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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

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.

"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.

A proper towel does wonders. Although she makes no move to enter the room (it's his, after all), Peggy does wait impatiently in the doorway. No break in her mood comes until she's got the towel in hand and can begin by fussing at the roots of her hair, soaking up water and soon after draping the whole thing around her shoulders.

"...Oh." Her mouth forms a perfect circle, just for a moment, before she nods a curt not. "I see. That -- actually, that makes a great deal more sense."

Because perhaps she doesn't find it so ridiculous. Indeed, it's one of the least ridiculous revelations she's encountered in a long long while.

But the moment is nevertheless awkward and -- groping for something nice to say (never her strongest moment) Peggy eventually settles upon: "I like the colours?"

Peter realizes she's standing out in the hallway still out of politeness, because he didn't actually invite her inside yet. God, his Aunt May would smack him over the back of his head for not having manners.

"...you can come in and find clothing in the closet if you want."

He doesn't know why she can't make it back to her own room, but it's pretty obvious that she can't. She wouldn't be here otherwise. She seems like the sort of person who doesn't really like relying on others like this or appearing dripping wet at their doorstep. It's probably one of those anomalies Darcy mentioned. He won't make it worse by pointing any of it out.

Peter actually laughs a little at her attempt at a compliment. "Uh, thanks. I sewed it myself cause I didn't have money to... do anything else," he says and then clears his throat. "I'm glad you just rolled with the whole thing and didn't think I was crazy, but I guess being in Wonderland makes almost anything believable."

"Almost."

She allows him that clarification. Wonderland has done a great deal to try her disbelief, but the thought of someone dressing up in a costume and fighting a good fight doesn't take her by surprise. Not in the least.

Peg enters the room, adjusting the towel around her shoulders and eyeing the closet with a moment of trepidation. As yet, she hasn't found one that doesn't produce just Asgardian garb. That's a problem in and of itself.

"--For what it's worth, I think you must be handier with a needle and thread than I've ever been."

Peter glances over at her with a sideways smile, which is warm but genuine.

"I learned how to from my aunt when I was little. Easier to sew up torn clothing than buy new ones when you can't afford them."

He frowns as he sees the Asgardian garb that she keeps pulling out. He doesn't trust it- When Wonderland forces just one option on them, he- he hates the lack of choice, but it's also worrying. This place has so much control over them. It can nudge them even when it doesn't completely force them to do what it wants.

"...it's not letting you pull out anything else, is it?"

"--Make do and mend," Peggy mutters. Possibly in relation to Peter's comment on torn clothes. Truth is, she's not terrible with a needle. But nor is she adept. It suits her to play it off like a tragedy, however, and she's about to launch into some fabricated tale seams gone wrong when he speaks up about the closet.

With a bit of soft green silk (is it silk?) in her hand, she turns to glance at the room's owner. "It really isn't. Ironic, really. Given all of this," she gives the stuff a shake, "has apparently got something to do with the world where I'm from."

But not a lick of it is familiar to her.

Peter leans back against the wall as she pulls out something Asgardian-like from the closet. He'd pulled out what he could earlier, but it was the same situation. Thankfully, he has all the clothing he could need in his drawers. He stands up straighter at the revelation.

"Wait, you're from Darcy and Steve and Fitz and Jemma's and... there's probably someone else- I lose track. You're from their world too?"

No wonder the whole super-powered-suit thing didn't seem to phase her too much.

"...that's what you meant when you said there were people from your home here but you hadn't met them. ...Damn."

A stiffening in her posture mirrors his. Peggy's attention turns sharp-edged, although her gaze hasn't flickered. It could be considered more of a slow cementing of her focus. At first wordless, she only nods.

There are probably other people. She can think of two, already, not yet named in that list. Maybe more. She might say she'd also lost track, but the truth is that she barely believes she had a track to lose in the first place. Another troubling dimension to all of this.

"Same world, yes. Markedly different moments in it."

As if moments could measure up to years. Bloody decades.

Peter quiets. He's smart- He's genius levels of smart even if he doesn't usually use that intellect for much beyond furthering Spider-man tech. It's not like he had intense plans for his future back home beyond attend a university of some kind.

He bites down on his lower lip thoughtfully, putting the pieces together, from little details here and there. It would be easier to deal with people from one's past- She'd already know about them, but what's more difficult? What's harder? It's when people have expectations based on what they know about another version- a future version.

