"Have you calmed down, Jack?" A familiar and dreaded voice roused the agent from slumber. The older man remained silent; a certain level of residual burning felt in his lungs. He ached in places that he had forgotten were hit. He knew he was taking on more than he could handle in his now weary age.
"It was foolish to attack without thinking." Hannibal added, as the agent looked around the room, he was lying in. He was reminded of how Will must have felt in the care of a hospital. He has never fully noticed the strength of the aseptic scent that lingered in the white painted rooms.
"You know this whole mess is your fault! Why?! Why have you led Will into this mess?!" A grating anger plowed through the older man's vocal cords, utilizing it to its maximum capacity.
"I did not intend to get Will into my matters, that is why I left." Hannibal responded; the matter-of-fact manner remained in his tone. The assassin approached the foot of the agent's bed, him peering down at the now capacitated patient. Whilst the agent look up, just to meet the younger man's eyes. A pivotal significance, because Jack knew in every way, Hannibal had the upper hand.
"I did not ask Will to follow me, nor did I intend for him to be attached to my family. You never let him leave the country after the incident, he would not have been harmed anymore." The assassin added, pressing his hands on the rails.
"Shut up!" The bubbling anger in the agent was teeming to erupt, but the next words from the assassin's mouth tamed the unceremonious anger.
"He did all this out of his own free will."
"Projecting your anger on me, when your incessant anger is more so, aimed at yourself. You, who could not protect Will, who you consider as a son. And yet you knew, you could have prevented him from being at harm's way." The psychoanalysis was a mix of truth and carefully selected lies. It was true that the agent saw Will as a son, but the subtle redirecting was managed with ease. A slow corruption of the false understanding within the agent was evident. The older man was subconsciously eating up the analysis as fact, making him more susceptible as he was just emotionally compromised.
"What would you have me do?! He is the only son I've ever known! Bella and I watched him grow up! I was there when he finally started to walk! I was there when he was the age he could finally go to school! I was there when his parents died! I have been working for the Grahams' for over thirty years!" Jack finally spoke in frustration, paralleling the analysis with his own admissions, and yet not processing what was happening.
"I am the person who knows him more than anyone! I am his—" Jack rambled on before being cut off by other man.
" Bodyguard, you aren't his father. You have over stepped your boundaries in terms of professionalism." Cold reality hit the agent.
"The same could be said with you. But you have the more intimate experience." Jack spitefully retorted, calmer now, gradual acceptance creeping in.
"It must be frustrating to know someone else knows the person you care about better. . . I sympathize with you. But harming me, would not be the solution to the emotions that ail you." Hannibal uttered, using reasoning as his way to affect the other's susceptibility to suggestion.
"We both want Will to survive."
"Dad, why didn't you tell me you were already here?" Abigail tentatively entered the waiting room where her adoptive father was currently seated. The talk with Jack truthfully took a toll in him.
"Should I give you the courtesy that you have been too frugal to give me?" Hannibal snapped, irritated by the youth's actions
"Dad—" the teen was cut off, with a chilling intensity.
"We have to drop that word relating to me, as you have surely known you aren't my own."
"Please! Listen!" The teen begged, tears slowly sliding down her cheek.
"You have neither listened to my heed nor Bedelia's, why should I give you the same respect?" A stern tone peaked; the assassin's tolerance is wearing thinner by the second.
"Im sorry! I—I just wanted to know why I was different! I always see parents pick up their kids from school, I always see a happy family, a—a complete family. I just wanted to know!" The word family humored the assassin. The truth is much crueler than that wishful thinking.
"Adults keep secrets to protect something with in their person. It could be pride, a sin, or for the protection of what they deemed as worthy. It was my mistake for try to protection you." A spitefulness was evident in how he spoke. He did what he thought was a way to hold on to his responsibilities, but now his regret was evident.
"Did your experience sate your burning desire for an identity?" Hannibal added salt to the open wound.
"No."
"An expected answer." Hannibal sighed, opting to leave, his frustrations with the teen can wait after the pressing issue dies down.
"Wait! Do you know who my real father is?" An innocent and expected question. But the answer is better unsaid, for the truth of the matter would give unease than relief.
". . . You would not enjoy the answer either way. And that man . . . Has long since passed." Hannibal left the room, opting to stay beside his beloved.
The assassin's mind retraced the memories of the happenings eighteen years ago flashed before him.
The tainted smell of snow cold, earthy and yet somehow acidic. The scenic blanket of white, had an artistic beauty in it, especially when red pungent paint strokes littered it like a canvas. He dragged the man by his hair, muttering a vengeful counting of victims.
The ceaseless rage has finally reached its peak, as he killed one of 'them'. The man was pleading for forgiveness, knees scraped by the icy ground, barely cushioned by the snow. His face was barely recognizable with all the injuries he sustained from the assassin.
"Did she beg?" The question startled the injured man, as the assassin fisted the man's brunette mop into a tight grip, raising his neck into an uncomfortable position. Hannibal slanted the man to the side to repeat the question again.
The man couldn't respond. His three companions were still free, and hope still lingering in him. The tension was as high as the pain he was suffering, but remained silent, as any unwanted response could result in either a prolonged death or an instantaneous one, both severely unwanted.
