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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She can't imagine that it would be many buildings in her day, if it's mainly houses in his. She wonders how different New York City actually looks, imagining the way that the future has progressed. She wonders what it might have been like for Steve, who saw it change in the course of one night. Peggy steps into the inn, wishing that the warmth helped the chill, but it did nothing for her.

She's as cold as she'd been outside. "I was never one for beaches," she admits. "I always liked to be doing something."

The inn is fairly empty, with just a few people loitering around, and there's empty chairs in front of the fire that Sonny begins to move towards. Maybe the fire will do something for her, even if it's only a little something. At the very least, it wouldn't hurt to try.

"Me too," he says, crouching down in front of the fire to stoke it, trying to build it up to something a little more roaring. "Especially these days, I feel like I need to be doing something. Back home, my job kept me really busy. Here it feels like I have too much free time on my hands, you know?"

"More than you know," is her assured guarantee, settling into the chair and feeling a touch awkward as she reaches out and appears to somehow combat the fire from touching her hands in a way that makes her worry that she's going to ruin it for the rest of the people here. She retracts them and settles them on her lap, one atop the other, a touch confused about how on earth she's supposed to manage with food and drink and other necessities if she's continuously freezing.

"I hadn't taken a vacation in five years, and even when I did, it was to work a closed case," she says, wishing that she had one of those here. "What did you do at home?"

For awhile now, he's wanted to dedicate himself to learning some new skills. There are plenty of people here who know how to hunt and fish, who help tend to their animals and their plants, those who attend to the medical needs of the village. Sonny can cook, and he's a good shot, a good detective, and that's about as far as it goes. The cooking is already taken care of, there aren't any guns here, and his detective skills can only take him so far right now.

He just wants to be doing something. He just wants to help.

"I was a detective, actually," he says, and it's with a small laugh. "So I think I sorta get what you mean. Days off are few and far between, right?"

It's not quite the same, but it's close enough that it perks Peggy's interest away from her own emotional grief and towards something more productive. "I was working on a case prior to coming here," she says, mustering up a smile of shared understanding. "I can assure you, not a single day was taken." Not even when the rebar had struck her, she'd kept going, but mainly because Dottie Underwood was still at wild in the world.

"It's an important job," she says, with a firm nod. "There are consequences to absence."

It is an important job. Especially when it comes to the Special Victims Unit, with it's volunteer-only basis due to the emotional turmoil it puts on its detectives. Normally, people only stick around the unit for a couple of years — it becomes too much, and that's understandable. For the most part, they're dealing with some of the worst monsters out there. But those are all reasons why Sonny joined, and why he's determined to keep at it, no matter how hard it tries to beat him down.

"Yeah." It's soft, a little bit thoughtful. "You have to wonder how they're getting along without us, huh?"

"I imagine there are cheers going around my office," Peggy notes wryly, seeing as while she knew her worth and value, not everyone had been quite so happy when Peggy Carter was in the room -- something about the way she never really let anything go without a fight and stubbornly stood up to men that didn't expect push-back from a woman.

"Do you miss it? Or is a vacation a much-needed respite, for you?" She's glad to distract herself, not thinking about her abilities, but rather home.

There was once that Sonny might have thought the same thing, too. In the beginning, he bounced between precincts, each one shuffling him off on somebody else. He always came off as too ambitious, to brash, always taking too much of the initiative, just too willing to please. But Olivia gave him a chance and from her, he's learned how to be a better detective, and a valued member of the team.

"I miss it," he says, almost immediately, no hesitation or doubt found in his voice. "I mean, a vacation isn't bad. I like my days off. But I like helping people more, you know? And I was helping a lot of people."

"I believe you're filling the brief right now in helping me," Peggy feels inclined to point out with a gentle smile. "I know that I'm hardly as downtrodden on my luck as some other people you might come across, but I assure you, it means a great deal to me," she says quietly, seeing as it's not like she really allows herself to be this vulnerable.

Even if Steve had disappeared without these powers, she would have done her best to endure. It's just the bloody awful unknown of it all.

She's right. Of course she's right, most of the strong, resilient women in his life are, no matter what they happen to be talking about. He might be here, essentially billions of miles away from his home and his job, but that doesn't mean he can't help people. Maybe it's not solving crimes and consoling victims and bringing horrible people to justice, but it's just as important.

"I'd do it again, too," he says, smiling softly. "Anytime. Even if it's not what I was doing at home, it's just as important."

"Now you know how to make a girl really feel special," Peggy can't help but gently tease, but she means it. Right now, she feels weary with grief, the sort of thing that consumes a person. It's nice to have someone here to listen and cope with her strange ice powers, even if they don't make the faintest bit of sense to her. Maybe they don't to him, either, but at least he's willing to try.

She's teasing, but it's good natured, and the sort of thing he's accustomed to. To be fair, he makes it pretty easy to do, leaving the door wide open for all sorts of poking and fun-making. But it's certainly not something that bothers him. Especially now, with Peggy, and the way he can hear the sincerity in her tone.

"I should," he says, exhaling a chuckle. "I've got three sisters, it sort of comes with the territory."

She doesn't mention her brother, mainly because she doesn't know what things would be like between the two of them, if he'd lived. Post-war, after Steve, who knows what sort of dynamic they might have struck up> "You must have had quite the noisy home," she says, given that she'd experienced something like it at the Griffith. "Certainly, I imagine mealtime was never boring."

"We're Italian," Sonny says, as if that explains everything. It does, for him. "It was me, my parents, and my sisters, so yeah. The house was never quiet, and dinner was always an event. We're all pretty close in age, so my sisters were always arguing, and my Ma always getting onto them, and Pops trying to keep the peace. Even now that we're all grown up, we all have dinner with our parents once a week."

Well. They did, anyway. But Sonny's here now, and has been for a little while. Long enough to miss a good two months of family dinners. He misses it.

"I've a friend of mine who has a family like that, she always spoke of the noise," Peggy says, thinking of how Angie spoke of her large family. Of course, she also had a far more cynical view of Italian families, thanks to her dealing in Los Angeles with the mafia, but that was more that they didn't like her. It was a touch of a common trend, sometimes, people not liking Peggy, but she got used to it.

"I'm British and living an ocean away, or I was," she admits, given that obviously they're no longer in that situation. "It limits the family dinners." Not to mention how awkward they were, given Michael's passing and the young children left behind.

"I can't even imagine being that far away from my family," Sonny says, shaking his head. Though, he supposes he is now, like she says, their situations having changed. Far, far away from his family. More like an entire world than an ocean. He hasn't even been here for that long, but it's beginning to wear on him. He misses lunches with his sisters and church with the family. He misses babysitting his niece.

"I'll tell you what, though," he says, smiling again. "If you ever want company for dinner, I'm your guy. I'm a pretty good cook, but I hate eating alone, you know?"

"It's where the job took me," she says, because it's not as if she had been keen on being so far away, but it had been where the work was, and it removed her from the grief of Michael's loss, something she could only barely cope with herself, some days. "I'm an awful cook, but I wouldn't mind the offer. Perhaps when I'm not nearly freezing everything I touch, that would ruin a meal quite quickly, wouldn't it?"

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goodbye, my darling

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