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.

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It doesn't set him off, nor does it prompt a collapse. Tony isn't wrong about one thing though, the only touches Barnes ever got during his time as the Asset weren't positive. They were slaps across the face, they were the fists of his enemies, the claws of fingernails as people scrambled against him for breath or for purchase. When he was cleaned, hosed down, stripped, washed, repurposed, tuned up, the people in charge did it with rubber gloves or the tips of their fingers like he was a disgusting and diseased thing that they were afraid might contaminate them.

Or, more aptly, like he was a utensil left in a freezer, so cold it burned them and they had to drop it at once. Tony's hand is a spreading warmth that melts ice, or at least brings him back to room temperature. It pulls his eyes from the grainy pattern of the hardwood, and he can - for the moment - meet that gaze again.

There is no clouding or disguising his soft appreciation for the gesture. Even if he wanted to, he doesn't have the mental energy now to thrust the wall up again so quickly. Unguarded.

He raises his glass. Pauses before he clinks them to murmur a rusty, crisp sounding, "Made the worst god damn sniper rifle I ever used."

He knocks their edges together.
Brings the glass to his lips.

"I beg your fucking pardon?" Them? Them's fighting words. Tony is fairly certain that is some kind of insult to someone somewhere but he's drunk enough to not take it seriously- and finally with the weight of blame off Barnes, off his Father-

There's resentment, still, for comparing him to a man that never existed, for holding up an icon that Rogers never wanted to be instead of offering a hand up to the son he couldn't understand or hope to handle. But that's his own baggage, older, easier to hold onto. It's not as bloody, not as painful. An old ache.

So it makes...thinking about him, now, about his work, how hard he tried, how hard he failed? A little bit easier. "Explain this to me because he held the fact he made you a rifle over my head for years."

It could be sullen or petulant but- it's wrapped up in a chortle of laughter, the hesitance in him melting away, grip firming into a friendly squeeze. Because this could be...something. They'll never be strangers, they've busted each other up too much to walk away with antipathy in the air. But they could be something. And under the baggage, the ice, the wounded eyes? Tony finds...he kind of likes Barnes. A little.

For a second he's worried he's replaced the singular square inch of progress they've made with a foot in his mouth over what was meant to be a fond memory, but that laugh and the physical affirmation settle away the rough edges that threaten to arise again and he nearly melts into the bar beneath Tony's hand. He slumps forward a little, exhausted, onto the supportive weight of his metal elbow like a kickstand braced against the bartop.

A reluctant, wry sort of smile tugs at his lips for the first time since this whole thing began. Still hesitant, once bitten twice shy as far as emotions go, he launches into his version of things.

"Made stuff for the troops all the time, usually standard stuff. Sometimes a few modifications. Got really excited about the whole team Steve led, I think, so he started churning out stuff for us whenever he could. He gave me this... rifle," He says, and that fondness shows itself now for the first time audibly and in the slight crinkle of his eyes. "Probably the most advanced weapon I ever held in my hands at the time. He thought of everything- night vision, custom stock, took my god damn measurements and factored in the length of my torso, the distance between my eyes. Pretty sure it even calculated wind resistance, but-"

He licks his lips, stops, can't quite suppress the smile or the bubble of feeling in his chest. Nostalgia, laughter, something threatening to overthrow him.

"He forgot to factor in the actual shooting part somehow. The god damn thing couldn't hit the barn side of a broad, pulled left every time. I had to start aiming six feet to the fucking right every shot."

"Specialists need special gear and special attention." He quotes by rote, one of the few stories Howard would bother to tell three glasses of Whiskey in, rattling off something nostalgic to Jarvis and Peggy when he was knee high. Something he couldn't think back on without at least a small edge of bitterness for years but now? It's easy. Comfortable, even, to think back and soak in the details he can recall, leave things washed in warm gold instead of the cold uncertainty that Howard had been happiest before he was born and he'd never do anything to change that.

