Years and a number of exceedingly expensive therapy sessions later, she’ll remember more of the actual abduction; how light shone into her room like sunbeams through water, how everything went bluegreen and swayed in a nonexistent current, how the normal house sounds were transmuted to the creaking of reeds and mossy boughs, how the horse shone dully, like bottle glass, how its forelock fell into its eyes, almost to its nose, its mane halfway to its knees. She’ll remember the seaweed slickness of it under her hands, the night wind cutting through her pjs as it bore her away, the way its hooves struck thin air like waves against rocks.
In the immediate aftermath, Triss remembers only the smell. Not like that’s hard; it oozes out of her, a rotting-fish reek smeared over her skin, coating the inside of her mouth where she bit the horse—kelpie. That’s what the strange adults call it, a kelpie, a word that means nothing to a shivering, towel-swaddled eight year old standing in the middle of a stranger’s kitchen.
“How could you not know?” hisses the tall thin woman, the one who gutted the kelpie out from under her with a heavy, rusted knife as long as Triss’ whole arm and she’s totally not gonna have nightmares about that for years (yes she is, until other horrors bury them, and the therapy will not help), “You. It’s only your goddamn job, Argus!”
“Language,” the other woman chides. She’s older and heavier set, with a halo of dark curls and smile lines at all corners of her face. She was the one who cried towels and dry clothes! when the tall woman dragged Triss into the house, all the lines tilted down in alarm. The thin woman bares her teeth at the mild rebuke, but subsides into silent scowls at the third adult.
That’d be the tired man, who Triss eyes with extra suspicion because he’s a man and it’s his house and his mismatched towels and the thin woman seems to think the horse was his fault somehow. The horse she can still taste. Her palms sting where they came unstuck from its skin and her knee is one big ache where it turned around and bit her with its big square teeth and it sounds like all that could’ve been avoided if this man had done…something.
“She’s not been actively burning anything, Danae, or I would have,” he says like the words have to trudge up a real long staircase to get out his mouth. He rubs at his eyes and scans Triss with a look that’s both flat and sad all at once. She hikes the towel higher around her shoulders, glares, and drips defiantly on his floor. The older lady tried to offer her dry clothes but no way she’s gonna get naked in a stranger’s house in the middle of the night. “Or…she hasn’t lived here very long. Or isn’t local, though I can’t think why a kelpie would go so far out of its way.”
“I want to know why a kelpie’d fucking bother,” Danae mutters, “When’s the last time you heard of the Courts making a play that obvious?”
The other two exchange an uncomfortable look, while the thin woman smirks unpleasantly and rolls her shoulders. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. The man, Argus, just shakes his head, but the second woman, whose name Triss still hasn’t caught, seems to remember she’s still standing right there and could, theoretically, answer some of these questions.
“Are you new, sweetie?” her tone is sweet and low, but Triss sets her chin behind the towel. She’s not gonna be tricked into answering just ‘cuz someone’s being nice to her. She went through like four therapists before Hannibal, ask any of ‘em. “Did you move here recently? Where’s your family?”
Triss blinks. Her heart rate spikes and her knees wobble. It’s bad enough she’s got no idea how she ended up on a horse, falling from the sky into Baltimore harbor. It’s worse that she can only make sense out of every other sentence these people shoot at each other, since they put the words together all wrong (of course she’s not burning while also dripping all over and chattering in place, thanks captain obvious). But for them to somehow guess at the whole other situation, how Hannibal decided to up and move his practice from Boston - because of her, to put some distance between them and the trial, her internment in foster care, the bodies she left behind - how she doesn’t know the city well enough yet to even guess where she might be in relation to Hannibal’s house, her house, where she’s supposed to be right now but isn’t and it’ll be morning soon and he’ll notice and what’s he gonna think and what if he wishes he’d never moved here for her, that’s too much.
She bursts into huge, gulping sobs and collapses in a pile of wet towels. Argus and Danae step back, bumping into the table and kitchen counter, but the other woman makes a pained noise and reaches forward. She doesn’t touch Triss, not quite, just tucks the towel around her shoulders a little tighter.
“I know, hon, I know,” she coos, “It’s been a long, rough night. But you did real good.”
“I-I-I-I ha-hafta go h-h—home!,” Triss gasps.
“Oh,” the mean one grunts, “Great.”
~
It’s not like she’d wanted to tell these strangers where she lives, but Triss couldn’t think of what else to do.
“We could put her on a taxi,” Danae’d said, after Triss had refused to answer any questions about herself, not her name, her phone number, or whether strange things like this had ever happened to her before. “Hand over some twenties, let someone else worry about her.”
“The Courts tried to take her from her home,” the other woman, whose name turned out to be Ruth, said, “They could make another attempt. We can’t let her out of our sight until we know for sure why and who to confront about it.”
Danae snorted, “You don’t seriously think she-“
“Someone has to talk to her family either way,” Ruth went on, “She has one, and she’s too young to sneak out for lessons or keep a secret worth a damn.”
Nobody looked very comfortable with that idea, not from where Triss huddled on one of the kitchen chairs. Her head throbbed from that little hysterical fit, her nose was one big stuffed brick on her face, she was still damp and she’d refused to eat or drink anything they’d given her. They’d all looked especially annoyed about that last part. Her need to keep all this weird stuff away from Hannibal and her new place warred with her need to get home before he noticed, and the sky outside the window kept on lightening. Tired, achey and a million percent done with being so lost, she’d blurted the address into the tense silence.
It turned out Ruth owned a car, although she wouldn’t let Triss out of the house until she’d at least pulled one of Argus’ sweaters on over her wet things (Argus brought it back after he went to change out of his own pajamas, cotton pants and a U. of M. t-shirt that couldn’t be further from Hannibal’s matching sets. Her dad used to go to bed in stuff like that.). She ended up in the backseat with Danae, who leaned against the window to keep maximum distance.
By the time they reach the house, it’s true morning, bright and sunny. Danae whistles as they pull up the drive, but Triss is too anxious to catch the looks Ruth and Argus exchange. She’s too busy scanning the sidewalks for cop cars, like the times kids ran away from foster care and had to be dragged back or called in. Half the usual cars are missing, ‘cuz people went to work, but that’s normal. Everything’s normal. And quiet. Was she wrong? Instead of being angry, maybe Hannibal’s just relieved not to have to take care of her anymore. Maybe he’s not looking for her at all.
After that thought, Ruth has to coax her out of the backseat, and she drags behind the adults as they head up the front walk. Even Danae gets in on the baffled looks they pass around at this abrupt change of heart. It’s Argus who rings the bell, Triss hugging herself tightly, holding all the bad-thought shrapnel inside. She rocks herself as footsteps approach - he didn’t go to work, is that good? - holds her breath as the door swings open, and freezes when Hannibal Lecter focuses on the three unknown adults instead of the kid hiding behind them.
He doesn’t look mad. Not that he ever really does, but then again it’s almost 9:00 am and he’s not wearing a tie or anything yet. That’s…off, in a way she doesn’t know how to categorize. Does ‘not normal’ equal ‘upset’?
Her skinny arms aren’t enough to restrain her churning belly anymore. Triss explodes past the line of knees and barrels right into Hannibal, wailing “I didn’t run away!” it’s not like she’s hugging his legs or anything, she just crowded into him and her head doesn’t even clear his hip and, okay, maybe she’s got a hand gripping his pantleg, maybe, “I swear! There was a-a horse? And then—“
“We found her near the harbor,” Argus interjects, and he sounds calm even if Triss has no idea what kind of face he’s making, with her own mashed up against twill, “It’s a…long story, but she was reluctant to talk to us at first. I apologize for what you must have gone through this morning.”
Hannibal isn't woken up by the sounds of the abduction. Millennia of practice is on the kelpie's side in its silence of capture. Its proximity alarm is barely triggered - just a faint discord in Hannibal's mind, chiming foreign but not enough to wake him. But the breeze from its opened window makes an eventual alarm, slowly ticking down as the wind carries the scent through the house, towards Hannibal's room.
Hannibal wakes up immediately to swamp grass and cattails and boggy, sinking, greedy mud. The smell is so strong and unexpected that it melds with his just-dreaming mind and, for a moment, he's surprised that his sheets are dry and not swarmed with crayfish. He's at his door in seconds, layering on weapons as he goes - formal pajamas have the benefit of pockets even before any sneaky additions are sewn in. But there he pauses, and listens. The smell lingers, but there's no sound - except of rustling cloth. Heavy, slow, arrhythmic. The breeze at a curtain.
An open window.
Hannibal sneaks down his own hallway with the light, purposeful feet of a predator. In his own home, he at least has the advantage of knowing every single squeaky board. He has no idea what to expect, although his mind is slowly searching through anything connected to this smell. A mutant? A supernatural being? Some strange new specification of Patricia's vague powers?
When he finally gets to Patricia's room, he's almost relieved to see her gone completely and not dead or dying. He assumes kidnapping despite the lack of signs of struggle, because the smell is so...foreign. If it's attachment clouding his judgment, Hannibal doesn't see it; but he'd like to think that if Patricia suddenly matured into marsh-themed powers overnight, that he'd still be able to recognize her in them. These are foreign, more foreign than a crime scene without any scent of fear - if Patricia was coerced, whoever did it had a power similar to his own, because the absence of terror splattering the walls is its own calling card to the supernatural.
--
As the morning lingers on, Hannibal dresses in fits and starts, with the vague intention of being able to search outside without arousing suspicion, should that time arrive. He has on a loose, soft sweater and the loosest, softest khakis he owns - which is to say they're not much of either, but compared to the rest of his wardrobe they might as well have come from an Old Navy catalogue. His hair is uncombed and product-free, and keeps shading his eyes as he pours over another book, hovering at his kitchen table.
So when an unexpected chord rings in his head, he's presentable, but only just. Alert and aggressively suspicious, he replaces the weapons he'd been gathering from his house and his Collection. His mouth is a flat, calculating line as he stands at attention by the dusty book on water demons, waiting to see if this is another ambush--
And then his bell rings.
Hannibal pads over immediately, footsteps purposefully loud. A linoleum knife shifts its weight in a hidden sleeve pocket as he swings the door open.
It brings to view not one, but three foreign adults, two of whom smell incriminatingly like Patricia's bedroom swamp. All of whom smell hesitant. Anxious. Defiant, defensive. Like animals cornered in their den, ready to fight to the death but not in the wrong for starting the scuffle themselves.
Odd. It's not who he expected. Hannibal had been anticipating nothing, or perhaps an owner of the kelpie demanding a ransom, in the best case scenario. Kelpies eat their prey, but Patricia is gifted in some way, and kidnappings of supernatural and mutant children are tragically commonplace. Outside of a normal human committing a hate crime, someone utilizing another supernatural being likely wants her, alive, for money or for magical gain. It's not the worst-case scenario, but it's far from the best. She could be intended as part of some underground, mythical army, for all Hannibal is aware - such things certainly exist.
But no sooner have all the adults begun sizing one another up than movement stirs at the level of the strangers' knees, and Hannibal only has time to glance down before a couple bowling balls worth of weight hits his shins and lower thighs.
She's here. Hannibal breathes in and realizes he didn't notice her right away because her smell is diffused by the kelpie that absolutely oozes from her, but it's definitely her, unless horrible illusions are a part of some long con going on in front of him. With no clear objectives or motivations for him to see, Hannibal feels unbalanced in his lack of certainty about what to suspect.
