7515/Sweaters and Soldiers

Sweaters and Soldiers
Date of Scene:	17 May 2019
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Peggy Carter, Captain America

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Peggy Carter has posed:
Spring. Almost summer. The weather has finally gotten lovely and twilight is just on the edge of pitching the sky into full darkness, but not quite yet. Peggy didn't quite know why she came outside, she hadn't really smoked for a handful of years and that was the only good excuse, but she simply needed the air. The warm breeze through her dark hair and she just takes a slow, steadying breath. This would all work out fine. Somehow. Uncertain if he is going to follow or not, she sinks down to sitting on the concrete steps that lead into the backyward, half curled in on herself, staring out at a only half familiar skyline. Even the city looked strange.

Captain America has posed:
It takes a minute -- maybe that was his way of sowing uncertainty or maybe diffusing any commentary at hand -- but the door can be heard behind her to open and shut again, its sounds as if it were being handled with the utmost care. As if someone's hands were fighting not to tremble.

Boots tucked beneath jeans show up on the steps first. Steve lingers standing in silence as he too looks out onto the city scape. Why does it feel so fragile? Everything around him feels so delicate and he's such a heavy-handed lunkhead sometimes.

Still, it's not nice to loom, he apparently decides, and he then sits down beside the brunette with noticeable space between him and her. One leg stretches out. He rests an elbow on his bent knee and frowns down at a pebble on the step. It gets picked up, flung away without too much fervor lest it dent a parked car.

"It's a helluva place to be, isn't it?" His voice is quiet. "Here and now. Nothing's simple anymore..." Not that it ever was.

Peggy Carter has posed:
He's not the only one who cannot quite look at her. Now that it's not the distraction of planning a mission, the adrenaline of working on a team again, it's hard to think of turning to see him and that tightness that comes in her chest at the thought of what he'd look like now. Even just the faint scent of him on the air was enough. Half the reason she hasn't really removed that sweater in days, despite the warmth of spring.

"...For a little while there, I was convinced this was HYDRA's doing. Some... horrid Red Room simulation. Of course, that's how they'd get to me. You... James. Everyone I..." Lost. Regretted. Needed again. Stayed up too many late nights wondering what she could have done to fix it all. "...I never though I'd see again. It would have been easier, you know, if it was HYDRA. I'd have... understood that." She admits softly, head hanging forward a touch more, a few of those brown curls concealing her face well now. The more she hides, the less obvious it will be just how raw she is, right?

Captain America has posed:
The ant he watches toils on with its crumblet of food. Steve scoots his boot forwards an inch to allow it to pass. He has sympathies too for the tiny insect -- the similarities drawn in near-Sisyphean existence in both himself and the woman beside him hit close enough to leave shrapnel in his heart.

"Easy like a spoonful of antifreeze," the Captain murmurs, glancing over at her to see the curtaining of dark hair. It blocks too how facets of both understanding and grief etch themselves on his face, in the quirk of his brow and the thinning of his lips. "I didn't understand it myself, either...not at first. Seemed like waking up to a bad dream instead of from one." He sighs, scrapes his boot on the concrete again back towards himself, begins picking at his thumbnail. "Time didn't stop for me either. It passed."

Peggy Carter has posed:
Those words draw her, for just a moment, out of her own grief. Protection and ache for him will always kick her ass in a bit of action. Ever since he was a skinny, asthmatic kid. "...You... remembered what happened? You were aware in the ice? Oh, god... Steve. We... we tried. We tried so hard to find you. Howard and I both. Half those planes he developed to try and find you. They... they kept telling me you were gone but I knew and... we never... Never managed. We didn't want to give up, I... God, Steve, I'm sorry... I'm so damn sorry." She's still not letting the tears free, but they are there again. The same tears that night over the radio. And years later, when she talked Howard down in that plane. When she poured his blood off the Brooklyn Bridge... Words she never thought she'd say to him but has waited decades.

Captain America has posed:
"No, wait, that's not what I meant."

