thecapsicle (thecapsicle) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2013-07-21 23:17:00 |
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Peggy Carter did not believe in panicking. She had learned from a very young age that losing control of one's emotions could lead to extremely destructive consequences, and more often than not, those particular consequences were messy. Peggy didn't like messy. Peggy liked to compartmentalize; she liked things falling into the neat boxes she assigned. She didn't think less of those who didn't do the same as her, but her methods worked for her. They prevented pain. Peggy didn't like pain, either. And yet as she arrived in Storybrooke, she could feel tears staining her cheeks. Like any self-respecting woman, she cleaned herself off and moved forward to meet with the sheriff of the small town. Emma was nice enough, and soon enough Peggy was sorted into a new apartment and on her way to explore. If she was going to be here for a while, learning her new town was only logical. She had just passed the library, her map tucked into the pocket of her donated denims when she did a double take. The man a distance away looked just like Steve. That couldn't be right. Surely she would have realized if he was here. It would have been a priority, considering she had been hoping against hope that he would be in this little town. Peggy shook her head and squeezed her eyes tight, blinking a few times once she opened them again. She didn't dare move just in case this was a dream that she was about to wake up from, but that didn't stop her from calling out, "You're late." It was because of the past few months that Steve barely batted an eye when he ended up in this place and they explained what happened. Magic? Sure. Trapped within a small town? Yeah. Apparently people knew stories about you and not in the propaganda type of way? ...slightly more uncomfortable. He was really hoping for a break after being thawed out and defeating an alien invasion, but people came to Maine for vacations, he was told. It was called Vacationland on the tag line. He was used to big cities. So far the little slice of life aspect was almost refreshing. Steve was much more concerned for the other people stranded there, and so he was more direct about his questions and hoping to find ways he could help them. He got no answers on that; maybe there was no solution for him to fight for, right now. And that was the worst part. He didn’t get the phones. They were small and made noises and his fingers were clunky when he tried to type on it. He’d have to get Tony to show it to him another time. For now he was actually on his way to the sheriff’s office, and he was lost in thoughts when he heard someone call over to him. A familiar voice. A voice he was positive he would never hear again but he’d know anywhere. He’d recognize Peggy Carter blind and deaf and in the middle of a battle on opposite sides. His head picked up immediately and he looked her way, similarly frozen for a moment. In her file, she was still alive. Retired. Steve hadn’t decided whether to go and see her or not, he thought … maybe not. So much time passed. But not now, she looked the exact same. Maybe he didn’t have the right, or maybe he did, but Steve was over to her in just a few fast steps and he swept her up into his arms for a hug. “Peggy,” he breathed, eyes closed. He probably should’ve said something witty in response, but there was nothing better to say right then. She stood, frozen as she watched the man in front of her, unsure of what to do next. Peggy didn’t often feel insecure about talking to strangers, regardless of their gender, but this was Steve or at least she thought it was and she cared about him in a way that she had never expected to. The night she talked to Clint Barton came to her mind and she instantly felt a rush of relief, confusion and unparalleled joy wash over her. She would need to apologize for thinking him so poorly; for believing that he only was saying things in a drunken haze. Because as her eyes met his, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was the very same man she had been tearing up about in the privacy of her home for weeks. Peggy felt those same pricks at the corners of her eyes and a tightening of her throat. They were her automatic tells of when she was about to cry, and she tried to fight the instinct as best she could. She’d no idea what he had been through, if he was from the same time as Clint or if he was closer to her own time, but by the way he just reacted, she would put money on the former. She let herself wrap her arms around his neck, holding him close for few moments, unsure she would be able to let go without surgical tools. He was safe, and warm and even if he had been frozen for years, he was alive. It was incredible and overwhelming and the last thing that Peggy had ever expected to hear. She felt shaky, but was relatively certain that she had never felt so stable before as well, and so she let go to move back and check him over. The possibility that she might be dreaming was still lingering in the back of her mind, and if that’s what this was, she just wanted to remember one last time that he had been real. “Hello, Steve.” Steve’s natural protective urges was what kept him from crushing her, because his strength was advanced, but really he just wanted to hold her as close as possible. The only woman he loved, the person he respected above all others, his inspiration, and he was certain he’d never see her again. He crashed into the ocean with her voice and the image of her in his head. The first thing he thought of when he woke up was how he had to find his way back to Peggy. And that was not an option, not in their time. But here? Oh man oh man was he suddenly all about the Storybrooke, Maine. He leaned back when she did and noted how she was looking at him, cataloguing, not unlike how she did when he first stepped out of the Super Soldier experiment. “Hello, Peggy.” Steve had a shy smile, it started out slow but when it deepened it seemed to have his whole heart in it. That was doubly so when he was grinning like right now. “Are you okay? You look -- well you know you look ama --- it’s great to see you.” Talking to women? Still not his strong suit. Luckily Peggy seemed to speak his language, most of the time. “I’m okay too, obviously you can see me right now, but I got pulled out of the ice in the future. Frozen for seventy years. Guess Dr. Erskine wasn’t kidding around when he made the serum, huh?” She was amused. It felt like eons since a genuine smile had last crossed her features, but listening to Steve’s rushed, stumbling talking made Peggy smile. He was so inherently him, and she couldn’t help but be grateful that no matter what had changed in those seventy years; no matter what Steve had faced, he was still him. If he had been very