[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.

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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

[nonstopnarcissist]

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.

[freightcars]

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.