[ she says of his finale -- glibly disguising praise as protestation even as she pays careful attention to her annunciation.
and yet there's something almost charming in the display. peggy might make a habit of turning her nose up at flair and showmanship but the shooting is damned good. and for that reason alone he might as well earn his wordless gloat. the flavour imparted by his spinning trick is like the flavour of the revolver itself: old world swagger. it casts a different colour on the man, standing here in his coat and his crossbelt -- as though she's been caught off-guard by his slippers all over again.
hell, she almost smiles to see him smirk. for a very brief moment of time peggy almost invites her own defeat. impending and inevitable.
certainly, there's no delaying it. no talking her way out of it. no swerving this particular fate. she can almost taste it in the back of her throat: cloying and sweet and flat like tea with all the peaks and valleys leveled out to one bland landscape with so much sugar. so she squares up to the firing line and raises her gun with a stance that's straight out of the book, no matter what the hand. strong; able; precise.
it doesn't make a lick of difference.
for all the attention poured onto the first (farthest) target, she succeeds in seeing it shatter. relief ruins her second (middle) shot as it goes wide -- breathing a burn mark into the glass but never touching it; the red laser loses itself in the distance, wrecking a tree trunk instead. the third (and closest) target leaves her with nothing to lose. ironically, that single shot might be her most gracefully executed of the entire competition. it barely registers with peggy because she's already turning away from the firing lane.
there's no embellishment. no peacocking. peggy holsters her gun on her hip and marches over to the thermos -- drinking tea straight from its mouth as a means of waving her white flag. it should be a pyrrhic victory, at worst, but she can't help but feel as though she'd been bested entirely.
she pulls the back of her hand across her mouth, scowling. ] That's it. You're getting rid of that beard the moment we're back inside.
[ as though reminding herself (and him) that she'd won the initial wager. ]
no subject
[ she says of his finale -- glibly disguising praise as protestation even as she pays careful attention to her annunciation.
and yet there's something almost charming in the display. peggy might make a habit of turning her nose up at flair and showmanship but the shooting is damned good. and for that reason alone he might as well earn his wordless gloat. the flavour imparted by his spinning trick is like the flavour of the revolver itself: old world swagger. it casts a different colour on the man, standing here in his coat and his crossbelt -- as though she's been caught off-guard by his slippers all over again.
hell, she almost smiles to see him smirk. for a very brief moment of time peggy almost invites her own defeat. impending and inevitable.
certainly, there's no delaying it. no talking her way out of it. no swerving this particular fate. she can almost taste it in the back of her throat: cloying and sweet and flat like tea with all the peaks and valleys leveled out to one bland landscape with so much sugar. so she squares up to the firing line and raises her gun with a stance that's straight out of the book, no matter what the hand. strong; able; precise.
it doesn't make a lick of difference.
for all the attention poured onto the first (farthest) target, she succeeds in seeing it shatter. relief ruins her second (middle) shot as it goes wide -- breathing a burn mark into the glass but never touching it; the red laser loses itself in the distance, wrecking a tree trunk instead. the third (and closest) target leaves her with nothing to lose. ironically, that single shot might be her most gracefully executed of the entire competition. it barely registers with peggy because she's already turning away from the firing lane.
there's no embellishment. no peacocking. peggy holsters her gun on her hip and marches over to the thermos -- drinking tea straight from its mouth as a means of waving her white flag. it should be a pyrrhic victory, at worst, but she can't help but feel as though she'd been bested entirely.
she pulls the back of her hand across her mouth, scowling. ] That's it. You're getting rid of that beard the moment we're back inside.
[ as though reminding herself (and him) that she'd won the initial wager. ]