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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"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.

No intention. Graham had never discharged his firearm, before Garrett Jacob Hobbs.

He stops turning the glass, but doesn't look up from it.

"I want -"

But it's not really right. And he corrects - "I want - to be able to tell you something else. But, I don't -"

There are no words of comfort for this, nor anything he can share to mitigate it.

Edited 2014-06-03 03:49 (UTC)

Rae swallows hard. "I know," she says, rough.

"But..." she clears her throat, trying to feel something that isn't defeat and misery and betrayal. "Better to... hear it from you, I guess. Than find out some other way."

He blinks up to her, then down to his hands. Or the cuffs of his sleeves.

"That's true."

Even if intellectually she knows it's better, it certainly doesn't feel better. She just feels run down, now. Exhausted. Miserable. Lied to.

"I don't... know what to do with this, Will," she says, looking at him. "If he is dangerous in your world, he is dangerous here, but apart from warning people..."

There's nothing they can do.

"Unless he breaks the rules here, he's free."

"If your worst enemy walks through, you have to leave them alone."

Graham's eyes stay down. "I remember."

"Well," she says, at last. "I was right. It can always get worse."

Conceding defeat.

"I'm not sure... how or if I'll be able to handle seeing him again." She supposes it depends on which reaction is ascendant at the moment - horror, grief, or anger. "Don't know if I could even talk to him."

This gets Graham to look back to her. "Don't talk to him."

There's nothing resigned in it. His voice rises, and he reaches out to her - though he stops his hand flat on the table. "Listen, I - I don't doubt he considers you a friend, and you don-"

Graham's voice just stops on the word. He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, it's lower, but trembling.

"You don't want to be Hannibal Lecter's friend. Stay away from him."

"How?" Rae spreads her hands, indicating the bar room. "This place isn't big. I will run into him sooner or later, Will, and I don't know how to explain to him how I've gone from that baker he likes to brag on and make...." Her mouth twists "...fucking food puns with... to someone who refuses to give him the time of day."

"Without, you know, telling him, 'well, you're a cannibal, see?'" She can't keep her voice from cracking on the word. "'And I'm a vegetarian. It just wouldn't work out.'"

Graham looks down, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"You said there was, um - Security here."

He lets out a breath. "Even if he's not - violent, you can't be forced to talk to him."

Rae looks away, thinking of how many times Autor tried to get away, and Dr. Lecter kept them, delayed them, just by talking.

"He's very difficult to get away from... politely... all the same. If he's not breaking the rules, then I don't know what Security would do. If he is... then... makes sense that catching him's the difficult part."

Graham lowers his hand. It's another moment before he speaks.

"Politely," he picks out, voice even.

"You don't want to be rude."

That word again. Rae looks at him. "Autor mentioned that he considered that Dr. Lecter's... watchword. Rude."

"He called Eric Northman rude, when the vampire came to talk about his debt. And... we've talked about it, before. What it means. When we were going to the opera, I was uncomfortable, because of the dress," Rae's hand touches just below her collarbone, the majority of her scars now hidden now by her shirt. "When I worried about people staring, he said..."

Rae's look draws down into a troubled frown as she remembers that evening, an echo of her earlier horror still shading her eyes.

"He said, 'With me beside you, I very much hope none of them will dare to be that rude.'"

The reward is for their undignified behavior.

"He was your friend," Graham murmurs, remembering the dress.

"Did - did he take you to our world?"

That dress remains the best thing Sunshine owns. She has no hope of ever being able to buy something like it for herself. It's hanging now, in the back of her closet upstairs.

"Yes, he did," Rae nods. The hand that had rested against her collarbone finds the amber sun-ring on its cord about her neck, and absently turns it through her fingers. This minor fidgeting is the only outlet of restless discomfort she'll allow herself.

"We went to his house. We had... a light salad, and... dessert," her mouth twists. Dr. Lecter often made remark of her vegetarianism, when they cooked together. And she can't even know if he... No, her mind refuses to go there. "Then we went to the opera."