versusnurture | eighth ♢ private + spam

private/video, backdated to shortly after white flag } megamind

[She takes care in her appearance, in a convoluted way, making sure she's dissheveled and exhausted-looking, hands wrapped tight around her upper arms like she's cold. In truth, and unfortunately, she doesn't have to do much work at all, just wrap her scarf securely around her neck and check herself in the mirror before cutting on the feed.]

[She's just naturally exhausted-looking, these days. The tentativeness is all fake, though.]

Hi. Um. I know we don't really know each other. But I was wondering if I could ask for a favor.

spam, tuesday night } elena

[Hannibal's hunt week frayed her nerves. The other Barge pulls a few stray ends out. But Abigail will realize later that the last straw was when she had to be sweet to him. Not that there wouldn't have been some other last straw - this just happened to be it. This is how it played out.]

[She knocks on Elena's door while shoving her scarf into her pants pocket. There's no way the other girl can't hear her heart hammering, she thinks, and tries to calm herself down for about five seconds before giving it up.]

spam, wednesday morning } ryan

[It's important, when hunting, to step quiet, to breathe calm. She was afraid before but she isn't afraid now. She's done this before. Kind of.]

[Besides, she isn't even sure he'll be here. The CES is a good bet, yes, but there are plenty of days when you go out looking and get nothing at all for your trouble.]

[If Ryan is here, or anyone else on the vague, short list she's got tucked away in the angriest, most vicious part of her hindbrain, nothing about her will change once she sees him. Not right away, anyway.]

[There's a dagger tucked into the back of her belt, under the bulky knit of her long sweater, a taser tucked up her sleeve ready to drop into her hand. She will wait until he reaches the edge of the woods, because that's where he is going to have to die. Between the open and the enclosed. Where he could run, if he was really looking at her face.]

spam, thursday morning } nathan

[And now she's nervous.]

[Which is not surprising. What is surprising is that she's not sorry. Not yet. She knows she'll be caught, she knew that from the beginning, but regret hasn't surfaced yet. This worries her. If she isn't sorry, how will she know she's separate from what she was trained to be? How will she know she's her own precise kind of monster?]

[She thought she might throw up after Ryan. She didn't. She just washed her hands and the blade and hid the dagger under the mattress. Business as usual, despite the fact that she knows Ben will find it as soon as he steps in there, despite the fact that she can't reuse that weapon. But he made her another one.]

[She hasn't inserted herself into the investigation, such as there's been so far. She is returning to the scene of the crime. This is, however, mostly because she wants a walk.]

[That said: as she walks, she's armed. Her hands are steady. She's nervous, but not sorry. Definitely not afraid.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Nathan is a liar. Of this she's absolutely certain. She knows the patterns of his voice and body, an unkind man disguised as a kind one. If not a monster hidden under the guise of a person, then at best inefficiently cruel. She doesn't believe him, and she doesn't believe in him. Believing in people has gotten her nowhere.]

[She steps close, hesitant, while he focuses on his photos and his anger. Her brows draw together in concern. It's all a matter of balance: she isn't Ryan's friend, but she knew him tangentially, was worried for him in a small way after Hannibal and is more so now. A matter of balance, of degrees.]

[(Her neck is uncovered. Her scar stands out pale in the sun.)]

Anything?

[ This is the thing about Haven and working on its police force. When lately the majority of its 'crimes' are perpetuated by the Troubled, a person starts thinking in can't helps and how to help, at opposite ends. It doesn't affect the way Nathan does his job, but that kind of experience seeps in, affects the whys and hows.

Mostly the whys. Abigail is, at this point, on a certain list of possibles, and maybe that should make Nathan warier than he is. He is not given to think the best of people until they prove otherwise (nor is he particularly given to think the worst, but that's the other thing working in Haven does: the Troubled didn't ask to be what they are, but that doesn't remove the damage those Troubles can inflict); what he misses, in the midst of things that should have his back up, is her perception of him.

As things are he takes the camera out of his field of vision but doesn't put it down, straightens up and turns to face her. ]

Can't tell yet.

[ Faintly apologetic, but also procedural in its slight double meaning. Active investigation, etc etc. ]

Edited 2013-11-23 12:35 (UTC)

Oh, of course not. I didn't mean . . .

[She trails off, looking faintly apologetic herself. From her shoulders to her toes she projects I should know better than to ask, a tired and light self-flagellation that is applicable to an unfortunate familiarity with the workings of a police investigation, from the wrong side.]

[Glancing away for a moment (because it's her eyes that'll give her away if nothing else does), she worries her lip. Nerves attributable to being in the proximity of an unknown and unpredictable killer, as well as to talking to a cop.]

Did he wake up? Ryan. [And then, because wake up isn't right at all:] Did they bring him back, I mean? I haven't heard.

[She hasn't been listening. But the fact that nobody's said word one to her means Ryan had no information to share. Even if she was, she did come prepared. She walks everywhere prepared, now. Has been for weeks. It's just the taser that's a new addition.]

[ Nathan's problem has always been a tendency to believe what he wants to be true, rather than necessarily the immediate acceptance of what's right in front of him. He works in a town where his objectivity isn't much compromised, and his intuition is good enough that physical evidence most often supports it, but--

There are exceptions. (Of these, Duke would probably claim to be the most significant.) What this means, though, is that it's not hard to manipulate him; ever since he started letting himself feel anything again he's close to dangerously ruled by his emotions. He's nowhere close to capable of understanding a position in space, and time, in the world as it's touched on and shaped by others, where the track back to oneself can only be blazed by cauterization, limned with and loosened by blood.

On the level that means he's been going everywhere armed since he came back, he understands the need for preparedness, and he'd have to be much blinder, more stupid and more cruel, not to grasp the difference between a grown man with the authority and freedom to wear a gun, and a young woman with a taser--he just doesn't understand how they intersect. Where Abigail sees him standing.

So at her posture his voice and stance soften visibly, reflectively, the camera hanging loose in one hand now. ]

Yeah. Doesn't remember much, but he's okay. [ As okay as death tolling is, which is terrible, but there's no point in belaboring that point. He tilts his head at her, solicitous. ] Are you?

eighth ♢ private + spam

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