dear_mun | voicetesting, whoops.

Maybe they want a dancing monkey. Guess who's the monkey.

[ In what passes for sass in his estimation: ] You seem to be doing well enough of it on your own.

I get paid. Do you?

I don't need money. Not anymore.

Why, you dead?

[ Wouldn't be the first, but that's fifty-fifty. ]

Yes.

[ For whatever it's worth, he doesn't seem particularly surprised or upset about it. ]

...No shit.

[ This got weird real fast, didn't it. ]

[ Yyyep. ]

Are— are you?

[ It seems like the logical follow-up. ]

You're taking the wind outta my sails, man.

[ Not answering that question, thanks. ]

[ To say that she's conflicted about this? Would be an understatement. Sophie shifts uncomfortably, her hands picking at the sleeve of her parka. (She's been wearing that parka the last time they'd seen one another; she'd been wearing it still when they took her aside and told her the truth about what was happening.) ]

—oh.

[ (Maybe he ought to have expected this, he thinks — for what he wished for to come true. It's his own fault for not having thought of what to say sooner. Typical.) ]

Sophie.

[ Benji's mouth opens, closes. ]

I told them I wanted to see you, but— [ (but I had to finish my mission; but I couldn't wait) ] —are you alright?

—you did? [ Her brow pinches in a hopeful way and there's a moment where it almost seems as if she's about to threaten a smile. But that impulse lasts only a moment before her expression crumples again, her shoulders drooping sulkily, making her neck seem longer and awkwardly more birdlike than it already does. ]

How can you even ask me that? [ She sounds defensive, petulant. Childish, almost plaintive — rather than properly cross. ] Your friend tried to hurt me— and he's already hurt so many people already.

[ A held breath follows like a question mark. You didn't know, did you? Please tell me you didn't. ] It's all over the telly. You, too.

[ Benji's expression follows as something of a mirror of Sophie's, the line of his mouth twitching into the beginnings of a smile before twisting again as her attitude changes. ]

He— he wasn't—

[ There's a flash of anger in his eyes, one that carries into a certain steadiness in his tone, there and then gone because it's not her he's angry with. (He can feel the dull sense of betrayal in his chest, one compounded by his confusion at what she's saying.) ]

I finished my mission; he wasn't supposed to hurt you if I did it. The police said, if he knew I was still alive, he would, but I did it, I'm—

[ He raises one of his hands as if to gesture, but he doesn't seem to know what to do with it, his fingers opening and closing in a fist before he lets it fall back to his side. ]

He wasn't supposed to.

[ (I'm sorry.) ]

[ She doesn't recoil from Benji's anger, though perhaps she should (it's one lesson she hasn't learned yet). Instead, it confuses her, makes her visibly uneasy but not enough to take a step away, Sophie's gaze wandering uncomfortably from his face before wandering back again and fixing on his chin rather than his eyes. I thought you were my friend, she thinks to say but maybe that isn't entirely fair. He'd been kind to her, after all; had taken her in out of the rain when nobody else would. Not even her mum and her dad had cared at the time, but Benji—

(Things feel better than they have in a long time. Sophie had done that, hadn't she?) ]

I don't understand.

[ Why you'd go along with him; why you thought doing yourself like that could ever help me. ]

No One said it was justice, [ Benji says, though there's something empty in his voice, like he still wants to believe it to be true but isn't quite sure anymore, doesn't quite have that conviction. ] He helped me — he helped me when the doctors wouldn't. I didn't need those pills anymore. And when the sword of justice fell, things would get better, not just for me.

[ Before, it had been an easier vision to commit to. Before he'd tried to hurt her (he doesn't quite understand why — she hadn't done anything, she wasn't doing anything wrong, she'd just been the first person to show him any kindness or patience after No One had come into his life), that is. As things stand now, he can feel his thoughts getting muddled in his head, whatever clarity he'd once possessed slipping back behind a sort of veil. ]

What are they saying? About me? About him?