different, suave in the way that Howard seemed to be at times, or any other man that she had been acquainted with, she would’ve been put off. But his bumbling through compliments was endearing, and Peggy shook her head slightly, pushing off onto her toes to place a kiss on his cheek. “I’m right as rain.” And she was. For the first time in those long weekms, she was telling the truth. She wasn’t merely just right, she was so light she could almost fly away. “I’m certainly glad to see you again. You don’t look a day over 87.” Back in New York, the dames were always looking for someone like Bucky. Charming, handsome, and confident. The small and shy Steve rarely registered to them, and whenever Bucky tried to set them up, both girls ended up fighting over him instead. At first it bothered Steve, when he was younger and first trying to cope with growing up, but eventually he came to accept casual flings weren’t for him anyway. He wanted the real thing, and he found that in a place he never expected. So when all those pretty girls started looking his way after the serum, the only one he looked for was Peggy Carter. Because she smiled at him when he was a nobody. “Gee, thanks,” Steve laughed. “I feel 87, believe me. Being in this time makes me feel old and maybe from another planet. Though uhhh with the magic going on, we almost are aliens.” They were from another world or planet. He tried to adjust to the culture shock the first time around, but it was disorienting to begin with. Now he’d have to do it all over again. “How are you doing with the change? I bet you’ll make sense out of it faster than me.” Peggy was smart like that. She was in the Scientific Strategic Reserve when the project was just being made, so she knew her stuff. Peggy knew exactly what had drawn her to Steve. It was the exact thing that had never changed about him. He was a good man with a solid, steady heart and she knew with great certainty that even if he had never been picked for the Super Soldier experiment, she would have fallen for him solely in the time she spent in his company. Not once had she suspected that his kind spirit and gentle demeanor towards most everyone was a front. He was genuine. It seemed rather difficult to find genuine nowadays. "Oh, I..." Aside from a few instances that she had felt completely isolated, it wasn't so bad. "Well, it doesn't seem like people have changed too drastically, actually. I'm sure they all have goals and families and things that they like and dislike about this place." It was diplomatic enough that if a native overheard, they wouldn't suspect her blatant distrust of each and every one of them. After all, she had essentially been kidnapped, and no amount of joy could completely cancel that out. "I find I suddenly like this place much more than I did about an hour ago. The technology is loud. This darn thing keeps beeping and I don't know how to fix it." Peggy shrugged, pocketing the all beeping device. "It's all a bit much, honestly." Steve was surprised at first that Peggy was neutral on the subject, even seeming overly polite, and he pieced together a moment later what that could mean. He was not great at covert ops, everyone knew that. He wore his heart on his sleeve and had a terrible poker face. Peggy was much better at it. “I’m sure they do. And they probably aren’t any happier having a bunch of strangers around them.” Super powered strangers at that. He wasn’t sure if the people here had any powers too, but it seemed likely. How else would that magical portal open? Steve offered her his arm. “Care to take a walk? Maybe that’ll make things seem simpler.” This would allow her to slide a little closer to him, allowing them perhaps more frank and direct speak. And give him a reason to have more contact with her, of course. The last part might be more of his motivation, not that he’d admit it. “How long has it been since I went down?” He hoped that maybe him actually being there standing in front of her would make the question easier on her. He knew talking about Peggy before was too painful, but now he could pretty easily. Maybe. It was all a lot. “Exactly,” Peggy agreed. “They have to adjust to these sudden changes, and I imagine they have it worse in certain respects. This is their home.” And Peggy knew better than anyone that people did not like having their home threatened. Not that she would be a threat to the people that resided here without reason. She suspected that there was much information being withheld from the arrivals and it didn’t sit well with her. If anything else, there were other magic users here and they could at least try their hand at the barrier. But she put those thoughts to the side for the moment in favor of entwining her arm with Steve’s, an unspoken answer to his suggestion. Never one to put up a good poker face, his motivations were fairly transparent, but Peggy didn’t mind. She could hold onto him forever and there was still the possibility that it would never be enough. What Peggy didn’t expect was the first question he asked. Perhaps it should have been obvious, but for her, it was still a wound too fresh in her mind. It stung in that way that a flesh wound did when cleansed with simple water and made her throat tighten slightly. She managed to calm her quickening pulse and slow the shallow breaths that had begun already as she answered, “A little under a month.” A month in a lifetime of what she knew would be sadness. Steve would be frozen for much, much longer than that, and Peggy didn’t know if she wanted to hear of his adventures since he had been thawed out. “It hasn’t been the easiest, but I suppose that is to be expected.” She glanced up at Steve, a reassurance that he was truly there, with his kind smile and warm skin under her fingertips. “There’s a man here, who says he knows you. Clint Barton?” “I wonder if a town this size can sustain too many people before long. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Steve was a strategist, he had a talent for looking forward and making decisions based on that. Not too long ago he was trying to think of ways to go back. Now that was the farthest thing from his mind. At the moment, he had Peggy Carter on his arm and he didn’t care about the rest. A month. He could only imagine the pain she was in, and Steve never wanted Peggy to feel any pain. Especially not because of him. He owed her so much better than that. Instead of keeping her hand in his elbow, he wrapped his arm around her. He was taking liberties and hoping she wouldn’t mind. Maybe they both needed this physical reassurance, simple as it may be. “Barton, yeah, he works for SHIELD. That’s a group Howard helped found, I think. We just saved the world from an alien invasion. There’s a lot I need to tell you.” And he was tumbling all over himself to try and find where to start first. “This might need to be a long walk.” |