Hannibal had no poisons or sedatives that would work quickly enough in the kitchen (an oversight he would have to correct). Besides Maryann's safety riding on such chemical warfare rendering it out of the question, Hannibal would never deign to do that to the food.
He lingered over the butcher knife block, but left the weapons intact. He could certainly hit Gideon between the eyes with any one of the gleaming blades, but his death throes might slice Maryann. In addition, actually killing Gideon in front of his gardener would skew her perception of Hannibal.
Which was not to say he wouldn't, eventually, skew it. Just that he wanted to do it on his terms and in his time.
Hannibal swept back into the room to find Gideon snuffling at Maryann's hair like an animal. The cutter caught the cannibal's eye and smirked. "Sorry," he said without contrition. "I couldn't help myself. She smells like flowers and..." he took a deeper inhale, his chest actually pushing Maryann's forward.
Hannibal forcibly swallowed his urge to imbed his fingers in the man's eye sockets. "Sunshine," he supplied, setting down the tray with care and seating himself beside it. "You smell sunshine."
"Ah!" Gideon exclaimed, extricating himself from her hair. "That's it! Leave it to you, Doctor Lector, to achieve veracity in poetic expression."
Maryann had been staring at the ceiling with a grimly set look, but at the proxy compliment, she twitched a smile for Hannibal's benefit. He watched her mull over the fact he had plumbed her scent for intricacies, noting the way her eyes softened.
"It's been so long since I smelled a woman," Gideon sighed.
"What about the orderly you killed?" Maryann spoke up blatantly, wrath clouding her face like a storm. "I imagine you smelled her - !" The gardener was cut short, literally, by a quick little dash of the knife over her exposed collarbone.
Gideon rode her snarling whine with an amused expression, allowing her to move in her pain with the knife floating against her blood soaked neck. He observed Hannibal over her tensed shoulder with dark eyes.
Hannibal watched Maryann settle and wrap shaking white knuckles around her own knees and wished, fleetingly, he were the one drawing those sounds from her. Gideon's choice of human shield was smart, if nothing else, because Hannibal was just as interested in seeing Maryann tested as he was in seeing her safely through. By lacing her up like Kevlar against Hannibal, he assured the cannibal would not only be hesitant to kill him, but would be placated by the ride in the meantime.
But Maryann held Hannibal's eyes through her tightly controlled writhe, her bare heel skating the plush carpet and her hands compacting over the wound. It made unholy heat pool in Hannibal's gut to have the reaction gifted to him, piped right into his fucking loins, instead of to Gideon.
Really, who of the two in the chair was smarter: the marmot who made suffering more attractive than murder, or the imposter who offered up the suffering in supplication to Hannibal's godhood?
"I did smell her," Gideon said in Maryann's ear, smoothly as the snake into Eve's. "Like morphine and the metal of lobotomy picks. Intoxicating, really. But watching the news does not give you permission to sass me."
Maryann's face twitched with anger, but she remained silent, glaring at Hannibal but not at Hannibal, who gave his own fascination reign on his face. She was angry at showing pain, because she knew she was bleeding around sharks. She didn't want to give Gideon any satisfaction.
It's dangerous to make a third wheel out of your captor, he smugly told her with his face. But inwardly, he crowed that even a knife-wielding psychopath couldn't completely disrupt their dinner. Hannibal glanced to Will, whose head had lolled uncomprehendingly at Maryann's vocalizations. "You chose the wrong hostage for that, I'm afraid," the cannibal said wryly.
The cutter chuckled to hide the flicker of worry over his features. "What's on the menu, Doctor Lector?"
Even with a knife biting cruelly into her neck, Maryann was captivated by Hannibal, who iterated the menu with refined pride to her, not to Gideon. "Spinach-herb tortes," he began, "Along with pesto and bulgur wheat crackers, make up the appetizer course. The spinach and herbs all came from the garden."
Maryann softly smiled. That her plants were, indeed, fitting ingredients for his artistically perfected dinner party dishes was lofty praise.
