Fic: "Moving Pictures", Agent Carter/Timeless, Rated T, Angie/Lucy, Rufus, Howard
Moving Pictures (3670 words) by lilacsigil
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Agent Carter (TV), Timeless (TV 2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Angie Martinelli/Lucy Preston
Characters: Lucy Preston, Rufus Carlin, Angie Martinelli, Howard Stark, Wyatt Logan
Additional Tags: background Howard Stark/Jason Wilkes, Hollywood
Summary:
A mission to 19th Century Los Angeles goes wrong and the team is stuck in 1955. Lucy's horrible hoop skirt tumbles her right into Angie Martinelli's arms and queer history comes to life.
Written for
shopfront for
ssrconfidential 2018, run by
sholio.
"This crinoline is driving me crazy," Lucy muttered, trying to stop it smothering Wyatt in the tight confines of the time capsule.
"Me first!" Wyatt's voice was somewhat muffled by the layers of fabric in his face.
Lucy tried to catch hold of the hoop. "At least you'll be free of it when we arrive in 1870! I made sure there was flame retardant on the skirt. Do you know how many women died in these?"
"Guys?" Rufus was starting at the display. "There's a problem."
"Is it Flynn?" Wyatt managed to struggle free from the excess fabric for a moment.
"Could be. We made it to Los Angeles no problem, but instead of being in a convenient valley in 1870, we seem to be in a warehouse in 1955."
Wyatt frowned and Lucy knew what he was thinking: Flynn had far too much access to their program via Anthony, and it was putting them all in danger.
He cleared his throat. "Okay, is it safe to snap back to the present and try again?"
"Whatever pulled us off course is also draining our power reserves. We'll have to get out there and see what the hell's happening." Rufus waved at himself. "While dressed like a cattle rancher!"
"Hey, cattle was the main industry of LA in 1870! Where we were meant to be," Lucy protested, and began freeing herself from the safety harness, significantly impeded by her hoop skirt. "At least I won't have to wear this for long!"
Lucy emerged first since the other two simply couldn't get past her, and carefully surveyed the scene. No-one was present, though she could dimly hear voices outside somewhere. There were crates everywhere, stacks of small railway tracks, and huge movie set keg lights, though they were turned off and the actual light came from the high-up windows.
"It looks like we're on a movie back lot!" she called out. Wyatt and Rufus quickly followed her from the capsule. "Maybe we should look for some different costumes?"
"Okay, you guys get us clothes, I'll try to work out what's draining our power." Rufus opened his battered old 1870s-appropriate leather bag and set up a monitoring device. "Man, it's nice to be somewhere with electricity! Once we solve the power problem we can easily charge up again."
"That's some good news," Wyatt agreed. "Okay, let's look for clothes and maybe something we can pawn if we need cash. I'm guessing the money we brought isn't any good?"
"No, sorry," Lucy said, searching through the rows of crates. "And I can't think of why Flynn would want us in 1955 Los Angeles, either."
"Maybe he doesn't!" Rufus interjected from over at the time capsule.
Lucy nodded. "More that he doesn't want us in 1870?"
"Yeah, exactly. It's definitely something set up here that pulled us off course. 1955 is early enough that Flynn could set up a reasonably complex device without being noticed - something in the EM band? And late enough that he can access reliable power to keep us here a while."
Wyatt loaded sunglasses and some costume jewellery into the pockets of his long coat. "So Flynn might not even be here himself. That's good news. And once we get out of here, we can go right back to where we meant to go in the first place."
"Which probably means that he's up to something in our time," Lucy muttered, gloomily, then froze as she heard voices close by. "Somebody's coming!" she hissed, and ducked behind the nearest crates.
Wyatt also vanished and Rufus quickly gathered his equipment and climbed back into the time capsule. With any luck, the people unlocking the warehouse doors wouldn't go into that area at all, and even if they did Lucy was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to access it. Unless, of course, it was Flynn's flunkies.
It was not Flynn's flunkies, but a pretty woman in her early thirties, wearing an elegant Katharine Hepburn style pants suit and large sunglasses.
"Told you the big Kliegs would be here!" she said to the two men in overalls beside her.
One of them shook his head. "I don't know how you remember all this stuff, Miss Martinelli. We'll get them down to the set."
Lucy was sure she knew that name. Martinelli, something to do with movies…her voice seemed oddly familiar, but her face not so much. That was unusual for Lucy, since due to the materials she had, it was much more likely for her to know a face or a name than a voice from history.
More importantly, though, the Klieg lights were well away from the time capsule, and there was no reason for the stagehands to go in that direction. They would be passing by Lucy, so she crouched down further and tried to tuck her stupidly large skirt behind the crates, only for the back of the hoop to tip up and knock a crate loose. Lucy stood up and desperately tried to push it back, but the hoop got in her way again and the crate hit the floor with an echoing crash.
