illyria_rpg | Welcome to the Illyria!

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Welcome to the Illyria!

Stardate 58561.8: Day One

Now that you've all got your room assignments and communicators, it's time to explore this ship. Please check out the deck plans to figure out where you're going. You can read about some of the existing crew members you might run into here.

Even those of you who may feel right at home on a spaceship will find that the Illyria is definitely a bit... different. Mostly because she's kind of a wreck right now. Whatever it was that threw the ship all the way out here to wherever we are, it really did a number on the ship itself. There's a lot of damaged areas, and several of the ship's systems have been compromised. You'll find that the replicators don't always work right (I asked for hasperat and I got pok tar!?), the turbolifts are unusually persnickety (I said bridge, not engineering!), and the environmental controls in your quarters may not do as they're told (why is it snowing in Room 4J?). Several corridors are blocked by debris, and more often than not the lights are flickering if they're on at all.

So what will you do? Help clean up the mess in the hallways? Try some bizarre alien food in the mess hall? Try and infiltrate restricted areas to get a peek at the ship's systems? Feel free to make your own top level comment, and treat this as a big mingle. Get to know your new crewmates, explore your new home, make friends or enemies, and whatever you do, don't try the gagh. If you need the captain or the first officer, please let a mod know, but try and stick to threading with your fellow new recruits!

(Don't worry about the entry tags for the moment, they will be added shortly. Before we throw ourselves into missions on alien planets, we wanted everyone to have a chance to get to know one another, so please use this opening log as an opportunity to kick off some CR with crewmates and bunk buddies, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask a mod!)

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Martha sat down a table away. Comfortable talking distance without getting in his space even if it is further away than she normally would be to talk to anyone.

"Oh don't I know it. But I've found that even when the bad was really bad, it helped me out in unexpected ways later. So it's hard to discount it even though I really wish some of it had never happened."

She grins then. "Brooklyn! I actually was just living in New York before this." Which reminded her of what had just happened in New York before all this happened. All those people gone. Her face fell and she took a sip of tea to hide it.

Bucky was watching her closely, in case she made any sudden moves, so he didn't miss the change in expression. Something had upset her, maybe reminded her of something - she looked the way he felt, when he got hit with a flashback or a bad memory popping up.

"What?" His attention sharpened, and his brows drew together in concern. Then he kicked himself, because the problem was likely the obvious one. "Did you leave someone behind?"

Unlike him, most people would have ties to others, people they cared about, were worried about, who would be worried about them. Small wonder she'd be upset at the reminder of home.

"No." No, but how could she put what had happened. "No. I'm fairly certain they're all dead. No one survives a Dalek invasion. Not when their goal is to stop those who could mess up their plans. I'd forgotten. So much happened between that and being brought here."

She takes another sip of tea and coughs.

"I'm sorry. Here you are not really a people person and now I'm talking about topics that no one wants to hear even if they are people persons."

Edited 2016-07-31 23:14 (UTC)

Bucky frowned, confused. He wasn't sure what a Dalek was, but there had only been one invasion of New York that he was aware of. He'd spent a lot of the past two years frantically catching up on the decades of history he'd missed, and the Chitauri invasion had been top of most lists.

"I thought the alien invasion was in 2012? Right after..." He faltered, but forced himself to continue. "Right after they found Captain America in the ice. That was the first time he appeared in public."

Martha shook her head. "That's ahead of me. Or possibly an entirely different universe. If you never heard of the Daleks, then you can't possibly be from my universe."

Which means they've been pulled in from different universes, which is disconcerting in it's own right.

"There's been a few alien invasions. I've helped stop most of them. Which is probably why we were targeted this last time."

"Well, not having heard of them doesn't mean anything," Bucky admitted with a sigh. "I kinda... missed out on a lot of world events. Y'know how people say stuff like 'what, were you buried under a rock?' That's pretty much where I was."

Buried in ice, not stone, but still far away from the world that had passed him by. Even with two years to catch up, he knew he was still missing a lot of context.

"Though, multiple alien invasions does sound like something I'd have read about at some point," he added, lips twitching in a smile. "I sure heard about the Chitauri and Loki. Different universes, huh? At this point, I'm willing to believe just about anything."

"Did you read about the Earth being in the wrong place in the sky? Seeing all sorts of other planets in the sky? Because that's what happened. We had to tow the Earth back to it's rightful spot in the galaxy."

And she knows that made the news. UNIT had been monitoring it all up until the Daleks destroyed them.

Something else he said caught her attention. "Hold on. You're not actually joking are you? About being buried?"

Bucky shrugged awkwardly, not really sure he wanted to get into it. But he had brought it up. And again, he had to remind himself that nobody here was hunting for him.

"Not buried so much as frozen. Kept in cryostasis for years at a time. I missed out on a lot... like, seventy years or so. Been free the last two years, so I was catching up. The internet may be the single most useful thing mankind has ever invented."

"Seventy years!" She counts back. "Blimey! So it was sometime in the late 30s or early 40s when you went down." A lot has happened provided his universe followed the same general path hers did. "The internet is very useful, but it's also a huge distraction. Tell me, it wasn't a group called Torchwood that had you cryogenically frozen was it?"

