logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

QUICKNAV
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's no need to seek him out, thankfully, as she's worked into the schedule already. It does not make what she's seen any more easily palatable, and in fact makes the impending return seem worse - such a finite time limit on how to plan out a response. Because it demands a response, of some sort. It doesn't leave her with a good feeling, but cannot be met with discouragement.

At the end of the day, she's got nothing. He's allowed in as is typical and led to the table. Something slow and methodical to her movements that isn't often there. Something in her eyes when they're next set on him. Not looking at Soldat, not looking through him. Boring in, as if she could rifle through and pluck out the closest version that would be relevant. The opal is placed carefully, with tongs, in the middle of the table.

Her stare isn't judgmental, condemning, or fearful, but it is stony, concerned, and determined. What little she can muster to say isn't really aimed at Soldat, either.

"You and me are gonna have words about this sometime, Sergeant."

They're distracted, coming in. It takes them a minute to notice something off with Misty. They've had their own memories to deal with, not all of them great, and even the good ones... difficult.

But then she looks at them. Really looks, and suddenly they're rooted to the spot, still standing, one hand ready to pull the chair out for her. Oh fuck. What happened. What is that look for-- what did they do-- what--

Being addressed directly startled the Sergeant, who falls in, blinks, and has to resist the stupid urge to salute. "Uh, excuse me?" It startled both him and Soldat, to be honest. He comes out on purpose so rarely, and only the once in front of a handler.

(Rock. Look. Oh. Oh. Sergeant, what did you do? I didn't do anything! I don't know what's in that thing!)

There hadn't been any expectation of actually pulling anything. It's enough to splinter her focus, and it's all she can do to blink right back, lips pursed, searching and failing for something. She can't articulate why this is upsetting in a helpful or clear way. Not without risking brushing a raw nerve, or sending a signal she might not intend.

"It isn't like you." As if she could lay any claim to that understanding. Better than nothing. She exhales, too hard and too lacking in relief to be a sigh. "You should - sit, and see it." Careful. Jesus, why is it agitating. "Or whenever you're ready, all of this must be...I don't know. It's not-- gory, it's just - not like you. Shit makes me nervous."

He gives her a wary look, which still seems at home on his face, even if it's technically Soldat's face these days. It still looks like Soldat, just maybe weirdly older. Soldat has trauma, occasionally seeming surprisingly young for a thirty-something nonagenarian. The Sergeant, however, is world-weary. The only tangible, observable difference, though, appears to be that eye contact is actually a thing that happens-- not as much as with actual!Bucky, but. It's there.

He eases into the chair he'd been intending for her. "Sure, okay. Not sure why it's gotta be me...." (Hurry up, Sergeant. I'm going, I'm going, Jesus. Hold your damn horses, Soldat.) He picks it up, using the right hand, and the memory washes over, leaves him again with a shiver as it settles into place somewhere in the mess of their brain.

Christ. "I was a sharpshooter. Designated marksman. Sniper, you'd call it now. We kinda still are, just got a lot more besides." He attempts a scrub over his hair, makes a face when he finds Soldat's current long tangle, drops his hand instead. "It was-- it was my job." (And you hated it. I didn't fucking-- I didn't hate it.)

It doesn't go unnoticed, but needs no comment. It's fascinating in a morose, almost morbid way, and someday she prays he's in a good enough place she can look back and scope out nuance without feeling sick with secondhand worry. They're not there yet.

"Ain't that that's throwing me." It's a little jarring, but she's no stranger to violence, to loss of life. In such a quick way, clean, at a distance, some horrified part of her clamors to try and brush it off as survival. Hers, others', doesn't matter. But it isn't so. "I've had a lot of time to get used to the thought of you killing people. It's the singing. The look on your face." It complicates things. He's harder to reach than Soldat - or so she'd had reason enough to believe, right up until now. It wasn't genuine. Her gut insists as much. But it's easy to need to hear it.

"Why were you acting like that."

This time the look is kind of incredulous, maybe a little mock-hurt. It's deflection, it's avoidance. Soldat doesn't deploy those in the same way, in the rare cases they deploy them at all. "Misty. I thought you knew this guy. We sing all the time."

The Sergeant is less open about his feelings than Soldat is, perhaps. Might be a result of not having had people trying to beat them out of him for decades. Might be because he's clinging harder to the social mores of their youth. Might just be he's not entirely sure, himself. Soldat is paying close attention from the inside, though, turning the memory over. It doesn't have the full name in it, so it doesn't elicit panic-- "Buck" is like "Jamie", it isn't the set of sounds that got them punished so often-- but they can kind of recognize the feelings involved.

