Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: "If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself." ~Martin Heidegger
Bella Crawford makes her final arrangements. That includes ordering flowers for her funeral. Set during and post-Takiawase. One-shot.
Author's Notes: Bella Crawford has to be one of my favourite characters and is played by one of my favourite actors. I simply had to write a fic about her.
This story follows in what has now become a series of fics including a floriographer named Charlotte. You do not have to read L'Enfer, C'est Les Autres or Les Fleurs Du Mal in order to read this, but the latter does account for how Hannibal got the name of the floral shop.
The title comes from Heidegger's Being and Time. Da-sein is…well, it's da-sein. It's being there: a person is their relations with the world (bodily, financially, etc.). Death stands in eminent opposition to da-sein. Death individuates a person and opens them up to the possibility of their own non-being and, as a result, other possibilities follow from it. I am not doing it justice. All I know for certain is that the second Bella said, "Alive," I had Heidegger on the brain.
This fic alludes to a pretty key development in "Takiawase". Also, like so many others, started off as a very light-hearted idea that descended into some very dark places.
Da-sein
"Full Bloom Floral. Charlotte speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hello," Bella Crawford's voice trails down the line like rich silk, "I'm calling to arrange flowers for a funeral."
"Oh, my gosh, who died?" might as well have been Charlotte's family from all the urgency in her tone. Bella can't help but smirk good naturedly. She has always enjoyed interrupting people, disarming them, and impending death has provided her with an entirely new arsenal.
"Me," Bella states confidently. "I'm going to be dead in less than twenty-four hours."
Charlotte sighs away whatever reserves of energy she might have. Bella's confession has exhausted her. "Look, whatever you're planning: don't do it. Life's worth living. Death doesn't solve anything. Things get better…most of the time? Sometimes?"
Bella is about to assuage the woman's fears: a cancer diagnosis is the perfect cover for a suicide. In the short period of silence that follows though, Charlotte has realized just how weak her attempt at saving Bella's life is and returns, aggressive and demanding in light of her previous fail. "Who are you?"
"You don't know me," Bella says kindly.
"Well, I want to know you," Charlotte counters. So there. "Who are you?"
"You're going to phone the police."
"You're going to kill yourself."
"I have cancer."
"So you're in the process of killing yourself right now!"
The silence from the other line contains an unusual amount of horror. That clearly sounded better to Charlotte in her head than outside of it. Bella doesn't mind. She appreciates the perspective, appreciates the honesty that it grants her. "Yes, I suppose you're right."
Charlotte backtracks, "Look, I'm-"
"Please, don't be sorry," Bella can't help but beg just a little. She never feels sicker than when somebody apologizes for her condition, for what's about to come. The cure for death and its accompanying melancholy is not, she has found, the knowledge that people empathize. It is the ability to set a time and date for the reaper's appearance, to take her thread from Fate's hands and shear the line between life and death herself. "I have more apologies than I could ever possibly need. What you said is true, and there's nothing I appreciate more right now than the truth, Charlotte."
Silence on the other line. Bella isn't worried. She understands social convention well enough to know that Charlotte won't hang up on a dying person, especially a dying person she just insulted. Sure enough, Charlotte returns. "Tell me who you are," she says.
"That really doesn't matter, does it," Bella replies cooly. Who she is has little bearing on flowers or her funeral. Death is for the living. Funerals? Doubly so.
"It totally does matter," Charlotte declares. Her own breed of confidence, a mixture of adolescent egoism and a wisdom so beyond her that even she doesn't grasp it, amuses Bella. She remembers wielding her own intelligence that recklessly, that threateningly, like her brain was a wild dog at the end of a leash about to snap. "As one of Full Bloom Floral's licensed floriographers, it is my job to know absolutely everything about the recipient of our bouquets in order to ensure that they are properly represented and reflected in the arrangements."
Bella scans her bedroom. She and Jack have maintained strict control over the number of bouquets allowed in the house and most of them end up in corners. Death is already a lodger in their home; they don't need reminders that she isn't going to be there for much longer. One arrangement in particular holds her gaze. Dr. Lecter sent her a humble bouquet from Full Bloom Floral, a small but immaculate collection of purple and white blossoms. The arrangement is the reason she called in the first place. "Is this a conversation you have with all of your clients?"
"Every one of them."
The flowers fit her like a glove. Bella can't decide whether the flowers were requested or the florist matched her personality. With Dr. Lecter, both are possible.
Charlotte continues, "Granted, when it comes to funerals, I'm usually speaking to members of the family. A first person perspective will be refreshing."
Bella looks away from Lecter's offering. "What would you like to know?"
"What do you think is important for me to know? These are your flowers. I assume accelerated cellular growth isn't one of your chief, defining qualities." Charlotte's wince is audible. "I'm sor…I'm…I have a problem. Actually, I wish I had a problem, but it's just me. I'm a walking, talking personality disorder."