Her host noted her recognition with a subtle smirk. "Sweet potato gnocchi in saged olive oil," Hannibal continued, gesturing to the steaming orange lumps the size of the thumb's first digit. They sat in tiny white porcelain boats. Giving Maryann a knowing look, he amended, "The violet-variegated sage, for interest."
Hannibal's eyes morphed into a different flavor of dangerous when Maryann allowed him a pleased look. She could feel Gideon's befuddlement against her back like a carpet of insects. What she and Hannibal neglected to tell him was the old-language meaning of sage: esteem. Hannibal was communicating that he prized Maryann, and the thought settled on her like a warm blanket.
But it was the beast saying such. Was the thing trustworthy? Did it care about her life, or simply wish to take it himself? Ultimately, it came down to which of these hard-eyed men would let her live. The devil I've met once before, Maryann queried, biting back fleeting hysterical laughter. Or the demon unknown?
"Carrot and ginger salad." The purples, reds, oranges, whites, and yellows of the multi-colored roots made for a cacophony of a vision, perfuming the air with natural sweetness and the magical heated hum of the spice.
Maryann's nose flared in appreciation, exactly as it might were she occupying the table of her own volition. She did have such a soft spot for ginger.
"Young greens salad with prosciutto."
"Hardly young, from what I reckoned," Gideon interjected.
"They're actually two months old," Maryann replied coolly. She deemed sticking up for her plants worth the trouble. She was ready for the second rake of the knife over her clavicle this time, and merely hissed and contorted shallowly in the cutter's lap.
SHIT that hurts! Maryann shrieked inside, clamping her jaw shut in the wildfire agony. She could feel Gideon soaking up her reaction like thirsty soil did water, and that made Maryann all the more determined to give him as little as possible. Just enough to keep that maroon-eyed thing across the table interested more in her life than her death.
But fuck, it was painful. And her dress was ruined, splotched with darkening patches of her own blood. After I spent a half-hour just deciding how to tie it, too.
She tried not to think of the blood, tackily drying on her neck and trickling down her chest. It made her a little sick.
"Do carry on," Gideon encouraged, unperturbed.
Hannibal seemed transfixed by the ribbon of red running down her breast, pooling in the fabric of her cleavage. Maryann was more willing to stay still for him, to let him get his fill of her distress, because it seemed to soothe whatever she saw reflected in his eyes.
She didn't mind, at the moment. That thing trapped behind his irises was deadly dangerous, decidedly more sinister than the man with the blade to her neck. With the right provocation, it would be her ticket to safety.
Somehow, the blade at her neck was both a threat and a protection.
When Hannibal tore himself away, Maryann blinked back tears to slip him a pointed glance at the salad, and a surreptitious wink. It might as well have been thunderous applause by the way subtle but no less indicative way he roostered.
"Liver pâté, my own recipe," Hannibal gestured, flourishing the serving bowl's lid off. "And you've met the roast." (Seeing at it was the thigh of a janitor on Gideon's floor of Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, the idea was not far-fetched.)
"Be a dear and make a plate, Maryann," Gideon said, lightly pushing her between the shoulders with his sweaty hand.
Maryann allowed her bewilderment to show as she cautiously slid from his lap, flashing a furtive glance to Hannibal. He ticked a brow as though to say, You heard the man.
"Freeze," Gideon commanded dully. Two fingers pressed to the base of Maryann's neck, running down the proffered knobs of her smile. Maryann swallowed and fought down a shiver, staring into the chandelier's gleam on the plate. What the hell...?
"If I want," Gideon said conversationally, tapping the space between two vertebrae. "I can paralyze you from the waist down. No tricky business, Maryann."
She nodded solemnly at the cold prick against her back and bent at the waist to reach the platter with four of everything. She hastily plated one of each item, tonged up some of the lovely salad into a shallow bowl.
Hannibal was right there. A mere two feet from her! Not helpless, Lord no: comfortable, offering not even a hint of aid. He'd sunk further into the coils of his monster, which was at once a potential saving grace or a certain grave, depending on... something Maryann hoped wasn't beyond her manipulation. She didn't know the inner workings of the dark being.
Both doctor and the terrible thing he harbored were contentedly sitting, languidly following the sticky trail between her breasts with unblinking eyes.
