versusnurture | fourteen ♢ text & audio & spam

fourteen ♢ text & audio & spam

spam } open

[She wakes up screaming at what is, relatively speaking, three in the morning. It's a nightmare, the first really bad one since she died. She tries to remember what it was, what exactly, but it's all a blur; she remembers screaming in the dream, too; she remembers a lure; she remembers blood, lots of blood; she remembers a song. Ein Männlein steht im Walde . . . She remembers not being able to breathe. She remembers her mouth was full.]

[The first few nights, she calls people. She asks for help. After that, she wanders the halls, unable to get back to sleep, unwilling to lie in the dark any longer. Her hair is tied back, a scarf tucked around her shoulders, but her scar still stands out against the pale clamminess of her neck.]

audio } ben

[Night one, she calls Ben. She is crying, her voice muffled (she is using the bear as a pillow, as something with which to dry her tears).]

I'm not hurt. [She has to clarify this first, so he doesn't fear for her, so he doesn't hurt for her. This is how she protects him.] But I need you. Please. If - it's not too late.

audio } blight

[It's instinct to contact him. Maybe it's bad instinct. But it's what she reaches for the second night, once she's calmed herself down enough that she's no longer hyperventilating. Once she feels mostly human again.]

[It's midnight. She sounds as chipper as if it was noon.]

What do you know about brain chemistry?

text, filtered away from hannibal } public, april 7

who has nightmares

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[That edge in there is beginning to alarm him. Yes, 'alarm', there really is no other word for it. She called him to talk her down in her anxiety? He never meant to sign up for this.

Still...what can he do? Keep talking, he supposes.]

"Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar". And even I know most of what Freud came up with was thoroughly debunked as practically worthless garbage ages ago. Though...admittedly perhaps not the part about dream analysis.

[He's pretty certain, what sparingly little he remembers of Psych 101, of that. He finds himself wishing whatever odd connection it is they have, wasn't somehow inadvertently founded on the principle that he would never lie to her.]

Oh, I detest them. 'Maybe' is useless, pointless breathing when what I want is answers. 'Maybe' gets under my skin. It was one of the few things that always did, even before.

[This he can say with cold certainty. It's a relief to find such steady ground for his footing, at this point.]

[This grounds her, a little. He hates something she hates. She wasn't wrong to reach out to him. Well, at least not completely wrong. He might not be able to help her, but he can speak to her loathing and her desire for power even when he doesn't understand what she wants.]

I thought you might. Okay. Good.

[She exhales.]

I bet you don't have nightmares.

[He's been having a rough couple of weeks. He's been having a rough couple of months, really, ever since his life became a downward spiral that turned into this. And he's already been pushed and prodded, forced into what could almost pass for 'bonding', tricked into giving secrets and pieces of himself he wasn't even entirely aware he had in him, giving them away.

Someone else tried to have a heart to heart with him a very short while ago, and he shut that down with malice and prejudice.

He really couldn't say -- couldn't even begin to formulate -- what it is that has him not able to, not entirely wanting to shut out confused and calculating and oh so curious little Miss Abigail Hobbs.

In the pause that has him turning all these thoughts over in his head, he surrenders that fraction more; allows weariness to creep into his voice. And he sighs.]

I don't think I sleep enough to dream, anymore.

[It startles her, that little bit of give. She never would have expected it. Or, at least - because people are so confusing and so malleable and so strange and so convoluted - she would not have expected it yet.]

[But there he is, telling her something. She almost ruins it by saying I'm sorry, but catches herself. No pity. Barely any sympathy, because it's easy to mistake for pity. No. She has to treat him as an equal if she wants to learn anything more.]

[If she wants to help him. If he can be helped.]

[She sighs.]

I guess things like a warm glass of milk or whatever they tell you doesn't work on you anymore.

Is it bad? Not sleeping? I heard you go crazy if you don't sleep for long enough.

[If either of them reach out and make the wrong move, acknowledge this for whatever it is, send out the wrong vibration, the brittle spider-web thread holding it up would surely break.

But keep soldiering on and don't look at the elephant in the room? Sure. He can do that.]

I sleep...enough. I function. I don't hallucinate or dream when I'm awake, which I'm told is when you've really got to start worrying.

Sleeping pills work, sometimes. Mostly. Some tricky math has to get involved, adjusting around my slightly altered metabolism. Back home I was unfortunately forced to rely on soporifics on a fairly regular basis, to get my forty winks. That and a very thickly-lined sleeping mask.

[And when he had his polymer skin on, then it was basically like having functioning eyelids again. That always helped.]

Which would you rather have, the bad dreams or the restless nights? I know what I would prefer. But then that's probably because one's what I've already got to endure. Grass is always greener, and all that.

I think . . . I prefer restlessness. Because at least with that, you know what's coming, you know? You don't have to wait and see what your head decides to give you. It's not something different every time. It's exhausting, but you can get used to it.