"I never worried you had run away, Triss." An offensive spell in a vial is squeezed into a deeper corner of his pants pocket when Hannibal squats down immediately. Effectively blocking his doorway, he shifts his legs to one side so as not to force Patricia away with bony knees. His own arms encircle her shoulders even easier than her arms were encircling his legs. With his head bowed into the hug, his next sentence is pressed into downy hair. "I'm very happy to see you're alright."
And then Hannibal looks up past her head at the explanation from the male in the group of strangers.
They didn't call the police. They interrogated a child for information about where to bring her before doing it themselves. If there was any doubt in Hannibal's mind about this being a supernaturally-motivated kidnapping, they've been put solidly to rest. Those on the fringes of society's laws tend to police their own, which means this is likely either a second wave of a con or an honest rescue attempt by a group rightfully wary of law enforcement.
Hannibal is capable of incredible lengths of social niceties, which makes the opposite all the more obvious. His intense focus settles deliberately on the adult who spoke to him - and then, just as deliberately, he ignores all three of them in favor of tucking his chin down to address the child clinging to his khakis. "Now, Patricia." Her full name for (hopefully) her full attention, tone gentle and firm. A solid foundation. One of his hands cups the back of her head, as if shielding her from the strangers.
(She's never clung to him in desperation, and his movements are gentle - she's fragile, but not weak, and his respect for her bodily autonomy comes from a deeper place than either of those concerns could drag up on their own.)
"Please, be honest with me." Patricia is a precociously dishonest child, as it often seems to be dread that holds her back - the sort of conversational fears that only adults should need to worry about so often. Hannibal's face is serenely trusting, even if his disheveled hair might betray his act. "Before I speak with these people, I want you to tell me: did any of them hurt you or threaten you in any way?"
Whatever the word might be for the bastard offspring of a sob and a relieved sigh, that's the noise that cracks out of her when he says he didn't blame her for not being there. It ends up muffled in his shoulder, drawn in as she is by the hug, but the force of it still rattles her thin frame.
"I worried you worried," she says, an admission as groundshaking as it is quiet.
The hug only lasts long enough for her to remember, in the wake of her relief, that this isn't something they really do. Touching for a while, that is. Triss used to, but she feels like she's forgotten how to do it, or let it happen, and now it's like trying to eat with chopsticks instead of a fork. Hannibal projects a no-touching forcefield so strongly it almost makes her wanna mess him up. She hasn't yet, for the same reason she was so worked up in the car - it's all too new, and she can't risk being sent back to CPS.
So they both lean back, Hannibal to look up at Ruth, Argus and Danae, Triss to swallow down all those freefloating pointless anxieties. She's still got a fistful of khakhi pant, though, bunched up next to his knee. She frowns at it until he calls her name.
Half her Christian name, even, yikes. Triss snaps to wary attention, fingers flying straight, but Hannibal just runs a hand down the back of her head like he's testing for gooseeggs and asks her if she's been hurt. If any of them hurt her.
Someone - Danae, probably - snorts. Someone else sighs at that, though she can't guess who. Triss gives the request for honesty a moment of serious consideration, recognizing with the mercurial speed of a practiced liar all the many ways she could make this really unpleasant for the three adults who kept her in a strange house overnight. Like, it wouldn't even be hard. She knows kids whose parents or stepparents got arrested for less. Technically, Danae swearing if you don't stop kicking me in the fucking spleen I'll leave you here to drown I swear to God while towing them both out of the harbor could count as threatening.
"No," she says at length, turning her hands over so Hannibal can see her abraded palms. The first layer or two of skin has just peeled away, leaving them red and raw. The insides of her calves, which were pressed against the kelpie's sides, look about the same, and that's not even starting on her lividly swollen left knee. "The horse thing did that. They were just--" her nose wrinkles as she turns in Hannibal's grip to squint up at them, "Confusing."
Ruth laughs, all the smile lines interlocking. "I'll bet we were," and next to her Danae's rolling her eyes, but Argus' lack of a reaction is the weird thing. He's got his head tilted to the side, like he's listening to them all, but his eyes aren't locked on anybody. They jump around a little, especially over Hannibal, though his attention flicks into the foyer beyond once or twice just while Triss watches.
"There really was a horse," she doesn't mean to sound defensive, it's just...she knows how it sounds, and if it were anybody but Hannibal she wouldn't even've told the the truth about that much, she'd've run away from her rescuers somehow and thought up some other story. But Hannibal knows about the weird. And it's important that he doesn't think she left on purpose. "M'not making it up, she saw it too."
Danae rocks away from the finger Triss points her way, but Argus shifts into the line of accusation and says, still calm as anything, "That's where the story gets long." He's not talking to her, he's talking to Hannibal, which is a familiar if unpleasant sensation that makes Triss sigh out all her frustration and exhaustion. The look she gives her guardian, back safely to the others, says: Now do you see what I've been dealing with?
Hannibal pointedly gives no reaction at all to the responses to his asking Patricia if she's alright. He's not about to have three strangers deposit his adopted daughter back on his doorstep and not assume foul play may still be involved, and he absolutely trusts Patricia - if not to tell him the truth on purpose, then to at least fumble when asked point-blank. She has, after all, far less reason to lie than the motley crew tracking mud and errant cattail seeds onto his porch.
But Hannibal doesn't see or smell a lie from Patricia when she says 'no', and if he's going to keep building her trust as he's been, he'll believe her. He takes her wrists, gently, to inspect her palms - they haven't been cleaned, there's still some dirt shoved in the crevices of skin. They didn't have first aid with them? Or they didn't care? Or they couldn't get close enough? Hannibal has no confusion about Patricia's aversion to strangers. Getting a ride on 'the horse thing' immediately prior couldn't have helped, no matter how friendly or unfriendly her rescuers.
'She saw it too'. The older woman smells like kelpie almost as much as Patricia - Hannibal believes her. It's the first time he looks away from her face, to size up the woman who reeks of water demon and was apparently the only one present when the kelpie was. That would logically mean she gathered the other two afterwards. They're an odd group. Out of necessity, then? What sort of secrets are they hiding?
"I believe you." Hannibal says to Patricia, in a very reasonable tone considering they're discussing a kelpie kidnapping an eight year-old child out of a second story window. When he stands up again, he lets his hand linger on Patricia's shoulder, until it can't reach anymore. His fingertips brush the tangled, damp fluff of her hair, instead, and he takes an unmistakable step forward - defensive and offensive all at once, although his face has melted into a cordial mask.
Patricia ends up behind his left leg as he reaches out a hand. This is, after all, the second time the man has tried to be the only one actually offering up the promise of an explanation. "I apologize. I wasn't expecting anyone to bring her home for me."
And then. Then he turns to the taller woman, while still holding the man's hand. And, certainly not because he slept for only two hours last night and definitely not because he's been up frantically searching through old books for clues as to where his adopted child might have been kidnapped to, and obviously not because she was the one who snorted at him trying to assure that said adopted child hadn't been manhandled by the strangers who dropped her off, he asks: "Should I thank you for getting her away from the kelpie? You certainly smell as though you fought it yourself."
At this point Triss has slept maybe five hours out of the last thirty, she hasn't eaten since dinner the night before, and she hurts. She thinks she can be forgiven for both her wide, watery smile when Hannibal doesn't refute her claim, and for falling back to shelter behind him when he stands up. It's not the first time he's been a wall between her and potentially hostile grown ups; he came to a lot of the State of Massachusetts vs The Boston Diocese trial sessions, and then there were all the custody hearings. Triss doesn't remember the first time she let him walk her out to the waiting social workers, but it became the norm.
She manages not to grab onto any more of his clothes, curling her hands up in the overlong sleeves of Argus' sweater instead. It smells comfortingly of coffee and old books, only familiar 'cuz Hannibal's got a whole library full of antique stuff, too.
The two men shake hands, Argus' attention fully on Hannibal's face instead of some point over his shoulder, though his head hasn't tilted all the way back up yet. Triss lapses back into silence and watches him, unable to put her finger on what, exactly, is so weird about that. There's something about the set of his mouth that makes her think he might be biting down on the side, his cheek or tongue or inner lip, and what's up with that? Whatever it is relaxes as he goes to answer Hannibal's apology, but her guardian's already done that thing where he's steamrolled the conversation over to Danae instead.
Triss catches two things: that Danae's gonna need some aloe for that burn, and that she, Ruth and Argus all jerk in surprise. Their reaction sets Triss into immediate flight-mode, her whole brain lighting up with the instinct to get away from Angry Adults, especially the one who sliced a horse mostly in half right in front of her. She doesn't have the capacity left to wonder why they react the way they do, she's too caught up in what that means for her safety, and maybe Hannibal's.
Except nothing about his posture changes at all.
Danae grins a not-grin at him, lips peeling back to show all her teeth. Unlike some people in this conversation, Triss's never been a medical doctor, but she's pretty sure that's more teeth than most people have? Something ripples over her skin, too, like a band of cloud sweeping in front of the sun, and now Triss does grab hold of Hannibal's sleeve. She can't remember what Danae did with that huge rusty knife she had, it's just another blank space in her memories, but what if she's hiding it under her jacket somewhere or-- "Break out those knives you got up your sleeve, man, and I'll show you how I did it."
"Danae," Argus groans. Ruth, who Triss would've expected to be the one shushing Danae again, only eyes Hannibal speculatively, smile lines no longer in evidence. Whatever she sees, it has her shaking her head and planting her hands on her hips.
"Well, since there's no use closing the stall door now that the horse, or kelpie or what have you, is already loose, why don't we hash it out somewhere with a first aid kit? Maybe she'll let you clean those scrapes, Mister..?"
The dangling question is obviously an invitation for an introduction, but Triss is too busy reeling to notice. Ruth said kelpie but so did Hannibal. He didn't just know she'd been taken away by something, he knew what, and that she must've been rescued, and--
She sorta kinda understands how his powers work. She knows his nose is really sensitive, anyway, but once again he's put all kinds of not-even-there clues together to come up with a true answer. It's creepy when it's directed at her, but kind of neat to watch from the outside. Maybe she doesn't even need to ask these people about what happened, maybe Hannibal can just look at them and know.
There is a specific, sublime feeling that comes from looking at someone's hidden set of cards, announcing them, and then lighting those cards on fire. Metaphorically speaking. As someone without fighting of defensive abilities augmented, physically no better than a talented normal human, Hannibal has chosen to exemplify what was gifted to him - gathering information, and using knowledge to guide other people to useful places. And watching the tall, rude woman's face flatten and grow calmly cold is the sort of thrill you can't quite get any other way. Hannibal's lips only barely bend up in response to her smile - a gentle, unmistakably false gesture of good will, although his clear amusement is probably visible enough.
"If it bothers you, perhaps we can all disarm before we enter my home." 'Home', not 'house'. He feels Patricia's small hand spasm into his sweater's sleeve, and he adjusts the angle of his wrist so that he can loosely hold her hand - she could slide away with a pull, but he wants the family aspect of this to be a clear signal to the strangers. If they rescued Patricia because of something like duty or compassion, perhaps it will help everyone's attitudes. And if they pose a threat, then Hannibal does not mind asserting ownership and attachment as a warning. "But I was very concerned when I heard visitors had arrived, so soon after my daughter was kidnapped. I think precautions are something we can all find understandable, Danae." No point in saying 'adoptive' in the sentence, too clunky, too awkward - it's already how Triss is introduced to curious waiters and bank tellers, after all.
But then the shorter, stockier woman proves to be a very determined truce-organizer. Hannibal considers her, head tilted a few degrees, birdlike curiosity surprised into full focus. He evidently likes what he sees, though, because his smile turns a few degrees less glacial and he offers her his hand, as well. "Dr. Hannibal Lecter." He looks from her to the man. "And I have to agree. I'd be delighted to learn your names as well - inside." And he does indeed take a small step back, looking down as he does so.
The hand holding Patricia's had never let go, assuming hers hadn't, and he sticks that hand out in front a few more degrees so that he can allow her to walk in first.
He stands to the side of the door to watch everyone walk in after them, holding it ajar with the patience of a practiced host.
Something passes between her three rescuers when Hannibal suggests they all disarm (Triss doesn't know that word, but since Danae's accusing him of having a knife and he's not saying he doesn't, she can sorta guess what it means). Like, they all...settle, somehow. They seem very sure? Well, Ruth has this whole time, but Danae's fists relax and Argus nods. He seems really decisive about it, especially after Hannibal makes it sound like Triss is really, truly his kid.
They've been lying about that for a couple months now. She's not as natural about it as she wants to be, so mostly she lets him handle that line.
"I doubt any of us are armed in a way we can help," Argus says, like it's the punchline to a joke Triss hasn't heard yet. "Except maybe those knives." But that's part of the joke too, in a way that also doesn't make sense to her, not with Danae's teeth shining white against her dark lips. At least it sounds like she left her weapon back at Argus' house? Triss tries not to look like she's clinging to Hannibal's hand while totally, completely, one hundred percent doing so.
"It's nice to meet you, Doctor Lecter, and you too, Patricia" Ruth says as she clasp's his free hand and smiles a real, not-an-inside-joke smile at Triss, who is suddenly awash with embarrassment at her earlier lack of manners. She could've told them her name. "Or Triss? I'm Ruth Bar-On. This young man is Argus, and you've both met Danae already."
Triss can't help the way her face twists, all skeptical and unimpressed, startling a laugh out of Ruth (she can always tell when people laugh without meaning to. It's like a victory, every time). Hannibal pulls her away ever-so-carefully and she lets him tug her into a turn, guiding her back into the house.
She lets go so she can sit down on the bench just inside the door and peel off her soggy sneakers. Her knee doesn't appreciate the walking or the bending, now that she's been standing still for a while, leaving her hissing through her teeth. The shoes take longer than usual, with half her attention on the tangled laces and half on the 'guests' as they enter and look around the foyer. Triss approves of Hannibal waiting by the door, pleased to have someone at their backs, though it's obvious from the way Danae sidles in that she's not super comfortable with it. Good.
"Are those really your names?" she asks as she drops one scummy shoe to the floor. It kinda plops. "Those don't sound like real names."
"They're very real names," 'Argus' says with that same punchline smile. His head has gone sideways again. Listening, but not to her.
Unsure whether she likes any of that or not, Triss narrows her eyes at him and says, "Okay...but, not yours." After a year and a half with Hannibal for a therapist, she's getting better at noticing how people say the things they do, and the things they don't.
"I think I liked your silent treatment better," Danae mutters, but at least she's not talking over Triss this time. While that's an improvement, maybe, Triss scrunches up her nose, sticks out her tongue, and lobs her other shoe at the woman.
It doesn't just miss, it stops, hovering in midair before thumping to the floor.
"Danae," Ruth says in a tone Triss has heard hundreds of times from social workers. Danae reacts much like the bratty kids she's known: with a roll of her eyes and a flick of her fingers.
"Like we weren't going to get to that anyway," she shrugs.
Hannibal had smiled at the inside joke about being perpetually armed, but he spends the next half minute of intervening time wondering...what, exactly, he's currently watching walk into his foyer. Are they mutants like himself? Do they know what he is, or are they merely guessing because he knows what a kelpie is without needing his hand held? Hannibal has told only two other still-living persons his secret, and having it announced by strangers rings...foreign.
And yet... There's a strong chance they're not mutants. That they're something else, something closer to magic. It's just fact that a lot of mutants don't ever get further than, well, other mutants - not everyone scrambles for the shadows, gets their hands on every scrap of information on the broad supernatural that they can.
It's too soon to tell, all around, and that certainty is more quieting than aggravating. Hannibal is much better with being patient than he'd been as a younger man.
That, and Ruth earned more brownie points in addressing him formally. Flattery will, in fact, get you things, if you're smart with it. His host-smile is a little less empty when the shards of it are directed at her.
Until the other shoe drops. "Patr--" is all he manages in calm reproach before he cuts himself off.
Telekinesis. Alright. That seems to be what Triss can do as well, as unplanned and hard to categorize as her outbursts of power have been. Hannibal looks surprised, although not alarmed, and he collects himself quickly from staring and wondering if it means that Patricia has somehow attracted her kind of strange, compared to the chances of coincidence. "As eager as I am to hear your explanations for this, I'm afraid you're going to need to wait for us down here." Trusting three strangers, at least one of whom has powers, alone in his house is apparently just something that's going to happen if he takes time to care for Patricia, which means that Hannibal is going to wrestle back a semblance of control the only way he knows how: acting completely unruffled about it. "Please, make yourselves comfortable." His outstretched hand is indicating his kitchen. "But please do not touch the books that have been left in there. They are fragile, and were difficult to acquire. I can get us all something to drink when we return."
He nods his head politely, but turning his back is a pointed affair - 'I'm not afraid of you' - so he can address Patricia. "Let's get you some dry clothes." Which is a clear invitation for her to run upstairs, even if the hardwood is going to bear the brunt of wet footprints and soggy run-off from squelching sleepwear.
Edited (Re-thought his dialogue; Hannibal isn't as polite this time) Date: 2016-06-04 01:07 pm (UTC)
Somehow, despite the kidnapping kelpie and the almost-drowning and her minor meltdown about how all this might affect her adoption status, Triss still finds the energy to panic at the shoe thing. Danae's so casual about it, like she doesn't even care that other people might get hurt, or that she could end up tied down and punished. Triss flushes and shivers in turns, battered by the sense-memory of stifling candleflames and biting cold ice water. Her pulse drones in her ears, drowning out Hannibal's rebuke, if there is one, and anything else he might say to Danae about that.
The pressure on her chest is all in her head. She knows that, she's actually talked to Hannibal about it before, how sometimes it's like she's stuck in a small space even when she's not, and sometimes she feels like there isn't enough air when there is. When that happens, she's supposed to try and count to five and take a breath, right? She's just groping for two when Hannibal says "Let's get you some dry clothes,", his voice closer and louder than before, direct enough to snag her attention. Triss' face jerks towards him, nostrils flaring and pupils rapidly dilating back to something normal.
"Yeah, yes, 'kay," she slides off the bench, shaking hands in her sleeves, and bolts for the stairs. Everyone's watching her now, even Argus, which only drives her need to run. She'd take the steps two at a time if her knee didn't hurt so bad; she ends up half-hopping just to climb the stairs normally, 'cuz her palms sting too much to grab at the bannister.
The house, her room, it's all still too new and impermanent to feel safe, especially since she'd been snatched out of it like six hours ago. Triss hangs in the doorway for a moment before darting to her dresser, digging past the top layers of carefully folded new clothes to the faded, well-worn stuff underneath. She wants her things right now. If it wouldn't be such an obvious sign of babyish weakness, she'd grab Otto off her bed and take him back downstairs with her for the grown-up talk to come.
Triss turns with an armful of clothes to find Hannibal with his feet still respectfully in the hallway. "I don't like this," she blurts before burying her mouth and chin in her favorite shirt. It's got jellyfish on it and her mom bought it for her on the last field trip before things went bad and even if her mom lit all the candles herself the shirt's still really soft. "I don't wanna."
It's not until they're out of sight from the strange visitors that Hannibal feels the weight of the unexpected mask he's been wearing. He thought he'd only need to have a strong outlook for a child, at the end of this - if he found her alive, they'd still be alone. He hadn't expected to be observed when reuniting, to have to talk about this incident with someone with more powers of deduction than an eight year old girl.
As he pads after her in the dim hallway, he lets the full extent of his relief really hit him. While no one can see, he stands alone outside of Triss's room, eyes closed, and lets the little spiderwebbing cracks open up.
He'd considered the possibility of her being kidnapped before, even though she'd been publicly confirmed as a non-mutant. Most assumed her parents were merely delusional, but not all haters of the preternatural were easily dissuaded. There was always a risk, more specific and more vengeful than the normal fear of child abduction. But calmly planning for such an event had, in the end, done very little to help him cope with the reality. It's not a result he'd ever have predicted.
And then comes a small shard of a voice, and Hannibal smelts that mask back into something cohesive and containing. He turns to her and then gets on one knee. All of their emotional conversations have ended up with their lines of sight level, either from him sitting or from Patricia perching on a tabletop. "You don't need to speak with them if you don't want to. And I cannot reasonably demand that you stay in my sight from now on forever, regardless of how much losing you may have frightened me this morning." He speaks with the same calm, even keel he always uses with her, although there are still fractures in that mask. He isn't concerned about hiding from Patricia the way he's concerned about hiding from other adults.
"Once you've changed, I'd like to look at where you've been hurt, to make sure you're alright. Afterwards, you may stay up here if you like."
If they're talking, it's okay for Hannibal to come into her room. That's just one of the rules they've sorted out, some spoken and some not. He's told her it's okay that you don't always want to talk and you're allowed to want to be alone in your own space, but he's also made it clear that she has to reopen those doors when she's ready. She can't expect other people to magically know what she wants the second she decides she wants it. They never sat down and decided on signals or anything, but 'Patricia starts a conversation' turned into one anyway. She's okay with that.
She's not okay that stuff keeps happening that scares not just her, but people around her, too. Only what's she supposed to do about that? How's she supposed to stop that, or control it? Triss bites her lip, nods, and reaches up to shut the door so she can change clothes. So she can think about it for a second.
When the door opens again she's wearing her jellyfish shirt and a pair of shorts, because rolling up jeans sucks bad enough when your knee isn't purple and blue and the size of a softball. "It bit me," she sulks and picks at the hem of her shorts instead of scratching at the raw skin down the inside of her legs, like she really wants.
Hannibal used to be a doctor, and even though Neph's never met anybody he took care of, she assumes he was a good one. She's been to lots of doctors, she appreciates quick and relatively painless. Hannibal doesn't have to ask her dumb questions she can't answer anymore, either, which is always a plus. She follows him silently to the master bath, where they keep the big first aid kit, and hops up on the toilet without being asked.
While he plucks out all the stuff he'll need - antiseptic packets, sterile pads, wipes, gauze - she asks, "Do you think they know stuff?" a pause, while she chews some dry skin off her lips, then, "Like...stuff we need to know too?"
"So it did." A nasty bite too, more bruising than blood, which means realistically the most he can do is clean out the few scrapes she actually has and just give her an ice pack when they're downstairs. There's a certain theatrical magic in just paying attention to hurt areas, though, especially with children - the weight of acknowledgement and the shared burden of getting help can comfort even adults.
There's a little first aid kit in the bathroom's linen closet, on a low shelf that Patricia can reach. With Neosporin and band-aids, it's moreso a safety net and a way of making her feel a little less out of control, should he ever not be home during normal scrapes and bumps. Above that, of course, is a kit that's had to come down...not too frequently, all things considered. If the way Patricia eyes his banisters when she thinks he's not looking is any indication, though, then Hannibal has maybe two more 'settling in' months before she's comfortable enough to really act out. They'll see how long the 'not even minor injuries' stretch lasts.
