sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

WHO: Peggy Carter
WHERE: Outside the Inn
WHEN: Late October 11th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Mature clothing
STATUS: Closed

Naughty Surprises

When the box arrives on her doorstep, at first Peggy thinks that perhaps it's simply James' turn for a gift. The package is a small one, the likes of which she'd found her hair items in earlier, and though she still doesn't understand the ability of a prison like this to deliver them such luxuries, she's also not about to turn them away. She's even turned over her shoulder to summon Barnes when she gets a better look at the name on it.

It's her name. Odd, though. After the last few, Peggy can't imagine what more she might require. Certainly, the seeds and the pigeons have been somewhat useful and the hair frivolities are a lovely little treat, but what more could she need? Settling on the front steps in order to open it and find out, she discovers that apparently, there is a cruel streak of humour in whomever is sending her such gifts.

The top two items are practical. They appear to be quite skimpy, but look like they will support her quite well if she decides she wishes to exercise. The shorts and brassiere are not what she's used to, but the concept is quite practical. It's when she goes further to the next layer that has her eyes wide and a look of shock on her face.

"Good God!" she reacts, slamming the box shut instantly. Opening it a moment later, the set is still there, as lurid and red and lacy as before. Fishing the top out, Peggy dangles the strap of an indecent set of bra and panties from her fingertips, which wouldn't cover much on any woman, let alone her. Turning skywards, she regards her strange benefactors with a disbelieving look, as if this is suddenly some awful movie production Howard is manning and he expects her to put on a show.

"If you think I'm putting these on where anyone can see, you've another thing coming," she warns the strange gods above, staring through the holes of the panties and going approximately the same colour red when she sees someone else through them. "Well," she says, as calmly as she can muster, "this is embarrassing."

One Hundred and One...

When Kate and Margaery are found and brought back to safety (albeit somewhat scraped), Peggy finds herself quick to frustration and hating her ineptitude in helping to find them. That, combined with how easily her body slides to weariness is a reminder that she needs to keep up with a much more regimented training plan. While she dislikes running for the sake of exercise, she clads herself in her brand new sports brassiere, the tank top, and scrubs trousers before going for a run.

What she would like most of all is something to take out her aggression on. There had been nothing better than the punching bag at Howard's mansion to finish a day with, allowing her fists to take out all the fury she can manage. The best she can do here is a pillow she's absconded with, but the punches feel light and she gives up someway through when it's nowhere near the sort of satisfying she's aiming for.

In her mind, she can hear Howard's voice (a ghost of itself) as it asks Peggy, does Jarvis know that you can do 107 one armed pushups? and it makes her absurdly homesick for a set of people, but also gives her a determined goal to try and best.

It's been some time since she set that record for herself, but there's no time like the present to try and beat it, especially since sparring seems out of the question when the pillow is hardly fighting back. Pinning her hair back to keep it from her face, Peggy settles herself on the ground in order to begin, winding her way through the first four sets of ten with ease, but as she begins to hit seventy, then eighty, she finds herself flagging.

"Bloody Nora, they weren't always this hard," she mutters under her breath, arm trembling as she refuses to give up just yet. This is what she gets for ignoring her regiment as long as she has, and with a loud cry of frustration, her arm gives out and she goes to her stomach on the barely-dried ground, accepting that she'll be doing quite a bit of laundry after this. Staring up, she lets out a long sigh and wishes for Howard's gym facilities, not for the first time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Annie can feel herself going mad.

Ever since her Academy days, she'd gone for a daily run. Barring injury, of course. Swimming depended on weather, on if she was okay with water, but running? Every day. Even if it was up and down the marble stairs in her victor's mansion, she'd run. She'd run because it's a habit, she'd run to keep up her stamina, and she'd run because she noticed if she didn't, she got...

Worse.

More distracted, more paranoid. The violent thoughts would come and the fear would be easier to set off.

Except, here, in an arena, ironically enough she can't. And here, once she and Finnick had taken refuge in the house, there isn't even any hiking. She can feel her energy curl itself in her, under her skin, starting to seize up her fingers and make her twitch.

Once the rains had gone, she'd had to get out. Walk a bit. Normally, she'd add, 'talk to someone not Finnick', but that's not a goal here, with these strange people. Besides, she knows he's watching her from where he's gathering supplies. Keeping an eye, just in case she needs assistance. Which she doesn't, until she sees the brunette doing push-ups with one arm and collapse into the dirt with an all too familiar groan.

