bakerstreet | i see trees that are green, red roses too

i see trees that are green, red roses too

soulmate meme ;
▸ post your character ◂
▸ you're now in a universe where destined soul mates exist! ◂
▸ rng for the type of au and for the ~situation~ ◂
▸ tag around ♥ ◂

type of au;

1. tats, your character has a tattoo of the first words the love of their life will say to them
2. familiars, your character has an animal tattoo representing their soul mate on them
3. glow, the first time your character sees their soul mate, their chests glow!
4. world in color, life is literally black and white, until you see your soul mate for the first time
5. choose your own, i'm definitely missing a milly because i'm lazy, pick your own

situation;

1. first meeting, you've never met this person before.
2. childhood mates, you've always known this person -- but on one particular birthday, everything changes.
3. together, you've been in a relationship for awhile now! happily wed or not, you decide.
4. not together, you've known you're soul mates for a long time, and yet have avoided a relationship.
5. choose your own, self explanatory c:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Long gone are the days in the United States where prisoners can be paraded past like zoo animals. Hannibal has the right to deny certain visitors, and he certainly can ignore anyone that hospital director Alana Bloom sees fit to allow through anyway.

The most inconvenient part of prison, Hannibal has found, is the way it limits new information. He had to be on good behavior for three months before he was allowed monthly magazines, four months for weekly tabloids. Internet access is monitored and, while Hannibal is as unapologetic for his interests as ever, it does keep him from seeking out the stories he would truly enjoy reading.

No. What Hannibal is left to content himself with is exactly what he had been preparing all his life - the scenery and creations of his own mind. Day after day, keeping himself company and entertained and stimulated. Running through plans and ideas and crafting artwork and conversations, pouring over astrological charts and pulling apart formulas used for exploring the natural world.

It is, even on its most exciting day, more dull than life outside, but it sates him. It keeps him alive. And deeper in his mind, in the basement floors of his palace, Hannibal lurks through escape plans and longings for freedom, watches the possibilities for his future like a closely-guarded secret.

When the opportunity eventually comes for something more interesting than this confined life, Hannibal will be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep it.

*

Rustin Cohle. Detective Rustin Cohle. A safe-search protected internet query had returned only very tame facts, but Hannibal is an expert at reading between the lines. Gaps in employment histories mean injuries, or substance abuse, or mental breaks, regardless of how much is redacted to keep the records of state police looking shiny and new.

Hannibal had been given the opportunity to prepare for the visit, but not to allow it. Alana simply told him the man would be coming to ask him some questions about a case. The internet hadn't been terribly helpful in letting Hannibal find out what that case may have been.

Hannibal is in a far corner of his large cell when the outermost door opens. A tall man enters and pulls the door shut behind him, a notebook tucked in the crook of one elbow. There is a gun on one of his hips, handcuffs on the other, a badge hanging off the front of one belt buckle, but no other police memorabilia coats him. It's warm inside, and he must have removed any jacket before coming in.

There is about twenty feet to be crossed before one can stand directly in front of the glass that separates Hannibal from the rest of the room. Dressed in white prison clothes, shoes soft and without laces, Hannibal is completely silent as he leans forward from his corner of the prison.

He steps forward, quiet and slow, to begin their talk.

"Doctor Lecter." Detective Cohle's voice is deep and slow, his pace in approaching him like a mountain clearing into view through the morning fog. "I've got a few questions to ask you."

And so it had begun.

And so it might have ended, if Detective Cohle wasn't so curious and bold as to walk right up to the glass. And so it still might have ended, if Hannibal Lecter wasn't the sort of panther to stalk right to the limit of his cage, the better to smell the cigarette smoke and whiskey and car exhaust, the sweat and shampoo and drive-thru sandwiches that clung to the man talking to him.

It still might have ended that way, if Detective Cohle hadn't so clearly seen the way Hannibal's cage kept him bored. If he hadn't offered up pictures in return for an opinion on the case - and perhaps Hannibal's memory about the latest victim, one of Hannibal's past clients.

