versusnurture | sixteen ♢ spam & voice

sixteen ♢ spam & voice

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.

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I suppose...so long as you took something out of it. Then no experience is ever fully a waste.

[He says the words slowly, carefully, almost as if he's rolling them around in his mouth, contemplating them even as they appear. He still doesn't understand what she's saying, not fully. But he understands enough. Enough to know there's no point in asking further questions. What he doesn't get aren't the things she can explain.

Dying as a learning experience. There should be something funny in that.

Or perhaps only in that way where it's easier to find morbid humor, then take in the full scope of the meaning.

As abruptly as he can, when it still hurts to breath, he goes and lies back down. Head flat, staring up at the ceiling; his eyes are still wide open. Maybe she'll realize, maybe she won't.]

But you and I have something else in common, Miss Hobbs. Something that frankly should have occurred to me before now.

[He hesitates just enough for it be a significant pause, before he finishes that thought.]

We both got here because of someone we thought we could trust.

['Here' meaning the barge. She let Hannibal get too close, get in her life, and he killed her all the same. And he made the mistake of thinking his own flesh and blood could be counted on not to betray him.]

[She watches curiously, almost impassively, as he turns to lie down again. He made the effort to sit up, to move closer to her. She registers that as significant, and it pleases her, but she's not offended when he has to lie back again. It's not personal - so little he does is, and her own bones are starting to hurt again, to get that scorched feeling on the inside.]

[The way he frames his statement is curious, too. Not because we put our trust in the wrong person - no implicit judgment against either of them - but because of someone we thought we could trust. This feels better than just about any other way he could have put it.]

[She tips her head to one side, scooting towards him in turn so she can hear him better, so he doesn't have to raise his voice, so no one else might be able to overhear.]

Because of betrayal.

[He appreciates the closeness, if only for the part where it's easier to be quiet. Secretive. This is not a conversation he wants anyone to overhear, not really. Especially this part.]

Yes. Because of betrayal.

[He stares up at the ceiling, not at her. It makes it easier to see things reflected in his mind's eye, faces that aren't really there. Hear things he knows his other self has long forgotten.

Like the sound of a voice. ("You taught me yourself, Dad. The only way to get power is to take it.") A voice that makes him feel something flaring all along under his skin, and it's easier to call it 'anger', because he might have to study it further if it remained as simply pain.]

It...stings, doesn't it? [His fingers tighten, clawing into the sheets at his sides.] The less chances you give anyone, the worse it gets when you find out you've made a mistake.

[A laugh flutters out of her throat, not with her permission but because it has a seemingly inexorable need to escape. She thinks of all the chances she didn't give people, still doesn't, and wants to cry. What would it have been like if she'd trusted Alana instead, or put all her faith in Will? Though even Will would have been a poor creature to side with; he's a poor creature in most ways, she thinks, without pity.]

When you're that careful, trusting the wrong person doesn't seem like a mistake any more. It seems like it's a miscalculation. Like it's your fault.

It feels like my fault, anyway. Like I should have been smarter.

[Should have seen her father for what he was. Should have seen the monster behind Hannibal's eyes. Should be able to stay away from him, now that she knows what he is. Shouldn't trust anyone, really. Shouldn't trust Derek Powers and his dangerous, frightening potential, no matter how well their ambitious natures match.]

[But she hunches her shoulders and wraps her arms around her knees and doesn't go anywhere. She should be smarter, but right now she's not that smart at all and she doesn't know how to get any better. Crawl into the lion's mouth, that's what Ben would have her do, so she sharpens her tools every other minute of every other day; today she is tired, and she rests, and it's all she can do to resist the urge to cry.]

Stings is such an understatement.

I know.

[That's all he says in response to her self-recrimination; now, he feels, is not the place to confirm or deny what she's feeling herself. But his voice is hollow even where it remains steady. He 'knows' what she's feeling, because he feels it himself.

