versusnurture | first ♢ voice

Entry tags:

first ♢ voice

[Abigail's voice quavers, as though she's uncertain of the connection, like someone making their first long-distance call. She starts out firm and then peters out into uncertainty, the tail end of her first sentence almost a question.]

My name is Abigail . . . Hobbs.

I'm not sure how I got here, but I'm here now. [A pause; who to ask for?] I'm looking for Dr. Alana Bloom. She's tall with dark hair. She was supposed to check in with me this morning, but instead I'm here.

Are there - [And here she inserts a little more tremor than necessary into her voice, because she doesn't know what else to do right now - ] Are there letters home? That kind of thing? How does this work? Because I need to talk to my dad.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ben is surprised by the question, and it shows in the subtle, quick way he glances sidelong at her before looking ahead again. Her focus is shifting for some reason, though he couldn't say why. They'd been talking about one thing and now she's asking about his world of origin.

He isn't, exactly, certain what to make of it. So he waits and watches, and above all, answers because he has no reason not to.]

All of it was, for a time. Some in good ways, some in bad ways, but all of it was strange and new.

There was a waterfall in one of the forests outside of a city that used to be called Kent. It's loud, and wide, and falls down a series of rock steps, at some points wider than several vehicles, and in others narrow enough for a baseline human to jump without much difficulty. It is... ideal for hiding amongst, between the noise and the complication of its makeup. But it is also beautiful.

Amongst the human accomplishments, I appreciate... churches.

[She does like him, she decides. Definitively and permanently: this is someone she likes. He's sharp and fractured and beautiful in a very specific way, and best of all, he doesn't know what to make of her.]

[Her eyes shift, studying his body language, and then return to his face.]

Good for hiding, but also beautiful?

[This resonates. And she smiles, soft and shy, pushing her hair behind her ears.]

Are you . . . religious?

Yes. [Ben isn't so far removed from being able to read people he doesn't know that he's not well aware that the combination of good for hiding and beautiful is an odd one. He's working on piecing together an acceptable way to clarify the distinction about the waterfall when she unloads another question on him and he realizes he should have anticipated it. He never, however, does.

He's quiet for several moments, as though he's considering not answering at all, as though he doesn't have the answer or maybe it's taboo. It is, in a way, this subject in particular has been unfit for acknowledgement ever since they left Manticore. Even here, where so much else came back within his reach and understanding, where he has so much more, he knows he's not supposed to touch this.

He always wants to, but he's not supposed to. He's deciding, in the private, shining mirror closet of his mind, if he can indulge in it this once. She's new. And no one's ever asked him directly.

Ben clears his throat gently, something in his expression softening.]

Sometimes.

[Ordinarily she wouldn't hesitate to share her own, fairly typical and uninteresting religious experiences. She'd chatter and act normal, if a little vulnerable, and see what she could get out of him. But he's so hesitant in his own response, so gentle, so - loving is the word, she thinks, so in love with the very idea, that she understands this is more important than small talk.]

[After a moment's pause to marvel at him (either the false love he presents, or the true reverence that shines from within him), she nods. Reaches a hand out, as though she's considering touching his arm in commiseration, then draws it back.]

[She has no intention to tell him. But she does want to see how he'll respond - to that, and to this:]

Wanna talk about it?

[Ben doesn't notice her deciding, in turn, to take this more seriously. There's a crack straight down the center of his mental landscape, and through it can be glimpsed that place he once spun out of nothing for his family. Soft, cool, and welcoming, it is where he learned to love, how he learned to talk about it, how he first taught himself to trust completely and blindly. He doesn't, these days, allow himself to look at it, he's tried his best to pave over it with the help of his friends; he trusts them when they say it's not real, of course he does, because there are other cracks that show him places that are as impossible, as imaginary, and he is absolutely willing to let them be part of some non-reality that can't touch him.

But he loved Her best of all of them, and at a time in his life where nothing else seemed right, where nothing else was warm, he'd taken comfort in that at least. It's very difficult to leave that behind for a world without Her.

