entrancelogs | It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you!

Entry tags:

It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Friday October 27th - Tuesday October 31st
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch all for the Horrible Memory Truth Event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, everyone's entire room will be replaced with a memory playing on loop. They will likely recognize the moment as soon as they see it – it is a moment they remember as the worst moment of their entire lives. It could be a memory from home or something that happened in Wonderland. Lengths of the memories will vary, but they will find that these are not memories they can merely watch – they can step into these memories and attempt to make changes to them, and the memories will be long enough that they have time to make changes (though no more than 24 hours). However, anyone who tries will find that it is futile. No matter what you do or how hard you try, the outcome is always exactly the same somehow. No changes you make will prevent that horrible outcome. It just happens over and over and over again no matter what you do.

On top of that, perhaps complicating any attempts to make changes, everyone will be forced to be honest for the duration of the event. No lies or half-truths are allowed, and filters will be gone for the entire five days. If something bothers someone then they will blurt it out, regardless of whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, and no one will be able to simply keep quiet when they have something to say. They must be truthful and honest with every word they say.

This is a catch-all log for all of your Worst Memory needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and Room Number + Floor for character rooms, or just location if you're making a top level for a public place in the mansion (like the tea rooms or the kitchen) so people can see if there's already a thread available. And here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ she listens intently even now -- even as he babbles, as though he could ever hide the wheat within the chaff. peggy can pick out the parts that matter; she has an ear for it.

and eventually (much to her chagrin) she has to put a hand on his arm once more in a silent bid to slow him down. not because she needs him to stop, but because she struggles to keep pace so long as there's still healing left to accomplish in her leg. ]

Time wants to happen. [ although it's true (it seems) they aren't her words. she'd heard someone else say them over the network earlier -- and that warning had been what spurred her onward to check on tony in his room. ]

You can't change it. Not what happens between those walls at any rate.

[ which is a rather careful bit of phrasing, in the end. ]

Okay, not you too. stop it right now.

[ it's easy to pick on that, of all things. ]

you realize that's the most cliche sentence, right? time doesn't want anything. It's like nobody studied physics in this Mansion except for one kid who I'm sure isn't even twelve. Time's a force. No, I can't change it, because it's history and if I could, I'd be changing everything that happened later, change one constant, you change the equation. equations have to be balanced but time doesn't want to happen.

[ and he's pretty much sure that stupid british dick is this week's victim. or one of. not that tony has enough time or mental stability at the moment to concentrate on that. ]

It's like saying light desires to pierce the darkness. or any other purple prose narration that's really a way to say, this sucks, we're screwed and there's no one around to punch for it. literally.

[ in a way, the argument is something she craves -- something she needs. because if she thinks too long and too hard about that metal fist and about howard stark's face...

well -- her eyes already look a bit swimmy outside the irises. reddish and threatening to brim over if she's shunted the wrong way. it's not a nice look, and it's one she rarely wears. ]

Sod the physics of it all. [ she cuts a hand through the air. ] Those rules don't apply. They never will where the mansion's concerned.

[ she exhales. ]

...Would punching someone for it make you feel any better?

See, that's what they want us to think. If you don't know the rules, you can't control the game but it's not entirely true. If I start calling it all magic, then I might as well be saying I can't win.

[ and though the odds aren't in his favor, he can't think about that. ]

Didn't do much the first time.

[ when he hit Steve. When he tried to take out barnes. ]

[ she could say a lot of things. she could say she's curious to see whether his status as a non-believer holds out. she could say it's disingenuous to call it a game. she could tell him that maybe winning is the wrong way to think about it.

but, instead, she seizes upon the last thing said. ]

He's infuriating that way, isn't he?

[ shoot him, hit him, spit your anger -- it never seems to make you feel any better when it comes to steve rogers. ]

Can't say. I don't think I've ever really known him.

[ or at least, he doesn't feel as if he had. There was a time tony called steve rogers a friend but the bunker had proved steve could blindside and lie and hurt - all things Tony thought him too decent to do.

So maybe he didn't know rogers. Not really. Maybe it really was always barnes. He turns back, starts walking again. Frantic, heading nowhere at all. ]

I don't want to talk about him.

Good. I don't much want to talk about him either.

[ but, christ, what's left? he bookends both their panics today -- even if he isn't necessarily at the heart of it all. howard would be the worse topic. and barnes. well, barnes is straight out.

and they're walking again. ]

[ he walks and walks and walks until he's forced to stop. tony stark places two fingers against his temple and wills his body to breathe. he knows this tightness in his chest and the way his breath catches. no, he thinks, calm down. he is not having an anxiety attack in front of anyone, least of all her. not again, that is. ]

well. I'm going to go. this is good, we have shared traumas now. most researchers say it's a great basis for interactions.

