This gesture, this whole 'mouth on her hair, or maybe her forehead' thing, is so new Neph doesn't see it coming, doesn't register alarm or anticipation or anything. One second she's blinking up at him and the next he's ducked down, closed lips a brand against her cold skin.
There'd been no time to react back at the warehouse, no room for anything but a flash of startled confusion amidst the panic and adrenaline. She's had literally no chance since to think about it. This time there's no thought at all, just a flashflood of memories so old they've worn away to sensations - the smell of her mother's hand lotion, the way her wedding ring would snag when she'd comb Patricia's hair, the silk of her father's tie slipping between her hands, the weightlessness drowsiness of someone else putting her to bed and tucking her in. Kisses goodnight, kisses goodbye, kisses just for fun. Family, family, family.
Tears sting her eyes, the first warm thing she's managed for herself. Neph ducks her face into Hannibal's neck. Her hand slips loose from his and snakes around his back, hooking the far side of his ribs. She breathes through her nose, her mouth too firmly wedged against his pulsepoint in something that can't really be called a return kiss. For long seconds, the better part of a minute, she hides there, struggling to control her reaction. Hannibal adjusts her star blanket and puts his arm around her in turn.
Somehow Will's the safest topic available right now. Let's teach him how to capture people like us, Hannibal suggests, and Neph snorts so hard she practically blows a raspberry down his neck.
"I really hope you mean 'dangerous people' and not, like, 'specifically mutants and magic users'," she says as though her voice isn't kinda thick. Has she occasionally had vague nightmares of Will arresting her? Yep. Does she want to imagine a future where he uses his experiential knowledge of them to form some kind of anti-meta taskforce? No. She knows Will, though, and that's been enough to keep those specific nightmares at bay. So far. "I think he just...wants things to be better for people like him." The scared. The lost and ignored. Weird, bright kids. Neph wonders why he's fixated so much on cops and not, like, social workers or lawyers, but maybe that's pure self defense.
It wouldn't be so bad if he used whatever he's learning from them to accomplish that. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe wasn't going to take that information and run. Neph shivers into her blanket, her voice dropping into a rough whisper. "He's not gonna care where we learned how, he's gonna care that we killed, like, ten people."
The deaths bother her more, now, removed from the immediate need. They color her thoughts and perceptions, so that Hannibal's use of 'us' can only mean their collective bodycount. And, maybe, what it means for Will staying with them in the future. "Could you let him go?" she asks. "If he...if he wasn't okay with what we did?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
google says 2001! And oh no you're stranded with the most recent ones!
Date: 2017-08-27 05:56 pm (UTC)There'd been no time to react back at the warehouse, no room for anything but a flash of startled confusion amidst the panic and adrenaline. She's had literally no chance since to think about it. This time there's no thought at all, just a flashflood of memories so old they've worn away to sensations - the smell of her mother's hand lotion, the way her wedding ring would snag when she'd comb Patricia's hair, the silk of her father's tie slipping between her hands, the weightlessness drowsiness of someone else putting her to bed and tucking her in. Kisses goodnight, kisses goodbye, kisses just for fun. Family, family, family.
Tears sting her eyes, the first warm thing she's managed for herself. Neph ducks her face into Hannibal's neck. Her hand slips loose from his and snakes around his back, hooking the far side of his ribs. She breathes through her nose, her mouth too firmly wedged against his pulsepoint in something that can't really be called a return kiss. For long seconds, the better part of a minute, she hides there, struggling to control her reaction. Hannibal adjusts her star blanket and puts his arm around her in turn.
Somehow Will's the safest topic available right now. Let's teach him how to capture people like us, Hannibal suggests, and Neph snorts so hard she practically blows a raspberry down his neck.
"I really hope you mean 'dangerous people' and not, like, 'specifically mutants and magic users'," she says as though her voice isn't kinda thick. Has she occasionally had vague nightmares of Will arresting her? Yep. Does she want to imagine a future where he uses his experiential knowledge of them to form some kind of anti-meta taskforce? No. She knows Will, though, and that's been enough to keep those specific nightmares at bay. So far. "I think he just...wants things to be better for people like him." The scared. The lost and ignored. Weird, bright kids. Neph wonders why he's fixated so much on cops and not, like, social workers or lawyers, but maybe that's pure self defense.
It wouldn't be so bad if he used whatever he's learning from them to accomplish that. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe wasn't going to take that information and run. Neph shivers into her blanket, her voice dropping into a rough whisper. "He's not gonna care where we learned how, he's gonna care that we killed, like, ten people."
The deaths bother her more, now, removed from the immediate need. They color her thoughts and perceptions, so that Hannibal's use of 'us' can only mean their collective bodycount. And, maybe, what it means for Will staying with them in the future. "Could you let him go?" she asks. "If he...if he wasn't okay with what we did?"