He's broken out of it by her hand reaching toward him, preternaturally aware of his personal space in the way only someone who has had it routinely and casually violated can be, and some of the gentility goes out of him in its own silent, reflexive warning. He doesn't quite lean away, not the least because she takes her hand back. In its wake he looks up at her face, meets her eyes with his own bright brown gaze, and says,] Are you?

[That wasn't quite what she wanted. She wanted him to tell her. Not these questions. But she can answer, even though it makes her think of her mother, whom she misses even though she's been eclipsed by the echoes of her father's ghost.]

I - a little bit. We always went to church on Sunday until I was twelve or so, and then kind of stopped. But it was nice. It was . . . quiet. I could just think.

I don't know if I believe in God, but it would be nice to believe in something.

[Something other than the wicked wrongness of people. Something good. But she never will.]

[He has to know if it's safe, if he can talk about the Good Place and his Lady without having to defend himself against the kind of ruthless practicality that She was originally designed to conquer. She's not real, of course, he knows that - but sometimes She still is, and if he's going to tell someone about Her, She should be at least for that.

Ben has never been to church, although he's lingered in the side streets and the alleys outside of them sometimes, listening to the creak of wooden pews and the shuffle of feet and the muffled strain of untrained, untried voices raised in song; he never understood the words, not as applicable to anything, but he didn't need to. Faith rang out in each syllable, lived in the faces of those that shuffled down the steps at the end of the service, and glowed from behind the stained glass windows he'd come to admire as something he would never be able to touch.

He doesn't believe in God, either. But he does believe in something.]

I don't know if that qualifies as religious, but. I agree. Everyone needs to believe in something.

[She can see his belief. She can. And in its own way it's such a beautiful thing, to see someone who believes in something abstract rather than something concrete, like the ability to twist people to their own purposes. Like the necessity of using every part of someone, to honor them.]

[And so she smiles at him, bright and wide, and there are tears at the corners of her eyes that she's not entirely sure about - where did they come from? What's their purpose? And are they real, or are they false?]

It qualifies.

Tell me? Please? I want to know. It feels - important.

[The tears confuse him, but then, he's used to that; every time he starts to think he's gaining ground, someone else does something else completely inexplicable and he's back to studying, analyzing, and mentally documenting. She's smiling, but he can smell saline, and he blinks slowly at the request.

It makes him hesitate but, glancing around, he adjusts course. Instead of heading for the CES, now they're walking across the deck towards the chapel. Ben has never gone in, of course, it's not safe, but he is fully capable of standing at the opposite end of the deck and studying it anyway if left to his own devices. It's safe for Abigail, probably.]

She. She is important. She was the most important thing I ever talked about, before. The Blue Lady.

The Blue Lady.

[Even the way he says it is reverent.]

[Using every part of someone.]

[Closed eyes, tears bright on her lashes, and then she opens her eyes and they're gone, gone, gone, along with the feel of a knife in a gut, gone. Ben. Ben is here.]

[Take her to the chapel, to safety. Her hands clasp together in front of her, fingers laced, an anchor for the fear that's only now starting to come to her in force - the fear, the memory.]

She sounds beautiful.

[The name has a strange effect on the girl, and for a moment Ben thinks maybe she knows about Her. Something nondescript lurches in his chest and he isn't aware of nearly holding his breath, but she opens her eyes and he realizes it's a broader, more general sort of recognition. She doesn't know his Lady. But she knows faith, or the need for it.

He clears his throat.]

She is. Beautiful and fierce, and capable of compassion for those who are faithful and strong. She is not a kind benefactor, but She is protective of those who honor Her.

She... [Nomlies, Ben knows now, are not real. Not as he'd outlined them in hushed tones in the indigo air of the barracks at lights out, the nightmare creatures compounded of every terror Manticore held for its test subjects. There were horrors, alright, and transgenics that had lost what little minds they'd had and were violent for it, and he still fears them for what they are. They are him, one step to the right or the left, one link up or down the DNA strand. He closes his eyes then opens them again to clear his thoughts, the space of a long blink, nothing more.] protects those who believe in Her, and at the end of their lives, She guides them to the Good Place.

[Abigail isn't quite here right now. She's frightened, but awed; surrounded by beauty, but really and truly dead. And the way Ben speaks is simultaneously so familiar and so distant from her experience, the way her father used to talk, Hannibal's gentle tone, that she's almost not sure who's with her.]

