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.]

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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?

[She bites her lip. Sometimes he asks her questions like it's the simplest thing to know the answers. She knows he doesn't really think that, but - that's how it sounds.]

[She chews back and forth, scratching lightly at the fake fur on the bear's arms. She likes the fakeness of it. That it was never alive.]

I don't know if I can. But I know that right now, I don't want to. It . . . didn't always feel bad.

[When she was tiny, she was quiet and scalpel-sharp. The safest place was at home. Then home was the least safe place, and now she doesn't have a home at all.]

[She looks up at Ben, brows furrowed in genuine confusion.]

But I also - I don't think that, after what happened . . . I don't think it'll ever be the same. I want it to be the same, Ben, and it's not - that I want to stop, it's that I can't start again. Ever.

[Not knowing is a viable answer, an honest one; Ben doesn't know many things. It's better than lying to oneself, convinced of knowing something that is merely a strong desire, or someone else's expectation turned to a desperate quest for approval. Denial.

She doesn't have to know. That's what he's here for, or one of the things he's here for. He's not sure he knows all of them.]

It's okay. My point is that should doesn't matter much except as a motivation; should is pressure from an external source, and it is secondary to what you can or cannot do. The latter determines the former.

[His heart breaks a little for the rest of what she has to say, because he recognizes it; he hears his own voice pleading with Max, we never should have left, everything made sense there and how impossible her reply seemed. She wasn't being honest. She was counterbalancing, trying to keep them both from tipping over under the slide.]

No. It will never be the same; nor should it be. It didn't always feel bad but sometimes it did, and that means something needs to change. As long as you are cognizant of that, you have choices.

I think it's both. I think it's should and wanting to. And part of the wanting to is because I should.

I don't know. I can't . . . tease out all the pieces. I can't order them and make them all make sense. I wish I could.

[If she could, she'd either be a hundred times more dangerous or a hundred times easier to help.]

[She sighs, looking at her long-fingered hands, then at Ben's, practiced and sure. Trustworthy.]

What are my choices?

You don't have to do it alone. That is why I am here. That is why we were assigned. You will have assistance, as long as I am here.

[He is confident of this; he has gained far more than he lost, and Abigail is among them. She has already taught him so much, and they will figure out what the final picture looks like between them.]

Your choices are to make deliberate decisions, or choose to ignore what you feel. To do what you have always done, even though it did not always feel right, or to do something differently. Choice is not a result, mind, but that too is a requirement: without choice, results are nonexistent. It will not be easy. Nothing about being a person is.

[She considers this, all of it, lets it settle in her belly, lets it digest. It feels like a dangerous amount of responsibility for her to hold, but then again, Ben has a history of giving her a dangerous amount of responsibility. It hasn't blown up in his face yet.]

[One thing, though. One thing she still can't fit.]

It's - making decisions based on feeling. It's not logical. It's not.

It's not what I was taught? Or it's not what . . . feels right. It's like a broken puzzle piece, or petting a cat backwards.

[Others, of course, think that it has; others don't realize that when a nuclear bomb makes a dent in a sidewalk, it is avoided tragedy, not hazardous negligence. She is capable of so much more, and yet has not taken advantage of it.

She might, still. She will, if he only tells her not to; if he tries to force her hand the other way. He blinks slowly at her as she tries to puzzle it out for him, and then glances sidelong until he finds a pencil on the floor, half rolled beneath the bed and overlooked. He leans forward,picking it up neatly as she speaks.

When she's done, Ben neither warns her nor attempts to fool her. He simply tosses the pencil to her.]

[She catches it.]

[Of course she does - and of course, she does so without thinking. Her eyes are dry, her tears are gone, but she makes her decision based on feeling rather than logic nevertheless. And it doesn't feel wrong. It feels perfect. Effortless.]

[It takes a moment before she realizes what she's done, before she understands that the more-or-less cylindrical shape between her palms is a pencil, before she recognizes the sight, feel, smell of it, before all the sense memories of school come back to her, before she can even begin to understand what he means. But when she looks up at him, when she meets his eyes, there is comprehension there.]

[He didn't have to say a word.]

[It would be easy to snap the pencil in half. She doesn't do that, either. Instead, she gets up and carefully puts it on the desk with the rest of her writing utensils and then stands beside her bed, leaving the teddy bear sitting back against the wall on top of the comforter. Her chest moves with her breathing, slow and steady.]

Labels, [she says,] and assumptions.

You keep teaching me the same things. I keep missing them.

[She isn't berating herself, exactly. Just realizing a truth and putting it out in the open, where it belongs. Maybe learning something about herself, a little self-knowledge, a quiet revelation.]

[He sees the moment when she understands, waiting, watching for it patiently. Ready with the explanation.

Unutterably pleased when it is not necessary.]

Yes.

[The single syllable is confirmation and praise alike, and he accepts the truth she lays out, turns it carefully in his hands, and offers it back slightly altered. It feels better than he could have ever imagined, to have an answer, to feel confident in his knowledge. To be ableto help, even if he would rather Abigail never need it at all.

But she does, and he can give it, and he does. Unconditionally.]

Not missing them. They are drowned out by other things you have learned in your life.

It will take time, but you can choose. This you can choose. If you do, someday that choice will become reflex as much as anything else you've ever known.

