versusnurture | 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

Then I want to be powerful, I guess. But if I don't realize that I am, I'll never be happy. I'll never feel safe.

I'm sorry.

I can't figure out if power made me safe or not.

I'm not sure I have a common or meaningful concept of what safe is.

You should try to find one. I want you to be safe.

I mean, it doesn't have to be common. It just has to feel right.

I want you to be safe too.

I'm trying. It's so much harder than it sounds.

[That's the thing about life, he thinks: no one gets out alive.]

Yeah. It is.

If you ever want to do 3AM hot chocolate or whatever, my sleep schedule is pretty out of whack anyway.

[You don't have to try alone.]

Okay.

But it has to have marshmallows.

[She means thank you.]

I'll lay in supplies.

fourteen ♢ text & audio & spam

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