"You have been nothing but delightful so far," Bella reassures her.
"Har har," Charlotte chides. "I'm hyper-fixating on your illness and making sarcastic remarks to compensate for my own discomfort. The kaibosh you put on apologies isn't helping at all."
"That sounds like a lot of 'you' problems," Bella points out.
Charlotte heaves a breath. "Save me from myself. Who are you?"
Bella's words fail her. "It has been a very long time since I thought about the answer to that question." Death has clarified a lot of things for her, but identity isn't one of them. Conceptions of the self fail when the self will cease to exist in less than a day. Bella is certain only of the actions she wants to take and the reasons she has chosen to undertake them. "I have tried very, very hard not to define myself in terms of my illness."
"Tough luck. You're staring death in the face. That changes people."
"Don't you start regretting you said that, Charlotte."
"I'm going to flagellate myself when I get off the phone."
Bella smiles politely. She wonders if Dr. Lecter received the same treatment, and if so, how he managed to order the flowers. The good doctor prefers honesty when it's carefully contained in propriety. "I don't want to be remembered as a dying woman. Cancer is not a battle; I am not a casualty of war."
"I have always despised that pink ribbon garbage," Charlotte's tongue loosens; her mood reanimates. "Cancer as some cuddly, fluffy, teddy bear illness."
"Pink's the wrong colour for what I have," though she's made a point of not knowing whether there is a ribbon for lung cancer.
"You value honesty."
"Yes," Bella's brow furrows, "But I know the value of lies. I know…how to avoid speaking the truth."
Charlotte scoffs, "Why would you ever do that?"
"The truth hurts, Charlotte."
"Apparently, not for the imminently dead."
"Illusions are for the living."
"Who are you withholding the truth from?"
Besides you? "Now that I know is none of your concern."
"It's either people you love or people you don't."
"What difference does it make?" Bella wants to hear the answer. She loves questioning categories and assumptions. Death has truly given her a new lease on life.
"One means that you're human. The other means you're a sociopath," Charlotte hits the nail on the head. "I'm leaning towards human, but my dealings with you have been decidedly limited."
Bella's heart wells inside her chest. It's not just the cancer making it difficult to breathe. "I am all too human."
"Who do you love?"
"I am more than who I love," Bella reminds her.
"Not when you're dead. Who is going to be looking at these flowers three-ish days from now and thinking of you?"
She can actually count the lumps amidst her alveoli now. All the growths blooming like a garden inside her chest. Bella smooths a hand unconsciously over her side of the bed. The comforter is cold beneath her fingers. She wonders how many nights Jack will go to sleep searching for her, how many mornings he will wake up before he realizes that she is gone.
"Hello?" Charlotte's voice rouses Bella from her reveries. She's starting to panic. "Are you still there?"
Bella wipes the tears from her eyes. "For now."
"I'm wasting time here, aren't I?"
"No. No, you're not. I'm...I appreciate your thoroughness, even if it is unorthodox. I didn't expect flower arranging to be this detail oriented."
"You want a flower arranger, go to a grocery store. I am a floriographer. I have been trained in the language of flowers."
Bella sighs. Very well. "I want my flowers to say, 'I did it my way.' Loudly and proudly: I did it my way."
Charlotte's horror returns. "Holy moly, you are committing suicide, aren't you?"
"No," Bella chooses her next words very carefully, "but I am dying, and since I must die, than it will be on my terms."
"Okay," Charlotte says frightfully, "and…um, what about the person with whom you're being so lovingly dishonest?"
Bella clutches the comforter in her hand. "Anything but a chrysanthemum."
"Oh?"
"Chrysanthemums are flowers of the dead in Italy," Bella purses her lips, "We met in Italy."
Charlotte waits for further explanation but none is forthcoming. "So you don't want chrysanthemums at a funeral because…?"
"He will have all the reminders he needs that I am gone. I want him to have one of me from when I was alive," Bella doesn't like her use of past tense. She corrects herself. "I am…alive right now. I am more alive right now that I have ever been." The words emerge from her mouth faster than the revelation can form in her brain. Bella breathes a sigh of sweet relief. "Translate that into the language of flowers."
"Why wouldn't you just do that now? Without the flowers?"
"It's very hard to convince people of anything when you're dying, Charlotte."
After a moment of careful consideration, Charlotte has to agree. "I will put together the most dishonestly honest bouquet the world has ever seen."
"Nothing over-the-top."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
Except that she's already dreaming of it. In fact, Bella swears she can hear flowers being heaped together already in some casket sized version of the rainforest. "It's not polite to lie to a dying woman," she only half-jokes.
"I am not lying," Charlotte is lying. She's lying well, but she is still lying nonetheless. As if sensing this, she offers the best line of defense against Bella's scrutinizing silence. "But if I wasn't, and I say this with all due respect, just what exactly could you do about it? You said it yourself: funerals are for the living."
