open » please don't be a stranger in my place

[mucked]

Who: Peggy Carter + YOU
Where: Mansion grounds + the 'Palace'
When: August 25th to 27th
Rating: PG13ish
Summary: Peggy struggles with spatial anomalies, with the universe being bigger than she thought it was, and with life in general. Will match prose/brackets.
The Story:

( DAY ONE )

Even after the announcement made by Darcy and Steve, Peggy Carter isn't looking to stay a homebody. Not least of all because somehow (somewhere) in all this spatial mess, she's gone and misplaced one of the very few items brought with her from home. (Home! What a funny concept, just now!)

So, she's on the hunt. It's not an easy endeavor. Quite apart from striding into the kitchen and ending up in the music room, or entering a stairwell only to find herself standing in mild bewilderment in the middle of someone else's bedroom, it seems she can't quite manage to get back to her own quarters without ending up in the lake.

That's right: in the lake. And so if someone doesn't catch her misdirected elsewhere, they might come across Peggy as she's stalking her way back to the mansion with her heels in hand and her clothes soaked through. The unexpected dip has forced her curls undone and her makeup to run. By the stormy look on her face, it's entirely possible this isn't the first time she's made this particular and sodden walk. Little does she know, she's got a lot to be thankful for. At least the lake hasn't taken to freezing yet.

All she damn well wants is to get back to her bedroom.

( DAY ONE + TWO )

With a bit of charity from a fellow resident, she may yet manage to make it through this event with (most) of her dignity intact. Incapable of making it back to her bedroom, Peggy is forced to rely upon the kindness of (near) strangers. It's a position she hates to be in, but it's entirely possible she'll be knocking on your door with a quick and sheepish request to make use of your closet. I'll only be a moment. Hand to heart. She promises with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Good Lord, this is humiliating. Begging, hand to mouth, while dripping lake water all over someone's doorway.

The Asgardian garb isn't really her style, but it's any port in a storm -- and until she can make it back to her own wardrobe, she might as well make do and mend. And if the whole ruddy place is meant to be so transformed into a palace then perhaps she may as well look the part. Albeit under duress.

( DAY THREE )

-- But it becomes soon apparent that she's not wholly herself in these fabrics and armours. Never great at sitting still, it now feels like tenfold a challenge not to rush to the threatened defenses and do something about it. At first, she tries to resist the siren's call to arms. And when she does begin to wander the palace, she tells herself it's because she's curious about this place that shares some metaphysical connection (apparently) with her own home-world. She can be found leaning her cheek against the warm walls with interest, or tracing the impossible architecture of an arched doorway.

"--Must've taken ages to knock together something like this. Touch more ambitious than Hampton Court. And that's saying something," she comments to passers-by.

But in the end it's with relief that she finally manages to access her own room again -- keen to peel away the alien fashion and find herself a proper pencil skirt again.

Comments

Day one

[oakay]

Groot isn't entirely sure what exactly it is that she's knocking on the door to ask for and he should really ask Rocket before he let a stranger in because it's Rocket's room buuut he's not here and she looked so sad. What to do? He's really not sure! He held up his finger to make sure she paused and waited before he shut the door and trailed off to get what he thought she might want. That way he could help without potentially upsetting Rocket.

When he opened the door again, he presented her with a sock. A clean, white sock.

This is what she wanted, right? A sock? He understood that thinking, socks were great. They could be used to keep stuff, they could be used as a weapon, they could be worn or slept in. She could really use a dry sock. They were a genius item, way better than a shoe. Shoes were just deceptive non-sock lies. He held it up a little further and insistently. "I am Groot?"

[mucked]

Well, damn. This is troubling.

Peggy might have looked sad (and soggy) at the outset, but her disappointment quite quickly gives way to confusion. Concern, even. Bewilderment, certainly. And when the little tree, root, plant (?) chap actually bids her to wait and be patient.

She isn't convinced she knows why she heeds the creature, but she does. Drip-drip-dripping in the hallway with her hands on her hips until the door opens and...

"A sock?" She counters, hop-skipping over what she presumes to be a friendly introduction while she bends over to snag the item and inspect it more closely. "Oh, yes, thank you. That'll be good for drying oh about a third of my face."

Somehow, her gratitude doesn't sound all that sincere.

[oakay]

She didn't like the sock? "I am Groot?"

He wasn't sure what there wasn't to like about the sock. Did she really think it was that useless? Hmm. He held up his finger again and watched her for a second, making sure she was paused before he shut the door again and searched for what else it could be that she'd want from him. Clearly she was weird, strange and needed something that fit her and her current mood.

