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

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

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?]

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[It is hard, almost impossible, to look away from the man in the corner. The way he breathes; the way she can sense every motion of his chest, in, out, in and out, the way he looks at her, as though he could peel her skin from her body and eat her alive. It's a terribly familiar sensation, and it makes her want to scream and run and hide and give up and go along with anything he says.]

[But Ben is here. She has to focus on that. She has to look at Ben, eyes wide and tear-filled, and see him, his sternness, his heavy gaze, the way he stares at her as though his expression says everything necessary to say.]

[Everything necessary besides the one thing he does say, which is that he's here, and the implication, which is that she is safe.]

[She doesn't feel safe.]

Ben?

[I died, she wants to tell him, cling to him desperately, but her eyes shift over again to the man slumped in the corner.]

[She doesn't have to tell him she died. He already knows. He has thought of nothing else in the time since his warden item went cold in his pocket and now. She died. She died.

He glances at the corner when she does but, seeing nothing, his attention does not linger. He tightens his hands on hers.]

I'm here. [The only reply he has to his name; he does not add that she is safe now. He can't promise it, obviously, but he can promise that he is here.

That, and this.] I'm sorry.

Ben.

[This time it's an exhale, a slow and steady letting go of fear and pain - most of it, not all of it, but she lets him carry some of what's hurting her because he's Ben and that's what he does. She should trust him with it.]

[Even though the man in the corner is still staring at her, staring and smiling and shaking his head slowly back and forth. She lifts a trembling hand and points at him, right between his eyes.]

Ben, do you see?

[Ben lets go of the hand she lifts away, still watching and ready to pluck it back to him if she looks to do anything harmful to herself with it. He's concerned enough to reach for her but not confident enough to hold on if she pulls away even slightly.

Now she points and he glances over at the empty corner, at the equipment stored there, and back to her. He would happily carry whatever she put on him at this point, he knows intimately what failure feels like, but he doesn't know what she means.]

Do I see what?

Him.

[The amount of sheer terror in her voice - she might well be talking about Hannibal. There's the same disbelieving horror there, the same visceral discomfort and refusal to believe the truth. But there's something in her voice that is, if anything, more intimately sorrowful than her tone when she speaks of the Chesapeake Ripper.]

[Hannibal is a facsimile of family. This is the real thing. She remembers finding her mother, throat cut, ripped apart on the front step, and her father telling her everything was going to be okay. He's not saying that now. He's just saying--]

[See?]

[She misses Will abysmally. He would understand this vision, even if he couldn't see it himself.]

Daddy, [she manages to mumble out, words half-formed and guttering like a candle in the wind,] Dad.

[Ben does not understand the differences, not truly; he understands the fear, the horror. He has a face to put to that emotion, a real person to fill that role, but Lydecker's name was never Daddy. He was Sir, always, the only constant face of Manticore. He embodied the entire corporation and Ben and his unit were terrified of him and did not know love.

So Ben wants to understand, but he doesn't - or rather what he understands is that the corner is empty, though he strains all of his senses to find evidence of Garret Hobbs anywhere in this room. He simply isn't there. Ben's eyebrows draw together and he returns his attention to her in full.]

Abigail, there's no one there. Just you and me.

[She turns to him, her eyes wide and burning with tears. She trusts Ben. She has to trust Ben. No choice - he is the one who has always given her a choice, and that is why she has no choice but to trust him, because it would be foolish to do anything else.]

Really? You don't see him?

[Clutching at her head, she tears her hair, leaning back against her pillow and slamming her eyes shut. She thought she was past this. She thought she was free of visions and monsters in the closet. She thought she was sane again.]

Ben, I'm going crazy. I'm going crazy again.

No.

[He is focused on her again in an instant, his hands reaching for hers, to hold them steady, to keep her from doing herself further harm. Of course Ben doesn't see what isn't there to see.

Of course she's not going crazy - or if she is, it is because it is the only sane response to what she survived. Ben understands this like few can, but just the knowledge itself is not, in this moment, particularly useful.]

Abigail, stop. It's okay. I'm here, it's okay.

[She lets go of her hair, but doesn't quite look up at him - not yet. She's too afraid. What if his face is replaced by someone else's, something worse? She couldn't stand to see him change.]

I'm scared. I'm scared. I don't want to see him anymore.

Close your eyes.

[It's the first thing he can think of; if she no longer wants to see, then stop seeing. He says it quickly first, a kneejerk response, but then with more confidence, more evenly.]

Close your eyes, Abigail. Breathe and listen to my voice.

