Peggy Carter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mucked) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entrancelogs2018-02-01 07:03 am
mucked) wrote in entrancelogs2018-02-01 07:03 am
open » i've got an atlas in my hands
Who: Peggy Carter + YOU
Where: Library, Rabbit Hole Diner, and other locations.
When: Early Feb
Rating: PG-13; will warn for changes in individual threads.
Summary: A catch-all for the first half of the month. There are some open prompts under the cut, but I'm also posting some closed starters in the comments. Hit me up if you'd like something other than the options below.
The Story:
[ DURING february's first few days, peggy pays a few productive visits to the »LIBRARY. she arrives armed with a scrap pressed into her palm. the paper is thin and torn, jagged, from a puzzle book -- folded in threes with precision and hard corners forced onto its asymmetrical shape. while she walks from stack to stack she traces the list's edge with the pad of her thumb. in reality, she doesn't need it. she'd long-since memorizes the book titles recommended to her in order to bring her loosely up to speed with popular science. so the list is a flimsy talisman, maybe, but during these visits it represents purpose. forward momentum.
her reading list is accumulated over multiple days, as though some reflexive defense mechanism convinces peggy to take her time. patience is rarely her strongest suit but she nevertheless makes an effort, knowing that a rush will only leave her rudderless and once again without distraction. to that end, she allows herself to wander off-path. maybe she's come for non-fiction, but she detours through a shelf of thrillers and mysteries and adventure stories.
she touches the spines as she passes them by -- her little list peeking between her knuckles like an ace at the ready. peggy never intends to appear lost but catch her at an odd moment and she might want some help. after all, stark never gave her author names to go with the titles.
LATER, with her coursework assembled, she goes elsewhere to conduct her reading. a great deal of it happens behind her bedroom door as she readjusts to a solitary life now that jane has returned to her husband. but some of it happens at the »DINER. with a whole booth claimed for herself, she sits with the dust jacket removed so bystanders can't easily discern what she's reading stephen hawking's a brief history of time, incidentally. it takes some two or three chapters to really dig into work she couldn't already recognize in passing -- and, on occasion, she offers up an audible scoff when she finds herself confronted with a colourful explanation of scientific discovery which nevertheless somehow manages to neglect howard stark's contribution.
she orders a plate of chips (hot; crispy; salted) and implores the wait-staff to keep them coming. instead of tea, she asks for a milkshake. not a quarter of an hour passes before she's cracked open a journal and uncapped a pen. her annotations are, for the time being, made in pitman shorthand -- and so appear as a series of near shapeless scribbles to those who aren't fluent. even so, there's no secrecy behind that choice. merely a swell of impatience after she'd worked so hard to contain it earlier.
and yet peggy's not averse to interruptions. not exactly. she may not be the most welcoming conversation partner, nor is she particularly fond of idle chatter, but she doesn't chase off interruptions or inquiries.
OTHERWISE, known associates and strangers alike are free to run into her »OUT & ABOUT. whether she's 'commuting' from quarters to library or grabbing a quick breakfast in the dining room early in the morning. she doesn't have a precise schedule (on most days) but she's not impossible to chance upon. she's nearly always immaculate -- from heel to hair-pins. having a project in hand puts her in a better mood. ]
Where: Library, Rabbit Hole Diner, and other locations.
When: Early Feb
Rating: PG-13; will warn for changes in individual threads.
Summary: A catch-all for the first half of the month. There are some open prompts under the cut, but I'm also posting some closed starters in the comments. Hit me up if you'd like something other than the options below.
The Story:
[ DURING february's first few days, peggy pays a few productive visits to the »LIBRARY. she arrives armed with a scrap pressed into her palm. the paper is thin and torn, jagged, from a puzzle book -- folded in threes with precision and hard corners forced onto its asymmetrical shape. while she walks from stack to stack she traces the list's edge with the pad of her thumb. in reality, she doesn't need it. she'd long-since memorizes the book titles recommended to her in order to bring her loosely up to speed with popular science. so the list is a flimsy talisman, maybe, but during these visits it represents purpose. forward momentum.
her reading list is accumulated over multiple days, as though some reflexive defense mechanism convinces peggy to take her time. patience is rarely her strongest suit but she nevertheless makes an effort, knowing that a rush will only leave her rudderless and once again without distraction. to that end, she allows herself to wander off-path. maybe she's come for non-fiction, but she detours through a shelf of thrillers and mysteries and adventure stories.
she touches the spines as she passes them by -- her little list peeking between her knuckles like an ace at the ready. peggy never intends to appear lost but catch her at an odd moment and she might want some help. after all, stark never gave her author names to go with the titles.
