versusnurture | twenty-nine ♢ private & video

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.

video

[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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[She can hear him breathing, and it makes her feel calmer - soothed and grounded. It might be the last time she gets to be this close to him, and she desperately wants to make the moment last.]

[The question is - well, it's complicated. It's the only home she's ever known, and she wants to succeed in it. Excel in it. But before she can, there's one thing she has to do, one obstacle she has to remove. She wonders if Ben knows what it is, if he'd approve. Apparently the Admiral does; she hasn't been demoted just for thinking of it.]

I want to go back. But I don't have anything there. I don't have resources. I don't have money.

[She cocks her head up at him, wondering if he'd disapprove of a deal being used this way. Somehow she doesn't think so; he's not so sentimental as some other people, at least not in the ways that count.]

[The problem is that Hannibal is impossible to escape, if she goes back; Ben knows that. He must either be run from or eliminated, and Ben's training has a decisive answer for that. His heart, though, would lead him in an entirely different direction. It would also be the direction completely opposite from any world with Hannibal in it.

Instead, he nods, and cranes his neck back to look back down at her.]

I know that was a concern of yours at one point. It is valid, and this would be the easiest way to give yourself that, if you intend to make a place for yourself in your world.

[An endorsement, but there's a note of something else there, too. Not quite sadness, but related to it, faint and fleeting.]

[Something in the undertone of Ben's voice lets her know how worried he is. She can't blame him, of course. What she's about to embark on is a dangerous, some might say absolutely foolhardy venture. But it's also the only way she knows how to move forward. She needs to reclaim her home; if she doesn't, she'll never feel completely whole again. And she needs to get rid of Hannibal to do that.]

[There's only one way to get rid of him. The law isn't strong enough to break him. Prisons can't hold him. She doesn't want to make him seem more powerful than he is, but the truth is, death is the only thing that's going to stop him for long.]

[She shakes her head at Ben, but it's not a no.]

I want to. I don't have to, but I want to. I won't have my home taken away from me for good.

[Ben never had a home; he created one out of fond wishes and fantasy, and then the Barge scooped him up and it became real. This place, though, was never going to be home for Abigail. He did not know that immediately but he has known it for quite some time, now.

She needs to go back to where she came from just as surely as Ben needs never to go back to the same. He only wishes, faintly and out of attachment to Abigail more than any real desire or expectation of being useful in her quest, that he could go with her. That, however, won't work either and he knows it.]

I understand.

Anything I can do to facilitate this, I will do so. You know that.

I know.

[She squeezes his hand and bows her head.]

This is really important to me. I'm glad you . . . support me. I'm glad you're helping me.

[There's pretty much no way she could have the courage to do this on her own.]

[He leans back a little now that they're speaking, though he doesn't go as far as he normally would. She bows her head. He tilts his, eyes still on her face, and leaves his hand in hers.]

Once Dr. Lecter has been dealt with - [She hasn't said this, but he knows it must happen. He knows that.] - do you know what you would like to do?

[She is awash with sudden gratitude when he says that. Dealt with - it sounds so sanitary, but she knows he knows what is going to have to happen. That she is going to have to kill him. The same as all her other kills, and yet so different at the same time, purposeful, deliberate, a public service. This is not an excuse. It's simply a truth.]

I want everything.

[A warm smile, another squeeze of his hand.]

I want to buy a house in the country and never have to talk to anybody ever again. I want to save Will but I also want to never speak to him again. I want to go to college. I want to go to business school. I want to travel.

Do you think I can do all that? All at once?

[He suspects she will kill Hannibal, but he doesn't know it for sure; this is, in part, the whole point. No one but Abigail knows what Abigail will do. No one can. Her choices are in her hands.

And he expects that indeed, she will gut him as any hunter does their prey, but there is still room for something else. There must be. He lets there be, and tilts his head.]

All at once? Not likely. You are, however, capable of all of it. You will do all of it.

[He's searching her face now, memorizing it, this moment when she is still his Abigail, still young and intelligent and fierce and now hopeful, now free; freedom is so important, she'd said. It is, he'd agreed.

It is.]

You will do so much more than anyone thought you could.

[More, especially, than she had thought she could. Part of her has always held herself back, in case, in fear of . . . but now, she can't imagine what she was afraid of in the first place. She is a sharp edge, a giddy knife, but she is also the hammer, never the nail. She will form her own destiny.]

[This is what the Barge has given her. This is what Ben has given her. This is what she's given herself.]

I'm going to have a long life.

[She smiles at him, soft and sweet and dangerous, all at once.]

I have to fill it with everything beautiful.

Remember me? [Like this, poised to spring, to fight, to hunt: remember her all potential, trailing possibilities like endless shadows.]

[Ben smiles for her then. He smiles more often these days, more than he ever has in his life, he does so more freely than he would ever have imagined possible just out there in the open, out where anyone can see, less because he is not afraid and more because he never remembers to fear. But this is not that smile.

This is subtle and warm and affectionate, this is light behind his eyes and an easy exhale, this is love.]

I never forgot you, Abigail. I never will. [He forgets things sometimes, but not people; he loses time, but not friends.]

You are still the girl the beautiful soul, and I will tell your story to others that will listen, and I will remind others of you for as long as I am alive.

[He reaches, then, to touch her hair; not to do anything with it, but just to smooth his fingertips over top, to add a sensory memory to the utter detail of his perception.]

Remember me? [Remember, if he loses himself, that he once had himself and she saw it; remember that there is one person at least in all the worlds that never doubted her.]

[She closes her eyes as he reaches out to touch her, basks in his attention, his calming, gentle presence. She loves him so much; she wants to make the world a better place for him.]

[Barring that, she will remember him always, her heart soft with loving him, content with holding his memory within her mind.]

I couldn't forget you even if I tried. You helped me save my own life.

[She rests her fingertips on his wrist, light and soft. When her eyes open, they're warm with everything he's ever done for her.]

[Ben doesn't answer for a long moment even after she answers, after he nods. His fingertips over her hair smooth into his fingers, his palm, and he leans his forehead against hers before he breathes out.

They will remember each other. There isn't much more either of them can promise, not really, not now and not within the foreseeable future. It is, he finds, enough.

It has to be enough, and it is.]

I suppose that's it, then.

[Another moment, his thumb stroking against the crown of her head, and then he straightens back.]

You'll tell me before you go, after you've told the others? [Because of course she'll tell them, of course she has business to tie up. And she'll tell him if there's anything he can do when she's done, before she goes, before they're really done. That's it.]

[Yeah. That's it. This infinitesimal moment when they're touching will have to be enough to bridge the impossible gap of the rest of time. She looks up at him when he pulls away, and her eyes are swimming with tears, and even she doesn't know if they're happy or sad or some emotion no one has put a name to yet, in all of the many worlds represented on this ship.]

I'll tell you before I go.

[Because . . . she shouldn't linger. She shouldn't. But.]

Before I go . . . can you do me a favor? Can you just. Can you sit with me for a while? I want you to be the last thing I see before I go.

[Which will just make it hurt more. But she wants it anyway.]

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twenty-nine ♢ private & video

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