Entry tags:

[OTA] Midas is king and he holds me so tight;

WHO: Karen Page
WHERE: Various
WHEN: 8 January 2018, throughout the day
OPEN TO: All, with 2 locked starters
WARNINGS: Standard blanket warning for Netflix MCU spoilers

In the Forest

OTA - 3 max threads

It was probably only a matter of time, Karen thinks. This morning she woke up to find three big boxes sitting in the middle of her chilly bedroom floor like they'd been dropped off overnight by the FedEx Fairy. She's three days out from her one-month anniversary stuck in this place, and she has officially been anointed by the gods.

As much as her instinct is still to be wary, curiosity takes only a beat to win out. Sitting cross-legged in her absconded "I'm not Daredevil" shirt and chili pepper socks, she pulls each box open and lines the contents neatly beside her on the floor. Shampoo, journals, underwear, earmuffs. When she's done, she can't shake the feeling that this is less divine intervention and more care package.

And weird as that concept may be under the circumstances, she's not looking the gift horse in the mouth.

She feeds the furnace and indulges in a longer shower than normal, then starts the process of organizing her notes in her new journals while her hair dries. Then it's out into the snow, bundled like the true Vermonter she is, pack of supplies on her back as she looks toward the horizon. There's a voice tutting in the back of her head that sounds mostly like Frank, sometimes Matt, and funnily, occasionally like Claire, but she's never really been very good at listening to people who tell her to sit still. Boots crunching with each step, she pushes into the forest's edge.

[Feel free to find her in the forest, on the way there, at the canyon wall, or on her way back.]

Canyon's Edge

for Peggy

Here's the truth: It still freaks Karen out a little bit that Peggy (and others, but mostly Peggy) are from points in time so far-flung from her own. The people who say they're from alternate realities, other planets, that doesn't get her as much — She stood in the aftermath of the alien assault on Manhattan. But the time thing she's still getting her head around.

But in the moment, it's usually an easy enough detail to forget, and Peggy makes it easier by being the sort of woman who, when Karen asks if she'd like to come with her to try and scale the canyon wall, agrees without hesitation. It's possible Peggy is mostly looking out for Karen's well-being— Because yeah, OK, it really isn't smart to go mountain climbing solo — but the fact that Peggy seems interested at all, especially when she's been here so long, is encouraging. In Karen's opinion, it's way too easy to be complacent in this place.

Home Again

for Claire

The stomp of snow-clotted boots on the porch announces Karen's return home that evening before she pushes open the door with a sigh of relief. It's warm inside, which means Claire must have been home long enough to feed the furnace. As Karen unwinds herself from her scarves, she can hear the distant sounds of another person in the house, and she smiles, grateful, almost bursting to tell what she's discovered today.

"You won't believe what happened today," she calls out, shrugging from her coat and then plopping onto the sofa to begin working off her boots. Pulling at a heel, she winces; she had a misstep earlier while climbing, and her wrist is killing her.

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Any time that someone says they're going out into the canyon yields worry for Peggy, seeing as she'd once spent a terrifying two days on a tight ledge thinking she was going to break her leg. When Karen had spoken about wanting to come out here, Peggy had been encouraging, of course, but also quite firm in the fact that she wasn't going to do it alone. Besides helping her out, it's a good opportunity to spend more time with her.

Her version of the future makes her curious, seeing as it seems aligned with others she's heard. That said, costumed capers in New York are far more cheerful sounding than her own, so perhaps she can eke out a few more stories. "Careful," she advises, drawing herself from her own mind when the canyon walls begin to encroach them. "You know, I've mapped this out more times than I can count, yet every time I come here, it's changed," she says with the irritability of a woman who's not planning to give up, but wants to make her annoyance known.

"That's what I heard, that it changes," Karen replies with a glance back over her shoulder to Peggy before returning her attention to the canyon wall looming before them. "One more thing to support the idea of this place not being natural." Not that it particularly seems that way regardless.

It's been snowing for days, but it's light, and Karen squints up toward the top edge of the wall through her newly-gifted sunglasses. The conditions aren't ideal, and that Frank/Matt/Claire-sounding voice in the back of her head is massively dubious, but if she waits for conditions to be perfect, it could easily be months. No; they came out here, she's going to climb the damned thing.

