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

[vitaelamorte]

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!

Comments

[mucked]

...We'll be in a damn spot of trouble if we end up using too many of the same people, no matter what the name becomes. [ shield, whatever. ] God knows how much of the SSR has grown lazy and compromised since the war ended. There are some tremendous agents in the ranks but -- there will always be those keener to play politics.

[outstandingbalance]

Oh, it's not always the same agency. [Natasha says it with some very real bitterness. All the games and politics are very familiar, and she's not the best person to discern what's necessary compromise and bureaucracy, and what's more sinister.

She chokes back a comment about Operation Paperclip. Whatever Peggy has already heard, Natasha isn't particularly interested in dragging either of them through that conversation.]

Maybe not the best conversation topic for the moment.

[mucked]

[ certainly! it would be a conversation peggy would be considerably surprised by. apart from some of the preliminary arrangements made at the very close of the war, she's been divorced and isolated from those tippy-top sort of decisions. that was never her brain-child.

although the question must be raised: ]

Is there a topic you'd prefer to pursue, Miss Romanoff?

[outstandingbalance]

[Prefer is a tricky word. Especially in this context. Natasha isn't always good at knowing what she'd prefer. If there were choices, it would be easier, but off the top of her head... it's a little too much like wanting things. At best, Natasha's wants still tend to be reactive.

It's one of the things she likes about Steve, and respects about Tony even when they disagree. Both of them have a sense of vision, creativity about what they want. They can picture a best case scenario where she tends to be trying to minimize the worst.

She blames that word in combination with the truth compulsion for her answer, if only internally.]

I don't know. Boys? Guns? Favorite shade of lipstick?

[Technically all things she'd prefer to talk about than the convoluted history and future of SHIELD, lacking any real plan.]

[mucked]

[ her scoff -- quiet as it is -- isn't meant maliciously. it's more like a tuft of surprise caught in the back of her throat. as though, somehow, she hadn't expected the conversation to take so simple a turn. peggy's grateful, really. ]

I prefer men to boys, a PPK to just about all else, and my lipstick dark and red. [ in that order. but something akin to a smile cracks across her lips. ]

-- I've got the gun. Cosmetics were tricky, at first, until I figured out how the closets worked. And I'm not much in the market for a man.

[ well. so much for smiling. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Good gun. Not my choice, but I can respect it. Not convinced most men aren't really boys at the end of the day, though. They get older. They don't usually get better at cleaning up their own messes.

[Which is, apparently, her distinction.]

That's a bold color choice, though.

[mucked]

...Not so bold. Is it?

[ her question is genuine. after all, the red had been so commonly worn that it was included in ration kits.

and maybe this question is easier than teasing out the differences (or lack thereof) between the men and the boys. peggy doesn't agree with natasha's assessment, but arguing the point would only drag out examples. ]

[outstandingbalance]

The actual answer depends. In the 20s or the 40s, maybe not so much. Now...

[Natasha smiles, as much for the choice of topic as for the subject matter itself.]

Let's say it's more of a night look. But a good one.

[mucked]

-- Does it look dated?

[ peggy isn't concerned. not really. if there's something about her look that isn't in fashion, she's not much bothered by it. but she's curious. she can't really tease out any firm assumptions over modern fashions. there's more variety than she ordinarily expects.

but if she ever needs to pass herself off as something other than 'vintage' then perhaps natasha's answer will help her pick a different colour. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Dated might not be the word I'd use. [At some point, fashion choices stop looking dated and start becoming intentional again, disruptive even.] Especially not in context. But it's of an era.

At some point, the trend started turning away from vivid makeup outside of specific contexts. Obviously there are plenty of people who don't conform to that, and the trends change, but as a broad generalization, we're more fresh faced than we used to be.

Same for hair. Not many people want to look like they spent an hour on their curls. Even when they do.

[mucked]

...So now I'm being called out for my curls as well, am I?

[ but it's all good-natured. peggy shakes her head and (miraculously) hides a snicker behind curled fingers. a strange little splotch of decent humour in a dreadful day. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Hardly called out. It looks good. [Natasha can tell Peggy isn't insulted, but... might as well go with a safe topic. Honest compliments are better than a lot of what they could be doing.]

But it wouldn't get you far doing undercover work surrounded by people from your future.

[mucked]

...Given how quickly you lot recognize me over the network alone, I doubt it's strictly the curls that would give me away. [ ... ] Or the lipstick.

Honestly, one of them had the audacity to say she recognized me from a picture in a SHIELD handbook.

[outstandingbalance]

I think you'd find your face isn't that widely known out of certain circles.

[Those circles just happen to be over represented here.]

If for some reason you ended up on the street in 2015, or something like that? I have faith in your ability to be anonymous.

