dear_mun | voicetesting, whoops.

[ (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?

voicetesting, whoops.

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