers it briefly before huffing out a quiet breath.]

Perhaps the closets have decided to engage in a bit of trickery in that regard. [Certainly he knows they seemingly enjoy limiting what manner of technology he can produce from them. But so far as alcohol is concerned, it's a simple enough matter to step over to the door and produce a rather finely aged bottle of scotch.

(One he remembers well, from when he still had faith in what the Time Counsel would do upon learning Vandal Savage stood guilty of altering time.)]

[ the change in his expression doesn't escape her notice. his eyes widen instead of narrow, and she'd like to think that tells her something. what, exactly, she's not certain -- except that she wonders whether shuffled off into a corner of all his current problems he might be just about as bewildered as she is about what has transpired between them. had she tried to refashion this bridge too early, she might have come blustering in her with some peremptory desire to sabotage everything. to hurt rather than repair.

it's almost a pity. she's so much better at hurting than she is at repairing. her reunion with steve has reinforced this lesson.

peggy releases a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding -- not until she witnesses rip's trip to the closet. she interprets it as forward momentum. and she can work with forward momentum. ]

Trickery. Perhaps. [ there's something light and affected in her tone. ] But the alternative is that I simply can't be choosy enough to get the blend right whenever I make the order. So to speak. It's what drinking on the front lines for years will do to you, I imagine. Standards get lowered.

[ an equally affected shrug. ]

But you've got the good stuff.

[ so do the bars, mind. but one look at his slippers and she knows she needn't explain to him why she'd come a-rapping on his door first. ]

[Forward; it's not a direction Rip has gone in for some weeks now, and yet that time spent in misery has certainly accomplished nothing. Well, perhaps nothing more than earning Gideon's ire at his continued refusals to converse in person with those who he might have once thought of as comrades, and whom in more recent weeks had been subject to his betrayals. But as he has well learned, Rip is possessed of those same human drives as anyone else: to keep going, in spite of all things.

Somehow.

He motions towards the sitting area when he turns back towards Peggy. It's tidy enough, with the only clutter being related to a bit of machinery he hasn't had much luck in putting together. Really, it's a wonder what Raymond can get up to, especially here.]

Sit wherever you'd like. [Rip, meanwhile, means to fetch glasses. Whether they talk about it or decidedly don't, passing the bottle back and forth between them would hold a little too much similarity events gone by. Not that he knows if it's in her head now too; Rip may not be able to see how it couldn't be, but he's certainly not going to ask just in case it somehow isn't.

Instead, with the bottle in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other, he drops down into a chair near enough to Peggy to converse on.]

I've got a good memory. [He corrects, based on what he's gathered is the popular theory.] That's supposedly the key to it. The more you know a thing, the easier it is to replicate via magic or whatever it is the closets use.

[But then, Peggy's reasoning would make sense too. She likely remembers battlefield moonshine better than nearly anything else. He sets down the cups, then gets a start on opening the bottle.

She's the one who came to talk to him—regardless of what else she's said. So Rip will let her carry the conversation forward.]

[ battlefield moonshine, yes. and before that it was whatever the girls could sneak into the dorms at st-martin's-in-the-field: gin no better than bathtub swill, and schnapps so sickly it would turn your stomach. yeasty beer made in some pub's basement. but the best bourbon she'd ever had was with dum dum dugan -- the best scotch while waiting on howard stark to come home from another misadventure. so perhaps that's the problem -- the memories with the best drinks are memories she tries not to dwell on so long as she's stuck here, cut off from friends and makeshift families. her impatience gets the better of her and before she can take a deep breath and use the closets properly, her mind has already drifted to the easiest and lowest common denominator.

and she would have rip believe that instead of bothering to get it right, she would rather depend on him. it's a clumsy lie. the drink is an excuse -- but a tasty one. she awaits its fulfillment with real anticipation and takes a prim seat. ankles crossed; back straight. a far far cry from the looser posture peg the personal assistant once held.

a far far cry from a lot of things. peggy folds her hands against a knee and banishes the memory. it's a red herring. it's a distraction. ]

I said we didn't have to talk. [ how quick she goes back on an assurance. ] And we don't. Once the drinks are poured -- we can shut the hell up and say nothing more. But before that--?

[ bugger this is difficult. others make it seem so easy to reach out and try to be decent. warm. friendly. the struggle engenders an uncharacteristic stammer in her voice. ] I thought I'd hate being here. But it occurs to me as dreadful and strange as the circumstances are -- I don't.

