orderfromchaos | 12. Mea...culpa?

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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

Yeah. It is.

You're a self-centered power-hungry jerk and you've hurt people terribly just for being in your way and not thought twice about it.

[Dillon Cole: not sugarcoating.]

But so have I. And you're not dedicated to hurting people, you don't think it's the only beautiful thing in the world, that other beauty either reflects or should be in service of.

It's a pretty big difference.

Edited 2014-08-03 21:52 (UTC)

[Wait what...what just happened here.

There's been shots fired at the way he lives his own life but at the same time he's being complimented for how he is by comparison, and he's always happy to listen to someone tearing down Hannibal but Abigail is a a more complicated issue that twists at him under the vest, and he's not sure what to make of it. Especially now.

It takes him another moment to mentally regroup and respond.]

Hannibal Lecter is the same kind of creature that even I have a marked repugnance for. Inflicting pain and misery on others for naught but it's own sake...a myriad of so-called ethical and moral issues aside, it's just impractical. It's the kind of distraction that can run as detriment to one's own survival.

[Sneering a bit, sardonic.]

And you know me, I'm all about the self-preservation.

You try to be, anyway.

You don't have to put them aside, you know.

I have no idea what you're talking about. [Liar.]

No, come on, saying it's impractical is a cop-out, go make a moral judgement. It's fun!

Don't worry about being a hypocrite, everyone is occasionally, you can work out that part later.

I don't know what kind of a joke it is you're trying to make, but I can guarantee you that I am not laughing.

The joke is that you'll say he's the kind you have a repugnance for, but you won't come out and say Hannibal Lecter is a horrible person, because if you did that you might have to say why, and then you might have to think about how you treated your son.

The joke is that you're almost nothing like him.

Edited 2014-08-04 00:51 (UTC)

[He audibly sucks in his breath the second Dillon brings up Paxton. When he speaks again it's in a tight, heated hiss.]

What is it that you think that you know, about me and my son?

I know you treated him differently than Abigail.

The way your shoulders tightened when I clarified about you and her. It was pretty clear.

So. What of it?

Never mind. I am not talking about this with you. It's a subject you have no right to.

So you're still not like him.

But okay.

[He should really just leave it there, but, after a moment of irritably grinding his teeth, he finds he can't resist.]

Why is it so important to you that you tell me that? I already know I'm nothing like the cannibal that loves to play headgames.

You're the one who's resisting taking a moral stand about it.

I mean, what if it did work for him? In a practical sense. Manipulating and controlling and deceiving people and aiming them like poison darts. It did for a long while.

You mean if it hadn't gotten him killed? If he'd gotten away with it, if it hadn't ever - pardon the pun - come back to bite him?

Yeah. If that.

Well. He would have never gotten his brains scrambled by you and your rampant uncontrolled star fragment powers, now would he?

Well, he still would have died someday. Even if he were never caught.

And what, that means he would have automatically come to this ship, and therefore to you?

I hardly think that that's so...absolutely predestined.

I'm going to go out on a crazy limb and say the admiral is probably harder to get away from than the police.

And good try, way to turn it around, but I'm not really concerned about me.

If he never gets caught, do you still find him repugnant? For cracking people open physically and emotionally, ruining their lives and minds and eating them, all for the pleasure of it. Or do you respect him for living as he wished and using his intellect to succeed in his chosen goals?

Edited 2014-08-04 06:27 (UTC)

I find the manner in which he chooses to live his life disgusting. [Flat, frank.] There is no other word for it than that. Killing and eating people as a hobby, honestly. Manipulating them simply to prove a point.

[That part of it winds him up more than it would have before; the Joker toyed with him, used him, in a method similar to Hannibal's little games.]

I think his "success" is a waste of perfectly good passion and intellect. But if this is the part where you're waiting for me to agree that somebody needed to stop him -- no, that's not going to happen.

I do not take moral stances, Mr. Cole. As a rule I don't get involved with tawdry concepts of morality at all.

Why tawdry?

Because they are small, a waste of time and utterly meaningless. Morality as a concept is subjective, and it shifts depending on where you are and who you're talking to. I simply don't have the time to be bothered.

Emotions are subjective. As experienced. Anger, for instance.

Are that meaningless?

Not for the person experiencing them, clearly. I suppose that I lump morals in the same way: I acknowledge that if somebody considers themself a "moral person", they likely take those things very seriously. But that doesn't mean that I necessarily should.

Disgusting is pretty subjective, too. But you don't have qualms about declaring that. What makes him disgusting and someone else not?

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