andrew mumford will teach you how to dance. (ladysoldier) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-24 23:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain america, door: marvel comics, peggy carter |
WHO Steve and Peggy.
WHAT Reunions.
WHEN Recentish!
WHERE Grand Central Station, Marvel Door.
WARNING Nada!
Steve had intentionally not gotten his hopes up. Bruce didn’t think this new appearance of Peggy was another trick of Hank Pym’s, but Steve wasn’t so sure. He knew Bruce wanted Hank to reform, to get it under control, and he knew it was personal for Bruce. Steve didn’t have that same faith, and he didn’t walk to Grand Central Station expecting to be reunited with a woman he believed to be long dead. He hadn’t asked about Peggy, but he figured Bruce would have clued him in if she was alive, so he didn’t ask. Just like he didn’t ask who killed Captain America in the future. Certain things were better not known, or they would consume him whole. He was having enough trouble with his temper these days, and it had been even harder to reel it in with things going the way they were with Loki, Pym and the rest of the Avengers. Grand Central Station looked like Steve remembered, even all these years later. The structure hadn’t changed, and the sounds were still the same. The clothing was different, the electronic devices everyone carried were different too, but the rest of it still applied. People saying hello and people saying goodbye, the hurry and bustle and movement of a busy city. That felt like home, at least, though almost nothing else did these days. He was dressed in khakis and a button-down white shirt, a slim white undershirt beneath the military-grade pressed fabric. No tie, and just a brown belt and brown shoes. His hands were in his pockets as he wandered the station, looking for the trick, the snare. His didn’t have his shield, but it was an act of intentional defiance, and not something he forgot at the gym. Whoever wanted to lure him there, they’d managed it. Now it was their turn in this particular wargame. Getting Andrew to actually cross the threshold of the door took a bit of effort and pushing on Peggy’s side, but eventually she succeeded and found herself stepping through to Grand Central Station. It was a curious choice in hindsight, and she wondered how the door determined where people entered. Her last memory before awaking in Andrew’s mind was sitting with the comm in her hand and calling out Steve’s name in vain, and she fully expected to step right back onto that plane. But she didn’t, and that caused her to turn to that journal Andrew received. A risk, certainly, and something she might not have turned to had she had other options. She didn’t though. Peggy Carter seemed to be out of options, standing in the middle of the bustling train station with no one to contact and no way to do so anyway. The journals seemed like the only answer, and when someone by the name of Steve R. replied, she couldn’t resist She didn’t dare hope that it was actually her Steve though. How could it be? He died in that crash in the Arctic. And even if he hadn’t -- but he had -- he would have been much older now, in his 90s, at least. She had picked up a newspaper while wandering around, and if she believed the date, it had been practically seventy years since she was last conscious. Since he died. And this clearly wasn’t a wartime New York City. The station was the same, with its glittery golden-painted walls and ceiling of constellations painted above her head, but the people weren’t. Things beeped, and people spoke into handheld devices, and it clearly wasn’t the 1940s, at the very least. Peggy earned a few odd looks as she wandered through the throngs of people. These people of New York, people accustomed to the strange and out of the ordinary, didn’t pay much heed, but one or two did a doubletake after passing the woman who looked just like she stepped out of a World War II movie. Deep red lips, curled brown hair, leather jacket, military-grade uniform. She looked exactly like she did the last time Steve saw her, but that wasn’t what was on her mind when she spotted him a few feet away. Her breath almost caught in her chest, and she stopped cold, causing a few passing commuters to bump into her. “Steve?” she asked, voice cracking with shock and that same sort of mourning she clung to when his line went dead all those years ago. This was a sick joke, some sick, disgusting joke, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why someone would do something like this. But her fingers twitched towards the gun still in its holster on her hip. Just in case. Sentiment or not, she was still an army woman, and that instinct would trump anything else. He didn’t actually hear her in the clang and din of the busy train station. He’d been in 2012 long enough now to start acting somewhat like a local. He didn’t look at everyone who walked past, and he didn’t greet everyone who he made eye contact with. Some habits were harder to break, like opening doors for dames (which seemed to be a really bad idea these days), and giving up his seat for them on the subway, but he was getting better about that too. Better, which meant wandering