Shit, Lucy thought to herself as Miss Martinelli and the two stagehands hurried right over to her unfortunate hiding spot. Worse, the hoop of the skirt was still up in the air and she was very much stuck in the narrow aisle. She'd practiced walking and going to the bathroom in this thing, but she really should have practiced hiding as well.
"Goodness, you're lost!" Miss Martinelli said in some surprise. "You boys go get the lights, I'll help here."
She wrangled Lucy's skirt back to ground level with surprising competence for a woman from nearly a century after the damn things were phased out. "There you go! I was in a Western a couple of years ago and it wasn't quite this bad, but I swear there was enough metal in that thing to start a foundry!"
"Thank you so much!" Lucy was genuinely relieved, and surely one actress - no, that's not where Lucy knew the name - wouldn't be too alarming an opponent. She'd talk her way free soon enough.
"What are you doing all the way over here, Miss -?"
"Pullman. Lucy Pullman," she answered quickly, using an easy-to-remember alias.
"I'm guessing you're meant to be over on the Stark lot filming that historical thing, judging by your clothes? He always spends a lot on the costumes! I'm Angie Martinelli, by the way, second unit director over here on the ABC Paramount lot."
"Oh! Angela Martinelli!" That was how Lucy knew her! Not from history at all, but as a guest presenter at a college seminar on documentary film. She had been an actress and a pioneering early female director, mostly in TV, but in 1980 she put together a series of art-house documentaries on lesbian life in America, with footage dating back to the late 1940s that she had kept hidden for many decades. Since then, she'd put out another one every five years until she retired at 90, along with all her other directing and producing. Lucy could remember being absolutely fascinated by Angela Martinelli with her pink-streaked white hair, her brightly patterned dress and her big laugh. 19-year-old history major Lucy had been outraged at Angela telling them not to hunt for objective truth but to respect their subjects' truths, to build community rather than expose it, but even so the idea had wriggled into her brain the more she read and studied. It was something she thought about a lot, these days, when even what she considered objective truth was shifting beneath her feet. She'd kissed a girl for the first time right after that seminar, too.
"It says Angela on the pay checks, but Angie is fine! Come on, I'll take you back to the Stark lot while these guys get the lights over to my set." She took Lucy's arm and they started walking, the crinoline hoop bouncing as they got out of the narrow aisle then settling into its proper position, at last, a long oval that let Angie walk beside her. "There you go! How did you end up all the way over here?"
"I went to the bathroom, and it took ages, and when I came out everyone had gone," Lucy improvised. It seemed plausible, at least. "So I walked and walked and ended up in there looking for Wardrobe. But when I heard you coming I hid because I didn't want to get in trouble."
Angie patted her hand as they headed out the doors and into the bright LA sunshine. "Don't worry about me, you're more likely to have trouble if you've missed your scene!"
"I'm just a glorified extra, really. But, Angie - how did you go from acting to directing?" Lucy thought she couldn't go wrong asking about things that had already happened.
"Sick of the glamorous life of an actress, hey? You know, I started out on stage, in New York, but a friend moved to LA and asked me to join her, so I did. Got some roles, definitely paid better than the stage…but it wasn't the same thing." She waved to a production crew installing a huge camera on a portable track. "Eddie and Juan are getting the lights now! Be back soon!"
"We've only got the set today and tomorrow!" yelled a woman with a clipboard, but Angie didn't seem concerned.
"We've got to get the light levels up or we're not shooting anything! Tell the actors to keep rehearsing their blocking because if they screw up the murder scene again I'll murder them myself!" Angie yelled back. She turned to Lucy as they kept on towards more long warehouses. "That's my team! They're great! When I was on stage, you know, everyone's a team trying to make a story real. Some people get that from movie acting, too, but not me. It was so isolating, and you don't see the finished movie for forever and a day. But you know who was working together to make it real? The crew. So I learned about cameras and lighting and everything else…" Her sunny expression clouded over. "Of course, there was also an example right in front of me."
"You don't seem very happy about having an example!" Lucy wondered if she was going to get some first-hand gossip about Ida Lupino or one of the few other early women directors.
"No, no, I don't mean as a director. My friend who brought me to LA, she knew someone who'd had a great career. Lead roles, Oscar nominations, all that jazz. And one day the men decided she was too old and that was that. She was a brilliant, brilliant woman and it drove her crazy, I mean literally crazy. And it really got in my head, knowing she deserved better than that. I don't mind smiling on cue and asking prettily and playing dumb sometimes, but I'm not letting them throw me in the garbage." Angie shook her head. "I used to be a waitress, which is acting too, but at least then the performance ends and you get go home to be yourself. Hollywood wants every piece of you, all the time. The only way through is to find a space where you can be yourself. It sounds easy, but I fought hard and, on top of that, I was very lucky."
