twenty-eight ♢ spam & video ( cw: tooth squick )

[versusnurture]

spam } infirmary

[Before the pain hits, in that brief insensible moment after waking, she feels a stab of pride. She did it. She got him. She didn't win, but she fought back against the implacable, impossible, eternal enemy. She silenced him - if only for a moment, she silenced him.]

[It's after that that the pain hits, her head aching impossibly. She wants to die, laughs silently when she recognizes the irony. It feels as though she's cracking in half from her skull down.]

[But even the pain can't distract her from panic for long. While she was dead, it must have gotten worse. It creeps back up her throat before she knows it's there to push back down, her heart beating a hard tattoo in her chest as she sees-- hears-- smells red blood on her hands and the fur of the beast.]

[There is a man in the corner of the room. He breathes in and out. She can hear him speaking, one word only: "See." She can see his chest moving. She can smell blood on his teeth like he's breathing in her face.]

[She sits on her cot, staring at nothing, shivering helplessly, her throat as dry as the deadest desert.]

video

[It's later that the knives sprout. Thirty-two little monster teeth, each with a metal serrated edge, each curved just slightly, making their way into her mouth after pushing her old teeth bloody onto the pure white sheet.]

[They don't distract her as much as they should, though they cut her tongue up something wicked. She has questions - but she can't speak.]

[So in video she turns on a smile, her knife-teeth fitting together like perfect dentures, and holds up a small whiteboard.]

[It says, WHO ELSE CAN SEE HIM?]

Comments

[thelastbullet]

[He looks at his hands, the knuckles gone white minutes ago, then back up at her. He'd never blamed Nucky for what he'd done; he only blamed the both of them for letting it come to that. But he doesn't judge her, even if her smile twists something inside of him.]

Are you going to kill them, when you graduate?

[versusnurture]

[Cocking her head to one side, she gives him a serious look, feeling for once a little out of her depth. Usually she uses her story to frighten people. With Jimmy, for some reason, she really doesn't know where to start.]

My dad's already dead. The other man - his name is Hannibal Lecter. I don't know if he's dead or alive. If he's alive, I'll find a way to put him down. He doesn't get to beat me anymore.

[A pause; then,] I know once we graduate, we're not supposed to kill. But it would be a just killing, I think. If justice really exists.

[thelastbullet]

[A man who's capable of cutting off a girl's ear, of beating her, god knows what else-- Jimmy doesn't have the whole picture, but that sounds like a killing as just as his own father's.

So he nods, satisfied. From one killer to another, it's approval.]

I wouldn't be the one to tell you not to do it. Some people don't deserve to live.

[versusnurture]

He killed a bunch of people here. Ate them.

[Her eyes are boring holes into Jimmy's face, gauging his response, waiting for something - disgust, maybe. She assumes that everyone will know the connection between him and her, will know her crimes and her cruelties, just by looking at her face.]

You can ask around. Almost everyone remembers him. He's very memorable.

[thelastbullet]

[He doesn't see that connection, and he's not disgusted: he's shocked, though, very clearly so. Even in the trenches, when they'd sometimes been so hungry that they'd chew on their belts to distract themselves, even then they'd never considered that.

Someone doing that- his eyes flicker to Abigail's ear and he thinks, did he-- before rapidly discarding the thought. It's too much to think about. But he figures Abigail for a victim, not an accomplice, without even entertaining the thought that he might be wrong.]

I imagine he would be, yes.

[versusnurture]

[Her gaze is just level, now; some of the intensity leaves it. She's just looking, not staring, not trying to pull him apart.]

I hope you never have to meet him.

[thelastbullet]

[He lets go of a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, finally uncurls his fingers from the bedpost.]

I hope you get to kill him.

[versusnurture]

[That's the deciding factor. Whatever part of her was waffling on whether or not to like him decides now: he's a good person, or at least a good person by her standards. She smiles at him, all soft gratitude.]

Thank you.

[thelastbullet]

[He doesn't smile back, but he nods at her, almost solemnly.]

I'll see you around, Abigail.