off so they could sit without knowing he’d given the seat up for them, or just happening to need to go through the same doors first, to hold it open for himself (and keep it open for them). It was all about adapting, but that adapting meant he didn’t hear her voice, and he didn’t even see her straight off. He was looking for a robot, truth be told. Something with Peggy’s hair and her voice, but only cold blue where her eyes should be, and so he missed the woman in clothing from the life he’d left behind for a second. But then it was like a magnet drawing his gaze over his shoulder, to where she was standing. Soldier first, he noticed the twitching of her fingers toward the gun, and he held his hands up in the universal symbol of surrender. Maybe it wasn’t her standing there, and maybe it was a better robot or, worse, one of Loki’s illusions, but he couldn’t stop staring, regardless. It was like time stopped, and he’d always been a cheesy romantic at heart, especially without Bucky around to tell him that he was being an idiot. “You know,” he said, the beginning of an echo from a last communication before he hit the ice all those years ago, “I still don’t know how to dance.” As he turned, Peggy stalled her movements, stockstill in awe and utter surprise. Even as much as she wanted to believe it was Steve, she thought it was a damn near impossibility. A fool’s dream. So to see him standing so close, within a few long strides’ reach, just about knocked the wind out of her. When his hands shot up, she relaxed her fingers, giving her head an almost imperceptible shake. The gun was still there if need be, but her hand moved away for the time being. Instead, she stood there, and she stared, and she tried to wrap her mind around it all. How was he standing there within the hustle and bustle of these New Yorkers, alive and well (or, at least, he looked well)? Peggy was hardly one of those women who became twitterpated over any old man, but Steve had always been an exception. An exceptional soldier, and an exceptional man, and he was the only man who had been able to get her heart to catch in her throat that way. His comment, one that harked back to their last conversation, made her lips twitch into a smile before clearing her throat. “Well, you’re late.” She wanted to move closer to him, wanted to be able to touch him to make sure he wasn’t real. “I’m afraid I might not know all of the moves anymore.” He smiled, a smile that was crooked at the corner, boyish. It was suited to the unimpressive man he had been before the serum, a leftover that never quite managed to fade away with the realization that he wasn’t that kid that got beat up in alleys anymore. His hands dug further into his pockets as he listened to her speak, to that voice that he’d last heard in his ear before everything ended. If there was one thing, and one thing alone, that he regretted about that sacrifice, it was her, leaving her behind, and her voice brought those few last seconds crashing back in stark, bright light. He had to clear his throat to talk, hands sliding out of his pockets and closing behind his back in a standard, timelessly military pose. He took a step forward, a long and sure stride. “Ma’am, you look just like her, but you can’t be her,” he said, the hurt of the words thick in his Brooklyn accent just then. “I don’t know if this is Loki’s doing, or if it’s Hank Pym’s doing, and I don’t even know if you’re in on it, but you should come with me. Bruce or Tony can tell us what’s going on.” He paused, hand reaching out for her. “Unless you know what’s going on, and can explain it to me.” To Peggy, Steve looked like he dropped right out of a photograph from back in their days. The clothes weren’t his normal military uniform or the Captain America costume, but everything else was the same -- his neat blond hair, that smile that still clung to his boyish charm, the lilt of Brooklyn in his voice. Steve was still Steve, and it confused her, unnerved her. Whoever decided to pull this trick did a damn good job at all of this, and it could easily be a set-up for a trap. She should probably leave, she figured, but she faltered, still stuck to her spot. The hurt in his voice tugged at her chest desperately, but her frown covered up her own pain. “You can’t be Steve,” she replied simply, hurt bleeding into her words, too. “Steve died a long time ago. A very, very long time ago, if the date is correct. I listened to him--.” Cutting herself off, she huffed a quiet breath to try to quell the sting in her eyes. Instead, she focused on the next thing he said, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “I’ve no clue who either of those people are, and I haven’t the slightest about what happened. Last thing I remember, Steve’s,” because she could not believe he was standing there, not yet, “communication died. And then I woke up in a man’s mind. A boy’s, really. Regardless, this is the first time I’ve come through the door, and all I know it is certainly not the my time.” It was her admission that she didn’t know who anyone was that started to convince him, that she remembered nothing after the communicator failed. It could all be an elaborate hoax. After all, there wasn’t