Peggy Carter + Sharon Carter
No Warnings | Complete
She was still getting used to it, spending time with a niece she hadn't known about, wouldn't know about for years. But Peggy liked it. And she was glad for this connection, another connection that she was able to make here in Atlantis. She smiled as she walked into the coffee shop, spotting Sharon already inside. She crossed quickly and slid into the chair across from her. "How are you?" she asked.
“Good,” Sharon answered as she stirred some cream and sugar into her coffee. A lot of people liked the fancier drinks, but she preferred a good strong cup of regular coffee, even if she tended to add some sweetener to it to mask some of the bitter taste. “How are you settling in?” Sharon had been here for more than two years and in another place for a while before that. She’d seen Peggy come and go a number of times and sometimes she had to remind herself of how completely weird this environment had to be for someone who was new to it. Or who didn’t remember it. For Sharon, Atlantis had become home, but she knew not everyone felt that way.
"Oh, I'm fine," Peggy said, folding her hands on the table in front of her. "It's - better now, I suppose, since Howard turned up. I feel like it's probably my job to make sure he doesn't get into too much trouble. Not too out of my experience." She smiled at that. Not that she thought she was Howard Stark's keeper, but the fact that Steve and Tony and Sharon and - many others - had been here for much longer than she had, they were all settled. She could make herself useful in dealing with Howard in the meantime.
“Like father, like son?” Sharon asked, laughing softly as she shook her head. She’d only heard stories about Howard, but she had enough experience around Tony to know he could be kind of a handful, himself. It wasn’t the first time both Stark men had been in Atlantis, but she still wasn’t sure the city could handle that much ego in one place without imploding.
“Should I add ‘Howard Stark’s Handler’ to your official job description?” she teased.
Peggy laughed at that and shrugged. "Well, it isn't too far from the truth really," she admitted. Not that she minded. In fact, she was glad for it now, here. She hadn't had a lot of close interactions yet with Tony, but she couldn't imagine Howard's son not being similar to him. "Have you spoken to Tony at all? I - was wondering how he's doing with his father here. I probably should check in with him."
“Not recently,” Sharon admitted. She had Tony had never been that close to begin with and being a part of the ops command team in Atlantis kept her pretty busy. She supposed she should check in with him. Sharon knew enough to know Tony and his father hadn’t had the best of relationships.
Peggy nodded a little but didn't say that she hadn't spoken to him much either. She reminded herself to do that. "And how about you?" she asked. "Anything exciting happen lately? I mean, I know this is Atlantis and strange and interesting things happen every day … "
Sharon smiled knowingly. “That they do,” she agreed, but she shook her head. “I haven’t been turned into anything weird in a while, but my teams definitely keep me busy.” Are part of the top staff in Field Ops, Sharon had several teams under her, which meant way too much paperwork on top of overseeing some training decisions and other things. It was never boring and didn’t leave her an abundance of free time, but she managed to have a pretty good life here.
"That's good. Keeping busy helps, I think. I'm still working out where I fit here, but it's good to have something structured to do, something to stay busy." Peggy smiled again and sat back, rubbing the side of her neck.
Settling in to a place like this took time, that was something Sharon knew very well. She’d been in Breckenridge before Atlantis and that had helped as had having others who’d been there, too. It wasn’t hard to imagine how much of an adjustment this all was for Peggy. “It takes everyone time to settle in,” she offered. “The longer you’re here, the more it starts to feel like home.”
"And, I suppose, the more someone has friends and family here as well," Peggy said, trying to let Sharon know just how much she appreciated that she was here, that they had this opportunity to get to know one another.
Sharon nodded and offered Peggy a soft smile. “Having friends and family around is a big help,” she admitted. “I think a lot of the people who choose to go home do it because they miss their life and the people in it.” Sometimes Sharon missed hers, too, but most of the important people in her life were here and the work they were doing was important. There were also people from other worlds she’d come to care about, like Becker and Lissa, who she’d never see again if she went back. That made the decision to stay easy for her. She hoped it would end up the same for Peggy.
Peggy nodded. "It's good to have the opportunity here to get to know people who we would have never even met where we come from," she admitted, because she was seeing that as a positive, even if it was still hard to get used to being someone's idol or - well, something like that.
“It’s one of my favorite things about being here,” Sharon admitted. “Things can be a little strange and we are at war with COS, but there’s so much opportunity here none of us could have anywhere else. It really is incredible.”