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

Just an observation.

[Dryly. You're doing it again.]

[And your point would be?]

So how did this happen, anyway? I'm almost surprised he held still for long enough for you to try.

He wasn't standing still, he was in the middle of strangling me.

So, self defense, then. Surprised you didn't lead with that, when you offered up this explanation to the public.

I. Well.

[He blinks, because seriously, why didn't he? It's not like anybody doesn't know Hannibal's not a threat. Except that he's not, not normally, not really, not even then. Not to Dillon. If he had eat him, it would have probably screwed up Hannibal more than him. But he hadn't wanted to give him the satisfaction of having done it, like a man trying to keep raccoons out of his garbage even though he through it away, because he doesn't want to deal with the mess, because he doesn't want pests to make themselves at home on his property.]

It was still - disproportionate. I didn't want to sound like I was making excuses, I guess.

[Also, he values his own life and pain barely at all, would have valued it even less had he not promised Else he'd be okay.]

You still care that much about what other people think.

You can make and unmake things with a single lack of thought, have an ability over the very fabric of reality so run rampant you feel safer, in more control conversely, with it fettered...you can feel souls and warp men's minds and turn dead wood into a living, too-perfect tree; you have been an unwilling god among men, and you still stop to be bothered so, by what other people think of you. By what they might see.

[His mouth goes to a thin line, but he drops his eyes. Blight isn't quite right - Dillon has invited hatred more than once - but he isn't wrong, either. He thinks about it, the squirming shame in his stomach when he thinks about, yes, what people see. After a pause, quietly.]

I can't see my own pattern, did you know? I mean. It would probably drive me totally crazy if I did. All the ripples all the time, and that's not even getting into free will and despair stuff. So it's better that I can't.

But it's still - disconcerting, flying blind when it comes to the choices about my own life.

I don't want to be someone who makes excuses for something like this. I could become such a monster, so easily. I could rip the planet apart if I started letting myself justify things.

And with everything I have to do, and how almost no one can stop me, how other people see me is some of the only feedback I get against when I've gone too far.

If excuses are something you wish to avoid, then why bother with apologies?

[Because he may not be a 'monster' himself, he may in fact be what Dillon said, a better person than Hannibal...but he's still very far from a saint. Or even the saint-like bar set by an average human being.

And to him excuses and apologies go hand in hand. They both have to do with concerns about how those around you will react. About considering other people's feelings.

A series of inconveniences, all.]

[His mouth twitches, and his smile is a bandage on a wound.]

Confession is good for the soul, I suppose. And properly done, it requires contrition.

[Which he is...lacking, in this case. He is a monster, merely a less destructive one than he could be, some of which he whole-heartedly regrets, and none of which he quite knows how to stop. Properly done, confession requires that he dedicate himself at lest to trying; another reason he hasn't been in over two years.]

Mostly it just seemed right to warn people he was...off. And I knew I'd need help fixing it.

Ah, yes. That little problem. Must be why my own apologies have always only ever been about keeping up appearances.

[Because he's pretty much never sorry about anything himself.]

Maybe it'll wear off on it's own?

In a few months, maybe, if we were half a continent apart. Here?

[He shakes his head.]

That does sound like a problem. [It could be taken as a quip, though that's not exactly how he means it.] Well...I suppose I should wish you the best of luck? I may not care about what happens to Lecter, but obviously it bothers you.

It bothers me that I'm allowed. Which is to say, more in principle than in practice, and that bothers me too.

[How easy it is for him to rationalize things; how quickly he becomes a monster Hannibal can only aspire to - or, in actual fact, seethe in resentment about.]

Thanks for caring, Powers.

[So dryly. He's totally joking! He's not joking.]

Oh, you're very welcome. [He meets that dryness with snideness in equal measure. He'd say "you know me, I try" but he's too sore on that point to even joke about it right now in passing. He tries not to care, and recently he finds he's been utterly failing.]

You both enjoy the rest of your day, now. The rest of your time together.

[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.]

12. Mea...culpa?

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