"Excuse me!" Rufus called out behind them.
"Oh, hi! Another lost extra?" Angie asked, looking at Rufus's costume.
Rufus pointed to Lucy and improvised. "I followed her!"
"I'm so sorry I led you astray," Lucy lied. "This is Angie Martinelli and she's taking us back to the Stark lot where we were meant to be filming. I'm Lucy Pullman, by the way."
"Thanks so much, ma'am! That's the direction I really need to be going. I'm Rufus Carle."
Angie held out a hand for Rufus to shake and he hesitated, which didn't surprise Lucy given some of the other places they'd landed recently. She was about to cover for him, but Angie also saw his doubt and stepped forward to clasp his hand in both of hers, shaking it enthusiastically.
"Nice to meet you, Rufus! Join the crowd!"
As they got closer to the next lot, Lucy could hear a strange noise, a low, repetitive kind of whomping sound. She glanced at Rufus to see if he could hear it too, but then caught sight of Angie's face. She was steaming mad.
"Ugh, that Howard Stark! His friend Doctor Wilkes goes away for two days! Two days! And he's set up that stupid gravity machine he said he wouldn't use!"
"Gravity machine?" Rufus asked, his eyes lighting up. Lucy knew that Howard Stark was a particular hero of his, though she'd forgotten that the late forties to late fifties were Stark's movie mogul period. "And do you mean the inventor, Howard Stark?"
"That's the very guy." Angie picked up their pace to a brisk march. "He's not as terrible as everyone makes out - well, he can be but he's always been nice to me and my friends. But he does like to make things up as he goes along! Since he met Doctor Wilkes it hasn't been so bad. Doctor Wilkes was in a lab accident and now he's a bit more cautious, but he's been invited to give some lectures in Jamaica, at the new university there. So the second he's gone, Howard's firing up that machine again!"
"What machine?" Rufus was desperate for answers, but Angie had already flung open a gate in the tall wire fence and heading across the parched grass of the Stark Industries lot. Lucy and Rufus scurried after her, the weird noise getting louder and louder. They followed her past a warehouse and into a large, paved area, but nobody seemed to be about.
In the middle of the concreted area sat a large device that looked entirely like a satellite dish had been pierced with an old-style TV antenna and stuck on top of a pile of random machinery. It took Lucy a moment to realise what she was seeing: above it floated a car, spinning gently on three axes, surrounded a number of random items: coins, loose cigarettes, a man's hat, nuts and bolts, a dirty coffee mug. Rufus stopped dead and stared in awe, so Lucy had to grab his arm and pull him onwards.
"Howard!" Angie shouted, her voice projecting even above the now-constant whomps and thuds of the strange machine.
"Hello there, Angie! And your lovely but anachronistic friend!"
Lucy was horribly startled until she remembered that she was dressed for the 1870s. As his floating car rotated back towards them, Howard Stark slowly came into view. He was sitting casually in the driver's seat, not hanging on even though the car was completely upside-down right now, making notes in a grubby, oil-stained notebook. He was so composed - his hair and clothes perfectly in place - that Lucy had to blink a few times to convince herself that she was the one who was the right way up.
Angie stomped right over to him. "Should we be taking cover? Because I seem to remember the last time you activated this machine you nearly killed both Jarvis and that horrible flamingo!"
"I seem to recall Jarvis saying it would be worth it," Howard muttered, but he stepped out of the car and pushed off it, gliding gently towards the ground then suddenly dropping the last six inches to land on his feet. "But don't worry, I've solved the problem!"
"Is the problem what happens when you shut down the field?" Rufus butted in, unable to stop himself. "You've artificially isolated that sphere relative to the machine, but the moment you turn it off, they're going to keep on moving at the speed of the earth's rotation."
Howard's eyes lit up as he turned to look at him, and Rufus dashed forward to shake his hand, too thrilled to be cautious this time. Rufus's face was a picture of delight and Lucy couldn't bring herself to get in his way.
Fortunately, Howard seemed entirely flattered. "A fellow engineer! What are you doing wasting your time as a movie extra? Do you need a job?" Without pausing for Rufus's answer, he reached out and snatched a cigarette from the sphere in a move that Lucy was entirely sure he had designed to impress. "My esteemed colleague Dr Wilkes told me not to set up my gravity machine again until I'd solved the power drain issue, so -"
Angie interrupted. "I believe Jason's exact words were 'Until you've solved the power drain issue, and I get back from the Caribbean.'"
