[ closed ] I ran to the devil, he was waitin' all on that day

[glumshoe]

Who: Will Graham (notyourteacup), Hannibal Lecter (avoirfaim), and Evelyn O'Connell (nascensibility)
Where: Will Graham's room (floor 1, room 9), then Hannibal Lecter's room (floor 1, room 669)
When: Saturday evening, February 21st
Rating: R for incoming violence and gore
Summary: Sometimes you construct fairytales.
The Story:


In full view of a perpetually setting sun, Will lets his own young, delighted screams play backdrop to the eerie stillness smoothing out all sign of movement, passion, life from him. The water's ripples smooth back into the lake's surface by the time they reach his bare feet, no tickle but cool water kissing rolled up pant cuffs, eyes scraping over the message as though to scrape it from existence.

I would like to see you if you're available. I'm concerned about Evelyn.

He knows. Doesn't he? Hannibal Lecter does not go off secondhand information. Hannibal Lecter is the apex predator, he follows the trails he finds and winds up at Evelyn's door, the devastation Will wrought. Evelyn isn't that good of an actress; that was the entire, terrible point that drove Will's achingly flawed choice. Every missed opportunity, every too long pause that heralded a subject change had to be in Evelyn's face.

From the boat, young Will's screams sharpen and swell with blood spatter, imagination giving voice to cries he's never heard from Evie but resonate from the rows of occupied morgue slabs in his memory. It remains to be seen whether she's joining them, but Will can't help but imagine an oven preheating, a tartare recipe chosen for a wounded, bleeding heart.

The calm flowing into him is and isn't Will's, thumbs poised over a reply field. With the event thrust upon them, he's almost certainly been thrown into the lion's cage. No safe fort in his mind left. Where can Will hide?

I am too. I'll be right over.

Will swallows his dread, throat clicking, and sends one more message without a guarantee that he'll get a response either way. Call it a dying man's wish.

To: Evelyn O'Connell

I know I said I'd leave you alone, but please listen to me one last time.

Stay away from Hannibal.

Please let his mistakes amount to something good.

Comments

links TV Tropes for "Shut up, Hannibal!" and "The Reason You Suck Speech"

[glumshoe]

Yeah, insult is the gristle in Hannibal's teeth. Will intends to be a bothersome meal.

I trusted you he wants to hiss, all the deadliness Hannibal had known was in a deep, rich vein and that he'd worked so hard to strike true. But that was old news, wept from behind bars with crocodile tears. He'd wanted to believe in Hannibal so badly, the old Will. The new one believed with the faith of a follower reveling in his god's grace, lessons of use to him while biding time for the day he'd become a godkiller.

Only a narcissist puts someone through what Hannibal put him through and expects admiration. To a degree, Hannibal has it, except for the one thing that put the bullet into the chamber and pointed a loaded muzzle at Hannibal's head.

"Abigail."

This is about her, you son of a bitch.

[avoirfaim]

There it is, the irony that stings like a cut from a sharp knife that had just been used to slice lemons. He might have laughed in a different situation, but this is hardly the occasion. There is no mockery, no detachment. There is only a stare, bare sadness, exposed and now barely beating. Instead he nods, a mere centimeter tilt of his head downwards in acknowledgement. Not of Will, facing his back, but of how they came here.

He made a mistake. Will made a bigger one. Their steps are in-time, even as they step further apart.

His fingers close around the sheers, and he barely glances over his shoulder, with Will's exact location in his peripheral vision.

"Abigail. What do you assume that I did to her? Do you think I cut her down, when she meant as much to me as she did to you? You coughed up her ear, Will."

But what happened to the rest of her?

[glumshoe]

Perhaps against his better judgement, Will whips his head toward Hannibal, hand abandoning its approach to the blade. No, Will doesn't think he's off the mark. He knows damned well that as soon as Abigail becomes inconvenient she's just as expendable as any farm animal. Acknowledgement of the crimes he's committed is far afield an expectation as Will's had, reachable as his fantasy of capturing Hannibal had once been, but how they got here and Hannibal's disappointment sings on the air. It occurs to Will that he is not the only one who's had something taken away from him. He hates that he cares about that.

"You put it there," Will positively spits. "You care about people the same way fire does - we're destroyed because you lay claim with your hands. On her. On me.

Nothing escapes a void. Not even light."

[avoirfaim]

"As usual, your ability to wax poetic exceeds your perception of reality." The words fall from Hannibal's lips with the acidity of rot, like milk out too long in the sun. It will congeals and sour, when once it gave life and strength to bones, but it begins with a sharp kick.

The distance between Will and Hannibal is short, a long stride and a half in one direction.

He breaths out through his nose, resigned. The sound of Murasaki's bath in the distance mocks him, a reminder of disappointment.

"Everything you have chosen to believe about me is colored by your perception of yourself, the idea that you are, in contrast to myself, a moral man. But you're wrong. I never killed Abigail."