versusnurture | Entries tagged with abibabble stabigail

( private } ben & elena; cw fire imagery )

video

[Everything is, in its own way, a production. Even this. She's posed herself carefully, sitting on her bed and framed in light from the window, so that she looks older, more poised than she feels. What she feels is afraid. Overwhelmed. Not ready.]

[But she has to be ready, which is why she makes herself smile like nothing and nobody can touch her anymore.]

I'm not as good at telling stories as Ben is. But I want to tell this one, if that's okay, because it's important to me. Some of you know it. If you do, I hope it's all right that I repeat it.

[She looks down for a moment, at her hands where they twist together in her lap, and then up at the camera. The smile reaches her eyes, now, because she can feel the strength coming, making her spine straighter and her breath come smoother.]

Just over two years ago now - two years ago for me - my dad died. He'd killed a bunch of girls who looked just like me, and I had helped him. Because I didn't know what else to do, mostly, and because if I didn't, he said he was going to kill me, too.

I didn't want anyone to know what I'd done. I didn't want anybody to think badly of me. I worked so hard to keep myself safe that I ended up killing somebody else, and then . . .

Some of you remember Hannibal.

[She clears her throat, forces her hands to flatten out on the bed beside her.]

It's so easy to trust the wrong person. It's so easy. I trusted so many of them, and I got so many people hurt. I want to apologize, but most of the people I hurt are gone now. For those of you who are still here, I'd take it back if I could. I'm sorry for making the wrong decision.

But I'm not sorry for surviving.

[Now her eyes blaze with confidence, her words coming stronger with every breath.]

Ben saved my life. You all saved my life. So thank you. I'm going now.

I'm going to kill Hannibal.

[She hopes beyond hope that he comes back here. But that part she won't say out loud, just biting her lip, smiling, waving - and killing the feed.]

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?]

do just what the captain says

& hang the rest

Entries tagged with abibabble stabigail

twenty-nine ♢ private & video

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

Profile

a perfectionist;