"Yes, that is what he said…but anyway, we weren't shooting today, so I couldn't resist. See, I even set it up where there was no-one to get hurt!" Howard beamed with pride. Angie side-eyed Lucy and Rufus at the mention of not shooting today, but she didn't say anything.
Lucy frowned. "So, this power problem, could it be perhaps pulling power from other things?"
"Like my lights!" Angie asked.
"Or my, uh, work!" Rufus followed, belatedly covering up.
"But Angie, your set is nearly half a mile from here, it couldn't be…" He glanced at his notebook.
"I think it could," Rufus argued. "Let me look at your power consumption figures. You can't possibly have a secure supply from the equipment you've got here. No wonder you're draining everything else to maintain it!"
They went into a huddle over the notebook, Howard scribbling things out and jotting down new figures as they went.
"You're an extra, huh. On a day when Howard's not even shooting." Angie said to Lucy, dryly.
"Sorry," Lucy told her, feeling more ashamed about the lie than she really should be, considering that they were on a mission. "I had to come up with something."
"You're with the government, aren't you?" She wagged a finger at Lucy. "Don't deny it, I know the signs. If you're investigating Howard after that HUAC nonsense, don't bother."
"It's nothing to do with that," Lucy said, truthfully. "It's actually this device we're here about, but that's more Rufus's field."
Angie sighed. "I can't wait for Jason to get back. He's much more sensible than Howard - well, most people are, but he doesn't listen to just anyone."
"Are Howard and Jason, uh, friends?" Lucy asked, suddenly realising the undertones of what Angie was saying.
Angie clamped her mouth shut and shook her head, then sighed. "I don't think that's for me to say. Or for you to ask, Miss Government Agent."
Lucy quickly backtracked, remembering the time they were in. "Oh, I didn't mean…I wouldn't…" and half to prevent her stupid and anachronistic apology lasting another moment, half because she want to, leaned forward and kissed Angie on the lips.
Angie kissed her back for half a second, then broke away and glanced about suspiciously before shrugging and throwing her arms around Lucy's shoulders. "I can always say you started it!"
Lucy laughed and kept kissing her, feeling Angie's bright lipstick transferring to her own lips. It was a relief not to be lying, even by omission, to be fully in the moment for the first time in a long time. Maybe it should feel strange that it was Angela Martinelli here with her, but instead it felt more like a completed circle.
"Uh, Lucy?" Rufus's voice broke through to her.
"Go ahead, don't mind me," Howard added, and that definitely made Angie break it off.
"You gonna put on a show for me, sometime?" she snapped, and at Howard's delighted expression, held up a hand. "No, Howard, please don't take me up on that."
Rufus cleared his throat. "We've solved the power issues, and we can shut the device down safely. Turns out that there's a machine in the vicinity that can provide enough power to slowly turn down the field so we don't all end up punctured by a penny at 460 metres per second."
Howard pouted. "He won't tell me what it is, though."
"It's classified!" Rufus and Lucy said at the same time, and Angie laughed.
"Nice to see that one turned back on you, Howard!"
With the massive energy from the time capsule available to Howard's machine, it slowed down and shut off with a sad thunk, which Lucy thought highly preferable to a high-speed blast of shrapnel.
"Please show me your energy source," Howard begged Rufus, offering him, in order, money, the best night of his life, a job and a look at his lab. Rufus looked terribly torn at the last, but Lucy stood firm.
"No, absolutely not. And if you try to follow us I'll have to shoot you."
Strangely enough, that finally stopped Howard in his tracks, and made Angie giggle.
"I'm surprised that worked!" Lucy whispered to her. "He doesn't seem the type to be bothered by threats."
"Oh, anyone who's met my friend Peggy knows never to call an armed woman's bluff."
Leaving Howard behind, all but dragging Rufus away, Lucy and Angie headed back over to the ABC Paramount lot.
Angie kept her arm in Lucy's. "We probably won't even need those extra lights now that you've put a stop to the Stark Menace. Nearly an hour's shooting lost! I should send him a bill!"
"You probably should," Lucy agreed, enjoying the human contact now that she didn't have to lie to Angie any longer. As they came around the back of the warehouse where Wyatt and the time capsule awaited, Lucy put a hand on Angie's cheek. "Thank you."
"For tracking down Howard? No problem."
"More for reminding me to be myself. It's easy to get lost in a role sometimes."
Angie kissed her again, just lightly. "You hang on to your truth, okay? See you round, Lucy Pullman."
"I'm sure you will," Lucy smiled, and let Angie go, off into her future.