And she bores straight through. She's caught a scent, and won't be thrown off this easily. Not without signs of sincere distress, at least.

"Sing when you're happy. Working. In a good mood, or something's just stuck in your head. That's not what was happening, there. The satisfied look, what was that about." That distance, willfull or not, from what he'd just done, incredibly at odds with what she'd previously imagined would have been the layers of past self under 'Soldat'.

He pushes to his feet, jittery, wanting a goddamn cigarette-- wanting ten goddamn cigarettes in rapid succession, in the hopes of the hit actually working-- but you can't get those here unless you bum them off Rosinante. "What does it even matter. I ain't-- he-- they ain't that guy anymore. I'm just a ghost, and Soldat's-- well, you know what they are. And it ain't that."

(No. Orders.)

"Fuck off, Asset," he mutters, pacing around the living room, not looking at Misty.

Taking the seat herself, she exhales. A proper sigh, this time.

"I don't think it's clear cut like that. Not at all. And even if it were, you're there now and here now, and whatever's going on matters. That's not the most okay person around."

She doesn't stare after him. Let him have that much space.

"How would you feel, if it turned out the thing you were best at in the world was killing people?" the Sergeant snaps. "Bet it'd fuck you up pretty good, too."

(Sergeant. Yeah, okay. Okay.)

"I'm sorry," he groans, running his (goddamn metal) hand down his face. "New memories are fuckin' rough. You know I threw up after just about every time I did that? Soon as I could get away? Pretty sure Soldat got over that pretty quick."

Having been wound tense already, treading and retreading mental ground she's petrified some stranger will intrude upon before this is over, the nerve that brushes is unfortunately open. Mouth opens, shuts, and for one moment she is dangerously close to crying. Not to make presumptions about her relationship with death, she can't say.

It passes quickly enough with apology. Easier to ache on his behalf.

"I don't know if that'd be exactly the case. It sounds like you had such an impossible time getting over it he had to. I'm - sorry. That's why it threw me. You're not a killer, like that."

There's a distinction between killer and individual who has killed, and it's largely attitude, remorse. It had to be made clear he's still the latter. This suffices.

"Coffee, while we're at this?"

Her brief stricken expression doesn't go unnoticed, but the Sergeant can only chalk that up to being growled at, and maybe feeling on his behalf. Soldat's behalf, because it ain't like she's his. They've never even spoken before. The apology smoothes it over, so it had to be that, right?

"I didn't hate it," he says, voice back down to a hoarse growl, still pacing restlessly around the room. "Wouldn't keep fucking doing it if I hated it, would've taken a discharge, would've-- fucking-- I hate that I didn't hate it. What kind of fucking person just keeps doing what they're told, and bein' happy when your SO says you did good? For killing somebody who didn't even see you comin'?"

"That what was really happening, or what you're stuck telling yourself? Society gets weird when wars are on. You get a lot of dumb stuff crammed down your throat until you can get by thinking it's...I dunno. Helpful, brave, tolerable, whatever."

He's hers, aware of it or not. She sees them as shatds of the same entity, and even if she's proven wrong, then it's merely more indiv8duals to look after. This is about him. She'll process and examine herself, that lack of speech, later.

"You come off as someone who needs something to do. Prospects get low, it's easy to get...swept up into things."

The Sergeant has a bit of a thing about not claiming things that "belong" to the other voices in this head. Well, not claiming things that belong to Soldat. Nothing belongs to the Asset.

"I don't even know," he mutters, still moving around restlessly. He wants to hit something, but this is Misty's house, and there's nothing to hit. "My head is still the Soldat's head, and it's got all the same holes in it. I've got a lot of the shit that fucker in the factory did-- if all of it's even real. I've got a memory of tryin' to escape HYDRA guns, I've got a memory of a goddamn kitten on the battlefield, and now this."

And a couple memories of Steve, or thinking about Steve, being all big and... target-like. The way he knows the guy was in that memory, even if he didn't actually look at him. But that thought is still literally, physically painful, like some kind of actual wound on their brain. Soldat can't share it yet, can't even properly think about it without a headache, so the Sergeant can't share that with Misty yet, either. Not that he really want to talk about it, himself. It might be partway fueling the desire to hit things.

