sixthiterationlogs | bye bye baby

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bye bye baby

WHO: Peggy Carter
WHERE: In the Inn
WHEN: October 20th, at sundown and moving towards
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: She's fading, fading away!

Something strange has been happening to her, though Peggy has been having a terrible month and the truth is, she hasn't seen fit to get out as much as she ought to. It had begun earlier, when she'd started to see Steve less around town and then, when enough time had passed that she was sure he wasn't just avoiding her, Peggy had come to the epiphany that he was gone again. Then, when she'd gone to find Barnes to ask him about it, he wasn't there either, though at least with him, someone had mentioned seeing him go off with Moana earlier.

And yet, couldn't he be gone, too? Just like all the others who've left.

It's been a recipe for isolation and Peggy has spent most of her time in her home with Stella, but each night, she ventures out to the inn to see if perhaps James has returned. The strangeness that's happening each night upon which she seems to be less opaque than usual worsens and as midnight nears, Peggy hasn't been able to put her hands on anything and secure them. With the sun beginning to set, she feels that same sensation again as she stands in the lobby of the inn, pacing and watching the door as she tries not to fidget, and yet, it's a futile exercise in two ways.

The first being that it's not going to stop her thoughts.

The second in that, her fingers keep slipping through the strands of hair she keeps absently touching. Yesterday, no matter how she tried, she couldn't get Stella's attention when she'd called for her in the middle of the night, and now Peggy has had to put aside her grief and admit that something is very wrong. The trouble is, what happens if she can't figure it out? Will she simply vanish? It's a terrible thought, but right now, with no solution, she has little else to do but worry.

"Hello," she says, frantic to escape these thoughts when someone opens the door. Before she even sees who it is, she's blasting into a question. "Can you hear me? See me?"

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Felicity was so lost in her thoughts as she pulled the door to the Inn opened that, when she heard the voice, it took more than a moment to apply that voice to the vision of the woman standing in front of her. Except, was there a woman in front of her? Lifting her fingertips to her glasses, she adjusted them slightly and, for a moment, it appeared that the woman had completely faded from view before she was standing there yet again.

"I can hear you," Felicity admits, though more slowly than she feels like she should. "But--" And she adjusts her glasses again. "My glasses are a little foggy from coming in from outside."

That has to be it.

Peggy finds herself more distressed by the second, because no one should have that much trouble seeing her when she's standing right in front of her. Alarm is broadcast all over her face, not entirely sure she can excuse away the troubles so quickly. "Clean them," she says, a touch frantic, but fearing the result.

"Clean them, and tell me if you can see me then." Her voice has become more stringent and urgent, feeling like the loss of her shadow, the way she's had trouble grasping things, it's all signs leading to something.

To be completely honest, Felicity's not sure how much 'fog' could have gotten on her glasses to make it difficult to see someone all of three feet in front of her, either. The panicked tone in the woman's voice doesn't help and she reaches up to take the glasses off, squinting at what appears to be an actual ghost in front of her before she steps to the side and uses the hem of her scrub top to rub at her glasses.

Putting them back on, she focuses on the woman in front of her, but the vision isn't helped much and that knowledge shows on Felicity's face and in the dismay of her tone.

"It's like you're there, but--" And reaching out, she tries to touch Peggy's arm.

When the hand goes through Peggy's arm, there's really no dismissing the fact that something strange is happening. Breathing out sharply, Peggy tries to remain professional, but she worries that such a thing isn't really going to help. If she is like this, then there has to be some way to counteract it, yes? Some sort of action.

"I'm Peggy Carter," she says. "This has been happening for days now, I think. I saw it happening with others, but not to this degree. Don't leave," she half-orders briskly, aware that it might sound bossy, but she needs someone here with her to keep track of the effects.

Peggy might be professional, but Felicity's eyes widened and she breathed out a, "Whoa," before she tried to touch her again without success. "That's. Not what I was expecting."

"Felicity Smoak. You're not wrong. I've been missing my shadow, but I can't figure out why. But this? This is new." She stays where she is, less because of Peggy's order and more because she's extremely curious to see what's going to happen next. That and she's very, very good at keeping track of things. "What can I do to help?"

"No, I don't think it's really what anyone would ever be expecting of someone," she agrees, even as she can feel panic sliding in and crowding her thoughts, making her feel rather trapped and closed in. "I'm not sure, but finding out what can stabilize me to stop this from getting worse..."

The last thing Peggy ever thought would happen to her is that she would actually fade into nothingness, which is a terrifying prospect that she never thought would have to be entertained. "I'm not really a scientific mind, do you have any ideas?"

