Peggy asked the question that didn't need answering. Merely looking at the bit-of-flesh gave her all the information she need, and yet she still plucked it gingerly from his hand and gave it a proper squint in the almost-dawn light. More and more of it was spilling into the valley with ever minute. The tentacle twitched still, thrumming along to a beat she soon realized came in concert with her own pulse. Perturbed, she let the appendage drop.
"Likely native. Or else another opportunist of the same calibre as you and I. I'm not certain which possibility I prefer least. Although--" Peggy paused. Watched him. "Can you describe it?"
Perhaps she wanted to know the dimensions of whatever creature could do that to him.
Logan was scratching his head, though it only meant rubbing in warm blood to later dry and flake there. He sniffed for the creature's scent, but aside from the creature's tentacle, the beast itself was long gone. But there was at the very least a trail, should they decide to follow it.
"Big. Ten feet tall at least. Thin and wiry, more leg and arm than anything else. The bastard didn't seem to have a face. Just three of these things in its chest. But he was fast. I ain't ever seen anything move that fast. The goddamn thing tried to french me."
Her attention lifted to the jagged cliffs above. Peggy wanted to look anywhere else but at him -- in a flash, she'd grown less transfixed by the horrors of his healing body. There was an unpleasant tension in her throat, and she was forced again to estimate how long it had been since she'd last lost the contents of her stomach. Long enough to make the prospect all the more unwelcome. Her guts weren't made of steel, and so she maintained a pedal note of distress.
"Our absentee landlords," she decided. Hosts; citizens; aliens, perhaps. So long as she wasn't looking at him, she could keep a kind of calm certainty about her words. Sentimentality was kept at bay. "--French...?" The SSR agent didn't bother turning her gaze while she worked through Logan's complaint. She damn well knew what such a kiss was, but her mind was at work and work had nothing to do with kissing. She sighed her mild hindsight's amusement through her nose when she realized the what exact wry comment Logan had been trying to make.
"I don't fancy a snog like that," she answered -- implying (of course) that the creature's affections had left him rather worse for wear. Perhaps she didn't yet understand the probing appendage had caused the kerfuffle, rather than assuming it had been the kerfuffle entire. "Bloody continental, isn't it? Kissing on the cheek when one first meets. Awful. Do you know which way it went?"
At long last she turned, leaning heavily upon the rifle.
Were it not for the taste of blood in his mouth, he might have been gagging at the taste of the creature being in his mouth still. For all the pain he'd just went through, he somehow found that aspect to be the most offensive. He'd never given much thought to aliens before, but he always expected them to be somehow more humanlike in appearance and mannerism.
"Up there." Logan pointed a bloodsoaked hand up the steep incline above the river. How the creature had made it up there so fast he could not say, but the two of them certainly wouldn't be doing it without the use of some rope and climbing. "The bastard's in a hurry. Probably warning his buddies."
Peggy clucked her tongue. Hurried was the last word she could ever hope to use to describe the nature of their theoretical pursuit. If he was right -- if this was some sort of forward scout now rushing back to raise an alarm -- then they might be overrun in due time. Only she'd thought the city was meant to be abandoned. Life-signatures clocking in at next to nothing. Only birds, Howard had assured her. Birds and rats and whatever vermin persist after the death of civilization.
"Then we should work on not being here when it returns. Can you--" she softened. It was one thing to know a man healed quickly, and quite another to take it on faith that he was ready to but out. Her own bruises were showing purple and blue on her cheek, and there was a stiffness in her body that couldn't quite be argued with. But she'd move, if she had to.
Logan hadn't been eager to pursue, but he liked the thought of hiding even less. He staggered to his feet and stretched his back and knees in the process. They seemed to pop into place as he did before he at last knocked out one last crick in his neck. His eyes settled on her with dull acceptance.
"I can move. But you ain't lookin' so hot right now."
He did not doubt she would make a solid effort of it, but she would certainly be slowing them down. Cut her loose, runt. The thought came without bidding and he worked his hand in and out of a fist. The two of them were in it for the long run.
