maskormenace | File 02 - Video

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File 02 - Video > Text

[For a moment, the feed turns on. There's Kristin, looking at the lens - face pale, eyes puffy from tears that dried up beforehand - but she doesn't speak. She can't bring herself to speak. She was gone, gone back to her home; now she's back, and it's apparent that something has gone wrong. Behind her, her room is a flurry of scattered papers. Dulled green eyes widen a bit as she tries to process information, tries to pull words from the haze and the darkness.

She can't do it.

She casts a darting glance over her shoulder, jumping at a shadow, and with the lift of her chin it's easier to see the fading bruises around her throat. Her eyes flick downward to the preview of her feed and she spots them.

The visuals click off. She switches to text.]

I went back. It felt like weeks, but the calendar here says it's only been a day. Like it was a bad dream.

I don't know what to do now that I've woken up.

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[The signs are there. Pallid skin and red eyes. The incapacity to speak that necessitates a change in medium. They draw him in to run an investigation. He eyes the micro-reactions and then the bruises on her neck - someone has frayed her nerves. The poor dear is terrified. Lost in darkness and frozen in fear. The colder she becomes, the hotter he feels. And what has he done to patients like this? Frightened them out of their minds.

And what's more intrusive than text at this moment?

His voice of course!]

Boo!

[Riku wasn't sure if he should answer this, at first. But the thought of the way she looked in her video didn't leave, it stuck in his brain and nagged, and he navigated back.]

Are you

[He wants to ask if she's okay, but the answer to that is pretty obvious.]

Would you like to talk about it?

[She catches a glimpse of the video feed before it changed to text, and well, Peggy didn't like what she could see.]

My name is Peggy Carter. Is there something I can do to help?

[The response to this comes after a brief beat - the voice that comes back over the line is raspy and cold. A far cry from that last time they had spoken.]

You aren't funny.

Leave me alone.

[Guess who heard that scary sounding paper-nado earlier? This gal. So instead of actually going to Kristin's door, Mabel checks in via the network.]

...do you want hot chocolate?

I don't know how to wrap my brain around it yet, much less talk about it.

I feel like I should, but I don't know if I can.

That's okay. Distracting yourself is fine, too, if you need that instead. I'll listen, either way.

I don't actually know what would help.

I don't...feel safe anymore.

[Mabel's friendly face is nice to see - but she doesn't respond in video, instead firing back a text. A very cold, detached text. Hooboy.]

...That would be very helpful. I haven't been able to eat anything since I got back, so my blood sugar is probably getting lower than is safe.

I appreciate it.

Have we...met before? My memory is still coming back in waves, and sorting it all out is exhausting.

I don't think so. I just... you looked like you needed someone to talk to you. I mean, someone who isn't Crane.

[Oh. Oh. What a nice voice.]

Would you prefer me to lie and say I saw none of your histrionics, too?

[Man, this does not look good. Saul wonders whether he should respond or not, on account of it being none of his business, but something about her appearance plucks all those silly sympathetic strings in his heart.]

I'd start by taking a deep breath.

Welcome back.

I daresay here is better than whatever had just happened to you over there.

[She knows, already, that he is not the same Edward. This has been established, this is knowledge that she can feel secure in. Knowledge is her only security right now.

But still his name on her comm makes her sick to her stomach, and it takes her a moment to even find words to respond with.]

it was him

That I do appreciate.

I just didn't think it safe to be alone with my thoughts right now.

you dont look well
are you living with anyone?

Perhaps you could take a walk. [ If she's feeling jumpy, it might be therapeutic to just put one foot in front of the other. ]

[You liked that, Crane? You oughta love this. The rasp becomes a hiss, something dark from deep within. The wide-eyed lover has a dark side after all.]

I said. Leave. Me. Alone.

[Truly the LAST thing he needs are implications against any male pronoun that could, at least feasibly, somehow be tied back to his duplicate -- a mirrored element well beyond his control, to be sure, but one couldn't be too careful. Not when people like Power Girl were breathing down one's neck.]

Why would he do that?

[No protest, no unnecessary clarification. Eddie understood that anyone with his mindset could hurt and brutalize -- he had, after all, murdered quite a lot of people before he had reformed. The stone's throw between them would not measure in miles.]

Edited 2015-11-08 23:13 (UTC)

I'm trying to. I really am.

[What she doesn't say is that breath feels precious right now - like a privilege that she had been given again, more than a natural physical function.]

[Manolo. She likes Manolo. He has a good heart that he couldn't hide if he tried to. It's honest and she needs that right now.]

I don't feel well, either.

Yes. A pair of very nice twins. I'm a little worried that I scared them when I returned.

No. Sometimes that's... not the best course of action.

[Dude knows.]

It's good that you recognize that, though.

[The moment the texts become private, she's compulsed to confide - it's strange and sick, but he's really one of the best people she could talk to about it. In his own bizarre way, he has the most insight.

But where to even begin? Just thinking about it makes her throat want to close, her palms sweat.]

We started dating when I went back. It was too good to be true. I was right that he had killed Tom - he told me about it, about how it happened. He smiled the whole time.

He was smiling and telling me he loved me when he

I tried to get away

I triedto scream

couldnt breathe

cant

im dead

You don't look well, you know.

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