milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(Not-Actually-OOM: A few days ago, Gavroche and Sunshine come to the conclusion that it's better to show someone you're still their friend than abandon them when things get complicated. The trick is finding the right balance.)

When Sunshine comes in from the kitchen, today, she has a plate of food - a full meal, really - in addition to her tray of baked goods. The plate holds a sizable slice of broccoli-cheese quiche, a spinach and mixed greens salad with raspberries, feta cheese, candied pecans and a homemade vinaigrette dressing, and some toasted quinoa with carrots, sweet peppers, corn and caramelized onions. Though vegetarian, everything in it is a good source of iron and protein. On a smaller plate, for dessert, she includes one of her humongous cinnamon rolls.

She leaves the plate and cinnamon roll with with the bar, with instructions that they are for Jason Todd.

A peace offering, and a sign she doesn't want their friendship to be over, though she knows neither of them is probably ready to confront this yet. They'll work through it, though, eventually. That's what friends do.

Once the plate has been delivered to the Bar, Rae starts arranging her tray of baked goods for sale, and puts up a sign:

Sunshine's Freshly-Made Baked Goods
Cinnamon Rolls As Big As Your Head: $4
(Extra Icing: $.50)
Bitter Chocolate Death: $3.50
Death of Marat: $4 (only two available)
Caramel Cataclysms: $3
Lemon Lechery: $3
Rocky Road Avalanche: $3
Chocoholia: $3
Hell's Angelfood: $2:75
Meringuamania: $2.00
As-Of-Yet Unnamed Chocolate Cake with Pecans, Ginger Fudge, Pistachios, and Sea Salt
Help me name it, and get a slice for free!

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She glances at him with a kind of grimace-smile. She sees his kindness in the offer, and appreciates it. She does. But she has sit down, and has her liquid fortitude - however adequate or inadequate it is for the task at hand. Best do this right.

"But it isn't all."

"No, it's not."

His eyes fall to his glass, and he takes a deep breath, as though he were about to dive.

"There's a killer we've been investigating for - years. He never leaves evidence, and the way he leaves his victims is always - presentational. And um -"

Graham blinks up to her as he says it, voice uneasy, but there's no other word for it. "- elegant."

Rae can't look at him, her gaze turned down and away, following the line of shine of light off the metal napkin holder on the next table over. The brightness is what's making her eyes water. Really. Presentational.

All she can picture is one of Dr. Lecter's beautifully-arranged plates. Flower-arrangements decorated with the horns of dead creatures and the bodies and wings of dead butterflies.

"And... and your world wouldn't have sympathetic magic, to help find who made the presentations..."

It's a diversion. A desperate one, given without thought. Her cerebrum might know she needs to hear this, grinding out beliefs of worthwhile and not worthwhile, the hindbrain doesn't want to hear it.

Edited 2014-06-01 05:00 (UTC)

"No."

He doesn't know what it is, and right now, doesn't ask. "My world doesn't have that."

"It deals with the imprint of the maker upon the thing - you can... follow the power that made something back to it's source," she says, desperate. "Sometimes. It's not an exact scienc- no, don't let me do this."

Because she will. This is difficult for them both. Painful. And it's in her nature to try and avoid putting anyone through that. Sunshine deals in kind distractions. Baked goods.

"Go on. Please."

There's an eerie familiarity to it - but he swallows that down.

"Rae, I'm still - learning some of this, and - figuring it out. No one in my world believes this, no one can prove it, it's - it's just a guess."

But even as he says it, he can't really hide that this is only technically true. A piece of well-intentioned kindness, not just for her.

She nearly misses when she moves to top up her glass. Her Dark Sight is playing merry havoc with her depth perception, her overbright eyes muddled.

"How many people believe or don't believe something doesn't affect whether it's true or not, Will," she murmurs. He is being kind, she knows. Softening the edges. That's where her instincts lie, too. It's where she'd like to go, but mustn't let herself. "It just determines if it's... actionable truth."

Actionable truth, the thought repeats, bitter in his mind.

He doesn't reach for the bottle, leaves his glass as it is. He needs his stomach as steady as it can be to get through this.

"This killer, his most consistent pattern is that the mutilations disguise - we called them surgical trophies. He was - expertly - removing organs from his victims. He - he always took something."

Will has good timing - or as good timing as one can have in the situation. She isn't in the middle of taking a sip. Her glass doesn't spill when she suddenly has to put it down.

"...Shiva wept," she breathes, not able to meet his eyes. Her mind refuses to imagine it.

"Rae..."

He doesn't reach out to her. But this time, when he says her name, his tone is nearly gentle.

"... do you - understand why I told you that?"

She doesn't react immediately. Her pallor isn't good. She looks ill, and tired, her hands around the cold glass to keep them from shaking.

"Graphic illustration of how true the saying 'it can always get worse' is?" she mutters, voice rough. Rae shakes her head.

"No. Dr. Lecter has been my... or has been presenting himself as my friend, for the past year. I... do need to know how bad it is, however much I'd rather not."

Why he told her that in particular, no. She doesn't know.

Graham knows he should just say it, but even to him, the accusation still seems distant, unbelievable. Incredible, unless seen the way he sees it. He lowers his head, and closes his eyes.

