Title: God Is Dead
Author: Gin
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He has never liked the sound of German. Perhaps in his mind it is equated always with those Wehrmacht Heer and their cruelty.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or references used herein and make no profit from said usage.
Notes: Hannibal Rising is coming out soon, and I couldn't help myself. This doesn't really have a point, but I'm interested in Hannibal as a youth and some of his relationship with Lady Murasaki and his time in France before medical school.

His memories of the German deserters are locked in sort of closet inside his memory palace, intact but mostly, and purposely, disregarded. He tries his best to stay out of there, and indeed it takes him until about age forty before he unlocks that particular door and ventures inside.

Not all secrets can be contained. At night he sometimes dreams of them, and no amount of lucidity will change the image from their winter uniforms and lusterless eyes. Even when he pushed himself to wake and abandon the dreams, he could hear them talking. Inside that locked room and inside his head at night, there is an unwanted litany of phrases and conversation. He has never liked the sound of German. Perhaps in his mind it is equated always with those Wehrmacht Heer and their cruelty.

---

When he is a boy of nineteen, still in France, he spends the summer at the coast in Brittany. Most of his days are spent lounging in the windowseat reading omnibuses, scolded by the tacit arch of Murasaki's eyebrow. She does not censure him, exactly, and they have a fondness for one another that is unexpected but content. Still, she is a foreigner, a woman, a lady, a prize bought and paid for by his uncle. In some ways he is a pet to her, or at least a distraction, but the idea is not insulting. There are worse things than to be a pet to a geisha.

He learns a measure of social decorum from her, but it is Japanese in its sensibilities. His uncle is robust and self-important where Hannibal is quiet, and concedes to the ego of other men in the room. He is also like a woman in this way, like Murasaki, and it unsettles his uncle.

He is better off reading in the window, in any case.

--

One afternoon his uncle instructs him to go outside and walk along the beach. Hannibal knows he wishes to talk to his wife and wants the house empty of all but servants for their disagreement. Not that there will be any reaction from Murasaki; she will sit with her ivory hands in her lap and her ink eyes to the floor. The nature of the argument is obvious -- his uncle is pushing to send Hannibal to university right away, and Murasaki wants to keep him close as long as possible.

"It's damned unnatural for a boy his age to be inside so much," Hannibal imagines his uncle will say. "He needs to see more of the world."

He knows what his uncle will say because he has heard it all before. He has no inclination to go anywhere, not until term starts and he can settle into the dorms or a house. The level of tension inside his uncle's household has risen, and both Murasaki and Hannibal's silence are driving his uncle to action.

He was lucky the idea of the coast was conceived; their last outing as a makeshift family. When his uncle realized three days into the holiday that all Hannibal was partial to involved books and resting his feet on the furniture, or dining with Murasaki in solitude, he was furious.

To save his aunt the degradation of being yelled at in within his earshot, Hannibal follows his uncle's urging and takes a stroll along the beach. He has brought along a basket of foodstuffs and a book, a worn copy of Athenaeus' "The Deipnosophists." He is reading it as a delicate, and most likely unnoticed, blow to his uncle, who finds the merest hint of Classical vices scandalous. Since he learned this peculiar fact, Hannibal's collection of ancient Greek texts has tripled.

There is no one out that he can see. Shrugging, he seats himself down on the bare earth, far away from the tideline. He removes his shoes and sits Indian-style, toes buried in gritty sand.

After a few minutes, he finds he is hungry and pulls out an apple. The cook included a whole set of cutlery at his request, and he methodically peels and cores the apple, dropping the red skin onto a napkin that will be disposed of later. He cuts the fruit into quarters and eats them as the wind blows his hair errantly and attempts to do the same to the pages of his book.

For about twenty minutes he reads, mostly from Book XIII. He is fascinated by pederasty, and not just because his uncle finds him immoral for it. There is something so vain and deluded in its nature; he cannot think of what any older man might teach him that he doesn't already know, aside from the practical technique of fellatio -- the idea is laughable. Hannibal Lecter has never been a pais in his life, not in the true sense.

He is reading of Agamennon loving Argynnus, Argynnus swimming in the Cephisus river. This is being committed to memory when the sound of laughter from a short distance brings his eyes up from the pages to survey the landscape. Four boys, also with their shoes and stockings off, are playing on the beach. They throw sand at each other as impetus to brawl, and throw rocks into the water as a game. They are his age, maybe a small handful of years younger; it is hard to say for certain.

The tallest with hair the color of a beaver's pelt notices Hannibal first and waves congenially. Hannibal raises his left hand in still greeting and returns to his book. He thinks this will be the end of it, being the sort who would leave greetings on the beach to that level of acquaintance, but they come closer, still laughing.

"Salud," the tallest says, his accent distinctly Breton.

"Bonjour," Hannibal replies in his faintly Baltic French.

"Pairs?" he asks.

"Non," he answers, although it is as true as anything. He is Lithuanian, that is the end of it, but saying so is unfitting.

"Ah." He tilts his head at Hannibal, and his three friends do the same in a bizarre mimic. "You speak English?"

"Yes," Hannibal answers. By now he has given up on returning to his book, so he closes it and rests his palms on his knees. "I'm here on vacation."

"Oh, ya, vacation. My friend Jochen is on vacation also. I am Gaël."

"Hello, Gaël." He says it simply, and to be polite. "Hello, Jochen."

Jochen hears his name and smiles in a tight-lipped fashion. "Guten tag."

He freezes inwardly at the sound of German, although he really should have guessed by the name. He remembers the cold soldiers gathered around a fire, muttering to each other what words they could through their misery. He remembers the barked orders in German, frustration mounting as comprehension fell to the children and failed. Achtung. Achtung, dummkopf! Somewhere in this mess of memory, he recalls basic courtesy. "Freut mich, sie kennenzulernen."

Jochen smiles sincerely at Hannibal's attempt. "Sehr gut. Wie hei---"

He knows what is being asked, and he doesn't want to hear more of that cursed German coming from someone so near his age and so nondescript he cannot despise him. "Hannibal." For Gaël's benefit, he says it in English. "My name is Hannibal."

"Ya, Hannibal, nice to meet." It is clear to all that their conversation is limited, and any ideas the other boys might possess about a new playfellow have been quashed. Hannibal idly wonders who in the group speaks German, or if Jochen speaks French. He finds he doesn't actually care.

"Nice to meet you as well, Gaël, Jochen."

"We'll leave you to your book," says a blonde who has not been introduced. He has keen blue eyes and is clearly educated from the cadence and familiarity of his English.

"Thank you."

"Kenavo," Gaël says to Hannibal, though he is walking away already and it is clearly an afterthought. He waves a disinterested, limp wrist behind him and walks off with his friends.

The other boy Hannibal did not get the name of says something about attending church. Everyone else in the group laughs reproachfully.

"Gott ist tot!" Jochen says, still laughing. Hannibal can't help but silently agree.