InsaneJournal

Peggy would have much prefered to have chosen her own bathing suit to wear at the beach, though she was used to it by now. She hadn't considered purchasing a different one when they were all sending in orders, and she regretted that now. These colors were all wrong. Ah, well, she thought as she sat in the sand, her legs stretched out in front of her, just to the edge of the water where it was racing up toward her. She squished her toes into the wet sand and leaned back on her arms, her face tipped up toward the sunlight.

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she slid her neon pink, blocky sunglasses down her nose and squinted into the bright sunlight to see who it was. The smile on her face grew when she realized it was Howard, and she waved him over to her. "Are you planning to go for a swim," she asked as he came toward her, "or just bake in the sunshine like I am?"

“You know, I’m leaning towards sunbaking. I’m not sure I should take off these shorts. Supply is pretty limited, and I’m just not prepared to handle the kind of demand it would create.” Howard had deeply mixed feelings about his bathing suit. Seeing Steve try to maneuver in a Speedo was certainly entertaining, and watching Stane grapple with it was a real confidence booster. But he wasn’t especially keen to become a datapoint on that spectrum. He had to admit that it was marginally less ridiculous than a bathing suit he’d bought in France circa 1959, but he was (regrettably) a lot less drunk in this moment than he’d been in that one. He’d stashed the contents of a few neat triple whiskeys in the flask he’d bought on Amazon, but his distillery wasn’t quite up and running yet.

He liked Peggy’s, though. Having recently emerged from 1991, the combination of dayglo pink, purple and orange seemed both retro and current. And, well, if there was anything that didn’t look good on her - even through the filter of army green sunglasses - he hadn’t seen it yet.

Pulling the beach towel off of his shoulders and laying it out on the sand, he took a seat on the sand next to her and a sip of his coconut water. “When was the last time you had a vacation?”

She brushed her hair off her neck and leaned her chin against her shoulder to look at him. Really look at him. "I'm sure whatever your scientist gave you can't be that bad," she teased, though she would be the first to admit that she hadn't spent too much time paying attention to everyone else's clothes. She was much more interested in her own, especially the new pieces that she purchased for herself.

"That depends on what counts as a vacation," she said with a shrug. Peggy wasn't really the vacationing type, at least, she hadn't been since the early years of the war. She doubted that part of her ever changed, but she was hesitant to ask if that was true or not.

There were a lot of things that Peggy wanted to ask Howard about her future, but she wasn't going to. Not unless the opportunity presented itself in a way she couldn't ignore. "What about you? I can't imagine you ever managed a real vacation either. Even when you were relaxing, you were working. Might as well count this as one, even if we don't know where we'll end up in the morning, hmn?" Peggy turned back to the water as it rushed up to her ankles before receding.

“I’ve certainly taken some trips, but they tend to either start as or quickly turn into working vacations. Truth be told, it’s got beautiful beaches, but there aren’t a lot of legitimate reasons to take the family to Madripoor.” There’s one for the list of regrets. He knew, now, that he shouldn’t have done that. He probably knew it then, too, but he’d never genuinely thought it would come back to bite him. He’d survived so much for so long, really, that danger had started to feel like something that only applied to other people.

It was probably the war that had started to warp his perception of life and death - the number of people who were killed by weapons he made was hard to conceptualize, a difficulty enhanced by the unprecedented magnitude of the atom bomb’s destruction. But having that sort of power over life and death - even if he’d never meant for his weapon to be used the way it was - had given him a false sense of control. SHIELD and the authority that came with it had made their contribution, too. He could see more than other people ever would. Could prevent more threats than others could hope to. He could make himself more durable, he could slow his aging to a snail’s pace, could develop technology and soldiers capable of fighting threats both terran and extraterrestrial. But it hadn’t made him nearly as invincible as he’d expected. His current predicament was irrefutable evidence of that.

“This is by far my strangest family vacation. But not the worst.” He gave her a smile, flexing his toes in the sand and letting his mind wander to red-rimmed sunglasses and Los Angeles beaches. Sure, he was grinding down his molars over the sudden loss of meaningful control over his situation. And his child’s obvious disdain for him was weighing on his mind as much as something like that could weigh on someone like Howard. But this was the first time in a very long time that he’d had almost everything he really liked in the same place.

"Well, we are the same, you and I," Peggy said with a sigh. "I've been trying very hard to simply relax and enjoy this while we have it, and yet all I can think about is the fact that I ought to be doing something, and I don't even know what." She looked at him, hopeful. "What can I help you with, Howard?" While she didn't necessarily fancy herself getting into any of Howard's usual trouble, she did need something to do, at least while they were here and not wherever they happened to end up next. Which could be anywhere, and Peggy tried not to think about that. She had asked around a bit, and prior to London during the Blitz, this group had been at a circus and in the jungle. She shuddered to think of the potential horrors that could await them. Then again, how was that much different from the life she chose to live otherwise?