[ Sophie shakes her head slowly. Suddenly she doesn't want to talk about this and the urge to run away again (to break something, to take something that doesn't belong to her just for the sake of talking about something else) swells like seasickness in her belly. They said all sorts of things on the telly and on the internet, but Dad had always said some folks would say anything (do anything) to get a rise.

They called Benji the Samurai Killer, but he wasn't a samurai (was he a killer), just some lonely guy living by himself in ragged old flat. A man who loved green tea and sleeping on his yoga mat, with nothing to eat in his house and shelves stocked with pills. (—how could she have been so stupid?) But not every article was unkind; some pitied Benji, called him a pawn in TT's twisted game. A man who was sick who'd needed help but who'd been abandoned by a system that didn't care about him. (Sophie thinks she understands that — more than she'd like to.) ]

He lied to you. [ Sophie shakes her head again, more emphatically this time. ] Things are just getting worse. People are dying and he doesn't care who does, so long as they're other people who'll listen.

But — you're not like that. [ She wants it to be a statement, something she can say emphatically but Sophie's voice curls up at the end of the sentence, making her wince slightly. ] —are you?

Edited 2013-11-19 13:14 (UTC)

[ He lied to you. Benji doesn't recoil at the words, but his face visibly falls, the realization that something has happened patently different from actually hearing it confirmed. There's no one to blame but himself for his foolishness, a truth that's just as hard to come to terms with. ]

You weren't supposed to be hurt.

[ He doesn't quite seem to be able to look her in the eye, his gaze instead hovering somewhere just over her shoulder. (He'd killed those people, and for what? For nothing? What had he died for, then? And how, if No One had gotten to him so easily, does he know she's not lying, too? It's a dangerous thought to follow down the rabbit hole, but the warrens only multiply the more he tries to parse things out.) ]

Nobody else was supposed to be hurt.

[ Hurt, which means he recognizes that something went wrong, that the lives lost were not, in fact, for some greater cause. ]

[ Nobody else. Nobody else. There's the rub and it's impossible to ignore, Sophie's hands resuming in their nervous habits — brightly colored nails picking at the hem of her pale pink sweater. (She'd been raised to be a good girl; to fold her hands and wait her turn. But the silence had smothered her, sitting there ignored in her mother's sitting room while she busied herself with more important things that hadn't been important at all. How did the saying go? Good things come to those who wait.

What utter bull.)

You killed people, she wants to say, but that's quickly followed on its heeled by a second thought. You died. Whether it had meant to be atonement or simply wiping his hands after a job well done, Sophie doesn't know and part of her is afraid to understand, so instead she just offers up weakly: ]

—I wasn't hurt. [ The policewoman had saved her in the end, the both of them hitting the water with a cold and shocking splash. ] Just — it was really scary, you know? I came back to the flat and — there were all these cops there, with their lights going.

[ I didn't know what had happened to you. I didn't have anywhere else to go. ]

Edited 2013-11-19 13:56 (UTC)

[ (She'd been raised to be good and so had he — say please and thank you, offer shelter to those in need of it. Not acts of grace he'd really been privy to, himself, not once anyone knew he had a few screws loose. That had become cause either to leave him alone or to treat him differently; not necessarily badly but in the way you might treat any child known for some sort of delinquency. Sophie hadn't, even after she'd seen how he'd stocked his kitchen shelves.

She'd come back.)

Her words seem to trigger a thought, as Benji somewhat abruptly straightens up — which isn't saying too much, given his small stature. ]

They found the picture you drew, [ he says almost eagerly, as if this might somehow ease the conversation. ] Of me. I'm afraid I hadn't had a chance to look at it properly before, but it—

I would have liked to have kept it.