[ she'd realized it during that private smile moments earlier. fact of the matter is, this is where she'd arrived. and when things got weirder? this room is where she'd come to try and make better sense of them. if others in this mansion would seek to make a friendship out of far less, then peggy supposes she might find an ally here.

that's all she wants, in the end. a decent ally. ]

Edited 2017-10-06 20:26 (UTC)

[Before that, and for a moment Rip thinks that yes, here it is, whatever she's come to say is about to be put into the open. Because of course he realizes the truth, that beyond the excuses there is a reason for Peggy's presence aside from Rip's taste in alcohol, which is no doubt matched by someone working at the bars. Not to mention that for all he knows, if she were truly after his liquor she might content herself to simply knicking it as Leonard Snart so often had.

It's still a bit strange not to have to worry about such things any longer. Strange, and melancholy should he let the thought linger.

He doesn't. Unknowingly he has this choice in common with the woman who provides distraction from the thought now, as she works her mind around words that seem slow to come out. In the meantime Rip pours them each a generous portion of the scotch, the amber liquid easily filling half the glass. While they hadn't been themselves, Rip is willing enough to bank on Miss Carter having an alcohol tolerance to match Lambeth's at the very least.

But she does figure out what she wants to say, eventually. She doesn't hate being here, and Rip looks up at her quietly, mulling over that curious little statement. Certainly there's enough to despise—those unspecified circumstances no doubt either of them could ramble off with ease, from events and manipulations to the disappearances of friends, and the presence of unfulfilled romantic fantasies.

There's a subtext to it he almost thinks he can see. She is there, after all. But Rip is not often a kind man, even if he does soften the blow by pushing her glass towards her.]

What's kept you from hating it, then?

[ it's a big question, yes, but an expected one. there are certain conversational branches that peggy (in the breath between one statement and the next) has already done herself the favour of mapping. half of them might be unlikely, but this one never was. and in that respect, she's already absolved him of its sting.

after all, she would have asked the same.

peggy curls her fingers over the glass's top edge -- herding it nearer to her side of the low table. what accompanies the action is the crystalline tink-tink of her nails on it's surface. but she doesn't take a sip. it's as though she might finally intend what she's already said: the moment they start drinking, they can stop talking altogether. ]

Honestly? [ honestly. as though the word has any meaning any more. ] The slippers. [ she nods her chin at his feet. ] Christ. You answered the door in a pair of ruddy slippers and I found myself thinking oh, Peggy Carter, you don't know this man from Adam.

[ see -- she didn't expect slippers. she'd had a vision in her head or a supposition or an archetype and half of it was still based on circumstances well beyond his control. it was freeing, really, to be so taken by surprise. she'd worked herself up in a frenzy by thinking she had any right or claim to understand who rip hunter is or was.

in reality, she barely knows him at all. it makes it that much easier to dismiss the fabricated intimacy of one event's weekend. a little less easier, perhaps, to wash away what had happened at the firing range. but it's damned nice to be reminded that ultimately he's an undiscovered country -- that rather than repairing scorched earth, as she'd thought, she's still just breaking ground. ]

[Perhaps it might be easy not to trust in the word, honesty when it's been months since their last proper conversation as him and her, Rip Hunter and Peggy Carter with memories untwisted by any outside force. Still, he believes it--or perhaps he wants to believe it. Perhaps Rip simply wants the unvarnished truth from someone, and Peggy has proven herself neither blunt nor short on opinion in the past.

And when she does confess her answer, gives nod to the comfortable and worn slippers on his feet? Well. It's a little too ridiculous to be anything but true.]

My slippers. [He repeats with a touch of amusement in his voice, and even on his lips if one judges the line of his mouth just so. Like Peggy he pulls his drink near, the bottle set on the table for when each glass is inevitably emptied. Rip leans back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other as he too considers the rather ordinary footwear that on him, stands unexpected.

Of all things. Honestly.]

Let's be glad I'd rather not pad around with cold feet, then. [And as if he's somehow made a fantastic toast, Rip raises his glass--not near enough for a clink, but simply as a signal before he takes his first sip.

What comes after is more telling. After all, she's given him an offer. A promise of an out, if he wants to take it.

Rip finds that he doesn't.]

The first time I received this bottle of whiskey, it was a gift from Rob Roy MacGregor. [A touch of a trivia from the man she doesn't know from Adam--an unexpected thing, and distant enough to be harmless, he thinks.]