Or, at least, that's what the Captain mouths as the outpouring of her explanation washes over him. His own throat catches as his jaw clenches. Dinner goes more sour in his stomach. A hand previously balling up in his lap extends towards her, falters -- hangs, reaches out to brush fingertips at her arm, a gesture far less confident than her patpat of earlier. He knows the fabric he's touching.

"Peg -- " He swallows. "Peggy, no. No, that's not what I said. I was out. Everything was dark. One minute, I was watching the ice and the next minute, I was staring at a ceiling in a recovery room. Like a blink." All that time -- passed in a blink. He brushes at her arm more firmly now, the slide of fingers and glancing palm, absolutely uncertain of where professionalism dies before simple human comfort. "I don't blame you. I don't." His voice, quiet, is firm with a fracture to it. "That was my decision to make and I made it."

Peggy Carter has posed:
Eventually, he manages to quiet her. The reassurance of the most horrific scenario in her mind not being true, it helps. But now she's staring at him and she can't look away. She blinks, a tear clinging to long lashes but she doesn't shut her eyes hard enough for it to escape. She just stares up at him for a few heartbeats, instinctively leaning into that touch on her arm a bit more. Familiar fingertips, his hand making her look small in compare, and she wasn't exactly a frail woman. She lets her opposite hand come up, the right one, the one without the ring, to rest overtop his knuckles. "... I looked so long. I... truly did. But, thank god... I'm glad you didn't know. That's... that was always my fear, you know? My worst nightmare. I'd wake up in... blankets wrapped around, too cold in the winter, just... dreaming of you in ice, trapped, alive, that damn... Damn serum we gave you keeping you alive. God, Steve... I thought we'd damned you to some awful arctic prison for... forever. There were days that I thought at least... at least, if we found your body, I'd know you were dead. At peace. But to never know..." Her lips tremble, hovering on a thousand other apologies and words he probably doesn't need to hear.

Captain America has posed:
Gentlemanly instinct has Steve placing his full palm against her arm now; her own lighter, warm hand's weight seems permission enough and an acceptance of his offered silent comfort. He hasn't looked away from her face, not now, not after seeing the glistening of grief on her lashes. He'd wipe it away, but...assumptions are terrible things to make and both have their monumental, brittle pride to contend with.

He seems hesitant to share his thought, but does so regardless. "Seems... I guess it's a double-edged sword to see me." He smiles, but it's painful. "No more nightmares about me, okay?" As if he could make Peggy promise.

Peggy Carter has posed:
A bittersweet smile crosses her lips at his words, holding onto his hand just a bit tighter for a heartbeat, "No... no. It's... good to see you. So good." She cracks out a little laugh at the question of nightmares, that brittle line coming back to her lips edged with the tiniest bit of a smile, "Then I guess you'll have to stop doing idiotically brave things, Steven Grant Rogers, but considering I know you too well for that... I can't make any promises." That tease hangs in the air for a heartbeat.

Then it all hits home. She still is wearing those rings. She still had another life she'll never see again, a whole new set of grief, even as these wounds almost would start to heal. Was it right to be sitting there, half laughing with him, when everything else is gone? Her hand abruptly pulls back and she shifts into standing, almost stumbling backwards. "I... I'm sorry. You... you certainly don't need this. We didn't need this. Not... not before a mission. I'm sorry..." She stops, looking for more words, but if she starts again she'll never let herself escape. So, instead, she turns on the ball of her borrowed sneaker and dashes up the back stairs, back into the house. Hopefully May isn't lingering close, because she is going to need some time to compose before confronting anyone else.

Captain America has posed:
It seems a blur, how one flicker of a moment in tentative peace is so easily pulled from beneath the firm footing like a poor prank. Steve turns in place to watch her go back inside, his hand left empty in the arm where he had forged a connection. His palm still tingles at the absence -- and that's still his sweater.

Each portion of his name had been like a well-deserved sock in the arm, warming and smarting at once. It still echoes in his ears. Eidetic memory can play it back -- will play it back at some point -- but right now, his ears ring in the silence of the backyard. A nightbird sings in a nearby bush, ushering in true twilight. The city beyond lights up in its blanketing of organized lines and rows of golden windows.

Steve whispers to the melancholy song, "No...I'm sorry."