[prp] consolidation — jack/abbi

[medigel]

It struck him that he could have brought something just before he turned the knob. Guilty gifts had never entered his mind before. Guilt, certainly, but never an impulse to try and balance its existence with something material, as if money could possibly counteract the weight or stitch a hole. But Jack had nothing but his clothes, his phone, and the necessary make up to cover the hollowness of his face when he knocked and entered her room, and the thought faded away.

Thankfully, Owain had no snappy retort for that.

He didn't say anything at first but instead strode to Abbi's side, looking for a chair to pull up to the bed. Only as he was taking a seat did he say, "Thank you for letting me see you."  

[AyeAvast]

As much as she's grateful that Jack's tweet didn't come for a few days, there is still a part of Abbi that is a little put off that he's waited this long before coming to her. Thankfully its an easy feeling to temper and be able to box up and put away, thankfully Abbi is learning to do that with better success.
She makes no move to tidy up her room or rearrange anything, mostly because she knows that aggravating her injuries further would help no one, but there is little to fiddle with anyways.

So she cuddles more against the giant bear plush in her bed and flips through a magazine until Jack knocks on the door. There is no need to instruct him to come in as he does it on his own accord, so Abbi instead busies herself with sitting up.
"Afternoon, Jack!" She chirped with a grin and waited, trying very hard not to move.
There was a desk chair he could use, and lots of things Abbi wanted to know, but she only waves a hand at the chair when he looks for it.

When he does finally speak Abbi isn't sure what to say.
She knows what he means, she knows he is being formal in his attempt at expressing guilt, she knows things happened and that he was at the center of them. So maybe the 'thank you' is his way of saying they'll talk about it, or maybe Abbi is totally wrong and it just is niceties.
"Of course! S'not like I've got a lot of places to go right now." She laughs lightly, something hollow because putting any sort of enthusiasm behind the action will make her side hurt.
"So. How ya doin'?"

medigel

 

[medigel]

"I'm fine." Always the go to word. "A little tired, but fine." He didn't ask how she was because he didn't need to: the untouched room and the bandages would have been enough, even if he hadn't started their previous Twitter conversation with that question.

Her grin felt wrong, though, out of place for the reaction he thought should be there. As if Abbi was fine he had purposefully thrown her into danger. And it as his turn to wonder if she wasn't employing some niceties herself.

"I'd like to hear about what happened after we separated," he said, moving straight to the point. Jack had no real skill in small talk. "You found Edith, I saw."  

[AyeAvast]

When he says 'fine' twice Abbi's smile gets tight. No one ever means 'fine' when they say it, they always use it as a way not to worry others, or to keep quiet, in Jack's case. He's not even been here five minutes and the teen is wondering if she'll ever get past that wall he puts up.
"I'm ok too!" Now that is a way for her to intercept him asking, a way to put him on point for the feelings he's working through.

The girl shifts a little in her bed, reclining some. There is no surprise that Jack jumps straight to the point, even if Abbi always finds herself hoping he won't.
"Sheesh! Buy a girl a dinner first." She mumbles it, its supposed to be a joke, but Abbi nods and hurries on so he won't ask her what she means by that. "Yeah, I did find Edith. Dawson split when we found her, she told us there was another clone on Island they'd been watching, and boy you should have seen him run." Here she would laugh, but she doesn't.
"I didn't think he could move that quickly."

Since Jack probably already knows about the second clone, or at least knows more than Abbi knows which is nothing, she moves on.
"I went with Edith to find Dr. H, and we were out in the hallway when the basement exploded. Um... And that uh, that Dr. Stephen guy, he ran and I chased him." The 'because you told me to' isn't mentioned. "He almost got away through a hole in the back wall, but I tripped him up."
 

[medigel]

He scoffed softly in response. Abbi's jokes were mildly reassuring; there was something grimly optimistic about the way she still retained her humor regardless of what happened to her. But Jack's eyes narrowed at the mention of Dawson's peculiar behavior. He'd have to return to that later.

