Title: Facilis descensus averno, Day 5 of 30 Days of Hannibloom
Fandom: Hannibal
Pairing: Hannibloom
Rating: pg-13
Alana Renee Bloom knows she has abandonment issues. She has devoted her adult life to psychology, so she knows where her abandonment issues come from too. Not that they're not obvious. Her father packed up his bags one day and left. One day he was there, and poof, the next, gone. They told her "It's not your fault." And she'd hear whisperings of, "It was a long time coming." But it felt like her fault, and it certainly hadn't felt like a long time coming to eight year-old Alana. Her daddy had been her favorite, her prince. Her daddy had tucked her in every night, read to her from Charlotte's Web or The Wizard of Oz or some other novel. They'd been on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when he left. Alana never finished the book. When she found it under her bed collecting dust when she packed for college, she tasted something bitter and almost metallic in the back of her throat, and threw it in the trash. That was the first and only time the studious, literary-loving Alana Bloom ever threw out a book.
So Alana Bloom knows she has abandonment issues, and she knows where they come from. But as any psychologist could tell you, knowing where your issues come from and getting over them are two very different things.
She knows she has rarely let men into her life because of her father. She's afraid to trust because deep down she knows (or at least feels) that any man she comes to love will leave her.
Tonight, she finds herself running through a field in the dark, her breath puffing out in front of her in the frigid spring air. Her eyes have not yet adjusted to the darkness, and she trips over large stones in her path.
She grabs onto one as she trips again, and feels the smooth, cool stone beneath her fingertips. It is too smooth for something natural; this stone is man-made. She runs her trembling fingers over the stone and feels the notches of letters carved into it. Her eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark, but she feels the letters as if she is blind and reading Braille lettering; the words spells "Beverly Katz."
She pulls her hands back from the stone as though she has been scalded, though the stone is so cold, as cold as death. She is at Beverly's gravestone, and the other stones she has tripped over are other gravestones. She is in a cemetery.
She shivers in the cold and the dark and puts her hands in her pockets. In her pockets, she feels her keys, a pack of cigarettes, though she hasn't smoked since medical school, and an oblong metal cylinder. She pulls this out and feels for the switch on the side; when she finds the switch, she flicks it and light shines out bright in the darkness from the flashlight.
She plays the flashlight over the nearby graves. No name is familiar except for Beverly's grave right in front of her. But she knows she is looking for a particular grave. She's just not sure whose grave she is looking for.
Alana picks herself up from the ground and walks gingerly around gravestones, slow and silent in respect for the dead. She trains her flashlight over grave after grave.
Her eyes pause beneath a simple square stone of granite amidst weeds. This grave is uncared for, and she feels pity for its inhabitant. The stone was unusual with a piano etched upon it. Superimposed on the piano is a burning heart, and below, the words, " Facilis descensus averno." Her Latin is poor, but she believes it reads, "The descent to hell is easy."
Below the images and the disturbing phrase is the name Hannibal Lecter.
She screams. From the grave she hears a voice-his voice. "Alana. Alana!"
She opens her eyes. Pale light shines from behind the curtains in Hannibal's bedroom. The inhabitant of the bedroom is currently shaking her gently, his head cocked to the side, studying her.
"Alana. You were having a nightmare, my dear." He brushes her sweat-slicked hair back from her face. She shudders.
Alana Bloom has abandonment issues, and ever since becoming romantically involved with Hannibal, she's found herself having nightmares. They're different every night, but they always end the same. They always end with him leaving her.
This one was particularly bad. Never before has she pictured Hannibal leaving her by death. Does she find comfort in knowing that he didn't leave her voluntarily in this nightmare? There is no comfort, for he is gone, gone, gone.
She forces herself further awake, and reminds herself that Hannibal is not gone, but here, real, solid, alive, right next to her.
Hannibal kisses her forehead. "Tell me about your nightmare. It will certainly feel less real and therefore have less pull in the light of morning," Hannibal prods her.
Alana takes a deep breath to steady herself. "I'm...embarrassed."
"Of?" He asks.
"Of what you'll make of my nightmare." She turns toward him in his big bed and places one hand on his chest. "If I tell you...will you tell me what you have nightmares about? You told me once..."
His eyes flash dark and dangerous. For a moment, she feels afraid of him. But only for a moment.
"They'll have less pull in morning light, right?" she asks lightly.
He smiles, a brilliant, beautiful smile. "Yes, my dear. I'll share. You first though."
She tells him of her nightmare. When she finishes, she waits for him to psychoanalyze her dream.
Instead, Hannibal takes a deep breath and gets out of bed. He grabs a key from his bedside table and then walks to a trunk in the corner of his room. He bends down and unlocks the trunk, pulling a photograph from the trunk. She waits patiently for him to return as he stares at the photograph, lost in thought.
He returns to the bed, and when he looks up at her, she knows what Hannibal the boy looked like, innocent, open, and afraid. He hesitates, and then hands her the photograph.
"I have nightmares about being left too, Alana."
There is a crease down the middle of the yellowed photograph, right through the face of the little girl who peers out of the black and white photograph. She is small and chubby, a toddler angel frozen in time as she giggles and holds out her hands to the photographer.
"She was my sister. Her name was Mischa."
Please read and review!