Tony angles himself twoard Barnes, the fluid sprawl of the drunk settling him against the bar though his eyes remain sharp and clear. The Whiskey and moonshine have done their work of quieting his mind and soothing his anxieties- all his focus? Is on Barnes. The weight of it, Pepper's said, is like a physical thing. Tony's never noticed, normally he doesn't bother giving anyone all of his attention, he's got too much going on.

But whatever this blunder of his Father's- this piece of the past, of the man he never truly got to know? He wants to hear it. Memorize it. Paste it in place and make a more complete picture of Howard Stark.

"Wait- the Buckshot? That thing bruised the fuck out of my shoulder." He knew that gun. Shot it off once in the range behind the mansion when he was young before Howard shipped it off to a museum somewhere. "The rifling on the barrel was off center by a few millimeters, the spacing of the internal spiral fucked just enough to- yeah. I wanted to fix that but he put it behind glass somewhere before he told me what it was I was 'fooling around with'." Air quotes, insert eyeroll here, laughter on his lips, thinking back to the kick.

"I'd put money on him rushing to finish it before you went out on the next mission- and if you're rushing you get sloppy. Or his math was off- but I doubt that."

Specialists need- an eyebrow arches a little at the words spoken from memory, apparently that's not a quote Howard ever bothered to share with the specialists themselves. If he had, he probably would've gotten a few laughs and a gentle correction along the lines of all we need is a map and an ass to kick. Morita probably would have protested, the man loved any kind of neat explosive you could give him, but the rest of them functioned just fine with guns and scrap metal.

He bears the weight of Tony's attention with steadiness and ease now that they're over the biggest of their hurdles and honestly? Maybe that outburst had been a little cathartic. Maybe something about the way all this went down was like ripping splinters out of a wound; painful at first but now that the worst is over the healing begins. The sheer relief of it is almost crippling. No amount of pointed attention can really replace the heft of what's been taken from his shoulders.

"Probably a rush-job," Barnes agrees with a little nod. Can't attest to Howard's math, but, "Seems like we were always behind, back then. He put stuff out for us as fast as he could, can't believe he ever managed to sleep frankly. Wouldn't mind having that thing back, either, if you could fix it."

Oh well. Maybe one day he'll be well enough in Tony's favor that he gets a gun that sits as comfortably against him as that one did. He cuddles his rifles like women when he snipes, curls around them and molds to them. That one fit like a glove.

"He probably didn't. His record was sixty two hours with no sleep." One of many records Tony beat easily while in college. Things they had in common, things they never got a chance to discuss because Howard was so busy, because Tony was so argumentative and resentful. He shrugs off the usual welling of regret in favor of huffing quietly, imagining the young man his father had been, scrambling to keep the Howlies equipped. "He didn't have the luxury of an AI assistant to double check his work before he sent it out."

Tony did, for the Avengers. It made flipping through options faster, more efficient, more effective. J could extrapolate data well enough to keep them equipped, work as a second mind and pair of hands after Tony explained what they were working on and why.

"...I make up my mind on developing actual weaponry here? I'll think about it." Because gunpowder isn't difficult chemistry. Thermite, napalm, all that shit? He could put together with what's lying around the forge with a little bit of digging around the forest for sulfur deposits. There's an argument for: Survival. The argument against- how can they know it'll be used appropriately? Accountability matters. Glitter grenades and bombs are innocent fun. A sniper rifle?

Might help with hunting.

Frankly, if you want the real and honest truth of it? He regrets the request the second it's out of his mouth. At any given time it feels like he's shorn into two beings; half of him is a soldier, a piece of metal, a tool that appreciates things like custom stock and excellent battle strategy. The other half is a person, and that person is tired. Part of what made this place so easy to adapt to is that second half, that desire for peace and calmness. Normalcy, real feelings, time and space and distance between bloodshed and loss.

But he can never seem to erase Half A. Seventy-something years of habit and some of it even before Project: Winter Soldier, it's a hard thing to break.

So he falters a little, and his voice cracks when he finally says, "Take your time on that."

