Peggy Carter (Hunger Games AU) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
impaledqueen) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2015-05-30 07:35 pm
impaledqueen) wrote in thecapitol2015-05-30 07:35 pm
But if to live, we have to be numb
Who| Peggy and You
What| The spitting image of her dead best friend/only love is now running scared in the arena with the spitting image of her not-so-dead best friend chasing him. This has caused serious flashbacks and unearthed a lot of repressed trauma. Peggy deals with this by destroying her body with the gym.
Where| Training Center
When| After the Arena begins
Warnings/Notes| Discussion of trauma, addiction to exercise, possible mentions of bidding (but that's not in the header and threads with it will be labeled)
Peggy has a very rigid schedule that no one can get her to deviate from. Two and a half hours of exercise in the morning. Two hours in the evening. Two hours midday. Minimum. Even if she has to skip meals or cut into her ability to sleep, she will do that minimum every day. When she can't, she gets moody and anxious and very unpleasant to deal with.
This is well beyond her minimum. She's getting into her fifth consecutive hour with only the bare essentials of hydration and skipping her meals. She's covered in sweat. Her throat is dry. Her muscles have gone past the point of pain. She's forgotten about things like eating and drinking, only remembering to drink from her water bottle when the pain in her throat gets searing. She picked a time when the gym wasn't crowded, but it doesn't stay that way, and people are coming in.
To those who don't know her, it looks normal. She's wearing a little bit of waterproof makeup so the sweat doesn't make her look too unseemly, and she just seems to be deep in an intense workout. To those who do know her, there's something very wrong. The biggest sign of that is that she's not wearing one of her signature scarves. The scar on her throat is knotted, mottled, and exposed to the world. She had to take it off to keep her neck cool. She never takes it off unless she's getting into a spar or working with heavy equipment.
What| The spitting image of her dead best friend/only love is now running scared in the arena with the spitting image of her not-so-dead best friend chasing him. This has caused serious flashbacks and unearthed a lot of repressed trauma. Peggy deals with this by destroying her body with the gym.
Where| Training Center
When| After the Arena begins
Warnings/Notes| Discussion of trauma, addiction to exercise, possible mentions of bidding (but that's not in the header and threads with it will be labeled)
Peggy has a very rigid schedule that no one can get her to deviate from. Two and a half hours of exercise in the morning. Two hours in the evening. Two hours midday. Minimum. Even if she has to skip meals or cut into her ability to sleep, she will do that minimum every day. When she can't, she gets moody and anxious and very unpleasant to deal with.
This is well beyond her minimum. She's getting into her fifth consecutive hour with only the bare essentials of hydration and skipping her meals. She's covered in sweat. Her throat is dry. Her muscles have gone past the point of pain. She's forgotten about things like eating and drinking, only remembering to drink from her water bottle when the pain in her throat gets searing. She picked a time when the gym wasn't crowded, but it doesn't stay that way, and people are coming in.
To those who don't know her, it looks normal. She's wearing a little bit of waterproof makeup so the sweat doesn't make her look too unseemly, and she just seems to be deep in an intense workout. To those who do know her, there's something very wrong. The biggest sign of that is that she's not wearing one of her signature scarves. The scar on her throat is knotted, mottled, and exposed to the world. She had to take it off to keep her neck cool. She never takes it off unless she's getting into a spar or working with heavy equipment.
no subject
She doesn't know what's up with him. She turns back to the punching bag and starts pounding it.
"Is this the first time you're aware of me being here?"
no subject
It's not the same woman. This isn't his aunt from his child hood. Not the woman who would give him little treats and ask him how he was when he she came to visit.
"I was barely aware of who was in the last arena." Really he doesn't pay all that much attention to anyone outside his sphere of influence.
no subject
At the very least, he should know the other mentors. They're the people he needs to compete with.
"I'm Peggy Carter. I won the 67th Hunger Games." Now it's almost an afterthought to introduce herself as she increases the power behind her punches against the bag.
no subject
An exaggeration really, he knew their names. If he really tried he could name them, he just didn't care enough about them for them to be ready memories for him.
He shakes his head when she introduced herself, not that he technically needed it he guessed. He wants to be relieved it's not the Peggy he knows, but it still bugs him because of how much she still acts like the woman from his past. Back when she had all her memories, before she would just talk off in a daze about his dad and all the things they did even though the stories where getting more incorrect over time before she would realise she wasn't talking to Howard like she had thought and look so lost.
