sixteen ♢ spam & voice

[versusnurture]

infirmary spam } after mirror barge

[Dying the second time . . . honestly, it wasn't as bad. This feels like a strange thing to think, but it's most of what she thinks in those days of the death toll that feel like death isn't quite over yet.]

[The difference is, her first death, her real one, was intimate. This was a mercy, sort of, and she doesn't totally regret it, but it wasn't. It wasn't.]

[The same.]

[It wasn't family.]

[She lies back in the infirmary bed and stares at the ceiling with a soft smile. It's very impersonal here, but that's a relief in its own way, too. She's not the only person who died, not by a long shot. She's not the person most choose to focus their attentions on.]

[She can just rest.]

spam } blight

[It's a few days after everything clicks back into shape that Abigail works up the energy needed for speech. She doesn't go back to her cabin, although she sort of wants to. There are pros and cons to everything, she thinks, and the pros of staying in the infirmary outweigh the cons by far.]

[Blight is here, for example. She can see him from across the room. His presence makes her feel safe, in a backwards way, simply because she knows he isn't what he was. He will not protect her, but he will be reeling as much as anyone else. Maybe more. He doesn't seem like a man who likes to lose control.]

[One more day, and she hoists herself up out of the bed and makes her way over to his. A soft, quick smile - an exhausted one.]

Who got you?

spam } hannibal

[She knows he isn't welcome in the infirmary. That's part of the reason she stayed. But halfway through her stay, she did begin to regret it. Because . . .]

[This death lacked intimacy. That's one reason. No one sang her songs. No one told her everything was going to be all right. No one apologized. There was no sense of closure.]

[And because he frightens her at the same time he comforts her. Because the uncertainty and insecurity of her relationship with Hannibal Lecter is secured with a love that doesn't seem to die.]

[When she is well enough to walk, she walks to his cabin, and she knocks on his door.]

inmate filter } minus hannibal

I know a lot of people who are here being - punished, or whatever - they've killed people.

How many of you hunted them?

private } ceres

I'm interested in your answer especially.

Comments

[warisart]

[She's not the only person that died, but she is one of the few people Ben is absolutely focused on: the problem is, he died, too. Even his constitution isn't enough to get him out of bed immediately.

But it's still within the first 24 hours of waking up himself that he sections everything else off to locate Abigail, and it's not until he is able to half-collapse, half-fold down at her bedside that he feels he can breathe more easily.

He can't. His chest still aches like there's a gaping bullet wound in it, but he knows there isn't and so he does his best to ignore it and, instead, focuses on being lucid when Abigail is again once more. She'd been so angry with him, so hurt, there; he wonders, when he wonders anything, how long it will be this time before she can stand to be in his presence, if she ever will.]

[versusnurture]

[She is asleep. Soundly and without pain or nightmares, for once. Soon enough she'll wake up in pain and will need comforting.]

[There's a difference between this time and last time. She won't be able to pinpoint it exactly if she's asked, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that this time, she was angry. It means she isn't angry with Ben now, or afraid of him. The line is drawn sharply enough between Ben-that-is and Ben-that-was that she could tell them apart even in the dark.]

[She turns over in her sleep and winces at a pain in her side. Somehow she senses him there and reaches her hand out in waking, her brows furrowed.]

Ben . . . ?

[warisart]

[Sleep pulls at Ben, too, while he waits; his eyelids are leaden and every breath hurts, but he knows how to remain awake, he lets what he learned as a child pull him along through the small eternity of each second and, eventually, he is rewarded.

Her movement and his name would normally send him retreating upright, pulling back, but now he merely opens his eyes further where he is leaned on the side of her bed, chin resting on his hands. He looks at her and her outstretched hand, and his expression is sad.

Sad and tinged with a painful kind of pride, a brittle hope. He will go at the first sign she does not want him here, but that is not what this is, so he does not move.]

Abigail. [He says her name like other people smile.]

[inmate filter]

[robinwishes]

[ Mindy does not know what to make of Abigail, but the question is one she doesn't have to think very hard on. ]

I don't know if 'hunt' is the right word, but-- close enough. [ She shrugs, casually careless. ] I don't regret it. Some people just need to die. Most people won't do what it takes to protect who they love, places where they live.

I was. Still am.

[inmate filter]

[versusnurture]

In the broadest sense. [There's a smile in her voice, or something like one.]

So you did it to stay safe. Some people would say that's not murder.

[inmate filter]

[halftheman]

I did.

[ He knows she knows that -- but all the same, he says it anyway. He's not ashamed. ]

[inmate filter]

[versusnurture]

A different way than I did, but. Yeah. You did.

Knowing you made me less scared of it.

[deadly_ned]

[The Piemaker, shockingly, did not die in the last Barge event. But he still comes by every so often to check on the ones who did.

