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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.

[ in the end, it's easier to watch the dreariness settle itself like a familiar mantle on rip's shoulders. this, she knows. this, she can watch in relative comfort. although it doesn't stop her from tilting another considerable mouthful of scotch down her throat.

here's a path they keep taking. one sitting across from the other. talking, testing, tugging at straws. it happened when they first met and it's happened every time since -- barring the too-easy affection struck up between whitechapel and lambeth. and maybe that's another reason to be so caustic tonight. guilt touches the pair of them. she's not so stony that she doesn't feel the cut of what she's just done. of course, she doesn't much regret it either -- it had to be done, she tells herself, in order to stave off that strange rosy warmth that was both too much and nothing like what they'd shared during the event.

and as for the day on the firing range? well. ]

You're right. We never did discuss it.

[ and peggy isn't so desperate to vindicate herself that she will rush to explain her actions. or inactions, as the case may be. more importantly, she's been taught better than to answer questions that haven't even been asked.

that, along with making inroads to friendship, is one of the fastest ways to say more than what's intended. ]

[He scoffs, just a touch, a momentary roll of his head from one side to another. The word really hangs unspoken in the air, the exasperation it carries nearly palpable—but then again, so too is the question yet unasked, but implied.

She's smarter than that. Rip knows it, and when he looks once more at Peggy there's a tightness in his lips that hadn't been there prior. If she'd rather not answer then she can say as much, but honestly. To act as if there's nothing written between the lines, as if what he's said it merely an observation and nothing beyond.

It's not exactly a pleasant sort of dance.]

So let's discuss it now. [It may work against her in the end, however. Avoidance tells its own story, and Rip leans forward, elbows rested on his knees as he spells out what he would like to have answered.] Why didn't you shoot me that day? Turn me over to the Legends; you've already mentioned that Dr. Palmer had addressed the issue with you. Certainly it would've been the safer call.

[ he leans forward. she stays as she is -- leaned back in her chair, although this time when she sets her glass aside it's so she might leave it balanced carefully on the chair's arm. peggy folds her hands 'placidly' in her lap. and she tries to forget the fact that she's chased this tension in his expression.

that she's sought it out in favour of what had actually been a rather pleasant smile, not so long ago.

peggy hears his question. but far more interesting is the commentary what follows. there are two competing answers to this line of inquiry. there's the reason peggy herself had balked at the very gesture of leveling a gun at him on that day -- and then there's the reason why she'd not bothered to follow through with any of the due diligence he goes on to suggest.

there's no hesitation now that the seal's been broken on the topic. and peggy gives blunt honesty a good college try. ]

It certainly would have been the safer call. Even before our paths crossed on the 4th, [ the date is notable, ] I'd told Dr. Palmer as much. Argued, really, over whether you shouldn't simply be apprehended from the outset. If the change was truly so serious.

[ had nearly offered to do it herself, actually, as a decently impartial third party. but it hadn't come to that. obviously. after all, peggy did say they'd argued over it. ]

[Blunt honesty might be a funny phrase for what she offers up; certainly there is truth in the words, an interesting path, but the answer Rip is after? Still remains unsaid, even as Peggy points out she made a push with Ray for Rip to be handled; hell, for all Rip knows, she may have volunteered her own efforts to the cause. Someone trained in espionage would be good for it; moreover, Rip had indeed taken his own risk with her, letting down his guard that day at the gun range.

He'd never drawn his weapon, point of fact.]

Somehow I doubt that the words of Dr. Palmer alone would have been enough to sway you. [Not if Peggy truly wished to act. She's shown her stubbornness more than once now, continues to do so through this very conversation. He rubs a hand lightly over his lips; for a few moments, his gaze goes distant as he considers.

What would have happened—or not happened—had Peggy won the argument that day?]

It all makes the original question all the more pressing: why converse rather than shoot?

[ why, indeed? peggy could fall back on the vocational explanations. she is, after all, a federal agent -- even here. it is not in her purview to shoot without justifiable cause, and the hearsay of a person who had been (at the time) another stranger hardy offered justification enough.

it would make for a good reason. valid, level-headed, pragmatic. but it still wouldn't have been the truth. merely a fractal piece of a larger one -- the proceeding logic used to talk herself down once she'd made the knee-jerk decision not to fire.

