[ as if carrying nothing more than a fashionable clutch, she tucks both the case and the holster underneath her arm. to try and don the thing, she decides, might ruin the line of her outfit. she's allowed a modicum of vanity, isn't she?
the chatter stays relatively innocuous as they head up one floor and peggy detours, with an almost-apology, to drop her 'gifts' off in her room. it's empty now (thankfully, she thinks) but she leaves fitz outside all the same because she knows rip's abandoned slippers are still stashed somewhere in sight.
but once they're properly on their way to the diner, she veers back into the planned conversation. ]
I hope you didn't feel too...prop-like. Yesterday. It wasn't my intention. The strategy sort of sewed itself together on the fly and there wasn't much time to explain it.
[The walk is pleasant enough to be manageable, though it makes Fitz curious about what sort of debriefing might come from this. He waits patiently when instructed, holding back his questions until it seems like they'd be more welcome.]
Sometimes it's the nature of the occupation to perform as a prop. I trusted that your way would work effectively.
[ it's not the trust she doubts -- he's proven that well enough. it's his acceptance of what it might have entailed. ]
Had I been in your position, I'm not convinced I would be so understanding. [ because she'd been projecting some of her own hang-ups onto him -- blindly, maybe, only to just now learn that they're not quite so galling in his eyes. ]
[ it did go smoothly. and perhaps that's what bothers her most -- that she'd gotten away with it, that she had her lover back, that the shield agent whose shoulder she'd tapped to help her untangle the problem remained such a font of sympathy.
her tongue clucks while the round the corner, start down the hall that will eventually bring them to the diner. ]
I find I'm not proud for having made use of Captain Rogers's fate in that fashion. [ and maybe that's the real problem. she and fitz had first found their feet with one another discussing steve -- sitting across from one another in that cursed little ski lodge. peggy doesn't often care about someone else's perception, but she does care about how this particular strategy might reflect on her.
and then there's the part of her scrambling -- hungry -- to ask whether or not he'd lied like she'd wanted him to. when in reality she knows she's better off if she doesn't know. ]
No. [ well, maybe, yes, a bit. there's an uncomfortable and greedy squirm in her gut at the thought of holding onto a bit of real intel. peggy's cheeks puff. her voice drops to a near-whisper while they walk through the door. ] What upsets me is doing the very thing I can't stomach everyone else doing: capitalizing on him.
[ and in such a vicious way, although the real depth of it hasn't yet been revealed to fitz. to do so, she'd have to explain the whole time travel malarkey. ]
[ offensive? no. that's not the word. but there's scar tissue somewhere along this topic, and fitz has only ever been granted a glimpse of it in the past -- under duress of a truth event, at that. peggy's expression looks queasy while she slides into one side of a diner booth. ]
I so often wish he didn't have to be one. [ a symbol. ] The world seems to always want to see him in a particular light -- lunchboxes, radio programmes, propaganda posters. Using his legacy as leverage feels as though it falls under that same category.
[ not much is sacred, in peggy's eyes, but steve's memory still is. no matter how much he'd hurt her. ]
Nonsense. [ she reaches for a set of cutlery, tidily wrapped up in a napkin. something to hold; something to fidget with. ] You did exactly as I asked you to do. And now it's only fitting that I explain why.
[ parts of why. bits of why. there are elements she needn't detail -- the sentimental elements, the things concerning her confused heart. but the pragmatic stuff! he should know it. not least of all because she values his trust in her. and some part of her feels as though she risks losing it if she misuses him too much.
after all, isn't that what's in the process of happening back in the ssr? ]
I'm not happy I had to invoke his name the way I did. But you're not to blame for that regret.
[ close would be an apt way of describing it. outwardly, however, peggy doesn't much react to the word. regardless of her regret, she steams forward with a business-like energy behind her eyes. ]
We work well together. [ peg explains. ] Well enough and often enough that I've become familiar with his doctrines. His philosophies. And it was that familiarity that allowed me to anticipate his outburst.
[ she glances over her shoulder -- not to check for eavesdroppers, exactly, but to be certain she had enough time to explain herself before someone came by to take their order. ]
What I didn't tell you when I first approached you with my concerns, [ what she perhaps should have told him -- although at the time it hadn't seemed perfectly relevant, ] was how those doctrines might change if he was indeed returned as the 'edited' version of himself.