[mucked]

[ and yet it's those certain circles that worry her. ]

Heaven forbid. [ she doesn't envy steve his transplantation; she can begin to imagine the duress of it all. thanks to this place. ] I will take a hard pass on the so-called golden age of superheroes.

[ not her term -- nor was it even used in relation to her world. but she's scoffed at it then when she'd heard it. she scoffs at it now again. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Wait, the what?

[That one takes her off guard, because that's not a term Natasha has heard before—and she's not a huge fan of the term superhero in the first place, a tangent she can't entirely keep from commenting on now:]

You know, I hate that word.

[mucked]

I'm not terribly fond of it myself.

[ for many reasons. once upon a time, she mightn't have mattered. but while he was still here, steve had...said some things. those things stuck like wounds. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Any reason in particular that it gets under your skin? Being from before the golden age of superheroes and all.

[mucked]

Superheroes.

[ she repeats the word -- clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ]

It's such a double-edged word, isn't it? All this talk and emphasis on superpowers. Super abilities. Super-everything.

[ and peggy might have normally stopped there -- she'd rather swallow her own tongue than bring up his name -- but the truth effect pulls it out of her. like an anchor up from her guts. ]

Steve Rogers tried to talk me down from wading into an event a handful of months back. Suggesting that a baseline human like myself should have left it to the enhanced individuals instead.

[ -- and it had steamed her. royally. still bloody does. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Did he? That's funny coming from him.

[There's a sour note in Natasha's voice, though minor. Her one meeting with Steve here before he vanished had involved him trying to put himself between her and harm's way.

At the same time, she had chalked it up toward his general instinct to use his body as a shield when the real one wasn't available.]

Considering he tossed me in the air to catch an alien cruiser a few years back.

[Not that it was his idea, or that he even liked her suggestion. He hadn't argued it though.]

I'm not sure you actually need super powers to end up under the superhero umbrella.

It's a bigger tent than you'd expect.

[mucked]

It's not an umbrella -- nor a tent -- that I'm rushing to get under.

[ because what's it to her, in the end? signing onto the ssr was never about being a hero. let alone a super one. ]

But it's exactly as you say. Damned funny, coming from him. [ downright blasphemous she would almost add. and maybe that's what stung the most because she can remember admiring the man before he became 'super' -- she can remember lending her voice to erskine's when pitching why steve was the best candidate for the serum. somehow, she'd always expected that admiration was mutual. and perhaps it was once upon a time.

but then again, so where a lot of other emotions. ]

I blame this place. [ there are so many overpowered people running around -- it's almost as though it skewed steve's ability to appreciate the humanity beneath what's super. a caustic verdict, maybe, but she hasn't been too feeling charitable towards captain america these days. ]

[outstandingbalance]

No, I wouldn't imagine you are. I'm still trying to figure out how to get out from under it.

[It's possible that making herself an international criminal did just that. On the other hand the fact she technically had been before becoming an Avenger didn't seem to stop the label from sticking in the first place.]

I guess he'd been here long enough to have adapted to it? But at the end of the day, it's not much of an excuse for someone who should know better.

[A pause, but she has to ask. Normally she wouldn't have to, but now she actually does have to.]

Are you sure it was about being enhanced and not because he wanted to keep you specifically out of the fight?

[mucked]

[ -- well, hell. the fact that natasha asks the question proves she knows a little too much. you specifically, she says, and peggy's nose crinkles at the implication. it's worse because she's right. it's a damned valid question.

but here's the damned kicker. ]

Maybe so. But he used those exact words, Miss Romanoff. Baseline human. That wasn't mere interpretation on my part.

[outstandingbalance]

I'm not saying that's not what he said. I'm suggesting he might have said something that wasn't exactly what he meant because in his head it sounded more rational than admitting he had a feeling. Which is pretty much what I meant by boys.

[Which doesn't make it right.

And Natasha hates the truth compulsion more by the word.]

But I saw what you dying did to him once. Not hard for me to imagine that he'd put his foot in his mouth trying to avoid it again.

[mucked]

[ peggy is riding high on the tide of her righteous anger. baseline-bloody-human indeed. and natasha's explanation only reminds her with renewed heat and indignation that the man never did know how to talk to her. a half-dozen messy conversations come to mind. and yet all of them cherished, despite the duality of her feelings relating to each.

but then she says something that pulls all the colour out of peggy's face. it's not the part about dying that makes her heart skip -- everyone dies, in the end, with certain super-soldiers notwithstanding -- but it's all the implied living that steals her sturdiness away from her.

...she lives long enough to die sometime after steve is pulled from the damned ice. 2012, at least, or thereabouts. does that mean--? dare she hope--?

peggy is visibly troubled by this revelation. there's no use hiding that she's hearing it for the first time. ]

I didn't expect I'd last so long.

[ and that's the god-awful truth. ]