versusnurture | first ♢ voice

A fractured psyche.

[She's heard this term, too. It sounds kind of beautiful, in a way, like stained glass windows.]

[Her smile at his question is shy; she ducks her head so her hair falls in a curtain over her face.]

Well, he was a friend. I wasn't expecting him to kill me.

Yes. The sane parts are no less sane, the unstable parts no less unstable. It is merely that one has not overtaken the other as of yet. A constant state of flux, or a triggered state of disillusion, if you will.

[Ben reaches for the stairwell door, distracted from her for a moment while he scans the deck as he leads the way out onto it, hesitating just before stepping through the threshold. It's such a small hesitation, a mere slowing before he's stepping forward again, sidling out of her way so she can join him.]

Unless you needed it as a mercy in some way, he does not sound like much of a friend.

[She takes the space of a long blink to breathe in deep, letting his words consume her for long enough that she might attempt to understand them. They fit her snugly, like a warm jacket. There's no good reason she can put on this, how it feels intensely accurate. It just does.]

[One has not overtaken the other as of yet. All potential. Except for in those brief moments when one or the other part of her slips out, all talons and sharp beak, and rips into the world before receding.]

[She glances at him. He's looking out. He's protecting her. But is that just a ploy before betrayal?]

He was my friend. [He was more.] Now he's something else.

[Ben doesn't notice that he's said something she understands on a visceral level; he's clearing the deck, performing a mental headcount and coming to the conclusion that of the scattering of other people present, none of them are immediately dangerous. None will look twice at them.

He looks back to her.]

Unless your death served some greater purpose or, as I said, was some manner of necessary mercy, he was never your friend.

It probably served a purpose for him.

[But she has begun to resign herself to the fact that she will never understand Hannibal's design. She doesn't like it, but that's just how it is. He's smarter than she is.]

[He has a grand purpose, and her role in it was over.]

[She turns her head up to look at the stars.]

It's nice out here. [A pause.] . . . Big.

[The word, perhaps, is vast.]

Then as I said: he was not your friend.

[Ben knows what friends are, or at least he's learning. Rhade, Alex, Aya, Anya - they would never hurt him, not unless he made them, not unless he asked them. He's not sure what all else it means, perhaps, but he does know that much. On this, he is certain.

Then she's looking out at the sky and he does, too, after a moment. It is big. He remembers thinking the same thing, remembers that it would have been intimidating had he not already been well accustomed to being intimidated by the world around him. To not understanding.

He is silent for several long moments, letting the door fall shut behind them, before he begins moving forward again.]

This is the deck. The upper levels are off limits to inmates unless accompanied by a warden. There is also the CES - the Closed Ecological System, which a warden must open for you, and can replicate several landscapes from the planets of the passengers on board.

[She doesn't answer. She doesn't know if he's wrong or right. She doesn't know a lot of things. What she does know is that he was gentle to her while he killed her, and that probably means something. She just can't put her finger on what.]

[She falls into step next to him again easily.]

What's yours like? Your landscape.

[Ben is abruptly more interesting than this ship.]

[Ben would not be soothed to hear this, not after Alpha; Max had not been gentle. She had been merciful, but decisive. Alpha...

He's not, exactly, thinking about that as he crosses the deck. He's not not thinking about it either, though, keeping watch around them until she asks the question. Glancing sidelong at her, he clears his throat.]

Forests, mostly. Occasionally a river. I doubt it is anything you'd find spectacular.

[Abigail smiles at him. She likes him. She doesn't trust him, but she likes him. He seems to be so - fragile. So empathetic. Like Will, but with something else, some coiled and potentially dangerous thing that she doesn't understand.]

What did you find spectacular?

[There it is again - Ben moves automatically to answer, willing in the very least, but he realizes halfway to a response that he's not sure which question she's asking. The smile confuses him slightly but he likes it better than the affronted look, the sharp remonstrance, and something in the line of his shoulders relaxes ever so slightly. Too slightly, mostly, to be visible.]

In the CES, or on the Barge?

[Neither of those questions had occurred to her, though maybe they should've. That's useful information to know about her new environment. But there's a part of her that's inexplicably tempted to figure him out, instead of her prison, at least for this moment.[

[She tilts her head, dark hair falling in a smooth, straight curtain, and looks at him quizzically.]

Where you're from. What do you think is spectacular where you're from?

[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.]

first ♢ voice

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