"They're from your future. It's a future you haven't lived."

She wags a finger. Not in admonishment, but rather acknowledgement. And soon thereafter she goes back to cloaking herself in the towel -- apparently not keen on taking a chance on the Asgardian dress just yet.

"Yes. Precisely." And Peggy doesn't smile but there's a note of reserved approval running through the smaller pieces of her composure: the way she nods, and the way her brows uncrease. It's both a relief and a challenge to be around someone with a brain in his head. They figure out too much too quickly, yes, but it also means she doesn't have to beat around bushes to make her meanings known.

"And although I may not have lived it -- most of them are uncomfortably familiar with its details."

"But they have certain expectations because of what they know happens? But that's not who you are... at least not yet."

It's not difficult for Peter to fill in those blanks either, but it has less to do with the intellect this time. It has more to do with being able to relate even the slightest bit (but not exactly, of course, because it's the life she has yet to lead. It's the life she will lead if Wonderland ever sends her back to live it).

"I- It's not the same at all, but sometimes I'm afraid of that with people who know other versions of me."

What if they're better, stronger, or more? How can he hope to measure up to the face of versions of himself that are so far removed from him but so similar people can recall details of his life without ever having met him at all? They're the ones who read comic books and watch movies about him.

"Not yet, no."

It's all she offers by way of confirmation for her own predicament. He's hit the nail on its head: so many of the people she's met from her world expect her to be Director Carter. Peggy's not certain she knows how to be that woman -- or whether she'd want to be, even if she knew how.

Rather than discuss herself, she's quick to seize on his concerns. "Does that happen? Have there been...other versions of you?"

Peter has a tendency to focus attention outward for the very same reason. He's not really used to that same method being flung back at him. He opens his mouth, sliding his hand behind his neck, with a wince as he thinks of how to put it to words.

"Uh, yeah, but I haven't met them. They haven't shown up here. It's more like other people from other worlds- They know different versions of me. I don't look like those other versions at least not completely, because there's always a moment after they hear my name."

He shakes his head, clearing his throat. "Some people from your world actually have met a version of me. I guess he's younger than I am, and his suit's different."

"Well, I haven't."

And she can say it with utmost certainty -- ages and suits aside. Peggy makes a show of toweling off the ends of her hair, letting her attention slip off Peter for a moment while she considers her position in all of this.

"But I suspect that has more to do with me being from '47 than with much else. Very like, I'll never meet the 'you' from my world."

Peggy has done the math. She'll either be dead by then. Or 95. Hard to tell which prospect sounds worse.

"I like that you haven't so you don't have expectations. He's not me. I'm not him. There's no one out there trying to save people in my world but me."

Trying to fix his own wrongs, trying to right those mistakes. He's saving people from danger that he created. He is not good. Peter doesn't know that he'll ever be able to with that formula out there for Oscorp to dig its claws into. He swallows then, because he also understands the realization for her. An ache takes over his chest. It's sudden, abrupt. He releases a breath, which he holds too close.

"...but I'm also sorry you won't- All these people who know about you from your future, you won't get the same luxury of knowing the details about them." How strange it must be. She must do something great, something huge if so many people here have these expectations and know about her without ever having met her before, but it also must be so much respsonsibility. "God, that's complicated, isn't it?"

He's right. He's entirely right. It's damned complicated, it's damned annoying, and it damned well leaves her uncertain of were to put her toes. Every conversation with someone from her world becomes a fresh landmine. Already, the things she's learned have left her feeling more confused than when she'd arrived. Is it any wonder she's taken to preferring the company of strangers?

-- But she's not prepared to tell him he's right. Not at all prepared to start walking down that conversational path. And so to avoid it, she goes boldly on the offense.

"Now, I don't know your world from Adam," Peggy begins, "but it seems a touch melodramatic to say there's likely no one else trying to save people in your world. Even if the rest don't go around looking like..."

She draws a line in the air in front of him, as though to indicate the red and blue suit.

It's an effective strike. Peter winces, sliding a hand over his face, as he nods then because it is melodramatic and not what he meant at all. He clears his throat then, folding his arms across his chest loosely.

"No. I mean, of course- There's not as much danger there as what I've heard about your own world, and I- There's the police. There are random New Yorkers who lend a hand when times are tough, and there's- I mean, there was my uncle too. He did what was right without having any powers at all."