Edited (phrasing) 2020-02-20 22:15 (UTC)

"It's time," she says, deliberately calm to counter him, however little she feels it. "It's going to be bad awhile, but you're on an upswing. All of you. You'll get sorted and remember that you're fine, everything'll come back, and you'll get past it."

A sentiment expressed before, and one she'll express again. However long it's needed, she will be a buoy. Not always fun, but necessary.

Asset is hers, too, damn it. Whole package is worth the effort tenfold.

"And realize you're not best at shooting, dunno what idiot put that in your head. You're a softy and a dancer, good aim has just as much use with something innocent as darts."

It doesn't feel like they're on an upswing. It feels like things are falling apart the more holes they fill in-- even Before HYDRA wasn't great, dragged into a war he didn't want to fight in. The happiest memory with Steve feels ruined, knowing what they do to him. The Sergeant is just not equipped to deal with this shit. (I'm tired of this. Get the fuck out here.)

Soldat stops pacing abruptly, wincing at the start of the now-familiar headache, and takes a second to try and calm down the way the Sergeant hadn't even bothered to do-- folding paper. This way for a crane's wing, then that way, then back in on itself.... The arm gives a purring little calibration loop under their sleeve, and they finally put the opal away in a pocket.

They take a slow breath, then actually start pulling their fingers through the tangle their hair wound up in. The accent is gone when they say, subdued, "Sorry, Misty. It's been a rough few days."

Credit where it's due: the difference in carriage is noticeable. They're distinct, distinct entities. In some sense, it's all the more worrying even if it isn't new or urgent. The matter tabled for the moment, she allows herself to deflate.

"Don't apologize, I brought it up. Didn't think he'd just jump out like that. Didn't really have an outline yet. You okay?"

"He didn't think he would, either, just kinda happened. He doesn't like doing that much." And now he's withdrawn as far back as he consciously can, avoiding the whole situation. Soldat doesn't necessarily blame him. They drift over to the seat closest to hers and sink down, giving up on detangling for the moment in favor of rubbing their forehead. The tugging, gentle or not, was making the headache worse. "I'm okay. As okay as I'm gonna be, anyway. You?"

She shrugs limply, eyes turned downward.

"Sorry. About that. To you and him, I guess. I didn't-- I don't know."

Guilty, maybe. Apologetic. Drained. That was more intense than it should have been, sooner than it should have. Upsetting him is a horrid, heavy feeling. "Shouldn't have brought it up, maybe. Or not like that."

That tone of voice, that listless shrug, manages to be slightly alarming even despite the headache and emotional exhaustion. "Hey. No. Not your fault." Soldat reaches over to pat her forearm with the flesh hand, just cuz that's the side she's on. They don't even look, they just know where she is and pats. "Was important to you. To know what it meant. Yeah? S'fine."

"Could have been more tactful or something." The impulse to shrug again is ignored in favor of appreciating the contact. "Thought more about it. Couldn't just hold onto it, is the thing, and I couldn't give it back without asking. Not the best with big things that happen this quick, and it's - not something that's good for a person. Him or anybody. Doesn't mean riling him up for an answer is productive."

"Maybe. But he's not hard to rile up. And you're not wrong." But she still sounds unhappy, and they're just. Not great with the words thing. And their head still really hurts.

So they drop their hand from their forehead, fish into one of their pockets on the left side of their coat, and pull out a particular opal that they're very familiar with, now. Set it on the table. "Palette cleanser," they suggest, pushing it towards her with one metal finger. Should she touch it, she'll get this charming memory.

Making Soldat worry is even worse, so even if she weren't voraciously curious about whatever he would be willing to show her she'd have taken it for something to do. And it's perfect. It's not familiar, but lived-in and abundantly warm as if to compensate for...everything, more or less. Everything is so lacking in warmth. (And bitter. Because he'll have school tomorrow, and he won't be him in a decade or two, and he's died, and god, they've died, and it takes some bullshit like this to get it back--)

But so warm.

The opal is gingerly slid back toward him, and she is absolutely crying now. Pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes she's quick to preempt: "I'm fine. That's just a better one than I was expecting. You're all so cute."

They get it. They really do, even if they feel a little bad. Tucking the opal safely away again, they say, aiming for gentle, getting calm and soft: "Fair play. You've made me cry loads of times." Well, like three or four. That counts as loads. Then, more quietly, reminding themselves as much as her: "It's not all bad stuff." Just. A lot of it.

There's a smile, at least. She's not sure she believes that latter point, or if she would even allow herself to, but that one remark hits where it has to.

"Sounding a little optimistic there, Soldat."

IV

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