any better way to get to him than her. Maybe Bucky, but that was different than this. He’d never been with a woman, never dated one, never danced with one, but he loved Peggy Carter all the same. So, yeah, it could all be some elaborate hoax. If it was, it was starting to work. “I hit the ice, and I guess the serum kept me alive for awhile, which no one was expecting. They fished me out of the ice a few months ago, now, in this year. It’s taking some getting used to,” he said, leaving out the anger and the hurt and everything else that had come with waking up and realizing everyone he knew, everyone he cared about was dead. But his Peggy, if she was really his Peggy, would be able to see it in the clouded blue of his eyes, in the tenseness in his jaw that was new, the anger that lived there constantly these days, just out of reach. “I’ve got a gal on the other side,” he said, a match to her statement about the boy whose mind she inhabited, “but that’s complicated.” It was, and he had a bad feeling the appearance of Wayne Mumford wasn’t going to do a bit of good when it came to the gal’s future. But that all took a backseat to seeing her, and he felt suddenly underdressed, being out of uniform like he was. “Howard’s son, Tony, he’s here, and we’re working with some others from SHIELD.” He had no idea if she knew what SHIELD was, if it had been in existence way back then, and maybe he just hadn’t known, but it was worth mentioning. He didn’t mention Pym or Loki, because while he was starting to give in, to hope it was really her, he still wasn’t sure. She did recognize the flicker of hurt in his bright blue eyes, the set in his jaw that twitched with pulses of anger. It stung to see him like this, so keyed up and full of pain, so unlike the man Erskine chose to create his soldier. But the man Peggy knew was still under there, behind the storm of rage, underneath the button-down shirt and tired eyes. The man who believed in good for good’s sake. He was in reaching distance, and before she could stop herself, fingers stretched out and brushed his cheek. His skin was soft, with tiny bumps of stubble resting underneath. It was like when he stepped out of the chamber after being pumped with the super soldier serum -- she couldn’t resist the touch. And right then and there, he seemed real, he felt real, but she snatched her hand back like he burned her. No room for vulnerability, not now. “He’s complicated, too,” she said with a hard look. “But surely nothing I should have trouble with.” Andrew Mumford was hardly the ideal choice to share a mind with. He was so like those misogynistic men she encountered day to day in the army, and the activities he involved himself with was everything Peggy fought against. He was going to be a challenge, but maybe she would succeed. The idea of Howard having a son, however, brought a slow, almost affectionate smile to her face. “If he’s anything like his father, we’re in for a world of trouble.” A quirked eyebrow gave away how little she knew of SHIELD. Which was, of course, nothing. “SHIELD?” she asked, trying to run through her mind for some sort of mention of any agency with that name over her years in service. “I don’t believe that anything by that name was around during our--my time.” Steve wasn’t expecting the touch. He remembered an almost-touch in the moments after the serum had been administered, and he remembered a kiss as he left for a battle that was sure to end badly. He hadn’t been expecting those either, so it wasn’t surprising he didn’t see this one coming. Time might have passed, but Steve hadn’t changed all that much, not when it came right down to it. He lifted a hand to grab onto her wrist when she pulled her hand back like the touch had burned her, but he stopped short, hand halfway up to her arm. Whether it was her higher rank, or just the fact that grabbing onto a woman was something he’d never done and never planned to do, well, that was uncertain. But his hand lowered back to his side, and he was wordless as he watched her get it back together after the touch. For some reason, it brought back Pym’s words in that warehouse, the fact that he wasn’t human, that he was something less than her - than all the people around him, and he took a step back, giving her space and distance. “Tony’s a piece of work,” Steve said, and he noted that affectionate smile for Howard Stark’s son. It was easy to fall back into jealousy about Stark, and it was easy to transfer that jealousy to his son, the one who had just earned that soft smile from the woman who had just stepped back from him like he’d burned her. It hurt, but Steve hid it as well as he’d hid his feelings about her and Howard, and he gave her a smile in return. “He’s a lot like his dad. He can give you more intel on SHIELD than I can. Intel was never my strong suit,” he said, his smile wry. He’d always been more of a ‘rush in and do’ kind of soldier, which she was well aware of. And it was then, at that moment, that he realized he’d accepted the fact that she was her. If Peggy knew what he was thinking, she’d frown and tell him to snap out of it. Steve Rogers was human still, utterly and completely human. To a fault, really. She was sure that he