versusnurture | eleven ♢ spam, private + open

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eleven ♢ spam, private + open

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[This all seemed pretty standard to Ben, the line they both struggle with in sight but not yet crossed, and he knows from experience that isn't a comfortable place to be. He'd been prepared to reassure her that it's part of the process, learning how to sight the line and avoid it, that learning to do so is necessitated by existing with it near.

But then he realizes it's an entirely different line she's toeing and his gaze visibly sharpens.]

You may speak to whoever you like. What did wearing it make you feel?

Feel?

[She wasn't thinking of it in terms of feeling. In fact - she closes her eyes, touches her chin, where there was a slight gap between her skin and the mask. In fact, that was the point, wasn't it? Feeling nothing.]

[No. Not nothing.]

Victorious.

[Her eyes flutter open; she draws in breath. The touch of her fingers drifting to her cheek, then falling back to her lap.]

And nothing else.

[That's not what I want, that emptiness. But, but, but. She gives a wry smile.]

It felt good at the time. I felt so focused.

[Ben breathes out. There is a comparison in his own past: the moment when his grip closes over tattooed skin, the vertebrae under his hand snap and he knows, without doubt, that he is not a mistake. That he is powerful, vindicated, protected. That She exists and She loves him. That moment that brings about the absolute, peaceful calm for days afterwards before the uncertainty begins crackling back in at the edges, each time driving the fracture closer and closer to who he is at his core.

The desperation to get back to that place, even knowing - because the madness is only madness through moments of sanity, he could not have the static without both - that it won't last. That there's something wrong.

There is no judgment in his voice, only calm reason.]

Abigail, the mask is not evidence if your victory. It belongs to someone else. It is temporary.

It can help, but it is not your solution.

[And just like that, whatever thrill she's feeling is cut in half, the floor yanked out from under her. She's lost the high. Because he's right. Even if it was victory - it's not hers. It's proof that somebody, somewhere, beat him. That's all.]

[She rubs her eyes like a tired child.]

It . . . I . . .

[Not my solution. Not my solution. She has to keep it, she realizes; she has to beat that too. The desire for simplistic solutions, for the talismanic familiarity, for keeping the devil at arm's length with a wink and a smile: those are all dangers she has to fight. She can beat them. She can.]

[She has to.]

I want it to help. I don't want to just - feel that. It was lonely.

I don't want to go backwards.

[It brings him no joy, being right; there's a kind of solid confidence to it, to being sure of his footing, but he watches her face fall and takes no pleasure in being the source of it.

It's worth it, though, to see emotions that are hers. Not borrowed, not an imitation of someone else, not fabricated; Abigail's. The mask, like the line, can't merely disappear and take its danger with it. She must learn to hold herself separate from it.]

If it is agreeable to you, I will keep the mask for you. You may see it whenever you like, but I will keep it safe.

[He will keep her safe, as much as he can. He will help her find out how to keep herself safe.]

You will have your own victory over him. The proof that others have found theirs can be a useful reminder.

[Feeling what she feels is worth it. It has to be. She has to cling to that belief, or else what good is all the work she's done, the people she's hurt and gotten no lasting joy from? Finding herself incapable of being Hannibal's perfect monster - not even wanting to, most of the time (most being the key word) - she has to become Abigail.]

[Whoever the hell that is.]

[She swallows, nods.]

Yes. Please. I don't want just anyone to have it. But I shouldn't keep it with me. [It has to be Ben. Otherwise, it might just be a joke. A fiction. She's forgotten already that it was Dillon's to start with.]

I don't understand why I didn't lose time this time.

You were focused.

[He is confident of this, now. He was most lost, most adrift, when he was fighting between the static in his head; once he'd given himself up to the comforting ritual of tracking down a Nomlie, abducting it, branding it, preparing it, and turning it loose to hunt down again, to kill, to collect tribute from, well. He was everything he'd been meant to be, then, and more. Capable. Deadly. Perfect.

What everyone else told him he should be. Ben searches her face for a moment, trying to decide something, but he already had or he wouldn't have sent the request at all. Definitively, he reaches for an inside pocket of one of his new jackets, and tells her:]

I have something for you. Did you receive the watch I requested?

[Oh. That makes sense. A lot of it, and a comforting kind. More than that, it provides her with direction. Learn to focus without obsessing over victory. Over Hannibal. Over safety. Learn to focus and breathe at the same time.]

[It sounds impossible. But Ben did it, in his own way. She can, too. He wouldn't tell her she could if she couldn't.]

[Some of the helpless weight lifts off her shoulders, and she shoots him a half-smile, brightening at the mention of the watch.]

