eleven ♢ spam, private + open

[versusnurture]

spam } open

[The mask is secured in her room before she goes anywhere. She goes back to check on it frequently, bordering on obsessively, straightening it in its place of pride hung above her desk. She wonders what it's like to live life, day in, day out, in a few square feet, never allowed to breathe free air but through that grille. It's so much easier to imagine through Hannibal's eyes than Will's. She never imagined it would be.]

[She knew there was another man here who went by his name, but he never seemed real. Now - even though this artifact was never his - now it feels like a real, possible future.]

[What she doesn't do is lose time. She walks with even breath and utter confidence, anywhere and everywhere, feeling the simple joy of movement. She is afraid of nothing. She looks people in the eye, even if only for fleeting moments as she passes, and she doesn't even consider pulling a scarf on over the scar on her neck.]

spam } alana

[There's no way Alana doesn't have questions. Abigail doesn't feel obliged to protect many people, but Alana - she's been lied to all this time. Longer than Abigail was lied to. Hannibal was a colleague. And now . . .]

[There are probably worse ways to find out, but Abigail can't think of any. Besides death at his hands, anyway.]

[After a silent struggle with her conscience, she grabs the keys to Alana's room and hurries there, letting herself in before she can change her mind.]

spam } ben

[Eventually, she finds herself in the chapel. She has no question that Ben knows what's happened, or at least that something's happened. There was that brief moment of breathlessness, open for all to see on the network, and he'll have seen that even if he didn't watch her go with Dillon later.]

[She sits cross-legged in the pew and looks clear-eyed at the opposite wall. After quite a while - an hour, she thinks, maybe a little bit more - she sends him a message.]

Need your help with something. Not an emergency. You can walk.

[Then she turns the communicator off, lays it beside her, and waits.]

Comments

[ Spam ]

[warisart]

[Ben has been withdrawn lately, though not in a necessarily dangerous way. He's not losing time either, he's just isolated and quiet. He did, as it happens, see the breathlessness; he did follow Abigail as far as the chapel, saw Dillon enter, waited ready to intervene.

But nothing had happened and, because his interest is safety and not investigation, he'd abandoned the chase at that point, confident Abigail would reach out to him should she need him. And here's the text now.

He does walk, as it happens, and it takes him a while longer to track her down because he uses his own familiarity with her rather than his warden item. The X5 balks a little at the entrance, though it takes the form of a smooth stop, a small hesitation, and then a smooth start again.

He hesitates again at the end of the pew Abigail is occupying.]

Hello, Abigail.

spam

[praesidium]

[Winston is the one who reacts to the keys in the door first. He stands up and immediately trots over to sniff the bottom crack of the door to investigate. It gives Alana just enough of a warning to wipe away stray tears, wipe her hands on her dress and stand up from her desk chair.]

[She knows it's Abigail - she's the only other person with keys - but Alana still has a look mixing surprise and confusion all in one go all the same. Abigail is, more or less, the last person she would expect to see.]

Abigail, hi.

[She doesn't bother with asking if everything is alright. There are quite a number of things that are not alright right now.]

[routemistress]

[Abigail isn't someone Iris seeks out. Her brief conversations with the girl have felt like trying to stroke a cat that's scooting backwards under furniture; Iris isn't always the most sensitive person, but she's capable of respecting that.
Nonetheless, the glimpses of the complex intelligent personality have been fascinating, so when she sees Abigail in an apparently nonscooting mood, she catches her eye and grins.

Iris' dogs, more outgoing still, wag their tails and start to move forward; Iris, mindful of skittishness, lays a hand on Elvis' back. The two German Shepherds aren't leashed, but the touch is enough to hold them back, though every line of their bodies speak of friendly eagerness.]

'Ey Abigail. All right if me lads say 'ello?

latest spam but i don't care

[worthyofalittlework]

[Royce, typically, keeps to himself as sort of a dark hooded specter. Albeit, short, dark hooded specter. He's very similar in height to Abigail and really, he's not a big man under his layers of black and greys. He usually doesn't voluntarily start conversations but it's the scar that catches his attention.

As a very, very small courtesy, he approaches her from the front. Where usually he approaches everyone from the rear without a sound.]

They were interrupted, weren't they? The one who tried to kill you. [He uses to two fingers to indicate his neck.] Did you kill them?

spam

[persecutioncomplex]

[Abigail went off Touko's list as soon as Ben did, after she let him touch her and knew who she thought he was wasn't. She doesn't need to lurk around corners for him any longer, and Abigail only mattered to her insofar as she was his innmate.

That doesn't mean she isn't watching her now, though, catching her the third time that day, on the stairs this time as she tries to watch her steps below her and her book under her nose as well as the people around her. She's taken off the camouflage: Touko can see it in how her body doesn't deliberate any longer, simply does, and in a world where she's been arguing with someone almost every day about who she is and isn't, that sudden difference in the girl she remembers and the one she sees today is a magnet.

If it's the same girl. Ben has a man who shares his face, who couldn't be more different, so she has to rule that out first, before she tries to worm out of her what changed. Her head snaps up and she tries a cool, nonchalant stare (unsuccessful, almost immediately looking away).]

I- I wanted to ask you something.