Peggy Carter (offthepeg) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2015-05-18 23:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, loki, ~peggy carter |
Who: Peggy and Loki, open to Steve or Bucky if they like
Where: The cottage
When: Monday evening
What: Tet-a-tet
Status/Rating: Narrative complete/open?
Warnings: Potential violence, warnings for sexual suggestiveness
If Peggy had to catalogue her scars in a book, both physical and not, they would fill a Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Some were small and insignificant enough to forget how she got them, though there were some small ones that were unforgettable. One in particular was the scar of Steve’s teeth on her shoulder, a bare pale mark from one lovely afternoon before Mouse was born when she had demanded more. No, most of the marks on her body were of no importance to her, really. A few – and it really was few – bothered her now and then when she saw them in the mirror. One across her thigh from a mission before Steve had come into her life, another bullet wound on her stomach from a horrific battle that still haunted her dreams on her worse days.
As Peggy slid the lock over on the bathroom door and turned on the taps to run herself a bath, she winced as the most recent wound was stretched. “Damned thing...” she muttered and pulled off the shoulder of her dressing gown to inspect the wound as best she could, wondering if she’d popped a suture or the like. Peggy perched herself on the edge of the bath and peeled off the thin bandage she still had to wear to keep it clean and was relieved to see it was intact. There’d be no need to re-stitch it, thank goodness. Blindly, Peggy thought about Steve and Bucky and how damn quick they both healed compared to her. She was incredibly jealous that nothing physical seemed to fell them for long enough to make much of an impact on their daily lives; at least, nothing that could happen here. She’d beaten the living daylights out of Steve, as much as she could, and he’d been healed within 48 hours. Meanwhile, she had limped for the rest of that week, sore but blissfully happy that she’d won for once.
The water filled the room with steam and Peg poured half a bottle of jasmine bubble bath into it, letting the bubbles amass. It was so inviting, the soothing water and peace from children and supersoldiers at last. They were so very noisy, heavy footsteps and constantly moving. Some days, it was impossible to get them to stay still.
“You really should think about using chamomile, Agent Carter. It’d suit you so much better than that cacophonous assault,” that chilled voice came from the doorway of the bathroom.
Peggy immediately tugged her dressing gown back up and turned to see the man, whose voice had lingered in her mind since the accident. “So it was you,” she muttered a little curtly, sliding one knee over the other and wondering if she had a gun stashed in here or not. Would they be of any use, even? “I had started to believe I had hallucinated your existence but, sadly, I was wrong.”
Loki chuckled just a touch and his lips split into a smile. “Sadly, yes. I have been waiting for you to be alone, Agent Carter. Who knew you were such a popular woman that it’d take this long for you to need a break from domesticity.” Peggy turned to kill the taps from filling the bath but they turned themselves off before she could touch them. “You were about to overflow.”
“Indeed I was,” she replied, “Might I ask why you are here. In my bathroom. In my house. With my husbands downstairs, who are likely to rip your head from the rest of you if I so much as scream...”
“Now see, Agent, I know you wouldn’t scream. It’s not your style, is it? At least not a scream of peril,” he was almost haughty then, if Peggy believed it possible. “No, you’d try and make some contraption from the things around you in order to subdue me before you resorted to being a damsel in distress.”
Her painted fingernail twitched slightly at the phrase but otherwise she was still. “If you wanted me dead, Loki, I’d have been dead a long time ago,” looking at him, standing there in almost normal clothing, she’d say he looked normal too. Those tapes of him destroying New York, there’d been something deeply evil in his eye that she thought would be there forever. But standing there, the steam starting to curl, Peggy would swear he looked almost... child-like. “Why are you here? In my bathroom. In my house.”
“To bathe in your incandescence of course,” he replied, deadpan and then looked at her bath. “You shouldn’t waste water, Agent. It’s getting cold as we speak.”
“The earth can spare me a bath-full this one time, I think,” she leant to her side and tied up her gown a little tighter. “I’ll recycle it or something.” God, she hated feeling so exposed. Naked but for the silk, wounded, no gun, not even a lick of lipstick to hide behind. “You didn’t answer my question, anyway. Why are you in my bloody bathroom?”
“Cut to the chase, don’t you?” he commented. “I want to... apologise...” the words seemed to get stuck in his throat and hung between them as he forced it out. “What happened with that mortal weapon... and the visions... I did not mean for it to have the effect it did.”
Peggy just blinked, “And what effect did you hope it would achieve? My complete mental breakdown?” she laughed a little, “You might be a god, Loki, but I am not one of your disciples who will bend to your knee when you show them a magic trick. You meant to hurt me, and were glad that your little mind manipulation worked until I shot you.”
“You did not shoot me, you shot yourself, or have you forgotten?” he almost thundered, that icy cold look flashing in his eyes at her insolence. “Yes, I intended to jolt you from this... this... spell you have cast over yourself. You are not a medical experiment, Agent Carter, you are not a god, nor have any powers, you are one hundred percent human. I wished for you to act like it.”
“Mission achieved, I do believe. I have a hole in my chest, a rather painful way to learn that lesson,” she said primly. “I’d rather like for you now to stop the bullshit. You did intend to hurt me, to hurt not only me but my husbands too. That is how you saw me, as a pawn. But I saw you,” she said softer, almost scared at admitting it. “I saw you afterwards when I was bleeding to death, a slow agonising death and you were more scared than I was. I have been asking myself the one thing I cannot answer: why was a god scared of a human?”
Peggy waited what felt like hours for him to reply. His hand flexed, as if wanting to reach for his sceptre, but none appeared.
“I was not scared of you, Agent Carter,” he replied eventually, his voice tense and terse. “I have not come here for you to delve into my psyche. I came to make things right again.”
He rushed her into the wall and suddenly, Peggy was cornered like an animal, no weapon to use if he decided it was too exposing to have her alive. His fingers tore at her robe and bandage, her blows to him were swatted away as if she were a fly. “What are you...” she managed to stutter out before he clamped one large, wiry hand over her mouth whilst he ripped off the bandage with the other.
“You need to learn your limitations, Carter. People depend on you here...” he pressed the heel of his hand to her wound and she felt the stitches pop apart, her flesh searing in cold as his eyes and hand turned completely blue. “No more fighting in battles you cannot possibly win.”
There was pain, yes, and rather a lot of it. But there was no blood. Peggy could feel her flesh knitting together; muscles, tendons, sinew and blood vessels returning to their normal, freshly minted state. The final piece of her body, her skin, knitted back together and healed with nothing more than a slight dimple. It may even have been there already, she couldn’t recall. He was heaving with his power, whatever he’d done to her or however he’d done it.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, more dumbfounded that he’d healed her rather than hurt her more.
“That is what all you mortals say,” he was still pressed up against her and freezing cold, tense. He gave her face a stare before ripping his body back and going pinker in the cheeks. “There. We are even.”
“No we bloody well are not,” she huffed, pulling her robe back together where he’d ripped it from. “No, Loki. You... you did that. Fine, but you still owe me a favour. You know that.”
Loki chuckled softly one final time and looked at her, brazenly, up and down. “I owe you nothing more than a goodbye.”
Within a blink of an eye he was gone again, and Peggy caught her breath again. She dipped her hand into the water to pull the plug, surprised that the water was still hot as it had been before the interruption. As Peg slid under the foam, her shoulder didn’t ache, it didn’t twinge or bleed or feel more than slightly colder than normal until the heat of the water melted the last vestiges of Loki from her mind.
Now all she had to do was tell Steve.