[ Again, a mirror finds the both of them, Sophie's posture lifting slightly in the shoulders to echo the shift in Benji's posture. Not better, per say, but more open, perhaps hopeful. She hadn't give the drawing to him explicitly but instead had waited for him to be out of the common room, tearing it free from her notebook as carefully as possible before slipping it under the placemat where he had served her tea the night before. At the time she'd thought of leaving a note for him, scribbling something silly and grateful on the back of it. But, as was the case with most teenagers, words that didn't feel saccharine or sentimental failed her so Sophie had left it as is. She'd left it so that the corner of the page had peeked out just so, so that Benji would be certain to find it when she'd left for the shops.

Shifting her weight back and forth between her feet, Sophie's voice cracks as it pitches upward. ] I could make you another one. [ They'd taken her drawing, along with everything else from Benji's flat, packaging them each in a large plastic bag. His medicine, his teapot; his strange little shoes. Back home that was all that was left of Benjamin Robertson in the world and the thought makes Sophie sad. ]

—if you'd like.

I'd like that very much.

[ His expression seems to soften a touch, that sense of anxiety ever-present in the wide set of his eyes and the wavering quality to his voice, but his demeanor a little brighter. (There's nothing left of him, back home, that would ever say that he was a whole person. And maybe he isn't, but the picture that remains of him is still different, still says sicko or monster or terrorist. All there is to say otherwise is her.) ]

I— I can't give you anything in return.

[ Again, Sophie shakes her head, feeling a bit like one of those bobble-headed birds that people sometimes fix to the dashboards of their cars. That had always been her problem, hadn't it? She never said anything for far too long and so by the time she'd learned to open her mouth, nobody bothered to recognize the sound of her own voice and had simply cast it aside like white noise. ]

You were nice to me, [ and for some reason it sounds like more of a complaint than it should be. ] You didn't have to be, but you were.

[ That's the truth she keeps coming back to, the one that has her circling back to him even after everything he'd done. Sophie had packed her life up into a backpack and had thought her mother would loose sleep over it, though her dad would come looking. But nobody had come and nobody had called; in the end it had been Sophie who'd rung home and even then it hadn't earned her relief — just another earful. (—you ungrateful little—) ]

Real decent, you know? [ Half of her mouth crooks as she attempts another smile. ] If anyone asks, that's all I'll ever say.

You're very kind.

[ He manages a tenuous sort of smile, gaze lowering (because he doesn't know that he deserves it, not if what she's saying about No One is true). Misguided actions still have effects. If nothing else, he knows that. He hadn't felt fear or trepidation when he'd carried out his mission but he feels almost ill, now, just thinking about it. (And he'd yelled at those poor policemen, too.)

At length: ] I'm sorry, Sophie.

[ It's what he's been waiting to say, and the words taste sharp on his tongue. But the thought is clear in his head, at least. They mostly are, when it comes to her. ]

You must believe me when I say I never meant to put you in harm's way.

[ It isn't his fault; that's what she keeps telling herself. The Truth Terrorist — he was the monster, the one that looked for innocent people to hurt just for the sake of teaching lessons nobody would ever really learn. Benji hadn't chosen to be sick and TT had been the one to convince him otherwise. (He'd stopped taking his medication; he'd stopped trusting his doctors. What hope could he possibly have had when the only person on his side wasn't on his side at all?)

Again, that dull aching feeling sounds beneath Sophie's breastbone, making her shift her weight again. She feels bad but she feels good at the same time. (She doesn't understand how that works. Things shouldn't be right, but they feel better than she thought they ever would again.) ]

I know, [ she says, a little weakly. (But does she really? How could she ever know for certain?) ]

I— [ Sophie thinks of her mother, of how cross she had been, even after the police had returned her home. (It would make her so mental to know Sophie was here with him.) ] —I believe you, Benji.

