This is not the floor she expected

[therightpartner]

Of all the ways Peggy had anticipated her day going, becoming the head of Stark's latest endeavor had not been one of them.  Once the details of her exploits the night before were known, she had expected two reactions.  She would either be praised for her work or her efforts would be disdained simply because she was female.  Even knowing which outcome was more probable, being reprimanded and called incompetent by someone like Flynn had been insulting.  

Then, everything had changed with that phone call.  Howard had always believed in her abilities.  He might have spent most of the war flirting with her but he had never doubted her place in the SSR.  Or her place in S.H.I.E.L.D.  The idea of it, the idea of being one of the leaders of the organization left her in an almost awed state.  

But even through that shock there was a quiet happiness that finally the doors that had always been slammed in her face because of her gender were now being opened.  It wouldn't be easy.  Men like Flynn would dismiss her until they realized Peggy wasn't a pretty trophy piece that Stark had chosen to decorate the S.H.I.E.L.D. offices.  There would be resentment from some, but  it was something she was used to.  

At least now she'd be doing real work.  The type that had kept her going when it would have been easier to focus on her grief and return to the role that was expected of a woman after the end of the war.  After Flynn offered his feeble congratulations, Peggy moved to the desk, removing the one personal item that she had kept in that depressing office.  

The framed photograph in one hand, her purse in the other, Peggy stepped onto the lift.  Smiling faintly when she looked down at the picture of Steve, she hoped he would pleased with this new incarnation of their work.  The doors slid open and she stepped into...

A pub?  One decorated in a style that looked more like a Hollywood set than any bar or club she had ever seen.

Taking a few tentative steps forward, she looked around, trying to understand how the lift - the entire building - could disappear.  Or how she could have disappeared, stepping out of a lift and into somewhere else entirely.  The look of shock and confusion lasted only a moment before Peggy regained her composure, moving to one of the tables and sitting down as if that had always been her intention.  Placing the photo on the table beside her and her purse in her lap, she watched those around her, trying to understand where she might be and how she had arrived.

Comments

[bestpal]

Bucky has a favourite seat in the corner of the bar, it allows him a view of all the comings and goings without anyone disturbing him. The new woman's face sends a jolt through him, he knew her once upon a time. Slowly he creeps forward from his seat and comes around towards her, studying her.

His eyes drop on the picture. "Where did you get this?" he demands. The face in the picture, he definitely recognises.

[therightpartner]

As Peggy mentally listed all the possible reasons why she would find herself in some strange pub, none of them made any sense. A possible head injury earned during her activities the night seemed a likely option. Or perhaps she had been drugged during that encounter and it had taken hours for the substance to effect her.

Even in a state of confusion, when she instinctively noticed someone drawing near, her hand went to her purse, ready to draw a weapon if necessary. The motion stilled when she saw who was standing before her. Sergeant Barnes.

For a moment, all she could do was stare, answering his question with a truthful answer that she had never given to anyone except Phillips. "I stole it from his file. Someone needed to remember Steve from before."

[bestpal]

"From before..." A cold sweat breaks out on Bucky's forehead. He doesn't remember her. Her face jumps out from a file, a picture in Howard Stark's file. She hadn't been important. His fingers curl into his palms. No she is more than a photo or it wouldn't hurt so much to look at her.

"Do I know you?"

[therightpartner]

"From before the serum." It wasn't something that many people would have understood. Only a handful of people still remembered Steve as the artist from Brooklyn and fewer still understood how important that person had been to the world

Barnes would understand her reasoning, but Barnes was dead. Except he was in front of her. He looked just like Barnes but how could he have survived that fall? "I don't know. My name is Peggy Carter. I knew someone who looked like you but he died in the war."

[bestpal]

"I have been told that before." The room felt warmer, closed in as he tries to attach a significance to the name and her reasoning. "I am Winter, or Barnes. Those are the names I am told people know me by ma'am."

His old good manners come easier than anything else.

[therightpartner]

This couldn't be Barnes... could it? A hallucination would be a more logical assumption but why would she imagine him instead of Steve? Looks wise, he was similar enough that Peggy could believe it was true, but his demeanor was different. Although the war had changed them all.

