So Alana Bloom walks into a mental institution. Frederick Chilton asks, "Why the hell are you still doing this?"
"Because, Frederick," Says Alana, "Go fuck yourself."
Her anger gets him punished. She says it out of pure needed defense. Because Chilton had looked at her with a sincerity she didn't even think he could manage, with something like human sympathy, and she is so absolutely repulsed by the premise of pity from this crawling tar pit of human filth whose organs have all been reattached that she cannot spit anything but bleeding vitriol out of her mouth. For anyone who knows Alana Bloom this is both uncharacteristic and strange, but she has been feeling it for a long time, and now the detachment is beginning to settle in. It's rattling her, feeling more unhinged. She doesn't usually bite that way.
"Thank you." Hannibal says, watching her with his maroon eyes. They're very black in the dark, and his complexion is uselessly sallow. She's seeing his synthetic humanity hemorrhage, watching it leave like the way his skin seems to slough off his bones, too thin. "I was looking so forward to Teletubbies this evening."
Chilton's adolescent punishments, how he does love them. Forcing Hannibal to watch awful television and listen to horrific music and taking everything out of that cell he can.
"What have you done for me lately?" She says, gathering her hair into a high ponytail.
"I don't know what I have done for you lately." She can hear the I before done as he would have enunciated it, where it would have been spoken—has it been years ago? "I'm curious to hear what your version of me has been doing for you, however. Do tell me how I occupy your mind."
This game is so outdated that offense is old hat. She would be angry if she weren't so tired. Being his enemy is exhausting. Being his friend is fatiguing. Being anything to him seems to take all the strength a person would need to hold up the Empire State Building on their back.
"I think the other night I dreamed about your awful joke in the break room, the 'couldn't cut it joke'…"
"Hello, Dr. Bloom."
Clarice Starling's hair is faintly auburn and the sun makes it lighter, paints it an enthralled shade of almost-ginger that makes Alana think of the poem in Stephen King's IT about January embers. Her eyes are the blue of a young pup, and her West Virginian twang is buried beneath an absolute desire to hide it from indignity. Alana notes it is not buried completely and there is something to that. Clarice Starling, she thinks, wants the world to know she will not entirely rebuild herself for its purpose.
In years, Hannibal Lecter will tell Alana that she sees Clarice Starling in her.
"FBI Agent-in-training Clarice Starling, I presume?" She asks. She knows the answer, though it's a politeness.
"Yes, ma'am, it's very nice to meet you." She flashes a smile that would seem simple to anyone else, but Alana reads the soft touch of unease to it. It's a rushed anxiety, the sort that doesn't bode well with someone who fidgets often, prefers to move constantly. She's reading Clarice's motions and actions immediately, especially for the nature of this appointment. She's already apologizing for the 'ma'am' but Alana waves it off, not bothered in the slightest. If anyone is allowed to address how old she's gotten, she thinks, it's the young who notice it. "It was Agent Crawford who pointed me in your direction. He thought it might be of some help to speak to someone who has better insight on Hannibal Lecter before I interview him myself, and it seemed to be his belief that you have somethin' of an expertise you can lend me."
She notes, with some worming comfort, that Clarice calls him Hannibal Lecter. Full name, like he is a living, breathing human being with human cells and hair follicles, and like he was given a name by parents who had him and he was born on earth, in a country, to a human way of life. It's a little relieving. No matter what anyone's done, she always feels uncomfortable when it's his professional name people call him by, like the 'doctor' gives them some distance.
She has a PhD in Hannibal Lecter. She might not know the rivulets of his skin or the intimate details, might not know but for once what his lips tasted like (she carries this thought like a strand of hair in a locket, and it drives her further and further insane), but she knows the veins in the backs of his hands and the ones in his wrists. She knows that he avoids saying the word 'pretty' because in his accent it is both strenuous and hilarious. She knows the teeth he will try to bite this girl with. She knows their indents like dental records. Above all, she knows he cannot be trusted. That last detail was the final fact in her dissertation, after all.
"When you sit in front of him, shoulders back, chest out, chin tilted up, hands in your lap. It's important your palms stay upturned, like you aren't hiding anything. He'll read your body language, and he'll pick at your bad posture."
"I haven't had much time to think on my bad posture." Clarice admits. Alana still reading, the tones in her voice, they're humorous, a little kind, but not without resilience. Not without a small sting for criticism. But she does pull back, does listen, and does mirror precisely what Alana asks.