Hannibal kneels in front of her again, kit opened on the immaculate floor. He'd treated several children in his time as a surgeon, although never for something this minor. It feels more like a heavy ritual than a medical routine. Her hands are so pale, miniature against his palm where he holds one steady.
Patricia, like all children, apparently still has that ability to sometimes hit things innocently, exactly, on the nose with no warning. "That is what I'm hoping." He's cleaning the abrasions with care, although he can't help the fact that raw skin is always going to hurt. "Triss. I know you don't like discussing magic. But that creature that took you is a magical being. I believe that your mismatched rescuers may know things that will help us keep that from happening to you again." Band-aids aren't really going to work on her palms, even as small as they are. So he wraps gauze around them, very aware that children are often more entranced than put-off by large bandages on themselves. She looks not entirely unlike she's about to go have a tiny, terrible boxing match, and Hannibal thinks that on any other day, he'd have a chance at catching her shadow-boxing in a mirror.
Not this morning, not likely.
Her calves - somehow both skinny-flat and curved, in the strange shapeless strength of children - are a bit more rough. Hannibal wonders if the kelpie's sides presented more scales to scrape against, whereas her hands might have been cushioned by its mane. Her knee remains the worst by far, and he is very careful as he plucks dirt from it with bright red, plastic tweezers. He is absolutely not going to gloss over a horse bite, as far as the antiseptic goes. "This will hurt, but it will also be quick."
It'll be a while yet before Triss actively worries about the terrible math that is open wounds + open sewers (and what else is the Harbor, honestly?), but she does know that bandaids help. Nothing hurts as bad when it's covered up, and right now she's got a lot of exposed pain. Therefore she sits with only minimal squirming and hissing as Hannibal wipes her palms clean, fingers curling spasmodically, ineffectually, over his. Even so, she doesn't cry, not even when he has to pick dirt from the ragged edges where her the whole skin stops and the flat shiny pinkness starts. It pulls when she spreads her fingers so he can wrap the gauze securely around each digit, but the end results are totally worth it.
Triss makes experimental fists, so entranced by kickboxer chic she almost doesn't notice when Hannibal takes hold of her left ankle and starts on her leg. He didn't point out how she came back wearing pjs and shoes, shoes Triss can't even remember putting on or tying, shoes she keeps at the foot of her bed still, just in case. Maybe he will later, when they don't have to put up a unified front for the strangers.
Chewing on stuff's a bad habit, every adult says. She's scraped all the rough parts off her lips, which leaves her with her nails or hair. Unaware of the math regarding open sewers + mucus membranes, she pops a lock in her mouth and nibbles while Hannibal dabs at her leg and explains his suspicions.
"I guess I wanna know why it happened," she admits. You have to understand something to stop it, she gets that. That's exactly why she doesn't like this magic stuff, or talking about her experiences with it, 'cuz she doesn't understand and nobody, not even Hannibal, has been able to explain things so she can keep from hurting people. Kidnapping is definitely a thing she'd like to avoid, if she can, and she doesn't think Hannibal knows how to stop that either. If he thinks these weirdos might be able to help with that...then, okay, it could be worth it.
"I'll go downstairs then," she says as he tapes a large square of sterile gauze to her calf and considers her knee. "But you gotta tell them no magic here incase somebody notices." Danae was so obvious about it, like she didn't care at all about getting in trouble. Was she like that when she took out the kelpie? Triss can't remember much except the noise it made when the knife went in, the hot stink of its guts and the way they splashed to the water below. Hannibal could be wiping off kelpie gut-residue right now, for all she knows.
That thought makes her a lot more compliant about the whole 'this will hurt' thing. She just sticks her leg out, frowns intensely, and nods.
The house rings with silence after Argus and the others leave. Not a silence like the ones after Hannibal's big fancy dinners in Boston, after even the catering staff were gone for the night, but something a little warier. A silence like a held breath.
Things've changed again.
Things're still changing, Triss admits to herself as she hobbles up the stairs to shower. Hannibal wouldn't let her help with the teacups, and even though she knows she's tired and sore and clumsier than usual it still stings a little.
But she is so, so tired. Everything's throbbing by the time she reaches the landing; her hands, her legs, her knee, even a weird new rawness under her skin. Triss wonders if maybe that's why Argus said they'd have to wait to test her colors against his sounds, if he knew the magic was starting to hurt. Ruth had agreed that she'd had a very long day even though it's only noon, and even Danae nodded. Triss just wishes they'd said why.
The realization that she's got a lot to learn, and she's never been a smart student anyway, hits as she's unwinding the bandages from her hands. What if she's too stupid to do this Very Important Thing? This thing that's dangerous to others and makes her a big fat target? She's only any good if she can get it under control, but what if she just can't learn how?
If she weren't so tired and wrung out, if her eyes weren't already puffy and itchy from crying, if her head didn't feel like a balloon full of pudding, she'd probably freak out again. But three meltdowns in one day is all her tiny body can process, so instead she coils the gauze up into two little rolls, rips the bandages off her legs, and curls up on the shower floor under the spray. Eventually the steam starts to smell less like a swamp, and she works up the energy to reach for soap.
She can't stop thinking, though. Like, how come the other Allomancers didn't stick around to talk to Hannibal? Adults love sitting up talking after the kids go to bed, even if it's only the middle of the afternoon. It's their favorite thing. Did they not want to talk to him? Were they afraid of what he'd ask? How secret are their secrets and are they gonna ask her to keep secrets from him too? She's got a couple, but it's stuff she decided she didn't wanna talk about.
They better not ask her to take sides. She'll have to tell them so, even if they don't like it. Ruth will probably understand - Ruth was the one who insisted on looping her family in on the weirdness.
But Ruth was also, unquestionably, the scariest person in the room when things looked like they were gonna go bad.
Triss chews that over as she dries off and climbs into a long t-shirt covered in cartoon bees. Danae killed the kelpie and got her away, but she stepped back and let Ruth stare Hannibal down. That is. Something. A little thrill of remembered fear shimmies up her spine as she dries her hair and tries to pinpoint what everybody else was doing while she sat there 100% sure somebody was gonna murder Hannibal's entire face.
Was he...kind of happy about it?
There are many shades of happy-Hannibal, each harder to detect than the last and all of them brought on by really, really weird stuff. Triss kinda doesn't even want to try and figure them out, she's got too many other things to sort out right now, but why would he wanna pick a fight with people he already thought had kelpie-murdering powers?
She's halfway down the stairs already, clumping awkwardly with her sore knee. The sounds of running water and clinking dishes have faded away, but Hannibal's still in the kitchen, collecting the scattered (magic) books. Triss leans against the doorway and stares at them for a second, remembering the vivid colors, before she blurts:
"What'd you call them before? When you were tryin'ta make 'em mad on purpose? Was it something bad?"
Obviously it was, but how bad? N-word levels of bad? Because, Hannibal, aside from setting off a bomb that frightened her as much as it offended them, you can't use anybody's N-word..
Children are very observant, but they often get confused about the meaning of what they see. Their limitations define their perceptions.
Hannibal supposes he should have realized that Triss would be able to detect 'saying something incendiary just to upset someone else'. Foster homes teach you a lot of things quicker than even a school yard can. Hannibal hadn't yet glanced up when he heard Triss padding into the doorway, but now he looks at her. His arms hold a stack of three of the books, all carefully balanced so that none of them press on or rip at the others' delicate bindings. If Triss were an adult, he'd answer her over his shoulder while toting them off, leaving his cleaning uninterrupted.
He still feels equally unapologetic, but Hannibal doesn't brush her off so neatly. After a moment of considering, he very gently places the books back on the table. "It's a title they carried, centuries ago." Even if a lie couldn't be undermined by Triss asking those three potential teachers the same question she's asking him right now, Hannibal wouldn't be bothering to lie to her. He circles around the table but stays near it, pulling out a chair to sit down while facing her. "But they didn't choose it for themselves. It's a term their hunters used for them."
He sorts through the facts, weighing Triss's age and existing fear of her powers against them. "The world is already a much safer place for people like us, Triss. But today, the only written works that have survived about your people - or at least, the only ones that I have found - were written by their enemies." Hannibal inclines his head, as if conceding to a point that they've discussed before. "As you know, the terms that humans pick for people unlike themselves don't tend to be flattering. Jealousy and fear make them defensive."
Triss does not come sit when Hannibal does. There's power in being the person standing, or at least there's power in refusing to let somebody else dictate your actions with theirs. She caught onto that two sessions in with her first therapist.
(Hannibal has never once said anything disparaging about her past therapists, but the few times she's mentioned them he's projected this kinda...Doneness. She always gets the feeling he's working real hard not to close his eyes and sigh.)
She crosses her arms and squints her eyes and stays leaning against the door instead. This is the first anybody's said about hunting or enemies, except for the obvious fae, and she's not sure how to feel that people have written books about how much they hate her. But there's lots of stuff online and in newspapers about mutants, a lot of it terrible, so that's probably not new. She decides that doesn't bother her as much as belong to a 'they'. Well, that doesn't bother her, exactly, it's just a weird feeling. Like staring at a plate of something she's never eaten before - it could be good or it could be terrible and she won't know until she digs in. It's...distracting.
"Then why'd you use it?" she asks. Pushes, really, "You're s'posed to ask people what they wanna be called if you're not sure." Her teacher for the last half of second grade said that, which Triss only really remembers 'cuz she got in trouble for it with the principal later. Her squint pulls lower, into a true frown, "I'm just like them and you used the bad name for it." For us.
Triss enjoys - needs, even - her autonomy, and Hannibal has been very willing to allow her any and all outlets for it that are possible for someone her age to have. This isn't the first time she's refused the clear invitation to sit down with him, but she doesn't look like it's from feeling shy or embarrassed. It doesn't even seem to be that she's worried she's going to want comfort and is upset at showing vulnerability in front of him.
Is she...trying to scold him?
It's not appropriate to laugh. Not even to smile. Luckily, Hannibal has been perfecting his poker face for the last few decades. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, drawing his face even closer to being level with hers.
His voice is still even and calm, clearly not rattled by her pressing him. "I wanted to confirm my suspicions, if that was what they were. And I wanted them to know that I was not as far in the dark as they thought I was." Hannibal's head tilts bare degrees to the left. "Words have the power to hurt, yes, but this word is a secretive one. It's not nearly the same as insults you may hear in the street or at school. There are implications about what one would go through to have learned the word I used. It is no casual term."
Hannibal's gaze doesn't waver from Triss. "If I am to trust them with instructing you, I would rather know now about how they react to unpleasant surprises. A rash temper wouldn't do for teaching a child with telekinetic abilities."
This particular eight year old's brain doesn't have the juice, at this particular time, to follow or care much about the way labels evolve and get lost and become codewords in and of themselves. She was sorta aware at the time that there was a...an understanding competition going on, where people were doing their best to get answers while giving away the least amount of information, but Triss couldn't keep track of who was winning. She's always preferred the 'sit and wait in stubborn silence' approach (which worked: they brought her home when she wouldn't talk to them, so who won that round, huh??</>?) and once they realized she was an 'Allomancer' too they'd been pretty willing to talk to her.
So really it's the last part that makes her cross her arms and scrunch up her face, her jaw jutting forward. What Hannibal said was pretty rude, and that's bad on its own, but the real reason he said it--
"But you didn't know when you called 'em names!" she says, high and angrily shrill, "You din't know what they could do at all but you knew I was like 'em and you know what I did so--so--!"
