[ CLOSED ] i'll be lookin' at the moon but i'll be seein' you

[revlon]

WHO • peggy carter (revlon) & steve rogers (starspangle)
WHERE • deck 2
WHEN • forward-dated to the first week of july
WHAT • tmw your wartime girlfriend shows up in space when she should be hella old and super dead
WARNINGS • ...blood?? mildly graphic descriptions of injury

[ She remembers falling.

Anything that comes after that is hazy and indistinct. The way the room is spinning behind her closed eyes certainly doesn't help, nor does the swooping nausea in her stomach. But somehow, that all makes sense to her, as does how cold she feels. Because Peggy Carter remembers tangling with Whitney Frost, she remembers a horrible and sickening kind of agony (like ice, like one must imagine being sucked into a void must feel) when the other woman touched her bare skin, and then she remembers —

— falling. Again, she's back to that.

Falling off the landing, hanging by her fingertips, her grip slipping, and then — blinding white pain, the shock of air punched out of her lungs, looking down to see herself impaled on a piece of rebar —

Bloody Nora.

Peggy's eyes snap open when that catches up to her and her fingers scrabble for her abdomen, seeking out the injury, the metal, and finding... nothing. No pain, other than a vague sort of all-over ache to her body. No injury. But her clothes are torn, sticky and stiff with mostly-dried blood (her own blood, surely), and the skin healed underneath. Then her eyes adjust to the flickering gloom around her and she doesn't recognise any of it: they had been in a warehouse, not some aircraft hangar or factory or bunker. This isn't right. Despite the chill, perspiration pricks at her brow, her heartbeat picks up; something is dreadfully, horribly wrong.

She sucks in a breath through her chattering teeth, squeezes her eyes shut, and exhales slowly. All right. So either she's been — affected or transported or kidnapped, somehow, by Ms Frost, or she's lost consciousness. Or she's fallen to her death after all. Fine. Very well. One step at a time, Peggy Carter, that's the ticket.

Breathe.

But then — foosteps? She opens her eyes. Someone's coming. ]

Daniel? [ Her voice breaks, dry, unused. It echoes in the space. Peggy wills herself to remain calm as she pulls herself up to sit (her clothes stick to the ground), her hands groping for her weapon on the metal grating but finding nothing in the dark. ] Mr Jarvis?

Comments

[america]

Two years -

[ For the briefest of moments, Steve's got no idea what she means by that. Two years since what? Two years of what?

And then he remembers it all like it was only yesterday: the War, Erskine, the super-serum, Peggy, HYDRA and Schmidt ... the plane ... those last words of his. His promise. ]

Oh.

[ He doesn't tell her that for him, it's been seventy-five years - give or take. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he'd been to her funeral, had seen her when she was at her most frail, a woman who had lived such a life even though it'd been a life without him.

Maybe she's not real and this is all some kind of illusion, but he wants to believe that it's her. He wants to believe that her warmth and the sound of her voice isn't something being used against him. ]

Well, that's a long story. [ He takes a breath, makes the decision - for now - to trust her, and slowly drops his hands back to his sides. ] I think, technically, I'm ninety-five now.

[revlon]

[ His hands drop away from her and she moves before she can stop herself, taking a half step closer to him and catching at his wrist. Her fingers are a little sticky with dried blood but they curl so gently around him, sliding across his palm, taking that one hand between both of hers.

It's so wonderfully real and she marvels at it in her own quiet way, brows knit, eyes bright, and jaw held tight against tears. She's exhausted, strung through, it makes everything bubble too closely to the surface. She can allow herself this weakness, perhaps. And he says ninety-five like it's supposed to mean something, it doesn't; but then again, none of this does. ]

You're not making any sense. [ Under any other circumstances, she'd ask, You expect me to believe that? but this is extraordinary on its own. Peggy takes a breath, looks up to meet his eyes instead of staring at their desperately joined hands like they'll yield better answers. ] It's got to be a trick of some kind. I wish to God it wasn't, you're so real, but I can't... Prove it. I need you to prove it.

i will dig this trope into the ground im not even sorry

[america]

[ Steve almost smiles, because here they are ... two people who desperately want to think they're seeing the other person but years of lies and falsehoods and tricks from all kinds of people and non-people alike have turned them skeptical, cynical, nonbelievers.

He doesn't move away from Peggy, even when she takes a step closer towards him, and he doesn't pull his hand from hers because that much contact feels like an anchor more than a distraction.

He thinks of something only the both of them would remember, something she could say to prove to him that she was really her too. ]

Do you remember what I told you in the car? Before we got to Erskine and Stark's lab. I told you after everything, asking someone to dance didn't seem to matter anymore.

I figured I'd wait.

[ Tell him what he was waiting for, Peggy. ]

screaming

[revlon]

[ No one else would know these words, some silly little phrase that they both took and ran with as the war grew longer and more difficult. It became a promise. The driver in the car hadn't overheard them and that horrible day in the radio room, she'd been alone to say her goodbyes in peace. No one else knows and she's never breathed this memory aloud to anyone else.

Her hands tighten on his as truth and reality slot neatly into place, as she's always known they would. ]

For the right partner.

[ There's an awful, heart-stopping moment where she thinks she might cry, but then she just laughs — this broken, little sound — and folds his hand against her heart. ]

Well, [ she finally says, shoring up her resolve, willing her voice to remain quite steady. ] I'm afraid we're both quite late.

[america]

[ His voice is soft. ]

Better late than never.

[ Steve folds his other hand over hers, and the relief in the breath he exhales is nearly palpable. It's a little like he'd been holding it, waiting for her to say the right (or wrong) thing and confirm this hallucination or this reality.

He couldn't have realized just how glad he is that this is the latter than the former until this very moment. ]

The impossible's become possible.

[revlon]

[ She doesn't quite trust herself to speak now, not with how exhausted she is, how brittle her carefully constructed walls have become in the face of all this shock and confusion; so she just nods (like a child, she thinks distantly and with some exasperation), and leans just that little bit forward — not to kiss him, alas, but — to rest her forehead against his chest.

She stays like that for a few long moments, breathing him in, feeling the faint pounding of his heart against her skin, and soon it becomes clear by the gentle hitching of her shoulders, that she's weeping. ]

[america]

[ Steve doesn't say anything. He remains still, just for a moment, right until he recognizes the quiet tremble of her shoulders and remembers that this is real. This really is Peggy Carter, not some complicated figment of his imagination or a trick laid out by one of their recent alien attackers.

He can touch her. This isn't a dream.

His arms move to wrap around her, slow and gentle. One broad hand rests against her back, moving in small circles. ]