A nice, long time. They've got enough to get by, after all. They've got machetes, hatchets, crossbows, enough to fend off the local wildlife - even a nine foot tall Wendigo that weighed more than him with claws like knives. He brought that down with not much more than his metal arm and an electric flower.

...And a whole team of people, and a casualty.

He sighs. The other side of the coin: Peeta might be alive if he'd just had a god damn gun.

"Okay. For...five, maybe ten minutes? I'm going to be completely sincere and serious." The fact that they've run up against something that's a weighty issue for both of them- and yet is something Tony's got experience handling? Is a little hilarious. This particular scrap of guilt and discomfit is one he's able to handle. Sort of. Relatively. Ish. The hand on Barnes' shoulder tightens for a moment, thumb rolling in a rough approximation of a soothing stroke, before Tony's hand flattens and slides away. It falls to the bartop where his fingers drum, his eyes on worn wood more than Barnes himself. "...When Rhodey came back from his first tour."

It's not all his story to tell, but he's got enough in the scraps of it that are his, something he's fiercely protective of, possessive of- that he can share. The steadfast certainty of Rhodey's presence in his life is one he's always known never to take for granted while being something he clings to as a point of normalcy no matter how hellish and mad the rest of the universe becomes.

"All he'd ever wanted to do was serve. Be an Airman, protect American interests, design fighter jets and fly them, yadda yadda but- before you get to do any of that? They put you in the trenches. The guy that came back from that first round...he was and wasn't the same guy that helped drag me out of bed at ungodly hours of the morning to sober up before an exam. That shit changes you. He- ah." Tony flexes his left hand, his bad hand, rolling his fingers together to get rid of the pins and needles feeling that kicks up from time to time. "First thing he did was put his sidearm in a safe in my apartment and try to pretend he was still just...Rhodey. Sourpatch. Honeybadger. Same kid. But you can't shake that stuff. What he saw, what he survived- he needed me to give him back his sidearm just so he could sleep. Couldn't do it without knowing he could defend himself if he had to, even if he was in my home, safest place he could be. I ended up fabricating him a dummy gun. Just. Something he could hold like a- a totem? So the actual gun could stay in the safe and he could still feel secure. He needed it- and hated that he needed it. That he couldn't just. Pack up the uniform and go back, put it on when he needed it and put it away when he was done."

His lips twitch with the stifled desire to point out that they've been serious and sincere a number of times thus far in their conversation, but he's smart enough to know better. Quiets his ass down and listens, and in part, it's due to the pressure of a thumb soothing him to a halt.

Sourpatch. Honeybadger.

Bucky's eyes flicker back down to the bar top again, though, mulling over the anecdote. That shit changes you indeed, one tour, one decade, seventy years. Same feeling.

"I get how it helped him," He begins with a careful, respectful falter. Follows it up, of course, though, "But a dummy gun wouldn't have helped me save that kid's life a few weeks back."

It's not his own sanity he's worried about. The slight difference between himself and Rhodey is that he doesn't need a weapon to sleep at night. He is a weapon, and he traveled through Europe for almost two years without a gun.

"I'm not scared of being without it," He sighs, bringing the glass up and murmuring over the rim of it, "I'm scared of not being able to put it back down again."

"That's what he's been able to make peace with, eventually. It sticks with him but- He can lock it down when he's not working. Don't ask me how he managed it because I'm still trying to figure that shit out for myself. But. Systems help. Accountability helps. Talking to people helps. So. If I were to manage to make a thing like that for you, real and working so you can hunt and protect people from man eating moose or whatever-" Tony's nails drum against his glass as he takes another sip, sighing at the slow burn on the way down. "I'm still going to have to make ammo for it. And if you get to a place where you think you should be done? I'll quit making you bullets. Easy. Or...I just don't make you the gun. You want to be done, don't you?"

Fighting, scraping by to survive, trying to make peace with this place and the people in it?

"...It's okay to be done."