She'll blame it all on being cooped up in a house, in an arena, because Annie opens her mouth and blurts out, "They're always if you've not done 'em in a while."

Then she snaps her mouth shut and stares, a little wide-eyed, because even in a non-arena setting, people don't tend to like random comments from her.

Peggy's glance upwards is fond despite the wryness, because it's hardly the other woman's fault that she's lost her ability to do the push-ups the way she might have once been able. And it's true in that she hasn't done them in a very long time, seeing as she's been trying to find a way out of here, which means push-ups and running and sparring, in general, have taken a backseat. "You would think that with all the time in the world that I do have, I'd be acing these with no problem."

And yet, here she is, struggling away. She pulls herself to her feet and one planted firmly in the ground as she works herself to her feet. "You sound like you're speaking from experience," she says warmly.

Annie smiles, nervous and shy and brief. She thinks, well, it's easy to get distracted, but conversation isn't exactly always easy with her. Particularly not when she didn't prepare herself beforehand.

By the woman's second statement, she's got herself more together.

"Yeah. I am. I got injured, once. It wasn't easy to start up again, after."

"May I ask how?" she wonders, taking the opportunity of the break to fix her hair absently. Peggy's own injury had been hard to come back from, especially given that she had a bad habit of popping her stitches by not taking it easy. "I just came off of one myself," she shares, "but when I got here and after the spring, it's really just when it's damp that I feel the ghost of a pain." She's not even sure that makes sense, really, or perhaps it's just her brain thinking that there ought to be some sort of pain there.

"And did yours fix as well?" she adds, because she does have to wonder whether the springs and the fountain had been generous in their healing abilities.

Annie often has a sense of movement about her, all her urges to run and fidget lingering even if she's standing still. She stumbles over words, her sentences can be choppy, and her eyes rarely rest. Certainly, they rarely rest on a conversational partner.

But now, that all vanishes into focus. Her eyes, a dark sea-green, flick over to the woman sharply and remain.

When she speaks, she still stumbles a little over her words, but her eyes don't leave.

"I, in my games. Oh, except you don't know about them." It's said dully, but mostly impersonally. Like she's gone somewhere else, a little. "I had to tread water once, when I was nearly nineteen. For a day. It fucked up my joints pretty bad. Since then, air pressure, wet weather, all of that makes them hurt. Bad.

But not here. They don't hurt here. I thought-"

Here, the impersonal falters, and her gaze drops. She swallows back the rest of the sentence, that I was just going crazy again.

"The spring healed you, too?"

"I was already mostly healed before I arrived," she clarifies, not wanting to give the spring all the credit when she thinks that her own (somewhat devoted) care to healing had been top of mind for a very long while. Brushing off the dust from her knees, she watches the woman warily. "Games," she echoes. "Like some ancient Roman games in the Coliseum?" It certainly sounds like it, right down to the flooding.

Perhaps there were even crocodiles about and lions, the likes of which she'd read storybooks about as a girl.

"No, I meant..." She wavers, trying to weigh up how crazy she sounds. "Not the spring. Or maybe it helped. But nothin's hurt since I arrived here, out of the fountain. Did, was your injury further along, when you got here?"

Then Annie frowns, this time in confusion rather than in the effort of trying to find words.

"Not heard of them."

"It was a fairly acute injury that was already at its worst and then better before I arrived," Peggy confesses, though she still cringes to think of how hard she'd slammed the ground when saving Daniel from the void. "Is that something you've experienced?" she asks cautiously. "Something that usually hurts, not hurting every since you've been here?"

She brushes stray hair from her forehead as she tries to reason through the problem at hand. "Perhaps the fountain water and the spring water aren't so different?"

"Exactly that," Annie says, rubbing her wrist and then twisting it to peer at her skin. She'd studied it before, many times, trying to work out, but maybe here, talking about it, means she'll see something.

"I'd have thought maybe it was surgery, and they just polished the scars away. But. That means I missed all that time, so. I'm not sure that, that's any more reassuring.

But, um. If, it's the water, than what's in it? Little machines?"

"Not necessarily, it could be drugs," she allows. "It could be a manner of alien to this world technology that we've simply not worked our way around to understanding." After all, she still isn't sure she quite understands zero matter. Why not something that accelerates the healing process to a completely confounding degree?

"I don't think they had the time for the surgery," she agrees. "And there would have to be some evidence. At least, someone to do it."