The slot is on the left hand side of the prison, from Hannibal's view. They march to it together, Hannibal's steps military and exacting, Cohle's slouching but efficient.

The slot is opened on one side, the photos deposited. The carriage is pushed through, photos encased in clear plastic, and Hannibal opens the slot on his own side.

He touches the folder and pauses at the contact, the stillness of a tiger startled by its prey turning to walk right towards it.

Hannibal lifts the folder up in both hands, brings it to fall open at the level of his chest. But his eyes are on the man's. "Detective Cohle," he says. His voice is the breath of one at prayer, at once searching and demanding and seeking.

Because the indirect contact, the transfer from Cohle to Hannibal, has begun something that Hannibal has discussed with clients too often not to interpret. Not to notice for what it surely is. There is a burning, itching tear in his chest right above his heart, one that Hannibal makes no twitch towards.

He knows it's his Mark appearing. Brought on by contact with his Paired, with his Mated, with his - there's a litany of euphemisms for it.

He knows that the contact, even one-sided, will bring with it the Mark for both of them.

"How Fate likes to play games with us."

Doctor Bloom had been very resistant at first, when Rust had come in person to present a request for an interview. It later required a phone call from Rust's supervisor and the forwarding of documents backing Rust's experience in suspect interrogations to assure Bloom of the detective's resilience. The case is big -- spanning states and incriminating more than just a couple of potential suspects. They put Cohle on the case because of its similarities to his Erath case. Dora Lange. The Yellow King.

That was back in Louisiana, but as reluctant as he was to be excavated from the state police there, his tenacity to pursue the case on his own time never relented, even out here in Maryland. FBI wanted him, even, over in Virginia. He politely ("politely") declined.

But this case needed him. Luckily, FBI was willing to coexist with state police, and Rust relies on the wide scope and reach of these ritualistic murders keeping the FBI from being able to juggle it. They have the benefit of their cutting edge technology, but the FBI still needs the boys down home to keep details rolling in.

One of the victims was a patient of Lecter's, five years back: drug abusive, manic-depressive, charged for animal mutilation as a teenager. Parents were well-to-do and could afford the best care money could buy... From the extent of his possible involvement, he may have been one of the many hands getting bloodied in this recent string of murders, or at the very least, an accomplice.

Rust isn't here to determine whether or not Doctor Lecter stirred the pot half a decade ago, though -- Bloom did offer her own impression despite no request for it, to offer that the doctor could have groomed the patient for a penchant for murder during their time together. Whether it's possible or not, Lecter did destroy many of his patient's records in the great climax leading up to his attack on several FBI agents, escape, and eventual conviction... Kind of a dampener on trying to scrape up any desperately-sought records on the victim.

'Watch yourself; he'll play games with you,' Bloom warned.

Play games... Rust seems to awaken at the words, eyes blinking into a wider shape as he stares holes through the bullet-proof glass. Lecter, who was so keen on these photographs before, seems like a cat who has noticed a more enticing prey than the fly it was content to kill a mere moment ago.

Rust's brows wrinkle in on each other, curious and cautious. The muscles in his throat seem to contract and strain momentarily, a breath pouring out from underneath stretching and intertwined muscles spanning across his upper chest and shoulders. Something pangs in the shallow depths of his skin on the left side of his chest, but his reaction (and therefore, apparent awareness) is so distant, he doesn't seem as aware as his own nerve endings seem to be. It's barely enough to break his hands, wrapped around the spine of his large notebook held idly in front of his lap, away to itch at the spot just yet.

"...I beg your pardon," Rust responds, tone even like a still pond, yet somehow also as genuine.

Edited 2016-12-06 22:48 (UTC)

Hannibal had thought it might have been Will, at first. The paper he'd prepared and signed for Will to be approved for police work hadn't done it, however. Neither had their first real touch, Will seizing in Hannibal's home and Hannibal running a hand across his sweating face.