[ humour seems to haunt this conversation's creases and corners. humour, at least, by a narrow band of a definition -- not ha-ha funny but it's something which rates a ghostly sort of amusement for both of them. he conjures the thought of cold feet and peggy is obliged to lift her glass in tandem. it's true; somehow the thought of him with bare toes simply doesn't hold the same bizarre reassurance.

then again, it was never about the slippers.

the slippers were a convenient flash in the pan. seeing them reminded peggy that the narrative she'd built up around rip hunter was actually just two or three lumps of genuine interaction that were then doused liberally with muddied water. impressions of impressions. warnings. second-hand commentary peppered with some scathing first-hand commentary from the man himself. whitechapel, too. hell! she doesn't know whether he's actually from whitechapel...

peggy shelves that thought as she watches him drink. she drinks, too. and she shuts her eyes briefly against the first taste. peggy later might ask herself whether the depth of flavour came from the whiskey itself or from the unique triumph found in facing a demon (her own reluctance, in this instance) and overcoming it. let it be put to bed, even if they do sidle out the remainder of their glasses in silence.

except he speaks again. ]

-- Is that so? [ peggy's attention brightens. truth be told, she's a bit pleased with how he shakes off the easy escape route to their conversation. the thought allows her to settle more comfortably in the chair, propping an elbow on its arm. ] Should you really be boasting about accepting favours from a rebel Scotsman?

[ at heart, peggy quite likes a decent rebel. or a good revolutionary. if she hides it now, then it's only so she might equally hide her relief that rip should choose to continue conversation past their lips touching their glasses. and almost as if in a second toast to that prospect, she drinks again. this talk reminds her ever-so-almost of ray bragging about stealing a president's jellybeans. ]

And what made you so deserving of such a fine scotch?

[ -- she could have asked about rob roy. and, in effect, she still is. but there's no artifice in how she articulates her question. who is rob roy to her but another folk hero? shady and tied up in narratives of his own. ]

Edited 2017-10-08 22:16 (UTC)

You're drinking his whiskey right along with me. Or a replica thereof. [She seems to relax, shifting forward with a spark in her eyes Rip's really only seen in another life, one that doesn't belong to either of them but rather had been inflicted upon them by the machinations of this place. But this interest is real, hers, and for once Rip finds himself in a position to brag a bit. Normally there's any number of factors that would label this as a bad idea, from Rip's own secretive nature to potential issues with the timeline—

But for once, just once, he feels safe enough taking advantage of the rules of this place. It's harmless, and that offers a rather sweet liberation from the heavy matters that have most recently dominated his thoughts.]

A man had seen opportunity in King William's frustrations with his rebellious Jacobites, and decided to sell him a weapon with untold power. Fortunately, MacGreggor met a "sorcerer"--[spoken with a hand lifted and fingers curled to mark the quotations]--of his own around the same time who could counter the King's magic.

[Or so it had gone at the time. Rip leans back in his chair, stealing another sip as he gives Peggy just a few seconds to mull over the scenario—a telltale grin playing across his lips.]

In truth the first man was what's known as a time pirate, offering advanced weaponry in exchange for a fortune—a laser gun in this instance.

[ rip sketches out the skeletal pieces of a story -- its barest bones, but bare bones offer enough shape to allow peggy the opportunity to fill in some blanks. for one, the words weapon with untold power reconstruct themselves into the tesseract and the other 'stones' steve had begun to explain to her before he'd disappeared. some safe; others decidedly not. all of them ending up where they weren't supposed to be.

-- although when rip eventually names it as a 'laser gun,' peggy is left one part relieved and one part disappointed. maybe once the term would have eluded her, but she's been in wonderland long enough to learn a thing or two about advanced weaponry.

doesn't much matter. the laser gun is incidental; the thrust of the story remains in rip's duty fulfilled. peggy's gaze has shifted from his eyes to his quoting finger to his grin. it's a grin that seems to invite a reader into the mischief of the matter, although peggy proves herself rather intentionally resistant. she gives little beyond that spark in her eye and another sip of (once) hard-earned scotch before offering up her commentary as well. ]

A sorcerer. [ she repeats the word -- tickled, even if she doesn't smile. ] Sorcerers and pirates, in point of fact. [ and she very nearly asks him whether he lives a life torn from the pages of picture books. ]

I suppose your work often depends on disguises and covers. [ it's the easiest of guesses. ] Although I'll confess I do wonder how one passes oneself as a sorcerer -- bit of red robe and a starry hat?