Not just looking the same but having the same name, in Tony's eyes felt like a cruel joke.
"Has it. Always been that? I mean you didn't decided to change it to that in say, the last year or so? And I'm not talking about going from Margaret to Peggy. I'm saying the whole name... And look... Accent"
Because Tony just can't let somethings go.
no subject
But something else he says catches her interest. She furrows her brow, the force of her punches increasing. "You had no idea who I was, and you know that my given name is Margaret?" It's not exactly a secret, but it's also not widely known. People just don't care about little things like that in the Capitol. Maybe he's paying closer attention to the other mentors than she thought. All she knows is that he's asking a lot of really weird questions. "Yes, my name has always been mine, as has everything else. Do you ask this of everyone you meet?"
no subject
"Not really that uncommon." He says quietly with a slight shoulder shrug. "A lot of Peggy's start as Margaret. At least, they used to. I don't know about now I think it's mostly Maggie? I think there's a Margret in accounting?" He licks his lips and redirects his thoughts. "There was woman I knew, when I was a kid. Peggy Carter, heard she had one hell of a right hook." He nods towards the punching bag. "She is why I know that Peggy's are also called Margaret. And that I know exactly how you'd look in pin curls, a pencil skirt and strong red lipstick."
He speaks like he knows exactly what he's talking about, being that he's Tony Stark of course he knows what he's talking about.
"Also, not everyone I meet reminds me of boiled sweets and pats on the head when I was six.
no subject
She catches the bag again, turning his head to look at his face. She searches his expression, trying to find some sign of trickery. She sees none. "...You're from the same world as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes." She knew that before, but she hadn't considered the implications. "There's a version of Peggy Carter there as well?" The thought of some version of her, walking around, indulging a small billionaire with pats and treats between work, is a strange one.
no subject
"It's popular in England. Or at least it was. I didn't really spend a lot of time remembering names when I visited. Uh. It's a country. Back... In my world."
He raises an eyebrow and leans back just that little bit when she scrutinizes his face. Far more used to getting into other peoples personal spaces than he is with people getting into his. But in the end he nods when she mentions Steve and Bucky.
"Last time I looked. Yeah. I mean, I work with Steve. Never met Barnes before this, thought he was dead. Well Steve was dead to me until a few years ago." He gives a pause before slipping his hands into his pocket slowly. "Wouldn't be looking so shocked to see you if there wasn't.... Well the age is probably throwing me more than anything else."
no subject
That's the most delicate way she can put it.
"I imagine anyone from their time would be quite old." Including her. Which meant her counterpart had been left behind by her boys. Just like her.
At least some things never change, even across universes.
"How do I--how does she know you in your world?" Maybe when she is old and grey, she'll know a little boy named Tony Stark. So far, the universes reflect each other at least in relationships.
no subject
Tony says by way of explaining where Steve and Bucky fit in along with how his Peggy was connected to him. And if the stories were anything to go by, Howard really hadn't interacted with Bucky much before the younger man fell to his theoretical doom. But at the same time, Tony only assumed Steve was Howard's friend from how he spoke about him, and spent no small amount of money on finding his body. He assumed Peggy was his friend because she was at least around the house often enough for Tony to at least remember her.
no subject
How strange. Is that what she will be one day? Will she be wandering around with a man named Howard, meeting his son? Will she be without Steve and Bucky for decades upon decades?
"How did she treat you?" What was she like?
no subject
"He helped develop a lot of things that helped you win the war." he says with a mixture of pride and dismissal.
But at the thought of how his Peggy treated him, he gives a slight smile, before looking around then moving to sit on a bench near them.
"Uh. I mean it was a long time ago. I'm going to start with sweet, like a better Mary Poppins. She'd scold you one minute, then sit you down for tea the next."
Sure, he sounds a little vague about it, but remembering is hard past 'she was amazing' but it feels weird for Tony to gush like that to her doppelganger. He crosses his arms and leans back a bit.
"She was probably considered the perfect English mom."
She wasn't over that often, but even at a young age Tony could tell she was better at being a mother than his own was.
no subject
Seeing that dreamy expression on his face as he described someone who was basically her in another world is strange. Even so, she feels drawn to it.
She slowly releases her punching bag, but she doesn't move away from it yet. "I find that hard to imagine. I don't intend to have children." At least not unless the Capitol is destroyed and the Hunger Games abolished. "She was a mother. And she was your..." Aunt? Babysitter? (Was she actually this man's mother?)