Which is when when he opened the door next time, he threw a sun hat up into the air and in her direction. "I am Groot." Only weird people like hats. "I am Groot." You're pretty weird. "I am Groot." Maybe it'll make her head look better.

Looks too small right now.

[mucked]

Again, she's asked (commanded?) to wait. And if she listens then perhaps it's only because there's something strangely less humiliating about sorting through this interaction with a odd little bark creature if only because of how out of the ordinary it all is for her.

Turns out she doesn't make good on her suggestion that the sock would only do to dry her face. It's still hanging limp in her hand when the door opens again and she's tossed a hat. A hat! And Peg does like a good hat, but it hardly seems the time and...

"You're Groot." Only now does the odd speech pattern get noticed. She frowns, holding the hat upside down and tossing the sock into its hollow. "Look, Mister Groot, this is all well and good but have you got a flannel?"

day three

[readytocomply]

Bucky's not purposefully avoiding Peggy.

He tends to keep to himself anyway. A habit that he's not really in any position to break. He either doesn't feel like good company or his mind helpfully supplies that it wouldn't be wanted anyway, he's undeserving of good people having him around. The event and the change of clothes, soften his resolve to be alone. Unfortunately, he's not sure how to be around Peggy right now.

So when he's walking down the hallway, sees her with her cheek pressed to the wall, he freezes. He knows she'll notice him soon, if she hasn't already, but he stands there anyway.

They haven't spoken in a while and definitely not since Steve told her about the two of them. Clearing his throat, he nods. "Miss Carter."

[mucked]

The heat bewilders. And when Barnes turns up, Peggy is still canted against the wall. It's a step on the flagstone that draws her attention -- prompting her to turn on a heel and (with one hand still flat against the stone) set her sights on the other person.

And the other person is Barnes. Yes, the very sight of him quietly catches her off her guard -- but very little of that surprise registers in her face. Peggy's outward appearance stays schooled. Thoughtful, almost. Seeing him might bring with it a twinge of heartache, but she doesn't hold him at fault for moving on an opportunity she ought to have moved upon years ago.

One she moved upon too late.

Slowly, she pulls away from the wall and returns his nod. The air is cordial, albeit distantly so. Professional. By some paradox and twist, she appears calmer now than when she'd met him in the ski resort's kitchen -- perhaps because the flood of new information had been allowed to settle; it's knitted into her worldview. And speaking of worldviews...

"Difficult to imagine this place has some tether, some connection, to home." She says by way of a safe and perfunctory greeting. It's been bothering her ever since Darcy and Steve addressed the network -- that any slice of this could somehow be a part of the universe from which she'd been yanked.

[readytocomply]

Professionalism, he can handle. He doesn't expect anything less from a classy dame like Peggy Carter and the response he gets only solidifies that notion. Bucky takes a step or two closer, running his hand along the wall, intrigued by the way warmth permeates the stone as if by some strange magic or science.

"We were on a space station once. Flying cars and holograms." More advanced than the cars from the Stark expo and what technology the modern world he'd (they'd) come from had to offer. "The longer I'm here, the easier it is to swallow."

He never completely does. Sometimes his head plays tricks and makes him think this is all an elaborate hallucination, but there are people to ground him in the moment. It gets better each event.

"Never got to meet him. Thor." Bucky glances around them. "Met Jane, though. She was smart, kind. Was from the same place we are." She left Wonderland like others have, here one day and gone the next. No evidence that they got to go home. Just gone.

[mucked]

Thor, he says, and she's heard rumblings. Nothing she'd readily believed until seeing this place, however. No matter what she'd been told. And she's got no ruddy idea who Jane is meant to be, but Peggy nods along as though she does. It seems simpler -- past and present circumstances making her proceed with a touch more caution than her usual roughshod interrogation.

"Funny, I find myself feeling quite the opposite." Peggy leaves the wall behind. Its warmth carries a bit too much allure -- like a nice fireplace, exuding comfort. She's not at her sharpest when she's leaned up against it. "The more I see, the more I find sticks in my craw."

But then again she recognizes there must be a horizon of sorts: a point past which these messes get easier and easier to digest, after they spend months feeling like impossibilities. Only it seems as though every corner she turns brings her something she'd never before imagined.

Truth be told, she hasn't fared well with it.

( day two )

[shrinkage]

"Lady Margaret!"

Ray's voice booms as he answers her knock, and if he pauses for a moment in uncertainty about, well-- did he just call her Margaret? He shakes his head against the doubt (warriors do not doubt themselves!) and strides toward her, exo-suit draped in a crimson cape. While his exuberance may not mark a difference in his behavior, perhaps his choice of curse might...

"By Odin's beard! You're sopping-- here," he rushes to pull the cape from his own shoulders to help her cover up. "Please, come in and find your respite!"