Over the next several weeks, no amount of contact had ever brought on a change. Hannibal had even found himself pausing after planting Abigail's ear in Will's throat, had clinically pulled Will's shirt up to check his chest for any beginning marks.

Nothing. And nothing it had stayed, far past the point where a mark could have reasonably appeared.

Which is alright. Hannibal had quietly filed that as another failing on the part of a nonexistent or nihilistic God, another way in which he himself was beyond the restraints of humanity.

But there's no mistaking the crawling incentive in his chest. It sears, almost burns. Hannibal feels the warmth right over his ribs, the scraping swell of blood seeping from the fresh wound.

After all, what good would a decision from God be if it didn't draw any blood?

Hannibal shifts the folder to sit on just one hand, lowers it so his chest is in full view. A soft hand touches his shirt, and that faint touch is enough to press the fabric against his forming Mark. Blood is drawn into it immediately, red blossoming a stark blot on his prison whites. "So many people I've drawn blood from. So many people who I have mutually exchanged wounds with."

Hannibal's smile is carved from stone. "This is the first time I have been injured without so much as a touch." His head tilts to the right, mechanical and searching. He feels curious and amused. "I suppose it's a fitting metaphor for what these are supposed to represent. What do you think, Detective Rustin Cohle?"

Meanwhile, in another small universe nestled within the all-encompassing existence of humankind that makes up the complete nuanced experiences and characteristics on the opposite side of the glass wall, Rustin Cohle has never concerned himself with the idea of these self-tattooing Soul Mates. His ex-wife one night softly expressed her fear that their marks had never come, hers and his hands resting on her slowly doming belly. He hushed her, fingers on lips before his own came to replace them. 'Don't worry 'bout any of that nonsense.' He wasn't going to let that stop him, or control where his life would go, and what he would feel for someone. 'I don't feel love for anyone but you and this lil' girl right here.'

And that love died, twice over...but that's life.

Rust has seen people rot from the inside out over their Marks, obsessing over the lack of identity of their Mate; or finding their match, only to discover they're locked in a relationship, driving the person insane; or, discovering that they've already passed away... And that doesn't even account for those who go their whole lives never finding theirs. Rust is content to sit in that boat, because there's a lazy comfort in not being bothered to wonder, or find out.

Lecter shifts the folder around in his hands, but his attention is still anywhere but. Rust's eyes watch the documents until he notices a hand reach upward, near his collar bone--

Against bright white cloth, a pool of red flushes through. Rust snaps to attention, right hand reaching around and behind him to grasp the holster of his gun.

That's when he feels it, like a cat's claw on his skin, his own mark a mere few steps behind, but Rust thinks nothing of it while adrenaline keeps his mind in the moment. What is Doctor Lecter doing? Rust blinks rapidly as he wades through the other man's softly spoken words, difficult to keep his focus on their meaning when his eyes scan desperately over the hand, looking for a weapon of some kind.

Nothing. He looks up to find an unsettling smile and a predator's eyes staring right back at him. This man just loves to speak cryptic bullshit, doesn't he? "What are you talking about? What is that?"

Edited 2016-12-07 00:46 (UTC)

"You'll have to open the door to shoot me, you realize." Hannibal's eyes only flicker from Cohle's face for an instant, to look pointedly at his gun. There's a smirk in his eyes. "This glass is bulletproof."

What is Cohle defending himself against? Not the idea, not yet. It seems it hasn't quite occurred to him at all. Hannibal watches him, head still tilted to the side like a curious bird, neck arching back a moment as if to find a better angle to observe.

"I've had the pleasure - perhaps unique, even in a world as interconnected as ours has become - of speaking to many people who found themselves bearing a Mark. The media doesn't always like reporting the full truth. They'd rather something squeaky clean and celebratory. How romantic."

Hannibal has been absolutely still, in posture and in tone, but now he takes an unmistakable step forward. A foot away from the glass wall, he stops again. "They bleed, as you're surely about to find out yourself, Detective Cohle.

