Starstruck March Mingle Madness!

[theroadwarrior]

Who: People aboard the Starstruck, visitors and crew alike.
Broadcast: N/A
Action: SS Starstruck
When: The month of March!!

[Just your typical monthly mingle.]

Comments

[mucked]

[ curious, really. both max's calm body language and the prospect of a man in concern in the prison system. peggy doesn't look up from where she's still scratching rock under the chin. ]

I'm surprised that was allowed.

[theroadwarrior]

[He shrugs.]

Guess people in jail're still people.

Just easy to forget, when you look at some of their records.

[Max used to do his best not to remember. That they were people, lives.

Because then he had to face what happens when they die in pursuit.

... Of course, Max was still troubled, anyway. Consciences are a real bother, aren't they?]

[mucked]

Some people, I suppose. In some jails.

[ peggy waits a moment while she listens to the music. ] But I've put away some real monsters -- not the sort who will be getting any concerts any time soon.

[theroadwarrior]

[A thoughtful pause. He rolls a pair of empty shotgun shells in his hands.]

Mhmm.

So've I.

[Then he went crazy like one.]

[mucked]

The SSR had its own prisons for that sort of monster. There's little honour found in black sites, but -- facilities like the Rat were necessary. Just after the war.

[theroadwarrior]

[He snorts, quirking his eyebrow.]

You're speaking alien to me, captain.

I patrolled half-dead highways.

[Your agent is showing.]

[mucked]

[ a hum. she shakes her head. she wonders how best to explain herself. ]

You remember your history, yes? The war -- and what happened during it?

[theroadwarrior]

To a degree. Was... younger, when it all started.

The war never really stopped once it got rolling, though.

[Obviously. Apocalypse, and all.]

[mucked]

Mine, I mean. [ peggy tilts her head. ] If only to try and explain the sort of war criminals the SSR put away in the months that followed the treaties.

[theroadwarrior]

Ahh.

[Sometimes he forgets that they're alike, in that way. History, that is, until something nasty happens and diverges those timelines. Admittedly, he didn't know much behind the months that followed. The treaties, the work put into trying to make things better. He just remembers with vivid detail the Oil Wars, the Water Wars. Fighting for Guzzoline.]

Nazi bastards?

[See, he's quick to reroute.]

[mucked]

Precisely. Once the signature ink started drying, I was tasked with hitting their deep-science division's last few hideouts across Europe. Put as many of them behind bars as I possibly could.

[theroadwarrior]

Aah.

Must've been pretty cathartic.

[mucked]

Exceptionally so. [ not least of all because of how hydra had cost her a great deal; truth is, they'd cost a lot of other people a lot more. ] Can't imagine anyone performing any bloody concerts for those bastards.

[theroadwarrior]

[Ha.]

Unfortunately, lot of those kinds of people became leaders, where I'm from.

... Makes sense. Violence and power, bad combination.

[mucked]

And both have a bad knack for tending towards totalitarianism.

[theroadwarrior]

[Haa. He shakes his head, exasperated in his quiet way.]

Who gets water and when. Who gets blood. Who gets to ascend from starving in the desert.

[He shrugs.]

M'not much better than an inmate in a jail, but m'confident I'm no tyrant.

[mucked]

You're a pain in my neck. That's sure and certain. [ her smile doesn't reach her eyes. ] But you're just about one of the least tyrannical sorts I've ever met.

[ she's confident he'd throw himself on his own sword, so to speak, before he jeopardized someone else's well-being -- not for heroism, perhaps, but a tragically low self-worth. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[Of course not. He's the bloodbag.

And maybe, just maybe, he's Max. He's starting to get confident of that.]

Nicest thing you've ever said, right there.

[Teasing her maybe. He cocks his head to the side, apparently thoughtful.]

... Maybe that's why I'm here.

[mucked]

To be my own personal source of pain and administrative angst? [ peggy just about rolls her eyes at him. ] Very likely.

[ -- she doubts that's what he meant. and yet. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[Haa.]

Hmph... No. Mean more like this place is my Johnny Cash.

I don't think I'd work anywhere else. Not anywhere normal, anyway.

[Trying to imagine it... Being dropped in a normal society now...?

He'd probably end up in prison. Johnny would've been knocking at his jail cell.]

[mucked]

You may very well be right. [ she's been here so long that it's hard to recall that none of this is normal. she wakes up; she works; she eats; she exercises; she falls asleep curled next to the man she'd loved and thought lost. there's a part of her that almost craves that this be normal ] At least, 'working' would have taken a hell of a lot longer.

[ and nasty therapy, but she doesn't want to tell him so. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[If it even would have worked at all.

Max doesn't have a lot of hope for himself in a normal world. He barely has a flicker of hope for being semi-okay here. Baby steps. Maybe someday he'd believe it; but he'll never me normal, that's for sure. He huffs, humored it seems by Peggy's words, instead of believing.]

Nice thought.

[He rubs a thumb along the shotgun's makeshift barrel.]

I'll leave the job of 'working' to you.