[She can't get used to the bad dreams. For a while she was able to keep them away with a thick shield of denial and distraction - for a while she shut Hannibal out, and that helped too. She thought, if she was dead, how could dreams hurt her? Mind over matter almost worked.]

[But he is still here, and he is still haunting her, and now she is so, so angry. At him, at Will, even at Alana sometimes. At her father. At her circumstances. At herself.]

[She'd rather neither of them have either of these, is the real answer. But it's a weaselly one, and the man in front of her would not appreciate it. So she shakes her head and doesn't let it out.]

Is someone giving you sleeping pills here?

Yes. You can get used it. But then, you can get used to almost anything.

[He's gotten unnervingly used to being what he's been turned into, and that almost scares him. If he reaches the life expectancy for his time period, he's got another fifty years or so of being a radioactive freak. And he can't. He can't look to a future that has that waiting for him.

Denial; it has so many useful applications, really.]

Restlessness is easier to put up with when you have ways of being productive. [His voice drops briefly to a frustrated murmur. And there's a small pause before he continues.]

No. I haven't asked. [He hesitates, but only because he feels he probably doesn't need to spell it out for her, really.] I don't like the idea of admitting that weakness to anyone I can think of, currently, who'd be in a position to do something about it.

I'll get them for you.

[She doesn't present this as a question or as an offer of help. It's just something that's going to happen. He doesn't have to take them when she gets them, but she is pretty sure that if she asks Ben he'll give them to her. He trusts her enough. And it wouldn't be abusing that trust, either. It would be helping a friend.]

[In short, no, he didn't need to spell it out for her. But she can hide his weakness and pretend it to be her own, if that's what it takes. She can't make the nightmares to go away, but she can get a couple damn sleeping pills.]

And in exchange, you can help me with the nightmares.

[There. It's a deal. It's only fair. They can shake on it, even.]

[He isn't surprised she would make an offer. The fact that it wasn't presented as an offer, though, but a statement, that is surprising. He's caught up between gratitude at her usefulness and wariness at her understanding and approval at her forwardness and aggravation at her presumption. In the end he just...lets it go.

She can get something for him. It'll be one more small flaw he gets to keep covered. Why make it anything more than that?

Pointedly, he doesn't ask 'how'. Mainly because he doesn't care. He doesn't need to know.]

I honestly don't know how. But, as previously stated...I can certainly try. I'm more than willing.

[He's a little bemused by the faith it feels like she's putting in him by implication.

And it's a good thing they're making it about his this for her that, because otherwise he might have to analyze why he'd have been willing to help without any previous incentive.]

[I know you don't know how. She doesn't say it. The reason she doesn't is . . . complicated, but it starts with the fact that she'd give him a free favor if she thought he'd accept it and ends with the fact that just talking to him is already helping.]

[There's also the fact that no, he doesn't need to know. He barely even needs to care.]

[She makes a noise of assent, of confirmation: they have a deal.]

Good.

You're a valuable business partner. [It's mostly a joke. But only mostly.]

[He makes a little sound in his throat that can be called a laugh, if one wants. If one chooses. He acknowledges her 'joke' both as being that and as being not, and then pretends on a surface level that's all it is.]

As are you, it seems, thus far. This place really is full of surprises.

[It's rare that they be likable.]

But if nothing else since it's been established I tend to keep...odd hours. If you'd rather talk of nothing than try falling back asleep, suppose in the future you can try giving me a call.

[If he let himself actually think about it he'd realize that's in essence what she's already done. And he's already accepted the bother.]

[She is warmed, to know that her intrusion into his time is, if not welcome, at least not wholly unwelcome, either. She's got no illusions that he's any gentler than he was on their first acquaintance, but at the same time, she knows herself, too. She has danced into his good graces, only halfway intentionally, only a little bit carefully, and he's let her in. Just barely, but every little bit counts.]

[For once, she has no ulterior designs other than her own security, what little of it she can find. And his, too. She wants the best for him, to the extent that he will accept it.]

[There's a smile in her voice, echoing his laugh, if that's what it is.]

I'll do that. Worst case scenario, I'll learn something.

[It means 'thank you.']

[If asked he would say he never doesn't have an ulterior design -- but if asked, specifically, what the plan was with regards to Abigail Hobbs, he would be forced to falter. He wants her on his side rather than not, and he still considers her a very useful source for information on the other people around here. But outside of that?

Anything he can find in this place that he enjoys, rather than be aggravated or frustrated by, is a good thing to hang onto. Because the alternative means letting his temper and instabilities keep eating at him from the inside, and that will lead no place good.

And he doesn't...dislike talking to her. She is nearly always full of intriguing surprises.]

It does seem that, somehow, you always do.

['You're welcome'.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

fourteen ♢ text & audio & spam

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]

[voice ; private]