After a lifetime of being so careful, of being above the ties that weighted down everyone else, how could he make such a disastrous misstep? How could he be so stupid, so careless, so...sentimental. How could he manage to leave himself wide open, the one time when it would have been so much better to remain closed off and shut in?

He shuts his eyes then, for all the little good it does, and twists his head away. Tells himself it's because he doesn't want to see her cowering there, that the sight is distasteful to him, when it truth what he's really doing is more about giving her privacy. Not bearing witness to her pain and uncertainty.

Respect. It can be harder to earn that trust, in it's own way. But she's paid it to him when he needed it, often enough.]

It's like a fever. Something boiling gradually just underneath your skin, festering. The more questions you ask, the worse it gets. Because there are never any answers.

[She doesn't exactly expect his respect. It doesn't come as a complete surprise, either, but it's enough of one that she has to pause when he turns away and dissect his action. He says he knows. But knowing isn't enough. It's about remembering.]

[When he gives her privacy, it's all she can do to give it back. Her hands bunch into loose fists on her knees, and she sighs lightly. Don't look at him. It's impolite. It's discourteous. And besides, you owe him, don't you? They owe each other.]

I know. You can second-guess yourself until the end of time, but it really doesn't. Help. But you can't stop, either. [It's a mess.]

[She looks out over the room full of beds, about half occupied now, and fidgets with the hem of her shirt.]

What questions are you asking?

[They keep making it about the trade-offs, the debts, all very matter of fact back and forth across the board. One day all the tally-marks will pile up too high, and the whole maddeningly jumble will fall down, and they'll have to look at this relationship, whatever exactly that is, between them as actually that.

But thankfully that can be put off now, for at least another day.]

What signs I shouldn't have missed, I suppose. There had to be some. Or at least even one. That's all I would have needed. After all, I've known him long enough; his whole life. You would think...

[Oops. Might be giving too much of it away, there.]

[For now. For another day. Even though he's tipping his hand, even though he's showing her too much (and she wonders whether he means to or if this really, truly is an accident, from such a calculated man).]

[She doesn't look at him. But she still fidgets. She tries not to do that anymore, but here she is, toes tapping on the edge of the bed, fingers twisting in each other's grip.]

[You would think. But you'd be wrong.]

Family can't be trusted.

[This she says quietly, almost a sigh. It's just a statement; he can take it, or he can dismiss it. He can use it, or he can discard it.]

[But she knows. Children are as wicked and deceitful and vile as parents can be.]

[He doesn't move, but inwardly something in him flinches. She knows. She must. Or at the very least she's guessed as close as she possibly can.

If it wasn't exactly on purpose that he's said what he has, though, it wasn't precisely an accident either. On his first most conscious level he would deny wanting to talk about this at all...a bit deeper than that, he's already well aware that Abigail is someone that can be trusted. For his purposes at least.

She won't use this against him. She won't give this away.

Or she wouldn't, not without a very good reason.]

No. Evidently not. [He doesn't move; save where his right hand clenches tight as it possibly can into a fist.] Somehow, there seems to be something...tragic, about that.

[It would be foolish to share this. There's value in a secret kept between two people that's diluted the more it's passed around. It would be pragmatic, too, because secrets kept mean at least practical, if not emotional, trust - because if she told this secret, he would have a reason to hate her.]

[But those aren't the reasons she isn't going to share what he's told her, or implied to her, or skirted around the truth of for her benefit. She isn't going to tell because she might be loose with her own secrets - she might use them to shock and frighten and manipulate - but she knows that if someone else told them, she would be hurt.]

[She doesn't want to hurt him. It's not a clever reason, but it's a reason nonetheless.]

[She inspects her nails.]

It's tragic because of genetic imperative. We're designed to protect our children - unless something goes awfully wrong, anyway. Unless we go crazy. So when they turn on us, we're betrayed on - on a chromosomal level. In our bones. Same with parents.

