(Open Log) You gotta know when to hold 'em

[bindlestifflost]

Who: George Milton, Nick Valentine, and anybody who shows up
When: April 22, starting around 6 PM until
Where: Apartment A-3
Summary: A night for playing cards, drinking beer or b.y.o.b. if harder, snacks and unwinding. Feel free to thread jack and jump all around, at least in my threads. This is just for some relaxed down time and catching up or introductions in a smaller, casual space.
Warnings: None expected. If your characters get to discussing anything triggery or get up to anything spicy, please CW in your individual threads.



Over the past week or so, hand printed signs drawn in sharpie on plain paper have shown up taped to walls around the apartment complex and on any easily accessible bulletin boards at ADI. A couple of them were also delivered to the flophouse with the request they be displayed somewhere the residents might see them.

They read:
Cards and Beer
Friday April 22 6 PM
Apartment A 3
George and Nick's place
You want more than beer
or chips and popcorn
bring your own.
Extra decks appreciated.

The night of, the door to A 3 is propped open. In addition to the dining table, a couple of card tables and cheap folding chairs are set up for games. Two bowls on the coffee table contain chips and popcorn respectively. There's a cooler on the floor in the kitchen filled with ice and cheap beer.

George or Nick will greet people as they come in and tell them to make themselves at home.

((OOC: Feel free to top level with your own character and make whatever prompts you like. George is generally easy-going, but if he catches anyone stealing, getting too hot and heavy in a bedroom, or otherwise being a general jerk about the apartment or the other guests, he will try to throw the offender out. If you want that kind of thread or want to succeed at something nefarious, let me know so we can work it out.))

Comments

[worthallthis]

He looks a little curious, head tilted slightly, which for him is like perking up with intrigue. "I'm a supersoldier. Or I was. I missed our alien invasion, though. I was still frozen for that one. Also, I was the only one." Besides Steve Rogers, that is. But they were still pretty unique, the two of them.

[failedpromise]

Cortana grins the grin of someone who long suspected something and has just been proven right. "I thought something seemed familiar."

Not that it's precisely good news. The original Spartan program was a massive breach of ethics, and Winter seems a lot worse off than they are.

Did they just keep him in cryo whenever they weren't using him?

"Seems a bit odd they wouldn't thaw you out for that."

[worthallthis]

That's pretty much exactly what they did, yep. When he wasn't training, prepping, or on a mission, into the ice with him.

"That's what I thought when Belova told me about it," Winter agrees, with maybe a little more emotion behind it than usual. He's somewhere between baffled and actually kind of offended that they didn't think he'd be useful for that sort of thing.

Also, it sounds cool.

"Were there a lot of Spartans?" he asks. He's not sure if the idea of there being others like him within HYDRA is comforting or distressing, honestly.

[failedpromise]

Well, clearly that's not going to be happening anymore. Seriously, the only reason Chief was kept on cryo during space flights is because that was the procedure for all soldiers.

But it's not like Winter's past can be changed.

"There used to be." Most of the IIs were lost in the Fall of Reach, the IIIs were always intended to be disposable, and the IVs ...well she may have had a hand in killing those.

[worthallthis]

Well, when you say something like that, Cortana, you'd better be ready for a question like this: "What happened to them?"

[failedpromise]

She takes a breath. Yeah, she should have expected that.

"Most of the IIs were lost when Reach-my homeworld-was glassed. The IIIs were always meant to be disposable. The training facility for the IVs was destroyed as a result of a recent war." A war she started. That facility was destroyed on her orders. John was her closest friend, and he'd done everything to help and protect her, even when she'd become more of a liability than an asset. The newest spartans may not have been the same as his own, but they'd been important to him.

Her actions were the ultimate betrayal.

[worthallthis]

He's silent for a moment. He can tell that this makes her unhappy, though he's not going to pick up on the guilt. That's one emotion he doesn't have a lot of experience recognizing in people. He finally says, "I'm sorry. You lost them. They weren't like you, exactly. But. They were a little." If she could live in their heads, they had to have something in common with her, he thinks.

CW: Slavery mentions

[failedpromise]

She mimicks sucking in a breath. There's more truth to that than he knows.

There was a time when she didn't agree with the comparison, when she thought that AI work was special and fulfilling and that Spartans were just automatons without any choice or joy in their jobs. After meeting the Chief she knew the latter wasn't the case, but it was a long time before she realized that the former wasn't entirely the case either.

Both Spartans and AI were intelligent, feeling beings treated as little more than military hardware. Property, not people.

"I only really knew the IIs, but ...thanks, Winter."

[worthallthis]

He nods a little.

He has no idea what to say after that, though. Maybe... this is not great conversation for a party, is it? So he changes it. "Do you eat? Drink? I brought hot cocoa. There's still some left."

[failedpromise]

She frowns at that. "Unfortunately, no. I can't even taste." No cocoa for Cortana. Which honestly she's fine with: she's been given so many other wonderful things already and it's more than she deserves.

But still, she wishes she could try it, if only to avoid letting Winter down.

[worthallthis]

He looks her up and down with mild confusion. "You can't taste? That's. Why not? You have a tongue. Does it not work?" He may have assumed that this body of hers is pretty much biological, since they're all made largely human when they come here.

[failedpromise]

She gestures at herself. "Made of light, buddy. I don't even have a digestive system." Cortana's more ghost than Human, not that she'd ever admit that. "Anything I try to eat just falls right through me."