[Almost.]

[The difference is that Ben isn't telling her that what's happening is her fault. Not that it logically could be, but - her father killed because of her. Hannibal said . . . but Ben is just here. He's just here next to her, talking about his god.]

[She takes a shuddering breath.]

The Good Place. [Maybe she should have believed in something like this.] Do you -

Did you honor her? [Honor every part of her?]

Mm. [Ben makes a wordless noise of affirmation, and he's carefully lining up what he'll say about the Good Place - he won't make it here, he knows logically that this isn't a good place, not for most, but it has been for him. It has. - when she falters over how to continue, what to ask.

He doesn't smile. What he did wasn't good, either, but it had felt like it at the time. He had done it for the right reasons. He just can't talk about that anymore, either.]

Yes. I was the one who made Her real to the others, and in every way I knew how, I honored Her.

[She nods.]

Good.

[Her tone is fierce now; she's come back to herself, more or less, and the fear has gone away in large part. This is, in fact, the first thing she's said since she got to the Barge that hasn't sounded afraid, either falsely or truly. She's glad he honored her. Since she was important to him. Even if it's not the right thing to do now.]

Thank you. For telling me.

I'm sorry. You don't like to have people close to you, do you? I didn't mean to startle you earlier. [She did. She very much did.]

[Ben, ever vigilant, doesn't miss the difference. He's not sure yet what it means, but he doesn't miss it, studying her sidelong as they approach the chapel.

The corner of his mouth twitches, neither a smile nor a frown, and he returns his attention ahead.]

It's alright. I am unharmed, as are you, and we do not know each other. I have been told and observed often enough that I do not have many of the expected reactions as others do.

Do you? Like having people close?

I do. Most of the time.

[Sometimes events of the past creep up on her, and she wants to be away from everyone and everything. She rarely can, so she tries to suppress the feeling. But for the most part, yes, she likes people. Likes being near them, so she can get her fingers deep in what makes them go.]

[And because every once in a while, someone will genuinely love her, in whatever twisted way that might manifest.]

[It is not, after all, an unusual response. Ben has observed it in many - indeed, the majority of - his fellow passengers, which is part of why he's so willing to believe that his own preference is the unexpected one. It is.

But she's the one who brought it up, so he feels comfortable enough in the subject to press a little.]

What conditions are considered undesirable to you?

When it's fake.

[She answers instantly, instinctively, which she shouldn't do. She berates herself instantly for it; what does she know about Ben really, when it comes down to the important things? Not much - and it's been proven concretely that she's not as good at reading people as she thinks she is. Stupid, stupid, stupid.]

[Her expression barely changes.]

You know. Just - fake social things. That type of stuff.

[That's not what she means at all.]

[If he notices, Ben doesn't give any indication. Indeed he seems to follow the explanation exactly as she lays it out.

There is a reason for this and it should not, at this point, be surprising what it actually is:]

I do not know. What is the point of a falsified social gathering? There is a type?

Not a gathering. Just - when people lie. When they say they like you and they don't, not really.

[This could easily be the whining of a high school girl who feels left out in school, but it's absolutely not. She does well with her peers. It's big game that tends to get her when she's not looking.]

You don't seem to lie much. That's - [Her hair's fallen in her face again; she pushes it out of her face and takes the opportunity to look down at her feet for a moment.] That's part of why I like you.

[Ben wouldn't recognize it as such, anyway. He's not familiar with high school, with teenagers, with cliques. Of course on the other hand, he also doesn't understand - not really, not in more than theory - why the one example she picks is the most important. No one, to his knowledge, has ever bothered to lie to him about that. He's not important enough for anyone to feel the need to convince him either way of their friendship for him.

He's heard the last thing she says before, though. That he doesn't lie. It's accurate and he sees no reason to deny it.]

I don't see the point in it. Very rarely have I been in a position to need to do so, or that the results of doing so would not be much, much worse than the consequences in the inevitable matter of when I would be caught doing so.

I am glad it is a positive point for you, however.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

first ♢ voice

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]

[ Spam ]