Bella smirks, "I also told you I wasn't dead yet."
Charlotte changes the subject. "What name do I put this under?"
"Crawford. Bella Crawford. Actually…put 'Phyllis'. Phyllis Crawford."
Jack only calls her Phyllis when they disagree, and if they disagree about one thing, it's how her life is going to end.
"Do I need to call the police, Phyllis?"
"Call me Bella," she begs, "and no, no, you do not need to call the police."
"I have never spoken to a dying woman before."
"We are all dying, Charlotte. I'm just know how much time I have left."
"Twenty-four hours. What are you going to do with twenty-four hours?"
Bella smiles. "I'm going to tell my husband that I love him," she runs her hand over Jack's side of the bed. "I'm going to say goodbye to my friends and coworkers. I'm going to thank my psychiatrist. And then…" she leaves out the part about consuming all of her not-insubstantial supply of morphine, "And then I'm going to die."
Charlotte's voice is oddly quiet on the other line. Bella has to ask her to speak up. When she does, Charlotte sounds forced, "Do you want to leave a card?"
"Yes," Bella's voice sounds forced too, "but I don't want it to say…what I want to tell him."
"What do you want to tell him?"
Tears start to form on the edges of her vision again. Bella doesn't bother to wipe them away. "That I'm not sorry," she says sternly.
Charlotte gives her just enough silence as propriety can allow, and then another moment or two more because really, she has absolutely no idea what to say. When she does finally speak again, she's sporting her initial tone of brazen frankness. "I'm going to ask that you pay for these up front."
Bella's face breaks into a smile. She senses that Charlotte's has too. Laughing lightly, she reads off her credit card information and relays her address. The arrangements have already been made for everything else.
"So that's one dichotomous arrangement – no card – and a single stem of something Italian that says, 'I was here.'"
"Yes," Bella confirms.
"Is there anything else I can do for you today, Bella?"
"No," she prepares herself for the silence of the house. Her eyes graze over the bouquet Dr. Lecter sent. "Actually, yes. I received an arrangement for your shop recently. Could you identify the flowers?"
"Totally. What do they look like?"
"Violet coloured. Four petals. Star shaped. They are potted, not cut."
"Lunaria annua," Charlotte says definitively.
Bella raises a brow. "That was impressively fast."
"Those were a special order. I never forget special orders," Charlotte loves special orders, if her tone is any indication. "And, wow, they make total sense now!"
"How so?" Bella asks.
"Lunaria annua is also called 'annual honesty'," Charlotte states.
Her heart stirs. The blossoms become even more beautiful in her eyes. "I like that."
"Oh."
Bella doesn't like that tone of voice. "What?"
"In Dutch their known as judaspenge or judaspenning for Judas Escariot and the silver he was paid for betraying Christ."
"Oh," her gut twists. She looks away. "I like the other name better."
Four days later, after being released from the hospital, Bella is brought to pause at the entrance to her own home. There are flowers on the doorstep: an arrangement that walks a fine line between understated and excessive. Bella recognizes a few of the blossoms – gladiolus, delphiniums – but the others are lost on her. All that remains is the pit in her stomach, and the burn in her lungs with every breath.
Jack's presence at her side finally registers. He hasn't moved either. At first, Bella thinks it's her oxygen tank tethering them together, but then she remembers that Jack didn't know about the flowers.
"This was your doing?" he is scrambling to keep up with all the secrets she's keeping from him.
Bella doesn't lie. "Yes," she starts up the stairs. Each step brings another pause, this time from her battered, dying lungs. "I didn't want you to have to worry. Not after I was gone. I made…" she takes another step, drinks in another ragged breath. "I made all the arrangements."
"Those are for me, then?"
"No," she declares, harsher and bitterer than she intends. Bella softens her tone and gazes at Jack to remind him that he's not the reason she's angry. He doesn't believe her, but she has to try. "Those are for me."
Flowers are for the living, and she is, rather unfortunately, still alive.
There is a smaller package under the larger bouquet. Bella has Jack bring both into the bedroom. She surveys the small table with her other flowers, picking through the wilted specimens to create space. If there is one bouquet that should be there, it should be the one she had a hand in designing.
Lecter's lunaria are still there, diminutive and unassuming. Bella glares at them. She valued his honesty, trusted in it, and was liberated by it. If only she had known the cost of his truth, that the garden he led her to blossomed from the blood price on her own machinations.
Bella slams the pot of lunaria into the garbage and sets her own bouquet in its stead. The gladiolas beam up at her radiantly.
"You sent a card to your own funeral?" Jack asks.
She turns. In his hand is a small card, folded and stickered shut. "Bella Crawford," is written in curly font on the outside. Upon opening it, Bella lets out a small, involuntary cry.
"I'm not sorry. ~Charlotte."
Gladiolus and delphiniums both signify pride, boldness, and personal strength.