cat in a tree (or a carter)

[womanofvalue]

WHO: Peggy Carter
WHERE: The Canyon | Inn
WHEN: mid-day November 4 | end of day November 5
OPEN TO: Steve | OTA
WARNINGS: Potential language
STATUS: Closed

---

For Steve

It's been colder than Peggy likes, but that's no reason to stop exploring the canyon. If anything, it's actually a good incentive as if she doesn't finish her work of mapping out the area, then she's going to end up locked out from onslaughts of snow that piles up too high to do anything about. It's why she's clad herself in her coat, grasped the rope, and starts towards the canyon.

She stops, though, outside of the house Steve is living in. It's the sort of adventure that she thinks he might like. More than that, it's the sort of thing that she imagines they might have done together at some point, had he come home from the war. "Steve, it's me," Peggy says, trying to stay brisk and refuse to allow any emotion to creep into it.

Adjusting the rope a little more, she reaches up to tweak her hair to ensure it stays pinned up.

"I've got a prospect I think you won't want to turn down."

Down The Ledge

Later, much later, Peggy feels like she's had a long experience that she's not sure she can quantify. Truly, it's a stressful thing because she'd been up on that little crumbling edge so high above everyone else that she had genuinely worried about ever coming back. There had been moments, up there, where all she could imagine was a broken leg that led to her death or something else equally as terrible.

She's made it back to the inn with some help, but she still feels shaken. The canyon map is spread out in front of her with all its conflicting information. She wants a drink more than anything else, because her whole life had flashed before her eyes and she feels like she's neglected whole parts of it and for what?

Some bloody map that still doesn't make sense.

Months and months of work and this is a dead end. Staring forlornly at it, Peggy leans down to rub sore muscles from standing on that little ledge for so long, wondering what comes next. "This bloody, awful, ridiculous thing," she swears, her voice trembling slightly as she crumples the map before her (for all the good it does, seeing as fabric doesn't crumple quite well).

It's nearly cost her her life. What else might this place try and take from her next?

Comments

Inn

[thekittenqueen]

The sight of Peggy makes Margaery's stomach dropped when the woman stepped into the inn. Jumping from her seat by the fire, she raced over to her friend. She knew that look on her face, certain that she had exhibited it when she returned from being lost in the woods. Something strange was happening in this place and it was no longer isolated events.

"What happened?" Margaery asked, her hand going to Peggy's arm.

Re: Inn

[womanofvalue]

Peggy feels as shaken as she had when she'd been impaled with the rebar. There's a sort of shock that goes along with her state of mind that makes things a little fuzzy to process and cope with. "There was an incident," she says, trying to keep a brave face on. "I was in the canyons with Steve, about thirty feet from the ground when the rope snapped."

She breathes in sharply, chastising herself for being so, so, stupid. "And all for what? A map that changes by the day!"

[thekittenqueen]

She felt her blood freeze as shock swept over her features. "The rope snapped? Are you all right?" She asked, giving a quick assessment of Peggy. Nothing seemed immediate, but she wasn't a maester and wouldn't know as well as one if something were wrong. "Is Steve all right?"

Margaery frowned, well aware of how the environment could suddenly change. "The map changed or the canyons?"

[womanofvalue]

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, just shaken up," Peggy assures blithely, trying not to let herself be too bothered by what was, honestly, a totally freak accident. It's not any foul play, just too much use of a rope that did her in. She presses a hand to the back of her neck to collect her thoughts, shaking her head.

"The canyons keep changing," she says, the frustration clear in her words. "No matter how many times I went out there, the edge would shift or change, as if I could never quite find the horizon."

[thekittenqueen]

"You should sit down," Margaery said softly, seeing a measure of frustration in Peggy's expression. After something like that, she would need somewhere or something to lash out at. This wasn't some inconvenience, it was dangerous and she could have been hurt. "Or would you rather walk around?" She could at least expel her temper through activity.

"Does that mean that you were unable to see what was beyond the canyon?" No one had considered or tried to find what was further out in the wilderness. The fact that the forest could change had dissuaded Margaery from even trying. Now it seemed that it wasn't just the forest, it was everywhere that could shift.

[womanofvalue]

"I could never find a way out. Never mind that, I could never even find the boundary that led to a way out," she says, huffing as she sits in the chair with an audible thump, her frustrations becoming evident from sound alone. "And it's so maddening, because if we were trapped and had to find a way out, I could do it. It would take time, but I could," she insists, aggressive and stubborn.

