sixthiterationlogs | [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

"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.

[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

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