Peggy turned on one heel and started her careful walk back towards the cave's mouth. Their makeshift bed -- she thought of it almost with sentimentality, she found -- would have to be packed away into their satchels. Stored. Any hint of their presence scrubbed from the earth, and then (contrary to what Logan hypothesized) Peggy would want them venturing deeper into the city itself. Perhaps not by the higher road, for she didn't relish the thought of the climb. But so long as the river-bed could be followed in a direction that was once up-stream, she wondered if they might not locate a better point of egress.
"I can manage. And I'll manage better yet with a gentlemanly arm, which I have every scrap of faith will be offered me once we begin again--"
The sweetness -- the warmth -- of the night had seeped away. Horror and her unwavering sense of duty had shoved affection rudely aside, so that the steady tap-tap of her pulse as he'd caressed her neck and ear was a forceful but distant memory. Kept under lock and key for both their sakes.
He still felt stiff and sore as he labored his way in after her. Even if he could heal fast, it seemed like he could never quite mentally catch up to how his body healed. He seemed to hobble a few steps before falling into a more natural rhythm as those last bits of damaged bone and tissue knitted themselves back together. Right now would have been a fine time to wash off all the blood and grime, but there was little enough water for that. He knelt to the task of clearing away their supplies and rolling up the blanket and tarp. Just as it had been before falling asleep, the job was far less laborious for him. The downside to being what he was is that no one would ever get to coddle him.
By the time he had shouldered the supplies again, it already felt as though they'd taken too long. Just as she'd suggested, he presented himself as a solid support to hold and lean onto. "Going back the way we came'll take hours. More with it darkening. Could be worth risking going forward. It's gotta level out eventually."
He might have been the hardier of the two, but she was still the one in command. Logan was, as ever, a soldier.
Her sensibilities met with more resistance than she could have ever anticipated: here she stood, staring for a moment at his blood-streaked arm. Minutes earlier, it had been a crushed and pathetic thing. Broken; busted; beyond bruised. Now it was whole again -- he was whole again -- but she couldn't shake the memory of how he looked. It wasn't decent of her, she realized, but she felt a true hesitation when it came to settling her hand on his. She was ginger. Gentle. Behaving as though she feared the touch would bring pain -- to him, to her, or to both of them. Her mortal mind was trying very hard to wrap itself around what happened to him. Superior strength and resilience might not have been strange concepts to Peggy Carter, but she'd never seen the Captain half-so-hurt as she'd now twice seen Logan. It was a lot to take in.
"You're right," she conceded. And found the courage to lock her fingers up with his. Arm curled 'round his elbow, and her weight favoured onto the side where he was helping her. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yes?"
A bluster of good old British pliancy found its way back into her speech: justifying risk by imagining the reward.
He had the decency at least to don his jacket again, though he had not bothered to fasten it in the front. Now that she knew what he was, there seemed little to gain in burdening himself with extra layers he did not need. He preferred to feel the wind against his skin. It made him more alive. It made him the hunter and not the prey. His fingers curled up with hers and he began to lead them through the slow and unfriendly terrain that they now new was filled with monsters. Or at the very least, one monster.
"Kinda thinkin' we're lookin' at the raw end of that metaphor." A man who could recover from anything ought to have had a more optimistic perspective, but his ability to survive this mess did not mean that they would come to a good end.
She had no fuller name for him than that. Or -- the SSR had its guesses. Aliases used over time, perhaps. But nothing concrete. But when Peggy wanted to put a bit of emotional distance between herself and someone, she fell back upon the easiest method: Misters. Ma'ams. Ranks.
"But there is great potentiality to be found in all that's raw. Even metaphors. I'll take raw over rancid any day."
"Easy there with the food talk, teacup. My stomach's growling enough as it is." He might have been healthier than she was right now, but he was by far much more ravenously hungry. A healing factor took a lot of energy and he didn't just generate that from nowhere. He was hungrier now than before they had ate their rations hours ago and that was only going to get worse before it was better. It made him wish that he had simply just ate that bit of whatever that he had ripped from the slim creature.
"--On the brighter side of things," she ventured. "If there is a biological presence in the area, we might find ourselves fortunate. All life requires sustenance of some sort: let's hope your new sweetheart likes the same manner of dinner we do."
If aliens were among them -- if they lived, breathed, ate, and ruled still in these lands -- then Peggy and Logan might experience something of a windfall. Provided the strange creature he described ate anything remotely digestible by humans.
