versusnurture | 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

[The courage to ask took everything that was in her, and now that she can approach, she doesn't know how she should, how not to give away the reason for her interest. Evasion only works when she has time to plan, delete and overwrite every word, so a long, nervous breath shivers out as she looks for the perfect question.]

What movie did we watch when I first met you?

Edited 2014-01-14 22:48 (UTC)

[She raises her eyebrows in surprise, but otherwise doesn't react. It's a paranoid question, but then, this is a pretty good place to be paranoid, all things considered.]

Vertigo. I had to leave in the middle to get more popcorn from the dining hall so I missed the flashback.

[It's the truth, and something in her uncoils at the first world, so relieved her knees unclench and she drops an inch in height. In that rush, she can't go over her plan again, rewrite the next question to suit context, and lets out what only doesn't sound like an accusation because she's relieved.]

What happened that you're happy, then? It's like you aren't yourself, but...

[Shocked, she laughs. Covers up her mouth quickly, but she can't help it. It's such a bizarre thing to think about being - happy - that it seems farcical, like she's being made fun of, even though Touko's brand of cruelty isn't so subtle. The only response is to laugh.]

I'm sorry, I'm just - I'm not happy. Lots of things happened. They were all - stupid and frustrating and mostly my fault. I just feel alive now. That's the difference.

You feel real. Not like a phantom.

[Touko thinks she might understand; the memories are, to her at least, old, but she remembers not needing to lurk the edges at Hope's Peak.]

. . . Yeah. I think I am.

[Real, that is. She hasn't really felt real up until this point.]

[Glancing up at Touko, she frowns slightly. It's almost concern.]

Are you?

What is real here?

[She knows the true answer, but no one gets it no matter what answers she demands from others.]

I don't know.

[She shrugs.]

Sometimes it feels like everything's real. Sometimes it feels like nothing is.

[She doesn't feel real as herself at all; she's tried to be a ghost and stay one, and half the time only sees other people as forms to flesh out or echos of tropes. They're more real inside her head.]

But today you are.

Today I'm - as real as a newly-born person can be.

But I'll die a lot of deaths before I really live again. This place is weird like that.

[Someone else who believes in this place, its potential, and it's all she can do to not turn away in the face of that knowledge. If someone here begins to change, they start to tell her she can too.]

You'll keep going back to nothing?

[Not quite true. She just believes today is today. Tomorrow might be awful.]

[She shrugs.]

Maybe. I don't know yet. I might disappear altogether. People do sometimes.

Does it matter if you do?