"I didn't know you as Winter." The name, if it was one, sounded strange. Not one that had been mentioned before. "I knew you as Barnes. We were in Steve's unit." The question of how he had survived tempted her, but she knew not to ask when the situation was so foreign. The photo seemed a safer topic. "It didn't seem right to let the picture sit in a file and be forgotten. I didn't think he would disapprove of me wanting a memento."

[bestpal]

"I was." I am. Bucky knows that as long as he retains some memories, he will not fight Steve again. It would be wrong. "I don't remember you." He doesn't expand on why. Only three people know on the ship and that is too many already.

"You will not need the photo to remember him here."

[therightpartner]

"That's all right. I can remember for both of us." The words seemed to catch in her throat but she kept her tone steady. Perhaps surviving the fall had made Barnes like some of the soldiers she'd visited with after the war. Shell shocked or worse. At least he seemed stable unlike some poor souls that she had seen when she'd returned to the States.

For a moment sorrow caused her breath to catch slightly as she glanced down at the photograph. Barnes didn't know. Or if he had been told, his memories of her weren't the only ones that had disappeared. "Sergeant - Bucky... Steve was lost on a mission to stop Schmidt. He's been declared MIA. We're trying to find him, but so far there haven't been any solid leads."

[bestpal]

Stable is an illusion that Bucky is very good at creating. It didn't take him long to work out people didn't want to witness someone fall apart. They became distant, or worse worried. He knows Steve spends far too much time doing that.

He shakes his head in denial. So much of his world has been illusion but there are a few solid facts, and Steve's presence is one of them. "He's real. He's alive. He's here."

[therightpartner]

For a few moments, she didn't know what to say. If that illusion helped Barnes, did she have the right to destroy it? It might be the only thing that kept him going just like the photo kept her focused on what Steve had fought for.

But if Barnes could be here, maybe it was possible that Steve was too. It was probably a foolish, impossible hope but everything that had happened since she had stepped off the lift seemed impossible. "You've seen him.... spoken to him?"

[bestpal]

"Yes. I have spoken to him and seen him, here." Other people have seen him too. Bucky holds on to this, he knows Steve is real. Or....this ship and everyone on board it are the result of an illusion recreated by Hydra.

He steps back, glowering and suspicious. Separated from the drugs Hydra has used to control him, Bucky is feeling the withdrawal and he doesn't know it.

"I will tell you his room. You can see for yourself, once you've cleared quarantine.

[abyssum_invocat]

"You know Steve," comes a voice from somewhere around her left, belonging to a dark-headed child with severely-cut brown hair, and the faintest of childlike resemblances to her father (a man Peggy really ought to know of, but the narration won't blame her for not bringing him up).

Sinthia is no longer sporting either arm or head wounds, thankfully, and is none the worse for wear physically when she comes up in her usual greys and blacks, head tilted to see the picture. Steve might look nothing like the skinny man captured in the frame now, but his face hasn't but barely changed. "Do you know when this was taken?"

[therightpartner]

The words stop Peggy's attempts at trying to figure out where she might be. Smiling at the girl, she relaxes slightly, not completely surprised that the speaker knew Steve. What was odd was that someone recognized Steve from before the serum. Most only knew of the image that had starred in newsreels not the man beneath the uniform. "Yes, I did know him."

"In 1942." The girl looked more familiar than the other people in pub. Her hair cut more in a style she would expect and her question reminding Peggy of the fans that used to flock to Steve to meet a hero. "He was still in basic training then."

[abyssum_invocat]

"I didn't..." She looks surprised, somewhat confused, a little more than any child from the modern era should be at seeing Steve anytime after the Smithsonian exhibit opened.

"But that was only two years ago," Sinthia murmurs. "His face looks the same."

[therightpartner]

There's something about this conversation that she was certain that she was missing, but Peggy was unsure what that detail might be. Perhaps the girl was a fan of Captain America that had been interested in the newsreels instead of the comic books. "He is a great man." Even knowing how unlikely it was that Steve was still alive, Peggy couldn't say 'was'.