"One cannot expect a message from God without some bloodshed."

Rust had no real intention of firing his gun, but he can't fight the habit to pull his gun at the sight of a potential threat. He still doesn't understand what Doctor Lecter has done, not quite, but his immediate assumption is that he's attempted self-harm, or suicide.

Until he continues to speak about a 'Mark.' With every cool and smooth word, Rust feels a burning, tearing pull across his skin, over a set of ribs below his clavicle. His face twists slightly, confusion and irritation making a complimentary mix in his features, until he finally winces at the pain.

He looks down, hand drifting from his firearm to move his necktie away from a darkening stain on his shirt. Incredulous, he pulls the tie loose a few inches and yanks a few buttons open, just enough to expose...

The shape of a four-pointed star, about two inches across. Its lines are dark and tinged with his blood, but slow-moving, seeping, not bleeding like a cut. The skin is puffy and irritated, glowing pink around the edges of the image. Is it...actually...?

When he looks up at Lecter again, rage is only just behind the surface of his skin, but clear just past his pale eyes. The mere idea that this is the mark of two Mated is at best distant behind the horrified roar in Rust's mind. "The fuck is this, some kinda joke? What the fuck did you do?"

'Wind him up and watch him go.'

Will's voice, bitter and exhausted, echos in Hannibal's mind. Watching this new person, this collected detective, slowly react to this sudden event is the single most interesting thing that's happened since Hannibal was imprisoned.

He hungers for it, regardless of his own feelings about Soul Mates. Pushing aside his disdainful fascination with Marks, his thoughts on the philosophy behind the idea of matching with another person in soul if not intentions, there's the plain and simple fact that Hannibal has been in here for almost a year. He's bored.

And he is curious about this man. Hungry for it. Hannibal watches the anger in Cohle's eyes burn, brave and bright. Hannibal shakes his head, almost gentle, but his expression is unrepentant. "Merely walked into this chaotic universe of ours, and was dealt a surprising hand. The very same as yourself right now, Detective Cohle."

Edited 2016-12-07 01:57 (UTC)

Un-fucking-believable. Rust's eyes scan over Doctor Lecter's face as if searching for a punchline. Did he just say they're Marked, together, like Soul Mates?

He shakes his head, staring at the man on the other side of the glass, nearly slack-jawed. This cannot be possible... Rust has to bite back a laugh that panics in his lungs and yearns to escape.

"No fucking way," Rust growls, feeling audacious enough to follow suit and step closer to the glass, nearly flush against it. Honestly, the last thing he is is afraid of Doctor Lecter -- and it shows in how his expression spreads back, mere degrees away from allowing a smile. "You don't know me, man...but I know about you...enough to finally know now what a fucking sham this whole thing is."

Rust's eyes don't waver from Hannibal's for a moment, merely ping back and forth across his whole gaze. "Show me, goddamn it." If Hannibal plays games, then he needs to know that they have the same mark, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Edited 2016-12-07 02:38 (UTC)

Hannibal only looks away from Cohle's eyes for long enough to explore what other sentences he's wordlessly saying to him. The line of his shoulders is tense and wide, but his hands are at his sides and not reaching for his gun anymore. He walks forward like a predator that wakes up when it's needed, that only gets to be taken out for special occasions.

He walks forward like he thinks he knows exactly what he's walking towards and he doesn't care, because he feels prepared.

Hannibal's mouth splits open, just faintly, just enough to taste the air as well as smell it. There are drilled holes across the glass wall at face-height, intended to allow sound to pass through more easily. Right now, it lets in the scent of cigarettes and aftershave and the quick heat of anger. "As you wish."

Hannibal straightens, only to bend entirely at the waist and place the folder calmly on the floor. Hands now free, he looks back into Rust's face as he begins purposefully unbuttoning his prison uniform. Pale eyes stare a challenge at him, and Hannibal placidly pulls his shirt open enough that he feels the fabric unstick from bloody skin. He has no undershirt to clear from the way.

