open » youth is wasted on the young

[mucked]

Who: Peggy Carter + OPEN
Where: Various spots
When: From July 3rd to mid-month.
Rating: PG, most likely.
Summary: Peggy digests some unexpected developments, fires away her disappointments, and throws herself into more productive endeavours. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
The Story:

FIRING RANGE (backdated to july 4th)--

[ steve's confession, of sorts, scatters her emotions and sends peggy's fledgling optimism deep underground. perhaps it'd been the sort of thing she should never have nurtured: hope; expectation; excitement for the few decent possibilities wonderland might have offered to offset so much horror and disappointment. but she'd made a mistake when she'd allowed herself to put the cart in front of the horse. to put it mildly. it's a mistake she won't make again. of all those involved, she blames herself most -- for courting distraction when she ought to be focused on survival. just as it had been during the war, she should brook no time for love nor distractions. it only gets people hurt.

so the day after her conversation with steve sees her at the firing range. she's got one of those modern firearms, given to her by sharon, and she decides she'd better grow comfortable with it. and quick. now that her wound is feeling much better, there's no excuse to hang back and wait out disasters when she could wade into them instead. it's a cold comfort to squeeze out a few whole clips on a muggy 'independence day,' knowing that others might yet be celebrating elsewhere on the grounds.

afterwards, while field-stripping the gun and giving it a good cleaning, she sits well-back of the range itself. her expression is stony, and when she fumbles with the unfamiliar barrel and utters a sharp curse. it's said with far more vehemence than the error merits. ]

THE VENDORS (july 9th)--

[ curiousity (paired with an appetite for diversion) eventually gets the better of her and she ventures into the orchards. she'd like to tell herself she'd only been walking, without intention, and meandered in their direction. truth is, she wants to see these wares with her own eyes. touch them, perhaps, with her own fingertips. peggy goes from stall to stall with her notebook tucked protectively under one arm.

she'd heard about the prices the vendors might place on their goods. the concept intrigues her a little more than it ought to, especially considering she'd arrived with very little currency of her own, but she manages to resist the urge to make a purchase. after all, she'd never been one for ownership; it'd never meshed well with her chosen career.

but she does try to snag the attention of another resident as he or she walks by, asking: ] Pardon, but...have you bought anything from these fellows?

[ is it worth it? ]

AROUND THE GROUNDS (all month)--

[ the mansion was already beginning to feel oppressive. but now, understanding the true cost of opportunity the building might represent, peggy feels driven to spend as little time under its roof as possible. she begs a thermos from her bedroom closet and fills it to the brim with hot black tea -- making do with ordering cup after cup in the dining hall and pouring each one in succession into the vessel. this becomes a mid-morning ritual, with a square of toast smeared in jam taken for a quick breakfast. on any given day, she might be found sitting with her back against an outer wall at the stables, or on the edge of the fountain, or perhaps on a blanket by the lakeshore.

although the place changes, the scene is otherwise always the same: peggy, her gone-lukewarm thermos sitting open beside her, and a notebook canted against her knees while she writes slowly and deliberately. either because this is a new undertaking, or because she herself is so recently arrived, only a handful of pages have thus far been filled. some of the sentences appear legible (intended in english) but others, should anyone peer over her shoulder, are gibberish. coded, most likely.

when strangers or rare familiar faces walk by, she'll at least do the decent thing and give a cordial nod. despite her sour mood, it doesn't register all that much differently from her customary distance and chill. ]

Comments

[directed]

[She speaks the words as surely as if she'd plucked them out of his own mind, and Rip huffs quietly from his side of the table. He wonder if his plan, impromptu though it had been, maybe hasn't worked a little too well. Too much sympathy garnered on the wrong side—though Rip knows, regardless, that if Peggy somehow winds up standing against him, he would still dispatch her without hesitation.

Thinking on the scenario reveals that truth to him. If need be, he could pull his gun and shoot her right now.]

I am still human. [More callous than he'd once been, with devotion to a different purpose—but human, regardless.] I'm just equally aware of how none of it will matter in the end. There is nothing to history but war and misery and death. Such things are inevitable. So I've decided not to devote my effort to a pointless cause.

So much the same way, I suppose, as you've decided to let go of your American. [To abandon the fight for what would be futile at best. Whoever this man is has chosen another—so Peggy in turn has decided to free herself of the torment of pursuit.

Painful in the present, perhaps--but it would serve her well in days to come.]

[mucked]

[ it isn't the same. not one whit, she thinks. but's got a steady head on her shoulders even now and so knows better than to argue a point what doesn't need arguing. it might behoove her better to let him think her concession comes close to surrendering to the inevitable.

peggy's not so certain it ever was inevitable. the timing of it all has worked against her, doubtless, but she's at least partially cognizant that steve still loves her. perhaps that is why she's about-turned so quickly in the opposite direction. even friendly relations will continue to disturb a hornets' nest of feelings that she's not prepared to kick.

not yet. perhaps not ever. ]

I've done it before. [ let him go. ] I can do it again.