The idea that people are fading from existence, from their shadow to their entire selves, is more than just a little disturbing and Felicity can hear the panic rising in the woman near her. At the question Peggy asks, Felicity curses (again) the lack of technology that keeps her from studying their environment and the possibilities of the things that could be happening to them.

"None," she tells Peggy apologetically. "Scientific mind or not, there just isn't anything that I know of that accounts for someone fading from existence unless your parents never got together in the past." It's a very weak joke - sorry, Marty McFly - but it's really the only thing she can come up with at the drop of a hat. "My science is computer science and I don't have one here. No Google, no algorithms, nothing. Do you know anyone else that might be able to help?"

"Well, as much as they might be icy towards each other sometimes in the present, I can't imagine that impacting me on a retroactive basis," she jokes, maybe because she needs something to ease off the fear and joking about her terrible situation is about the closest she can get right now. Breathing in deeply, she's staring at the other woman, wondering if there's anything she might do.

"What about some of the pods we found here? Or maybe the fountain?" She's stretching to think of something local that might be powered up and helpful, but feels as if she's failing.

Except for last autumn (and let's face it, she had far less to wear back then), it's been a while since Nerys has had to work the fine art of layering, for days when it's too cold when she gets up and ridiculously warm by the time she's been running around for half the day. By this time of the afternoon, she's wrapped up in a lightweight sweater again, come out of the dim woods. She's got some energy left, so helping to prep dinner is, she decides, the altruistic choice.

She pushes open the door to the inn, blinking at the change in light conditions, and that's when she hears the familiar voice. Hears, but doesn't really see.

Blinking furiously, she turns, looking around her, though her pupils still haven't quite adjusted. "Peggy? Sorry, I just came in, it's getting pretty dark out there--where are you?"

Edited 2017-10-23 21:34 (UTC)

It's a terribly good question, honestly, and Peggy isn't entirely sure herself where she's wound up. She's right here, yet, is she? The minute she passes her hand through her other arm, she thinks that it actually glides straight through, rather than hitting solid flesh. "Nerys," she says, a touch frightened. "I don't mean to sound alarmed, but I think something terrible is happening," she says, eyes wide as she tries somehow to try and reach out to touch her, stumbling forward when she can't quite grasp at her.

It's like she's half-solid, more of a shadow (and speaking of, she's not sure she's seen that in a very long time, now).

Nerys takes a moment to figure out where the sound of Peggy's voice is coming from, because, even as the brightness of the light eases in her vision, she still can't quite make out where the woman is--

Until she's right in front of her, there but not. Nerys startles, manages to keep herself from shying backwards in surprise and maybe a little horror as Peggy tries, and fails, to touch her shoulder. She stares in open-mouthed disbelief. "Prophets," she whispers. "I mean, uh. Yeah. I...can't really dissuade you from that conclusion, I have to say, Peggy."

Her brow furrows (and in honesty, she's developing quite a line from the frequency with which her face does that these days, not that she looks in a mirror much), and she blinks, trying to focus on Peggy's somewhat insubstantial face. "I've heard about this kind of thing happening. Dimensional phasing, like you're partially on a different plane. But I don't know anything about how it works."

Beverly might, now that Nerys thinks back to what she'd seen trolling through old reports. "Or how to fix it."

Peggy purses her lips together as she regards Nerys, beginning to understand that this is going to be a problem. Well, no, it already is a problem, it's just that this is the first time she'd acknowledging that. "Yes, thank you for helping confirm that," she says, all business as if she can somehow drive her mind away from the terror of what's actually happening.

She slides her fingers through herself, staring in shock and horror as it seems to simply continue to skim through her skin, trying not to panic and yet...

"Let's ignore fixing," she says. "How do we stabilize me?"

Nerys lifts a brow, but doesn't comment about Peggy's shift into business mode. If it keeps Peggy from panicking too much (because hey, Nerys would totally be panicking), she can totally live with it for now. The panic, in fact, is written on the other woman's face as she cards her fingers through what should be solid flesh--

"Hey," she says, and puts a hand up, trying to redirect Peggy's attention to something other than her solidity. "Look, I...don't know how to fix it because of the equipment we have here. When it's happened before in my universe, it's been because of transporter accidents or things like that--and it usually needs that kind of tech to fix it. But possibly someone like Dr. Crusher or Captain Picard will have an idea what we can do with what we've got. I'm a shitty scientist, but Beverly's certainly good at what she does."

It takes longer than it normally might for Peggy's attention to be drawn away from the immediate problem at hand, but Nerys does eventually manage to steal it back from the panic. Breathing sharply in, at least she can manage to do that, and she takes a moment to reorient herself before she goes off the deep end.

