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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He stalked me and tried to eat my face while it was attached to me. He had a knife and a shiv and he stabbed me a lot. It was the last day of the Joker's...thing, and I was already tired and pissed off, and he has done a huge amount of the kind of damage I can't heal to people I love a lot.

I broke his knee and his arm, and I warned him, but I knew he was too crazy to hear me, and then he started strangling me with his good arm.

I could have just killed him, but I was mad, and I hate him, and I lost my temper.

[She listens, takes the story in. And then she wonders how many people have actually given him the same chance to speak his piece before shoving their indignation straight down his throat.]

Y'know, this place makes things all twisted up. Ya didn't take a man's life. And that shouldn't be looked at as a bad thing. No one should ever get t'a place where killin' is the easy choice, the better choice. It's not. Ah don't care how many times the Admiral will bring us back from the dead, killin' isn't the answer.

Ya had shit options and ya picked the one that was less wrong. We'll fix this. And if people give ya grief, Ah've got yer back.

Edited 2014-08-03 23:32 (UTC)

[It takes him aback, for a second. It's such - or it seems - such a ubiquitous assumption on the barge, that changing someone's mind is worse than death. Which dovetails with his own fears, his own damage and assumptions. He does feel guilt about not killing a man, and that's all kinds of messed up. Thou shalt not kill. He kills so easily, at home. But he didn't want to kill Hannibal, didn't want to crack his skull open and squirm out from under the mess. He's so tired of killing. He blinks rapidly.]

I...hadn't thought of it that way.

Edited 2014-08-04 00:25 (UTC)

Honey, Ah honestly don't think most folks on this boat do.

[And that's a problem. It's been there all this time and it's only now that it's been shoved right under her face. She's never killed anyone here. Not even when her brain was scrambled by Alpha. Not even when Victor would have each time they faced off. But how many here could say the same? And how many just weren't paying attention to this mentality because it's so glossed over into normality? Even she is guilty on that count.]

It's so easy, at home. When I bring people back they don't even have the toll.

But I always hated it. The killing, not - anyway.