orderfromchaos | 12. Mea...culpa?

[Public, video]

[They're the kitchen of Dillon's parents' house: relentlessly suburban, a few southwestern touches, from the touristy Navajo-ish vase on the table to the sepia color palette, well-coordinated. There are floral magnets on the fridge, and one Hannibal Lecter humming as he makes what appears to be gourmet tomato soup and fresh-baked bread. He's wearing an open lab coat over his suit that he grabbed while attempting to join an infirmary shift, right before Dillon hurriedly hustled him out.]

I kind of...fixed him.

[Not like you fix a car; Hannibal wasn't broken, he was himself. Like you fix a dog.]

I thought it would wear off but it hasn't, and his room is the same so it doesn't count for graduation but I don't. Actually know how to undo it.

He's not faking, either.

[Voice pitched more deliberately across the room, though he hasn't been been whispering or anything; Hannibal could have heard him before if he was listening.

Hey, Hannibal, say sorry to the nice people.

[Hannibal pauses, sets down the wooden spoon and turns to the comm, contrite, shifting, a little uncertain.]

I'm terribly sorry for what I've done. It seems almost unreal, but I do not mean to belittle anyone's suffering. I apologize.

[Dillon waves him back to the soup.]

[Private to Jean]

I'm pretty sure what you do is more. Versatile, than mine. I know it's a lot to ask, but could you check and see if you can reverse it?

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Then why not leave someone so they don't?

Because it's wrong?

I dunno. You should teach me one!

Uh. One without dice.

[He sticks his tongue out, because he is just that mature. But his eyes are a little crinkled at the corners, trying not laugh as he cuts the feed.]

I'll leave the door unlocked.

I still don't believe it is, but it's been made transparent I'm the only one in this place who does. Don't ask me why.

[they shouldn't have this fight, not when he feels terrible about what he's done]

I suppose you have to turn him back just so he isn't stuck here.

He's lost a lot more than his monstrousness. It's not all - immediately apparent.

If he was really a better person - if he was really a person like this - I wouldn't care what everyone else thought.

I've never seen how it makes someone any less.

You're talking about walk happened to you.

[He wasn't here for that, but it's obvious anyway.]

It isn't just one thing. Not even all the stuff I do to people is the same. But this - I could tell him his tie would look better if he cut his own throat, and he'd frown kind of mildly and then do it. He wouldn't have enough sense of himself to object.

But it isn't as if you would. [What matters - has always mattered - is who holds the power. What's done with it.] I already conceded, all right?

I might.

[Dryly. He's done worse things, certainly. After a moment -]

I don't want to win. I want to be understood.

It's about being able to make his own choices. He wasn't - he wasn't broken. He was exactly who he wanted to be. So I wasn't fixing him. I was making him no one.

You've got places where you're not who you want to be. And there are ways you could get help to change some of those places that cost less than this.

Everything I hear here about "choice" is lip service. If you want to say it was wrong because you were trying to hurt someone, that's fine, th-that's normal. But don't pretend it really matters whether anyone here gets to choose what happens to them.

No one gets to choose what happens to them. Not one person. Never.

[His voice is a little choked, suddenly, heavy and taut.]

All we ever get to choose, at most, if that, is how we respond. That's why it's so important.

Of course you can say that. When your responses change things.

Sometimes it doesn't at all.

The choices matters when it changes things. And it matters even more when it's all you have. All you are.

If someone pours mud on you, you're still covered in mud. Even if you wash it off, someone still did that.

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12. Mea...culpa?

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