"But this isn't fair, changing the rules like this."

[thekittenqueen]

"Kate is a survivalist, but even she couldn't find a way out of those woods. We had to wait until someone found us. Whatever is happening, it is trying to confuse us and keep us lost. It isn't about 'fairness', but it is about 'why'? Why is whatever this is trying to make us lost and isolated?"

It didn't take a wise man to know that it was for sinister reasons.

[womanofvalue]

"All I know is that I could have caught my death out there," Peggy says, her frustration stewing and building up with every passing moment. She wants so badly to have answers, but she's denied them at every turn. "If it's isolation this place wants, I refuse to give it to them," she says, brazen and bold, considering how shaken up she feels.

"I could really use a drink," she confesses, feeling weary for it, and desperately in need of it for her nerves.

[thekittenqueen]

"How do you intend to keep us from being isolated?" Margaery asked, not meaning to challenge Peggy on that, but genuinely curious about what could be done. So far, they hadn't been able to predict what the forest could do, not until it had already caught them off guard and trapped Kate and Margaery during the night. "What exactly can we do?

She beckoned Peggy to follow her. "Tea?"

Inn

[booklegging]

On his way by, Jess glimpses a head of brunette hair bent over Jo's handmade Codex and pauses, a mug of hot tea in hand. Peggy is a familiar face in the inn's common area and he has a mind to say hello when they cross paths (which is relatively often in a place with under fifty people).

But looking at her properly, he gets the impression this isn't just an average social call.

If her stiff posture and the off-color of her complexion doesn't give away something's wrong, her attack on the square of curtain does. "I think you got it," he pipes up from the doorway, taking a few steps in. Time to call time of death on the cloth.

Re: Inn

[womanofvalue]

Peggy rubs at her forehead and gives a small sound of dismay, thinking that she certainly bloody hasn't. If only she could burn up this stupid map that she'd asked Hook to make her, but it might seem rude to spit in a man's face after doing her such a favour. "After the last forty-eight hours, I assure you, this isn't enough."

She glances up wearily to see Jess, reaching back to try and fix her hair somewhat. "I'm hardly in a decent state," she warns. "I hope you aren't expecting propriety of me."

[booklegging]

"It's not fair to ask something of someone you don't do yourself," is his immediate answer. Propriety in front of a Brightwell, that's almost funny. If she had any idea she was talking to the son of a criminal kingpin, she might have laughed at her own unintentional joke.

The cavalier resolve in his tone says there's not much she could do to scandalize him. He comes forward and sets the steaming mug down in front of her.

"It's blackberry and violets. You look like you could use it more than me. What happened?"

[womanofvalue]

She's happy for the quip and her exhaustion doesn't prevent her smile. "You're a godsend, Jess," she promises as she reaches out to take the mug, the very prospect of tea making her practically weak at the knees, regardless of what flavour it is. It's simply the ritual of it all and the presence of tea. "There was a slight incident when Steve and I were out exploring the canyons."

"I don't think it was foul play, but it wasn't a day I'd like to relive anytime soon," she murmurs, taking in a slow, deep breath as she cups both hands around the tea. "I was on a high ledge when my only way down broke."

[booklegging]

"You'd be amazed how often I hear that." That's twice now, between Margaery and Peggy. If he didn't know better, he'd say the lovely ladies of this middle-of-nowhere town are buttering him up. "It's my pleasure."

He's English; he's well-versed in the art of modest English understatements. 'Slight incident' makes him subtly look her over more closely for injuries.

"You could make the case that everything that happens here is foul play," he says as he does so, lifting his gaze just in time to give a sympathetic grimace when she was stranded out on the outer perimeter of their glorified jail. "Are you all right?"

Between sudden changes in weather and rockslides out of nowhere, he's not unfamiliar with mishaps in the canyon. He'd come close to injury a couple of times, but luck and quick reflexes had prevented the worst from happening.

[womanofvalue]

She feels slightly distracted yet, not entirely sure how to cope with what's happened and truly understand it. She keeps thinking it over again and again in her mind, trying to understand what happened. It had been poor luck, right? That's all it could have been. "Yes," she says, dragging herself from her distracted state. "Yes, I'm sorry, I am. I suppose I'm a little shaken. Today could very well have ended with the lot of you throwing dirt over a six foot deep hole," she says, aware that she's being pessimistic, but it had felt like that, for a few hours.