Hannibal glances down at it himself, though, because he still hasn't had a chance to see it either. Sure enough, it matches the one he saw for a moment on Cohle's skin, the one he can still see the edges of through the detective's carelessly-opened shirt. Irritated pink skin outlines the cut itself, already darkened with black ink that no human hand laid into the design. A four-pointed star, the bottom one stretching longest.

"The Star of Bethlehem." Hannibal's voice is musing down at his chest, until he looks back up at Cohle, still holding his shirt open to expose the mark. "I wonder which of us was lucky enough to influence the design itself."

Rust can do nothing more than watch as Doctor Lecter makes simple work out of unbuttoning his shirt and exposing his own bleeding Mark... Goddamn. Goddamn it. A helpless blankness flutters across his face as he watches the man unveil his Mark, identical, just as freshly stained as his own. Four-pointed star, angled like an elongated diamond...

He grimaces at Hannibal's words, his Biblical association to their shared image. What a fucking prick; is he really some twisted Bible-thumper, or is this way of trying to rattle Rust on this subject of supernatural core values?

You're in for one real surprise, if you think that's going to work. "Oh yeah, you would know all about influencing everything around you, wouldn't you," Rust hisses against the glass. It doesn't make sense, though...Lecter couldn't have arranged this, could he? He isn't some Charles Mansion type maniac -- and really, as far as Rust is concerned, he has a hard time believing in this, let alone what else the existence of Soul Mates suggests. He isn't about to start suspecting Lecter of witchcraft.

Rust's fucking luck, though. After years of nothing he gets Mated, and it's wasted on this asshole. Is this the universe getting him back for all the nihilistic shit he has spouted in his lifetime?

As angry as Rust is, he thinks even that is being a little childish...

Cohle is so heated, isn't he? 'A live wire' is a phrase that comes to mind - sparking and electric, charged and directing its energy somewhere specific. Hannibal hears that attempt to rile him and he simply sits deeper into it, takes a half-step forward. He completely bypasses what Cohle tries to bring up.

"All that energetic focus, driven into your detective work - you must have made quite a name for yourself." Hannibal watches the hawk-sharp eyes, the way they slide over himself like he isn't something to be feared. As if Cohle is safe by virtue of anything other than this bulletproof glass, as if even that could keep them apart if Hannibal decided he wanted him dead. "Can you explain this, then? In any other way? I felt the same prickling violation that you just have."

Hannibal lets his hands fall back down from opening his shirt. The buttons come back together, the weaving motions of his fingers habit after so many decades.

If Hannibal lets himself stop and think about this too much, then honesty that he doesn't want might surface. Hannibal doesn't enjoy the concept of Soul Mates for more than a philosophical exercise, and seeing - feeling - its effects means he's going to need to dedicate some time to warping the concept to something he doesn't mind having branded into his skin.

But when has he ever shied from reshaping the truth into what he needed it to be?

Rust senses that he's being baited, something that he doesn't feel the need to rise to, but he can still feel his patience continuing to slip the longer he has to stare at the doctor's smug-looking face.

But continues on before Rust has a change to snipe back once more. 'The same prickling violation.'

The fucking audacity. His brow wrinkles a little more sharply, as if offended at the idea that Doctor Lecter is equally as irate as Rust is. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I disrupt some lifelong hope you had for your Soul Mate, some daydream you played in your head over and over again about who it would be, when you would become Marked?"

Rust appears almost solemn as he takes a few lumbering steps back, movements heavy with the weight of terrible news. "You don't know jack shit about what I'm feeling...you don't know me." Rust sweeps an opened palm, the one not carrying his large notebook, low and across the air between him and Lecter's invisible cage. "None of this means anything, man."

Rust won't let it mean anything. This man is a killer, deluded, fucking insane. He's a complete stranger -- they don't share shit. No magical tattoos and twin soul circle-jerking will trump the shared experiences between two people, and Rust has nothing to share with Hannibal Lecter. Hell, Rust could live with Marty being his Mate over this inexplicable, rigged-up bullshit. To hell with that.