LATER, with her coursework assembled, she goes elsewhere to conduct her reading. a great deal of it happens behind her bedroom door as she readjusts to a solitary life now that jane has returned to her husband. but some of it happens at the »DINER. with a whole booth claimed for herself, she sits with the dust jacket removed so bystanders can't easily discern what she's reading stephen hawking's a brief history of time, incidentally. it takes some two or three chapters to really dig into work she couldn't already recognize in passing -- and, on occasion, she offers up an audible scoff when she finds herself confronted with a colourful explanation of scientific discovery which nevertheless somehow manages to neglect howard stark's contribution.
she orders a plate of chips (hot; crispy; salted) and implores the wait-staff to keep them coming. instead of tea, she asks for a milkshake. not a quarter of an hour passes before she's cracked open a journal and uncapped a pen. her annotations are, for the time being, made in pitman shorthand -- and so appear as a series of near shapeless scribbles to those who aren't fluent. even so, there's no secrecy behind that choice. merely a swell of impatience after she'd worked so hard to contain it earlier.
and yet peggy's not averse to interruptions. not exactly. she may not be the most welcoming conversation partner, nor is she particularly fond of idle chatter, but she doesn't chase off interruptions or inquiries.
OTHERWISE, known associates and strangers alike are free to run into her »OUT & ABOUT. whether she's 'commuting' from quarters to library or grabbing a quick breakfast in the dining room early in the morning. she doesn't have a precise schedule (on most days) but she's not impossible to chance upon. she's nearly always immaculate -- from heel to hair-pins. having a project in hand puts her in a better mood. ]
no subject
except, perhaps, it seems so unlikely to properly love one person. how could anyone have enough heart inside of them to love two? what does it matter. peggy doesn't foresee that being a question she'll ever have to answer. ]
They do say that's a rather telling sign of true love.
[ to let it loose, to make its own choice, to never hold it hostage. but peggy can only speak in abstracts, here. best to stick to what's concrete -- all the little details of what claire is telling her. the insinuations and the careful gaps. ]
Was it tempting? [ ... ] To try to touch the stones again -- just in case it worked, that time?
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[ She rubs her thumb over her silver ring, Jamie's ring, thinking back to that moment when she had a decision to make. ]
It was a choice, but then it...never felt like much of one. He saved my life, twice over, more. He listened, he believed me. And he was already so deeply in love. I knew I wanted to stay with him, so I did. Perhaps it was selfish. But I can't ever get myself to believe it was the wrong one. In any case, three years later I wound up at the stones again and that time went through. Pregnant and alone. Then my husband went off to die in a battle I knew his clan would lose from history.
[ Only he didn't, and she could have gone back for him so much sooner if only she'd started researching then. But maybe it wasn't meant to be for those twenty years. ]
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and perhaps that's not the case for someone like claire. she feels a twinge of sympathy in her stomach that she doesn't know how to articulate. ]
Although it had been three years, did the stones take you back to the moment you left? Or beyond it?
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[ And that makes her feel a bit guilty, yes. ]
And suddenly I was back, in clothing that belonged in a museum, and pregnant with another man's child. But he...didn't want a divorce. And I didn't want to raise my child alone. I thought Jamie was surely dead, so Frank and I left for America, I had Brianna, and we...well, he tried. I never quite did.
[ She looks down at that, frowning at herself. ]
I was back in the correct time, physically. But my heart wasn't.
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It must have been very difficult for him.
[ in truth, it must have been very difficult for claire as well. but peggy keenly knows the pain to find yourself on the other side of that very lonely situation: the person you'd grieved and loved was not only alive but pledged to someone else.
only instead of moving backwards in years, steve had moved forward. and then laterally, once, to wonderland. ]
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[ Claire can acknowledge that freely. ]
I had Bree, and we vowed, then, to try. Both of us. But she had this...shock of red hair. Jamie's hair. Frank was always wonderful to her, he loved her as much as if she were his own. But...I know every time someone asked where her red hair came from, it had to be like a dagger in his heart. Still, he supported us, both of us. He put me through medical school. I tried to be a good wife, to love him. But he knew that my heart hadn't returned to him, too. So, he found someone who would love him. Someone at the university where he taught. I offered to grant him a divorce but he was so...afraid I would take Brianna away from him. Until she was eighteen. Then, he wanted to take Brianna away from me, go to Oxford. And that was the argument that ended everything.
