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

[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.