She smiled back at him. "I suppose you're only missing your wife," she said, perhaps in a little effort to get more information about her. Maria, she thought someone had mentioned was her name. At Peggy's point in time, Howard hadn't mentioned any Maria, but seeing as Anthony wouldn't have been born for quite some time, Peggy knew, that didn't mean much. She couldn't help feel at once curious about and jealous of the woman Howard eventually chose to settle down with.

“Sure,” It didn’t sound insincere, exactly, but perhaps it did seem a bit put-on. The way you might sound when insisting to someone that their invitation had gotten lost in the mail when you had, in fact, forgotten to invite them. He cared for his wife very much - they were good partners, and… passable coparents, with Howard decidedly bringing down the class average. But most of the time, they didn’t see much of each other. Howard traveled constantly for work, and Maria had obligations in New York. They had a life together, but they also had lives apart, and those usually took precedence. It wasn’t a marriage of convenience, or anything, but it was a relationship that tended to be prioritized only when convenient.

“But Maria is probably much happier sunning herself at our house in the Hamptons than she’d be out here. I’m sure she gets as tired of the what fresh hell have you gotten us into Howard speech as bands do of playing the old stuff.” Howard smiled, digging the stem of his class into the sand to plant it there, just out of the reach of the waves. “I’m sure the kid would like to see her, though.” Tony probably missed her - they’d always been closer. Odd, perhaps, under the circumstances, but she had a big heart, and she’d always wanted children.

Peggy looked at Howard for a long moment, attempting to figure out his tone, better understand his answer. She was good at reading people, even Howard, but she shook her head slightly and decided that she wasn't going to in this case. She slipped her fingers back through her hair as she listened to him talk about his wife and laughed. "So in that sense, she's somewhat like me?" she joked, because asking him 'what fresh hell have you gotten us into?' was one of one of Peggy's favorite pastimes.

"I've been enjoying getting to know Anthony," Peggy said sincerely, though she could tell from interactions on all sides that he didn't have a perfect relationship with Howard. What son did, really, she thought. "And I'm sure I'd enjoy the same with Maria, if given the chance." How odd it was to talk like that, when in reality, in her own future, she did know and, she assumed, like the woman Howard married.

Howard chuckled, nodding his head to the side in recognition of her point. "Certainly seems to be a trait I select for, doesn't it?" He managed to stop himself short of calling it a "type," but only just. Wouldn't have been accurate anyway. As far as Howard was concerned, Peggy was in a class all her own. (He liked to think his own was a close second, but he also very much didn't actually think that.)

"Tony seems like a good kid. Adult, I guess. The last time I saw him he looked... about like he did when I arrived, really. Eighteen and aimless. But plucky. Smart-- or a smart ass, anyway. I used to think he was going to waste it, but I guess he got his life together in the intervening years. Maybe too together. I hear he doesn't even drink."

He wasn't sure what he could say, really, about Peggy and Maria. How best to describe that sort of cordial awkwardness marked both by reluctant fondness and faint resentment. He had never heard one say a bad word about the other, but Maria hadn't always been entirely comfortable with the role Peggy played in Howard's life. In recent years, he thought Maria had come to see Peggy as an ally in more contentious discussions with Howard, mostly because Peggy was the only person Howard actually listened to. But then, that was also kind of the problem.

Peggy couldn't help but smile even if it made her a little sad to see that Howard and Anthony weren't talking much here. She spread her legs out in front of her, pushing the sand on top of one foot and then the other. "I have been curious as to where his life has lead him. I suppose that's because I'm curious where my life put me. While at the same time, I don't know if that matters here, does it?" She tucked her chin on her shoulder as she turned to look at him.

"We're here for whatever reason and though our experiences may inform how we react to certain scenarios, the details probably don't matter. They might not even matter if we leave here either. There are too many uncertainties with how this continues or ends."

“Maybe being here’s a blessing in disguise. A chance to do things a little differently.” Maybe this was his chance to be a… better dad. I mean, maybe not that, it seemed like a lot of work and his kid was almost fifty. But something. “Not make the same mistakes. Probably make a lot of different ones, but better ones.” Howard did learn from his mistakes. Usually all the wrong lessons (like, “lie better” instead of “don’t do the stupid thing in the first place”), but it still counted as learning. Kind of.

“But whatever you decide to do here - and whether or not it bears any resemblance to what I saw you do back home - I look forward to seeing it. You’ve always been a singularly impressive person. And not one to waste an opportunity.”

She considered that in any new situation there was an opportunity to do things differently, though in this case she wasn't certain what that might be. Perhaps a scenario would come along where that would be clear. "I'm glad you're here with me, Howard," she said after a long moment of watching out over the swelling water. Peggy said it to the ocean and not directly at him, possibly to save the moment from coming across too sentimental.

Howard’s lips quirked at the ends in a slight smile before he reached for his drink, taking another sip. His smile looked a bit like a smirk, but they always did. Perhaps recognizing her own reluctance to inject to much emotion into the moment - or else, just acknowledging his own -- he nodded once and let his gaze shift to the skyline. “I’ll drink to that.”