The prospect of finding sustenance was a welcome one and it would be one area which Logan could prove exceptionally useful, even if he did not particularly relish the idea of becoming Peggy's food taster. But that was going to be later before it was sooner, because the way ahead was long and there path was going to be slow going. Because the river seemed to be at always a constant curve, it was impossible to tell if there was any place to climb until the wall of rock and dirt was right in front of them.
"More like -- here's hoping its tussle with you made it think twice about taking a second taste."
Whatever else she might say about Logan, he was something of an excellent shield. A bunker of a man: broad and strong and resilient. And (apart from a bit of prickle around his edges) shockingly gentlemanly. Even his soft caresses of the previous evening had brought with them an overwhelming sense of care. Of attentiveness -- not hunger; not need.
"You might not have noticed, but I didn't exactly win that fight."
With bullets, he might stand a chance against this alien creature. But in a physical confrontation, Logan would be turned into putty again. He might live through that, but he knew Peggy wouldn't. He did not fear the creature, but he had no idea how they were supposed to take it down if it came to that.
She leaned a little heavier upon his arm. All so she could swing the rifle so its muzzle pointed forward. Optimism was not her best colour, but they were two desperate souls in a dreary situation. Misery would suit them even less, and Peggy felt confident about how she handled a long-arm. Paired together, they must be all the more effective than the mere sum of their parts. Teamwork did not come naturally to the SSR agent, but she'd felt it forced upon her often enough over the past year. She'd taken a shining to it.
"While not a banner victory, it counts for something." She let the rifle drop and it resumed its secondary existence as another crutch. "I mean to say -- I'm...glad to see you survived it."
There might have been some affection before they slept, but it was all born from practicality and necessity. He may have warmed to her some, but he had not forgotten who she was or who she represented. Just because she might be willing to keep his secret, that did no unmake what she was. He was not so suspicious or cold to lay them all at her feet now, but it clouded what she had to say. One thing was certain and that was what she really was depending on him for.
He snorted. "Right. There ain't getting far without the code handy."
She tipped her hand to that impression. There wasn't any practicality in hiding it: she needed him. Perhaps far more than he ever needed her. It would be foolish to downplay the dire nature of that need, as well as its manipulative design.
"But gladness doesn't require only one source, Mister Logan. Gladness can be something manifold and...diverse."
Diverse. There were plenty of ways to take that. Logan naturally assumed the worst among them. He fixed her with a wicked grin that was not so different than the kind he had before getting into a fight. Logan did enjoy a little bit of conflict now and then, so long as he had time enough to react to it.
"Alright, alright. You'll get your snogging later. Damn if ain't hard being the only man on this world."
-- At first, she looked livid. Eyes brightening in righteous anger. There was no denying he'd struck a nerve. And perhaps it was a miracle she managed not to shove away from his solid support and make another turn of it hobbling along on her own. But that had been a costly protest, last time. And besides, Peggy wasn't a precise stranger to this kind of chatter.
She breathed in. Let her temper relent. Peggy found the smile she wore around the office. And answered, sweet as could be: "Beg your pardon, but you're not quite my type. As a last resort or otherwise."
Did Peggy dislike the brute? Not at all. He proved himself remarkably efficient. There was that word again: remarkably. He was, to a note, remarkable. And she was as hot-blooded as any other human could be.
Logan was thoroughly amused. Up until now, Peggy had remained thoroughly composed and on point. It was refreshing to see that she was, like any other person, completely capable of being irritated and losing her temper. He was more disappointed she had managed to compose herself, but he'd seen it in her eyes.
With a shake of his head and a snicker, he finally shrugged in helpless defeat. "It's cuz I'm Canadian, ain't it? Too much French in me fer all that received Britishing."
Well. He was soon treated to another dip in her poise. "Canadian--?" Peggy queried, surprised to learn the SSR's meagre file on the man had missed even that much. She'd met him once in France and had assumed (rather earnestly) that he was with the Americans. Truthfully, this gap in her intelligence seemed to bother her miles more than his sarcastic advances.
Her lip curled. "Well. I suppose that explains the smell."