"The other one was America Jones'," he offered. Information for information. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward with interest. "So you caught up to him, then."  

[AyeAvast]

Upon explanation of the other clone's identity a little noise of understanding left Abbi. That only added more questions to the pile, but it was one of the less important ones. There were so many more things she needed to know first. And so much more she had to tell.

"Something like that yeah. We exchanged the usual good guy, bad guy routine." Here she pauses to affect a more dramatic tone. "Why'd you blow up the building--" Now she does her best Stephen impersonation which was mostly just a lower pitched voice. "Ha ha, you'll never win!" A hand waved through the air, their conversation was, in the end, meaningless. She hadn't learned anything from him. And Abbi is fairly certain Jack doesn't really care.
He just wants to hear the good part.
"So, yanno. I tried to fight him." But first, she had to dangle the conclusion in front of him for a few seconds. There would probably never be another opportunity for Abbi to know something Jack didn't, and especially not something he was actually interested in hearing!
 

[medigel]

He waited with a weary patience that blunted the edges of what should have been a curt prod to move the story along without further theatrics. "You tried," he echoed.
 

[AyeAvast]

Oh man, this was too good.
Abbi had fully expected him to feel at least a little guilty over being the one to have persuaded her into getting so hurt, but for Jack to be nearly antsy about it? Too good!

The teen shrugged.
"Think I did pretty good, all things considered." She wasn't dead, so that was a point in her favor. "It wasn't much of a fight. He put some... Icky black crystals on Vivi, but she was ok. I uh... I, well, I tried to um decapitate him." That was a lot harder to say than she'd figured it would be. Yes, she felt guilty about being so violent, but maybe Jack could soften that guilt by being proud she'd been wholehearted in her goal to stop the imposter. "I don't think it worked all the way. It worked a lot of the way, except he stabbed me and then everything exploded."
 

[medigel]

Somewhere in the midst of that, he stilled.

"I need more detail than that." And there was some of the old bite peeking in. "Stop stringing me along and just tell me everything, Abbi."
 

[AyeAvast]

Surprised that he very nearly snaps at her, Abbi finds herself starting to sit up straighter and only curbs the action because it will make her side ache. For a moment she pouts, furrows her brows, misunderstanding what he means. To her this is frustrated concern, she does not catch that he means everything that happened with Stephen, not everything that happened with Abbi.
"I uh-- There was this power build up between me and him, I tried to cut his head off and he stabbed me and we both kind of were at a stalemate like that..." Maybe she should have just told him to send Chel and have had her relay the message. Her bedside manner would have been way better.

"And then I had all this... I-D-K, like a big swell of feeling and power. And I could have probably gone crazy with it, but I didn't. I pulled back and then everything exploded." She looks down at her hands. "I woke up singed and bleeding and I was by myself. There was a black crystal in my palm but it disintegrated at some point, I don't remember. I passed out. Then Towers rescued me and dumped me off at what was left of the Infirm, the jerk."

With that done Abbi didn't bother looking at Jack. Now he knew the whole story, now he could go on ordering everyone around with the knowledge that his good little lamb had done what he'd said.
And it hurts more than the burns or the stitches in her side, but right in this moment having helped Jack no longer feels good.
 

[medigel]

He turned a hollow look at the wall behind Abbi.

The first thought that came to him was that Chel was going to murder him. It was one thing to get involved with Merlin himself, but it was completely another to have dragged Abbi into it as well, accidentally or not. He could argue that she didn't have to do--but that wouldn't matter. She wouldn't have gone after Stephen if he hadn't told her, simple as that. Chel was going to get angry with him, and it'd be another thing she wouldn't forgive him for. (And there was some thought to Abbi's own friends beyond him like Leslie, but they were just small-faced collateral damage in that fallout. More reasons to think he was just another a*****e who got off on ordering people around.)