Triss has never been the greatest about following a thought down a coherent path even at the best of times, which this is not. This one branches off in too many possible directions: so they could've destroyed the house much easier than she had a whole church, so why would you mess with a buncha telepaths on purpose anyway, so they don't know enough about Triss' abilities to know what other non-house-destroying stuff Allomancers can even do, so that was really risky and pretty dumb and very scary but most of all totally unnecessary.
Her glare intensifies with the sheer volume of all those so's swelling her brain, her eyes burn with--no, not tears again. Triss blinks and scowls and somehow settles on "So that was dumb."
'But you didn't know when you called 'em names' is both entirely true, and a fact-checking call-out that Hannibal had genuinely thought he'd be able to sidestep with an eight year old. Hannibal still looks patiently, blankly not-guilty, even as he nods agreement to Triss's points.
She's more upset than he'd have guessed she would be. She hadn't reacted well at the time, of course, but Hannibal had assumed her fear would be the sort of short-lived overreaction that children have in droves. This lengthy attempt at telling him off isn't at all what he had expected, and that, more than the actual content of what she's saying, unbalances him.
Hannibal is silent for longer than he has been so far, wondering what angle to play now that she's discarded both previous attempts at deflecting her worry. Addressing it directly, perhaps? "I am sorry that I frightened you." Because that's what he thinks is at the root of this reprimand. "I would not have upset them if I truly believed they would be a danger to you."
"Not to me," Triss shakes her head, short and sharp, eyeline somewhere between the floor and the tabletop. She'd been pretty sure by then that she wasn't gonna get hurt. They'd already rescued her from a kelpie and tried to get her warm and dry and argued about the best way to try and take care of her. Why would they hurt her on purpose after all that?. On accident, though... "Everything."
To the house, since it looks more and more like whatever protection Hannibal's got on it is only for keeping things out, not for smothering magic on the inside (or else those books wouldn't work). To Hannibal, who doesn't seem to care that he was outnumbered or aware of what it looks like when all the metal stuff holding a building up gets told not to do its job anymore. And to her totally nonexistent control, with her sitting there with the fuel to mess with all that metal and no idea how not to. Danae had to stop her. Danae!
Hannibal is afraid of very, very little, and perhaps that's part of what's made him something of an adrenaline-chaser. He takes risks he doesn't need to take, he throws wrenches in plans from the shadows to see what happens. He regularly kicks the hornet's nest, even if he's hiding behind an alias or two. The benefit of living as a bachelor with no close friends is that no one - not since he was a teen - has tried to interrupt him doing so.
So suddenly being faced with someone who does care is... Jarring. It's jarring. Hannibal's frames for reference are all negative - he never has much reason to care if he's upsetting someone else. It's often the point, or at least a welcome effect. But he didn't want to upset Triss. He very genuinely hadn't even thought of her reaction when he'd thrown those words out to the likely-armed-and-definitely-dangerous telekinetics at his table.
Hannibal's expression is at the edge of a cliff - tentative, cautious, moving slowly to avoid upsetting his footing. It's openly hesitant, which is perhaps his only saving grace. Maybe the fact that he's not coolly brushing her off will help smooth things out, even if Hannibal now feels a little lost about how to go about that himself.
"I may have been hasty," he finally allows. His voice sounds uncharacteristically small in the wide space of the kitchen.
Triss knows Hannibal's 'listening' face by now. It isn't something that happens, it's something he does, and while he's never given her any reason to feel like he's using it to lie to her, she likes it better when he's not choosing his faces. Like when she started Ruth into laughing earlier, it's just...better.
That thing he's doing right now, with the ghosts of his eyebrows and the way he sorta sucks in his bottom lip, is definitely not planned. At least she doesn't think so. She's seen Hannibal make lots of faces at lots of people for lots of reasons, many she didn't and still doesn't understand, so she can't say why exactly this strikes her as different. Maybe 'cuz he doesn't ever go for stuff that make him look like he's wrong?
(The word she wants is vulnerable. Somehow, despite everything, that one hasn't found its way into her vocabulary yet.)
"Okay," she says, which is Triss-shorthand for a lot of things. Things like 'it's fine,' 'it's not fine but I don't wanna deal with it,' 'I'm happy but this is a lot to take in,' 'I'm upset but nothing I say or do is gonna change anything anyway,' and 'I get what you're saying even if you don't know how to say it but I don't know how to say that either.' This is the last one. She sells it with a small but firm nod, like a pact-sealing handshake, and then leaves the doorway to come over to the table.
That 'okay' might be a single word, but it has multiple implications. It takes long enough that Hannibal feels she must have been searching for something in his own answer and finally found it - what it may be, he isn't certain. Perhaps honesty? A benefit of lying to adults is that most social spheres don't really have room for calling one another out on white lies or light suspicions. Children, on the other hand, gleefully and often will declare bullshit when they see it. If expressions don't match voices, they get genuinely confused and don't know better to hide it and allow the other person to save face.
It is...surprisingly dangerous and difficult, lying to a child. And if Hannibal is truthful, then being honest with them feels only marginally safer.
"Of course." He stands back up, pushing the chair back towards the table. He regathers his stack of texts, but watches the few left on the table consideringly. "The one furthest from you, with the dark brown cover and the silver metal fastenings. Could you very carefully help me put that back in the study?" Extra trust and responsibility. If Triss is going to have an altered relationship with her powers, Hannibal can choose to block or enable the confidence she might need.
He would rather her feel that he trusts her to be responsible and helpful, when given the opportunity.
Not that Hannibal is ever likely to ask himself 'what would Patricia's biological parents say or do?' except to select an opposite course of action, but if he ever did, there's a useful lesson in there about parenthood being an exercise in the dangerous, the difficult, the unexpected. They have nothing useful to share on gracefully fielding curveballs, but they could say a thing or two about feeling unsafe in the role.
Patricia doesn't think about any of that, because she tells herself she doesn't think about her parents at all. It's a new thing she's trying out, and she's getting pretty good at it during daylight hours.
She walks over to the books and reaches out for the brown and silver one, movements as telegraphed as if it might bite. Although she squints hard enough to summon up a twinge in her temples, no magical colors pop up. It really only works when she's got the right metals, doesn't it? She kinda likes that she could just turn her magic off whenever she wanted, except what if one time she really needed it and didn't have it? They didn't even get around to what all the metals are before calling it a day, an oversight she both resents and (kinda) understands. She's so stupid-tired right now she might not remember, no matter how important it is, and she's still got to convince them she's not stupid-stupid.
For now she's got to not drop the valuable book, which weighs as much as a largish cat. Triss holds it to her chest, figuring it's better if it touches cotton than skin. She's heard all about how skin oils can destroy old stuff on field trips before.
"What's this one do?" she asks as she follows Hannibal to the study. "I can't tell ennymore if it's magic."
Hannibal watches the squinting with private amusement. He remembers his own mutant adolescence - which, as with most of them, coincided with the rest of puberty, unlike Triss and her from-birth abilities. He remembers the way he had tried to examine the extent and focus of his abilities in those first weeks and months. How long it had taken to learn to activate the pheromones at will, how long it had taken to realize that his sense of smell was simply always on. The sense-memory of squinting in a large store full of leatherworks hits, the way it had started a headache that squeezed its way through all his sinuses.
What sort of burn outs will Triss experience, if any? What price is paid for their abilities, aside from being hunted throughout the centuries?
When Triss admits aloud that she can't see the magic anymore, Hannibal's smile becomes a public affair. "Because you snuffed the flame, or because you're out of fuel?" He asks, for more than simple curiosity - how far does their fuel go? Will there be a chance of her accidentally 'lighting' it later on? But he is more concerned with answering her question, make no mistake.
He continues smoothly, slowly leading through the kitchen to the living room. A downstairs office of sorts is on the ground floor and, while the book Triss is holding should be sorted upstairs in the proper study, Hannibal prefers the idea of her helping to the idea of getting the book placed back immediately. "That one is only a reference book, however. About water-born creatures." The scent in her room had given Hannibal a bit fat clue about where to start looking, after all.
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timeasmymeasure
Adopted-younger AU: closed to itrhymes
Date: 2016-06-03 06:57 am (UTC)In the immediate aftermath, Triss remembers only the smell. Not like that’s hard; it oozes out of her, a rotting-fish reek smeared over her skin, coating the inside of her mouth where she bit the horse—kelpie. That’s what the strange adults call it, a kelpie, a word that means nothing to a shivering, towel-swaddled eight year old standing in the middle of a stranger’s kitchen.
“How could you not know?” hisses the tall thin woman, the one who gutted the kelpie out from under her with a heavy, rusted knife as long as Triss’ whole arm and she’s totally not gonna have nightmares about that for years (yes she is, until other horrors bury them, and the therapy will not help), “You. It’s only your goddamn job, Argus!”
“Language,” the other woman chides. She’s older and heavier set, with a halo of dark curls and smile lines at all corners of her face. She was the one who cried towels and dry clothes! when the tall woman dragged Triss into the house, all the lines tilted down in alarm. The thin woman bares her teeth at the mild rebuke, but subsides into silent scowls at the third adult.
That’d be the tired man, who Triss eyes with extra suspicion because he’s a man and it’s his house and his mismatched towels and the thin woman seems to think the horse was his fault somehow. The horse she can still taste. Her palms sting where they came unstuck from its skin and her knee is one big ache where it turned around and bit her with its big square teeth and it sounds like all that could’ve been avoided if this man had done…something.
“She’s not been actively burning anything, Danae, or I would have,” he says like the words have to trudge up a real long staircase to get out his mouth. He rubs at his eyes and scans Triss with a look that’s both flat and sad all at once. She hikes the towel higher around her shoulders, glares, and drips defiantly on his floor. The older lady tried to offer her dry clothes but no way she’s gonna get naked in a stranger’s house in the middle of the night. “Or…she hasn’t lived here very long. Or isn’t local, though I can’t think why a kelpie would go so far out of its way.”
“I want to know why a kelpie’d fucking bother,” Danae mutters, “When’s the last time you heard of the Courts making a play that obvious?”
The other two exchange an uncomfortable look, while the thin woman smirks unpleasantly and rolls her shoulders. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. The man, Argus, just shakes his head, but the second woman, whose name Triss still hasn’t caught, seems to remember she’s still standing right there and could, theoretically, answer some of these questions.
“Are you new, sweetie?” her tone is sweet and low, but Triss sets her chin behind the towel. She’s not gonna be tricked into answering just ‘cuz someone’s being nice to her. She went through like four therapists before Hannibal, ask any of ‘em. “Did you move here recently? Where’s your family?”
Triss blinks. Her heart rate spikes and her knees wobble. It’s bad enough she’s got no idea how she ended up on a horse, falling from the sky into Baltimore harbor. It’s worse that she can only make sense out of every other sentence these people shoot at each other, since they put the words together all wrong (of course she’s not burning while also dripping all over and chattering in place, thanks captain obvious). But for them to somehow guess at the whole other situation, how Hannibal decided to up and move his practice from Boston - because of her, to put some distance between them and the trial, her internment in foster care, the bodies she left behind - how she doesn’t know the city well enough yet to even guess where she might be in relation to Hannibal’s house, her house, where she’s supposed to be right now but isn’t and it’ll be morning soon and he’ll notice and what’s he gonna think and what if he wishes he’d never moved here for her, that’s too much.
She bursts into huge, gulping sobs and collapses in a pile of wet towels. Argus and Danae step back, bumping into the table and kitchen counter, but the other woman makes a pained noise and reaches forward. She doesn’t touch Triss, not quite, just tucks the towel around her shoulders a little tighter.
“I know, hon, I know,” she coos, “It’s been a long, rough night. But you did real good.”