"Beverly, I know her," Peggy says, feeling a little spark of hope dragging up from nowhere because that's more than she had a moment ago. "Have you heard of this happening to anyone else? Perhaps we have something on file about being effective in stopping whatever is happening to me."

"I heard..." Nerys pauses a moment to rummage through her memory, looking up at the ceiling but not actually seeing the plaster there. "I did hear some people talking about something like this, but I haven't actually seen it for my own eyes." In perfect honesty, she'd set it aside as a localised issue, some sort of Observer manipulation of what people were seeing, but now that she's seen it herself, well.

She has a lot of questions--like, does Peggy feel hungry, does she need to eat?--but she's got enough self-awareness to know that that will likely just cause the woman to start panicking again, regardless of the answers.

"I'm sure this is just us being toyed with, Peggy," she says, fairly definitively. "If we push through this crap, that'll show them."

"But what happens if I fade out of corporeal being before it passes, then how will it work?" she asks, unable to help the way she's panicking about all of this. No, that's not going to help her, she needs to be more sensible about this rather than going off the deep end.

Breathing slowly, she tries to put that aside. "We should run some tests," she says decisively. If nothing else, even if that doesn't prove anything, at least it will do the task of keeping her mind off of what's happening.

Frowning, Nerys cocks her head and gives Peggy a somewhat confused look. "Just because you fade doesn't mean you don't exist," she points out. "At least, that's not how I understood it to have worked in my universe. You just are out of sync with the rest of our dimension, but you're still alive."

This is all incredibly metaphysical in a way that even Bajoran cosmology isn't well-equipped to handle, and Nerys is anything but the most spiritually attuned of people. She clears her throat and nods. "Yes. For example, if you focus particularly on doing something, does that help you gain more...physical coherence?"

"If it does, in fact, work as it did in your universe," Peggy feels pedantic today, a touch of her irritability likely caused in fact, by the part where she is fading away and no one can touch her. She thinks she's allowed to be a touch moody in these circumstances. Breathing in and then out to try and dispel that mood, she softens slightly. "Sorry," she goes so far as to add.

"I don't mean to be in such a mood." Tests, though, sound perfect. "Let's try," she says, searching the area around them. "How about I start with trying to lift a cushion," she says, staring down at the item beneath her. With all her might and thoughts, she pours them into thinking about lifting it, touching it, what it will feel like under her fingertips.

It seems to work, a touch, because she's able to pick it up. Her eyes alight with excitement, but when she turns to Nerys to crow about it, that seems to undo the spell and the cushion falters, falling through non-corporeal hands.

"It's okay," Nerys replies, because really, she can't exactly blame Peggy for being edgy about her own corporeal nature or lack thereof. It's also not something that happens every day. Hopefully. "It's worth trying, at least, and surely other people may have some ideas from their universes. We've got a number of scientists here."

She stops herself from reaching out to put a comforting hand on Peggy's shoulder. It'll likely go straight through, and that will just make things far, far worse. Instead, she watches her try to pick up the pillow--succeed--then lose it.

"Huh," she says, pleased. "What were you doing at first? Was it focusing on lifting it, or was it focusing on being more solid or something?"

Peggy closes her eyes tightly, wishing that she could feel more optimistic about this whole disaster, but honestly, given her luck with the cushion, she's not entirely sure that it will be any better with more tasks. "I was focusing purely on the cushion, but then I was distracted with my success," she admits.

"As soon as I stopped pouring one hundred percent of my attention on that item, it's like my fingers went ghostly again," she says, lifting them up to the light and feeling a chill down her back at how they look half-there, vanishing before her eyes.

"So you can--in theory--control it," Nerys says, half-wishing she had a PADD, or even paper, to write this down, but her paper's all back in her bungalow and she really doesn't want to leave Peggy alone. It seems like a poor idea.

"It's very difficult, obviously, but you can affect the results, that's something. I mean, not like we have some way to train your mind in biofeedback, but at least you have control in a little way." And control can be leveraged, that much she knows well. She lifts a hand again and shakes her head, feeling the need to clarify, "Not that I'm insisting you look at the positive in everything, that's really not my style. But there are things you can do, and we might be able to use that."

This does still sound a lot like the transporter phase shifting incidents she remembers, though without a transporter, it's not like they can rearrange Peggy on a molecular level. Maybe Peggy can do it to herself, though.

Edited 2017-11-01 22:31 (UTC)

"It's been growing worse as the day goes on, but I don't think that has anything to do with my state of mind," Peggy admits, because honestly, she hasn't thought herself that mad when it comes to the strange fading sensations. Each day, as it grows closer to sunset and then dusk and then dark, she's seen herself fading more and more, to the point that she's sure that it's tied to the day, somehow.

