sixthiterationlogs | goodbye, my darling

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goodbye, my darling

WHO: Peggy Carter
WHERE: Outside the fountain
WHEN: February 2nd, Evening
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Ice Powers, Grief
STATUS: Open

It's been days of searching, to the point that even for a woman of Peggy's stubbornness, there are boundaries as to how much she can take and how long she can go denying the truth. She's searched every possible crevice the village will allow her, looking for bodies alive or dead, but it's becoming painfully clear that she's not going to find her friends because they're not here any longer. She'll miss Barnes and Natasha, of course she will, but that's not what hurts so badly.

Peggy's been at the fountain, her last resort. Perhaps whatever cruel joke this is will vanish and Steve will pop up again, like he's never been gone. She'd honestly thought that something might be going right in the universe again, if only to give her back the best man she'd ever met, but that's all gone too. Inhaling sharply, Peggy can't keep back the grief any longer. Her sobs are a choked sound that she muffles with the collar of her cloak, trying to brush away her tears.

Tears, unfortunately, that are crystallizing on her cheek. Reaching up, Peggy stares in confusion and wonder as she holds an icy teardrop on her fingertip. It ought to melt away with her body heat, but a quick touch to her skin proves that she's just as cold as the weather around her, something that shouldn't be possible by any means.

Swallowing another sound in her throat, Peggy finds herself sitting heavily on the edge of the fountain, not sure she has the energy to cope with this on top of everything. She's been accused of being an icy bitch before, but she'd never thought it would end up being so literal. "You'd laugh," she says aloud, not sure which departed friend she's speaking to now, whether it's Steve or Howard or Jarvis, "it serves me right. The one moment I need affection and compassion, this place drives ice into my heart to keep people at bay." Letting her head hang forward, any tears that come turn to ice nearly immediately, dropping to the ground like a miniature weather event right in front of her, but she can't make herself move just yet.

Steve is gone. He's gone again and she's not sure how to say goodbye so quickly, this time.

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Peggy sags a little when Riza doesn't allow her to change the topic so successfully, though she is genuinely happy to hear that the visions have stopped plaguing her. It takes her another moment to compose herself, both to ensure that icicles stop spreading from her fingertips, but also to make sure that she's got the words she intends to speak. "I've realised that I can't keep searching for people who are gone," she says, finally.

"That no matter how much I want it to be true, the universe won't ever be so kind as to give me Steve back, properly," she says, her smile weak as it falls away from her lips barely a few seconds after she's forced it there.

It's strange, but the words hit Riza a little more closely than Peggy might have intended. The hallucinations had shown her only a glimpse of Harry, and yet here she was still wishing she could see him again. She was still yearning for a sign or some confirmation that it hadn't been one of her visions, that he'd really been here.

"I know what you mean," she says, before she can stop herself. Perhaps Peggy and her are more similar than even Riza had realized. "Try having a relationship with someone who lives in a completely different universe and then tell me about events keeping you apart. I guess time and space are on neither of our sides in this," Riza remarked. She didn't know the full extent of Peggy's issues with Steve -- how many times she may have lost him or the universe had taken him away. But it sounded like enough times to make the other woman frustrated. Riza could certainly relate there.

"No, they're not," Peggy agrees, and unfortunately, Riza's words are having the opposite effect on her, making her feel distinctively worse as she fights back new grief, ice spreading from her hands where they clutch the fountain tightly. She's trying to focus all of her attention on not letting this get the best of her, but she worries that talking about it and being reminded of how she'll never get to see him again will only work worse.

"What if he came here, though?" she aims to focus on Riza, instead. "Perhaps he'd remember you?"

Riza feels it getting colder. She ponders if perhaps she'd said the wrong thing, but then again she'd never been very good at this kind of thing. There was a reason she only had one real female friend back home and even then she didn't see Rebecca very often.

She tenses at the question, something she'd been pondering long before the hallucination of him here at the fountain. There was a time where she would have wanted nothing more, but time had passed and doubts had set in. Riza clenched her hand around the cloth of her scrub pants, letting out a breath that turned to vapor on the air. "Maybe. But a lot has happened since I last saw him...things I'm not looking forward to sharing," she said, her voice quiet. She looked across at the bench she'd been collapsed on a few weeks ago.

"I thought he was here, but even then I couldn't tell him."

"When you were seeing things," Peggy clarifies, because as far as she'd known, she thought that Riza had only been seeing villains outside of her periphery, so this is new. "Why didn't you want to tell him?" she asks, as if she wouldn't do the very same. Peggy's quite hypocritical at times when it comes to emotions like these, but 'do as I say and not as I do' could practically be a Carter family crest.

"Personal things? Or something else?"

There's a nod, hesitating, but Riza's mostly certain it had been part of the "seeing things" episode. That had been a rough week to say the least. It was easy to write off the bad thing as just visions, but Harry...well that was different.