Peter did not manage that when he had powers. He clears his throat.

"There are a lot of people doing good, but I meant-" Peter waves a hand vaguely in front of his face. "There aren't people with a lot of super powers dressed up in spandex, trying to help people. So. I am just figuring out how to do that."

And stuff.

He says a lot. And Peggy doesn't much mind it because she doesn't much mind uncovering new threads to coil into spools and keep under a heading labeled PARKER, PETER in her mental filing case. The same can be said for the rest of Wonderland, as well. She pokes and she prods and she learns. There are no SSR files or resources to pillage, here. She'll have to get her intel the old fashioned way.

For example -- the fellow must have powers of his own. It's easily deduced when he underlines so quickly that his uncle had none. He quickly confirms it for her with his follow-up commentary, but Peggy is still shaking her head.

"I won't speak to what my world becomes," won't not can't, "but when and where I come from? There isn't anyone with super powers dressed up in costumes" She lifts her chin -- weighing her words carefully. "Not any longer."

And it may very well be the nearest she comes to mentioning Steve. Even that much settles like stones in her stomach.

"Good work still gets done, whether it's done in spandex or otherwise." Which actually brings her to a terribly important point, because, "what's spandex?"

"There was someone before, but something happened to them? Something they couldn't come back from?"

Peter's head goes to death so immediately as if that's the only answer- the only alternative. He saw an alternate version of himself through a tear once. He watched that version of himself die (and it made so much sense), and he wondered what happened to the over powered villains in that world. Was there anyone to help the people, or did the people have to rise up on their own against insurmountable forces? It's always those people without powers who throw themselves into the fray who are the bravest like Peter's uncle.

If Peter had done what was right then, he'd still be alive today, but Peter didn't. Powers don't make someone brave or strong or right.

The question makes him pause and stare with his mouth parted as he clears his throat. "Just fiber used in clothing? That is the most aerodynamic so I used it to make the suit."

Cause of the whole flying from one building to the next. Thing.

Tricky, tricky. He pursues that line of thought -- of what could have happened, of why she might ominously leave the comment hanging at not any longer. At the time, she'd managed to convince herself that Steve had died. Howard had exhausted his search; the SSR had come up empty handed. It wasn't until she arrived here that she'd learned otherwise, and had leaped to take that guilt onto her own shoulders. What had she sacrificed by giving up too soon?

Peggy scowls -- redirecting her dissatisfaction toward the now-saturated towel. In the end, she simply doesn't bother to touch on Peter's questions. She dispenses with the art of deflection altogether.

"I've never heard of it." Spandex. "Something 'modern,' is it?"

Edited 2017-09-02 02:02 (UTC)

Peter understands. He gets not wanting to talk about certain subjects- not wanting to talk at all. It's why he doesn't push her to answer the question. If she wants to focus on spandex, they will focus on spandex. Of all the subjects to turn to, he doesn't quite know what to think about turning to this one though. He clears his throat.

"Yeah. I mean, pretty modern. A chemist discovered the fiber in the 1950s, and then it officially entered the clothing industry in the late 60s. I- I studied inventions a lot growing up," he says, waving a hand like it's normal for someone to know random facts like that. He memorized his multiple books about inventions, and then he went around his house trying to fix appliances and equipment for his aunt and uncle especially since they didn't have money for repairs themselves.

He pauses then, staring at her, since she's still wrapped up in a towel and mostly damp. "If you want to get something warm to drink from my closet so you don't like catch a cold, you're- you can do that too."

Peggy lets him talk it out. He makes excuses -- he references studying inventions -- but she hadn't even considered it an odd thing before he tried to explain it away. Too much time spent with Stark, she suspects, and she's begun accepting a certain level of egg-headedness as standard.

Her mouth opens. She's about to say something. But it's all blown out of the water by his oblique offer of hospitality. Well, well, don't mind if she dies.

"I could murder a cup of tea," Peggy answers -- helping herself to his closet because he's as good as invited her to do exactly that. "--You?"

She'll be obliging. Ish. She's a guest, after all.

Peter blinks as he looks up from his hand, which he'd been staring at. He clears his throat at the question.

"I'll have what you're having. I don't think I've had an actual cup of tea before at least not-" He waves generally in her direction since he's had tea in the past, but he's not- He doesn't think it really counts as to what she'd consider as actual tea.

He taught her about spandex.

Peter can learn about tea, proper tea.

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