[ but tony's heart and head are pounding and he starts at an opposite direction before it'll be too late. ]

Sod the researchers.

[ she's tired (it seems) of how he deflects still with reams and reams of fact -- fact, it seems, is different to truth in many little personal ways. and her eyes are still rimmed red and there's a tremulousness to her expression. ]

Tony. [ god, where does this instinct come from? she clears her throat. ] He should have told us.

[ god she doesn't want to talk about steve AND YET... ]

[ tony stark is still lucid enough to find a way around a truth-compulsion, it seems. facts and information thrown out to mask the little truths that make their way out no matter what he does. he takes a seat on the edge of the fountain. or perhaps, he feels his knees are about to give way. ]

he didn't. I don't know when he found out. When he found Barnes. maybe.

[ it doesn't matter anyway. another deep breath, exhale and inhale. ]

it was always about Barnes.

[ peggy can't follow suit. she can't take the seat -- instead, she paces in front of the fountain (in front of tony) and cards her fingers distractedly into the hair at the nape of her neck. of course it all comes back to... ]

Barnes. [ it's almost hissed. and maybe it's unfair that she should harbour this much resentment, given the practical details of what's happened to both of them. but there is no sly mask or subtle subterfuge to save her now from her real feelings. ] Christ. You have no idea how right you are. It was always about Barnes. Here, too.

[ stop, carter, stop! ]

I know he was here.

[ Barnes, that is. tony's almost thankful he missed him. he wouldn't have been able to kill him, not with the way the mansion works, not even if it's the right thing to do.

he wouldn't have been able to stand seeing him, either. it all leads back to the bunker, to 1991, to barnes serving as a humanized weapon. ]

didn't know he took someone out. big shocker.

[ surely that's what she's talking about. ]

He didn't.

[ peggy takes a seat -- heavily, slowly, sinking down onto the fountain's edge beside tony. her ordinarily squared shoulders show a slump to them. and when she raises her hand, it's to rub at her temple. maybe things would feel better if she simply would cry it out. ]

At least, none that I know of. Not here. Although if he had, I would have been the last to learn. None of us were really speaking in earnest with each other before they left.

[ none of it adds up. not after what he'd seen through her window, not now that he knows for fact she never found out about his parents. tony inhales, fills his lungs with oxygen and looks at her. she looks on edge, she looks like she's about to crumble. she looks exactly like he's feeling. ]

I'm - look. He's a grade A asshole but I know he meant a lot. I didn't tell you - I thought I was doing you a favor. I didn't want you to - I didn't want to take that away.

[ and now, it happened with or without him. ]

[ the worst part is that things have gotten so bleak -- so out of focus -- that she knows tony could say the same thing about either man: his father, or steve. these waves have been choppy for some time now, although she's done her best to mask that discord from others in the future. it didn't seem important that they should know any piece of it.

bad enough that she'd told anyone, really. ]

-- I'm not upset with you. [ the truth just keeps rushing out. ] Far from it.

[ if anything, she empathizes. ]

did you know about him?

[ he has to know. at least that. ]

Barnes. did you know that he could become a killing machine with a flick of a switch? Hydra had control of his mind. that's what Rogers said. it's not going to change what happened. that's what it's all about this time too, right? it's not going to change what happened.

[ but tony didn't care then, he doesn't care now, either. ]

I did. I knew. [ the words spill out like a hierarchy of honesty -- the simplest truths first, with explanations following soon after. ] He told me about the programming himself a few months after I'd arrived here.

[ it had gone poorly. because peggy hadn't reacted well at all -- not least because it was the first indication she'd ever received that hydra had survived. hell, had thrived. her life's work, rotted from the inside out. ]

But neither of them mentioned Howard. [ why would they? god, peggy would have crucified one or both. belatedly, she adds: ] O-or his wife.

Maria.

[ he says before he can help it. if only because he can't hear his mom being called that, being described by a connection to a father he still resents. ]

that was her name. I'm pretty sure they didn't know that since it can't be changed anyway.

[ steve never thought about him, he thinks. he never thought about giving his parents some justice. tony isn't even sure he knew his mother's name. ]

They died in a car accident, that's the official story. They're gone. it was more important keeping Barnes safe than letting the truth come out. He knew what I'd do.