[mucked]

Peggy stands in a puddle of lake water collecting at her feet and, when the door opens, she's met with a brace of epiphanies. For one, this is Ray's room. She didn't know that when she'd knocked. For another, she'd never seen him in the suit before now and -- and it turns out it's every bit as odd a visual prospect as she'd first guessed. Yet another? Something seems damned off.

Did he just call her Margaret?

It is all of it just about overwhelming enough that she reacts a little too late to the drape of his cape; he's already got it around her shoulders by the time she thinks to side-step and grumble through her complaint. She doesn't need a blood knight in whatever-that-is armour and...

And the cape now on her shoulders presents something of a problem. Renewed vigor, and a dash of warrior spirit. She stands a little taller -- as though someone pulled on a string attached to her spine.

"It's only a bit of water," she plays it down because she knows him. Because he's making a fuss. Because she's biding her time trying to decide how best to rap his knuckles for calling her Lady Margaret.

Even so, she strides inside -- cape tucked around her shoulders like an emergency blanket.

[shrinkage]

He'll always fuss and always require knuckle-rapping. He'll always be a little less self-aware than would be prudent, but here and now he's entirely ignorant.

"Make use of what amenities please you, my lady. Whatever you require, is yours."

He moves in then, heavy boots clomping along as he lets the door slam shut. Ray's never been a sloucher, but his chest is puffed out a little more, shoulders squared back as if in anticipation of combat. His strides take him into the living room further, where a sword that should be far too big for him lays. Its wiring (wiring on a sword?) lays in haphazard loops, half-built.

"Regain your strength, and we shall return to battle side by side!"

[mucked]

And Peggy follows. Easily. As much as she might despise others infringing upon her space, she shows such little compunction when infringing upon someone else's. Doubly so when it's one that's tastefully decorated and almost comfortable-looking by contrast to her room.

Not that she comments to that effect. Not that she so much as observes the place beyond an initial glance. Her attention is too rooted to this spectacle of a man leading her inside.

"Good God, man, drop the airs." Her head cocks to the side. "It's not cute."

Thrillingly abrupt. In general, this might actually be a sign of something good.

day one

[middlefinger]

[technically, this isn't Wynonna's room, it belongs to her boyfriend Doc Holliday, but she's here enough one might think that she was living with him (the suggestion would probably scare her off, she frightens easily). he, incidentally, is not here. she thinks he went to the library but with the wonky time shenanigans going on and all it's hard to know for certain.

wynonna, however, is in his room -- and less then dressed as it would turn out. she was wearing one of doc's shirts and little else and eating a powdered donut in bed while reading through a book that looks heavily annotated (doc has taken to editing the biographies she's read on him).

please don't tell anyone how she lives.

she lets out a yelp of surprise, dropping the donut onto the book, getting dust everywhere as she tries to cover herself up.]

I'd say you should knock first but I don't think this place gives a shit about that

[mucked]

[ tumbling quite unexpectedly into anyone's room is already a hassle -- a trial, really. doubly so when that room is occupied. triply, too, when it's occupied by anyone in any sort of undone state.

there's a flicker of surprise as peggy catches her balance on the back of a chair -- and then she's averting her eyes out of decorum, although with no real shame felt. there is a desensitizing factor which comes with living first in dorms and, afterward, in shared quarters at bletchley. and barracks beyond that. ]

Believe you me, I'd be somewhere other than here -- if I had a choice. [ a beat. ] No offense meant.

[ at least she's not found her way to the lake, yet. so that's a ruddy plus. ]

[middlefinger]

[wynonna doesn't feel any shame either. she grew up with two sisters. her body is probably one of the few things she doesn't feel shame about -- if anything she could use a little healthy modesty.

she doesn't cover up just yet, she grabs her device to shoot a text to doc to tell him not to shoot if he comes in here and someone else is in here with her, it's wonderland being weird and not a serial killer

well, she's pretty sure it's not a serial killer. if it is, peacemaker isn't far from her. anyway, with that out of the picture she grabs a pair of pants from the floor, setting her book and donut on the bed in order to tug them on. then she buttons up the shirt she's wearing.]

None taken. It's safe to look now.

[mucked]

[ with an obliging nod, peggy turns back to better face the room's occupant. she herself looks as though she's stepped out of an office. the whole look is in effect: the pin curls, the pencil skirt, the well-starched blouse. and by all immediate accounts, she doesn't appear armed -- but that's never any guarantee. ]

It's been happening all morning, [ she offers by way of a quick and efficient explanation. ] Walk through one doorway, end up somewhere entirely unintended. Bloody events.

[ a clearing of her throat. ] Peggy, by the way.