[ now is not the time nor the place to nurture a distracted heart, after all. ]

For all I know -- for all any of us knows -- I might disappear tomorrow. Cheerio, back home. Just like you did but without the bit about coming back. [ ah, but there's a worthy distraction. ] Did you remember Wonderland while you were gone, Mister Hunter?

[directed]

[He's unaware of her disagreement; equally, Rip ultimately doesn't care. Whatever she thinks or doesn't, whatever she may be ready to concede, Rip's only goal is to sow those seeds that might have her hesitate should they meet with guns drawn as enemies, rather than by coincidence. Learning of her reluctances and her regrets serves as a bonus: weapons, potentially, to be used against her at a future time.

Especially if she has a harder time letting him go, with the American present in Wonderland.

She veers, slightly, pointing out a truth that would seem to fall in line with Rip's assumptions: she could be there and gone in a blink, and what would the pursuit of a futile love earn her then? Especially given the answer he offers up, quick and without hesitation.]

Not a bit of it, in fact. It was exactly as everyone claims it to be. I returned to the exact time I had been pulled from, and continued on none the wiser for what I had been through here.

[And despite hearing it time and again, Rip before had refused to hear words of the future, to learn too much about what would come for him. Ironic, really. Though it would have done him no good, he could have prepared the Legends for the possibility of his return once his memory had been restored—if only he'd known.

If only he'd let himself know.]

[mucked]

[ it'd been a question. a conversation piece, really. between them on the first day they'd met -- and it had been the fundamental cornerstone beneath why she thought it prudent to heed his warnings when it came to learning too much about what might come after. but now? well, now the precaution hardly seems warranted.

doesn't matter. she's got new reasons not to go searching for the information. too much of it has made her question things about herself, her career path, and not only the decisions yet to come but also the decisions already made.

before today, before yesterday, peggy's convictions were already in crisis. steve's revelations only fueled those flames. dragged them to the forefront. ]

So. This realm is something of a loop -- closed in on itself. [ the choices made here by her and by others might not have ripples beyond these borders. might not. ] Hard to say whether that's a comfort or otherwise.

[ she suspects he'll spit on the idea of anything being a comfort, really. ]

[directed]

It would be more accurate to say it's separated from the normal flow of time entirely. [A loop, after all, implies some manner of repetition; a return to the start, whereas Wonderland might arguably never leave that initial point in spite of their perceptions. But in the rest she isn't wrong: Rip now has undeniable proof that nothing of what they do here would impact the world beyond, and equally?

He takes no comfort in it at all.]

We've already discussed the desire people so often hold to matter in one way or another. Now we reside in the one world where it's guaranteed they won't. Whatever any of us learns, whatever futures await each of us, we can do nothing but languish under the weight of those details, all the while certain of their inevitability.

Like you. You might have gone on your whole life, believing your American dead. [He pauses, considering their other conversations, then shrugs.] Then again, that really does seem to be your lot here anyway. Learning about your relatives not yet born, whatever it is you found that's left you famous. Now you know that your love didn't perish, for all the good it does you.

Wonderland is shaping up to be a woefully miserable prison for you, isn't it?

[mucked]

[ he's right, of course.

it's godawful. peggy has despised a great many circumstances throughout her life, but wonderland truly truly takes the cake. she'd been miserable even before yesterday -- and that, in the end, is half the tragedy. because as miserable as she'd been, the slightest sliver of hope she'd felt in reuniting with steve had just about made that misery manageable. whatever bombs being dropped, there remained at least a foundation to build from.

a known face, a reliable heart, a welcome smile.

-- and in many ways, those things remain. but they're cordoned off from her now. he's as much a museum piece, in the flesh, as he already was merely a year after his 'death.' excised from her life by velvet ropes and someone else's interests. untouchable.

her fist tightens where it sits, knuckles chafing against the weather-worn wood. ]

Yes. [ she agrees, but not without strings. ] But I imagine as woeful and miserable a prison as it is for me, it must be half again that awful for you. Especially now.

[ because as unfettered as he claims to be by old responsibilities and loyalties, it seems to be those very things now hemming him in. there's nowhere to run from the marks he's left on his team -- the good marks, the decent ones, the ones that persuade a whole group of individuals not to rush to terminate him on the spot. she may be a prisoner in a cult of personality she'd not yet earned.

but rip? right now? well -- he's earned his. for better or worse. ]

[directed]

[Is he miserable?

Certainly Rip wouldn't consider himself happy; less burdened might be the closest one could come to describing the difference between the man he is now and the fool he'd once been. The concerns of history no longer fall on his shoulders, nor does he feel the same attachments to those he once considered comrades.

But she's not wrong to think that they are still stubbornly connected regardless. Rip's transmission over the network has made that clear enough, along with each persistent encounter he's faced from any of the Legends.

They are persistent. Pointlessly so, but—persistent.]

Then it's fortunate that I don't expect to find any measure of contentment here. [And it's only a matter of time, he thinks, before the Legends realize he is a lost and hopeless cause. Something would come to a head. It's inevitable, and Rip's plan then is to do what he must to remain himself when that convergence does happen.]