versusnurture | twenty-nine ♢ private & video

private } ben

[She's shaking-angry when she goes to sleep, but when she wakes up the next morning, it's like everything's gone. Resentment lives under her skin, but she isn't consumed anymore, like she might go up if the flame of her anger isn't doused. She feels safe. She feels whole.]

[She gets up, goes to the bathroom, washes her face and brushes her teeth on autopilot. She's already gotten used to having a bathroom off of her cabin. It's amazing how little time it took, how used she is to something that was a luxury a month ago.]

[As she turns to head out the door to meet Scott at the clinic, her fingers brush across the Go stone, Ben's item, to pick it up, to take it with her - and she freezes.]

[It's ice cold.]

[In a flash, she's dropped it on the floor, run out of her cabin, and slammed the door. She pulls out her communicator with shaking fingers, calling the only person she trusts to help her in this situation.]

Ben? I need you.

private } elena

[This is the part she was dreading. She tries not to, though. She knows that what Elena said before is true. They're both strong people, and they can only get stronger with time. Nobody can keep them down anymore.]

Elena? I need to talk to you.

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[Everything is, in its own way, a production. Even this. She's posed herself carefully, sitting on her bed and framed in light from the window, so that she looks older, more poised than she feels. What she feels is afraid. Overwhelmed. Not ready.]

[But she has to be ready, which is why she makes herself smile like nothing and nobody can touch her anymore.]

I'm not as good at telling stories as Ben is. But I want to tell this one, if that's okay, because it's important to me. Some of you know it. If you do, I hope it's all right that I repeat it.

[She looks down for a moment, at her hands where they twist together in her lap, and then up at the camera. The smile reaches her eyes, now, because she can feel the strength coming, making her spine straighter and her breath come smoother.]

Just over two years ago now - two years ago for me - my dad died. He'd killed a bunch of girls who looked just like me, and I had helped him. Because I didn't know what else to do, mostly, and because if I didn't, he said he was going to kill me, too.

I didn't want anyone to know what I'd done. I didn't want anybody to think badly of me. I worked so hard to keep myself safe that I ended up killing somebody else, and then . . .

Some of you remember Hannibal.

[She clears her throat, forces her hands to flatten out on the bed beside her.]

It's so easy to trust the wrong person. It's so easy. I trusted so many of them, and I got so many people hurt. I want to apologize, but most of the people I hurt are gone now. For those of you who are still here, I'd take it back if I could. I'm sorry for making the wrong decision.

But I'm not sorry for surviving.

[Now her eyes blaze with confidence, her words coming stronger with every breath.]

Ben saved my life. You all saved my life. So thank you. I'm going now.

I'm going to kill Hannibal.

[She hopes beyond hope that he comes back here. But that part she won't say out loud, just biting her lip, smiling, waving - and killing the feed.]

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I hope you won't be offended if I say I'm proud of you.

[Charles said it to her once, those words exactly; it feels right, somehow, momentous, to pass them on, to someone she messed up with so egregiously, cares for regardless, understands deeply but sometimes sideways, often incompletely. But she's smiling enough to suggest she thinks it is unlikely.]

[Abigail matches her, smile for smile. Anya's saved her life, too, in different ways - by being too similar to her in some ways, far too different in others. The misunderstandings don't matter so much anymore. She thinks they understand each other now.]

Not even a little bit.

. . . Thank you.

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Will you take care of him?

[It catches under her sternum, a fishhook made of summer sunshine. It's so different, now, when for two months he took such meticulous care of her. It's not just of course or always anymore; sometimes, demonstrably, she can't. But the level remains constant - they always take care of each other.]

...I will.

Good.

. . . It's what I regret most, I think. That I can't stay here and help.

[She can't bring herself to say Abigail shouldn't regret it - not when she made the other choice, not when she understands so many reasons for staying, and for going, too, more of those than she wants to. Understands how unbiddable a thing regret is. But.]

You - seizing your life. I think that's a victory for a lot of people here, or who have been here. Not just you and Ben.

[She blushes a little, gratified in a way that she only would be with Anya saying these words. For all that they're still not exactly friendly, don't completely trust each other, she respects Anya in a way she respects very few people.]

I think so, too. I think it's - what the Barge is for.

Exactly so.

Thank you.

[Not for helping, but--]

For the part you played.

It's been an honor.

[And she means that, she really does. There are parallels she sees in Abigail and no one else; and things that go deeper in Abigail than they ever did in her.]

Give him hell.

[There's a gentleness to this, fierce and warm. Anya has never hated Hannibal; Abigail will always have been hurt and changed by him, but she isn't his any longer. It's revenge, but it's not poison, and it's duty, too. It needs to be done, and she has both the right and the strength. It's glorious.]

[She smiles, soft and kind and warm and sweet and vicious, all at the same time.]

I will.

Goodbye, Anya.

Farewell, Abigail.

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