I got it. I haven't had a chance to try out the compass part yet, because - no poles - but it's beautiful.

[Beautiful and useful. Her favorite kind of thing.]

[Abigail has more agency at a younger age than Ben ever did; her childhood built for her a different prison wrapped in a different set of rules, and she is not more intelligent than he is, but she is clever in a way he is not. She can master herself. She can learn to keep her own time, with time.

Until then he will lend her his experience, and be grateful that she exists so that all he struggled through was not in vain; she smiles at him and something behind his eyes gentles proportionately.]

It was my hope that you would find it useful. Someday you will be someplace that the time it keeps and the directions it points will be more or less stable, and you will be able to take it with you.

[He slides the card out into his palm and lowers both hands to his lap. He lost the original card somewhere along the way, left behind on the rooftop of Barracks B when they escaped. He still remembers every crease and fold, every imperfection in the ink, every line, and if he didn't know better he would say this was in fact that very card.

It can't be. But more impossibilities have happened. He rubs his thumb over it, cupped protectively in his hands, and then holds it out without looking up.]

And this.

[She had thought - maybe a case for it. Something practical like that, something related. But this is his Lady. Nothing to do with time at all.]

[And everything. She was his salvation and his destruction, his loss and his home, his family and his isolation. There was nothing that She couldn't do, except make the world make sense in the end.]

[Ben won't meet her eyes. She wonders fleetingly if she's done something wrong, and reaches out; her fingers tremble and run down the face of the card.]

It's - yours?

[It looks old. Worn. Loved. The Lady is beautiful, she thinks numbly, not realizing the resurgence of her focus, the buzzing calm, the self-awareness. It all feels so natural.]

[She's wrong. It's not anything Abigail's done, but more the knowledge that she's perhaps the only one here that could possibly know what it means. What one little card with one simple likeness on it could do. The kind of focus, of motivation, of inspiration it could bring.

The Blue Lady was his greatest creation and, in many ways, he was Hers. He was also Her most terrible disciple, beloved and adoring, imperfect and desperate. She saved him, and then She destroyed him, and the only way for him to save himself had been to abandon Her which is why he can never quite be saved. He cannot leave Her behind completely.

Abigail, if anyone, will know. The Lady was the first thing Ben gave her of himself, then in words as he had given Her to his unit. But this is where it started. He nods, takes a slow, deep inhale, and looks up at her.]

An employee at Manticore gave it to us. He discovered Jack having a seizure, and there was nothing we could do to prevent him seeing. But he didn't report it. He gave Jack the card instead, and he said "Pray to her. She'll protect you." And he left, and that was all, though we didn't know it at the time.

[Ben's thumbtip behind the trail of Abigail's fingers traces delicately over what they had believed, then, to be Her exposed heart. The most vulnerable part of her, held confidently on display because She was far too strong to fear anything that they feared. Fierce and beautiful, capable of exchanging faith for love, for protection, even against all that faced a handful of young X5s.]

Jack was afraid. We all were. Someone had to say something.

So you said it.

[He is so strong, Abigail thinks for the thousandth time; so much stronger than he seems, his heart so much bigger than the box they tried to close it in at Manticore. He would give so much - all of himself - for a little sense of safety.]

[So would she.]

[As his thumb follows hers on the card, she circles round and follows his movements exactly, getting a feel for the Lady as he knows her, edging in toward Her heart. It frightens her a little. But it makes her feel strong, too, even against all that faces her. All that she's already faced.]

You told them stories. You made Her real to them.

She almost feels real to me. [This is peaceful, less agitated than before but in no way distanced. She is here. She's just - thinking. Unafraid.]

I said it. I named Her and I made Her real.

[He's distracted, mostly, by his own riot of feelings regarding this particular card, this story, this piece of himself; it is the part of himself that will never find peace. The part with security and Manticore and uncertainty and the Lady all woven through it, constantly pulling against one another, at the center of his sense of self. But when he looks up at Abigail he sees her lack of fear.

That is all he ever created Her for. Ben extends his arm just a bit more, shifts the card in his hand in obvious offer without looking.]

She is not real. I have to remember that, or... She is not real. But Her power is real, and sometimes that is enough, which is why I wanted you to have this.

She will never leave you. She will love you. She will give you strength.

[Abigail is tired. She's done and felt and pushed through so many things today - if it were anyone else, she'd hug them without question, bury her face in their shoulder and cry, not from sadness but from sheer exhaustion.]

[She can't do that with Ben. She knows that, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a thing; that's just how it is. She knows what to do when she feels like this, too. He provided her with a solution.]