[ fantasia had been a waste of a weekend pass during s.o.e. training. years on, she's still bitter about it. ]

Edited 2017-10-19 22:29 (UTC)

[He shrugs, a play at innocence that doesn't quite match the look in Rip's eye. Sorcerers and pirates, and all other matter of names that might quantify what cannot be understood by those of any given time. It's hardly the first time he's been called such a thing, and equally he is sure it won't be the last. But it's a safe bit of spice to throw into the legend, rather than the truth: that a man from five centuries in the future had come to rectify the mistakes brought on by greed and disregard for history.]

Quite often indeed. [Blending into the times is indeed essential, not unlike what a spy would also do. Peggy paints a rather vivid picture, one that has Rip quirking an eyebrow as he looks at her over the rim of his glass.]

Hardly--nor did it work out so well for a particular apprentice. [An association Rip might not have so easily made, except it had been the movie of choice one afternoon when a group of future film students had gotten high and wanted something to watch while they devoured chips and brownies.] It really isn't a matter of passing oneself off as anything at all. People want to be able to understand what happens around them--and particularly in those times, "magic" was a quick and easy answer to explain what otherwise, to them, shouldn't be possible.

Some might say the same thing about our current circumstances.

[ that "magic" is a quick and easy answer for the unexplained mysteries of this place. peggy glances over her shoulder at rip's closet -- the closet she stepped out of, some months ago. and perhaps it's not a fair line to draw in the sand because (as far as she can guess) there is something nearer to magic at work within the mansion. or, at least, within some of its residents.

peggy hesitates. it shows in how she takes another drink, but soon after commits her glass back to the table -- nudging it a safe few inches from the edge. ]

This business just recently passed. The 'convergence' -- with all its spatial anomalies and trolls come knocking on our mansion door. Apparently it was a memory stripped from my world.

[ not hers, evidently. and at first the relevance to the topic at hand seems obscured -- but then peggy leans forward, furrows her brow, and explains: ]

Monsters and gods and Norse mythology come to life -- but I've been assured it's more alien than mythical. Thor himself is from some distant...planet, I suppose. [ it's still hazy, if peggy's honest. but it fits what rip's describing: magic, with finger quotes. ] Or so I'm told.

Most do--myself included, at times.

[Because magic is indeed a real thing, though perhaps not so broad a category as one might believe. Fire and lightning and electricity and any number of things have been attributed to it over the course of time; things like the reality changing properties of the Spear certain fall into the category as it exists in Rip's time, though who is to say what the future would hold?

But there's something on the tip of Peggy's tongue; he sees it when she sets down her glass, spends precious seconds placing it just so on the table. Rip, for his part, still cradles his own. Not so ready to give it up, but no less attentive to what Peggy has to say for it.

And it's an intriguing notion indeed.]

It sounded rather more like a dimension than a planet--but your point is taken. [That at it's core, it had been what she called mythology suddenly made real, and not in Wonderland, but her own world. Hers.

He leans forward, glass still cupped in his hands, considering something unseen in the amber liquid.] "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange."

And yet I am assured that he, and his fellows in that pantheon, are aliens.

[ different dimension or different planet? does it matter in the end? perhaps not. regardless, it's a quality of her world that won't come to light for some decades. but the damage is (ultimately) done. rip's wording concerns how the convergence sounded which means he'd doubtless witnessed that crash course given in its side-effects. darcy lewis and steve rogers. it pins her to a world -- to a cohort, perhaps -- and peggy has slowly been embracing that truth.

-- even if the whole lot of them hail from a version of home that so little resembles what she knows.

but then rip conjures the craggy shores of elsinore and with it peggy's near-exasperated grimace. or more like something caught between a smirk and a grimace. that insidious dark humour, unfurling itself once again. ]

You know, I've thought on that passage more often than I'd like to admit. Since my arrival. More thought, I think, then I ever properly paid it at school. I have seen wondrous strange things through my work, Mister Hunter, but nothing that makes me question it all more than these stories of Asgardian heroes and men in metal suits and -- [ her eyes flick upward ] -- sorcerers.

Edited 2017-10-20 01:04 (UTC)

Well, I suppose those from your world would know best. [Though she is right; it's impossible not to make the connection now, between Peggy Carter and those who made the announcement. He doesn't take it any further, however; doesn't assume that either of them is the American, or even acquainted with Peggy personally.

After all, he himself is a perfect example of someone from decades after the majority of those who share a world with him.

Instead he finds it his turn to set aside his drink when Peggy continues on, speaks of the things she's encountered here that are of the creation of mortal men rather than Red Queens and beheaded Duchesses.]

The first time I saw a sorcerer...I was ten. [He stands, moving quickly and with purpose. It's a simple matter to cross the room, open a drawer and pull out a rather simple device: little more than a handle with a trigger and a light on the end, or one would think.] It was on the streets of Whitechapel, when with nothing more than a flash, a man knocked out everyone who he shone his light over.

[He returns to the seat, holding up the device.] Now, years later, I know how he did it. How to do it myself, how to take apart the stunner and put it back together--in fact, this little device is standard issue for Time Masters. But for every mystery I came to understand, countless more came to light.

And that's the truth of humanity, Miss Carter. There are questions we will never answer, yet we still seek to try. We are meant to learn, constantly, in ways that can be overwhelming, but that can also make us better for them.

[ rip leaves his chair and peggy -- well, peggy leans back degrees as though she needs must give him decent berth despite the chasm of space still between them. with a pleasing twist of words, he describes his sorcerer. but when she sees the stunner in his hand and matches it to his explanation, she has to tamp down the instinct to look away or shade her eyes. she knows its kind.

it registers like a tightening in her jaw. she could declare her familiarity with such a device -- although it would never be peggy's place to take one apart and reassemble it. that was for the scientists, the engineers, the eggheads. the gadgets were great. but in the end she relied best on other weapons.

but in the end, rip's story isn't about the technology. it's about the cachet of it all: that queasy enchantment. she'd felt it first when she'd bore witness to the fruits of project rebirth. that light, too, had blinded.

the moral to rip's story is a good one and she knows she ought to take his words to heart. even so, she doesn't like questions that can't be answered. so with a curl of her lip she jabs for one that can be: ]

So you are a Whitechapel lad? [ the question ticks upward. peggy averts her eyes from the stunner device, reaching instead for her glass. ] You've scrubbed the accent rather well.

Edited 2017-10-20 01:45 (UTC)

[It's hard to say what he might think to expect of her. They don't know each other all that well, after all, no matter what foreign memories might want him to believe. But even after he sets the stunner down on the table, folds his hands together instead, his guess would not have been a confirmation of his place of birth.

Perhaps it should have been. It had been a point of truth among the fiction in that foreign world.]

It still slips out at times. [In moments of frustration or surprise, when lessons on speaking properly fell second to the urgency of the moment.] Should I take that to mean you're from Lambeth, then?

Turns out I'm not.

[ from lambeth. but she finds she doesn't much appreciate how she'd inadvertently tripped a conversation wherein it prompts him to name the place. fortunately, there's enough time and distance between the event and now that she can hear it as it ought to be (a location) rather than what it had briefly become (an endearment) -- nevertheless, it's shakier ground than she'd intended to cross.

she takes a fortifying drink before continuing. ]

Hampstead, actually. [ which made their boroughs near-neighbours, but oh what a world of difference. even in peggy's day, hampstead was something of a bastion of upper-middle class intelligentsia. owning it as her home back stateside is easy enough -- but there is always a subtler language to these things when speaking with another londoner.

so she moves brusquely on as best she can. ]

-- But I did go to school in Lambeth.

[ straight up until she enlisted, with hampstead's champagne socialist glimmer following her all the while until the s.o.e.'s grueling training taught her how to deconstruct herself and be built back up with harder edges and with latches more difficult to pry open. ]

Edited 2017-10-20 02:28 (UTC)

[Even saying the word reminds Rip of that time, the fondness he can recall in his own voice when he'd greeted "Lambeth," or worked up the nerve to ask her out. Except it hadn't been him--no more than Phil Gasmer had been, even though he can remember well those actions and that life.

No more than his evil self had been, one might argue. One other than Rip.

He occupies himself by topping off his not-quite empty glass, then motioning towards Peggy in a silent offer of the same. There's a brief clink when she holds the cup out, and Rip carefully pours.]

"Posh" wouldn't be the first word to come to mind if I were to describe you. [In answer to her comment about his accent; in his day and so long after Whitechapel had hardly been the seat of luxury that either her birthplace or her schooltown had been.]

[ she doesn't mean to smile. and after only one cup, she can't even blame it on the whiskey. peggy hasn't had near enough to dent her better judgment to the point of faulting it with any twist and vagary of her mood. no, instead, she can't help the twitch of her mouth when he speaks.

