Network

[musicdied]

Who: Yelena Belova
Username: jelica
Warnings: hallucinations, apocalyptic scenarios (please warn more specifically in the subject line if applicable.

[Yelena has never been what anyone would call a good patient. Even aside from the fact that she hates feeling vulnerable, she's never taken well to enforced idleness. She'd escaped medical the second she was able, but it will be a few weeks until she's up for her usual routine, which leaves her in need of something on which to focus her considerable energy.

Fortunately - or unfortunately - there's the flower-marked cellars they'd found in Dogtown the previous month, her investigation of which she'd had to cut shorter than she might have otherwise liked in order to join the excursion to Springfield, to distract her.]

For anyone who entered the cellars in Dogtown, what did you see? And where were you, as close as you can narrow down the location?

Did you explore more than one?

[Comparing apocalypse collections: the cheeriest possible topic of conversation.]

Comments

In person

[worthallthis]

Somebody else is not a great patient. Mostly because he spends the entire time he has to be anywhere near medical either shaking in terror, or completely catatonic.

He escaped sooner than Yelena did, despite arguably being just as damaged.

He doesn't reply via the network, since he's just across the apartment. Instead, he limps out of his room and leans on the wall, left arm still looking like he'd been picking awkwardly at the fried wires inside, to say, "It was the helicarriers. What I saw. What it would have looked like if Steve hadn't stopped them."

No preamble, just jumping right into answering her posted question.

[musicdied]

"What it would look like here?" Yelena asks.

She notes how ragged he looks when she looks up - not that she looks much better herself, not like anyone who fought the circus's avatars look much better - and leans over to pat the end of her bed in invitation, wincing past the tug of vertigo as she shifts positions.

"Or did you see home?"

[worthallthis]

"No, it was here. Smoke and dead bodies and a HYDRA flag rising from the wreckage." He pushes up from the door frame to limp over to where she's indicated, sinking down and pulling his metal hand into his lap, so it doesn't hang uncomfortably. It still works... sort of... but it feels heavier than usual. "I think. If they got what they wanted. They'd never stop at just a couple million specific targets."

[musicdied]

"Even a couple million would have shaken the world," Yelena says grimly. Even one or two could shake the world, if they were the right targets.

"But no. People like that are never satisfied."

She pauses, brow furrowing slightly, to tap out a quick response to someone on her phone.

"--Do you think it was drawing from something you feared? Or picking things that might have happened if the timeline was different?"

[worthallthis]

"Knowing where we are. And what we're dealing with. I'm pretty sure it's the fear thing," Winter says tiredly, and focuses down on his poor damaged arm to try and dig out another of the fried wires. "I don't think they can actually see into other timelines, anyway. If they could they'd pick better people to drag here."

People who would want to be their avatars, not fight against them, he means. Maybe even people who were actually people and who didn't have to figure out how to fake it, like him.

[musicdied]

"Seeing other timelines doesn't mean understanding the people in them."

Yelena plucks fretfully at a loose thread on the bedspread, then scowls slightly as she glances at another notification on her phone.

"They can still feed on us. And I think...most of us have our breaking point. I know if I hadn't found you, or met some of the other people here, I might have been willing to become a monster, if that's what it took to get home."

She pauses, then adds quietly, "If what I saw at the circus the first time had been real, I would have been willing to become a monster, even with that."

[worthallthis]

"Everyone has a breaking point," Winter says quietly, a little flatly. "It's. Better. If you know what yours is, probably."

He leans over a little, reaches for her wrist with his right hand, wraps it up a moment. Brief but warm. At least that hand isn't damaged. "I know I'm not her. But. I'm not going anywhere."

Text; un: bright

[abrightboy]

It was a bunker of some sort. Disused. Decaying.

[musicdied]

You fell into a bunker? Or did it change?

[abrightboy]

It was a bunker when we fell into it.

[musicdied]

Ok.

When you say bunker, what do you mean? This might be a difference in vocabulary between our worlds.

[abrightboy]

It was some kind of underground facility that people might stay in to escape a disaster.

[musicdied]

From what era?

voice

[twicelost]

Malcolm describe bunker we saw. We fell together.

Outside bunker, Dogtown turn into Bristol Cove. Humans catch sirens, torture and murder them. Ocean water look strange. Smell different.

Then it go away.

You read news of fish off Gloucester shore? I think that is what happen to ocean in vision.

[musicdied]

I read it.

[Her voice is thoughtful.]

Did you see the articles before you went to Dogtown? Or after?

[twicelost]

After. It is same as ocean in my home. Hard to find fish, food. We go to land to hunt. But humans not understand.

You also find bunker?

[musicdied]

No. Cellars.

[She...might have went back a few times. Whether she was searching for answers or just poking at an emotional bruise, even she isn't entirely able to say.]

The last time, everything was dust. No survivors. But you said it's the same at home - so what you saw was something you were already worried about before you got here?

[twicelost]

"Last time"...? You go many times?

[ Girl u intense. ]

Yes. I worry humans kill my people.

Entities know this. I do not know other answer.

[musicdied]

We are shit people like that sometimes.

I'm sorry about my fellow humans.

[A brief pause.]

I went out a few times. I wanted to try to figure out what was behind the visions, if there was a pattern to them.

text: @milton

[bindlestifflost]

It was an old canning cellar.

There was busted jars bulging cans and
some stinky old canvas.

Only went into the one.

[He's not yet sure he wants to talk about what came after. It's still a sore spot.]

[musicdied]

Anything when you left?

[bindlestifflost]

[The length of time it takes for him to respond to the question isn't solely due to his limited typing skills. There's a whole lot of start and stop with the dots indicating a text is in progress before one finally comes through.]

Nothing that makes much sense.

There had been a fire.

It looked like it took out everything.

I do mean everything.

[musicdied]

It makes sense with what other people have seen. World-shattering disasters.

Did you live somewhere with a lot of fires before coming here?

[bindlestifflost]

Yeah. NorCal. Fires could get
something fearce in the summers.

If the wind was blowing bad you could
get caught up quick you werent careful.

Other people had this happen to?

[musicdied]

Different kinds of destruction, but yes. If they went down into the cellars.

Have you seen anything like it since, in town?