"The worst of it, really, is that I don't understand what I was doing it all for. Exploration? Frustration?"

[booklegging]

There's no need for her to apologize for needing a moment to screw her head on straight after ending up stranded somewhere she could've easily fallen to her death. Or broken her neck. Or a leg. The list could go on. Lucky, then, that he's standing here talking to her in relatively one piece.

"I had no idea you guys were out there and needed help, or else I would've come. At least brought you a stronger drink if I'd known you'd be by." Grim predictions are only pessimistic if there's a good chance they won't come true. From the sounds of it, they'd been a strong possibility. "How long were you trapped for? How is Steve--all right, too?"

Being out in the canyon is playing a game of roulette even on the best day, they all know that. Today Peggy had gotten lucky on one of her ventures, but tomorrow it could be him dangling from a cliff, or someone else.

But when the reward is freedom, isn't the risk worth it?

"You'd did it to get out of this place. You had to. It probably feels like the opposite right now and you're kicking yourself, but someone has to push back when these people pushed us into this corner."

[womanofvalue]

"No, it's fine, we're all fine, it just posed a rather worrying problem when the rope snapped." Their solution in the end had been very simple, but it had taken some time to figure out past all the panic. "And I could definitely use something stronger," she says, a touch grave considering she's well aware that they don't exactly stock top bottle shelves anywhere that she knows about.

"Nothing in this place happens the way that it's supposed to," she vents, as frustrated as she gets when it comes to this. "The fountain goes nowhere, the forests play tricks on us, the canyons are no better. We're stuck," she says. It's the very first time that she's said it out loud, but she's becoming distinctly aware of the fact that it's true. They're stuck here. She's stuck. She's stuck and the life ahead of her is no longer waiting for her, which means that all her hope for a life with Daniel is...gone.

[paragon]

Again, Steve hears her before he sees her, and he guesses it's the dramatic part of him that wonders if that's always going to be the case, some sort of constant reminder of the way he left her. He dismisses it out of hand before the thought can even really form, but it still hangs on somewhere in his chest, where it always does, so that he's still left feeling off and complicated by it, even as he stands up to open the door to her.

He's not doing much of anything. Which isn't to say he's been resting on his laurels since he arrived; he's frequently gone into the woods to hack at the trees there until they come down, spending his daylight hours splitting them into logs and securing them a decent supply of firewood. They could use more to see them through the winter, if they're indeed going to spend the entirety of it here, but he needs to find a means to sharpen the ax before he goes out again.

(If a dull ax is the only thing keeping him from taking down the entire forest in his frustration and heartache in this place, or from acknowledging the honest to God soreness lingering in his body at the end of the day, well, that's his business.)

He's bored, and dwelling, so when he pulls the door open his eyes are a little wide with his reaction to her and his predictable interest in what she's saying. (He's also not unaware of the potential ways to take that statement, but he's pretty sure she didn't mean it that way and doesn't have the heart for it on the off chance she did, so he ignores it.) He looks at her, only glancing briefly at the rope before his attention is pulled back toward her, as always, like a compass finding north.

"Where're we goin'?"

[womanofvalue]

"The canyon," she says, filled with promise and hope that today is going to be the magical day that she somehow finds a way out of this unending trap. She usually goes out on her own, though there are times when she can coerce someone else to come with her. Today, though, she thinks that she should give Steve the chance to get away from that continuous log-splittin he's doing. "Unless you wanted to continue to pursue your newfound determination to be a lumberjack," she offers, keeping a straight face despite her jibe.

"I'd appreciate the company to keep me from being mauled alive and left for dead," she says. "Perhaps not that dramatic, but I've learned from past experience what going alone does."

[paragon]

The familiar poke and prod doesn't escape his notice, and Steve ducks his head on a huff of a laugh in acknowledgment of it, not at all surprised that she's got his number. He's grateful when she moves on, though, because he doesn't especially feel like explaining himself. Not that he usually needs to, with her, but he likes to think he can keep some things closer to the vest.

