versusnurture | nineteen ♢ video

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nineteen ♢ video

[When the feed comes on, the first thing there is is a wall and half of a desk. Those people on board who've been inside will know it as Abigail's room. There's a small blood smear on the edge of the desk, another dark spot on the corner of the lens.]

[She doesn't turn it towards herself, but the camera does move towards the desk, is set down at the edge of it. Two hands appear in the frame, blood-caked, palm-up. There's blood under her nails, too, drier blood that's oxidized to a deep, almost black color.]

[She doesn't say anything. But after a moment, there's a strangled noise, and she knocks the camera off the desk. The briefest flash of dark hair and a pale face; then it hits the floor and shuts off.]

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he was leaving my room. he was bleeding. he went to get help.

[His fist uncurls and lowers to his side when she opens the door, leaving him, for a moment, wordless.

He smells the blood. He's trying so hard not to, and shakes himself a little - reminding himself that he can't just stand here like a crazy person, he has to say something. Scott swallows hard, and tries.]

I'm - I came as soon as--

[But he stops, lowers his head for a moment before his eyes find hers again.]

I'm Scott. Do you remember me?

and Flannery O'Connor. we read together.

you're like family.

[She, too, is quiet for a minute. This puzzles her.]

To use information as a weapon. Later. [Sort of a question, sort of an assumption.]

yes please

Milk. Please.

[Always be polite. She pours her own milk when it's set in front of her, doesn't meet Steph's eyes.]

. . . Thank you. For letting me in.

[He comes over, and he brings and unopened box of swiss miss.]

Hi, Abigail. It's DIllon.

In a way

[ If he thought they could stand outside Hannibal's shadow, he'd be thrilled to be referred to so intimately. But with what Hannibal has made of 'family'... he tempers his joy that she remembers him like kin. ]

[ Steph watches, curious, but she knows better than to pry. Especially with a girl who just finished cleaning blood off of her hands. Speaking of which, she grabs that nail file before sitting down with her own coffee and offers it to Abigail. ]

No problem. I've had days like that. Want to clean under your nails?

[Her shaking stills, or at least slows. She watches him curiously, almost clinically, as he covers his mouth, as he moves. He looks sad. He looks so sad.]

[Why is he so sad? She's the one who . . .]

[A hiccup in the back of her throat; then she's still again.]

I don't know what to do.

[A pained confession, but one she thinks he's heard before. So often she doesn't know what to do. So often she needs guidance. For a while she didn't think she wanted it, but now she doesn't know how to do without it.]

I have all these memories coming back. I remember people . . . I remember you.

[She remembers being afraid. She's still afraid now, but it's distant fear, somehow, like it's buried under several layers of earth. Instead of wanting to run, she wants to reach for him--feels like she can't not.]

Did you get hurt?

In a manner of speaking.

[He remembers broken bones, in the vague way he remembers everything that happened, when the Barge turned into a funhouse. He remembers shattered knee caps and forearms, but then it was healed even as Dillon all but erased him.

He pushes his fury away, locks the drawer in his mind.]

It's perfectly natural for you to be confused by these memories. Tell me what you do remember.

[Direction. Something to do. Report.]

I remember some things. In bits and pieces. Mostly pieces.

[She laughs, shaky. He is worried about her. That's more familiar, and some other things fall into place.]

You died. And I died, too. I remember that. I remember you're the only one who calls me Miss Hobbs.

Can you, um. Can you tell me how long I was gone?

Scott.

[An unfamiliar name on her lips. There was a boy named Scott in her high school, but he didn't look like this. And there was a boy who hugged her once who looked just like this boy, even though she doesn't remember where, or why.]

[I came as soon as-- what?]

[She looks down at her hands and lowers the knife, just a little. Then something comes to her and she blinks, then laughs, a surprisingly clear noise in the silence.]

Hair pillows.

but in a way not?

I made myself a promise-- that if you wanted a father or a brother or an uncle, or family-- I would do be that. But only if it as something you chose. Choice is important to us.

