+ Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The grounds of the Mansion
When: March 9-16
Rating: PG-13 (warn if you go higher)
Summary: The Red Queen has thrown a carnival for everyone!
The Story:


From Friday, March 9, through Friday, March 16, the gardens and grounds of the Mansion will be a sprawling a carnival. The masked, unspeaking vendors will be selling trinkets and running free game booths. Carnival rides, exhibits, and foods represent all of the various cultures of those currently residing in the Mansion.


Of particular note, and perhaps incongruously, everything is decorated with red hearts.

Use this log for any and all of your carnival needs!

Comments

[mucked]

[ he's right; she dispatches with her confession quickly, and with little more than a look on her face that suggests so -- but not without a huff of impatience. a new kind, wholly divorced from the carnival snacks. one which deepens quick and sharp when he goes so far as to suggest spying on her own great-niece.

-- oh, she comes damned close to saying something.

but peggy carter isn't alone in her hypocrisy. although she never requires his sympathy, this sudden dearth of it strikes her as a touch too mercenary. what's raw and instinctive in her -- the part of her that might choose kin over kith when given a push -- wants to ask him whether he'd dare be so cavalier if it was his blood-relative suddenly taking centre stage in their discussion.

what stops her, in the end, is the sharp understanding that some blows truly are too low. and there are some topics she approaches rarely, if ever, because they are left in a kind of quarantine. his and hers. ]

Good God, man. You could at least pretend to be concerned for another person before you gleefully start sorting advantages from disadvantages.

[ her reprisal is sharp and uncharacteristic and its engine is built entirely upon peggy's natural inclination to protect certain people. it rears its bestial head whenever she's playing favourites. ]

[directed]

[Well. To be entirely fair, Rip had thought Peggy might simply ask her. Technically, they've already been spying.

But the opportunity to voice that thought has yet to arrive. Instead, Rip is greeted with all manner of sharp glares as Peggy swallows back one retort in favor for another. Fortunately, as even Peggy's anger would not serve as an excuse for the blow she decides not to levy at him--no matter how hypocritical Rip's own reaction would be in the wake of it.

Certainly it would be a rather abrupt end to what hasn't been an unpleasant meeting thus far.]

...I wouldn't say I was gleeful about it. [Now it's his turn to stir together the toppings of his funnel cake, idly blending nutella and cream and bits of bacon together in an off-colored muck.] Of course I'm not happy that it happened to her.

[Equally, however, he's not the sort to linger on it--at least, not when it's not a person in his small circle. But he can recognize from Peggy's reaction that Sharon falls into hers, meaning that Rip has to at least try to show that he does care, rather than do what he typically does: brush away the human elements of this mishap in favor of pragmatic strategy.]

But it cannot be undone, and if certain traits do hold true in your family? I suspect you'd both rather something good come out of it instead of being mollycoddled in the aftermath.

[It's a gamble, but--a well-founded one, if what he recalls about Peggy's apparent influence over Sharon holds. A woman who admired her great-aunt for presenting her with her first thigh-holster isn't the sort who wants to be shown pity in a case such as this.]

[mucked]

[ a well-founded gamble, yes, but peggy can see the mechanics of it and there is no surprise that she finds herself feeling a touch belligerent. heeding the human element, such as it is, is precisely the crowning lesson she'd taken from her war career. and so far the pair of them have been doing a decent job of avoiding an inevitable clash over what amounts to a fundamental difference in how they cope with the issues presented to them. peggy chews over that difference now, trying to keep rip's human element in mind when the urge rises (once again) to speak off the cuff.

rather than comment on the quality of her family's character, peggy tries to pull herself back into the present conversation. her mouth opens, she thinks about explaining that sharon claims to be her brother's granddaughter, but soon second-guesses that instinct. it's childish to look for sympathy -- especially at crossroads like this one -- and the reality is simply that peggy is bone-tired of dead men turning out to be anything but. the novelty, the joy, the relief has all but worn off.

what's been left behind is a muddled confusion that she has done her best to compartmentalize. sharon is indelibly tangled into that confusion -- a great-niece that, by all accounts, shouldn't exist. peggy would rather not open that compartment and dump its contents into this one, the one housing her and rip's arrangement. ]

You're saying what I want to hear. [ which doesn't make it any less accurate, unfortunately. which makes it all the more difficult when she overcomes her anger just to glance at him and add, earnestly: ] Cheers.

Not that I'd even know how to mollycoddle her. It's -- been difficult to get along. I'm not what she expected.

[ the same could be said for tony except she knows how to navigate parts of tony thanks to a long-standing expertise in navigating tony's father. peggy has no edge with sharon; merely a chasm of unmet expectations. ]

[directed]

[He doesn't realize at this juncture that Sharon claims to be the descendant of Peggy's supposedly dead brother; the assumption is naturally that she must have some other sibling, or an eventual spouse with one who would somehow connect Peggy's maiden name to the family line once more. No, Rip's got no idea of the emotional landmine lurking just below the surface where Sharon Carter's very existence is concerned, how it should be an impossible lineage, and yet apparently isn't.

He might manage a genuine touch of sympathy if he did, although not for Sharon's sake. And as it stands, he can merely follow the course of conversation as Peggy directs it.]