An odor that seemed to be thick with alcohol, sweat, dirt and grime, blood, and the still lingering taste of alien in his mouth. He might have murdered someone now for the chance at something to clear his mouth out, which was surprising for a man who never needed to clean his teeth.
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munebox2015-05-16 10:12 pm
no subject
Peggy asked the question that didn't need answering. Merely looking at the bit-of-flesh gave her all the information she need, and yet she still plucked it gingerly from his hand and gave it a proper squint in the almost-dawn light. More and more of it was spilling into the valley with ever minute. The tentacle twitched still, thrumming along to a beat she soon realized came in concert with her own pulse. Perturbed, she let the appendage drop.
"Likely native. Or else another opportunist of the same calibre as you and I. I'm not certain which possibility I prefer least. Although--" Peggy paused. Watched him. "Can you describe it?"
Perhaps she wanted to know the dimensions of whatever creature could do that to him.
no subject
"Big. Ten feet tall at least. Thin and wiry, more leg and arm than anything else. The bastard didn't seem to have a face. Just three of these things in its chest. But he was fast. I ain't ever seen anything move that fast. The goddamn thing tried to french me."
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"Our absentee landlords," she decided. Hosts; citizens; aliens, perhaps. So long as she wasn't looking at him, she could keep a kind of calm certainty about her words. Sentimentality was kept at bay. "--French...?" The SSR agent didn't bother turning her gaze while she worked through Logan's complaint. She damn well knew what such a kiss was, but her mind was at work and work had nothing to do with kissing. She sighed her mild hindsight's amusement through her nose when she realized the what exact wry comment Logan had been trying to make.
"I don't fancy a snog like that," she answered -- implying (of course) that the creature's affections had left him rather worse for wear. Perhaps she didn't yet understand the probing appendage had caused the kerfuffle, rather than assuming it had been the kerfuffle entire. "Bloody continental, isn't it? Kissing on the cheek when one first meets. Awful. Do you know which way it went?"
At long last she turned, leaning heavily upon the rifle.
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"Up there." Logan pointed a bloodsoaked hand up the steep incline above the river. How the creature had made it up there so fast he could not say, but the two of them certainly wouldn't be doing it without the use of some rope and climbing. "The bastard's in a hurry. Probably warning his buddies."
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Peggy clucked her tongue. Hurried was the last word she could ever hope to use to describe the nature of their theoretical pursuit. If he was right -- if this was some sort of forward scout now rushing back to raise an alarm -- then they might be overrun in due time. Only she'd thought the city was meant to be abandoned. Life-signatures clocking in at next to nothing. Only birds, Howard had assured her. Birds and rats and whatever vermin persist after the death of civilization.
"Then we should work on not being here when it returns. Can you--" she softened. It was one thing to know a man healed quickly, and quite another to take it on faith that he was ready to but out. Her own bruises were showing purple and blue on her cheek, and there was a stiffness in her body that couldn't quite be argued with. But she'd move, if she had to.
And had to trust that he would too.
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"I can move. But you ain't lookin' so hot right now."
He did not doubt she would make a solid effort of it, but she would certainly be slowing them down. Cut her loose, runt. The thought came without bidding and he worked his hand in and out of a fist. The two of them were in it for the long run.
no subject
Peggy turned on one heel and started her careful walk back towards the cave's mouth. Their makeshift bed -- she thought of it almost with sentimentality, she found -- would have to be packed away into their satchels. Stored. Any hint of their presence scrubbed from the earth, and then (contrary to what Logan hypothesized) Peggy would want them venturing deeper into the city itself. Perhaps not by the higher road, for she didn't relish the thought of the climb. But so long as the river-bed could be followed in a direction that was once up-stream, she wondered if they might not locate a better point of egress.
"I can manage. And I'll manage better yet with a gentlemanly arm, which I have every scrap of faith will be offered me once we begin again--"
The sweetness -- the warmth -- of the night had seeped away. Horror and her unwavering sense of duty had shoved affection rudely aside, so that the steady tap-tap of her pulse as he'd caressed her neck and ear was a forceful but distant memory. Kept under lock and key for both their sakes.
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By the time he had shouldered the supplies again, it already felt as though they'd taken too long. Just as she'd suggested, he presented himself as a solid support to hold and lean onto. "Going back the way we came'll take hours. More with it darkening. Could be worth risking going forward. It's gotta level out eventually."
