sixthiterationlogs | cat in a tree (or a carter)

Entry tags:

cat in a tree (or a carter)

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

Jess nods in acknowledgement when she assured him the both of them had walked away without major injury. Good, that's the important thing. Minor injuries, sure, but major ones... They weren't equipped well enough to treat those.

"Yeah, I'll bet." Part of being an effective smuggler is adapting to your environment in a pinch--sometimes that means literally, like scaling the side of a building in the pouring rain because the open window on the fourth floor is your one way in. The only time Jess is ever uncomfortable with heights is when he's facing plummeting to his death from them.

The sick lurch in your stomach when you think you might die and there's nothing you can do about it is universal, and he can sympathize with Peggy's nerves being a bit frazzled.

"True," he admits easily enough, continuing with, "For now, anyway. All that means is that we're playing a game we haven't figured out yet. Every game can be won, even this one."

"I usually win games much faster than this," she says, though she remembers the last time she felt this frustration. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she turns to her tea instead, taking a long moment to inhale the scent before sipping at it to try and calm her nerves. "Honestly, it feels too much like I'm back in the war. Rationing food, not knowing what attack might come next, victory always over the hill and never quite here."

It hadn't driven her mad back then, but she's older now and she feels like she's paid more than enough dues. She feels like it's her turn to have some peace and happiness, but instead, she's back in a warzone.

You and me both, he thinks to himself. The voice narrating his thoughts is rich with a dry kind of resignation.

"I prefer to think of it as we're not losing our edge, these guys are just difficult to beat." The survivors' glass half full perspective when staring down a bad situation with no end in sight.

Jess offers an understanding smile. "I can't say what living through a world war is like, but I know a bit about feeling stuck in a zero sum game. Today you get to let out whatever it is you need to let out. Tomorrow you'll roll your sleeves back up."

The only way out is through, as they say. Once Peggy has had time to process what happened, she'll get back up on the horse because doing otherwise is simply not an option--pushing on is what they have to do, all of them. And she will. He'd bet money on it. She made it through one war, she'll make it through this one or die trying.

He's right, but the trouble is that she doesn't feel like rolling up her sleeves and getting back up again, right now. She feels like curling up and having a drink and maybe even having a cry. She feels so useless and ineffective and she's never enjoyed having to fight uphill constantly the way that she has. "It's not even the war," she admits. "You know what it's like, truly? It's like when I got back from the war, when I came back and the men expected me to go back to being a little woman with no responsibilities apart from maintaining a home."

It feels like that. Belittled and bothered and betrayed, despite all the good that's come of being here (and being able to see Steve again, really, that alone is almost worth the trouble. Almost). "So what would you do in the meantime?" she asks.

"That doesn't sound like something you'd have taken lying down here, there, or anywhere," he says honestly, folding his arms. "Just another good reason to get the upper hand and show these people we're not here to play house, isn't it?"

It's a rhetorical question beyond a doubt. Jess isn't any more pleased to be treated like a doll attached to strings any more than her.

"I haven't had better luck with scaling the canyon walls, admittedly. This is the part where I'd be planning for the next time. But I've been told I'm a glutton for punishment that way."

"I believe starting all over again without making adjustments is the very definition of insanity," Peggy feels compelled to wearily point out. "If anything, I should be treating it differently." She's had time to think about it, even if it's been limited so far. "I've been thinking of starting to look more close to home for answers. Perhaps there's something we've been missing. Perhaps it's simply that we haven't dug enough." Literally, she means, in this case.

Who knows if this is the first and only settlement? What if they've built over it and it's simply archaeology that's been missing from this to answer their questions.

At that, Jess lets out a single soft laugh. "I don't know if I should be offended or not you think I'd suggest that kind of rookie mistake in poor planning. It's bad strategy, making the exact same moves and expecting different results."

He's not offended, in truth; his amusement is evident in the quirk of his lips. Honestly, he does feel like a blockhead running at a brick wall most days, but he also knows he's not alone in that feeling. This place makes them all look like fools.

"We can't rule out anything," he agrees after a beat. He's done the same, as for all intents and purposes this comes off as the type of game where thinking outside the box is a requirement, not an option. "And changing tack might offer you a fresh perspective. As long as you don't let yourself get mentally stuck."

That's the point he'd ultimately been getting at--that they can accept defeat around every corner, so long as it doesn't define their efforts here. Adapting and adjusting and continuing to fight for answers is the best they can do.

"I don't know you well enough to know whether you'd go back and make the same mistake," Peggy points out, seeing as she's been trying to do something different, but the bloody canyon keeps shoving her into the same situation. "Mentally, I'm running into the same problem. How do you deal with a landscape that wants you to fail, all the while you don't have any clues," she says.

"I think perhaps my greatest issue is that I haven't been very good about taking other people with me." Though, she did today, and look where that had nearly left her.

"Take it from me, I never make the same mistake twice," he says plainly. "And I don't think any of us would have lasted very long here if we were an inflexible sort."

Generous? Maybe. Jess only gives credit where it's due and he doesn't know the others well enough to judge them completely himself (and trust is a whole other can of worms he won't bring up), but he's had months to watch them. Most of them are doing their damndest to puzzle their way out by any means necessary, if Peggy's efforts says anything.

They're a strong group, like his postulant class. (But like with his postulant class, strength and determination isn't always enough, he knows.)

"If you ever want a second head to put together with yours, I'd welcome working together with you again," he offers with a head tilt. "We didn't make too bad of a team, last time." What he doesn't say is that it sounds as though they're both running into the same obstacles with solo work. Annoying as it is to admit to himself, he's been bottoming out against the landscape more often than not, too.