-- a line like that! well, it rather dangerously reminds her that she's keeping company once again with a proper countryman. no one else would spend this long in conversation with her and so confidently disavow the description (posh) in relation to peggy carter. but he's right, of course. by certain yardsticks she's far from it. poised, certainly. polished, often. but posh is a something only the americans call her when they think they're being cute.

(and as for the danger? it's sourced in how readily she remembers a kind of quiet homesickness having drawn their alternate selves together during that event. it would be unseemly to nurture that same camaraderie now.)

instead, she nods her gratitude for her filled glass and settles back in the chair -- forcing herself to relax once more. ]

Hard to stay posh in the mud of the Eurpoean theatre. [ by which, of course, she means the war. ] I adjusted.

[ not quite the truth of it, perhaps. but it hits as close as it ever can without tugging at the threads of her service record. blaming her military experience with a broad brush seems the best way to nudge and wink her way through a reply. ]

But, take heart. I'll leave well enough alone and not go asking you what the first word would be.

Edited 2017-10-20 03:09 (UTC)

[Well, look at that. Rip is rather well practiced when it comes to hiding smiles, yet like Peggy he finds himself having trouble doing so when he notices the curve of her mouth at his retort. Equally, there hasn't been enough drink shared to merit being an excuse—although it is convenient in that moment, to raise his glass and hide his mouth with a sip.

He doesn't think that these are leftover feelings, however. Merely amusement at the moment, something he's sorely missed. After all, Rip knows well that even he can only wallow for so long. The worst of days only last for awhile, and then, as with all people, he feels the urge to move forward.

To get better, as he once told a dear friend.]

Quite well, from what I've been able to gather. [Half-truth or not, Peggy has still left an impression on Rip. He's seen her bite back heartbreak to look him square in the eye while he'd been his worst self, come from a closet dressed in little more than a gown and smartly take control of the situation, even when learning of its numerous impossibilities. There's a fighter in her to be sure, and equally a strength forged in loss and hardship—be it during war or otherwise, untold.

So proven by how she continues their tit-for-tat, after having shown up at his door in the first place.]

How merciful of you, Miss Carter. [Especially since, at the moment, Rip himself isn't sure what that first word would be. But he does see a string to tug in mischievous fun.] I wouldn't necessarily prescribe that as your first attribute either.

[ here's the problem: it's all too lovely, isn't it? smiles and compliments and wit that's fairly exchanged. peggy feels compelled to pump the brakes -- to ward off anything that might even sniff of a nascent friendship. it's bad enough that others have managed to corner a bit of friendly association out of her; rip's a bit too observant, she decides, for her to allow that natural instinct to make nice go unchecked.

-- which is all a very complicated justification for something more accurately described as self-sabotage. ]

Oh, I can be plenty merciful. [ she schools away the majority of her smile, now -- clearing her throat as though trying to cough away any other impression but that of the same stone-faced woman who'd knocked on his door not long ago. it's not a perfect exorcism, but it will do. ] We've already talked about how I could have shot you, that day, but didn't.

[ it's not playing fair to conjure up that version of him. paradoxically, nor does it offer much in the way of mercy. but it does offer protection, she hopes. a way to sidestep the way two words pushed together like quite well sound like resounding praise when one knows how to read understatement.

peggy doesn't intend to outright shut down either of their capacities for mischief within the conversation. but she want to swing the spotlight once more onto him. all this talk about her attributes, first or otherwise, makes her itchy. ]

Edited 2017-10-20 15:38 (UTC)

[Well, if her given goal has been to dampen the lightening mood, Peggy can consider her job well done. Of course calling to mind the too recent past pushes Rip into silence for a moment. He remembers the day well, and his offer of apology after. Rip hums and steals another drink, longer than the last, the guilt that had been temporarily forgotten rising closer to the surface anew.

Not that it ever strays far, even if it's not foremost.

But it does raise an interesting point in context of the prior conversation—for in the end, what Peggy has not so slyly accomplished is to turn that spotlight away from herself completely. Rip can wallow and mope with the best of them, to be sure, but he's also one of a curious mind.

Questioning still, just what that first word might be.]

Yet I doubt it was mercy that stayed your hand. [She'd offered up the evidence; Rip in turn feels it fair to call her bluff. He can make his guesses as to why she might have opted for what she had, but what better answer than what Peggy says, or doesn't say, when confronted directly?] We never did discuss why you chose to lower your gun that day rather than use it.

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