mingle mangle

[takeabow]

Who: anyone!
Broadcast: why not!
Action: sure!
When: Whenever!

[ what are you up to, flooters? passing the time playing cribbage? watching Die Hard with a Vengeance, or maybe trying to repair friendships and perceptions of people that were dashed by invasive dreamscapes?

This is a mingle, so enjoy! ]

Comments

[enshields]

[He's... acquainted with the concept of a thousand yard stare, and despite the affirmative answer his shoulders draw down. Old instinct. There's no disguising his posture or his build, hard to mask the threat he presents, but he's not going to go out of his way to shove it in anyone's face, either.]

Thanks.

[Still, he'll claim a table where she doesn't have to sit with her back to him, and sets up the supplies. As he's flipping through the sheets of his workbook--]

My name's Steve, by the way. Steve Rogers.

[takeabow]

Katniss Everdeen.

[ her response is pretty immediate, though it's clear that maybe she didn't mean to say it at first ]

Uh, but I go by Nova here.

[enshields]

[It gives him a moment's pause, he flips the pencil he's holding between his fingers and taps the eraser down against the paper. His first inclination is to think super-hero, but he supposes there could be any number of reasons why someone would choose an alias, and 'Captain America' isn't one to talk.

He leans against his left elbow, letting his fingers brush against his short hair.]

Nova it is. It's nice to meet you.

[takeabow]

Yeah, you too.

[ she notices his pause ]

I was somewhere else before here. They wiped our memories when we got there.

[enshields]

[His attention flickers up to her.]

Before the Marsiva, you mean?

[takeabow]

Yeah. It wasn't in space. It's called Aather.

[enshields]

[The word means nothing to him. Idly, he jots it down in the corner of the notepad he'd laid out. He has his own reasons for not trusting anything that's meddled with someone's minds. She was Nova there, which means that Katniss Everdeen was from a place or time before.]

Ever get them back? Your memories.

[Beyond the name, anyway, the telling of which had almost seemed like an accident.]

[takeabow]

Most of them, yeah.

Guess I'm getting the rest back now.

[ rubs at her neck in an unconscious way ]

[enshields]

[God, it makes him hurt for her. He can only imagine what it's like-- what it'll be like, for Bucky. He doubts it's every easy. He runs his tongue over his teeth, probing at a canine, and then gently,]

You don't make it sound like a good thing.

[takeabow]

[ dryly ]

My entire life isn't much of a good thing.

[enshields]

[He'd started an idle sketch of something he's never quite been able to get out of his head: flowers in Holland. Rationally, he knows otherwise, but Market Garden felt like the first time in two years since he saw colours that weren't churned up by mud and blood and the bite of hoarfrost. War wasn't always the banshee shriek of mortars and gunfire, men screaming and pain. Sometimes it was sitting on a hillside listening to nothing more innocuous than birdsong.

His pencil stutters a bit, on the curve of one flowering petal when she speaks. But he does glance up, and give her a bit of a flickering smile.]

Seems like there's a lot of that going around.

[Nearly everyone he's spoken with here has their share of demons.]

Where're you from? If you don't mind my asking.

[takeabow]

[ she's feigning politeness, to an extent. it isn't that she doesn't want to talk, but more that she doesn't want to trouble him too much. it's a lot to get into ]

Panem. I'd be surprised if you'd heard of it. You're not the type to be from there.

[enshields]

[Heard of it? Not exactly, but-- panem et circenses. Juvenal. The memory swims up out of the mire of another life, and his jaw works off to one side.]

No, but I recognize the word.

[takeabow]

[ this intrigues her slightly and she looks up at him ]

Do you?

[enshields]

[He clears his throat.]

Latin. It means 'bread'.

[takeabow]

Yeah. It's part of a phrase, "bread and circuses". We're big on the "circuses" too. Rather, televised child death matches in order to keep people politically quelled.