Decisions Peggy had made all along carried weight. There was blood on her hands the same as anyone else associated with the Games, and that was a choice she'd selected years ago, when she'd really been too young to understand the full scope of associating herself with this machine that consumed the lives of not only tributes- children, really- but that of their friends and families, of whole Districts in some instances, and of everyone who wore themselves down trying to keep the pageant at a level that distracted from every ugly truth that underscored it. Looking back, she was surprised her father had pulled as many strings as he had.
Then again, if he hadn't, Peggy would've found another way. She devoted herself to a thing utterly, once the decision had been made to bother with it at all. There were no halfways in her book. It was do it, or don't do it.
With Steve, she'd made her choice to be his friend so long ago that it felt like it had always been that way. The rest had come accidentally; nothing she'd looked for and certainly a bad idea on some fronts, but terribly inevitable all the same. She couldn't help but feel the way she did, and there was little chance of scaring her off.
It actually insulted her that he was going to try. But Steve was good at that- throwing insults where he had only truth in mind, because Steve's truths were sharper and harder than most people knew how to stomach.
Sucking in a quick breath, she screwed her eyes shut against the image he wanted to paint. "Like I watched you, you mean," she hissed, fingers pressed into the countertop hard enough that they turned white. "I've had feelings for you for as long as I can recall, Steve. You kissed me and you walked away, both of us knowing that you were probably going to die. Horribly. And you were going to do it where I could see every moment of it, larger than life and in full bloody color onscreen. I've been there. You can't scare me and I'm sorry if it frightens you to think you might one day be in that position."
She paused, eyes flickering open again. "Actually, no. I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry because you are stronger than this. You've made plans- good, solid, real plans- and at the first sign of something unexpected, you're letting it rattle you. Is that how you mean to go on?"