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

[All at once, she's angry she stayed inside and all too glad she did.]

Infirmary, or your cabin?

infirmary

[Which means, if she catches the implication, that he's too weak to flee. He doesn't like saying this, but he thinks he'd like hiding it outright even more.]

[She catches it. She spent months trapped there, legs too weak to carry her weight. She knows what it means.]

I'm coming.

[He goes nowhere. He's got nowhere to go. And he feels pathetic, just waiting here for her - he'd rather run - but he stays.]

[She brings him one flower, a heartsease, one of the ones the Emperor potted for her. It's purple and yellow and black, bright and dark at once, and when she finds his bed, she lays it on the nightstand beside him.]

Do you need anything?

[When she was here, she needed someone to scream at. And though she's not willing to offer herself for the role, she'll find someone for it.]

[The flower is . . . probably the biggest surprise he's ever received in his life. He was not expecting that, not in the least, because Morgana has never struck him as the kind little gestures type. Maybe he ought to be looking harder.]

[Anyway. He gives her a crooked smile.]

I need to kill someone. But not right this minute.

It's pretty. I don't know anything about flowers, though. [His voice sounds like it's packed with ash, like it's about to explode from his throat at any minute. Maybe he should scream.]

[Her smile is a bit like a grimace.] So long as I'm not on your list.

[It's wry: unless he's lucky, or better than she expects, or picks just the right time, she has nothing to fear from him. She knows that. But it doesn't sit as easily with her anymore, this talk of death. So instead, she picks up the flower again, handing it to him instead. He sounds awful, but she can fill the silence.]

It's called a heartsease, in my time. I'm not sure if its name changed, later. There were fields of them around Cornwall and Camelot, when I was a girl. Valleys covered in purple and yellow.

You've never been on my list.

[In part for practicality. In part because he likes her, and there's no reason to kill her. He has little enough family here anyway.]

[He takes the flower when she hands it to him. When he lies back with it held in his hands against his chest, he feels like a corpse. It's not comforting, but moving or arguing are impossible concepts, and anyway, doing what she wants makes him feel solid.]

Think maybe I've heard of it.

It's . . . sentimental. [An observation, not an accusation. Mostly.]

[Mostly. She tips her head to the side, considering it. There is a tense quiver along her shoulder blades, like she can feel her hackles ready to rise, all she has to do is give in.

Instead she shrugs, and the tension fades off.]

Perhaps. The Emperor left several pots of them outside my door. I didn't want to let them wilt. [Sentimental in two ways.]

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