"We did quite a decent job, didn't we," Peggy agrees, trying to take solace in the fact that though she might have put herself in a dangerous spot, she's got people around her now and she's not going to go down that road again. At least, not if she can help it. "I think right now, I need to recuperate and calm down a little, then I'll probably have to go convince Steve that it's not his fault," she admits, given that she assumes he's somewhere right now, wringing his hands and believing so.

"Maybe you have better ideas than mine," she says. "Maybe the canyon isn't the right place to explore."

"We did." He smiles again, a little mischievously in the manner of someone recounting an inside joke. "And I've known men who've tired out quicker on long hikes. I'm sure Steve knows the pair of you getting back here in one piece is a win. No permanent harm done, right?"

And that, in Jess' opinion, means there's no point in letting feelings of guilt or discouragement get out of hand. It could've been worse. It could always be worse here.

He scrapes his bottom lip between his teeth. The truth is, Jess has plenty of ideas. Almost every night before he falls asleep, he spends his time takes everything he knows about this place and arranges them in his head like pieces to a puzzle, looking for a crack, a new connection. It's making headway that's the hard part.

"These people are capable of manipulating the environment and getting in and out of town without us noticing to leave the gift boxes behind. Logically, that should mean they have a base of operations close by. But with the way they change the playing field, it could be anywhere. Therein lies the problem."

She doesn't tell Jess about the complicated history between them, or the fact that a sacrifice had left Peggy weeping over a microphone and Steve taken from her and when their positions had been reversed, she could do nothing but think back to that exact moment, over and over again, as if she didn't already relive it every night in her awful dreams.

"I keep thinking that I ought to go back to the beginning, before I made things so complicated in my head," she says, tapping the table with her fingers absently. "When I arrived, there was an air raid siren and I always thought that strange, as no one was around to sound it. It would have required power, a person to operate it, and a base of operations. Perhaps I ought to go back to looking for that."

Jess remembers the siren. Not personally as that had been before his time, but he remembers Peggy had been the one to inform him of it, her information being what had set him on the path to wondering if some of these "natural disasters" had more human interference behind them than expected.

"Exactly that. They'd have to be nearby to do half of the things they do. Theoretically."

Outward leads to escape, but inward... inward has to lead to the puppet masters pulling the strings. And all roads inevitably lead to freedom... or so he'd hope. Some days he's not so sure what's at the end of that particular rainbow. Something to think about when they actually get there.

"I've been looking for signs of a hideout each time I go out. Nothing yet."

"Even if they aren't theoretically nearby, they would have to somehow have control, which means there must be some form of technology or something that we're missing." She's beginning to get pent up and aggressive again, which means that Peggy needs to calm her mind. She just got back from an excursion where her fervent determination to find answers got her in trouble. There's no need for more of that.

"Maybe we ought to be looking under?" she suggests. "Maybe there are tunnels or caves that led to a subterranean base of operations, which is how they can be out of sight."

"It's a good bet."

It seems as though they've harnessed whatever effect powers the fountain--whether it be translation, like the Obscurists use, or some other variation--and built on it to create a perfect prison that their jailors don't even have to show their faces around to make sure their wards are clothed and fed.

Is it any wonder Peggy has a look in her eye like she wants to chuck her tea across the room?

"It would make the most sense--the trick is finding the back door." Front doors are for people who aren't used to sneaking in through the back. "How's your potholing?"

"I do assume you mean that in the sense of exploring and not any lascivious version that it might pertain to," is her calm, edged retort. She doubts Jess would even dare with her, but it isn't exactly the most common thing that she's ever had said to her. She needs to retain some wariness. "If we can just find ourselves a way in, I say that we pothole to our hearts' content."

And then some, seeing as she anticipates that something will be there to throw her off as much as anything.

The warning earns a good-humored laugh from him. Does he seem the type? He'd meant it exactly as it'd sounded, and so there's no trace of either embarrassment or wounded pride when he says, "Oh, don't worry, I know when I'm out of my league."

He's kidding in the sense that he'd ever think to use a pick-up line on the likes of Peggy, and not kidding that she'd be out of his league even if they were of a similar age. Plus--

"And there's someone back home." So that nips pick-up lines of any sort in the bud.

Back on the matter of finding a way forward, the humored light dims in his eyes and turns more serious. A matter of life and death and personal liberty isn't much of a laughing matter.

"Therein lies the rub, yeah. We'll just have to keep scouring until we find something."

She raises her brow at his remark, wondering if he thinks the same about other girls his own age, but Peggy lets that fall away for the moment, setting it aside for a later date (she has some digging to do before she feels she can properly address that, anyhow). "I don't know whether to hope we do find something or that we don't. It seems everything we do find only make things stranger, don't they?"

And yet, the prospect of having answers is one that she wants to keep chasing for the sweet allure of closure and potentially escape.

Jess has the same urge to give chase--to run forward to make up for all the lost time he's spent running away from parts of his life and people in it. To eventually find a way home and reunite with the few people he'd call family, tied together not by blood, but something even more ephemeral: trust.

But Peggy has a point there. It seems like what they're chasing is the wizard behind the curtain.

"You sure aren't kidding," he sighs. "But I didn't get dragged out of my life to let disembodied overlords make my choices for me." Internally, he thinks he's had his fill of that. "Fighting back is a choice they haven't rigged for us and better the enemy you know, right?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

cat in a tree (or a carter)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

gotta say, this is the weirdest english term for splunking

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject