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]

[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?

[versusnurture]

Their throats got cut, too.

. . . Or they got to be afraid of me.

[adelphoktonos]

I won't be. Why were they afraid? Because you were- [How did you put it?] - wrong?

[versusnurture]

Yes. Because I helped kill people. They didn't know, but they suspected.

[adelphoktonos]

Animal instincts. [She means their sense of danger, of fear, but doesn't clarify. There's a dismissive air to the statement.] Who did the killing?

[versusnurture]

My father.