and that's the way it goes, when your head but can suppose

[enabeled]

WHO: ABEL GIDEON and DANGER
WHERE: Home.
WHEN: Wednesday, evening?
WHAT: "Harmless" is just a word.
WARNINGS: Violence, murder, references to violence/murder/cannibalism likely.


[ Freddie Lounds. Abigail Hobbs.

Neither problems on their own, even if Freddie has a chattier mouth than is probably to her benefit. No, Gideon doesn't mind either of them terribly but for the noose of his fate back in Baltimore drawing tighter around his neck.

Hannibal Lecter.

It makes his skin cold. Though he ventures out more freely these days, allowing himself out in controlled spaces, crowded areas, wherever he can get air and freedom from the cramped indoors without worrying about Lecter's jaws snapping down. Gideon knows how to be careful. There's a knife under his mattress, and daily he exercises his arms to keep them strong and reactive.

But his mind is a different place than it used to be. He can compartmentalize rationality from paranoia, that tight grip of trauma that still holds him, but sometimes even he can't deny there's overlap. Even now in the house, he hears footsteps elsewhere and searches the room for other weapons. ]

Somebody there?

[ He doesn't live alone, so it could be anyone. For better or worse. ]

Comments

[heartlessglitch]

[ She is, of course, aware of the knife Dr. Gideon keeps under his mattress. There's very little that goes on in their residence that she isn't aware of. Danger is mindful and meticulous in that way. But the extent of her awareness recedes away from that quasi-omniscience when she wears her skin and bones like this. There's simply no comparing the capabilities of her mechanical chassis, with its x-ray vision and infrared sensors, to the sensory organs utilized by her organic form.

Even now, the sound of Gideon's question is dulled by their distance, muffled by the walls and scattered as it travels down the hallway to where she stands in the foyer, shutting the front door and locking it behind her. She can hear him, but the words were difficult to make out properly. It doesn't help, of course, that a long day of work meetings-- the type that necessitated the use of this body, to keep her human counterparts in administration comfortable and cooperative-- has left her distracted and with a faint headache pulsing at her temples.

She makes a detour to the kitchen for pain killers and a glass of water before she lets quiet footsteps carry her in the direction that she'd heard his voice. Rounding the corner, she moves towards the door, pausing a moment in front of it. She would knock, but her hands are full, so Danger decides after another half-beat that it should be equally effective to announce herself as she nudges the door open with her hip. ]

Doctor?

[enabeled]

[ The knife makes its way from beneath the mattress to within the sleeve of his shirt, his heart thudding too loudly in his ears for him to hear her response at first.

He wheels away from his bed sharply, turning so that he can see the door nudge open in that slight way that it does, creaking in a slow and ominous way, and that his back is to the empty corner of the room.

It's Danger, he can tell himself -- she spoke, he heard her voice. But he only remains steeled for the worst, prepared for if she's not alone, or perhaps changed her mind on the subject of Gideon's safety. After all, she's close with people whose loyalties Gideon certainly doesn't align with; who can really say where Danger's fall?

She has pills. Who are they for? What kind of pills? He's aware of his own racing thoughts and the familiar hazy, distant sort of fog falling over them, but there's little he can do to stop it. ]

Danger. [ His voice sounds far away to him, as does hers. ] Where were you?

[heartlessglitch]

[ As the door swings wide, Danger enters the room apparently alone-- though if the doctor is of a mind to be wary of threats, the machine-in-flesh herself is a threat enough, even without company. But if she means him harm, she is certainly taking her time with it, lingering in the entryway as she gauges him, that analytical mind trying to pin down what doesn't seem quite in place with him. Something about his voice or his posture.

Logic dictates that her first instinct should be caution, but she finds that it trends more towards concerned.

Danger's eyebrows draw together pensively. ]

I had business to attend to. [ Mundane, but necessary. If she's vague, it's simply because she finds the details not worth discussing. ] Are you quite all right, Dr. Gideon?

[enabeled]

[ There is only silence in response for a long few moments as Gideon watches her, his hands clenched into tight fists against his lap, his face perhaps paler than he's aware. He's listening for any more footsteps, listening just in case, although it's true enough that Danger is formidable enough on her own should she choose to be.

He'll have to catch her off-guard, if it's to come to that. Not that he wants it to, but Abel Gideon is a survivor; he'll do what he has to.

Finally he wets his lips, looking at her with as much calmness as he can muster, however feigned. He says quietly, a bit dismissively: ]

Just feverish, possibly. Can't always tell, these days... [ "Business," she says. He doesn't want to distrust her. ] What's that you have?

[heartlessglitch]

[ The long pause between his question and her answer is calculating, the silence almost tangible as she eyes him, trying to pick apart what it is that seems so out of place at the moment. Without the many mechanical capabilities of her true form, she has to rely on her eyes and ears alone-- the tone of his voice, the posture of his body. Something isn't quite right. But it's difficult to decipher, when his words stay quiet and vague, and with that deceptive veneer of calmness.

