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.]

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[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.

eleven ♢ spam, private + open

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