[muffled spooky scary skeletons playing in the distance]

[geonomy]

Who: You! Me! Everybody!
Broadcast: idk but we've sure got a pretty broad cast of folks eh, eh
Action: HECK YEAH PLANET MINGLE
When: 10/7 until plot update or recaptcha

It's a deep, deep forest filled to the brim with fungi, mysterious life forms, and pitch black darkness. Explore if you dare and discover all these things and more! Just don't get lost...

Comments

[exothermia]

[He merely shakes his head.] I don't recommend it, as an experience.

[The Forties he remembers, but he imagines from a very different perspective than Peggy.] You're right that there don't seem to be many from that time here. There was a girl on my ship for a short while who came from the middle of the war, but she's the only other one.

[mucked]

[ there is a distracting and dismaying comfort found in speaking with someone who can say the war and refer to precisely the same one that always looms in her memories. taken aback by that, she clears her throat and averts her eyes -- just for a moment. ]

What a miserable time to come from. [ peggy might have made her best career choices in the war, but she never lost sight of the horror of it all. ]

[exothermia]

[The glance away doesn't go unnoticed, but Erik won't comment on it. The war was much further in the past for him, decades ago now... and yet it was his shadow at all times, there whenever he looked behind himself.]

It is. But it ended. [That war did, at least, though he'd felt no relief in it at the time. The war continues though, as it always does. Wars between nations and species both. He shakes his head and changes the subject.]

It's never pleasant to suddenly get a chunk of time back.

[mucked]

No -- it's not. [ terse, guarded agreement. not that her guard is personal, so to speak. ] With just a year it was like...like remembering someone else's memories, for just a split second. And then trying to intersperse them with those made here. Like stitch-work. Or basket-weaving.

[exothermia]

[It's an apt description, and one that fits his own experiences too well. He's a little gruff when he replies.] Nothing as neat as that, I find. [He's dropped plenty of stitches along the way.]

But it has to be made to work.

[mucked]

Then more like patchwork, perhaps. [ a bit of on-the-fly revision. it helps, really, to talk it through. ] A quilt made of memories made back home, and memories made here.

[exothermia]

That's as apt a description as any. [For something as formless as memory work.]

[mucked]

-- You have people here, don't you? From home?

[ she vaguely recalls a conversation with that professor chap -- and conversations around the heron's captain, too, that suggested erik and charles knew one another. ]

What do they think of your ten year leap?

[exothermia]

[He smiles slightly, humourless.]

They feel the same way about it. It happened to the four of us at the same time. [To say any more about how their relationships had fractured and been taped back together as a consequence of it would be to go too far.]

[mucked]

All four of you? [ she doesn't veil her surprise. ] That sounds like quite the coincidence. So much so that I would hesitate to call it one.

[exothermia]

It wasn't. [He's certain of that.] It happened at the same time, to all of us, and we all woke at the same moment as well. Only those of us from our specific reality.

It was not pleasant.

[mucked]

A few too many representatives from -- my reality, I suppose -- have been waking up and remembering more, as well. Though far less well-synced. [ a hem and a haw. she'll never really be within that group. she's too outdated; too old; to left behind. ]

Some of their memories have put them at odds with one another.

[exothermia]

[Erik's brow creases slightly at the last comment. It's not that he's heard of the conflict; more that however terrible the events his own friends had remembered, they had managed to make it out still united. If they had remembered just a bit less, that might not be the case... for Erik in particular. But things were all right with the mutants, for the most part. The biggest odds to deal with was the sudden shift in his relationship with Charles. For Erik, it feels like an insurmountable change to deal with, so much lost or changed with those revelations. He can't think on it without a mixture of loss and guilt.

It had been catastrophic for them in some ways. But they weren't at odds - he couldn't imagine having to wake up in a place like this and suddenly detest a friend.]

That's unfortunate. Especially in such closed quarters.

[mucked]

[ her nod is slow -- thoughtful. ]

Fair warning, but it all hinges upon your captain. [ ... ] Barnes. He's something of a sore point between some members of what will one day be the Avengers.

[exothermia]

[--he snorts, unperturbed.]

That has nothing to do with me. Winter is the captain on our ship, and that's all that matters as far as I'm concerned. [Erik's of no mind to be drawn into sides in some argument he's not part of, but this will be his by default. Despite some rocky events, Winter has been decent to him, and Charles is close to the man.]

[mucked]

Of course. I'd expect nothing less -- speaking as a Captain, myself. [ peggy might have her own tension with barnes, but it isn't because of what happens back in their home universe. that, she has nothing to do with. ]

And the Starstruck shall always have the Heron's back, so to speak. Old alliances run deep. [ and she misses jim something fierce. ]

[exothermia]

[The idea of old alliances makes him faintly uneasy; too reminiscent of the warring teams in the other places he's been. He knows logically that it won't come to that here. Nothing in the setup has lead to direct competition. Still...]

I know Wanda on your ship. I wasn't aware there were ties between us otherwise.

[mucked]

[ -- the misunderstanding is easy, and she doesn't know enough to clarify it. ultimately, she simply means that she feels somewhat bonded to the heron because of its leadership.

easily: ] More than you might think. I first met your captain during the war. I worked alongside his unit. From time to time.

[ so she knew the man the winter soldier used to be. it strikes a tenderness in her heart for him, and his recovery, that she never quite thought possible. despite the chilly reception between herself and barnes. ]

[exothermia]

[Ah, that kind of connection. He's silent for a moment. What he knows about Winter is mainly what Charles had told him, after his accidental trip through his head. This was a piece of information beyond that. Soldiers who fought in the war still leave Erik feeling slightly bitter; none of that had helped his parents, or him. He'd been abandoned in the camp days before the allied forces arrived to liberate the place.]

I see. That would be a closer tie.

[mucked]

I'm afraid it gets closer still. He and my Security Officer were boyhood friends. [ peggy says it lightly, despite the weight it brings to both steve and to barnes. ]

[exothermia]

[He hums a bit, not all that surprised. He's seen Steve pop up on the Heron from time to time, though Erik rarely speaks with him. Their personalities are not exactly a perfect fit.]

They do enjoy bringing in people who have ready-made connections, don't they.

[The four of them from his world. The array of others from related, yet different worlds. The others who'd been to the same world as him. All lines of the spider's web they're stuck in.]

[mucked]

Like we come in sets -- and they're eager to collect us. [ provided, of course, the atroma even choose who arrives and who doesn't. ]

[exothermia]

[He huffs through his nose, disdainful as always of the motives of their captors.]

Another theory to add to the pile. [Erik shifts on his feet, looking back towards the Heron.] I need to be heading back.