[Swallowing hard, she takes a moment to commit all of this not just to memory, but to heart. Her father has - fathers have - deserted her, betrayed her. The Blue Lady may only be real in Ben's mind, but that's so much more than enough to her. There are enough other things that aren't real but in the human mind that Abigail could wrap the strength of her belief around like hot iron: the power of words, the necessity of lies, the loss of time. She believes all of those things to be real and true.]

[So the Blue Lady is true. The Blue Lady will never leave her. She will love Abigail, and She will give her strength. She is not real, but She is true.]

[Abigail takes the card and slips it into the cradle of her hands with excruciating care, as if she's handling something small and fragile, a baby bird, the seed of belief.]

I need to go to my room, and I need you to come with me. [She rises.] Please?

[Once the card leaves his hands, Ben sits still and silent and tense like only he can; he watches Abigail without raising his eyes from the card, reads the exhaustion in her as much as feels it radiating from her. He is proud of her. He loves her. He will do whatever he can - whatever he can to protect her, even if that is to stand by and do nothing while she defines herself as best she can.

If Ben cannot be with her at all times, must not, the Lady will. She is not a kind mistress, she has no use for weak followers, but Ben is confident that Abigail will be safe with her. Abigail who is struggling to become who she is despite everything, Abigail who is fierce and clever and childlike and strong. Who is still defining all of these terms in the context of her self.

She rises and Ben's spine straightens to track the movement, though his eyes don't rise to her face until she is asking him a question. He rises then, too, in itself it's own answer, as though he could give any other.]

Yes. I will go with you. [The chapel is beginning to make his skin and muscles glow. He needs to leave it anyway.]

[She walks out the door of the chapel as soon as he speaks, knowing, trusting that he will follow her - walks all the way to her room in silence, with the card cradled in her hand. When she gets to her room, she holds the door open for him and then slips inside, stepping to the desk.]

[Over it hangs the mask. She looks at it for a moment, lips parted in an unconscious reverence. It's lost some of its luster in her conversation with Ben, but it's still so vital, so powerful, so frightening and beautiful and deadly.]

[She tears her eyes away and pulls a drawer open, clearing a space inside and placing the card inside with care. Later she'll lacquer it, protect it, so that she might carry it around with her always. It's important to keep it away from Ben, though; she knows that much.]

[Then, taking things in steps, one at a time, she closes the drawer with her hip. She pulls the mask down off the wall. She hands it to Ben, making sure not to let go until his grip is secure, lest it fall. And she crawls onto the bed, pulling the bear he gave her into her hands and hugging it tightly, burying her face in between its ears.]

[Ben trails after her, steps cat-silent in a way he has learned not to indulge in for the most part, and does not try to speak either. He is alert, letting distance from the chapel soothe the buzzing in his mind, carefully keeping an eye on the way his visible skin goes back to normal; he suspects no one else saw what was happening, that it wasn't real. He's still relieved when he rubs his fingertips together and feels only skin against skin and hears nothing.

He tracks the movement of the card with a rail steady gaze for as long as he can see it, and stares at the drawer for several more moments even after it's closed; love, need, love, hate, trust, desperation. It's only when she extends the mask to him that he breaks from it, though it's only muscular reflex that has him accepting it at first.

And then his attention transfers and Ben is studying the mask in his hands. He handles it carefully, even though he can see that it is sturdy, meant to withstand the efforts of someone trying to take it off; that isn't the point. He runs his fingers over the surfaces, the place where the bars over the mouth disappear into the rest of the structure, how the straps are hinged to it. He smells it, smells Abigail faintly, Dillon Cole more strongly, metal and padding and leather and cleaning agents and sweat. It makes him nervous for reasons he couldn't explain, but he doesn't have to.

Looking up at Abigail, his voice is quiet.] Shall I remove it now and come back, or shall I stay? [They aren't done speaking, yet, but Ben doesn't know how much danger she's in being in the presence of the mask.]

It's okay. Stay. Please?

[She speaks quickly, urgently - she doesn't want him to leave. He's neutralized the threat of the mask, anyway; he's stripped away its power and symbolism with the crisp surety of his words and the deliberate replacement of the Blue Lady.]

[Her speech is still muffled into the plush bear's head, though, and she doesn't move or say anything for a few more long moments. When she does lift her head again to look at him, her hair is mussed and dissheveled, her eyes tired but bright. Not fever-bright, though; her fever has broken.]

I had to get to the bear. [This, she has decided, is her best way to cope. It's Ben, but it's not. She can use it even when he's not around. It's childish, but frankly, she doesn't care.]

I will.