Figuratively speaking, anyway. What he's actually wearing are his green scrubs layered over thermal underwear, and he'd already been wearing his boots in the house simply to keep his feet warm. He thinks of the long coat and dismisses it just as quickly — if they're going to the canyon it can only get in the way, and he's not so affected by whatever's keeping him weakened here that what he's got on won't keep him warm enough. He steps out onto the porch and closes the door behind him after a quick glance backward, waiting for her to lead the way down the steps.

"Sounds like a story. Aren't you the woman who gave me a hard time for trying to go it alone?" His tone is fond, questioning, his expression on her gentle.

[womanofvalue]

"I thought that I could do things and keep my life as it was," Peggy says, watching him the way she has since he's arrived (with all the wonder that he can still be there and still alive). "I was wrong. Trying to have both meant that I got someone killed. Because of my sex, I wasn't trusted, and had to work alone in order to clear his name," Peggy says, trying to fight back that frustration that always rises up when she thinks about her days in the SSR.

She gives Steve a curious look as she raises a brow. "And what might you be doing alone, Steve? I sincerely doubt you actually listened to my sage advice, did you?"

[paragon]

It's an answer with a beginning, middle and end, yet remarkably lacking in details. Steve's actually gotten pretty used to it, during the last few years. When she'd been able to talk about the past, her work, it'd been a lot like that, true but need to know, and usually coming back around to Steve. Sharon had told him she didn't want Peggy to have any secrets from him, but he thinks it was always a little late for that. He couldn't really blame her — there would always be too much and not enough time for it all, even if she'd wanted to tell him. So he just listens, mouth tightening briefly, thinking of a conversation they'd had in a cab once and what an idiot he'd been.

"Nothing," he answers her truthfully, searching her face. "Nothing, I just— I meant before." When he'd been ready to drive straight to Italy on his own until she'd stopped him. "I always listen to you, Peggy." It's meant to be a little bit of wry hyperbole, offered on an attempted smile, but Steve is Steve and there's a ring of truth to it anyway.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy inhales sharply to stop herself from immediately laying into an accusatory statement - that she knows he'd always listen to her, which is why she'd needed him so much after the war. She doesn't want to go down in history as nothing more than the woman known as Cap's girlfriend, reduced by radio dramas to a helpless damsel that was incapable of anything. She keeps walking and keeps her chin high, trying very hard not to let her anger show. Steve doesn't deserve it, not when he'd gone out and saved the world with his heroics. In the process, he had sent her down a path of being demeaned and distrusted. "Yes, well, unfortunately when I returned to the SSR, no one else followed your example."

Not at first, at least. She knows that she has Daniel on her side now, but it had taken a great deal of time to earn that trust and to get him to stop looking at her as someone on a pedestal who needs protecting. "I could have used you, very much," she admits, her voice quiet as she tries to drain all the anger from it. "You held such respect for me that the others didn't have. I tried, when I got home, to trust people. I had Mr. Jarvis, of course, but not you. I missed you," she says, her voice raw and emotional. "For many reasons."

[paragon]

He realizes as Peggy speaks that he needs to stop comparing her to the woman she'd become. She had, after all, been a woman at the end of her life, and he'd fallen into a pattern of respecting her grief rather than allowing himself to share in it — he wouldn't pretend he knew what it was like to live with it for all the years he'd missed. He doesn't have that excuse now, with her here. He supposes that's all it ever was, an excuse, even if he doesn't know what other choice he could've made. Laying it all on her was never an option. All he knows now is that he's still an idiot.

"You know I would've been there," he says quietly, all traces of a smile gone, never having really been there in the first place. He doesn't know if it's the right thing to say, just that it's the only thing. Besides, he'd rather have her angry at him than both of them pretending like he can't hear it in her voice.

[womanofvalue]

"I know," she replies, hitching the rope higher over her shoulder. Even at the brisk pace she's walking, the canyon seems so far away given the charged topic of conversation between them, but she also thinks it's long past time that she allowed things into the open. She's been avoiding Steve for so many reasons -- guilt at leaving him in the ice at the top -- but sometimes she thinks she only avoids him because she's not entirely sure how to remind her heart that after two years, she had done her very best to move on.

Seeing him here makes her think of the worlds that weren't, the life she didn't have, and it's hard to face that when you look at the man that Peggy is always, always, going to love. "You just had to be so bloody noble and sacrificing," is her reply, the words brittle and fond, even if they crack in the middle. "I could have used you at the SSR. Honestly, just in dealing with Howard so often," she jests, trying to play this as lighthearted.