[She blinks. When she opens her eyes and meets his approving stare, she glows; she blooms. She has figured it out, this one small piece of the puzzle. It belongs to her now. It will be very difficult to forget, even more difficult for someone else to push deliberately out of her head. It lives in her heart, locked in in the way that things one learns for oneself stay stuck.]

[She feels warmed from within. She is a furnace of knowledge, briefly and brightly confident.]

[There are, of course, always problems. But when she cants her head at Ben and listens to his clarifications carefully, they seem surmountable.]

It feels like walking in the dark right now. Like stumbling in a dark room, and someone's moved all the furniture.

Is that what it felt like for you?

[The corner of Ben's mouth twitches, curving for just a moment with reflexive pleasure; she is so bright, sometimes, when she is herself. All of herself, not just the pieces others want her to be at any given moment.

There are always problems. He will not leave her to them alone. Now, by way of reply, he reaches for his communicator and searches back through his entries as he answers until he finds a story about princes and princesses. He offers it out to her so she can hear it, rather than tell it again now.]

Much of what you know of me now was, once, completely counter-intuitive to me. The use of my name, for example. Others insisted it was more "normal" to introduce myself as Ben instead of X5-493, but it was a long time before I could believe them. It was not what I knew to be the way the world worked.

But they all used their own names and insisted I use them as well. Beginning to use mine felt... like edging out onto a ledge too narrow to possibly hold me. Except that it did.

[She listens to what he says in the here and now first, because this is the Ben she knows and loves, the one who is teaching her how to survive on her own terms. But when she listens to what he said once upon a time - when she hears his story and settles into the groove of listening to it with all the calm of a stone being worn under warm water - she hears the Ben she knows and loves in this year-old story, too. It's comforting, a sign that whatever she becomes in her becoming will still be her. That Ben will always be Ben, no matter what.]

I hear that. You were afraid. And you were angry. I hear that, too.

[Everyone knows the sky is blue. Everyone knows that people who hurt you aren't to be trusted. Except for those people who don't know that at all.]

I'm afraid. I'm angry. I'm scared the ledge is going to break.

[She hands his communicator back, solemn.]

But I trust you.

[Of course she does, or he wouldn't be here right now. She wouldn't have called him. She would have called Hannibal.]

[Everything is changing, too fast for her to keep track of. The only thing that stays the same, that is constant by her side, is Ben.]

Edited 2014-03-11 04:51 (UTC)

[Ben accepts his communicator back, shuts it off, drops it in his pocket. Once upon a time, he would have buckled under the weight of those three words. She trusts him. She shouldn't, he would have thought, and maybe she still shouldn't. But he is capable, now, of being trustworthy. If he is trusted in the right ways, he is sound.

It's a strange concept. No less precious, for being more possible now than before, but still strange. Ben pushes smoothly to his feet, tilting his head when he looks back at Abigail.]

The ledge will hold. Or it will not. Sometimes others are not wiser than we are ourselves, for all their context and their experience.

But anger and fear are appropriate. Thank you for trusting me. I will do my best to be worthy of it.

Edited 2014-03-13 05:15 (UTC)

Oh, Ben.

[She smiles at him, wrapping her arms around herself rather than reaching for the teddy bear. This is better, more spontaneous, easier, with the same feeling of closeness and warmth. Like a hug - not from Ben, of course, but she knows his warmth from the look in his eyes.]

You're already worthy of it. Otherwise I wouldn't have come to you in the first place.

[If he wasn't worthy, she wouldn't trust him so utterly. If she didn't trust him, she would have let herself fall into whatever darkness was reaching out for her. But that's not how things are. Not anymore.]

[This, of course, is true; he hesitates, evaluating his statement versus hers, and then clearly comes to a decision.]

Then I will do my best to continue to be worthy of your trust.

[Because like everything, being trustworthy is an ongoing process, a state of being requiring constant cultivation as opposed to a goal that can be reached and set aside. He must be trustworthy every time the darkness reaches for her, so that when he offers his hand, she will take it.

Now he looks at her hugging herself, tilting his head, and does not smile. Or rather, he does: just a little.]

Is there anything else I can assist you with at this time, Abigail?

Anything else? . . . No.

[He's already done more than she'd ever have expected anyone to do for her. She looks away shyly, then to the mask in his hands, then meets his eyes again.]

Sometime later. Can we just . . . read together? Or something. I don't want to be alone too much.

Yes.

[She is barely done speaking before he answers; he considers pointing out that she need not ask him to make time for her, that he is always available to make certain she is not alone too much, or at all if she likes. But she knows. The question is not quite rhetorical, but it isn't a literal interpretation, either.

Ben neither acknowledges nor attempts, for now, to hide the mask in his hands; he will take it back to his cabin, put it in a drawer, and pull it out when Abigail wishes to see it or asks about it. He reconsiders his answer instead, considers laying out his day's schedule for her, but in the end it is the most accurate answer: yes. Later, whenever she likes, they can read together, or something. Yes.]

Contact me when you would like my company. If I cannot come to you, I will tell you where I am and you may join me.

Thank you for contacting me this time.

Thank you for . . .

[She searches for words, ways in which to quantify or qualify him. But she can't. She loves him too much, and he is too indescribable. What it is to trust, what it means, why it's so strange and rare, she couldn't say no matter how hard she tried.]

[So she just smiles at him and ducks her head.]

Thank you for being Ben.

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eleven ♢ spam, private + open

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