He brings Digby, and doesn't linger when Abigail's asleep. There's work to be done, after all.]

[versusnurture]

[When she wakes, it's to the smell of dog. Good dog smell, at least - Digby is clean. But she can tell it's him by the faint outline of a tail wagging over the edge of the bed and the vaguest smell of flour.]

[She blinks, trying to clear her head, and peers around.]

Ned?

spam }

[youwill]

[Contrary to what he's sure some must think, he wasn't especially fond of the other ship. Some things were much more pleasant, when unaffected: it was so satisfying to throw a dinner party, even if it wasn't quite up to his exacting standards. Short notice and a lack of wait staff. Still.

Still.

There was cruelty without purpose, there. The discourtesy abounded. He does not regret the flood, or port - he's not precisely certain how to classify it - but he is content enough to be back.

When he rises to answer the knock, he expects Mal, or perhaps Ned or even Alana come to judge his actions there. With those expectations, Abigail gets to see something she does not often see: his surprise.]

Abigail.

[She is not well. He can see the death toll's effects immediately, and he steps aside to allow her entrance.]

Please, come in.

spam }

[versusnurture]

[She doesn't come in.]

[Instead, she does what he has been expecting this whole time - what she's expected herself to give in and do long before this moment, if she's being completely honest.]

[She wraps her arms around him and leans against his shoulder, pressing her nose to the perfectly-laundered shoulder of his suit jacket, and closes her eyes.]

I died. [She is forlorn. It's wrong, but she missed him in death - and so many things are wrong, she can't even keep track anymore.]

[Private Voice ]

[forsaken_queen]

Unless it's self defense or an accident, all killing involves hunting.

[Private Voice ]

[versusnurture]

There are laws where I come from that would argue against that.

What kind did you do?

[What kind of hunting, what kind of killing - apparently, it doesn't make a difference.]

[inmate filter]

[notsoneedy]

[Needy gives her whole comm wary, confused look before she responds. She doesn't know any of these people or even this place very well, yet. But she sees no reason to hide what she did here, any more than she ever did.]

I did. All of them.

[inmate filter]

[versusnurture]

[A curious, but innocuous sound - like she's just been given an interesting perspective on one of the topics covered in her favorite class. It's an everyday sound, like they're not talking about murder at all.]

The obvious questions are why and how, but you really don't have to answer either. It can just be a poll.

[All of them, though. Which means the other question is how many?]

private;

[heavenlymisandrist]

I have never hunted anyone.

[ From the way she says it she thinks that hunting is a worse crime than just killing. ]

private;

[versusnurture]

Sylvanas says all murder that's not self-defense or an accident implies a hunt. You don't think so?

[spam]

[walkingmeltdown]

[He doesn't really look around him, at least not at first. His body aches all over, intermittently dull and stabbing, in a way that he can tell isn't going away for awhile. It's draining to move, hard to breathe, and his head is killing him and his mouth is dry and his stomach is nauseous. So while he can tell in a vague way that there are other people around him - a lot, it seems - he doesn't bother trying to see who. He'll just be staying put here, at least for the first week of the death toll. It seems easiest, safest.

At some point however as the days start to tick by he turns his head and catches a glimpse of her, sleeping. And he realizes he's...not happy, that she's here.

Not happy that she got killed. Not happy that despite all the precautions he knows she must have took, someone took her out anyway.

But she doesn't appear to be taking it too had, he quickly realizes, when she comes over and doesn't seem afraid. When she tries to smile at him, the way she usually would.]

Supergirl.

[His voice still has that sickbed roughness to it, but he's getting better. He hauls and pushes himself up to a sitting position, so he can face her the right way up at least.]

And who got you?

[spam]

[versusnurture]

[There's a chair next to his bed. An unkind part of her wonders who else might have visited. He's not what she might call traditionally pleasant, and she knows he's fought with any number of people already.]

[But anyone can make friends on the Barge, even the worst people. She knows that. And he's not the worst.]

[Her smile twists sardonic.] The best go worst quickest.

Ceres. So, I guess at least I got killed by someone whose name sounds like cereal.

[And fades. She seems smaller, briefly.] It hurt.

[She is brave enough not to say It hurts.]

inmate filter;

[adelphoktonos]

Are you a hunter, girl?

inmate filter;

[versusnurture]

I've been asked that before.

I could be.

[private]

[exnihilo]

What qualifies a killing as hunting?

[private]

[versusnurture]

You hunt before the kill. You couldn't kill without the hunt. Or the hunt is somehow part of the ritual of the kill, even if it's not necessary.

[Her tone implies 'duh'.]

late as hell but i'm doing this man. i'm making it hapen.

[persecutioncomplex]

She hunts them.

[versusnurture]

She who?