[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

[markwatney]

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.

Comments

Jessica Jones, OTA

[underachievement]

TOWN HALL CREEPIN (6:50-7:20), THEN INN - BAR

Free pizza wasn't on offer but Jess is here to check anyway. Watney's other get togethers revolved around food and if she's remembering correctly, he's part of the daily lunch effort she takes advantage of whenever she doesn't sleep through it. She arrives ten minutes before the meeting's set to start, hoping to sneak away with a coffee before the majority of attendees filter in. But there's no coffee, or scones or whatever bread-based equivalent to donuts that she knows from experience is typically at these things. Jess continues to hang around, leaning her shoulder blades to the wall and crossing her arms and lackadaisically observing person after person walk in not holding a casserole dish.

Maybe that's why there are so many so-called models around here. Nobody eats their feelings.

Disappointment ushering in the mildest of resentment, she sticks around til about 7:15PM to soak up the sadness in the room. Nothing puts her less in the mood for people than group therapy. Some people voice thoughts she's had about possibly being a clone and she almost envies how deeply shaken they are. Since she's lingering just to be an asshole, she peels away from the wall and quietly leaves before someone can call her on it. As she walks aimlessly through town, she passes by someone who reeks most delightfully and ducks into the building they wobbled out of. Fuck her sideways, is that a functioning bar she sees?

If the end is occupied, it's the seat she will be making her way to throughout the night as other 'patrons' come and go. Whatever she's nursing she will insist not go dry, as long as there's booze behind the counter and someone to pour it, and that someone could be her, if desperate times call for desperate measures. (They won't.)

[ to hash out CR with Jess ahead of time for this post or future events and plots, use my plot post! ]

[nifties]

John has been drinking a little while now, his coat on the back of his chair as the moonshine makes his limbs feel warm and loose. He doesn't even notice her pass him to sit at the end of the bar, a seat between them. When he turns to pour another finger of the jar Kira left him, that's when he sees her out of the corner of his eye. Confusion moves into bemusement, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as his hazy gaze slowly rolls across the bartop to meet hers. The first thing he notices isn't her dark hair or large eyes, her leather jacket or the Devil-may-care attitude weighing her down. It's the red communicator peeking out of her left sleeve that matches his; that matches the scrubs he's still wearing labeling him the probie. He slides her the jar, turning to lean against his hand as he props his elbow against the counter, putting his matching smartwatch on display.

"Looking for this, luv?" he asks in his usual Liverpoolian drawl, perhaps a bit more slurred than usual. If anyone could tell the difference.