An enormous, overpowering part of him immediately says yes. It rings through his mind, his gut, his heart. His very first instinct is yes, he wants to be done. He wants to go to bed with Liv, he wants to hold her and sleep through the night. He wants to wake up and go running with Steve. He wants to chop fucking wood, and build a house, and just be okay, surrounded by people who are also okay.

But Barnes is pragmatic. He's a realist. He blinks slowly, and takes a long drink. Sets the glass down.

"I can't be done," He says, shaking his head slowly. "Not when nine foot tall wendigos attack the civilian population. Not when a purple god damn alien eradicated half the universe, and eventually we're gonna have to deal with that. Not when..."

Not when there are things that threaten people he wants to keep safe, he couldn't sit at the sidelines with the skills and the talents he has and not do something about it. He can't stop yet.

Isn't that the why we fight, so we can end the fight-

Be done. Go home. Have a home and enjoy the safety they've earned by putting in the work. Build something more for themselves than the conflict. At ease, soldier, the war's over. There's a whole new generation to step up if they survive what comes after.

They might. They might not. Tony's still making peace with that.

"I'm going to have to deal with that. Apparently my survival was fucking vital or something." Worth giving up the stone for. He hates being a pawn, hates flying blind but that's all they've got. "But...alright. You'll get your Buckshot. And anything else I can make that'll help us keep this place safe. I'm also making you a sling for that arm, I don't care how light vibranium is, you're not juiced up anymore."

He's more surprised by the sling than the gun, frankly. Eyes flicker from Tony to his shoulder and then back again, and it's as though now that he's been called out he's free to roll it uncomfortably in its socket, shoulderblade straining under the weight of it.

"That obvious, huh?" He murmurs, a little frown on his face. The thing is - it's lighter than the last, but it's still an arm-sized hunk of metal stuffed to the gills with tech to make it work. Temperature control to tensile strength, there are pieces that adjust balance and pieces that let him feel, and it pulls down on frayed nerve endings that were only really kept at a constant peak by the serum. Now that it's gone...

Peaches and the hot spring can only do so much.

"I saw Hydra's notes. You've got internal hardware bolted to your ribs and spine." Different location, different configuration, but it is what it is and he knows how having a hunk of metal attached to what's meant to be flexible and supportive but not that fucking supportive goes. "Something you can sleep in, take the edge off, or when you need a break. Shouldn't be difficult."

He'd need measurements but- right now? Still in the vague design phase.

"...I could try making you a brace? Something to distribute the weight better externally, ease up on your ribs and shoulder." Also doable, more than. Tony's attention waves somewhat- eyes still on Barnes and his shoulder but mind half on th work ahead.

Distantly, dimly, he thinks he knew that. He's seen his own file, and somewhere in his head are manuscripts about care and field medical specific to only himself. Things he'd need to know to patch up Hydra property to return it for proper maintenance. He hasn't thought about it, though, in so long... Has pointedly tried not to, perhaps, because he can detach the arm but the things implanted in him... they're invasive and forever.

"Brace?" He echoes incredulously, not because he's necessarily against the idea, just... he doesn't have Tony's vision, and in his experience braces were always a legs or a teeth thing. He can conceptualize a sling, but he can't really picture a fucking brace.

But he isn't a prideful man, he doesn't have toxic opinions on masculinity and he isn't too vain to accept something like that if it'll help. Frankly, he'd be glad for the relief.

Amusing way this whole conversation has gone, isn't it? He huffs quietly, a little chuckle to himself, eyes flicking out to nowhere in particular. From blasting each other's arms off to making braces. "God. This place."

Life, really.

"Mhmm. I'll need to ask around, see who has leather but I'm pretty sure I can rig you something that'll be comfortable and stylish. Won't look like one so you don't have to worry about people asking questions if you don't want." He flips to a fresh page in his journal, making a few notes and starting the rough beginnings of a sketch. Adjustable straps, padding around the shoulder, strips of iron along the scapula and reinforcement to pull the weight off the joint and across his torso-

He's designed similar things in the past for recovering veterans- protecting American soldiers didn't end with the smart weapons he's designed over the years. It'll need to be a little tougher to hold up and take some working to be comfortable, but- "Call it penance for blowing it off in the first place. The whole fight was...a massive overreaction, but that was instinct."