Finally, she moves far enough into the room to nudge the door shut behind them, to afford their conversation some semblance of privacy from any curious housemates. Then she approaches in long strides, closing distance. She means to set her glass of water and the handful of pills down onto the bedside table-- to free her hands to check his temperature, to urge him back into bed. ]

Doctor, if you are unwell, you should resting.

[enabeled]

[ He watches the door close, hears the click both in his ears and his mind; that little flutter of paranoia spikes higher, a clench both tight and somehow certain.

How can he really trust her, though? Her loyalties are all her own and he doesn't count on that changing. As long as she alone finds something justified, she'll do it.

But then, Gideon is much the same way. His mind blanks entirely, body a spring-loaded reaction; as she moves closer his arm jerks forward, knife sliding from his sleeve and at her, aimed at her stomach, in one aggressive motion because even his body and mind working separately he knows one chance is all he'll have.

Quietly, he huffs: ]

They say treat the cause, not the symptom. Can't be helped, Danger.

[heartlessglitch]

[ The result is an accumulation of factors that makes the situation unfavorable for Danger-- the price she pays, perhaps, for becoming comfortable in the company of a professed murderer. In this human body, it's easy to let go of being alert, of being aware of everything to focus on one thing. And with her hands full, her mind occupied with prioritized information (the possibility of fever, the necessity for Gideon to rest), there's no stopping what comes next.

Pain of that kind is so unfamiliar to her, so foreign that she hardly registers it at first. But something makes her pause, something visceral, an automatic reaction from her nervous system that abruptly halts her. She stares at him, blank eyes, brows tightening in perplexity for one long moment. A wet stickiness spreads across the fabric of her shirt.

It clicks then: She's bleeding. Danger inhales audibly. The glass of water drops to the floor and cracks against the carpet. The pills slip from her hand. Vaguely, she acknowledges that they would be pointless now anyway. She feels half-distant from her own body, as if her mind, still the mind of a machine, instinctively felt that it could still withdraw to another container and just abandon this bleeding, hurting form.

Her palms press in futility against the open mouth of the wound, as if to hold her flesh together. ]

Doctor-- what have you done?

[enabeled]

[ It's brief, but Gideon's eyes widen very slightly in momentary clarity, an instant of regret before the moment passes and he is far away again. The knife went deep and there is more blood glugging from the wound than anticipated, spraying warmly over his arm and coloring his hand pure red. Did he think she would bleed? Surely. Humans -- and she at least masqueraded well enough as one in this body of hers -- couldn't function with oil or electricity running through their veins.

He withdraws the knife slickly to a slight smacking noise as, in its absence, more blood is allowed to escape. Inhaling through his teeth, he moves himself back slightly so that she won't fall or bleed on him more than she has already.

Almost soothingly he says: ]

Won't hurt for long... don't worry about that. Soon enough, just like going to sleep.

[heartlessglitch]

[ The noise she makes when he pulls the knife out is remarkably human-- pain, as the blood seeps past her fingers. Strong as she is, in all honesty, Danger isn't accustomed to pain. Not like this. Pain is something a machine of her making doesn't feel. But she feels it now, aching and throbbing along with the bloody pulsing of her organic body. And beyond that, the hurt of betrayal.

She stares at him, with those white eyes, accusing, rejecting those words of comfort. Ironic words, perhaps. She never did like sleeping. Too much like going offline. But maybe that's beside the point now, when she can feel blackness threatening at the edges of her vision.

One hand, red and slick, grips the bedside table as she slightly staggers in his general direction. Maybe she means to kill him. To try. Lowly, with a roughness to her voice that she nearly never allows, she utters in quiet, strained syllables: ]

You said you trusted me.

[enabeled]

[ There's something cold in the way Gideon's eyes fix upon her then, his expression stoic and barely merciful. Not cruel, but neither sympathetic.

As she nears him, Gideon puts a hand on his wheelchair to move himself backwards, even if there's only the wall behind him. If she tries to attack Gideon is unsure if he'll be able to defend himself against her even in her injured state, but it's possible she's been compromised enough not to be a threat to him any longer. ]

Trust never can be a static state of being.

[heartlessglitch]

[ She's learning that now-- what he's saying to her. It was foolish and naive to let herself become complacent. To ignore protocols for safety. She isn't lacking for the ability and intelligence to protect herself. But the emotions distracted her, derailing the normally strict line of her judgment. And here she is now, holding her own soft organs inside her body with bloody hands.

The pain seems to permeate every neuron she has. All this time, and she still isn't accustomed to the physical sensation of being hurt. At her worst, she had held a dozen of the most powerful X-Men at bay single-handedly. But her undoing had been one crippled man and a knife. The irony makes her seethe.

She doesn't answer him verbally. Instead, she steps forward again, determined but wounded, sluggish in a way that she never is. Blood drips to the floor, staining it, slipping past her fingertips. She's pale. Trembling faintly. But her face is full of resentment. When she reaches for him, it's hard to say what she means to do-- but whatever her intentions, she manages only to smear red fingertips across his shirt. ]