was still the type of man to lay his life on the line for the sake of others. The type of man to do things for the greater good, who had no idea what to do with a woman, who was different from all those men in their infantry pumped up with machismo and false pride. He had to be, or else what was it all worth really? What did all those feelings for him, all that work mean if Steve just turned into every man she’d ever met? “I think that’s part of the Stark DNA, to be a piece of work.” She couldn’t read his mind, and she didn’t know exactly if he was jealous of Howard Stark, but every woman knew. All the comments about fonduing, well, Peggy wasn’t an idiot. Stark wasn’t as important to her as Steve was either. Stark wasn’t the man she cried over on a communicator after all. “You’ll have to introduce me, though I’m not sure I’m ready to know two Stark men.” His comment about intel brought a quiet chuckle and a smile. He had never been the ‘look before you leap’ type. “No, it wasn’t. I vaguely remember you running into a HYDRA base. Or, I suppose, leaping into it.” She shot him a pointed look with the tiniest smirk, one that said she knew his game back and forth, even if she wasn’t quite sure the rules were the same in the 21st century. This man, he was her Steve, no question about it. When she said she wasn’t ready to know two Stark men, Steve’s expression sobered. Howard was dead, long dead - but then so was she, and now he wasn’t sure who was dead and who wasn’t anymore. “Howard’s supposed to be dead. Just like you. I woke up, after all those years on the ice, and no one I knew was still alive, Peggy.” Because he knew what it was to be out of time, and all this wasn’t her New York, and there weren’t two Stark men to know. “You’re the first person I met since I woke up that I actually know.” And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for her, that sense of loss. Maybe it would have been easier for him, too, if she’d been there when he’d woken up. But she hadn’t been, and he realized she might be disappointed in how far he perceived himself to be from the man she’d known all those years ago. Her chuckle and smile was a better balm than a thousand punching bags, and he smiled that little boy’s smile and ducked his head just a little. “You helped, if I recall right,” he said of that HYDRA base, because she had helped, every single time he’d leapt without looking back then, she’d helped. “The threat’s different now, but it’s just as bad. I was meeting with Dr. Banner before coming here, and we just had a radio meeting that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.” He motioned to the exit. “Walk with me, Ma’am?” he asked, ever the polite soldier. “We should probably head over to Stark’s.” He paused. “Where are you staying when you’re here?” She knew years upon years had passed since she sat with that communicator in her hand, since the War ended, since Steve crashed the plane into the ice. But to have it confirmed that everyone she ever knew was dead, possibly long dead, well, that stung more than she expected. Swallowing hard, Peggy attempted her best strong, put-together face for him. Steve was alone when he arrived, when they pulled him out of the ice. At least, at least she had him. “You have me now,” she offered with a soft smile. And he did, definitely. “I guess you can say that,” she said of her assistance, even if she knew the truth. “Dr. Banner? Is he working with Stark as well?” She fell into step with him and drifted towards the exit he pointed out. Commuters were rushing in and out of the doors, circumventing the two but not giving them a second glance. This was the New York of today, where the people of the city had heard and seen everything, and at this time, the wary few who chanced a look at the couple out of time had gone to their destinations. Only the beleaguered, worldweary natives were left, and they could care less. It was good because Peggy never took well to being gawked at. “I...haven’t actually figured out a place just yet.” It was unlike her not to have things planned out, but this was her first opportunity to step through the door. “This is the first time I’ve come through. He hasn’t given me much of a chance to plan something through.” He nodded. "I'm staying with Bruce - Dr. Banner," he said, and he moved ahead of her to open the door leading out of the station, because he knew she would let him, that she'd know it was just him, and not some attempt at taking anything from her like the dames here seemed to believe it was. He couldn't take anything from her, because she was one of the strongest soldiers he knew, male or female, didn't matter. "He's got some problems of his own," he added about Bruce, but that wasn't his to tell, and he let the door close behind her slowly, with more care than was actually necessary. He stopped then, hoping she'd come to a stop too. "We'll figure something out. Stark's dame, Pepper, she might be someone you can stay with until things get settled again." Again, because for once he thought yeah, maybe things could settle. Yeah, maybe. "Come on. There's a lot to get you caught up on, General." He smiled that boyish smile. Yeah, maybe it would work out this time. |