The question is innocent. Mainly she wants to know if he's one of Jack's.

"Early '45," he confirmed. "Captured by a Russian soldier, only they turned out to be a branch of HYDRA."

His mouth tightened as he spoke the name, and he flexed his left hand in a subconscious gesture. "Crazy bastards who played nice with Hitler until they decided they'd rather take over the world themselves, if you don't know the name. Never heard of Torchwood."

Martha shook her head. "Never heard of them, but I do know the type. Ran into a few of the take over the world types in my time. And been captured by them."

She frowns. "I'm sorry you had to go through whatever it is they did to you." He hasn't really told her anything, but she caught the mouth tighten and the flex of his hand. She heard how cagey he sounded.

When she mentioned being captured, he finally looked up and met her eyes properly for the first time. There was a dark sympathy in his expression, and his personal horror lurked behind that. Presumably she hadn't suffered to the extent her had, because she was still a fully functional, seemingly normal person.

Then again, maybe she was just stronger than he'd been, and hadn't broken. He wasn't going to judge. And any amount of pain caused by enemies was too much.

"Sorry you did, too." His voice was gruff. "Nobody should have to go through that. But hell, I guess that's what I signed up to fight for. So the world would stay free, and people wouldn't have to."

It had been hell. Even now, two years later, she still had nightmares. Still found herself hoarding food when there wasn't much of a reason to. Still found herself scanning every possible exit and trying to ascertain every possible threat when she entered a room. UNIT training had helped make her better at it. But having a lead position at UNIT also helped her heal.

Martha sipped her tea with a grimace though. "I had no choice but to stop them. And him. I was the only one who could even though I didn't sign up for it. Not then."

Edited 2016-08-07 21:30 (UTC)

Bucky would have understood any and all of those behaviours, all too well. "Good on you for stepping up when it counted," he said, quiet but intense. "Too many people don't, when push comes to shove. And the ones that do, never get enough respect for it. I'm sorry you had to suffer for it as a result."

Martha smiled, though it held little warmth. "I don't know. When so few are left, they all tend to do what they can. Too many people sacrificed their lives for me, so I could escape and finish my task." Even during the recent Dalek invasion, her commanding officer had died so she could get out.

"It's a heavy weight to carry, all those lives." Bucky carried plenty of his own, though they weren't sacrifices made willingly, but rather lives he'd cut short.

"The important thing is, you carried them. You did what you had to. You made the sacrifice worth it." He shook his head. "Even if it doesn't feel like it - you - could be worth that much."

He might possibly have been talking more about himself in the last words, but they still applied. Did anyone ever feel like they were worth someone else sacrificing their life?

Martha nods. "Even so, there are plenty of days that I feel I'm giving Atlas his meal breaks."

Another sip, another grimace. "But really. This is probably not the conversation you were expecting when you ran into someone else in the mess hall."

That made Bucky crack a grin. A dark smile, but still a genuine smile. He shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was wry. "Well, this is one of the first conversations I've had in 70 years. Can't say I really remembered enough to have expectations."

He paused, and fiddled with the unappetizing remains of his 'plums'. "I thought this would be a place full of soft civilians. You know? People who wouldn't have a hope in hell of understanding me, who wouldn't want to. So far, everyone I've met seems... I dunno. Maybe like I don't have to hide to protect myself, quite so much."

Martha nods. "I don't know what the criteria was for all of the outsiders who arrived here. But I imagine to serve on a starship such as this, one would have to go through training of some sort. Perhaps whatever it was that drew us here was interested in people who could handle a setting such as this? And as such, we understand how hellacious life can be. Perhaps hiding is one of the worst things we can do."

She presses her lips together. "Still, as much as I told you, I'm not sure I need to spill my entire life story."

"I don't mind," Bucky insisted. "It's good to talk to someone who understands a little, even if it's not the same things we went through. I think I kinda forgot there were people like that out there, that I'm not completely alone."

Other than Steve, but that was... yeah, that carried its own problems. There were reasons Bucky hadn't let his old friend catch up to him while he was on the run.

Martha nods and smiles. "Even so, I need to work through my own thoughts on things before I start sharing them." She takes a final sip of her "tea," draining the cup in the process.

"And that's the end of my drink. I believe I should be going. There are more corridors to help clear. Thank you for the discussion Bucky. If you ever feel the need to talk again, or find yourself wanting company even though you're not a people person, don't hesitate to comm me."

He nodded, and didn't try to stop her from leaving this time. Before, it had seemed like she was leaving because she thought he wanted her to, and that was different.

"You, too," he told her. "If you need help, or to talk, or just something heavy lifted. I ain't going anywhere, and I guess if I'm gonna get involved again, I might as well actually do it. And, thanks. Really."

He gave her a half-serious salute, a cocky tilt to his lips that for just a moment showed an echo of the playful, outgoing man he'd once been.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Welcome to the Illyria!

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Lol I finally figured out your username

Ha! I love it, but yeah. I didn't even think about using underscores when I made it back on LJ

I'm like, 'What's a notroses?'

Yeah... underscores would have helped.

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