She's going to focus more on what she can do about all this. "What do you think we should try next?" she says, determined to be positive.

Thinking about this data for a moment, Nerys tries to come up with logical reasons. She's not getting many, but one does spring to mind: "Do you think maybe access to sunlight has something to do with it? Or even just light in general?"

Because it's dark, here in the village, even on summer nights after a certain hour. Artificial light is non-existent, for the most part, and even a bonfire only gives off a certain amount of visibility. Candles and oil lamps are pretty limited in scope as well.

"We could try what it's like in by the fireplace, see if that has any effect on how easy it is for you to stay solid," she suggests. It's a long shot, but at least they're making a vague gesture at the scientific method.

Peggy is trying to reason past panic, which is never the start of a promising theory, but when Nerys suggests light, Peggy forces herself to take a step back and properly think about this. It has been getting worse as the sun goes down, but she's not sure how that ties into her, specifically.

"It does get increasingly harder to be corporeal when the light fades," she concurs, narrowing her eyes as she glances around them, settling on the fireplace that Nerys suggests. "All right," she says, stepping towards it. "The same test, with the cushion?"

Nerys squeezes her eyes shut for a second, trying to work through this in her mind. It'd be so much easier if Julian were here, but he's now gone (something she's not really been able to bring herself to think about); he or the Chief would be far better at this kind of methodical testing. But Nerys is what Peggy's got, and she's going to try her damnedest to help.

"Yeah," she agrees, opening her eyes to look back at the remarkably faint Peggy. "Let's keep it consistent, it's the same mass and weight. Move over this way?" She sidesteps towards the fireplace, reaching for the poker to stoke up the flames a little bit more and help increase the light in the room for the test.

Peggy steps towards the fire, admittedly so fixated on her own thoughts that she notices no hesitations at all as she goes. She breathes in as she looks to the nearest cushion when she's near the fire, but as she pours all her energy into this, it unfortunately doesn't seem to be any different.

When she is absolutely thinking of nothing but the lifting of the cushion, she's easily successful. The moment her thoughts drift, it's like water slips through her, the cushion simply phases right through her fingertips, hitting the ground.

"Apparently, firelight does nothing to help."

"Huh," Nerys says, cocking her head a little in consideration. "But it doesn't seem to be any more difficult, either. I wonder if sunlight would help--UV radiation, maybe?"

She glances towards one of the windows, then back at Peggy (who is translucent but certainly still visible), and gives her a wry nod. "Probably not the best time of day to try that variation on the experiment, unfortunately." And of course, the nights are growing longer at this time of the year, too, which won't help the situation if daylight is actually a supportive mechanism.

Peggy has been staring at her disappearing hands the whole of the time that Nerys has been speaking, fretful and still occupied solely with this, to the point that she feels rather rude. Still, as she draws her attention to Nerys, the idea of doing this in the day doesn't make her feel any better.

"There's nothing else that we can do now?" she's worried, of course, mainly that she might slip away. "Not even to stabilize me?"

Nerys heaves a heavy sigh and rubs her forehead with her fingertips, just above the bridge of her nose (the smoothness of which still disconcerts her). "This is going to sound bad," she admits, "but I think worrying about it might make it worse. If you're more solid when you think hard about being solid, thinking hard about being less so could have the opposite effect."

Admittedly, Nerys is no scientist, but this seems like a pretty rational hypothesis.

Peggy gives Nerys a dubious look when she states the obvious, because the trouble is that telling her not to worry is a quick way to make her worry all the more. "How on earth am I going to stop worrying?" she asks, but she genuinely means it. She needs to know how to calm her mind and stop worrying, but she honestly doesn't know how to shut her mind off.

"Any suggestions?" she asks, sighing and resigning herself to not finding a solution.

Now, Nerys is tempted for half a second to quip something about 'the usual thing people do when looking for a distraction', but she's not sure if she wants to go where that conversation might lead, positive or negative. (Not that she doesn't like Peggy, but this is really not the time and it would indeed be mostly just friendly distraction.)

"Well..." she starts. "We do some meditation, on Bajor, that calms your pagh before religious ceremonies. I don't really know how well it works on humans, but it's probably worth a try."

Meditation has never worked for her, mainly because she's never been able to take her mind off of the incessant, constant, ridiculous number of things that plague her mind. Still, when one is vanishing into nothing, shouldn't you try just about everything you can?

"Fine," she agrees, but it sounds grumbled and barely accepted. "I suppose at this rate, I'll try anything, even if I'm awful at it."

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bye bye baby

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