"Because it's going to be difficult for him to hear," she says. She bites at her lip, a part of her wanting to put the information out there. It still weighs heavily on her chest: the proposal, the pregnancy, and then everything had gone to hell. When they'd parted ways, they'd both made a promise, but now she sometimes dreaded the fulfillment of that promise. Maybe Peggy would understand.

But, Riza had kept it so long. No one knew outside of herself and the doctor she had visited all those months ago. She'd picked up the pieces, but at the same time it was still so hard to accept. Personal didn't really begin to cover it, did it.

"I think we're getting off topic though."

"You noticed," Peggy says with mild disappointment, having hoped that perhaps Riza would have fallen for her attempts to direct the conversation back around to something that didn't expose her so badly. Apparently, she's not that lucky. "Even if something is hard to hear, I have to imagine it's better to say it than to forever live with it on your heart," is what she says, quiet with her throat burning with the regret of what was never said (and what she still hasn't said, because she doesn't think that she ever got to tell Steve that she loved him).

Sighing, she's not sure what to focus on - the disappearances or the new ice flowing through her veins.

It was pretty easy to sidetrack her if the topic was right, at least for a short time. However, she was used to her colonel's attempts at such things and she was able to keep her focus. "It was nice to talk about my problems, but that's not why I'm sitting out here in the cold now," she replied, with a new focus.

She studied Peggy for a moment. "Is that advice coming from experience?"

"Experience of not having done it," Peggy admits, given that she has so many things on her soul that hadn't been said out loud, even though she should have. She hadn't even learned her lesson with Steve, delaying so long in moving on that she'd nearly lost Daniel, too. With a slow breath, she realizes that she's keeping Riza out here in the cold, despite the fact that only Peggy seems to be immune to it.

"Do you want to go inside? I know I'm not feeling the chill, but you must be."

"My, you really are trying to get rid of me," Riza replied, though her tone was teasing. She brushed her hair behind her ear, "I never had the privilege of being stationed at Fort Briggs, but we did some joint training up north...this is nothing." Peggy wasn't the only stubborn woman in the village. Still, Riza didn't want to push her luck. She turned her gaze fully to Peggy now, wanting to see for herself how Peggy felt.

"Listen. I've never really been very good at this, but I've also learned that we can't go through things alone," she paused, thinking of her friends from both Amestris and Manhattan. She continued, "So if you need me or anyone I hope you will seek someone out."

Peggy feels guilty for trying to push Riza away, but she's spent so much of her life not telling anyone the issues lying under the surface and it's done her well so far. "Wait," she sighs, and settles back down on the edge of the fountain, hands digging into the rough stone surface as she gives Riza a patient, yet mildly annoyed look. "I'm English, I like to repress," is her excuse.

"I've hesitated too often, with matters of the heart," she says cautiously, trying to think of the best way to sum this up and put it out there. "It's caused me to lose someone again, without being able to say all the things in my heart."

Riza only smirks, mildly amused, but it's only a small smirk and might not even be very noticeable. All the same, she doesn't respond, merely waits for Peggy to come around. Besides, the smirk wouldn't have lasted long after she hears what Peggy has to actually say. She'd certainly been in that boat before -- both with her Colonel and with Harry.

She'd tried to show the Colonel her feelings over the years, a silent communication and understanding between the two of them. However, she'd never actually told him how she felt. It would compromise too much. Still, maybe he did need to hear it.

And then there was Harry. What could she possible say about Harry? There relationship had been a strange one -- coming from two very different worlds -- and yet they had clicked. She had trusted him and he had trusted her. There was no denying that fact. But, as Peggy had said, she hadn't actually acted on those feelings until months had passed and even then it was only because they thought they were going to die. How different would things had been if that building hadn't fallen on them.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I understand though...I've managed to do that too often as well," she pauses, looking over to the fountain, "So what will you do now?"

"Grieve," Peggy admits, because as much as she doesn't like to show her feelings in public, she knows that she'll process them in private, even through this new and freakish ability with her powers. "I've done it once before for Steve, but never for the other man, mainly because I've lived quite heavily under the assumption that I'm going back." They're not precisely at a year yet, but she has the suspicion that she needs to start acting like it's not such an easy thing.

"Then, move on," is her determined course of action. "Somewhere in there, I have to figure out what on earth to do about the fact that I'm now an ice woman."

There is no sense in correcting her. Just because Riza managed to escape one prison much like this did not guarantee she or anyone else would make it out of this one. There was being hopeful and then there was being delusional -- and it was a fine line to be sure. Riza nodded.

"Yes, unfortunately I've more experience with abilities related to fire than ice--so I'm not sure how much help I can offer on that end."