[ might as well be civil about it. ]

day 2

[saved]

Peter expects whoever's knocking on his door to be someone who knows him and knows where his room is, which means he doesn't think at all about changing before he opens the door. He's mostly in the spandex Spider-man suit though he's not wearing the mask.

He opens the door and then stares at Peggy. Of course, he doesn't know her well. They only spoke the once, but she seemed very no nonsense, and now- She's completely wet, and he's in red and blue spandex without any obvious explanation as to the why.

"...uh, hi. Hey. Can I help you?"

[mucked]

And to think! She'd been worried about how daft she looks dripping wet and with all her polish come off. But when the door is answered and the room's occupant reveals himself? Well. That's a bit of a shock. She certainly didn't realize it was him, or his, or anything to do with anyone she's met before.

"Mister Parker," Peg starts. Uncertain; unhappy.

Frankly, she mostly wishes it wasn't a recognizable face. Somehow, meeting a stranger might have been easier.

"--A towel, please." She huffs. But then she can't help herself. "Apologies, but. Good God, are those meant to be pajamas?"

Foot, meet mouth.

[saved]

"A towel, yeah. That seems really obvious given you're- you're dripping wet."

Peter moves towards the closet to pull out a big towel from inside, walking back over to her to hand it to her. The question nearly makes him laugh, because that Red Ranger nicknamed him Pajamas in this very suit. He'd laugh but he gets the feeling she might get even unhappier then.

So he swallows up his laugh. He shifts on his feet from one to the other.

"... no. I-" God, how exactly does he explain this? It's hard enough when he's not in spandex. "I fight crime and giant lizards? That shouldn't have been a question. I do. Back where I'm from. And I help fight monsters and keep people safe here, and the suit was to keep my secret identity back home."

He lets out a little embarrassed groan as he slides a hand over his face, because he's sure this all sounds ridiculous.

Day two | new cr bring it

[mandrakes]

He doesn't get visitors often. When he does, it's usually Damon, or Elena, and neither of them are usually - ever - sopping wet with sheepish expressions on their faces. The request is.. unusual, but not unexpected considering her state, and he steps to one side with a small, polite smile and equally polite gesture to indicate she should come inside.

The rooms are warm, a fire crackling low in the grate, and every item of furniture is dark but comfortably worn. Regis himself gives off a fairly harmless air, though there's a certain alertness in him that belies his apparent age.

"Through the door, just over there. Take as long as you need."

[mucked]

Oh, the warmth is welcome. Doubly so the fire -- although she only casts a minute glance in the hearth's direction, disinclined to too obviously telegraph the way she covets its light and heat.

Instead, she nurtures her gratitude for such an easy welcome into the room. And such a cavalier invitation to make use of the closet.

"Cheers," Peg offers -- clearing her throat and offering an apologetic look when she tracks lake water inside. But a moment at the closet and she manages to produce a towel. A loophole, perhaps, in this whole Asgardian malarkey. "It seems I'm having a bit of trouble getting into my room; I keep landing in the lake, instead."

Her tone is jaunty as she explains the situation. However, her voice harbours a darker note. Real, earnest frustration.

[mandrakes]

While the young woman is seeing to her predicament, Regis tosses a little more wood onto the fire. She may have attempted to be covert, but he hadn't missed the look she'd given to the singular source of warmth in the room. The vampire doesn't need it for the warmth, of course, or the light, but he finds both to be something of a homey comfort.

"That sounds terribly inconvenient," he replies, something of an understanding calmness in his tone. For others, her frustration might go unnoticed, but he heard it. There's a certain benefit to rarely leaving your rooms, he decides.

He cleans up the floor quickly enough, giving her as much time as she needs.

"My name is Regis, by the way... And don't worry about the first impression. I've had worse."

day two!

[geiger]

Nora hadn't expected visitors this afternoon. As she opens her door just a little to peer through the crack, she starts a little when she sees a woman dripping wet in her doorway. She swings the door wide open, revealing a room that's very mid-century in decor, the Inkspots playing on her record player as she works on cleaning her guns, which are lined up on the table.

"You all right there?"

[mucked]

She knows this music. That, in and of itself, is remarkable. And under ordinary circumstances she might even have considered it a comfort. But today has been a rotten day, and comfort is thin on the ground.

Not to mention those guns! She throws them an appraising eye even as she steps inside. Grateful, really, for the hospitality.

"Soon will be. Although, I could do with a towel--" Peggy prompts, looking hopeful.

[geiger]

"Oh! Sure." She darts toward the closet and gets from it a warm, fluffy towel, handing it out to Peggy. "Come on in, if you like. What happened? You look like you lost a fight with a garden hose."