versusnurture | Entries tagged with she was nobody's meat

( 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.]

[Healing comes on her quicker than she had expected. She isn't healed, but healing is happening to her. To her, a process she feels she has no control over. It seems sacrilegious, missing the people she came to see as family less on certain days, more on others. She believes that grief should be a constant stream. She believes it should be as perfect as she can't be.]

[It's on the days that she misses Hannibal the least that she feels the most volatile, that she could hurt someone if they looked at her wrong. It's on those days that she's a little afraid of herself, and a little proud - for still possessing those urges, for not succumbing to them.]

[She hangs around the Enclosure, waiting to be let in, not sure if she'll be trusted with that freedom by anyone but the people who know her, the people she's tricked or the people she's let in. She wants to go hiking. She wants to go hunting. She wants to feel power in her hands or in the churn of her legs over rough terrain.]

[She has no idea what she wants.]

private } ben, backdated pre-breach

We have to talk. About Jerry.

( cut for gift list! )

do just what the captain says

& hang the rest

Entries tagged with she was nobody's meat

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a perfectionist;