This entry was originally posted at https://lilacsigil.dreamwidth.org/101312.html - comments are welcome at either location.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Agent Carter (TV), Timeless (TV 2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Angie Martinelli/Lucy Preston
Characters: Lucy Preston, Rufus Carlin, Angie Martinelli, Howard Stark, Wyatt Logan
Additional Tags: background Howard Stark/Jason Wilkes, Hollywood
Summary:
A mission to 19th Century Los Angeles goes wrong and the team is stuck in 1955. Lucy's horrible hoop skirt tumbles her right into Angie Martinelli's arms and queer history comes to life.
Written for
shopfront for
ssrconfidential 2018, run by
sholio.
"This crinoline is driving me crazy," Lucy muttered, trying to stop it smothering Wyatt in the tight confines of the time capsule.
"Me first!" Wyatt's voice was somewhat muffled by the layers of fabric in his face.
Lucy tried to catch hold of the hoop. "At least you'll be free of it when we arrive in 1870! I made sure there was flame retardant on the skirt. Do you know how many women died in these?"
"Guys?" Rufus was starting at the display. "There's a problem."
"Is it Flynn?" Wyatt managed to struggle free from the excess fabric for a moment.
"Could be. We made it to Los Angeles no problem, but instead of being in a convenient valley in 1870, we seem to be in a warehouse in 1955."
Wyatt frowned and Lucy knew what he was thinking: Flynn had far too much access to their program via Anthony, and it was putting them all in danger.
He cleared his throat. "Okay, is it safe to snap back to the present and try again?"
"Whatever pulled us off course is also draining our power reserves. We'll have to get out there and see what the hell's happening." Rufus waved at himself. "While dressed like a cattle rancher!"
"Hey, cattle was the main industry of LA in 1870! Where we were meant to be," Lucy protested, and began freeing herself from the safety harness, significantly impeded by her hoop skirt. "At least I won't have to wear this for long!"
Lucy emerged first since the other two simply couldn't get past her, and carefully surveyed the scene. No-one was present, though she could dimly hear voices outside somewhere. There were crates everywhere, stacks of small railway tracks, and huge movie set keg lights, though they were turned off and the actual light came from the high-up windows.
"It looks like we're on a movie back lot!" she called out. Wyatt and Rufus quickly followed her from the capsule. "Maybe we should look for some different costumes?"
"Okay, you guys get us clothes, I'll try to work out what's draining our power." Rufus opened his battered old 1870s-appropriate leather bag and set up a monitoring device. "Man, it's nice to be somewhere with electricity! Once we solve the power problem we can easily charge up again."
"That's some good news," Wyatt agreed. "Okay, let's look for clothes and maybe something we can pawn if we need cash. I'm guessing the money we brought isn't any good?"
"No, sorry," Lucy said, searching through the rows of crates. "And I can't think of why Flynn would want us in 1955 Los Angeles, either."
"Maybe he doesn't!" Rufus interjected from over at the time capsule.
Lucy nodded. "More that he doesn't want us in 1870?"
"Yeah, exactly. It's definitely something set up here that pulled us off course. 1955 is early enough that Flynn could set up a reasonably complex device without being noticed - something in the EM band? And late enough that he can access reliable power to keep us here a while."
Wyatt loaded sunglasses and some costume jewellery into the pockets of his long coat. "So Flynn might not even be here himself. That's good news. And once we get out of here, we can go right back to where we meant to go in the first place."
"Which probably means that he's up to something in our time," Lucy muttered, gloomily, then froze as she heard voices close by. "Somebody's coming!" she hissed, and ducked behind the nearest crates.
Wyatt also vanished and Rufus quickly gathered his equipment and climbed back into the time capsule. With any luck, the people unlocking the warehouse doors wouldn't go into that area at all, and even if they did Lucy was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to access it. Unless, of course, it was Flynn's flunkies.
It was not Flynn's flunkies, but a pretty woman in her early thirties, wearing an elegant Katharine Hepburn style pants suit and large sunglasses.
"Told you the big Kliegs would be here!" she said to the two men in overalls beside her.
One of them shook his head. "I don't know how you remember all this stuff, Miss Martinelli. We'll get them down to the set."
Lucy was sure she knew that name. Martinelli, something to do with movies…her voice seemed oddly familiar, but her face not so much. That was unusual for Lucy, since due to the materials she had, it was much more likely for her to know a face or a name than a voice from history.
More importantly, though, the Klieg lights were well away from the time capsule, and there was no reason for the stagehands to go in that direction. They would be passing by Lucy, so she crouched down further and tried to tuck her stupidly large skirt behind the crates, only for the back of the hoop to tip up and knock a crate loose. Lucy stood up and desperately tried to push it back, but the hoop got in her way again and the crate hit the floor with an echoing crash.