"How did you control them?" Peggy asks, because perhaps they aren't quite the same, but she thinks that the lessons behind them ought to be the same. The same principles, at the very least, given that control seemed to be the word of the moment, and one that would help a great deal with whatever's happening to her. "How did you disconnect your emotions from what you could do? I suspect that seems to be the most pressing matter, now."

Riza considered the question, but shook her head. Even after all these years she couldn't bring herself to tell the one secret she'd sworn her life to. But that wasn't to say that she couldn't be honest about aspects of it. After all, most of it was common knowledge. "The world I originally come from is a little different than most I've encountered. We have a branch of science called alchemy. It's too complicated to get into now, but my Colonel knew a special kind of alchemy that involved flames. He could essentially create and manipulate them. I witnessed him using it a number of times...we even fought side by side with his abilities and my marksmanship."

She paused and then added, "So, it's not really something I know...not like that. But I know it's a matter of focus. You have to envision what you want it to do, where you want it to go. You can't let it consume you."

Peggy is terrible at not letting things consume her life. Once she has them in her sights, she simply allows them to overwhelm until they touch every part of her life. It's not necessarily a bad habit in certain situations, but it's also not very helpful in others. It means she has to learn how to be a bit better at figuring that out. "I suppose I can also hope that it will go away as quickly as it came on," she offers.

"Not that I think this place is kind enough to do such a thing," she adds bitterly, finding it annoying to be talking about a piece of land like a place.

"That would be my guess. The people who have powers have theirs suppressed so it would stand to reason that, for whatever reason, they wouldn't want us to keep these abilities for long," Riza said, unsure but figuring it was as good an explanation as any.

"But. This might also be the perfect opportunity to test the limits of the abilities we are granted by the mysterious forces here," she paused and then shook her head, "Of course, that could just be the 'daughter of a scientist' talking." Not to mention having dated a detective -- the idea of finding out as many clues as possible the better and hadn't Harry always tried to test as many of the limits placed on them as possible?

She raises a brow as she considers Riza's words. "Is there some place that I ought to be testing out my strange new icy powers?" she wonders, not entirely sure that she can put these to good use so much as she can potentially freeze a fish out of a pond, but she doesn't know what good that would do.

From an attack standpoint, this could be very deadly, but she doesn't want to have to use them to defend herself, not anytime soon.

"I suppose until you have control it would make sense to do so on the outskirts of the village," Riza suggested after some thought. "I can be there for support if you want. I observed the lessons my father taught in the use of alchemy," Riza admitted, not sure if Peggy would want it or not, but offering the help all the same.

"We may not know why you have them, for how long, or what use they could be now -- but that doesn't mean they don't have some way of helping sometime down the road." They never knew what would happen around here honestly.

"Perhaps I'll start by the river," Peggy says as she thinks of where she'll do the least damage. The river offers her a place to practice, but also it will help with the need for ice, if she ends up freezing more than she's planned to, in the process. "If you'd come to support me, I would appreciate it," Peggy admits, trying not to look unnerved by the whole thing, but it's a problem that she's not entirely sure how to deal with and she fears that shows.

Riza nodded. There was certainly tactical advantage to training by a body of water -- fire or ice. The river was also close enough that if Peggy got in trouble they could get help and yet far enough away that it shouldn't cause too many problems for anyone.

"Of course," she said, after assessing the tactical advantages. "I'll offer as much guidance as I can."

Peggy isn't entirely sure whether guidance is going to be enough (truthfully, she'd prefer if these abilities came with an instruction manual for use), but she's never been one to quit easily and she looks to Riza with a determined nod of her head. "Right, then," she says, breathing in deeply to try and chase her grief away.

"I'm all yours, lead the way."

They have something new to focus on which is great. Riza finds that having tasks like that is better than anything in terms of staying positive in these places. It was easier to cope if you had something to focus on.

"All right," Riza says as she rises and starts away from the fountain. No one had shown up and so they didn't need to wait around much longer. "I did know of someone who used ice alchemy. I can't say exactly how it worked, other than manipulating the moisture in the air either rapidly cool or heat it."

That's an interesting concept to consider. Perhaps this isn't something that's simply happening to her, but something with an actual explanation. The thought of it being 'alchemy' sets Peggy just a touch at ease. Now, she just needs to cut off the emotions that come with the timing of these powers.

It seems as if it can't be a coincidence, honestly, yet, what if it is? "So if the air around me is already cool, shouldn't I have less success?" she wonders.

i just hit 6 comments for this --

hawkeyesniper - 2017-04-27 23:18 (UTC) - Expand

imma hit one more! :) and then faaaade

womanofvalue - 2017-04-28 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

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goodbye, my darling

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wanna try to wrap up in a few more tags so we can hit 6?

yes please the best plan!

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i just hit 6 comments for this --

imma hit one more! :) and then faaaade