“I-I-I-I ha-hafta go h-h—home!,” Triss gasps.
“Oh,” the mean one grunts, “Great.”
~
It’s not like she’d wanted to tell these strangers where she lives, but Triss couldn’t think of what else to do.
“We could put her on a taxi,” Danae’d said, after Triss had refused to answer any questions about herself, not her name, her phone number, or whether strange things like this had ever happened to her before. “Hand over some twenties, let someone else worry about her.”
“The Courts tried to take her from her home,” the other woman, whose name turned out to be Ruth, said, “They could make another attempt. We can’t let her out of our sight until we know for sure why and who to confront about it.”
Danae snorted, “You don’t seriously think she-“
“Someone has to talk to her family either way,” Ruth went on, “She has one, and she’s too young to sneak out for lessons or keep a secret worth a damn.”
Nobody looked very comfortable with that idea, not from where Triss huddled on one of the kitchen chairs. Her head throbbed from that little hysterical fit, her nose was one big stuffed brick on her face, she was still damp and she’d refused to eat or drink anything they’d given her. They’d all looked especially annoyed about that last part. Her need to keep all this weird stuff away from Hannibal and her new place warred with her need to get home before he noticed, and the sky outside the window kept on lightening. Tired, achey and a million percent done with being so lost, she’d blurted the address into the tense silence.
It turned out Ruth owned a car, although she wouldn’t let Triss out of the house until she’d at least pulled one of Argus’ sweaters on over her wet things (Argus brought it back after he went to change out of his own pajamas, cotton pants and a U. of M. t-shirt that couldn’t be further from Hannibal’s matching sets. Her dad used to go to bed in stuff like that.). She ended up in the backseat with Danae, who leaned against the window to keep maximum distance.
By the time they reach the house, it’s true morning, bright and sunny. Danae whistles as they pull up the drive, but Triss is too anxious to catch the looks Ruth and Argus exchange. She’s too busy scanning the sidewalks for cop cars, like the times kids ran away from foster care and had to be dragged back or called in. Half the usual cars are missing, ‘cuz people went to work, but that’s normal. Everything’s normal. And quiet. Was she wrong? Instead of being angry, maybe Hannibal’s just relieved not to have to take care of her anymore. Maybe he’s not looking for her at all.
After that thought, Ruth has to coax her out of the backseat, and she drags behind the adults as they head up the front walk. Even Danae gets in on the baffled looks they pass around at this abrupt change of heart. It’s Argus who rings the bell, Triss hugging herself tightly, holding all the bad-thought shrapnel inside. She rocks herself as footsteps approach - he didn’t go to work, is that good? - holds her breath as the door swings open, and freezes when Hannibal Lecter focuses on the three unknown adults instead of the kid hiding behind them.
He doesn’t look mad. Not that he ever really does, but then again it’s almost 9:00 am and he’s not wearing a tie or anything yet. That’s…off, in a way she doesn’t know how to categorize. Does ‘not normal’ equal ‘upset’?
Her skinny arms aren’t enough to restrain her churning belly anymore. Triss explodes past the line of knees and barrels right into Hannibal, wailing “I didn’t run away!” it’s not like she’s hugging his legs or anything, she just crowded into him and her head doesn’t even clear his hip and, okay, maybe she’s got a hand gripping his pantleg, maybe, “I swear! There was a-a horse? And then—“
“We found her near the harbor,” Argus interjects, and he sounds calm even if Triss has no idea what kind of face he’s making, with her own mashed up against twill, “It’s a…long story, but she was reluctant to talk to us at first. I apologize for what you must have gone through this morning.”
muffled wailing in the distance
Date: 2016-06-03 11:14 pm (UTC)Hannibal wakes up immediately to swamp grass and cattails and boggy, sinking, greedy mud. The smell is so strong and unexpected that it melds with his just-dreaming mind and, for a moment, he's surprised that his sheets are dry and not swarmed with crayfish. He's at his door in seconds, layering on weapons as he goes - formal pajamas have the benefit of pockets even before any sneaky additions are sewn in. But there he pauses, and listens. The smell lingers, but there's no sound - except of rustling cloth. Heavy, slow, arrhythmic. The breeze at a curtain.
An open window.
Hannibal sneaks down his own hallway with the light, purposeful feet of a predator. In his own home, he at least has the advantage of knowing every single squeaky board. He has no idea what to expect, although his mind is slowly searching through anything connected to this smell. A mutant? A supernatural being? Some strange new specification of Patricia's vague powers?
When he finally gets to Patricia's room, he's almost relieved to see her gone completely and not dead or dying. He assumes kidnapping despite the lack of signs of struggle, because the smell is so...foreign. If it's attachment clouding his judgment, Hannibal doesn't see it; but he'd like to think that if Patricia suddenly matured into marsh-themed powers overnight, that he'd still be able to recognize her in them. These are foreign, more foreign than a crime scene without any scent of fear - if Patricia was coerced, whoever did it had a power similar to his own, because the absence of terror splattering the walls is its own calling card to the supernatural.
--
As the morning lingers on, Hannibal dresses in fits and starts, with the vague intention of being able to search outside without arousing suspicion, should that time arrive. He has on a loose, soft sweater and the loosest, softest khakis he owns - which is to say they're not much of either, but compared to the rest of his wardrobe they might as well have come from an Old Navy catalogue. His hair is uncombed and product-free, and keeps shading his eyes as he pours over another book, hovering at his kitchen table.
So when an unexpected chord rings in his head, he's presentable, but only just. Alert and aggressively suspicious, he replaces the weapons he'd been gathering from his house and his Collection. His mouth is a flat, calculating line as he stands at attention by the dusty book on water demons, waiting to see if this is another ambush--
And then his bell rings.
Hannibal pads over immediately, footsteps purposefully loud. A linoleum knife shifts its weight in a hidden sleeve pocket as he swings the door open.
It brings to view not one, but three foreign adults, two of whom smell incriminatingly like Patricia's bedroom swamp. All of whom smell hesitant. Anxious. Defiant, defensive. Like animals cornered in their den, ready to fight to the death but not in the wrong for starting the scuffle themselves.
Odd. It's not who he expected. Hannibal had been anticipating nothing, or perhaps an owner of the kelpie demanding a ransom, in the best case scenario. Kelpies eat their prey, but Patricia is gifted in some way, and kidnappings of supernatural and mutant children are tragically commonplace. Outside of a normal human committing a hate crime, someone utilizing another supernatural being likely wants her, alive, for money or for magical gain. It's not the worst-case scenario, but it's far from the best. She could be intended as part of some underground, mythical army, for all Hannibal is aware - such things certainly exist.
But no sooner have all the adults begun sizing one another up than movement stirs at the level of the strangers' knees, and Hannibal only has time to glance down before a couple bowling balls worth of weight hits his shins and lower thighs.
She's here. Hannibal breathes in and realizes he didn't notice her right away because her smell is diffused by the kelpie that absolutely oozes from her, but it's definitely her, unless horrible illusions are a part of some long con going on in front of him. With no clear objectives or motivations for him to see, Hannibal feels unbalanced in his lack of certainty about what to suspect.
"I never worried you had run away, Triss." An offensive spell in a vial is squeezed into a deeper corner of his pants pocket when Hannibal squats down immediately. Effectively blocking his doorway, he shifts his legs to one side so as not to force Patricia away with bony knees. His own arms encircle her shoulders even easier than her arms were encircling his legs. With his head bowed into the hug, his next sentence is pressed into downy hair. "I'm very happy to see you're alright."
And then Hannibal looks up past her head at the explanation from the male in the group of strangers.
They didn't call the police. They interrogated a child for information about where to bring her before doing it themselves. If there was any doubt in Hannibal's mind about this being a supernaturally-motivated kidnapping, they've been put solidly to rest. Those on the fringes of society's laws tend to police their own, which means this is likely either a second wave of a con or an honest rescue attempt by a group rightfully wary of law enforcement.
Hannibal is capable of incredible lengths of social niceties, which makes the opposite all the more obvious. His intense focus settles deliberately on the adult who spoke to him - and then, just as deliberately, he ignores all three of them in favor of tucking his chin down to address the child clinging to his khakis. "Now, Patricia." Her full name for (hopefully) her full attention, tone gentle and firm. A solid foundation. One of his hands cups the back of her head, as if shielding her from the strangers.
(She's never clung to him in desperation, and his movements are gentle - she's fragile, but not weak, and his respect for her bodily autonomy comes from a deeper place than either of those concerns could drag up on their own.)
"Please, be honest with me." Patricia is a precociously dishonest child, as it often seems to be dread that holds her back - the sort of conversational fears that only adults should need to worry about so often. Hannibal's face is serenely trusting, even if his disheveled hair might betray his act. "Before I speak with these people, I want you to tell me: did any of them hurt you or threaten you in any way?"
man I'm gonna have to go expand these kid icons, I've only got 2 leftover from before...
Date: 2016-06-04 12:24 am (UTC)"I worried you worried," she says, an admission as groundshaking as it is quiet.
The hug only lasts long enough for her to remember, in the wake of her relief, that this isn't something they really do. Touching for a while, that is. Triss used to, but she feels like she's forgotten how to do it, or let it happen, and now it's like trying to eat with chopsticks instead of a fork. Hannibal projects a no-touching forcefield so strongly it almost makes her wanna mess him up. She hasn't yet, for the same reason she was so worked up in the car - it's all too new, and she can't risk being sent back to CPS.
So they both lean back, Hannibal to look up at Ruth, Argus and Danae, Triss to swallow down all those freefloating pointless anxieties. She's still got a fistful of khakhi pant, though, bunched up next to his knee. She frowns at it until he calls her name.
Half her Christian name, even, yikes. Triss snaps to wary attention, fingers flying straight, but Hannibal just runs a hand down the back of her head like he's testing for gooseeggs and asks her if she's been hurt. If any of them hurt her.
Someone - Danae, probably - snorts. Someone else sighs at that, though she can't guess who. Triss gives the request for honesty a moment of serious consideration, recognizing with the mercurial speed of a practiced liar all the many ways she could make this really unpleasant for the three adults who kept her in a strange house overnight. Like, it wouldn't even be hard. She knows kids whose parents or stepparents got arrested for less. Technically, Danae swearing if you don't stop kicking me in the fucking spleen I'll leave you here to drown I swear to God while towing them both out of the harbor could count as threatening.
"No," she says at length, turning her hands over so Hannibal can see her abraded palms. The first layer or two of skin has just peeled away, leaving them red and raw. The insides of her calves, which were pressed against the kelpie's sides, look about the same, and that's not even starting on her lividly swollen left knee. "The horse thing did that. They were just--" her nose wrinkles as she turns in Hannibal's grip to squint up at them, "Confusing."
Ruth laughs, all the smile lines interlocking. "I'll bet we were," and next to her Danae's rolling her eyes, but Argus' lack of a reaction is the weird thing. He's got his head tilted to the side, like he's listening to them all, but his eyes aren't locked on anybody. They jump around a little, especially over Hannibal, though his attention flicks into the foyer beyond once or twice just while Triss watches.
"There really was a horse," she doesn't mean to sound defensive, it's just...she knows how it sounds, and if it were anybody but Hannibal she wouldn't even've told the the truth about that much, she'd've run away from her rescuers somehow and thought up some other story. But Hannibal knows about the weird. And it's important that he doesn't think she left on purpose. "M'not making it up, she saw it too."
