Thanks to jnicweb for beta reading!

My dear readers, you may watch the short film "Café Hector" before reading, as young and nervous Lars' appearance from there is perfect for the fic.

The cousin (or the second cousin?) came to Carl's life like a thunder out of the clear sky about two months ago, just after Mom's death. Hannibal Lecter was older than he for a year or two, and was able to speak just enough to explain who he was to Magnussen the senior, and why he had knocked on their door. A son of such person, kind of relative therefore, an orphan now, all the family had died, had been brought up in an orphanage, had found an aunt in France, but… (Carl had had no idea what a "but" could be found in France, sunlit and warm, to make one prefer their nasty town three borders away.) "I beg you. I have nobody else to go to," said the skinny stray, and it was enough to melt the ice in the old man's eyes, causing a flood of tears. "She would do the same," he must have thought, the man who had aged from his early forties to middle fifties within some weeks. Since then Carl saw his new cousin at home from time to time, but didn't hear one more word.

Not as if he wanted to. Hannibal looked exhausted, nearly lifeless, so it was frightening to throw a look on him, not even talking. He slept though half a day and still had bags under his eyes, he ate well and still was as bony as a skeleton. And, despite all that, he looked neither ill nor mental.

Carl was scared of him. Not to hatred but to quite an irritation from any look at the cousin. Especially when the night darkness was becoming threateningly thick and the floor was screeching but not itself… Hannibal walked in his sleep, muttered something in another language, called for somebody…

"Dark. Not seeing. Blood. Mischa. Back. Hate you."

The lump in his throat hurt.

"Hannibal."

"No. Find you. Murderers. Mischa!"

"Hannibal!"

His voice almost broke with nerves. Carl would never let out the third call. Whether for better or for worse, Hannibal always woke up, not going further, to the stairs where he could break his neck…

At the minutes, when a cousin was standing opposite his cousin, when one's face was displaying other's fear, Lecter looked almost like a human. Carl often wanted to cross himself but knew it wouldn't help.

Carl was staring in a mirror and trying to stop a tic in his left cheek. He couldn't manage it.

"Gits. Hate you. Hate you all."

"Problems?"

"Bastards!" the guy shouted, turning around.

Hannibal was standing in the doorway and eating something attentively, not taking his same attentive eyes off Carl. His colourless voice had become less hoarse, but his lips now weren't parting.

"Who are?"

"From another group. That's nothing. They don't know yet…"

"That you can reply with something? Hurt them. Make them suffer. Kill one."

Carl threw one more angry look in the mirror. He felt a strong desire to break-

"I can help."

"What? Kill somebody?"

"Yes."

Carl made a non-believing smirk, then bared his teeth again and muttered:

"I'll do better. I have information. A bit more, and I'll show them…"

Hannibal eyed his cousin carelessly.

"I think a knife is more reliable."

No one heard the other.

The door opened almost at once after a knock, in answer to Carl's silent prayer. Pushing Hannibal out of the way, he came bursting in, shut the door back close, and pressed himself against it.

He looked quite like in a horror film.

"What happened? You have blood on your shirt and-"

"That's not me!" shrieked Carl, trying to flatten himself, to move further from Hannibal – not to let him point at the stains that were burning his skin like torture iron.

"Be quiet. Your father left, but the neighbours still have ears. That's not you who was wounded?"

"I did nothing," whispered Carl, condemned, closing his eyes. "He started it himself, I swear. I tried to ward him off… and he had a knife… and…"

He turned a bit green, swallowed, and fell silent.

"When and where?"

"Some… ten minutes back. There. In the lane," – an uncertain gesture in the air.

"Lead me."

Hannibal had had time to turn the lights off, pick up an old jacket, and to lock the door (from outside) until Carl realized what he had been said to do.

"Back in there? No, I can't, I…"

"Go."

The return seemed to be faster than the departure.

There was nobody in there. The bloke Carl had been talking about couldn't be counted, especially because he looked, and smelled, more like a bag full of dung than like a human.

Hannibal looked over him impartially:

"So?"

"What "so"? I wanted to drink, you can buy something two corners away. There were the ones I told you about, remember? Well, then I left, he left after me… Wanted to have fun, maybe, to punch me in the face or something. Or cut my throat open – look, that's his knife. But I heard him complaining to his gang that he'd forgotten in at home, what a pity and everything. I turn my head, he's there going at me, and I… I don't even remember what I did… He bumped into the wall and went out. After he wakes, he'll tell everybody I knocked him out. Nobody in here will believe me."

Carl seemed to be amazed by the lot he had said. He was being suffocated with despair. Hannibal's unnatural calm was flowing over him, dropping inside in one moment and causing him to tremble panicky and to want to run out of here as far as he could.

Hannibal squatted down to take a closer look, then picked up the knife, examined it and pulled it inside his pocket.

"What the hell are you-"

"He forgot it at home, remember? I see that you were rude. Can't you fight properly?"

Carl jumped on it:

"If I couldn't, I would lie here myself! And I say again, I didn't touch him…"

"You make a mess in your own words. You never killed before?"

Carl's throat was clenched with a spasm:

"He is not…"

"Not yet."

Now Lecter was trying to give a convenient grab to the "victim's" collar. He thought a bit, then grabbed his hair, too…

"Turn away. Close your eyes and ears."

It was easier to go blind than to stop himself hearing. A skull appears to crack very loudly when hit against a stone…

An acid wave rose in Carl's stomach. He shook his head to calm it down and heard rustling. Hannibal was dragging the body somewhere.

"I will throw him to the river for him not to lie here and smell. And the water will destroy clues."

Hannibal muttered on - something more about water, like 'a real downpour' for 'tonight.' But Carl couldn't listen any more. He just stood there, his back against the wall, refusing to believe what had just happened. The calm and force that his weakling of cousin had taken from nowhere was a bad trick to his already out-tuned nerves.

Was something wrong with his ears? The splash was lower than he had expected.

When Hannibal came back and put a "calming" hand on Carl's shoulder, there was much blood on his hands.

"You are a murderer."

Hannibal smiled calmly, not to say – proudly:

"Now you are, too."

"I did nothing!"

"You did a lot. I just helped you… to finish."

"And what do you need now?"

"Trust me. And don't be afraid. At all."

Carl hardly found might to breathe on. Hannibal didn't need an answer:

"Now you have, as you say, information about me. And I have some about you. It may unite us."

"What I don't know about you?"

"Actually, anything."

Both fell silent.

Slowly, very slowly, almost understanding what he was taking, Carl raised his arm and put his hand on his cousin's, staining his own fingers with the blood, as if setting a seal.

"I trust you."