[ what he almost managed to do. ]

he killed my mom. I wasn't going to let him walk away from that but in the end, I wasn't - I couldn't get through him.

[ Rogers. in the end, it was tony's loss. ]

Barnes is out there. a ticking time bomb. Next time it might be someone else's parents. next time that someone might be younger than twenty one.

[ maria. slowly, she begins to build a blueprint for howard's life -- and it's rosier, maybe, than it ought to be. because she always did like the bastard, even when he's being impossible. peggy understands that these are the moments wherein she should reach out, offer a hand, be human about it all.

those gestures don't come easily to her. her gaze shifts -- glancing back at the mansion, briefly, before she forces herself to meet tony's eyes. maybe she never knew maria, but it's evident she's moved and grieved by howard's death.

her next breath shakes. ]

I'm so terribly sorry, Tony. [ and it's raw, and it's honest, and with comes the first tear rolling down her cheek. peggy hisses inward, as though ashamed of her own reaction. ] Your family deserved better.

[ hell, how had things gotten so out of hand? ]

Edited 2017-10-28 20:54 (UTC)

Oh. Hey. Come on.

[ he reaches into his pocket for a good, clean handkerchief and offers it to her, clearly startled by her tears. ]

Here - don't cry. Or do. If it helps. Does it help? I never cry, which okay, you might say explains a lot.

[ but in the end, she's so young. Tony is older, able of putting a hand on her shoulder. ]

It's not your fault.

I wouldn't say it's a common occurrence for me, either -- [ there's a tremble in her voice. one which angers her, clearly, with how intently she frowns the moment she hears it. it sounds too much like her voice in that godawful memory looping back in her room: calling after steve, pleading with him...

(and she knows she'd sounded the same while howard had been barreling for new york with the midnight oil as his payload. desperate and despairing. back then, the very thought of losing him had twisted her toward sentiment.)

peggy grabs at the handkerchief and cuffs at her cheek. something tightens in the back of her jaw and she forces her expression to settle after a few wayward sniffs. ]

But it is. [ she cops to the weight she's been carrying on her shoulders ever since she'd learned. ] Whose signature do you think sits on the report concerning Barnes being MIA? If we'd looked harder...

[ maybe they could have stopped it, stopped hydra, stopped zola, stopped the winter soldier. it's a rather bleak confession from someone who not long ago had been clinging to someone else's truth: time wants to happen. ]

Barnes can't be traced today by all of my toys. Trust me, I tried. He's - untraceable. Even without HYDRA. Listen, maybe you couldn't have found him or about them but that - if you give in to your future mistakes you'll end up like me.

[ tormented by the weight of his past and a possible future. ]

Stark Industries isn't about weapons, not anymore. but how many died before I changed things? I got the company at 21 but without afghanistan, without the cave, I'd still be making advanced weapons of war and quoting my old man and his bigger stick theory.

[ which, in retrospect, looks dumb. The bigger stick was always in space. ]

You didn't know. I didn't know. But for better or worse, I am Iron Man. I will try to save people from this world even if I helped shape it. You'll do the same here. At home. Whatever. That counts. It has to count.

[ and there's the rub: she hasn't yet shaped it. all she knows is that the shape of things to come resembles something rather pear-like, and it's her organization that fails to stop it. or allows it to grow that way. or...

or truth be told, she doesn't actually know much more than brief impressions and crumbs of intel left behind by the others. she's been forever stuck between asking more and knowing that she shouldn't. ]

I can't believe I'm shedding tears over -- over something that hasn't yet happened. [ she scrubs at her eyes. ] Something that won't happen for years. God, back home he's -- he's in Peru, actually. Chasing me down a lead.

[ and she suddenly feels very protective of her friend who she's dragged out of his clubs and labs and poolside deckchairs. really, she ought to know better. ]

I don't have any good memories of him.

[ he wouldn't have said that if it weren't for the current situation. tony stark can't lie and make up a loving relationship with his dad but he'd know not to say anything. ]

I'm glad someone does.

[ that's honest, too. he can stomach howard loving her more than he could ever stomach him loving rogers. ]

...They're not all great. My memories of him.

[ peggy wishes she didn't have to confess so. her face contorts into a mournful grimace. just now isn't the time to speak ill of the dead, especially when she owes so much to this particular dead man.

she dabs at the corner of her eye, dotting it with running mascara. at the sight of the stain, she mutters a quiet curse. ]

He can be a proper wanker. Most days. [ but he is her friend. ] All the same, I don't know where I'd be without him.

[ ... ]

Steve mentioned there was no love lost between you and Howard. I was -- sorry to hear it.

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