Danae rocks away from the finger Triss points her way, but Argus shifts into the line of accusation and says, still calm as anything, "That's where the story gets long." He's not talking to her, he's talking to Hannibal, which is a familiar if unpleasant sensation that makes Triss sigh out all her frustration and exhaustion. The look she gives her guardian, back safely to the others, says: Now do you see what I've been dealing with?
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Date: 2016-06-04 12:57 am (UTC)But Hannibal doesn't see or smell a lie from Patricia when she says 'no', and if he's going to keep building her trust as he's been, he'll believe her. He takes her wrists, gently, to inspect her palms - they haven't been cleaned, there's still some dirt shoved in the crevices of skin. They didn't have first aid with them? Or they didn't care? Or they couldn't get close enough? Hannibal has no confusion about Patricia's aversion to strangers. Getting a ride on 'the horse thing' immediately prior couldn't have helped, no matter how friendly or unfriendly her rescuers.
'She saw it too'. The older woman smells like kelpie almost as much as Patricia - Hannibal believes her. It's the first time he looks away from her face, to size up the woman who reeks of water demon and was apparently the only one present when the kelpie was. That would logically mean she gathered the other two afterwards. They're an odd group. Out of necessity, then? What sort of secrets are they hiding?
"I believe you." Hannibal says to Patricia, in a very reasonable tone considering they're discussing a kelpie kidnapping an eight year-old child out of a second story window. When he stands up again, he lets his hand linger on Patricia's shoulder, until it can't reach anymore. His fingertips brush the tangled, damp fluff of her hair, instead, and he takes an unmistakable step forward - defensive and offensive all at once, although his face has melted into a cordial mask.
Patricia ends up behind his left leg as he reaches out a hand. This is, after all, the second time the man has tried to be the only one actually offering up the promise of an explanation. "I apologize. I wasn't expecting anyone to bring her home for me."
And then. Then he turns to the taller woman, while still holding the man's hand. And, certainly not because he slept for only two hours last night and definitely not because he's been up frantically searching through old books for clues as to where his adopted child might have been kidnapped to, and obviously not because she was the one who snorted at him trying to assure that said adopted child hadn't been manhandled by the strangers who dropped her off, he asks: "Should I thank you for getting her away from the kelpie? You certainly smell as though you fought it yourself."
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Date: 2016-06-04 02:01 am (UTC)She manages not to grab onto any more of his clothes, curling her hands up in the overlong sleeves of Argus' sweater instead. It smells comfortingly of coffee and old books, only familiar 'cuz Hannibal's got a whole library full of antique stuff, too.
The two men shake hands, Argus' attention fully on Hannibal's face instead of some point over his shoulder, though his head hasn't tilted all the way back up yet. Triss lapses back into silence and watches him, unable to put her finger on what, exactly, is so weird about that. There's something about the set of his mouth that makes her think he might be biting down on the side, his cheek or tongue or inner lip, and what's up with that? Whatever it is relaxes as he goes to answer Hannibal's apology, but her guardian's already done that thing where he's steamrolled the conversation over to Danae instead.
Triss catches two things: that Danae's gonna need some aloe for that burn, and that she, Ruth and Argus all jerk in surprise. Their reaction sets Triss into immediate flight-mode, her whole brain lighting up with the instinct to get away from Angry Adults, especially the one who sliced a horse mostly in half right in front of her. She doesn't have the capacity left to wonder why they react the way they do, she's too caught up in what that means for her safety, and maybe Hannibal's.
Except nothing about his posture changes at all.
Danae grins a not-grin at him, lips peeling back to show all her teeth. Unlike some people in this conversation, Triss's never been a medical doctor, but she's pretty sure that's more teeth than most people have? Something ripples over her skin, too, like a band of cloud sweeping in front of the sun, and now Triss does grab hold of Hannibal's sleeve. She can't remember what Danae did with that huge rusty knife she had, it's just another blank space in her memories, but what if she's hiding it under her jacket somewhere or-- "Break out those knives you got up your sleeve, man, and I'll show you how I did it."
"Danae," Argus groans. Ruth, who Triss would've expected to be the one shushing Danae again, only eyes Hannibal speculatively, smile lines no longer in evidence. Whatever she sees, it has her shaking her head and planting her hands on her hips.
"Well, since there's no use closing the stall door now that the horse, or kelpie or what have you, is already loose, why don't we hash it out somewhere with a first aid kit? Maybe she'll let you clean those scrapes, Mister..?"
The dangling question is obviously an invitation for an introduction, but Triss is too busy reeling to notice. Ruth said kelpie but so did Hannibal. He didn't just know she'd been taken away by something, he knew what, and that she must've been rescued, and--
She sorta kinda understands how his powers work. She knows his nose is really sensitive, anyway, but once again he's put all kinds of not-even-there clues together to come up with a true answer. It's creepy when it's directed at her, but kind of neat to watch from the outside. Maybe she doesn't even need to ask these people about what happened, maybe Hannibal can just look at them and know.
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Date: 2016-06-04 02:42 am (UTC)"If it bothers you, perhaps we can all disarm before we enter my home." 'Home', not 'house'. He feels Patricia's small hand spasm into his sweater's sleeve, and he adjusts the angle of his wrist so that he can loosely hold her hand - she could slide away with a pull, but he wants the family aspect of this to be a clear signal to the strangers. If they rescued Patricia because of something like duty or compassion, perhaps it will help everyone's attitudes. And if they pose a threat, then Hannibal does not mind asserting ownership and attachment as a warning. "But I was very concerned when I heard visitors had arrived, so soon after my daughter was kidnapped. I think precautions are something we can all find understandable, Danae." No point in saying 'adoptive' in the sentence, too clunky, too awkward - it's already how Triss is introduced to curious waiters and bank tellers, after all.
But then the shorter, stockier woman proves to be a very determined truce-organizer. Hannibal considers her, head tilted a few degrees, birdlike curiosity surprised into full focus. He evidently likes what he sees, though, because his smile turns a few degrees less glacial and he offers her his hand, as well. "Dr. Hannibal Lecter." He looks from her to the man. "And I have to agree. I'd be delighted to learn your names as well - inside." And he does indeed take a small step back, looking down as he does so.
The hand holding Patricia's had never let go, assuming hers hadn't, and he sticks that hand out in front a few more degrees so that he can allow her to walk in first.
He stands to the side of the door to watch everyone walk in after them, holding it ajar with the patience of a practiced host.
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Date: 2016-06-04 06:51 am (UTC)They've been lying about that for a couple months now. She's not as natural about it as she wants to be, so mostly she lets him handle that line.
"I doubt any of us are armed in a way we can help," Argus says, like it's the punchline to a joke Triss hasn't heard yet. "Except maybe those knives." But that's part of the joke too, in a way that also doesn't make sense to her, not with Danae's teeth shining white against her dark lips. At least it sounds like she left her weapon back at Argus' house? Triss tries not to look like she's clinging to Hannibal's hand while totally, completely, one hundred percent doing so.
"It's nice to meet you, Doctor Lecter, and you too, Patricia" Ruth says as she clasp's his free hand and smiles a real, not-an-inside-joke smile at Triss, who is suddenly awash with embarrassment at her earlier lack of manners. She could've told them her name. "Or Triss? I'm Ruth Bar-On. This young man is Argus, and you've both met Danae already."
Triss can't help the way her face twists, all skeptical and unimpressed, startling a laugh out of Ruth (she can always tell when people laugh without meaning to. It's like a victory, every time). Hannibal pulls her away ever-so-carefully and she lets him tug her into a turn, guiding her back into the house.
She lets go so she can sit down on the bench just inside the door and peel off her soggy sneakers. Her knee doesn't appreciate the walking or the bending, now that she's been standing still for a while, leaving her hissing through her teeth. The shoes take longer than usual, with half her attention on the tangled laces and half on the 'guests' as they enter and look around the foyer. Triss approves of Hannibal waiting by the door, pleased to have someone at their backs, though it's obvious from the way Danae sidles in that she's not super comfortable with it. Good.
"Are those really your names?" she asks as she drops one scummy shoe to the floor. It kinda plops. "Those don't sound like real names."
"They're very real names," 'Argus' says with that same punchline smile. His head has gone sideways again. Listening, but not to her.
Unsure whether she likes any of that or not, Triss narrows her eyes at him and says, "Okay...but, not yours." After a year and a half with Hannibal for a therapist, she's getting better at noticing how people say the things they do, and the things they don't.
"I think I liked your silent treatment better," Danae mutters, but at least she's not talking over Triss this time. While that's an improvement, maybe, Triss scrunches up her nose, sticks out her tongue, and lobs her other shoe at the woman.
It doesn't just miss, it stops, hovering in midair before thumping to the floor.
"Danae," Ruth says in a tone Triss has heard hundreds of times from social workers. Danae reacts much like the bratty kids she's known: with a roll of her eyes and a flick of her fingers.
"Like we weren't going to get to that anyway," she shrugs.
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Date: 2016-06-04 12:13 pm (UTC)And yet... There's a strong chance they're not mutants. That they're something else, something closer to magic. It's just fact that a lot of mutants don't ever get further than, well, other mutants - not everyone scrambles for the shadows, gets their hands on every scrap of information on the broad supernatural that they can.
It's too soon to tell, all around, and that certainty is more quieting than aggravating. Hannibal is much better with being patient than he'd been as a younger man.
That, and Ruth earned more brownie points in addressing him formally. Flattery will, in fact, get you things, if you're smart with it. His host-smile is a little less empty when the shards of it are directed at her.
Until the other shoe drops. "Patr--" is all he manages in calm reproach before he cuts himself off.
Telekinesis. Alright. That seems to be what Triss can do as well, as unplanned and hard to categorize as her outbursts of power have been. Hannibal looks surprised, although not alarmed, and he collects himself quickly from staring and wondering if it means that Patricia has somehow attracted her kind of strange, compared to the chances of coincidence. "As eager as I am to hear your explanations for this, I'm afraid you're going to need to wait for us down here." Trusting three strangers, at least one of whom has powers, alone in his house is apparently just something that's going to happen if he takes time to care for Patricia, which means that Hannibal is going to wrestle back a semblance of control the only way he knows how: acting completely unruffled about it. "Please, make yourselves comfortable." His outstretched hand is indicating his kitchen. "But please do not touch the books that have been left in there. They are fragile, and were difficult to acquire. I can get us all something to drink when we return."
He nods his head politely, but turning his back is a pointed affair - 'I'm not afraid of you' - so he can address Patricia. "Let's get you some dry clothes." Which is a clear invitation for her to run upstairs, even if the hardwood is going to bear the brunt of wet footprints and soggy run-off from squelching sleepwear.
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Date: 2016-06-04 07:52 pm (UTC)The pressure on her chest is all in her head. She knows that, she's actually talked to Hannibal about it before, how sometimes it's like she's stuck in a small space even when she's not, and sometimes she feels like there isn't enough air when there is. When that happens, she's supposed to try and count to five and take a breath, right? She's just groping for two when Hannibal says "Let's get you some dry clothes,", his voice closer and louder than before, direct enough to snag her attention. Triss' face jerks towards him, nostrils flaring and pupils rapidly dilating back to something normal.
"Yeah, yes, 'kay," she slides off the bench, shaking hands in her sleeves, and bolts for the stairs. Everyone's watching her now, even Argus, which only drives her need to run. She'd take the steps two at a time if her knee didn't hurt so bad; she ends up half-hopping just to climb the stairs normally, 'cuz her palms sting too much to grab at the bannister.