"The first victim - the first murder I'm accused of - was a young woman. H-he took her lungs."

Pretty sure she was alive when - he won't be sharing that.

"A few days after we found her, the uh - second time I spoke to him. He came to see me, and - brought me breakfast."

Graham makes himself look back up to her. "Have you ever cooked with Hannibal, Rae?"

Her face is an open book, even if she's not looking at him. Rae can't help the reaction at the image of Dr. Lecter... taking someone's lungs. Surgical trophies, Will had said.

But her gaze suddenly find his, upon his question. Her cheeks are wet, her eyes red-rimmed. Wary, stricken. She searches his face as the moments pass, trying not to see what she's finding there.

"No," she whispers at last, barely more than a breath.

It's not an answer to his question; it's a plea.

Edited 2014-06-02 15:50 (UTC)

He doesn't say anything.

Graham holds her gaze for as long as he can, before his own eyes start to sting. Then he takes a shaky breath, and looks down.

"No..." she says, again, as though it might negate this, strike it from her awareness. "Please."

"He couldn't be..."

But once she accepts everything else - the manipulation, the murders - couldn't he be? It isn't a thought she wants to let be true. She isn't sure she could stand to let it be true.

"Rae -"

Graham rubs at his eyes, before looking back up to her. "He'd - tell you I'm delusional. And this is all just a - product of that delusion."

"I know he would," her voice is choked. Rae doesn't know if she can get words out. One hand has left the safety of the glass and is loosely covering her mouth.

Her thoughts are scattered - beads spilled on a smooth floor. Will doesn't know, maybe, that Dr. Lecter comes into the bar from his future. And what happens later.

("My dear friend Will Graham -- I think you met him as well? -- is back, and working again. We consult, have repaired our friendship beautifully, and consult on very interesting cases.")

"But you're not... not delusional, now. I've seen the shadows of people laboring under delusions, and yours aren't that. They're fractured, glittering things, but yours," Rae has to look at him, then, blinking away tears so she can see his face clearly. Her voice is higher than normal, obstructed by the lump in her throat. "You... may have been delusional at one point. Yours still have jagged edges but they've already been working to knit back together. You're not delusional now. And I know you're not lying to me, either."

"You say these things, and you know them as the truth in your heart," her voice breaks on the words, as she knows his words to be truth, sticking in her heart.

Graham listens, eyes flickering away from and then back to her. He doesn't move until finishes.

At this point, he's feeling ready to reach for the bottle again.

"Must be why he didn't lie to you," Graham murmurs.

Sunshine takes a slow, shaky breath.

"No, I..." Rae shakes her head, wiping her eyes clear. Trying not to just break down into hurt, angry tears. Forcing herself to clear her throat and try to speak clearly. "I never got anything from his shadows. His look like... normal, like all shadows used to. They don't move. He's maybe the third person I've met whose shadows look normal to me."

"Sounds a little like how I saw him."

But Graham can't count out even two others like Dr. Lecter. Even when they tried, it would always be hard for others to make space for him. Graham's mind was so quick to wash him out, and let them in. Dr. Lecter was so contained, so reserved, that eventually, opening a door for him hadn't felt like a threat. He never came in uninvited.

Graham hadn't considered how often Lecter drew him out of it.

"It's - different now," he adds. His voice is soft - the most he can raise his voice, while looking to her. "That I know what I'm seeing."

"I've been told that I'll see similar shadows in those who are completely secure in themselves, or who are..." Rae's mouth twists, her voice bitter, "masters of their craft, that way."

Rae takes a drink, seeking to clear her throat and find some sort of steadiness to herself, when she feels like she's going to topple over at any moment.

"He still looked normal, when I last talked to him. He was... drawing. Me."

Graham keeps his eyes down. It helps him raise his voice, slightly, when he speaks again.

But he only echoes, "He was drawing you."

"Drawing me... beheading a vampire I have a rather bad history with, here, in the style of a Bible story I'd not heard of - Judith and Holofernes? - as painted by some... Italian artist whose name I couldn't pronounce if I tried," Rae explains as best she can.

"The uh, vampire in question is in my debt, and neither of us like the situation. He happened to confront me about it while Dr. Lecter and I were... in the kitchen." She has to stop and look away for a long moment, as a fresh wave of revulsion turns her stomach.

"After the vampire left, he... Dr. Lecter suggested - I thought he was just joking, to make me feel better - throwing silver spoons at him sometime to see if silver affects vampires like it affects Others in my world. When I found him drawing me, the next time we met, he said the... the experiment had been a successful one, and the vampire hadn't suspected a thing. I thought he had been joking."

"He... gets curious."

Graham is staring down at his glass, turning it between his fingers.

"He'll - wind pieces up. To see what they'll do."

"Well, I have no intention of beheading that vampire," Rae says, emotional exhaustion making her tone a mite defensive. No one likes thinking one themselves as pieces in someone's game, even at the best of times. "He and I have an understanding, uncomfortable as it is. I told Dr. Lecter so."

Her friend, Dr. Lecter. Every time his name comes up, it comes back again.

("Have you ever cooked with Hannibal, Rae?")

"Oh gods, Will," Rae says, feeling defeated. There's no way this is going to be all right. Leaving aside her empty glass, she presses the heels of her palms against her closed eyes.