Hannibal continued to dragged the man to a barebones hut. The patched old hut, a stain on the earth for the assassin, a reminder of his failure to protect his last surviving family. The sound of screams greeted them as they drew close. A woman, with a strained voice, trying her best to call attention and an infant, a sound that was aching and sore from constant crying. It was painful to hear, as the blonde silently wondered if his sister suffered the same fate over and over again. The fear and fight still in her.
He dragged the man into the hut, where he was greeted by the sight of the other three perpetrators had their merry way, drinking and having their way with a terribly bruised woman. The men stopped to look at the scene of their comrade being pulled by a man in black attire, a stark contrast to the white beyond the door.
He looked at the woman who was laying on the cold floor naked, face badly bruised, cuts with blood languidly oozing on her stomach and arms as she lays there being pinned down by a man larger than her. But what caught the assassin's attention was not the damage, but the woman had fair blonde hair, reminiscent of his own flesh and blood. She continued to cry for help, as the three perpetrators stilled at the image of the stranger.
Hannibal felt a new kind of rage. A cold rage. A rage that did not erupt in heat, but a cold and calculatedness that makes every move tactical. His ease was the need to prolong pain and instill fear. To imitate the fear that they had done to his sister. The ones who have sullied his sister, using her for years for their own twisted pleasures.
One of the perpetrators lunged at him with a knife, as the other tried to join in the fight. The one abusing the woman, struggling to pulled out of her, as well as struggling to reach for his gun. The woman continued to scream, as the attack drawn in closer. The abuser finally reached his gun, annoyed by the screams ringing near him, he shot the woman in the abdomen, leaving her to bleed out.
Hannibal was careful, he was careful not to kill any of them until he exacted his revenge. He let go of the severely injured one, and opted to take the one with the knife first. He kicked the man's shins, toppling him over, whilst avoiding the other assailant who was attacking barehanded. The knife of the assailant sliding too far for any of them to reach. The assassin skillfully stepped on the toppled man's ankle, hearing a resounding crack and a shout of pain. All the while he elbowed the other man's jugular, and twisting his hand in such a way that the bone was dislocated from its socket.
The assassin took this opportunity to pull the man's arm to move him a few steps to continually stomp of the man's chest, cracking a few ribs in the process. The man groaned and pleaded in pain, until it was too much to bear, passing out after the heavy foot hit the broken ribs multiple times. The man he was holding quaked in fear, as he glanced at his two companions now incapacitated.
Hannibal too this time, to repeatedly slam the head of the man he was holding at the edge of the table, when he finally heard the sound of a gun being utilized. He peered at the man, now looking at his direction with shaky hands. The woman below him muffling her voice of pain, as she tries to seal the wound on her abdomen with her hands. The blood leaked between her fingers as tears continued to stream down her face.
The man with the gun finally pulled the trigger, a bullet barreled his direction, but due to the shakiness of his hands the barrage of bullets had no distinct direction. The bullets flying towards the other's direction. Unfortunately hitting the one he was holding fatally on the head, as well as him receiving a bullet to the arm and a few grazes. The loud click of the trigger and empty magazine gave him an opportunity. He grabbed the man by the collar, slowly chocking him with a controlled strength. Tears dripped down the man's eyes, as he slowly turned from red to blue, as the lack of oxygen finally reached its peak.
With all four either dead or incapacitated, he turned his attention to the woman. She was blonde, petite and could barely speak anymore. Hannibal looked into the wound, and it was fatal, but a slow succumbing death. As he crouched down, a bloody hand weakly held on to him. He looked at her teary eyes, a silent plead of release. The assassin took mercy at the woman, who was so similar to his sister, and ended her suffering. He snapped the neck of the woman with a resolute ease. Her open eyes still looking at him, reflecting him in its blue hue. But the room did not gift him silence, but a muffled cry was echoing. He followed the sound to a pile of clothes on the ground, a female baby tucked in between the sheets soiled and retaining a heightening fever. Hannibal tentatively picked up the child, as he noticed the pile of letters that cushioned the child. Hannibal sifted through the different parchments, when he noticed the pile was written by a single person.
"Dear Hannibal,
Are you even receiving my letters? Or is Pietro lying to me as you did?
—M"
"I'm pregnant
—M"
He read the few, and looked at the child he was holding. An identical look to his sister, although the child did not inherit the fine blonde hair and maroon eyes that were a staple of the Lecter family. Be he felt the same intensity as when he first held his new born sister so many years ago. A resolution was made inside of him.
He tucked the child as best he could, and care for it as much as he could give the situation. But it did not sate his thirst for pain.
Hannibal collected the three living assailants. Tying them up and inflicting continues pain for approximately two weeks. Making the suffering longer and more painful than the next. His only regret is not being able to make all four suffer, the man who died was deemed lucky by the others after three days in the assassin's 'care'. Flayed skin would be strewn on the floor to rot, and many activities that were done in the hut was named as the karma of those that crossed him. All the while caring for the child, he names Abigail. An ironic choice, meaning a happy father.
For the assassin, the men, one of which was the child's father had no name to speak of. They were all meaningless existences, the pestilence of the earth incarnate. The only gift he gave was a prolonged death to aid their damn nation. He had no answer as to who was the father of the child, but he knew he had dealt with them affirmatively.