[She opens the door slowly and carefully. She is not carrying her knife, and she is no longer covered in blood, although there are some spots on her blouse that she hadn't thought to clean off.]

[He looks more familiar close up, so much so that she can even offer a wobbly smile.]

You can come in. If you want.

[She looks at the file like it's an alien device for a second before remembering: oh. Yes. That. She takes it carefully from Steph's hand like it or she might break and begins to carefully pick at the caked-in blood.]

[Then she looks up suspiciously.]

Days like what?

About four days, by my reckoning. ['You died. And I died, too.' She's remembering the aftermath of the Mirror Barge, maybe. He wonders how much of what she experienced before is coming through - if he'd prefer it or not if she remembered everything.] I died again, more recently. Much more recently. Do you recall anything about what just happened, around here?

He'll understand. [He understands so much.]

Where did you go?

[He's confused, for a second: that's so long ago in his mind. He's almost forgotten it.

For a moment, his eyes drop to her knife. It makes him nervous, but it can't really hurt him, even if she wanted to. That scares him, a little - he knows he's not invincible, and he doesn't like that he'd think that way.

But she laughs, and he tries a smile, eyebrows arching hopefully.]

Yeah. Right. You scared the crap out of me then.

[ Steph smiles wryly, not so much at Abigail as at the world as a whole. ]

Days when you wake up some place other than where you passed out, covered in blood, desperate for some privacy and maybe a shower.

[Direction. Something to do. She snaps to--not attention, because she isn't a soldier and she never has been, but to alertness, yes, a sudden jolt better than caffeine. He needs information. She has information.]

I was in the house. ['The house,' not 'your house'. Their house.] I killed Alana, like you told me to. [Her voice barely trembles.] I came to the kitchen, like you told me to. Will was there. He had--

[Here she hesitates, because how to say what he did? A bad thing. He did a bad thing. He hurt them all.]

He turned his back on you. He hurt. [You. Us.] And you were angry.

You cut my throat. [She will bleed out a hundred thousand times for him. But something nags at her. She doesn't want to be dead. She doesn't want--]

Should I go back further?

[Ben has seen others come back without their memories, has seen them struggle, has seen their loved ones struggle to reconcile knowing them with not being known. He has done his best to help Anya with it, though he can see that she is more invested than he can imagine for a reason that is not entirely obvious to him. He has thought about it in the past three days, what he would do if Abigail came back and didn't know him, but he decided he would be glad she was back at all.

It's an easier thing to think than to confront, but very little about Ben's life has been easy. He is equal to the task. Ben steps in when he's bidden, closing the door behind him, and stays there by the door looking at her. He does not let himself be drawn in so effortlessly this time.]

Thank you. Do you know who I am, Abigail? [The teddy bear is secure between his ribs and his arm, tucked against the crook of his elbow. The file is under his other arm. His attention is solely on her.]

The knife?

[ Which knife? There had been plenty but few significant. He remembers Garret Jacob Hobbs' knife as easily in his grip as it probably had occurred to Hobbs himself. He remembers his own knife, the one that had been used to implicate him in his trial, but that held no significance on the Barge; she was whole here, past her death, or -

So he thought.

He wants to touch again, fingers bristling at his sides as he wants to look her over, to make sure she's not actually wounded - it's not her blood, it can't be her blood - but her words echo in his head, don't touch, don't touch. ]

Is that what did that to you?

[ He doesn't remember. He's sorry and it reads in his voice. ]

The knife.

[She repeats it, like saying it again will make it clearer to him. Will make him come up with a memory he so clearly doesn't have. She touches her throat with bloody fingers--that--and nods, slowly. He's sorry. That counts for something.]

It was a curved blade. I don't remember what it was for, originally. Not a hunting knife. A kitchen knife. Or a gardening tool? I don't know.

It did this-- [She touches her throat again.] --and it . . .

[Her voice trails off into nothing very much as she reaches out to point at his stomach.]

It got you, too.

[When they first met here, Will thought she was a ghost. Now, pale and trembling and pointing at the lethal wound she saw but isn't there anymore, she really looks like one.]

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