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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"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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