To a certain extent, psychiatry consists of piling on approaches until you see which one works. Cohle's pupils dilate when Hannibal says violation, as if offended that this might be a reaction they share at all.

Hannibal isn't bothered that an officer of the law thinks he's an insane killer, a label that is clear in the angry eyes that stare at him. The vast majority of them share that illusion - even Will has used the term before, even if he meant it specifically as an insult. 'Insane' so often means that they simply don't know what to call you, that you have transcended in such a way that there is no vernacular for your actions.

Better that than to fade into nothing.

"Not if we don't wish it too." Hannibal's eyes narrow shrewdly, though he doesn't move any closer to the glass to try to make up for Cohle backing away. "Nothing means anything at all, without the interference of the mind to interpret what it sees."

Hannibal has mixed emotions about Soul Mates. He has a deadened curiosity to the concept that his has now been selected for him. He's never been good at accepting what others chose to give, has always cut out what he wanted whether or not it was on offer.

But it's natural, surely, to be curious at this choice. His voice is neutrally questioning when he asks: "Do you plan on ignoring this entirely, then?"

For just a small, trembling moment, Lecter speaks to Rust in his own dialogue. 'Nothing means anything at all, without the interference of the mind to interpret what it sees.'

But, it's easy to dismiss. He's a doctor, intelligent, and is a key manipulator. Perhaps it's just easy for him to see a man who dismisses one of the only true signs of the supernatural in the present world, and jump to the nihilistic end of the spectrum.

However, for a similarly aggravating moment, something wriggling in the back of Rust's mind wonders if it has anything to do with their supposedly...linked souls...

Fuck. Rust firmly swallows down the rising feeling in his throat, and takes a sharp, grounding inhale. Lips twisted in between a scowl and a stifling pout, it takes Rust a moment to steel himself against the adrenaline ripping through his veins. His hands, tense, come to wrap around the spine of his notebook, knuckles white. "I plan on getting those photos back, at your convenience, and never stepping foot in this fucking place, as long as I live." Rust's voice is steady, but teeters with a compromised balance.

"Is that clear enough for you, motherfucker?" His accent tints with something else at the end of his sentence, something that to an outsider is unrecognizable -- but, to Rust, is eerily familiar, whenever he feels the urge for violence caress his muscles, that adrenaline swelling under his skin. Crash.

So far, it's just a wondering. A passing hunger, one that a predator has for anything that constitutes as prey. Time will tell if this match is merely a passing fancy by a confused universe, or... Well. It can only really be that, can't it?

Everything is a passing fancy.

Does Cohle plan on that being a long time, 'as long as he lives'? Hannibal's eyes never leave Cohle, absolutely fixated on him.

It's too simple to point out that he's growing agitated, too obvious to even be worthy of being called baiting. Instead, Hannibal takes that frustration and defensiveness, he takes in the confident air of a man who's taken care of himself for quite a long time, and-- Oh.

Cruel intentions almost always look ugly. Even though Hannibal smiles congenially, softly, there is a hardness to his eyes when he takes the last step he needs to be almost flush with the glass. "Why, Detective Cohle. You haven't already been disappointed in finding yourself a soul mate, have you?"

Lecter appears more like an animal now than he has been so far -- predatory and animalistic are not mutually exclusive, and Rust doesn't need to be reminded of that fact. The doctor approaches the glass like a tiger, all in posture and essence. It's then that it really, truly occurs to Rust what he's handling right here: something caged, enclosed, enticed by those familiar aspects of the outside world that wanders near. There's that pure curiosity that gleams in the eye of a large predator cat when an enthusiastic child stands flush against the closest possible space that is also just out of reach.

Something in Rust's chest twangs gently at the idea of that kind of imprisonment. He remembers the nights in Texas, pockets of solitude where no one was around, moments where he could let the mask of Crash slip down if he wanted to, without risk of compromise... But he never did, not once, and that was always when that veil between those two levels of himself felt thinnest...and yet, when the chasm between those two sides of himself somehow never felt more apart.

