sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.

That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome

I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Maybe little earrings? Mom had a pair, like chimes." Worn during the holidays and only ever around the manor, something kitschy and pointless and not at all in line with her 'put together society woman' public personae- but they held fond memories for Tony. Maybe he shouldn't cross those wires-

He makes a mental note to toy with it anyway. Why not?

It's a small thing, the curve of his lips, a more honest, private thing that only a bare handful of people ever got to see- but Peggy's always been on that list. "Detail work relaxes me. The knife'll take a little while longer, I can't get the steel mix just right and I need to repair a few of the grinders."

She gives him a dubious look, mainly because Peggy is of the opinion that even if she were to be belled, she's sure that sure could find some way to make herself be silent and smooth, because the best spies can do that. Still, she gives him a fond smile as he offers it, because it's still kind-hearted and good of him.

"You can take as much time as you like on all these pieces. I've made do for two years without them, I'm sure I can manage for another few months," she's quick to insist. "Besides, what about something for you?"

"I need work more than I need things, Peg." There's a laundry list of shit that he wish he had, sure- things he misses, things he desperately hopes for but not a single item? Is something he can make. He can't build anything that'd bring him Friday or Jarvis. Can't bring the bots. Can't hammer Rhodey or Pepper into existence. There's not much on hand that could be made into a car, no armor for him to put together (What's the point what's the point what's the point)

So. Projects to keep busy. To help. To defend. Because if he cuts away everything else he ever tried for- that's what he's best at.

"I think there's something to be said about the work that one can do in creating something for yourself," Peggy opines, because it doesn't necessarily mean that Tony has to stock himself a whole line of items for himself, but to be proud of something is a wonderful thing.

"Make yourself a photo frame," she insists. "I'll be able to fill it. Polaroid size," she says. She's been sitting on the camera, only taking scant pictures, but she has it. "Perhaps we can find something that you might want a picture of, here."

"...anything I'd want to make for myself is decades ahead of what I'd be able to manage here." Building tools to build the tools to build the tools. All he wants, more than anything, is Friday or Jarvis, or even Dum-E. Something from home that's solid and constant. What he's got is a hammer and a forge and a long list of shit that needs building- and he's relatively content with that for now.

"A frame?" Pictures aren't...they are and they aren't something for him. Sentimental he isn't (he is, of course he is, he's human, he hates to admit that as much as any other weakness), and as Peggy is here and there's no way to photograph someone that isn't? Nothing comes to mind. "...Sure. That'd be...nice."

Touched that she'd spare something limited for him- he smiles.

"Yes, a frame," she says, instead of focusing on the things that he wants to make, but can't. She thinks that at least she can try and coax Tony's mind to something productive, especially when she has the capability to give him a gift. "I have a Polaroid, some photo paper. We could have one taken of the two of us for you to keep, if you don't mind looking at my face," she jokes.

She wouldn't mind one either, if she's honest, but she might simply buckle down and take photos of all the people dear to her, at this point. "It's that or I'll just try and get you to make more and more tea products."

"Don't think I've ever had a photo of you I was allowed to keep." Howard hoarded his connections like treasures while he had them and- well. He was raised not to be sentimental. Not to be sensitive, overly emotional, to be braced for the sharks in the water that he never did see coming until they got their first pound of flesh.

He tried, honestly. Tony can't blame him.

"It'd make the house more homey." There's not a lot of him in the house he'd claimed, not yet. Most of his time is, like back home, spent in the lab. The forge. "I'd have to clean up a bit, feels like I'm always dusting off soot from somewhere."

"Well, you can have any photo of me that you like, then," she promises, thinking that it would be nice to know that she's being a rock or some sort of support for someone, even if she doesn't feel like she's very good at it herself.

"The places here were terribly dusty at the start, when we all first climbed out of the fountain," she admits, thinking back to that terrifying day. "I do hate cleaning though, this is when I do miss the services you could get in."

"Up on the mantel." Or by his work desk? Drafting desk. But most of his drafting is done in the forge, at least while it's not too terrible weather wise. Somewhere he'll see it every day on his way in or out.

A reminder to try to maybe eat breakfast on days Peggy can't get out to him.

"Pretty sure I could take payment for one of my projects in housecleaning and pass that along to you, if you like." Nonskilled labor that needs doing, otherwise the house is a mess and- yeah- roombas aren't going to be a thing for...a few decades.

"I wouldn't want to make Stella think that I'm lazy in that way," Peggy says, trying to get Tony away from the idea before it settles in and takes root. "It's not such a big place and there are two of us, we can certainly manage."

She reaches over to give him a squeeze of his hand to thank him for the thought, though. "What you can do is make sure that you take proper breaks on a regular basis. I'll take that over a clean house any day. Can you give me that?"

Turning his hand over to squeeze her's back isn't instinctual, but it isn't something he has to think about. A show of support from someone he trusts and is more than willing to accept- and return- without worrying.

Though he probably should it's never going to occur to him to do so.

"I'll make sure Elena knows not to let me get away with spending all day in the forge." He'll be tempted, long list they've got ahead of them? It'd be easy to.

"Don't worry," she says, in the cool and calm voice that comes when Peggy's made up her mind and everyone around her is simply going to have to go along with it. "I'll make sure that you don't forget to take a break now and again."

It will be good for her, if only that it will force her to take her own breaks and not work herself to the bone. She's not perfect when it comes to that, so at least she has a good reason now to change.

"...Yeah I guess twelve hour work days and fifty hour engineering binges aren't going to be a thing anymore, huh?" There's a lot that needs doing and- he apparently will be expected to keep to a reasonable workday.

Rude.

"Not if I have anything to say about it, no," she agrees cheerfully, rather glad to have something to take her mind off her own work and if Tony is the charity case that she gets to work on, then so be it. "Behave and maybe I'll let you work eleven," she quips.

"So much for renovating the level of tech in the village. I can't get near enough done if I'm expected to sleep every night." It'll be impossible for him to keep up his usual workload here- without Friday to help him juggle, without the holographic simulators to test his math before he moves on to fabrication-

Without the fabricating bots? Working by hand is going to slow him down enough. "But, if you insist."

Because she will. She is.

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[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

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