Whatever else had happened to him, whatever else went wrong, I knew one man would be provoked by the question. The other man would have been equally cutting, I suspect, but for rather different reasons. Horrible as it sounds -- I had hoped to see him panic.
[ a breath puffs past her lips. with the last bit of data still held out of reach, she supposes it must look like that -- and peggy, too caught up in the logic of it all, doesn't stop to think for a moment that fitz could be right. that, on some level, rip hunter's protests had been all about sparing her a disappointment he knew all to well.
goodness, no, it couldn't be that. the possibility doesn't cross her mind. perhaps because in that particular instance she didn't want to think about how much he might or mightn't have cared for her. ]
Not at all. [ she leans back in the booth but her voice stays low. ] It was a test, yes. But of his professional boundaries. Not his personal ones.
[That seems less likely, somehow. What could Rip's profession possibly have to do with the affairs of some people a century behind and dimension removed from Rip Hunter?]
[ she acknowledges, in silence, a kind of irony involved in this conversations. she intends to outline a circumstance that no longer exists. after all, rip hunter is no longer a time master. he's barely a legend, from what she's gleaned. what he's become is a man wallowing in his defeat -- history and chronology and the laws of the universe violated and outside of his reach. peggy would rather paint a picture of a different person. the one she first met, here, and who'd enchanted her despite his arrogance.
she delays her explanation just long enough to order a club sandwich and a mountain of fries -- her words. and longer enough, still, to let fitz place his order as well. once they're alone again, she resumes their conversation. ]
He suffers from a sense of stewardship over time itself. According to those doctrines I mentioned earlier, he genuinely believes -- for example -- that someone from '47 shouldn't go poking around her future.
[ not that it's done much to stop her. if it's a professional boundary for rip, then peggy has made it her personal mission to see just how many incremental incursions she could get away with. ]
I wouldn't say it's unreasonable to compare his caution to, say, you and I believing we know what's best for national and international security.
[ he'll order a hamburger, trusting the place only with the most rudimentary of American basics. The closets tend to be better with his more specialized favorites. Under different circumstances, he'd say so, and derail the conversation into Americanized atrocities on the world food market. But instead, he stays quiet to encourage Peggy to continue on. ]
He also deals in espionage, then? [ why not just say so? If he was worried about an international incident...? ]
I wouldn't call it espionage by any conventional yardstick. But it's close to it. Certainly, it involves a great deal of secrecy.
[ she does believe he'd make an awfully good spy. there is a harmony there between their two professions, she thinks, that helps them better understand one another. helps them better respect one another, even when they're both at their most arrogant. ]
To hear him tell it, it's been his responsibility to make certain that history follows its proper course. A responsibility he would not have felt so keenly if he'd come back wrong. So I rattled that cage just a little with the idea of me perhaps wanting to rescue Captain Rogers a few decades too early.
It never mattered whether it was possible or not. It only mattered whether he cared.
[ -- peggy so rarely gets defensive. certainly not of other people. but rip is so beaten down, so disillusioned, so broken by his own circumstances. she can't help a bit of knee-jerk protectiveness. a quiet little glimpse of something not unlike how she tried to shield fitz himself during the actual interrogation. ]
[The eye-rolling persists until he looks to Peggy for agreement and finds none.]
....Because it doesn't. It's a limitation of third-dimensional perception.
[Is this something he'll have to explain to her? Who doesn't understand spacetime??? Ugh, where's Jemma when he doesn't want to have to explain things...]
[ certainly, he'll find no agreement -- but not for any bullheaded belief in time, its travel, or its curation. rather, peggy sighs. ]
That is a conversation you would need to have with him. I don't understand it -- but there are a lot of things, since arriving here, that I've learned I don't understand.
small>[ she folds her arms on the table. the point remains: what she does understand is how rip hunter thinks (or so she imagines) and she acted on that knowledge yesterday afternoon. ]
His is a strange world. With strange possibilities. [ she breathes in -- but at least recognizes there's nothing amiss in sharing what she's about to share. rip himself had shared it, after all. ] That event that had us all talking truths to one another. [ they promised not to talk about it, but peggy holds up a finger as if to buy his patience. ] The stuff that was happening in our rooms? The horrible moments looped forever? That was courtesy of his world.