[The promise is easy to make, anyway, even if he's left standing uncertainly into the drawn out silence. He doesn't look around - he doesn't have to - but neither does he look up from the mask. His eyes go unfocused so he can see the blurry shape of Abigail just at the edge of his vision without looking directly at her.

She starts speaking again in the moment he moves, stepping over in front of her and then folding neatly down to the floor, compact and balanced, placing the mask in his cross-legged lap. His hands are next, folding every bit as neatly, every bit as self-contained over top of it.]

It helps. [This is not a question. It is a marker, put out to use for navigation a few steps later down the path of logic.] What about it do you find comforting?

[The way she looks at him, it's like he's asked her a question she's already answered a hundred times. That's the thing. To her perspective, she has. To Ben's, she hasn't said word one. Her face goes blank and she drops her chin back to the already-worn space between the bear's ears.]

The fact that you gave it to me is the big part. It feels like a part of you, so it's safe, because you're safe.

That and - teddy bears are for little kids. The kind of little kids who get protected by their parents, I mean. Not the kind that are all alone, or the kind whose parents are crazy murderers. So it's . . . a nice little lie.

[A lie she doesn't mind. A lie that makes it easier to breathe.]

[Ben is accustomed to fielding that particular look, and to be fair sometimes it's because something he's asking about has been explained to him multiple times; he hasn't received it from Abigail in quite some time, though, and he tilts his head as though he might look away, abruptly self-conscious.

He doesn't, though, his eyes still on her face. It is a kind of research. It is finding out how to replicate it and, potentially, reduce her need for it. The problem is that the gift was a successful one, but he still doesn't understand why. He still doesn't know what it means to her, or didn't until now.]

This is important to you. The projection of family that would protect you. Of parents.

[Ben is confirming; it's the last part that is the shakiest in this obvious statement. The part he knows is extremely important, possibly key, to helping Abigail, but that eludes him completely.]

[She feels bad, making him insecure. He can't help it, any more than she can help her nightmares or the time she loses. The fact that they understand each other perfectly most of the time makes it more difficult to seamlessly move into those moments when they pass each other like ships in the night.]

[With another quick glance up to him, she nods, quickly and sharply.]

Hannibal was that, after my dad. And Will. And . . . Alana, kind of, I never . . .

[She never shared secrets with Alana. But then, she never shared secrets with her mother, either. Not the big ones, the deadly ones, like she shared with her dad.]

[She wiggles the bear's little arms, feeling wretched.]

Is that weird? Is it crazy?

[Here is what Ben knows about parents: there is typically one male and one female, they reproduce and give life to an offspring. They raise it. They release it.

He knows from Beatrix that a mother will love a daughter because it is hers; he does not know how fathers relate to daughters. He never had parents. He doesn't understand how the title moves from one non-biological individual to another. But Abigail has done it not once, but twice, with men who did not raise her, who only nominally released her.

Now three times. He will need to speak with Arkin more. Or Alana.

However:]

The definition of "weird" is, alternatively, suggesting something supernatural, something that is strange or bizarre, or connected with fate.

While you are using the figurative, colloquial speech, I would say no. I am, however, not the best judge of this. Perhaps it is crazy.

[He looks down at the mask, turning a strap over between his fingertips.]

But you know that I am crazy. It is not all that I am. Merely one thing. [One thing that he assigns, in and of itself, neither positive nor negative connotations. He looks back up.] If your compulsion to extend this status to others is crazy, that is only one thing that it is.

But if it is also sincere, then that must also be considered.

[It comforts her immeasurably that Ben knows he is crazy, that he has let that fact fly from him without condemning it or making it, somehow, beautiful. That's one of thousands of differences between him and Hannibal - Hannibal, who always told her she was not evil, not crazy, not a monster. Something beautiful.]

[Which maybe she is. But it has nothing to do with her state of mind. She is learning this.]

Maybe I should stop.

[As if she could just stop what is the only safe thing she knows how to do. The only security she knows how to find. She seeks it with every fiber of her being, despite awful past experiences. She can't just stop. She seeks family like a lost child.]

[Ben has told her she is beautiful; he has done so the best, most thorough way he knows how, and now he must trust her to remember it, or at the very least to let him see when she cannot. To allow him to remind her as he once outlined for her while they both fought back the gap in time yawning out to claim them.

He doesn't even remember if they won. Maybe that means they did. Maybe it means they didn't. He looks up.]

Can you stop? [Still no judgment - an honest question. He could not have transferred from his designation to his name a moment sooner than he did, although he spent his entire life wanting to leave his serial number behind. Sometimes, want is not enough - although it bears asking in the same tone from a slightly different angle, because it may not be enough, but it is still important:] Do you want to stop?

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