"I scrounged together some climbing equipment," she says as she slings her pack down off her shoulder and unzips it. She looks back up to Peggy. "I just want to see if I can reach the top. I know I'm not the first, but if I don't try, it will drive me crazy."

Peggy has brought a few things of her own, though it's the ropes that she's most wary about and wishes that she could better test before they head up. Still, with two of them, she feels safer, and she understands Karen's desire to explore more than she can put into words.

It's almost like looking at a former version of herself going through the same motions, but Peggy is also not quite stubborn enough to think it's useless. If it changes constantly, maybe this is the time they find something. It has happened before, after all. "Keep an eye for cracks and anything of the like."

Eyeing the face before them before turning to Karen, she also thinks they've jumped over a rather basic question. "Have you ever done any climbing before?"

Karen pulls in a breath to speak, hesitates, and then pushes it out in a chagrinned laugh that hovers opaquely in the air between them. "Not really, no." Where 'not really' actually means no, full stop.

"I grew up doing a lot of outdoors things, though," she picks back up, knowing that her reasoning is thin when it comes to something as specialized as this. "Winter sports. Skiing, hunting, ice fishing... Which obviously aren't climbing a cliff, but I guess what I'm saying is I was taught to be careful and aware. But if you've got any tips, I would definitely be glad to hear them."

"I didn't have much experience back home, but when I did have tasks that required ascending mountains, we had slightly better equipment," she says, with a mildly disapproving look to what they have on hand. It's not as if the army was wonderful at giving them supplies, but it had been better.

"For the most part, it takes a great deal of steel, nerve, and luck from my previous experiences, but I was also stuck on a ledge when the rope frayed, so my stories may not be the best to listen to," Peggy notes, glancing around them. "Are we trying to get a particular view?" she asks breezily, as if she hasn't just spoken of her own failures.

"A general look, and just to see how far I can get."

When she considers it, Karen doesn't really blame the people here for not being out here everyday, even if in those first days and weeks it had felt to her like complacency. There comes a point where you have to trust in the old adage about doing the same thing and expecting a different result. But the boundaries of this place have expanded before, and maybe there's a steady enough stream of newbies like herself who'll test the theory because they just have to know for themselves.

"At least the boots they gave us aren't bad for it," she points out, and then looks down to the climbing hook in her hand. No time like the present.

At least Karen isn't stubbornly determined to crack her way out of here as Peggy had been, all that time ago. It only leads to disappointment and a strange heartache. Recon and exploratory missions have a goal they can actually achieve, which is why she's rather pleased to hear it.

"No, they're fairly decent," she agrees. "Be careful up there," Peggy warns, as she starts to wrap the rope around her waist, trying not to think about the last time she'd belayed for someone and how what happened then isn't something she ever wants to repeat.

The prospect of being sucked into another dimension by zero matter is not on any of her to-do lists, particularly, after all.

"I'm just going to take it extra slow," Karen says as she approaches the rock face and ties off the rope around her waist. It's more damp than she really wants it to be, but the snow has slacked off enough and the sun has peaked through the clouds, so it's mostly dry about halfway up. It's just a matter of being super careful on the parts that aren't.

She's glad to find that the rock seems relatively solid — Getting a good hold with her hands and feet is easy enough; nothing starts crumbling away under her efforts, at least. That makes it a little harder to get the hook in, but it holds well when she's able to find a big enough crevice.

Peggy shifts her weight to her heels and resolves to think about this moment and only this one. Karen is not Daniel, this is not a rift into another dimension, and this isn't the past repeating itself. She only wishes that they had some method of taking pictures to help do proper recon.

"Do you see anything out of the ordinary?" Peggy calls up, when it looks like Karen has managed a little more progress than before.

The wind hadn't seemed like much to worry about down on the ground where the trees were a thicker bulwark, but by about halfway up, it's becoming annoying. Karen's glad she thought ahead enough to braid her hair and tie it off before she left the house, but she took her sunglasses off and put them in her bag earlier, and her eyes are starting to water.

Peggy's voice whips up on a breeze, and Karen has to pause and steady herself against the cliff face before she can take a deep enough breath to answer.