[When she brings up the truth event, Fitz takes a breath to protest. His sound is muted only by the presence of her finger, but it leaves his eyes wide, cheeks puffing with unreleased air.
That event had been humiliating. They'd been in an abhorrent space, blurting out things that should never have been uttered. It shouldn't --
He deflates when she mentions the other half, the part that sent them all scrambling together in the first place. And for the second time in two days, he's reminded of his father's voice, the smell of sweat and stale liquor.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[He'll provide a small case, about the size of a cigar box, and fall into step behind Peggy. He's perfectly content to let her lead.]
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the chatter stays relatively innocuous as they head up one floor and peggy detours, with an almost-apology, to drop her 'gifts' off in her room. it's empty now (thankfully, she thinks) but she leaves fitz outside all the same because she knows rip's abandoned slippers are still stashed somewhere in sight.
but once they're properly on their way to the diner, she veers back into the planned conversation. ]
I hope you didn't feel too...prop-like. Yesterday. It wasn't my intention. The strategy sort of sewed itself together on the fly and there wasn't much time to explain it.
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Sometimes it's the nature of the occupation to perform as a prop. I trusted that your way would work effectively.
[And it did. So what's the problem?]
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[ it's not the trust she doubts -- he's proven that well enough. it's his acceptance of what it might have entailed. ]
Had I been in your position, I'm not convinced I would be so understanding. [ because she'd been projecting some of her own hang-ups onto him -- blindly, maybe, only to just now learn that they're not quite so galling in his eyes. ]
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[ his brows knit together at that. ]
Ma'am, is there an implication to which I'm not aware? I was under the impression that yesterday went quite smoothly.
[ nobody got hurt. Nobody died. There was just the one kidnapping, and even that didn't last long. ]
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her tongue clucks while the round the corner, start down the hall that will eventually bring them to the diner. ]
I find I'm not proud for having made use of Captain Rogers's fate in that fashion. [ and maybe that's the real problem. she and fitz had first found their feet with one another discussing steve -- sitting across from one another in that cursed little ski lodge. peggy doesn't often care about someone else's perception, but she does care about how this particular strategy might reflect on her.
and then there's the part of her scrambling -- hungry -- to ask whether or not he'd lied like she'd wanted him to. when in reality she knows she's better off if she doesn't know. ]
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You're... Upset about receiving a false set of coordinates?
[He's so lost. What's the problem? Is this code for a problem? Should he be interpreting the nouns differently?]
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No. [ well, maybe, yes, a bit. there's an uncomfortable and greedy squirm in her gut at the thought of holding onto a bit of real intel. peggy's cheeks puff. her voice drops to a near-whisper while they walk through the door. ] What upsets me is doing the very thing I can't stomach everyone else doing: capitalizing on him.
[ and in such a vicious way, although the real depth of it hasn't yet been revealed to fitz. to do so, she'd have to explain the whole time travel malarkey. ]
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You merely used him as an example -- a symbol. Is. That offensive?
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I so often wish he didn't have to be one. [ a symbol. ] The world seems to always want to see him in a particular light -- lunchboxes, radio programmes, propaganda posters. Using his legacy as leverage feels as though it falls under that same category.
[ not much is sacred, in peggy's eyes, but steve's memory still is. no matter how much he'd hurt her. ]
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[She was too emotional to properly judge her actions. It was up to him to stop things if they'd needed to be stopped.]
I ought to have been more sensitive to the needs of the moment. It won't happen again.
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[ parts of why. bits of why. there are elements she needn't detail -- the sentimental elements, the things concerning her confused heart. but the pragmatic stuff! he should know it. not least of all because she values his trust in her. and some part of her feels as though she risks losing it if she misuses him too much.
after all, isn't that what's in the process of happening back in the ssr? ]
I'm not happy I had to invoke his name the way I did. But you're not to blame for that regret.
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But you knew he would react like that. You anticipated his outburst. Was it because you and he are close?