Fortunately for us both, it also happens to be what is true. [What she wants to hear; they both know by this juncture that Rip isn't necessarily the one to sugar-coat things--not unless it works in his favor, at any rate. But with Peggy there's a great deal at stake, so much that, unlike with most anyone else, he'd prefer to avoid the lies if he could. Oh, not the pretty little fibs they tell to keep their secrets and their walls cleanly shored up, but the falsehoods that matter, that skew the line too far away from trust and too deep into the realm of manipulations.

It's hardly an easy endeavor for him. All the better, then, that Peggy accepts his offering, meets it with what is an unexpected confession.]

I'm not going to be much help in that, I'm afraid. The one time I've spoken to her in depth didn't exactly go well. [To say the least; Rip had come to Leonard's aid, feeling the need to take up for his comrade who had chosen sacrifice over survival, and in doing so saved them all. He hadn't walked away from that conversation with a high opinion of Sharon, although even he knows better than to travel too far down that road just now.

Instead, he once more leans his head closer to Peggy; in the midst of the fair, he'll offer her another secret that's just meant for them, and no one else who might be wandering near.] I believe I told you before that expecting you to live up to that image is unfair to you both. All you can do is be who you are, Miss Carter--certainly there are those of us who have found that to be more than enough.

[mucked]

[ a quiet breath, not unlike laughter, puffs past her mouth. perhaps she doesn't need to be told that conversation went poorly in order to guess so. not because of some deficiency in either of their characters, rip's or sharon's, but because she can sense the ways in which she herself grates against both. doesn't matter; she won't be taking any part of that incompatibility to task. nine-tenths of the time, the antagonism of others isn't under her purview. she spend enough energy maintaining her own relationships. why should she concern herself with everyone else's?

so it's perfect, then to turn her cheek and watch rip hunter pivot to what's theirs instead. he says those of us but what he really means is him, she suspects, and the words come dangerously close to sounding like what he'd said to help her overcome her shadow. and maybe she won't ever be able to quiet the restlessness in the pit of her heart reminding her, again and again, that hers is a legacy she's far from matching. and maybe, before wonderland, peggy barely knew what it was to feel as though being who she is mightn't be enough. but those are her problems, her hair-shirts, and she shrinks from the idea of relying on him to intervene when they spill out in clumsy angry displays like today's.

especially -- especially -- when she doesn't doubt for a moment that he's still saying what happens to be true. and if she were half as ballsy, she would tell him the impression was mutual. instead, however, she sinks back against the post she'd first chosen for her vantage point. and if there's life in her cheeks then it's not only due to her temper but also his words. warm and intimate as they are. and him near enough (for a moment) that she could have kissed him. if she felt like it -- although, admittedly, that's not quite the fire she's feeling in her belly just now.

she nods toward the box once more. for peggy, evasion is just another means of admitting he's right to say what he says. ]

But back to brass tacks. [ please. ] I asked you out here, today, for one good reason. You thought maybe a voluntary memory might be more valuable, perhaps, than a stolen one. I'm wondering whether it being voluntary somehow makes up for how minor the cull seems to be. Two words. Latin. Obscure and functionally useless.

[ so, yes, she absolutely has been near enough to that box to read all the gritty details on display. he was right about that too; well done, rip hunter. ]

[directed]

[She sees right through his play at words; Rip doesn't often presume to speak for others, even when he quite readily will take the responsibility of directing a course upon his own shoulders. In this instance, although he's been purposely vague in his sentiment he does indeed mean Peggy's estimation in his eyes rather than any others. She has proven herself capable and clever alike, stubborn to a fault but rooted so often in worthy causes, determined to do right for the world and those she holds dear. Whatever woman Sharon grows-up influenced by, Rip stands in admiration of the person Peggy is now, in this place and its unmoving time.

But he knows better than to admit as much aloud. There are lines they still refuse to cross, smartly so. Even when Peggy leans once more against the post, a peculiar look in her eye and a warmth to her cheeks that Rip doesn't think had been there a few heartbeats before, he won't confess to the truth she's already figured out—much to her relief, if the way Peggy zigs again is any indication.]

Oh, it's more insidious than that. How many people do you honestly expect to know some random latin phrase like the one presumably on the box? [Rip doesn't know exactly what it says, but he can guess it's something relatively unknown simply by the willingness of anyone to contribute. Peggy likewise calls it obscure, and Rip gives her a beat to put it together before he finishes the thought.] They've set it up to create the very memory they then steal away. They've created something that seemingly no one would have reason to resist. A pure memory, without whatever rigors one might assume they must normally go through to pluck words and phrases from our minds.

[mucked]

It's entrapment.

[ oh, perhaps not in its hardest sense. there is no lurking sting operation that she can fathom -- although in a few days' time she might come to view the whole carnival as a sting operation. for now, with her abandoned plate of funnel cake pitched thoughtless in one palm, she's thinking more about the box than she is the bustle that surrounds it.

but here's the funny thing: since learning the word and its meaning, peggy has been biting her cheek all day and leaving that very ridge she now knows how to name. she chews the bitten up skin, just now, with a thoughtful silence. and maybe she feels just a little 'entrapped' herself, thinking about a gesture and a language and a pair of words she would ordinarily be ignorant of. ]

What motivates the ones who give it up willingly, I wonder. It can't be pure charity.

[ she has her sneaking suspicions; she wants to hear rip's first. ]