Edited 2013-11-19 17:08 (UTC)

[ That seems to get him to calm down. The manic energy generally present in his gaze seems to dull, turning into something that's no less focused but isn't quite as dangerous. ]

I think you're the first person who has, [ he says matter-of-factly, like it's not a statement that is more revealing than he'd like it to be (the same way he'd talked about his medication earlier). He doesn't know how else to address it, if only because he's never had to. It hadn't been entirely by choice that he'd lived such a spartan existence. ]

I'm— I'm glad.

[ Sophie's mouth crooks again, a little less-guarded this time around, the expression more natural on her face, the faintest hint of white teeth showing between her lips. ] It totally sucks, doesn't it? [ The words come easily, almost conversational — like when she'd confessed to him that she couldn't go home or, later, that her mum had gone completely ballistic when she'd called. ] Having no one listen to you.

[ Maybe it's a case of apples and oranges, trying to compare one man's mental illness to a teenage girl's rebellion; but at the end of the day they'd both yielded the same thing. A loneliness that had sunk itself so deep inside them that nothing (not running away, not taking a blade to the man entrusted with his health) could scour it away completely.

But Benji had listened, in the moments when he'd been present for their conversations. Those moments when he'd looked up at her with a kind of distant attentiveness — a strange mix of amazement and confusion, like he was perpetually surprised to be having a conversation in the first place. ] Makes a person feel small or whatever.

[ Makes a person go crazy, only Sophie doesn't say that aloud. ]

[ (He likes it best, when she talks like that. When he can tell it's easy. There's a part of him that it's not always easy to be around him — he'd forgotten who she was entirely, once, hardly the kind of thing you want to have happen when you're crashing at somebody else's flat — so it's always something of a relief when conversation isn't strained.) ]

It sucks, [ Benji agrees, the latter word sounding odd coming from him. (He doesn't seem like they type of person to swear, really, even with anything so tame. It's easy for him to glower, to shout, but there's nothing that suggests any inherent ugliness in his base nature. One assumes that's why it'd been so simple manipulating him in the first place.

Most of the time, he just seems too docile.) ]

It gets old rather quickly, I suppose.

[ (She likes it best too when it's like this, when she can put aside all of his strangeness and danger and just focus on the fact that she isn't alone and someone is agreeing with her for once. When the officer had told her to blame her bad behavior on her friends, her mother had sniped that Sophie didn't have any — and for all that her mother could be an absolute harpy, she'd been right about that much.

It's quite possible that this is what people meant when they used the phrase, scraping the bottom of the barrel. But that's cruel and Benji deserved better than that. They both did, Sophie reckoned.

If only the rest of the world agreed.) ]

So— [ She gives a little shrug, her shoulders collapsed inwards slightly, her slouch hidden by the largeness of her park. ] —does this mean you're going somewhere?

[ Other questions follow. (Can I come with you?) ] It's not like she'd take you out just to put you back again, yeah?

I'm not sure what she means to do, [ Benji says, almost reluctant in tone. (He doesn't much like not knowing despite how prominent a theme it seems to be in his life.) ]

I don't think she means to send me anywhere permanently — and I'd rather not go. It's all a bit frightening, isn't it?

If only the negotiations were as simple as that.

If only, [ Benji repeats, somewhat absently, before his mouth twitches into a brief smile. ] If wishes were horses, I suppose. We'd have a proper stable, here.

Perhaps it's best for naught. [ A beat. ] I'm allergic to horses.

Those people you're looking for [ It's unlikely he'll find them. It's hopeless, him finding them. ( All manner of pessimism makes itself known, before he settles with a quiet: ) ] — I hope you find them.

[ He laughs, half breathless (nervous, more like), at the comment on the horses, rocking back and forth on his heels. ]

I— I think I may have. Are you— looking for anyone?

[ Good on him. Perhaps it isn't all as lost as it appears here. Tom nods, as if following up his own thoughts. ]

My family. [ Although: ] If they aren't here, I can't say I'm looking all too hard; it means they're safe.

I suppose that's true, [ he concedes, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck. ]

This place seems more dangerous than any back home.

voicetesting, whoops.

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