Anything that went for the reactor that he or Friday had time to react to? Got the unibeam.

Thanks, Obie.

"...So. Sorry about that."

He huffs again, shakes his head as though to dismiss the very notion let alone the apology. Squeaks the cork off of the bottle and tops them off again now that they've had a moment to breathe. They've put a serious dent in the damn thing, and Barnes is without a doubt feeling it. Drunk might be a strong word, but he's riding the line somewhere between tipsy and there.

Just enough to loosen him up, to make the angst from minutes ago melt away. To make it easy to let things go when otherwise they might have been hard to even acknowledge.

"Don't worry 'bout it," he says in Brooklyn lilt, because he knows going for the reactor was a dick fucking move in the first place. He raises his glass a little, less a toast and more a gesture. "If you want, we can just... blanket apologize on both sides for- I don't know, everything. Start... right now with an even score and go from here?"

Which will be a lot harder to do in actual practice, but if they can even just pretend that bygones are in fact bygones and only worry about not screwing up from this point on? Might make the whole thing easier.

Tony's long since gone loose and easy, posture comfortably slumped, a healthy flush to his skin, feeling warm and more than a little forgiving. Maudlin moment had come and gone awhile ago and with the promise of something a little less shitty by way of his association with Barnes? He's willing to settle and stay into happy drunk. Which consequently is almost cuddly drunk on top of happy nine times out of ten, but he and Barnes aren't like that so he lists into the bar, cradling his glass with careful hands.

"Kinda gotta. I mean-" He reaches out, taps Barnes' metal hand. "You got feeling in that. Had to suck."

More than a little, probably a lot, but. Blanket apology? He can swing that. "Clean slate. I can get behind that. You, you're in the clear."

Rogers isn't. Won't be. It's not something he expects to become a thing as long as they avoid each other as Rogers seems content to do; so. All shall be well moving forward.

Feeling might be a strong word for what the metal arm is like. It isn't feeling in the same way as his right arm, it isn't the brush of skin and the softness of hair. It's a far more muted, numbed, simplified version of feeling. It's pressure, temperature, direction. He can feel that something exists, he can feel if it's room temperature or feverish or icy, he can feel what direction it's moving in and how firm or how soft it is. He can't feel texture, like the rough of cotton or the smooth of silk. He can't feel pleasure in so many letters, although under the right circumstances a bit of warm pressure can maybe be considered pleasurable. He can feel pain a little more, because it's usually intense pressure and a lot of heat.

What he felt when that beam went off was different than one might expect. Heat, yes, obviously. Enormous pressure all at once and then gone like a pop. What really sucked was afterward, with the circuitry exposed and his nerves desperately trying to make sense of the electrical signals firing off incorrectly. It was like a pulsing electric shock to the connective tissue, a radiating sharpness that descended his shoulderblade, side, rips, collar.

Hard to explain, but probably not as bad as it might feel to get his actual arm blown off. At least, he imagines. Hopes to never find out.

He'll take being in the clear, and he reads between the lines quite clearly. Steve is not, and that's okay. That's his own personal relationship, their own battle, their own issues to work out. Bucky isn't here to babysit or to force anyone's hand, he's made it clear where his lines reside. Hate him all you want, but don't shit talk him in front of Bucky because he's got too high a sense of loyalty and duty to abide it.

It's a stable enough foundation for a friendship, he thinks, because that... might be what this is. If Barnes is sharing expensive (and rare, for the village) scotch and if Tony is making him an arm brace, he supposes technically that does make them friends.

"Alright then," He says, and he raises his glass again to plink it against Tony's just the once. "Clean slates."

And he drinks.

And so they are.

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[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

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