He might have been the hardier of the two, but she was still the one in command. Logan was, as ever, a soldier.
no subject
"You're right," she conceded. And found the courage to lock her fingers up with his. Arm curled 'round his elbow, and her weight favoured onto the side where he was helping her. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yes?"
A bluster of good old British pliancy found its way back into her speech: justifying risk by imagining the reward.
no subject
"Kinda thinkin' we're lookin' at the raw end of that metaphor." A man who could recover from anything ought to have had a more optimistic perspective, but his ability to survive this mess did not mean that they would come to a good end.
no subject
She had no fuller name for him than that. Or -- the SSR had its guesses. Aliases used over time, perhaps. But nothing concrete. But when Peggy wanted to put a bit of emotional distance between herself and someone, she fell back upon the easiest method: Misters. Ma'ams. Ranks.
"But there is great potentiality to be found in all that's raw. Even metaphors. I'll take raw over rancid any day."
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If aliens were among them -- if they lived, breathed, ate, and ruled still in these lands -- then Peggy and Logan might experience something of a windfall. Provided the strange creature he described ate anything remotely digestible by humans.
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The prospect of finding sustenance was a welcome one and it would be one area which Logan could prove exceptionally useful, even if he did not particularly relish the idea of becoming Peggy's food taster. But that was going to be later before it was sooner, because the way ahead was long and there path was going to be slow going. Because the river seemed to be at always a constant curve, it was impossible to tell if there was any place to climb until the wall of rock and dirt was right in front of them.
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"More like -- here's hoping its tussle with you made it think twice about taking a second taste."
Whatever else she might say about Logan, he was something of an excellent shield. A bunker of a man: broad and strong and resilient. And (apart from a bit of prickle around his edges) shockingly gentlemanly. Even his soft caresses of the previous evening had brought with them an overwhelming sense of care. Of attentiveness -- not hunger; not need.
no subject
With bullets, he might stand a chance against this alien creature. But in a physical confrontation, Logan would be turned into putty again. He might live through that, but he knew Peggy wouldn't. He did not fear the creature, but he had no idea how they were supposed to take it down if it came to that.
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She leaned a little heavier upon his arm. All so she could swing the rifle so its muzzle pointed forward. Optimism was not her best colour, but they were two desperate souls in a dreary situation. Misery would suit them even less, and Peggy felt confident about how she handled a long-arm. Paired together, they must be all the more effective than the mere sum of their parts. Teamwork did not come naturally to the SSR agent, but she'd felt it forced upon her often enough over the past year. She'd taken a shining to it.
"While not a banner victory, it counts for something." She let the rifle drop and it resumed its secondary existence as another crutch. "I mean to say -- I'm...glad to see you survived it."
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He snorted. "Right. There ain't getting far without the code handy."
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She tipped her hand to that impression. There wasn't any practicality in hiding it: she needed him. Perhaps far more than he ever needed her. It would be foolish to downplay the dire nature of that need, as well as its manipulative design.
"But gladness doesn't require only one source, Mister Logan. Gladness can be something manifold and...diverse."
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"Alright, alright. You'll get your snogging later. Damn if ain't hard being the only man on this world."
1/2
-- At first, she looked livid. Eyes brightening in righteous anger. There was no denying he'd struck a nerve. And perhaps it was a miracle she managed not to shove away from his solid support and make another turn of it hobbling along on her own. But that had been a costly protest, last time. And besides, Peggy wasn't a precise stranger to this kind of chatter.
2/2
Did Peggy dislike the brute? Not at all. He proved himself remarkably efficient. There was that word again: remarkably. He was, to a note, remarkable. And she was as hot-blooded as any other human could be.
"Spare your snogs for our curious friends."
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With a shake of his head and a snicker, he finally shrugged in helpless defeat. "It's cuz I'm Canadian, ain't it? Too much French in me fer all that received Britishing."
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Her lip curled. "Well. I suppose that explains the smell."
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An odor that seemed to be thick with alcohol, sweat, dirt and grime, blood, and the still lingering taste of alien in his mouth. He might have murdered someone now for the chance at something to clear his mouth out, which was surprising for a man who never needed to clean his teeth.
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