"Only two years?" That... wasn't right. More time had passed since the procedure. "It's been more than two years since that photograph was taken."

[abyssum_invocat]

She looks up and blinks. "Not for me," she says steadily, shaking her head. "I'm from 1944. When I came here, I mean." It's not nineteen-anything here; it's hundreds of years in her future, and it's unsettling and frightening every time she lays eyes on the ship and the modernity of it, but slowly, horribly slowly, she's getting used to it.

"I don't think it's January yet."

[therightpartner]

Peggy caught herself before she repeated the year, not wanting to sound like she was simply parroting what the girl said. But it was a shock. Which one of them had lost touch with reality? Or were they both perfectly sane? "What do you mean came here?"

One moment on the lift, the next in a strange pub... "Were you in one place and then found yourself here?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"Yes," she murmurs. "I was...near Innsbruck,, in Austria," she says, swallowing back a surge of nerves as she says it out loud. "It's 1944 for me, and the world is at war. I'm...my father is fighting the Allies. And Steve," she adds, softly.

The bright, unnatural blue that flecks her irises seems to almost shine a very familiar color; the same one the Tesseract gives off, and her face, while gentler than her father's, does resemble Johann's in places. Thankfully, she will age to look less like him. "In particular."

[therightpartner]

None of this made sense. It had been years since she had been in Austria and the date was something that she wasn't quite sure what to make of. "I..." Pausing when she realized she was about to admit she had been one of the Allies, the rest of the explanation sank in.

There was only one person who had had that sort of grudge against Steve. One that as she stared longer at the girl, hinted at unpleasant memories. Could she really be his daughter? Why would she lie about something like that. "You don't seem to have your father's dislike for Steve." A safe enough topic, Peggy hopes, until she had a better understanding of what what was going on.

[abyssum_invocat]

She moves a shoulder in a kind of shrug, a motion she's only learned on this boat from watching people.

"Steve is nice," she says quietly. "My father isn't. I don't want to be a weapon for this war and Steve said I don't have to be." If she has the opportunity, she'll take it. "He didn't know about me."

[therightpartner]

"Is nice?" Despite Peggy's attempts at not sounding like an echo, that use of tenses was too important to ignore. Did the girl know what had happened to Steve? What had been done to the poor child? If she thought it was 1944, then she might not know about the crash.

"He was right. You don't have to be a weapon." No matter how shocking the idea of Schmidt having a child might be, the idea of how this girl must have been treated is horrifying. "If you're here -" Wherever here might be. "Then you have a chance to be whoever you wish to be."

[abyssum_invocat]

She nods, somewhat nonplussed. "Is. He's here," she says though her eyes flick to the sides as if making sure, as if she could see him, that Steve is still aboard.

She doesn't really have the capacity, yet, to give much response to what people keep telling her about the life mold she's been put in so far, though. She simply hasn't ever experienced complete freedom, ever, not even here. And she has no concept of what personal freedoms even are.

[she_listens]

"You look like you could use some answers."

The woman standing by Peggy's table looks young, though her eyes are deep and ageless, and her demeanor bears the careful grace of someone who has lived past their youthful recklessness.

She smiles, hands clasped before her, and then turns thoughtful.

"And maybe a nice cup of tea?"

[therightpartner]

The sound of a voice directed at her pulled Peggy from her thoughts. For some reason the woman set her at ease when everything around her had her on edge, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Nothing about the situation made sense but it was difficult to be wary around someone who seemed so steady. Slowly the tension in her shoulders eased as she gave the woman a warm smile. "Answers would be appreciated as would the tea." Looking around, her expression turned wry as she wondered at the improbability of the situation. "Although, I'm not certain that this place has the sort of tea I'm used to."

[she_listens]

Guinan smiles enough to make her eyes crinkle.

"I may surprise you."

She tips her chin forward to really look at Peggy, giving a few thoughtful minute's pause.

"How would you feel about a robust black tea? Or perhaps — rose hips and orange blossom, with just a touch of honey?"