Maryann blushed, but didn't adjust her dress modestly. Despite mortal peril, she really wanted his fingers to follow his eyes. Maybe she'd get the chance.
Gideon's gaze, however, she could feel on her ass like a spotlight. That, she could do without.
"Now," Gideon said, casually putting a hand on her waist to guide her descent back into his lap. "I want to hear the story behind that." He kicked Maryann's bare, mottled foot out indicatively.
Maryann felt all the blood rush from her face, even her lips. It was the sharpest paling she'd ever experienced, coupled with the strongest disbelief and terror.
Hannibal the man was not answering her pleading looks. The monster wanted to know as much as Gideon.
The gardener huffed-hitched-sobbed, trying to pull herself together. In this entire event, she had not once thought about Black Sheep or her myriad scars. The threat of more scars was a fitting distraction! And who was this asshole, to hold her hostage, hurt her, then demand her deepest secrets?
"We're waiting, Maryann," sing-songed the deranged man, picking up a slice of meat from the salad.
Maryann sought Hannibal's face again, trying to ground herself. She'd seen what had flickered in the depths of his expression when she directed her knife-born pain towards him: hunger, delight, actual arousal. The fact that such emotions could be garnered from Maryann's pain was inconsequential, at the moment; she would explore it later, if she had a later. What point remained was that it incited a bizarre desire in Hannibal to see more of that pain.
She couldn't give him that pain if she was dead.
So Maryann found anchor in Hannibal's dried blood eyes, simultaneously casting off the shell of wholeness she carried like a turtle, the shell that protected her soul's scars while convincing her of her healing.
The shell was little more than a lie.
Was this it? Was Maryann finally going to give voice to the series of events that had kept her from peaceful sleep for so long? That story that was tangled around her heart like parasitic vines, threatening to topple her?
"I got that scar," Maryann began hollowly, slowly. "From my last lover."
Gideon shifted to eye the puckered flesh over her shoulder, his cheek intimately brushing hers. "'Bout a year old, right?" he asked.
Maryann's nod was mechanical, craned slightly away from his unwanted, stubbly cheek. "Feels like it's been longer," she said softly, eyes hazing as she contemplated ever-fickle time. She spoke up again, after a moment. "What can I really say? He was my boyfriend. For two years we lived together. We were happy. Well," she mirthlessly chuckled. "I convinced myself we were."
Hannibal let the elegant fingers of one hand cradle his chin, interest written in his posture. He almost looked like a psychiatrist.
Maryann was happy to rest in the fallacy, if it got her through this. Retelling the horrific past was unsettling on a molecular level, each word wrenching past her lips, unspooling from her gut like barbed wire.
"What was his name?" Gideon asked, tracing the knife down her neck tendon.
A conflict was reached in the gardener. She didn't speak her ex-lover's name because it made her physically ill to do so. Since she'd never seen counseling for the event, and the court proceedings following had required more of her lawyer than herself, she'd fallen into the belief that but not uttering her tormentor's name, she might hold at bay all the anguish he'd caused her.
The beach may hold the ocean at bay, but it still batters its shores, Maryann thought ruefully. "In my dreams," she said, with a tremor of angst that she prayed would satisfy her captor and entice the insidious beholder. "His name is Black Sheep."
Against all odds, the effect was as desired. Hannibal took on a syrupy satisfaction, like he'd procured a choice wine. Gideon's smile was clear in his voice. "What have you to say to that, Doctor Lector?"
Hannibal seemed sedately delighted to be consulted. He leaned forward slightly, for all the world looking like a therapist, save for the malicious glint in his eyes. "A transposition of fear, for better to manage its gravity," he replied.
"Black Sheep, why?" Gideon asked.
"Because when he - " Maryann's dry throat contracted in a futile swallow. "When he comes up behind me in my nightmares, he always says, 'Baa, baa, black sheep.'"
Gideon hummed with excitement. "And how did he get this haunting little pseudonym?"