The second thought wasn't his, but Owain's: < Do you see how Revenge operates now? Can you justify this? >

"You shouldn't have..." Jack forced his gaze back to her face even though she wouldn't look at him. He was used to that through Chel; they always did enjoy their serious conversations without eye contact. "I shouldn't have told you to. In that moment, I was just...caught up in this need to get him," (To get revenge, he's corrected coldly) "and you were there, and that made it easier. You could get him. I could get Chel. It was more economical than taking you with me."

He didn't know who he was trying to explain himself to anymore.

"I opened you to that, and I'm sorry," he said quietly.
 

[AyeAvast]

The fact that he won't look at her is bad enough, but when he does finally speak and he actually sounds guilty Abbi is glad she's already sitting. Even then her knees feel weak, that gross feeling pools in her stomach as though she is the one who should feel guilty. As though she should feel badly that she wanted to help, that he let her.
But the ghost in her head rustles and spits at that, and so Abbi rejects it too.

"Oh come on!" The girl affects her best 'done with you' face, she does what she can to channel all the tsun's she knows and even goes so far as to "tch!" at Jack. "Like I would have accepted anything else than helping you. The building was crumbling, it was better for me to get out of there than risk getting hurt." She picks at the blanket in frenzied agitation, already loosing her steam because she just can't be mad at him when he looks like that. "You had to get Chel, and Edith had to go help with the Infirm collapse. It was... Economical."

Honestly, there is a little bit of a sting to that word; "economical", as though people's actions could be something so clinical and detached. Abbi doesn't understand everything, she's always grasping at puzzles pieces that don't fit, at pages of a book that have enormous gaps in their writing. But she does understand apologies, especially since she's fairly certain she's never gotten an honest one from Jack.
"I don't think... I don't think he uh, yanno, like got to me like he did Chel." Its the best she has to soothe him, and she is sure he will argue, but Abbi still reaches out and makes a grabby motion for one his hands.
 

[medigel]

The word he thought was so justifiable sounded so wrong coming out of her mouth.

"If there were crystals involved, then a door has been opened regardless," he informed her. "Two things: One, do not use his name aloud. It gets his attention, and he can do s**t if he notices something's not to his liking. Two." Jack paused. "If you feel an inclination to go to the basement, ignore it." Maybe Abbi had those too, he didn't know. Better safe than sorry.

"Correction, three things. Watch yourself, AK." More lines appeared on his face. "Right now you might be safe, but any traitorous activity will be scrutinized, regardless of how long a period it was done. You need to tell me and Chel if you feel or notice or hear anything strange, alright?"
 

[AyeAvast]

Ah yes, there was the Jack she knew and adored, giving orders and being the one to know All The Things.
Despite the serious subject, Abbi is able to relax a little. It helps that Jack actually has valuable knowledge on the subject (she makes half an attempt to reach for her notebook before she realizes this isn't the time and place), but also because he's actually sharing information with her. Willingly.
Well, mostly willingly.
It was a compromise she would accept.

"I-D-K if the door is still there... I feel like I shut it when I pulled back." She lets herself relax back against the bear plush, slowly so she doesn't agitate any wounds. "And I do wanna go to the basement... But I haven't seen Leslie since before the explosion so I'm guessing that's that."
Likely, it wasn't, but once again Abbi is doing what she can to downplay the situation. She is being honest about being worried for Leslie, but her injuries will keep her bedridden for another few days at the least so whatever yearnings to go exploring she has will hopefully pass by then.
As for everything else Jack has to say, Abbi only focuses on one thing.
"How is Chel? And you too?"

medigel

/trumpets blaze announcing my poor but still attempt at competency

 

[medigel]

"It's easy to open up again," he said. "Just watch it." In reality Jack didn't see the need to enforce this policy--Abbi didn't strike him as someone who would pursue revenge of any meaningful sort, not beyond nags and promises--but again, better safe than sorry. Moreso for him even: he had been the one to push her down that path.

As for Chel and his status: "We're okay. Just working through some things." It was better than the bland "fine" at least. "What does that shitstain have to do with anything?" The word had long since lost its bite.

AyeAvast