"Not yet!" she calls over her shoulder, not wanting to look down if she can help it, and begins the precarious process of gently loosening the climbing hook and fixing it to higher area all over again. It's strange to think about such a little thing as being the difference between potentially life and death, although she's letting herself hold onto a naive notion that even if she fell without the line, she'd only break a few bones.

Like that isn't ultimately life and death in a place like this regardless.

Squinting against the wind and midday sun, she keeps her focus on the lip of the canyon. The process is tedious, and she nearly slips more than once before catching hold of the end of the rope and steadying herself. Her stomach is twisting, not with anxiety but anticipation — She's read Mark's notes and Veronica's journals, she's talked to people, and she knows that whenever someone has tried anything like this, eventually the other shoe drops. Something knocks them back like a ruler snapping the back of a student's hand.

But it doesn't come.

At least, not when she thinks it will. She can't stop — That's not an option if going forward is still a choice — and her pulse is a roar in her ears as she inches closer and closer to the top, closer than she expected, the jagged edge of the cliff like a beacon until she can't wait anymore and stretches her hand up, up—

Fingertips brush the edge just before she slips, breath catching hard in her chest as she scrambles for the rope, pebbles pinging in a tiny avalanche as she skids to a stop some five feet lower, wrist throbbing from the sudden wrench of jerking herself still.

Peggy's been scanning the area to keep an eye out for anything that might pose as a danger, because she doesn't want Karen to get in any kind of situation that she might be able to stop. From the bottom, she can only rely on her own skill to belay Karen and hold onto her as tightly as she can, careful not to let go (and keeping an eye on the strength and structure of the rope, having nightmares sometimes about her own snapping coarsely).

"Karen!" Peggy shouts in alarm, when things go from worrying to potentially dangerous, the small rocks cascading down towards her. "Karen, don't push too far!" she shouts, trying to warn her. "If you don't feel you're secure, come back down, we can make another attempt!"

"I touched it!" Karen breathlessly yells back down, her heart still hammering in her chest from how close she'd been to losing her footing entirely. "Did you see, I touched the top!" In context with all the rest of her life, it seems so inconsequential, but here... Here it's monumental.

Coming back down is quicker than going up, gravity and her own sense of elation pushing her, and later she'll be more aware of how careless she got in her zeal. For now, she steadies herself on solid ground, still panting, and stares back at Peggy with wide eyes.

"I was so close, Peggy, oh my god."

Peggy makes a worried face, because the truth is that she's both wanting to get up there herself, but also terribly worried about something going wrong any minute now. That seems to be how things work here. Everything is just fine until suddenly, you're blindsided and knocked out.

When she's back on the ground, she momentarily debates her policy on hugging, but stands her ground as she gives Karen a look of relief. "Could you see over it?" she asks, her question perhaps a touch too blunt and to the point, but she's been trying to get to the top for so long and any information would be helpful. "Was there any indication that there was anything else there waiting for you?"

"No," Karen replies with a shake of her head, and then pulls down her ear muffs so that she can push back all the stray bits of blonde hair that had been whipped free by the wind. "I wasn't close enough to see over, but I touched it. I felt the edge of it with my fingers." And then, of course, she'd lost her footing, making all of this sound way more anticlimactic than it had felt a moment ago.

"I thought I had a good foothold, but I guess not," she admitts, a layer of guilt sliding over what's already beginning to become a palpable sense of frustration with her own haste.

It was good, though. It was progress. She's got to remember that.

"We can come back, bring better tools?" she suggests, as if it's even a question.

Peggy's not entirely sure why she feels so disappointed. After all, it's not as if she came into this thinking that they were going to break out of this. And yet, there is that bite that eats at her, because she'd thought maybe and possibly, that maybe this would be the time.

"I'm still surprised that you got as far as you did, that's an incredible feat," Peggy offers her praise, because it's true. "The furthest I've ever reached was one of the higher crags, but it kept seeming to grow above me."

"We'll certainly be back," she guarantees. "Perhaps we need someone else to help us belay."

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[OTA] Midas is king and he holds me so tight;

In the Forest

Canyon's Edge

Home Again

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