Maryann rubbed her knees in a blatant self-comforting gesture, obviously at war with the situation. "It's not really simple," she managed. "I began to call him that after his attack, once the dreams started. But he always would joke he was the black sheep of his family. He was different, in so many ways. Dark-haired, whereas his family were all fair. Liked reptiles and such for pets. Ate his meat raw, or as rare as possible," Maryann delicately shuddered. "Just... strange."
"But he was charming and dangerous, and you went for it like all the girls do," Gideon surmised mockingly. "Thoughts, Doctor?"
Cheap shot, Maryann thought, grinding her teeth. Making the man who looks like my romantic interest but speaks like evil dole out utterly respectable therapy.
"Seeking differences in mates is an evolutionary trait," Hannibal said evenly, steepling his fingers. "In our primitive pasts, it was evolutionary adaptations that made surviving possible. Thus, desirable mates were notably different."
Maryann looked pensive before she spoke, with understated acidity, "So I was predisposed to being attracted to a psychopath?"
Hannibal smiled, man and monster vying for dominance in the expression. "You are rather different yourself, Maryann. And knowing that, deep down, your biological imperative sought to double your chances of strong, healthy children."
Maryann flinched at the mention of children, drawing a hiss as she cut herself on Gideon's steady blade. Wincing, she remarked, "That's what set him off, I think. Out of the blue, he just snapped." With her spine slumped in dejected weightiness, she was the picture of morose recollection. "He was in the kitchen doing something, and I was puttering around the living room. I could see him and talk to him through the doorway."
Her fingers' tightness on her dress fold had made her hands literally half their normal size, and they were starting to prickle. She forcibly loosened them, taking a moment to glance at Will, who swayed to some unheard music, or perhaps his own beating heart. He looked pitiably ill, and Maryann was worried that his state might worsen.
She had to do something, and soon, to end this. Her poor, sick friend needed help.
"I asked him casually if he ever wanted to get married," Maryann continued. "He went still, with his back to me, so I took it as leave to ask if he ever wanted kids." She closed her eyes in pained remembrance. "I underestimated... everything. Least of all, our relationship. Most of all, his actual sanity."
"We went back and forth for a while, with him getting more and more agitated. I didn't understand why: we were just talking, for God's sake!" Her tone took on a hurt pitch that echoed from the past. "But argued, I asked him, 'Don't you ever want to read nursery rhymes to a little one, someday?' And that's what ultimately set him off."
"The kettle whistled, and he... his face just changed. He went from angry to crazy in a second flat! By the time I realized I was too close for comfort, he was sloshing the kettle at me." Maryann twitched her bare foot. "I wasn't quite fast enough."
The room hung silent with minds awhir: two dastardly, one miserable, and another chasing rabbits down welcoming holes.
"I did my research, after," Maryann broke the silence, unconsciously baring her neck to the blade to contemplate the ceiling. "He was different from his family because he was adopted."
"Dark hair is hereditary," Gideon agreed.
"He had been born in Russia, and brought to the US at the age of six." Her jaw ticked in self-blame. "A simple background check, which I could have done at any damn time in two years of dating, told me he'd been questioned by police in relation to not one, but two murders, and that he'd been reported for killing neighborhood pets as a kid and teenager."
"The first sign of a budding psychopath," Hannibal agreed. "And hints, perhaps, of blooming."
"Pity it came too late," Gideon sneered.
The gardener did not respond to the jab, for she felt so wrapped up in the misery of the recounting, she could scarcely be bothered with petty jeers. "That's the long and short of it," she muttered, drawing the story to an awkward end.
Hannibal, however, could scent the lie like burned butter. That was not the complete story. That was not the long, short, or any approximation therein. Maryann was still holding back, and only got away with it by not looking Gideon in the face.
Smart woman, too smart, his beast seethed in appreciation. She was basically guaranteeing Hannibal would strive to keep her alive, that he might get the full, complete, unadulterated and uncensored tale.
How she'd figured out it was something he wanted was beyond him. Maybe she understood more about his nature than she thought.
"Doctor Gideon," Hannibal said lightly. "You've now not only been fed, you've been regaled. I think we've earned the right to know why you disrupted our evening so spectacularly."
It was then Will took a stumble-step forward, eyes rolled to white, and began to shake.