El!
El has been with the site for nearly two years now and has continued to prove her value. Currently, she is heading up our site event, Battle for Liberterram, on top of keeping up with her own personal plots.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peggy Carter!
Lux's posts are all wonderful to read. She has done a wonderful job of grasping the new universe and incorporating Peggy into it.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peter Parker!
It's good to see Spidey back on the site. Watching him deal with the universe shift in his own snarky way has been nothing short of entertaining.
THREAD
SPOTLIGHT
Eight O'Clock on the Dot!
El and Lux are making magic in this thread. Straight up fireworks, and the way they've played with drawing out the reveal is top class.
The size of the estate could house a small town, and the amount of food being served in the ballroom could probably feed it for an entire year. It was a bit of a sobering thought, considering that this charity ball was meant to raise money to support a rural area in the Shadow Province that had been nearly destroyed by tumultuous typhoons. The rich and the famous had been invited, and while Peggy was neither, it was apparently part of her job to attend such events. It wasn't all bad; she liked the dressing up aspect and being able sample exquisite delicacies she could not otherwise afford, but she found the socialising aspect rather tiresome--and, after her horrendous first meeting with New England's Head of State, Howard Stark, incredibly unpleasant.
"Thank you very much for your concern, Senator, but I assure you, I'm quite fine,"she said, forcing a saccharine smile when yet another party guest came over to inquire about her wellbeing. "Something must've gotten into my eye while Mr Stark and I shook hands, but it's all clear now and I'm as right as rain."
It was a shoddy, half-baked excuse, but it was the only suitable one she could think of; everyone would think she was mad if she told the truth, which was that she'd no idea why she'd started to cry while she and the Head of State shook hands. Her abrupt outbreak of emotion had caused quite a stir, and Peggy hadn't even noticed her cheeks were wet until someone had handed her a handkerchief and asked if she was alright.
Even now, a couple of hours later, as Peggy stood by the buffet table and inconspicuously tried to hide behind an ostentatious chocolate fountain, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something intimately familiar about the older gentleman, even though she was sure it had been the first time they'd met. She briefly considered the possibility that they might have once met in a past life, but having never a believer of reincarnation, she quickly dismissed the idea.
The musical entertainment included a brass quartet, which had struck up a lively jazz number that inspired a few guests to head to the dance floor. Peggy remained at the buffet table, though her toes tapped in time to the beat. Finally, she could stand it no longer, and decided that, to hell with it, she was going to enjoy herself. Draining the champagne in her glass and depositing it on a passing waiter's empty tray, she made her way towards the first man she saw. His back was facing her, so she tapped him lightly on the shoulder to get his attention.
"Shall we dance?" she asked him pleasantly, right before she managed to get a good look at his face.
Notes: ugh sorry this took so long Tagged:Peggy Carter
Tony really, truly hated these things. It didn't help that this time he'd been dragged here by his Father instead of Pepper, leaving him awkwardly standing around while trying to avoid the man. He still couldn't quite make himself interact with the man without feeling like he was being torn apart by confusion, anger, sadness, and relief.
He didn't really know what to make of that last one, especially. Hence the avoidance.
Currently, he was standing off to the side of the room, mournfully staring into his glass of water. He really wasn't used to dealing with these things without the assistance of alcohol yet, and that meant that he was having a difficult time keeping himself from the liquor. He'd made sure that the entire waitstaff knew to keep him away from everything alcoholic as a backup and he was beginning to get incredibly antsy over the whole thing. Man, he needed a drink.
Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he turned towards it, eyes going wide as he took in the woman's face. "Aunt Peggy!" he exclaimed before he could stop himself. The way that he remembered the woman in front of him was with more wrinkles on her face, but it was unmistakably her. He cleared his throat a little. "Er... sorry... I... you look like one of my dad's old war buddies," he said, trying to explain the awkward reaction away. He'd never met her in this world. She'd been asleep or something, from what Howard had told him. Whatever. Didn't matter. This was becoming awkward. Or already was. Or something.
"Uh. Dancing. We can... do that," he added. Yeah, that wouldn't be awkward at all. Aunt Peggy had taught him how to dance at one point, so it was just like that. Or something. He drained his glass or water and sighed, wishing it had been alcohol and staring down at it. "Sorry," he apologized again, with a smile in her direction, as he set it aside, "I just stopped drinking and its making me a little jumpy."
Aunt what? Peggy stared at him, her expression teetering between offence and confusion. It didn't help at all that he looked as familiar to her as she apparently did to him--the obvious self-assurance of his stance, the smoothed tufts of short, dark hair (over-styled, in her opinion), the sparkle of humour, wit, and intelligence in his eyes--all of it culminating together into a single word, a name, that Peggy could practically taste on the tip of her tongue. But his next statement distracted her, and the almost-memory slipped away.
"Your father's war buddy is also named Peggy?" she asked, her expression sceptical. The excuse seemed rather convenient, and he didn't look terribly convinced of it himself.
She was starting to rethink her invitation of dancing when he hastily accepted it, downing his drink so he could free his hands. But when he explained that he'd recently abstaining from alcohol, her features softened and her once hard gaze melted into sympathy. She'd been there once, except her vice had been smoking. Peggy didn't remember why she'd quit, but she remembered how it'd felt, and how it still felt, sometimes.
(Peggy had quit smoking not long after the war. Her landlady at the time, the irrefutably prim and proper Miss Miriam Fry, deemed the habit grossly unladylike and banned the practice, evicting tenants if she'd detected even the slightest scent of smoke on their persons. Peggy, who'd run out of places to live by this point, decided this was one rule not worth arguing over.)
"Then the exercise will do you some good,"she said briskly, taking his hand to lead him towards the dance floor. Sidling between two pairs of foreign dignitaries and their spouses, Peggy rested one arm on her partner's shoulder and held up her other hand for him to take.
"Now, then," she continued, once she'd settled into the rhythm of the music, "with whom do I have the pleasure of this dance, and what other crippling substances should you be kept away from?" Her tone was playful rather than judgemental, and the smile and slight quirk in her eyebrow helped indicate that she was joking. Her dark sense of humour was perhaps unfitting for someone in a position such as hers, but sometimes, it was all she could rely on to get her through the day--or night, or this terribly awkward party.
"Uh. Yeah. She was," Tony replied, considering motioning in Howard's direction before deciding against it. He'd tell her eventually where the non-mix-up mix-up came from, but for now he was a bit curious to figure out what Peggy was like before she was his Aunt Peggy. He gave her the patented Stark smirk as he stood up a bit straighter.
The sympathetic look she gave him had his lips quirking into something more akin to a real smile. "I suppose it will, won't it?" he replied easily, offering his hand to her so they could go to the dance floor. He easily slid his hands into place, one grasping hers and the other resting gently on her waist.
He laughed - something real that had his eyes crinkling in amusement - as she spoke again, shaking his head a bit. "Just the alcohol for me. Tried some pretty shady drugs in college, but grew out of that phase pretty quickly," he replied, lips still giving an amused quirk.
It took a little longer for him to work his way into an answer to the first question. "Ah. I believe you know my Father," he replied, nodding in Howard's direction where he was schmoozing with dignitaries and whatnot. "Hence the 'Aunt Peggy' part of this conversation. Sorry about that. You feature in a great many old war stories," he added in explanation
"Tony Stark. Nice to meet you, Peggy Carter," he said, dance steps not faltering while he spoke. It was actually kinda nice to be doing something aside from standing around in boredom at one of these events, now that he was thinking about it. Even if it was a little strange to be dancing with Cap's ex-flame.
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