(not that she wouldn't have done something, of course, had rip proved himself a danger that day.)

peggy's sigh is audible. when she grabs for her glass next, she goes so far as to drain it completely. tilting it back, lifting her chin, swallowing the last three or four mouthfuls in one uneasy run. and afterward, she deposits the glass on the table -- staying bent forward with her fingers on the rim. ]

I have a temper. [ she admits -- well aware that for most of the people in her life, this is no big epiphany. had she taken a shot, it should have been to take him down. to incapacitate. not to light her own damnably short fuse. ] And I was trying not to lose it.

[ peggy nudges her emptied cup along the table and nods her head in a wordless request that he should pour her another finger. or two. ]

[The silence stretches, but not uncomfortably so. Certainly if there had been any pain to it, the sigh followed by the eager gulping down of whiskey would be enough to give bracing to patience. It could be a show, but Rip suspects it not, not this time at least. Resignation seems more likely from the look on her face, and the words that come next serve as convincing confession.

Rip's never really seen Peggy's temper for himself, but sparks of it? Sure. When the conversation had turned in ways she hadn't liked. As someone also able to claim a touch of the same for himself, he does understand how it strains, to keep anger in check.

He even goes so far as to guess what set it aflame that day--and quite fittingly, puts aside his half-finished glass in favor of playing a proper host and refilling hers.]

Because of the American. [The man who had seemingly broken her heart, not through ill-intentions but merely circumstance. So it hadn't been mercy after all, but restraint on Peggy's part that kept her gun aimed elsewhere that day. Fair enough, and a credit to Peggy that she had kept things in check.

Broken hearts are hardly easy storms to quell.]

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

yes. she deserves this. ]

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

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

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

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

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

Edited 2017-10-20 23:24 (UTC)

[She must have her own reasons for offering up the name, he thinks, ones that don't fall under the realm of dignity. Melodramatic though it may have been, Rip had no intention of asking Peggy to name the man love couldn't quite conquer, not in time for her to have him, at any rate. Still, she does, and unprompted at that. It's a name with which Rip's familiar, in the end.]

I met him once. Seemed a decent fellow. [Certainly he'd been willing enough to give up precious food to monsters, all for the sake of a stranger. Decent indeed, but Rip doesn't mean to give him compliment beyond that. Not when Peggy tries to leash not her temper now, but her ache.

He knows that agony. Not in the exact terms, perhaps, but similar ones. For love to die, then hope to plant it's seed--only for the ground to be poisoned.

It's his turn then to drain the drink. His turn, then, to decide how far to open the wound.

His, along with hers.]

I am sorry, for whatever that's worth. [For what she's been through, shouldering the blame of seeing death where there had been something far different at play. For having that second chance come just that bit too late. He remembers asking Gideon to check on the reports of his family.

She'd hesitated. Over and over. At the end, she had been the one to say she was sorry.]

I'm also quite willing to fetch another bottle, since it looks like we'll be needing it.

[ seemed a decent fellow.

and had rip left it at that, peggy might even have felt compelled to endorse the verdict. to her (even now) steve stood like a pinnacle of decency. perhaps he never quite learned how to talk to her, how to make the words as smooth and as painless as he might have liked, but even on the day he broke her heart she was left with the vexing impression that steve never wanted to see her hurt. even as she'd banished him from her room, he'd hopped to with that old earnest nature.

it's how she knows she would go to bat for him again and again and again, even though she couldn't make her peace with what's transpired. the ground is poisoned, yes, but her professional regard for captain rogers is as intact as the day she saw him dive on that grenade.

god, it'd be so much simpler if she could hate him. ]

So am I. [ sorry. although it's up to interpretation whether she's still talking about steve or has expanded her sympathies to that wider circle -- after all, it had been something of a two-way street of shared information out by the firing range. but peggy draws a line before outright mentioning rip's dead family.

she eyes the bottle. any worries peggy might have harboured that she'd been wearing out her welcome soon dissipate with rip's offer to fetch another. ] What can you bring to memory in the way of a good bourbon?

[ -- she's not picky about her blends. far from it. but the question seems like an ideal springboard to move them abruptly away from the topic. although the geography, it seems, remains distinctly american. ]

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