Shit, Lucy thought to herself as Miss Martinelli and the two stagehands hurried right over to her unfortunate hiding spot. Worse, the hoop of the skirt was still up in the air and she was very much stuck in the narrow aisle. She'd practiced walking and going to the bathroom in this thing, but she really should have practiced hiding as well.
"Goodness, you're lost!" Miss Martinelli said in some surprise. "You boys go get the lights, I'll help here."
She wrangled Lucy's skirt back to ground level with surprising competence for a woman from nearly a century after the damn things were phased out. "There you go! I was in a Western a couple of years ago and it wasn't quite this bad, but I swear there was enough metal in that thing to start a foundry!"
"Thank you so much!" Lucy was genuinely relieved, and surely one actress - no, that's not where Lucy knew the name - wouldn't be too alarming an opponent. She'd talk her way free soon enough.
"What are you doing all the way over here, Miss -?"
"Pullman. Lucy Pullman," she answered quickly, using an easy-to-remember alias.
"I'm guessing you're meant to be over on the Stark lot filming that historical thing, judging by your clothes? He always spends a lot on the costumes! I'm Angie Martinelli, by the way, second unit director over here on the ABC Paramount lot."
"Oh! Angela Martinelli!" That was how Lucy knew her! Not from history at all, but as a guest presenter at a college seminar on documentary film. She had been an actress and a pioneering early female director, mostly in TV, but in 1980 she put together a series of art-house documentaries on lesbian life in America, with footage dating back to the late 1940s that she had kept hidden for many decades. Since then, she'd put out another one every five years until she retired at 90, along with all her other directing and producing. Lucy could remember being absolutely fascinated by Angela Martinelli with her pink-streaked white hair, her brightly patterned dress and her big laugh. 19-year-old history major Lucy had been outraged at Angela telling them not to hunt for objective truth but to respect their subjects' truths, to build community rather than expose it, but even so the idea had wriggled into her brain the more she read and studied. It was something she thought about a lot, these days, when even what she considered objective truth was shifting beneath her feet. She'd kissed a girl for the first time right after that seminar, too.
"It says Angela on the pay checks, but Angie is fine! Come on, I'll take you back to the Stark lot while these guys get the lights over to my set." She took Lucy's arm and they started walking, the crinoline hoop bouncing as they got out of the narrow aisle then settling into its proper position, at last, a long oval that let Angie walk beside her. "There you go! How did you end up all the way over here?"
"I went to the bathroom, and it took ages, and when I came out everyone had gone," Lucy improvised. It seemed plausible, at least. "So I walked and walked and ended up in there looking for Wardrobe. But when I heard you coming I hid because I didn't want to get in trouble."
Angie patted her hand as they headed out the doors and into the bright LA sunshine. "Don't worry about me, you're more likely to have trouble if you've missed your scene!"
"I'm just a glorified extra, really. But, Angie - how did you go from acting to directing?" Lucy thought she couldn't go wrong asking about things that had already happened.
"Sick of the glamorous life of an actress, hey? You know, I started out on stage, in New York, but a friend moved to LA and asked me to join her, so I did. Got some roles, definitely paid better than the stage…but it wasn't the same thing." She waved to a production crew installing a huge camera on a portable track. "Eddie and Juan are getting the lights now! Be back soon!"
"We've only got the set today and tomorrow!" yelled a woman with a clipboard, but Angie didn't seem concerned.
"We've got to get the light levels up or we're not shooting anything! Tell the actors to keep rehearsing their blocking because if they screw up the murder scene again I'll murder them myself!" Angie yelled back. She turned to Lucy as they kept on towards more long warehouses. "That's my team! They're great! When I was on stage, you know, everyone's a team trying to make a story real. Some people get that from movie acting, too, but not me. It was so isolating, and you don't see the finished movie for forever and a day. But you know who was working together to make it real? The crew. So I learned about cameras and lighting and everything else…" Her sunny expression clouded over. "Of course, there was also an example right in front of me."
"You don't seem very happy about having an example!" Lucy wondered if she was going to get some first-hand gossip about Ida Lupino or one of the few other early women directors.
"No, no, I don't mean as a director. My friend who brought me to LA, she knew someone who'd had a great career. Lead roles, Oscar nominations, all that jazz. And one day the men decided she was too old and that was that. She was a brilliant, brilliant woman and it drove her crazy, I mean literally crazy. And it really got in my head, knowing she deserved better than that. I don't mind smiling on cue and asking prettily and playing dumb sometimes, but I'm not letting them throw me in the garbage." Angie shook her head. "I used to be a waitress, which is acting too, but at least then the performance ends and you get go home to be yourself. Hollywood wants every piece of you, all the time. The only way through is to find a space where you can be yourself. It sounds easy, but I fought hard and, on top of that, I was very lucky."
