characterdefect | 09 ◈ text + spam

spam, backdated to last laugh } hannibal

[Roderick is - not content, but happy enough. The chaos of this place gives him something to do that aligns nicely with his nature, even if there's no love in it, no common ground, even if the Joker's full of shit to his eyeballs.]

[He has a gun - not his favorite weapon, but a close second - and is prowling Level 6 without any particular agenda other than giving hell to whoever he happens upon, when he looks up and there's Dr. Lecter. Well . . . probably Dr. Lecter. It's got to be; it's the same face, same height, same build. But he does not look well.]

[A species of mad hilarity in his eyes, Roderick thinks, suddenly uncertain, and ventures neither forward nor backward. He does not look Hannibal right in the eye. He is not naive enough to think that this man is anything but dangerous on his most stable days.]

Dr. Lecter. You seem a little. Frazzled.

spam } infirmary

[This time, Roderick elects to stay in the infirmary. He could have fled with some - well, a lot - of effort, but the thought of standing exhausts him. It's not even that he's tired, exactly; it's that he remembers so clearly the sensation of muscle parting from muscle that he is afraid, yes, really and truly afraid that if he stands, if he begins to walk, he'll come apart at the seams.]

[So he stays in bed and watches the world reflected in the red light behind his closed eyelids. For the first few days he doesn't talk, not even to Horatio. On the fourth day of the toll, he sits up and demands something to write with and a blank notebook. He doesn't know what he's going to write until it comes out, but it ends up being nonsense, fragments of phrases he's heard before that ring in his mind.]

[Eventually his hand cramps, then the pen runs out. Until then, he stays where he is.]

text } morgana, c'rizz, mira

you dead?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There is a creature shaped like he is. It walks upright, it carries a weapon in its hand. It looks and it walks and it speaks. It has the skin and mien of a man.

But it's not a man. Hannibal knows.

Men - women - people and progress and humanity, they are only illusions. They play at being better than the basest animals. They lord free will and intricate thought over the beasts they fear most in the wild. And this is not the civilization that he cherishes so. Cherishes. Cherished. What did civility and politesse matter in a world made up of the rude?

He licks his lips, fingering the butter knife. It's turned up against his forearm again, hiding its bloody state; there is no hiding the shiv's work.

There is no hiding the blood on his face, his shirt.]

Frazzled. Yes.

[What does hiding it matter, if there is no true vision of humanity left to hide it from?]

You're armed. [You monster.]

[There is no hiding blood, no. Ordinarily Roderick might be pleased. Hannibal's brand of polite savagery interests him. But now . . .]

[Now, with the way he is being looked at - the way Ryan Hardy looked at him, all mad calculation and judgment - now he doesn't like it even a bit. He shifts the weight of the gun in his hand. If the safety hadn't already been off, he'd be clicking it off now.]

I am. So are you, after a fashion.

Didn't think you were likely to be caught up in the crossfire like this. I sort of thought you'd be above it all, truth be told.

[He's almost disappointed.]

[His eyes are dilated. His field of vision is expanded, and he intends to use it, a predator walking upright, a predator wearing skin, a suit, a veil. It's shredded, now. Hannibal has no use for pretend.

He lifts his shiv slowly, almost wonderingly, as if he hadn't realized he was so armed until Roderick pointed it out. He takes a step forward as he looks, focus shifted almost entirely to the metal, dirty and darkened.]

So I am. There's something - invigorating about it, isn't there? Empowering. The whole world can see you as you see yourself, now.

Mm. You know. Ordinarily I'd agree with you.

[Ordinarily.]

But this is a little bit of an extraordinary situation.

I think you're an incredibly powerful man, and I respect the hell out of you, Dr. Lecter. But I think you ought to back up a few steps.

[Hannibal lets a small smile pull at his mouth, and tilts his head down, away. His eyes don't leave Roderick, focusing on his chest when his face is out of peripheral vision. It is instinct: small muscles will clench in the chest, will show him exactly what Roderick will do before he does it.

It is instinct: a heart beats beneath the skin there, hot and red and life-giving. He could plunge his knife into the soft tissue between the bones just there, dig between his ribs. He can pull them apart, break them with the strength of his arms. He can rip that heart, still beating, from its shell and drink from it till it's withered and empty. Hannibal can hollow him out, until he's sated, gorged, and crawl under the eaves of his ribcage, crawl inside and make himself a home of musculature and gristle and bone and rotting flesh.

He lifts his hands slowly, both knives in the air, a gesture not of submission or innocence. See me. Every inch of his body screams it.]

Every day is an extraordinary situation. But when the extraordinary becomes ordinary in our own minds, do we become ordinary as well?

[He gives little advanced notice: the muscles in his chest clench half a second before his hands, initially loose on the weapons in the air, tighten on the knives. He drives forward to close the distance between them, relying on their space being too close for the gun to stop him, stop his fun. I respect the hell out of you, and Hannibal wants to show his respect in turn. He lifts the shank high to pull down, angles the butter knife low to drive up. He wants to soak himself in ordinary blood.]

[Roderick sees nothing else. It's impossible for a human being to be anything less than entranced by a predator, impossible for a man like Roderick to be anything less than enthralled by its motions, its cleverness, the sway of a snake's thin, muscular body in tall grass. He is not, has never been, will never be prey, but in the hierarchy - there is always a hierarchy - he knows where he falls.]

[He was less than Joe. Then he became more. Now, he is less than Hannibal. He has pride - so much pride - but not enough to defy reality.]

[The knives he used were sharp. He did not love the girls' pain as much as he loved the moment, just before they died, when they knew they were going to, when they saw him making them more than they had ever been, could have ever been, before. So he made it easy on them, as easy as he could. But this--]

[It's like being bludgeoned open. There is no time between the twitch of Hannibal's muscles and the forward motion. The shank, the pain, that's nothing, Roderick's felt pain before, pain is just pain, but the butter knife is pressure against his skin, cleaving slow and he can feel bruises form, he can feel--]

[This is the moment before death. He shouldn't fight.]

[He strikes out at random nevertheless, even as he feels his strength leaving already, trickling away with the heavy pulse he feels in his head that pushes his blood out of his body. He can feel himself dying.]

[He doesn't want to die like this.]

[His shirt, already red, is drenching in the close quarters. He saws his shank down, pulling them close together, until Roderick is bleeding on him. He is nothing but his instincts, just as they are nothing but animals. When Roderick lashes out, Hannibal makes the appropriate calming noises, animal noises, something a wild predator would warble to its child. Beasts learn by watching, by acting, by killing. Hannibal snaps his head forward, cracking the crown of his forehead against Roderick's nose.

All he sees is red.

He almost doesn't notice when the butter knife breaks through, when he heaves his arm and bruise becomes more. There are no more words, but he wants to tell Roderick that this is all right. That death only lasts so long. Pain stops eventually. And Roderick's pain will feed Hannibal for days.

Days and days.

He leans forward, kisses Roderick's cheek. Then his lips peel back, reveal what's underneath, his teeth dig in, bite hard and and burrow deep, and when he snaps his head back, he pulls flesh with him, hot and flooding his mouth with blood. It runs in rivulets down his chin, his neck, joins the blood soaking into his chest. They all are blood and flesh. They all join in the end, one way or another.]

09 ◈ text + spam

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spam } what a delicious tag

spam } YOU'RE a delicious tag

spam } tru

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spam } uh warnings for horrible cannibalism I am so sorry