[Hyperventilating but obedient, she closes her eyes and breathes, first hiccupy and jagged, then slower and more careful. She breathes, and she listens to his voice.]

[She reaches out blindly to take his hand. One more sensation to ground her to the world. (When she closes her eyes, she can't hear her father.)]

[The problem with this plan is, of course, that he must now speak. Knowing what to say feels like trying to breathe while pinching his nose closed, not the least because he knows what to say, he knows what to do, but it's been so long since he felt like the boy with the stories that he's not sure they're within his reach now.

She reaches out blindly and he catches her hand; she trusts him to speak, and so he must speak.]

There was a girl who kept time like grains of sand in a bottle. She had a very deft hand with pouring the time, was capable of tilting out just one grain at a time, and in this manner could make an hour or a day or a week pass as quickly or as slowly as she pleased. She could not remember why she was given this bottle and this privilege, merely that she had always had it. Others were at the mercy of time, but not the girl. Time was at the mercy of her.

[She imagines time being at her mercy. It's a far cry from the way the past haunts her at every turn, now, and the thought brings a smile to her face. She doesn't open her eyes, doesn't twitch but to squeeze Ben's hand to let him know that she's still listening, still working hard to keep calm.]

[Ben, watching, sees the smile, feels the pressure around his fingers. He mustn't stop.

He mustn't stop but there's nothing there when he reaches for the next part of the story, like missing a stair in the dark, like leaning against a wall that gives. He licks his lips.]

She... she... lived with a creature that drank time like water. It needed it to survive, and she made sure that it never wanted for what it needed, though she could no longer remember why. She could withhold time's passage from herself if she so desired, but not from the creature, and so she had to watch as the creature aged, died, and was reborn again under her hand.

She loved the creature, but she was afraid for it, afraid for what would happen the day it was not reborn, afraid for the day she was too afraid of this and held back time for it anyway.

[Her brow wrinkles with displeasure. This is not where she wanted the story to go; she feels her heart aching in fear, for the girl, for the creature, for the love that they shared. It would be awful to be that girl, to feel that much pain over and over again, without any hope of cessation.]

What did she do?

...She threw away the bottle.

[And just like that he is sure of himself again; not of the story, not for where it is going, because he never really is. He just opens his mouth and speaks, and whatever words are born are what they are.

A small correction, though, a moment later:] She broke the bottle, and let time scatter as it would. It fell in waves and crests everywhere on the ground, well within the creature's reach should it find itself wanting, but she did not want to be the one responsible for it anymore.

Which is when it happened: to her perception, the creature no longer aged. This was not, of course, the case: the creature still aged. But she aged with it and so she did not notice until one day it laid down and sighed its last breath and she realized - she realized that she had been aging with it.

And the next morning it rose up again, just as it always had. And she loved it, just as she always had.

And it loved her, not as it always had, but more - because she made herself like it, and it no longer feared that one day, it would not be able to rise again to greet her.

[It's the first time she's heard Ben change a story in the middle. Admittedly it's not a big change, but it makes her frown, worried about him. Worried about what this means.]

[Afterwards the story moves smoothly, though, and she brightens, even opening her eyes to smile at him.]

Did she die, too? Did she die with the creature?

[When she opens her eyes, Ben's are there to greet her, not as calm as he has been in days past but still unwavering, as though he is steady as long as he keeps her in sight.

That is exactly the case. He is capable because she needs him to be. He is strong enough because it is necessary.]

She did, eventually. She could not hold time back from herself any more.

But when that day came, they were both happy: the girl and the creature.

They were both freed by her decision.

[She, in turn, continues getting stronger because he is there to be strong for her. She believes in herself, on the occasions that she does, because he believes in her. It's a circular logic, but one that works for them.]

[Her smile grows wider when at last she understands. They were both freed.]

[She squeezes his hand.]

Freedom is so important. [For the both of them.]

[Ben is watching for it, searching for it, the moment when she relaxes. Or not particularly relaxes so much as becomes more comfortable in the place that she is in, rather than striving - yet - for a different one.

He nods.]

It is.

Can you rest now, do you think?

[She can still see him out of the corner of her eye, but she thinks - probably - she can rest. She can sleep.]

[Slowly, she lets go of his hand and blinks up at him, head cocked thoughtfully.]

Will you stay until I fall asleep?

Of course.

[The answer is easy, immediate, solid.

He smiles a little, not tentative but not broad.]

I will stay as long as you like. As long as I can.

[A lot is happening with the ship right now and he can't promise he won't be called away if she doesn't need him, but he has no higher priority than her safety and well being.]

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

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