"Excuse me!" Rufus called out behind them.
"Oh, hi! Another lost extra?" Angie asked, looking at Rufus's costume.
Rufus pointed to Lucy and improvised. "I followed her!"
"I'm so sorry I led you astray," Lucy lied. "This is Angie Martinelli and she's taking us back to the Stark lot where we were meant to be filming. I'm Lucy Pullman, by the way."
"Thanks so much, ma'am! That's the direction I really need to be going. I'm Rufus Carle."
Angie held out a hand for Rufus to shake and he hesitated, which didn't surprise Lucy given some of the other places they'd landed recently. She was about to cover for him, but Angie also saw his doubt and stepped forward to clasp his hand in both of hers, shaking it enthusiastically.
"Nice to meet you, Rufus! Join the crowd!"
As they got closer to the next lot, Lucy could hear a strange noise, a low, repetitive kind of whomping sound. She glanced at Rufus to see if he could hear it too, but then caught sight of Angie's face. She was steaming mad.
"Ugh, that Howard Stark! His friend Doctor Wilkes goes away for two days! Two days! And he's set up that stupid gravity machine he said he wouldn't use!"
"Gravity machine?" Rufus asked, his eyes lighting up. Lucy knew that Howard Stark was a particular hero of his, though she'd forgotten that the late forties to late fifties were Stark's movie mogul period. "And do you mean the inventor, Howard Stark?"
"That's the very guy." Angie picked up their pace to a brisk march. "He's not as terrible as everyone makes out - well, he can be but he's always been nice to me and my friends. But he does like to make things up as he goes along! Since he met Doctor Wilkes it hasn't been so bad. Doctor Wilkes was in a lab accident and now he's a bit more cautious, but he's been invited to give some lectures in Jamaica, at the new university there. So the second he's gone, Howard's firing up that machine again!"
"What machine?" Rufus was desperate for answers, but Angie had already flung open a gate in the tall wire fence and heading across the parched grass of the Stark Industries lot. Lucy and Rufus scurried after her, the weird noise getting louder and louder. They followed her past a warehouse and into a large, paved area, but nobody seemed to be about.
In the middle of the concreted area sat a large device that looked entirely like a satellite dish had been pierced with an old-style TV antenna and stuck on top of a pile of random machinery. It took Lucy a moment to realise what she was seeing: above it floated a car, spinning gently on three axes, surrounded a number of random items: coins, loose cigarettes, a man's hat, nuts and bolts, a dirty coffee mug. Rufus stopped dead and stared in awe, so Lucy had to grab his arm and pull him onwards.
"Howard!" Angie shouted, her voice projecting even above the now-constant whomps and thuds of the strange machine.
"Hello there, Angie! And your lovely but anachronistic friend!"
Lucy was horribly startled until she remembered that she was dressed for the 1870s. As his floating car rotated back towards them, Howard Stark slowly came into view. He was sitting casually in the driver's seat, not hanging on even though the car was completely upside-down right now, making notes in a grubby, oil-stained notebook. He was so composed - his hair and clothes perfectly in place - that Lucy had to blink a few times to convince herself that she was the one who was the right way up.
Angie stomped right over to him. "Should we be taking cover? Because I seem to remember the last time you activated this machine you nearly killed both Jarvis and that horrible flamingo!"
"I seem to recall Jarvis saying it would be worth it," Howard muttered, but he stepped out of the car and pushed off it, gliding gently towards the ground then suddenly dropping the last six inches to land on his feet. "But don't worry, I've solved the problem!"
"Is the problem what happens when you shut down the field?" Rufus butted in, unable to stop himself. "You've artificially isolated that sphere relative to the machine, but the moment you turn it off, they're going to keep on moving at the speed of the earth's rotation."
Howard's eyes lit up as he turned to look at him, and Rufus dashed forward to shake his hand, too thrilled to be cautious this time. Rufus's face was a picture of delight and Lucy couldn't bring herself to get in his way.
Fortunately, Howard seemed entirely flattered. "A fellow engineer! What are you doing wasting your time as a movie extra? Do you need a job?" Without pausing for Rufus's answer, he reached out and snatched a cigarette from the sphere in a move that Lucy was entirely sure he had designed to impress. "My esteemed colleague Dr Wilkes told me not to set up my gravity machine again until I'd solved the power drain issue, so -"
Angie interrupted. "I believe Jason's exact words were 'Until you've solved the power drain issue, and I get back from the Caribbean.'"
