+ Wanted to get it real home-like... +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: ANYT-- Friday, February 20 to Monday, February 23
Rating: An average PG-13? (Consider warning for explicit sexual or violent content in your thread's subject line)
Summary:
For the duration of this event each character will discover that their room has been replaced with one of their own memories, one that they find themselves particularly happy or "at home" in. More information can be found here.

This log is an opportunity for your characters to describe the memory playing in their room, so that other characters might visit, and watch the scene unfold. To help browse the collection better, please include your character's name, and their room number in the subject line (e.g. Seta Souji - 100, 6th floor) of your top-level comment.

Rooms/Comments may be locked to certain people, or be available for all to see & visit. Log participation is completely and entirely voluntary.

Have fun!

Comments

[nascensibility]

[Her stiff and unwelcoming greeting is reflected in every fragmented movement, the hallmarks of someone becoming increasingly uncomfortable in their own skin. What Evelyn feels is the last vestiges of her ire from another life and another self, compounded with her own validated distrust in Hannibal Lecter.]

I appreciate your concern.

[Following his gaze she is suddenly very grateful that her family is not in Wonderland, but what precious seconds she dedicates to that worry are swiftly replaced by a desire for the intruder to vacate the premises, post-haste.]

I am as well as to be expected, in light of the circumstances.

[avoirfaim]

[ Please Evelyn, Hannibal wouldn't kill a child. Not unless he had to anyway. Shifted every so slightly onto the defensive in response to the stark change in attitude, he smiles. ]

And you and I both know there have been far worse circumstances than this.

[ You and I both know. Or at least he has his intuition, which he trusts indefinitely. Something may very well be wrong, beyond the scope of melancholy. ]

It must be refreshing to see your family again, even in this capacity.

[nascensibility]

[If there are worse circumstances, she can certainly imagine them - at the moment Evelyn is all too preoccupied with the fact that Will kept his silence for too long, and a murderer whose first Wonderland victim was dedicated to her is in her flat, staring at her memories.]

It's been lonely of late, so yes.

[At its core, a severe understatement. Her quarters have never felt so devastatingly expansive and she, she grows smaller, curled around a red-hot ember.]

...you know, we never did have that talk. About...compartmentalisation, was it?

[avoirfaim]

We didn't.

[ He closes the door behind him, standing by it with his hands in his pants pockets. He won't sit, won't disturb the dust. Not when she is already on edge, and not when he can save the pricks and tingles of the unwelcome for a more opportune moment. ]

We can discuss that now, if you like.

[nascensibility]

[Evelyn's particular brand of on-edge is less nervous and more wary, but she has a number of reasons to maintain her guard around Hannibal. The smallest part of her is grateful he has chosen to remain standing.

This isn't a formal therapy session, after all.]

Would you be so kind as to define it for me?

[avoirfaim]

[ a formal therapy session means one of two things: admitting you have a problem or wanting to feel the importance of having someone else listen to you talk as if they truly care. No, this is most definitely not a formal therapy session; it's a conversation. And what is more revealing about a person's state of mine than a conversation, hm? There is more to read between the lines than on them, more often than not. ]

Of course. Compartmentalization is the ability to detach oneself from the emotional source of conflict, in order to minimize the stress of cognitive dissonance. Traditionally it is considered an unconscious act but I would disagree. The human mind is sharp enough to know exactly what it's doing when it's doing it, if it chooses to.

What are you considering?

[nascensibility]

[Evelyn takes a deep breath and exhales through her nose, releasing more of the pressure that has been building inside of her like an unsettled bottle of champagne. Cognitive dissonance is another term with which she is unfamiliar, but the context clues give her an idea of Hannibal's explanation.]

Relationships. [Her fingertips slide across the desk.] Regrets. Very rarely do I...entertain the latter about the former.

[avoirfaim]

[ Sometimes, very often it fact, it takes just a single statement to shine light onto a situation. It is a flick of a switch and Hannibal knows exactly what's wrong. ]

You and Will are having trouble.

[ You and Will probably had a fight having to do with Hannibal specifically. Why else would you be so icy? Either she feels threatened by their relationship, or he told her the truth. ]

Is there any way I can help?

[nascensibility]

[Evelyn is not so petty as to entertain jealousy - deadly sin aside, she doesn't think green is very flattering on her - and Hannibal knows her better than that. She never spoke about her relationship with Will around Hannibal and, to be frank, she never wanted to do so. It's her own damned business.]

Just a lack of communication. I'm sure it'll sort itself out.

[One way or another.]

[avoirfaim]

[ His slightest twitch of Hannibal's lip upwards might, to the common eye, go unnoticed, as he looks down at the dresser at his side and adjusts the angle of the hairbrush sitting slightly over the edge.

No, she never has spoken about their relationship. Neither has he. Not to such an extent as being entirely open. ]

For what it may be worth, I've never known Will to struggle with communication when the subject at hand was important to him. It's not the words that he struggles with, nor getting them out, but rather to desire to open up to those he doesn't entirely trust.

[nascensibility]

[It's meant to be insulting and the mark strikes true, a palpable hit cloaked in the pleasant language of the aristocracy. Hannibal knows how to find the crux and press, rubbing salt into a wound with fingers that claim to be gentle while he tells you to enjoy it.]

Perhaps you don't know Will as well as you think you do.

[Leaning up against the desk her gaze drifts over the memory playing on the bed and rests somewhere around the nearest window, tone softening.]

He certainly doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does.

[And neither do you.]

[avoirfaim]

You may be right about how well he knows you, but I would say he understands you better than you may think. That is, after all, the nature of his disorder.

[ Disorder is so clinical, but it serves his purpose. Emotion severs skin, muscle and bone, but cool rationale cauterizes the wound. He wouldn't, if he were inclined to be entirely honest, call what Will Graham has a disorder. He would call it an evolutionary advancement to be tapped and explored.

Fortunately, the extent of his relationship with Will is none of her business. A lesser man might get defensive, but his resolve against her only strengthens. ]

[nascensibility]

[He's dodging the subject rather admirably, a roundabout use of double-edged words. Hannibal is skilled in subtext and encouraging dialogue, fluent in wresting information from the most reticent of characters - here, however, he has the supreme advantage of knowing her intimately.

It feels akin to treading on a floor of eggshells over an active volcano, even in disagreeing with the assessment that Will has a disorder. It suggests confusion, the interruption of a perfect arrangement, and a state of disruption she has never seen in him before.]

And what "disorder" is that?

[avoirfaim]

[ Will Graham is confused. His entire being in a state of disruption because he refuses to quell the dissonance between societal expectation and his innate potential.

According to the majority, that would absolutely constitute a disorder. Little do they know that the real disorder is society itself. ]

Will suffers from extreme empathy and a toxic amount of guilt. Didn't you know?

[nascensibility]

There's no need to be patronising, Hannibal.

[She knows, to an extent, but disorders mean very different things to a person from her time.

Evelyn once spent an entire day researching dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia to better comprehend "the voice" in Philip's head - later, in a much more sober state, he explained that said voice could not be attributed to a disorder, but a viral infection with sentient qualities. Since then she's adopted a much healthier amount of scepticism toward "professional" diagnoses.

Jesting aside, Evelyn tends to take most modern medicinal advances - including terminology - with a grain of salt, having seen the extant differences in interpretations from Wonderland's many visitors.

Her gaze drifts back to the bed, the hulking fellow fretfully doting on his wife, the sleeping child.]

But my relationship with Will isn't exactly table conversation. I'd rather not speak further on the subject.