And it's shocking because it means they're flawed. The children or the parents.

[She frowns.] I don't know. I don't want it to be tragic. I want it to be factual. But I can't reason all of it, or even most of it, away.

Psychology versus biology. [Very good, Abigail; he latches with a weary gladness onto her idea, lets it lead this trail of thought back to someplace factual and devoid of all the rawness and realness, how it's all too present and important in both of their own lives.

By all means, let the discussion turn to the abstract, the intellectual. Or at least pretend that it has.]

What's more pressing and important a form of survival: one's genetic make-up, or the identity that makes up one's own self?

[He's twisting the focus of her words around, on purpose, changing them to something that has no sting. Maybe she'll thank him for it.]

Certainly a subject that could keep the intellectuals debating for weeks.

Intellectuals will debate forever. They'll never stop. It's what makes them intellectuals. It's a stupid question, though. A stupid chicken-or-egg thing that people make more complicated than it needs to be, as though they could ever be separated - they can't. Your identity determines the importance of your genetics, which determine your identity. The group defines the individual, who defines the group again.

[She thinks she's getting a headache. Maybe it's the lights in here, almost violent in their fluorescence. She squeezes her eyes shut.]

I'm not okay.

[A step in the wrong direction - or right, she doesn't know. Now she looks at him and wrenches them both away from the abstract, and even as she does so, doesn't know if it's the right thing or not. She's following instinct - what her nature tells her, or what her nurture has taught her. Even now, she doesn't know.]

Are you okay?

[He can feel her sudden look and it feels like a sting. A sting, though; not a slap. One is purposeful, aggressive, offensive. The other is just...a thing that happens sometimes. Some poor creature acting on instinct.

Instinct.

He keeps stressing that no matter what people are still instinctive creatures, thus self-preservation will always be key. But it's an instinct too to defend one's own family, one's own genetic make-up. To try and help those they are related to survive. What happens when those two instincts go head-to-head?

Well, it looks like both he and Miss Abigail Hobbs know. Or rather, don't. Because here they are, and still it seems they haven't found any answers.]

No.

[In a move quick enough it comes across for what it is - an impulsive decision he's not giving himself time to rethink - he turns his head and glances up enough to meet her eyes.]

But I will be. Eventually. I have no other choice.

[For a few moments, the space between their eyes becomes potentially dangerous territory. Potentially volatile, even explosive. Neither of them are willing to back down in any situation, neither fit to let a challenge fall by the wayside.]

[But then, Abigail isn't challenging him. And to her surprise, he isn't challenging her either; nor is he retreating. He is simply meeting her eyes, acknowledging, allowing her to know rather than concealing the truth.]

[It's a strange and rare gift. One she doesn't take for granted. Like the truth - she doesn't take that for granted anymore, either.]

[That's why she looks away after those few moments have passed, giving him - and herself - some reprieve. She stares at her shoes now.]

Sure. We both will be. That's what we do, isn't it? Survive?

[He feels that heat, that potential for challenge, and so when she looks off again while he's not relieved, he's not disappointed by it either. This encounter is taking a lot out of him and he's tired enough as it is.]

Not just survive; endure. Persevere.

[It's a subtle, minute difference. One is mostly luck. But he prefers to think victory goes to the lucky and the smart and the strong. You need all of them to do more than live; you need them if you want to win. He doesn't mind placing Abigail up on that plateau along with him.]

[A quirked eyebrow, the twitch of her lip. Of course. This is his own brand of comfort, she thinks, and the greatest benefit of it is that it comforts him as well as her. It's not altruistic. They're not being kind to each other.]

[Not yet.]

Thrive.

We are . . . highly adaptable.

[People like us.]

That's the cornerstone to evolution, you know. [He says it as offhandedly as he can, when they're having this discussion and it still hurts a bit for him to even speak. He makes it sound like he's not lecturing her; his voice has a very 'as you know' quality to it.] It's what they mean by 'evolutionary fitness'. Those that win the race are the ones that can adapt the best. It's a never-ending game, against Mother Nature, against...whatever life throws at you.