"Yes, that is what he said…but anyway, we weren't shooting today, so I couldn't resist. See, I even set it up where there was no-one to get hurt!" Howard beamed with pride. Angie side-eyed Lucy and Rufus at the mention of not shooting today, but she didn't say anything.
Lucy frowned. "So, this power problem, could it be perhaps pulling power from other things?"
"Like my lights!" Angie asked.
"Or my, uh, work!" Rufus followed, belatedly covering up.
"But Angie, your set is nearly half a mile from here, it couldn't be…" He glanced at his notebook.
"I think it could," Rufus argued. "Let me look at your power consumption figures. You can't possibly have a secure supply from the equipment you've got here. No wonder you're draining everything else to maintain it!"
They went into a huddle over the notebook, Howard scribbling things out and jotting down new figures as they went.
"You're an extra, huh. On a day when Howard's not even shooting." Angie said to Lucy, dryly.
"Sorry," Lucy told her, feeling more ashamed about the lie than she really should be, considering that they were on a mission. "I had to come up with something."
"You're with the government, aren't you?" She wagged a finger at Lucy. "Don't deny it, I know the signs. If you're investigating Howard after that HUAC nonsense, don't bother."
"It's nothing to do with that," Lucy said, truthfully. "It's actually this device we're here about, but that's more Rufus's field."
Angie sighed. "I can't wait for Jason to get back. He's much more sensible than Howard - well, most people are, but he doesn't listen to just anyone."
"Are Howard and Jason, uh, friends?" Lucy asked, suddenly realising the undertones of what Angie was saying.
Angie clamped her mouth shut and shook her head, then sighed. "I don't think that's for me to say. Or for you to ask, Miss Government Agent."
Lucy quickly backtracked, remembering the time they were in. "Oh, I didn't mean…I wouldn't…" and half to prevent her stupid and anachronistic apology lasting another moment, half because she want to, leaned forward and kissed Angie on the lips.
Angie kissed her back for half a second, then broke away and glanced about suspiciously before shrugging and throwing her arms around Lucy's shoulders. "I can always say you started it!"
Lucy laughed and kept kissing her, feeling Angie's bright lipstick transferring to her own lips. It was a relief not to be lying, even by omission, to be fully in the moment for the first time in a long time. Maybe it should feel strange that it was Angela Martinelli here with her, but instead it felt more like a completed circle.
"Uh, Lucy?" Rufus's voice broke through to her.
"Go ahead, don't mind me," Howard added, and that definitely made Angie break it off.
"You gonna put on a show for me, sometime?" she snapped, and at Howard's delighted expression, held up a hand. "No, Howard, please don't take me up on that."
Rufus cleared his throat. "We've solved the power issues, and we can shut the device down safely. Turns out that there's a machine in the vicinity that can provide enough power to slowly turn down the field so we don't all end up punctured by a penny at 460 metres per second."
Howard pouted. "He won't tell me what it is, though."
"It's classified!" Rufus and Lucy said at the same time, and Angie laughed.
"Nice to see that one turned back on you, Howard!"
With the massive energy from the time capsule available to Howard's machine, it slowed down and shut off with a sad thunk, which Lucy thought highly preferable to a high-speed blast of shrapnel.
"Please show me your energy source," Howard begged Rufus, offering him, in order, money, the best night of his life, a job and a look at his lab. Rufus looked terribly torn at the last, but Lucy stood firm.
"No, absolutely not. And if you try to follow us I'll have to shoot you."
Strangely enough, that finally stopped Howard in his tracks, and made Angie giggle.
"I'm surprised that worked!" Lucy whispered to her. "He doesn't seem the type to be bothered by threats."
"Oh, anyone who's met my friend Peggy knows never to call an armed woman's bluff."
Leaving Howard behind, all but dragging Rufus away, Lucy and Angie headed back over to the ABC Paramount lot.
Angie kept her arm in Lucy's. "We probably won't even need those extra lights now that you've put a stop to the Stark Menace. Nearly an hour's shooting lost! I should send him a bill!"
"You probably should," Lucy agreed, enjoying the human contact now that she didn't have to lie to Angie any longer. As they came around the back of the warehouse where Wyatt and the time capsule awaited, Lucy put a hand on Angie's cheek. "Thank you."
"For tracking down Howard? No problem."
"More for reminding me to be myself. It's easy to get lost in a role sometimes."
Angie kissed her again, just lightly. "You hang on to your truth, okay? See you round, Lucy Pullman."
"I'm sure you will," Lucy smiled, and let Angie go, off into her future.
This entry was originally posted at https://lilacsigil.dreamwidth.org/101312.html - comments are welcome at either location.