self_composed | why would you even bother telling someone your secrets before killing them

By the end of Bio, the halls are full of people eager to inform Bella and everyone else within earshot that her friend is a murderer. They have entirely the wrong attitude to have formed the impression because he just now murdered someone, and also her father hasn't come looking for her yet, so this is probably nonsense.

Bella goes to gym.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Have you tried?" he wonders.

From:

self_composed

"No, not really. I don't think most people care about the same things I care about anyway. Renée doesn't even write down grocery lists when she does the shopping. She wanders through the store and grabs what looks good and wonders why she doesn't have a red onion when she wants one the following Thursday. Charlie's pretty diligent about getting stuff he learns in investigations written down, for documentation if there's some kind of dispute later, but he doesn't extend it to any other sphere of life."

Edited Date: 2012-09-16 11:00 pm (UTC)

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Well, I don't care about pinning my thoughts down where I can see 'em," says Alice. "But I might care about pinning them down where you can see 'em."

From:

self_composed

Bella smiles at him. "Why?" she asks.

From:

edgeofyourseat

He thinks about it for a moment.

And a moment more, tilting his head from side to side.

And then he laughs.

"I see what you mean about the stuff you think not wanting to stay the way you thought it," he says.

From:

self_composed

Bella bursts out laughing.

From:

edgeofyourseat

Alice grins at her.

Cheerfully: "Maybe I should borrow your notebook."

From:

self_composed

"I have a box of them at home. They're pennies apiece in bulk. I can bring you one tomorrow."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"You do that," he says. "In the meantime, you still want that why?"

From:

self_composed

"Yes please." She hands him a pen; he's still holding her notebook. "You can write it down too, if you like."

From:

edgeofyourseat

He flips back to the most recent page, and then to a blank one after it.

A short interval of scribbling later, with much crossing-out and gazing thoughtfully at the page and one instance of nearly nibbling on her pen but stopping himself in time, he passes the notebook back.

His handwriting is pretty terrible, but more or less readable nevertheless. All in all, it only took half the page.

At the very top are the words Because I like you, with 'like' crossed out and 'love' written in next to it. From that sentence, two arrows wiggle down the page.

One points to a scribbled-out 'because', followed by So I want you to hurt me, which is also crossed out; the final version, So I want you to have the chance to hurt me, is written below that.

The other arrow points to So I want you to know what I think, with a (/how) added next to the 'what' as an obvious afterthought.

"Because I like you's what I ended up wanting to say," he explains. "The other stuff's what it actually meant."

From:

self_composed

She reads it.

"What do you want me to do with the chance to hurt you?" she asks. "And don't say 'whatever you want' unless you think about it for a full sixty seconds and still mean it - that's what I'll actually do, because everyone does what they want one way or another, but that doesn't mean you have no opinion."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Okay," he says with a bright, easy grin, "time me."

From:

self_composed

Bella's not wearing a watch, but she has a phone. She pulls it out and watches seconds blink past. "Go," she says.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"But I don't really know what you're timing me doing," he says, "because I know damn well what I want. If hurting me is what you want to do, you'll do it, and if it isn't, you won't. And there's only one way to find that out. I don't think you will, but maybe I'm wrong. It makes a difference if you do or not, but not the kind of difference that changes how much I want one or the other. So if I have to sit here knowing that for a full minute before you'll buy it, then sure, I'll do that."

From:

self_composed

"It's not quite that simple," Bella says, abandoning the timer as useless for this purpose, or at least this person. "Lots of things I might want interact. As long as anything I want is more important to me than not hurting you, you might be faced with - for example - the choice of whether to be in my way or not."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"...Run that by me again," he says, "because it made no sense the first time."

From:

self_composed

Bella hums to herself, thinking of examples. Finally she says, "Imagine your dad made some asshole move that had nothing to do with you, and also really pissed me off, and also there is no evidence of it sufficient to convict or it is not technically a crime or he buys off the judge on that one. And imagine I go on an overblown crusade to bring him to justice, however oblique, however slim my chance of success, and whatever the collateral damage. I'm making this example up; it's not at all likely that I'd chase messy goals on this scale without good odds of getting what I'm after, not when there are other things to do. But suppose I did. You might be in my way or you might be helpful. And since we're imagining that my crusade is my top priority, you know what will happen if you stand in various places relative to said crusade. What would you want me to do with the power to hurt you?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Oh," he says, and smiles, and shakes his head, and touches the scar that runs under the corner of his jaw. "No wonder it made no sense. Yeah, there is one person in the world who can get me to do stuff by threatening to hurt me, and you're not him."

From:

self_composed

"Example-me isn't threatening - isn't bothering to. Example-me will go over or through you if she has to, and doesn't care because there is a higher priority." She pauses. "I would make a terrifying religious fanatic. It's probably good I'm not one."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"So, in this example, where I stand relative to your crusade depends on whether or not I want you to win," he says, "and I still don't get the original question."