[Touching back on 'the Red Queen', again.

He prefers to think it's not that the barge is changing him. It's that he's adapting to better survive it. Learning what better tactics to use, as he goes.]

Life, or death. Suppose that's the one benefit here: everything gets to be a lesson. Even the ones that should prove otherwise fatal.

[She hums, absorbing this information.]

But then Darwinian law fails here, I guess. The most powerful rule of life and death, and someone like the Admiral just - makes it moot, just like that.

As long as we're learning. As long as we're adapting. As long as we change, we won't be stuck here forever.

[She has felt herself changing like the movements of mountains into each other over thousands of years, only all sped up, so there are growing pains in her mind. She doesn't know what to make of it, only knows that it's happening - and even being cognizant of that much is a big step.]

Maybe not.

[And he's quieter again, drawing back into himself, because this is the part that truly makes him uncomfortable. The one thing about this place that is so impossible for him to swallow.

He doesn't want to change; doesn't think of himself as flawed, in need of fixing.

But even as tired and incapable of processing something through as fully as he is right now, he still even knows. What he's just been through, what he saw and felt and knew on that other barge? That's not something you just walk away from. That's not something you get to ignore.

There's no getting off unscathed, from this - from that.]

But there's more than one way to adjust.

[It all seems very euphemistic to her. Adjust versus change; they are just synonyms, one of which sounds better. She won't hurt his pride by saying this, though.]

[As for herself, she knows change is required. She just doesn't know which way. Not yet. She's trying lots of different ways, though she's beginning to think she isn't reaching far enough, committing strongly enough to any of her paths. Her experiments are not committed enough. It makes her disappointed in herself, yet even more determined to push herself harder.]

We can adjust in all sorts of dimensions.

Or, I can anyway. I can regress or progress, or stay the same goodness and just move side to side. There's no exact goal to reach for, so it's all just adjusting in the dark.

You could set a goal for yourself. Not that you have to, of course...but it might be better than going blind.

[Some of the tension abates again; strange as it is for him in general, it is still undeniably easier to talk about her than it is to talk about him.]

Or having someone else set a goal for you. [He tries not to emphasize that too much, and isn't entirely certain he succeeds - he's gathered it's been a problem for her, in the past.] Oh yes; distinctly better than that.

[Her lips go thin in a grim smile. Yes; most things are better than that.]

That's what I love best about Ben, you know. He doesn't set goals for me. He let me - [let? she questions her word choice, then decides it's correct] - let me kill someone when he could have stopped me, so that I could see for myself what I'd done, why it wasn't right. For me, not for them. Not based on some - abstract moral system that doesn't apply to me.

I think I would've tried to kill anyone else the Admiral gave me. Nobody holds my hand anymore.

[In this moment she's fierce and crisp and eternal - but it doesn't escape her that she is talking about what she is not, rather than what she is. There is an absence rather than a presence in her, and that's precisely what she needs to work on. She doesn't want to be nothingness forever.]

I'll think about it. Goals, I mean. I think right now I just - I want to understand people better. Why they do what they do and why they're cruel to each other, besides for ambition. But I could be wondering about that forever. There's no end goal there.

[Tired as he is it takes another moment, but he makes a quiet thoughtful sound.]

If that's really what you're interested in, then this could be a good place to learn. If you observe and watch carefully. [It's said slowly, musingly, almost begrudging. He doesn't want to think of anything about this place as a positive but he is...learning things, here. There are enough things so far that can still surprise him.]

I'm choosing to treat it as an opportunity. Most of it, anyway.

[Being trapped in close quarters with Hannibal is not an opportunity. It's a sentence. The rest of it, though . . . there are good things.]

And there are a lot of people to learn from. [Blight, of course, being one of them.]

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sixteen ♢ spam & voice

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