[ Claire sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. ]
He died. In a car accident. Never getting to have a life where someone loved him, wholly. I feel guilt about that quite often, in fact.
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what claire's first husband chose isn't something she can blame claire for. by all accounts, the fault lies with the man's own stubborn loyalty. a dogged faithfulness that she can only imagine except that she'd devoted hers to a vial of blood. to all that remained of the man she loved.
her eyes flick nervously off of claire before they suddenly flick back. rather than engage with the story, its painful parts, peggy tries to march it forward: ]
And yet there are parts yet missing. You went back, again, didn't you? [ because there's a ship that needs to wreck and a shore that needs to be washed up on. she's been paying attention. ]
no subject
We lived in Boston, Brianna and I, but a dear friend of mine passed away in Scotland, so we went to the funeral. He was a historian as a hobby, and he'd kept every single...article, every news clipping of the mysterious woman who'd gone missing and showed back up again years later. Bree found it all and confronted me. She only ever thought it was a torrid affair that resulted in her conception. She...never knew that Frank wasn't her father.
[ Should she have lied to her daughter for twenty years? Probably not. But when is the right time to tell your child you traveled through time. ]
She only began to believe it when we discovered Jamie hadn't actually died in battle, that he'd lived but gone immediately to prison. His fate would have been to be shot or hanged, and the trail went cold, so I supposed that was it. We went back to America. It took me weeks to...move on again. And then someone who'd been helping us in Scotland arrived on my doorstep telling me that Jamie was alive but had simply changed his name to Alexander Malcolm. He was a printer in Edinborough and...had taken a poem I'd recited to him once and used it in a leaflet. We realized because...he used it decades before it was actually ever written.
[ Now, her fingers are twisting at her silver wedding band and she smiles softly, forehead creasing. ]
I wasn't going to go back. But Bree...insisted. Because I'd left to keep her safe, to make sure she had a chance to even live. She wanted to give Jamie back to me in a way. So I...went. Better prepared this time. I took penicillin and some modern medical equipment with me. And I found him. The moment I saw him, everything I hadn't felt in twenty years came back.
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and although it had only been a few years for her, it had been nearer to seventy for him. had he felt it, too? peggy doesn't know if she can believe he did. not knowing what she knows now.
but this story isn't about her, she reminds herself. this is claire's story. ]
That's some good detective work. Peppered with the after-effects of some light chronological rule-breaking, I'm sure. [ but that's someone else's voice in her head -- even more a sin to think of it while she's also been thinking about steve. ]
I take it was a rather good reunion, then.
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[ She laughs softly, ducking her head. ]
It wasn't completely easy, I'll admit.
[ There had come the admission quite early that he'd fathered a child he could never see. ]
And twenty years, my God, so many things could have changed. So many things did change. But the most important thing didn't. And...then it took approximately two days before I murdered someone in self-defense and we had to run.
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You know, I don't think they call it murder when it's done in self-defense. [ just saying. ]
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[ She pauses and smiles just a touch. ]
He'll fight for what he believes is true and accept the punishment later.
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[ She doesn't want to get into that, she won't. His scars are private now, something he should get to choose to speak of if he so wishes. ]
But now, after trying to sail home to Scotland after a rescue expedition, we've been caught in a hurricane. I nearly drowned, in fact, I washed up here after spending God knows how long in the ocean. Jamie arrived after I did and let me know where we washed up. And so, the reading material to brush up. Not that I'll remember it, but it's something to do.
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Getting 'something to do' is half the battle of this place, I think. Some days. [ anything to keep from going mad. ] Who knows. Perhaps we should be prepared for the one infinitesimal chance that things change. That an opportunity arises.
[ that someone, somehow, gets them out of here with memories intact. now -- wouldn't that be a coup. ]
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[ When they aren't fighting to stay alive. ]
I've heard rumors of people with magic trying to find a way to retain those memories. Or magic themselves a way out of here. But if no one's managed to do it in over six years, I'm not sure I'll keep holding my breath.
[ Not to be a downer, but she'd die of asphyxiation. ]
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But breakthroughs happen all the time, Claire. [ peggy smiles. ] And I've had the honour to witness too many of them, back home, not to believe they can't also happen here. There are good minds at work.
[ it's not optimism. it's not perfect hope. but it's a flicker of something. an echo of never surrender. ]
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[ She's not the 'sit around and wait for something to happen' type. If she had the mind for it, she would certainly be helping the ones trying to figure a way out of this place. ]
But I'm with you. I've seen too many things that shouldn't be possible, myself.