"Yes. Like that."
"You must be a very good psychiatrist, to notice all that."
"Just years of observation." Crawford knows, Clarice knows, the entire community surrounding the FBI, the incident, and most of the psychiatric world knows. There's no use in tiptoeing around what has made her something of a pariah in the professional world. It's all a sewing circle and she figures hopelessly visiting him doesn't help her reputation at all. She's still trying to fix him but, mostly, she's trying to fix herself in the reflection of his glass. "What's your perfume?"
"Sometimes L'Air Du Temps." Admittedly impressed, Alana feels a bit more present, a bit more chipper. Clarice Starling must be capable, to roll with the odd questions. The way she pronounces that will not do, Alana knows. He will tear her to shreds for those words. Alana mentally tumbles through her listing of perfumes. Fooling Hannibal Lecter is not something people often manage to do, but if anyone can, she can do it. The process is two-way, after all. To have gotten into her head, he has left himself open, and she's been inside his. It feels almost like some victory to be doing this.
She'll have to find something that is in adequate taste but is not particularly extravagant. If one puts a chimpanzee in a suit, after all, it is still a chimpanzee, just one wearing an Armani. Not that Clarice Starling is a chimpanzee. Though she is particularly boyish, in a navy blue polo and a pair of loose, beige cargo pants, she's a pretty girl with brightness about her. Hannibal will try to turn that off quickly.
"I have a bottle of Gucci Rush. I'll be happy to lend it to you."
"How would he smell that all the way behind that glass?" She's leaning in, then, like listening to someone tell a story out of a children's book. They've just gotten to the big bad wolf about to eat granny, and his jowls are salivating, and his jaws are wide open, and somewhere in the kitchen there's a filet mignon made of thigh sizzling. She's very glad of outdoor cafes, where she never has to smell food being cooked, where they aren't restaurants with the nauseating sight of steak. She breathes out in spite of the thought.
"He has a very peculiarly developed olfactory talent. It's a little bit of a parlor trick for him. He'll comment on what you're wearing to try to throw you off-balance. Probably he'll do it for shock factor." She could recite him in boredom, like reading lifelessly off a pamphlet. The perfume is a spiteful thing on her end- but she knows it will be a gift she's giving Clarice. If he smells her specific scent on Clarice he'll be more responsive. He'll recognize it, and even if on some sub level of his mind he will be more responsive, he will consciously make it a game to lord over Alana next visit. She'll take the rod for that, deserve the whipping. He can't hurt her anymore, and now she knows she can take it.
"Dr. Bloom- it really ain't none of my business, but," Alana is ramrod straight in the seat and very patient, and she isn't aware, not truly, of the laser vision she's got pointed at Clarice, like boring holes. The compassion is bleeding out of her, and maybe she's more a snake than a chameleon- maybe she has shed her skin and under it she has found his, much tougher than her smooth surface. She thinks if you dragged your fingertips across her now they might snag, but she wouldn't be able to tell you if it was on cracks or serpentine scales. "-are you okay?"
She hasn't thought about that word in a long time. 'Okay'. When people say 'okay' she has learned to understand the answer they are searching for is long term, not short. They want to know if you have been, will be, and are 'okay', not if you are only then. 'Alright' is the general word, she has picked up, that is used when they're only concerned with a single moment. And when she breathes out she exhales a touch of what feels like Hannibal, and for the first time in awhile she feels like Alana Bloom, present in that moment behind her eyes.
"Not particularly, but I think you can both understand at appreciate that, in your line of future work." She doesn't lie to Clarice Starling. She figures after dissecting her with such absolute abandon it's only polite she be truthful. "But I'll be fine. None of that 'ain't', though."
"I'm sorry." The girl has intelligent eyes, unguarded, but smart. They pick up on things quick, and they know when to drop things, too. "Talking to you I don't think I realized. I hardly say 'ain't', anymore."
"Good habit to break." Alana is sure she is smiling, and it feels like one. An actual smile, with teeth and everything. "Keep it broken."
"Yes, ma'am." Clarice says, apologetic. But her hands are up immediately, palms bare, like held at gunpoint, Alana's eyebrow raised pointedly for the second slip, "Sorry. Impulse."
"Habit." Alana corrects. She's still smiling, and that's what matters. "Which is fine."
Alana is glad for the pane of glass that will separate this girl and Hannibal Lecter. Now he can only figuratively eat her alive.