seventeen ♢ video

[versusnurture]

I have a question.

Maybe it's a weird question. [Not that all of her questions aren't weird. But.]

If you have a quality you want to accentuate, that you want people to notice. With hair or jewelry or things like that. How do you do it? Because.

[She pulls her hair back away from the right side of her neck to reveal a pale scar, horizontal, reaching almost halfway around. It's not a totally unknown sight since she stopped wearing her scarves, but it's not something she's been showing off, either, not exactly.]

I'm sick of hiding it.

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[adelphoktonos]

And does it still live?

[versusnurture]

No. Some hero shot him and he bled out.

[adelphoktonos]

But not you. Is he why you would hunt?

[versusnurture]

He's some of why. He's the one who started giving me scars. Not just this one.

[adelphoktonos]

You have others?

[versusnurture]

[She puts her hand over her chest, taps where her heart is. Then her temple.]

All over. [What she means to say is she's a little crazy, Helena.]

[adelphoktonos]

[Helena understands her meaning with perfect clarity; she has scars too.]

Scars grow old like everything else. They fade in time.

[versusnurture]

They haven't started fading yet.

I'm trying to heal them by - learning new things. Doing new things. But they haven't changed.

[adelphoktonos]

Sometimes the people you know can help them heal.

[versusnurture]

Sometimes the people you know can cut them open again.

[adelphoktonos]

Mm. [An image of Sarah, with the gun held so tight in a shaking hand, flashes in her mind.] They can. Sometimes they don't mean to.

[versusnurture]

Sometimes they mean to very much.

It all depends what kind of people you know. I haven't known very good people, before here.

[adelphoktonos]

Do you know good people now?

[versusnurture]

I know a few. I have my warden, and some friends.

Do you?

[adelphoktonos]

In life, I had some. Here... I am still new.

[versusnurture]

Do you want to be friends?

[adelphoktonos]

[A short pause.] Yes.

Would you want to be my friend, little hunter?

[versusnurture]

Yes. I think we'd be good friends. We're both wrong, aren't we? In one way or another.

[adelphoktonos]

Yes. [No hesitation. It's just the truth, after all.] Then we will be friends.

Tell me your name.

[versusnurture]

My name is Abigail.

[adelphoktonos]

Mine is Helena. Nice to meet you.

[versusnurture]

We're going to be good friends. [She feels warm, calmed, by this decision. Somehow she knows that Helena, unbalanced and dangerous as she might be, will be squarely on her side.] It's nice to meet you.

[adelphoktonos]

I haven't really had many friends before.

[versusnurture]

I had some. But they're all dead.

[adelphoktonos]

What happened to them?