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We work well together. [ peg explains. ] Well enough and often enough that I've become familiar with his doctrines. His philosophies. And it was that familiarity that allowed me to anticipate his outburst.
[ she glances over her shoulder -- not to check for eavesdroppers, exactly, but to be certain she had enough time to explain herself before someone came by to take their order. ]
What I didn't tell you when I first approached you with my concerns, [ what she perhaps should have told him -- although at the time it hadn't seemed perfectly relevant, ] was how those doctrines might change if he was indeed returned as the 'edited' version of himself.
Whatever else had happened to him, whatever else went wrong, I knew one man would be provoked by the question. The other man would have been equally cutting, I suspect, but for rather different reasons. Horrible as it sounds -- I had hoped to see him panic.
[ and she did. ]
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[ that much makes enough sense. Peggy must have confided in him, and forced him to witness what she perceived as a gross case of unprofessionalism. ]
You knew he'd care too much to bear watching you become something you never wanted to be.
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[ a breath puffs past her lips. with the last bit of data still held out of reach, she supposes it must look like that -- and peggy, too caught up in the logic of it all, doesn't stop to think for a moment that fitz could be right. that, on some level, rip hunter's protests had been all about sparing her a disappointment he knew all to well.
goodness, no, it couldn't be that. the possibility doesn't cross her mind. perhaps because in that particular instance she didn't want to think about how much he might or mightn't have cared for her. ]
Not at all. [ she leans back in the booth but her voice stays low. ] It was a test, yes. But of his professional boundaries. Not his personal ones.
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[That seems less likely, somehow. What could Rip's profession possibly have to do with the affairs of some people a century behind and dimension removed from Rip Hunter?]
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she delays her explanation just long enough to order a club sandwich and a mountain of fries -- her words. and longer enough, still, to let fitz place his order as well. once they're alone again, she resumes their conversation. ]
He suffers from a sense of stewardship over time itself. According to those doctrines I mentioned earlier, he genuinely believes -- for example -- that someone from '47 shouldn't go poking around her future.
[ not that it's done much to stop her. if it's a professional boundary for rip, then peggy has made it her personal mission to see just how many incremental incursions she could get away with. ]
I wouldn't say it's unreasonable to compare his caution to, say, you and I believing we know what's best for national and international security.
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He also deals in espionage, then? [ why not just say so? If he was worried about an international incident...? ]
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[ she does believe he'd make an awfully good spy. there is a harmony there between their two professions, she thinks, that helps them better understand one another. helps them better respect one another, even when they're both at their most arrogant. ]
To hear him tell it, it's been his responsibility to make certain that history follows its proper course. A responsibility he would not have felt so keenly if he'd come back wrong. So I rattled that cage just a little with the idea of me perhaps wanting to rescue Captain Rogers a few decades too early.
It never mattered whether it was possible or not. It only mattered whether he cared.
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Fitz sits back then, rolling his eyes.]
Well that's a right useless sort of profession, don't you think?
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Not in his world, it isn't.
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[The eye-rolling persists until he looks to Peggy for agreement and finds none.]
....Because it doesn't. It's a limitation of third-dimensional perception.
[Is this something he'll have to explain to her? Who doesn't understand spacetime??? Ugh, where's Jemma when he doesn't want to have to explain things...]
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That is a conversation you would need to have with him. I don't understand it -- but there are a lot of things, since arriving here, that I've learned I don't understand.
small>[ she folds her arms on the table. the point remains: what she does understand is how rip hunter thinks (or so she imagines) and she acted on that knowledge yesterday afternoon. ]
His is a strange world. With strange possibilities. [ she breathes in -- but at least recognizes there's nothing amiss in sharing what she's about to share. rip himself had shared it, after all. ] That event that had us all talking truths to one another. [ they promised not to talk about it, but peggy holds up a finger as if to buy his patience. ] The stuff that was happening in our rooms? The horrible moments looped forever? That was courtesy of his world.
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That event had been humiliating. They'd been in an abhorrent space, blurting out things that should never have been uttered. It shouldn't --
He deflates when she mentions the other half, the part that sent them all scrambling together in the first place. And for the second time in two days, he's reminded of his father's voice, the smell of sweat and stale liquor.]
That. Was unpleasant.
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