And then, it's like that feeling of anticipating when you're about to stumble on the stairs: falling back into your body from no extreme height. Rust really sees just how far he's fallen from his baseline, a pedestal above the rest, since the Mark now on his chest bloomed open on his skin. Hannibal's word have not escaped him -- in fact, they have been repeatedly echoing, soft at first, building up until the very moment that they can pierce Rust's lightning-quick thoughts.

He blinks, breathes, sees Hannibal now for what he is: a man behind a wall of glass. He takes a moment to think -- really think.

He digs his hands back into the mud of his mind, sinks his fingers in deep. Uprooted no more. "Gee, you seem awfully concerned about my past, Doctor Lecter...but I guess I can't blame a guy asking questions 'bout the past when..." Rust breaks his gaze away to glance up and around the concrete ceiling and mounted security cameras, "...he has no future left to look forward to."

Rust's eyes only have a moment to find Lecter's again before he takes the first step backward. "You can keep the photos, doctor. Thank you for your time."

Voice like cloth dragging against a stone floor, and steady as a stride. Rust has found his footing, finally, and he chooses to use that momentum to make his exit. He turns around and leaves, up the hallway where he came, no hesitating, and no looking back.

As Rust is given back his firearm and valuables, Doctor Bloom appears from somewhere out of view, face stony, but it can't hide how deep her concern cuts.

Rust sees it through a sideways glance, shuts his eyes, and picks up his car keys from the tray on the security deputy's desk. "Great, I take it your surveillance system includes live audio too," he rumbles, glaring up at the deputy, who averts his eyes immediately.

"Detective, we need to discuss--"

Doctor Bloom's words are cut short. Rust is suddenly one wide step closer and facing her, intimidation factor present but unintended -- really, he's just sick of being eavesdropped.

"No we don't," he growls, head up, eyes low on the top of her head until they flick up sleepily. It occurs to him that she is at the perfect height to see the drying blood stain on his shirt. "I left a folder with Doctor Lecter. Send my documents to my department, or don't, I don't care either way."

"Cohle--"

But Rust has already turned around, walking straight toward the exit. She tries to call for him a final time, and isn't surprised that it doesn't stop him.

In all honesty, for all the warnings she gave him about Lecter, she did receive some of her own about Rust, too.

There is something divine and ugly in connections. They're never perfect, no matter how carefully designed, and yet they transcend what either part could have achieved separately. When Hannibal sees a shiver of understanding in Cohle's face, it's a terrible moment. Terrible in an older sense, of something formidable and powerful.

Hannibal is not the only one who knows how to step back from a conversation long enough to aim. Cohle's words resonate in one of the only places of permanent hurt in Hannibal's mind - his lack of freedom, his sentence to remain bored and stagnant and unable to exercise influence, for the rest of his life.

Hannibal watches Cohle leave without another word, examining the dart that's just been lanced into his proverbial heart.

And then he gathers the folder off of the floor, to review the photos before Doctor Bloom surely comes to take them right back.

*

Hannibal has been meditating since he was seven years old.

He didn't call it that, back then. Back then it was the concentration he slipped into when organizing his Mind Palace. The way you could press or pull on things immaterial and create patterns in the empty space inside your skull. Make connections, leaving a string trail so you could always find your way around the labyrinth afterwards.

Except now there are new places to press. Never in the same spots, never at the same times. But upon waking, there is occasionally the crusted sensation of someone else's dreams. When he is in bed, in the liminal space between existence and nothing, there is the splash of someone else resisting sleep.

There's a connection growing, divine and ugly.

And Hannibal is teaching himself how to reach for it.

Edited 2016-12-09 03:06 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i see trees that are green, red roses too

this devil's come to collect its pound of flesh

YOU CAN POUND MY FLESH ANY DAY CANNIBAL DADDY

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