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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Re: action »

[directed]

[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?

action »

[mucked]

[ 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. ]

Re: action »

[directed]

[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.]

action »

[mucked]

[ 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. ]

Re: action »

[directed]

[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.

action »

[mucked]

[ 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. ]