The house, her room, it's all still too new and impermanent to feel safe, especially since she'd been snatched out of it like six hours ago. Triss hangs in the doorway for a moment before darting to her dresser, digging past the top layers of carefully folded new clothes to the faded, well-worn stuff underneath. She wants her things right now. If it wouldn't be such an obvious sign of babyish weakness, she'd grab Otto off her bed and take him back downstairs with her for the grown-up talk to come.
Triss turns with an armful of clothes to find Hannibal with his feet still respectfully in the hallway. "I don't like this," she blurts before burying her mouth and chin in her favorite shirt. It's got jellyfish on it and her mom bought it for her on the last field trip before things went bad and even if her mom lit all the candles herself the shirt's still really soft. "I don't wanna."
She doesn't. Not any of it.
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Date: 2016-06-04 11:01 pm (UTC)As he pads after her in the dim hallway, he lets the full extent of his relief really hit him. While no one can see, he stands alone outside of Triss's room, eyes closed, and lets the little spiderwebbing cracks open up.
He'd considered the possibility of her being kidnapped before, even though she'd been publicly confirmed as a non-mutant. Most assumed her parents were merely delusional, but not all haters of the preternatural were easily dissuaded. There was always a risk, more specific and more vengeful than the normal fear of child abduction. But calmly planning for such an event had, in the end, done very little to help him cope with the reality. It's not a result he'd ever have predicted.
And then comes a small shard of a voice, and Hannibal smelts that mask back into something cohesive and containing. He turns to her and then gets on one knee. All of their emotional conversations have ended up with their lines of sight level, either from him sitting or from Patricia perching on a tabletop. "You don't need to speak with them if you don't want to. And I cannot reasonably demand that you stay in my sight from now on forever, regardless of how much losing you may have frightened me this morning." He speaks with the same calm, even keel he always uses with her, although there are still fractures in that mask. He isn't concerned about hiding from Patricia the way he's concerned about hiding from other adults.
"Once you've changed, I'd like to look at where you've been hurt, to make sure you're alright. Afterwards, you may stay up here if you like."
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Date: 2016-06-04 11:24 pm (UTC)She's not okay that stuff keeps happening that scares not just her, but people around her, too. Only what's she supposed to do about that? How's she supposed to stop that, or control it? Triss bites her lip, nods, and reaches up to shut the door so she can change clothes. So she can think about it for a second.
When the door opens again she's wearing her jellyfish shirt and a pair of shorts, because rolling up jeans sucks bad enough when your knee isn't purple and blue and the size of a softball. "It bit me," she sulks and picks at the hem of her shorts instead of scratching at the raw skin down the inside of her legs, like she really wants.
Hannibal used to be a doctor, and even though Neph's never met anybody he took care of, she assumes he was a good one. She's been to lots of doctors, she appreciates quick and relatively painless. Hannibal doesn't have to ask her dumb questions she can't answer anymore, either, which is always a plus. She follows him silently to the master bath, where they keep the big first aid kit, and hops up on the toilet without being asked.
While he plucks out all the stuff he'll need - antiseptic packets, sterile pads, wipes, gauze - she asks, "Do you think they know stuff?" a pause, while she chews some dry skin off her lips, then, "Like...stuff we need to know too?"
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Date: 2016-06-05 12:36 am (UTC)There's a little first aid kit in the bathroom's linen closet, on a low shelf that Patricia can reach. With Neosporin and band-aids, it's moreso a safety net and a way of making her feel a little less out of control, should he ever not be home during normal scrapes and bumps. Above that, of course, is a kit that's had to come down...not too frequently, all things considered. If the way Patricia eyes his banisters when she thinks he's not looking is any indication, though, then Hannibal has maybe two more 'settling in' months before she's comfortable enough to really act out. They'll see how long the 'not even minor injuries' stretch lasts.
Hannibal kneels in front of her again, kit opened on the immaculate floor. He'd treated several children in his time as a surgeon, although never for something this minor. It feels more like a heavy ritual than a medical routine. Her hands are so pale, miniature against his palm where he holds one steady.
Patricia, like all children, apparently still has that ability to sometimes hit things innocently, exactly, on the nose with no warning. "That is what I'm hoping." He's cleaning the abrasions with care, although he can't help the fact that raw skin is always going to hurt. "Triss. I know you don't like discussing magic. But that creature that took you is a magical being. I believe that your mismatched rescuers may know things that will help us keep that from happening to you again." Band-aids aren't really going to work on her palms, even as small as they are. So he wraps gauze around them, very aware that children are often more entranced than put-off by large bandages on themselves. She looks not entirely unlike she's about to go have a tiny, terrible boxing match, and Hannibal thinks that on any other day, he'd have a chance at catching her shadow-boxing in a mirror.
Not this morning, not likely.
Her calves - somehow both skinny-flat and curved, in the strange shapeless strength of children - are a bit more rough. Hannibal wonders if the kelpie's sides presented more scales to scrape against, whereas her hands might have been cushioned by its mane. Her knee remains the worst by far, and he is very careful as he plucks dirt from it with bright red, plastic tweezers. He is absolutely not going to gloss over a horse bite, as far as the antiseptic goes. "This will hurt, but it will also be quick."
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Date: 2016-06-05 01:35 am (UTC)Triss makes experimental fists, so entranced by kickboxer chic she almost doesn't notice when Hannibal takes hold of her left ankle and starts on her leg. He didn't point out how she came back wearing pjs and shoes, shoes Triss can't even remember putting on or tying, shoes she keeps at the foot of her bed still, just in case. Maybe he will later, when they don't have to put up a unified front for the strangers.
Chewing on stuff's a bad habit, every adult says. She's scraped all the rough parts off her lips, which leaves her with her nails or hair. Unaware of the math regarding open sewers + mucus membranes, she pops a lock in her mouth and nibbles while Hannibal dabs at her leg and explains his suspicions.
"I guess I wanna know why it happened," she admits. You have to understand something to stop it, she gets that. That's exactly why she doesn't like this magic stuff, or talking about her experiences with it, 'cuz she doesn't understand and nobody, not even Hannibal, has been able to explain things so she can keep from hurting people. Kidnapping is definitely a thing she'd like to avoid, if she can, and she doesn't think Hannibal knows how to stop that either. If he thinks these weirdos might be able to help with that...then, okay, it could be worth it.
"I'll go downstairs then," she says as he tapes a large square of sterile gauze to her calf and considers her knee. "But you gotta tell them no magic here incase somebody notices." Danae was so obvious about it, like she didn't care at all about getting in trouble. Was she like that when she took out the kelpie? Triss can't remember much except the noise it made when the knife went in, the hot stink of its guts and the way they splashed to the water below. Hannibal could be wiping off kelpie gut-residue right now, for all she knows.
That thought makes her a lot more compliant about the whole 'this will hurt' thing. She just sticks her leg out, frowns intensely, and nods.
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Date: 2016-07-20 07:14 am (UTC)Things've changed again.
Things're still changing, Triss admits to herself as she hobbles up the stairs to shower. Hannibal wouldn't let her help with the teacups, and even though she knows she's tired and sore and clumsier than usual it still stings a little.
But she is so, so tired. Everything's throbbing by the time she reaches the landing; her hands, her legs, her knee, even a weird new rawness under her skin. Triss wonders if maybe that's why Argus said they'd have to wait to test her colors against his sounds, if he knew the magic was starting to hurt. Ruth had agreed that she'd had a very long day even though it's only noon, and even Danae nodded. Triss just wishes they'd said why.
The realization that she's got a lot to learn, and she's never been a smart student anyway, hits as she's unwinding the bandages from her hands. What if she's too stupid to do this Very Important Thing? This thing that's dangerous to others and makes her a big fat target? She's only any good if she can get it under control, but what if she just can't learn how?
If she weren't so tired and wrung out, if her eyes weren't already puffy and itchy from crying, if her head didn't feel like a balloon full of pudding, she'd probably freak out again. But three meltdowns in one day is all her tiny body can process, so instead she coils the gauze up into two little rolls, rips the bandages off her legs, and curls up on the shower floor under the spray. Eventually the steam starts to smell less like a swamp, and she works up the energy to reach for soap.
She can't stop thinking, though. Like, how come the other Allomancers didn't stick around to talk to Hannibal? Adults love sitting up talking after the kids go to bed, even if it's only the middle of the afternoon. It's their favorite thing. Did they not want to talk to him? Were they afraid of what he'd ask? How secret are their secrets and are they gonna ask her to keep secrets from him too? She's got a couple, but it's stuff she decided she didn't wanna talk about.
They better not ask her to take sides. She'll have to tell them so, even if they don't like it. Ruth will probably understand - Ruth was the one who insisted on looping her family in on the weirdness.
But Ruth was also, unquestionably, the scariest person in the room when things looked like they were gonna go bad.
Triss chews that over as she dries off and climbs into a long t-shirt covered in cartoon bees. Danae killed the kelpie and got her away, but she stepped back and let Ruth stare Hannibal down. That is. Something. A little thrill of remembered fear shimmies up her spine as she dries her hair and tries to pinpoint what everybody else was doing while she sat there 100% sure somebody was gonna murder Hannibal's entire face.
Was he...kind of happy about it?
There are many shades of happy-Hannibal, each harder to detect than the last and all of them brought on by really, really weird stuff. Triss kinda doesn't even want to try and figure them out, she's got too many other things to sort out right now, but why would he wanna pick a fight with people he already thought had kelpie-murdering powers?
She's halfway down the stairs already, clumping awkwardly with her sore knee. The sounds of running water and clinking dishes have faded away, but Hannibal's still in the kitchen, collecting the scattered (magic) books. Triss leans against the doorway and stares at them for a second, remembering the vivid colors, before she blurts:
"What'd you call them before? When you were tryin'ta make 'em mad on purpose? Was it something bad?"
Obviously it was, but how bad? N-word levels of bad? Because, Hannibal, aside from setting off a bomb that frightened her as much as it offended them, you can't use anybody's N-word..
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Date: 2016-07-22 03:28 pm (UTC)Hannibal supposes he should have realized that Triss would be able to detect 'saying something incendiary just to upset someone else'. Foster homes teach you a lot of things quicker than even a school yard can. Hannibal hadn't yet glanced up when he heard Triss padding into the doorway, but now he looks at her. His arms hold a stack of three of the books, all carefully balanced so that none of them press on or rip at the others' delicate bindings. If Triss were an adult, he'd answer her over his shoulder while toting them off, leaving his cleaning uninterrupted.
He still feels equally unapologetic, but Hannibal doesn't brush her off so neatly. After a moment of considering, he very gently places the books back on the table. "It's a title they carried, centuries ago." Even if a lie couldn't be undermined by Triss asking those three potential teachers the same question she's asking him right now, Hannibal wouldn't be bothering to lie to her. He circles around the table but stays near it, pulling out a chair to sit down while facing her. "But they didn't choose it for themselves. It's a term their hunters used for them."
He sorts through the facts, weighing Triss's age and existing fear of her powers against them. "The world is already a much safer place for people like us, Triss. But today, the only written works that have survived about your people - or at least, the only ones that I have found - were written by their enemies." Hannibal inclines his head, as if conceding to a point that they've discussed before. "As you know, the terms that humans pick for people unlike themselves don't tend to be flattering. Jealousy and fear make them defensive."
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Date: 2016-07-23 03:28 am (UTC)(Hannibal has never once said anything disparaging about her past therapists, but the few times she's mentioned them he's projected this kinda...Doneness. She always gets the feeling he's working real hard not to close his eyes and sigh.)
She crosses her arms and squints her eyes and stays leaning against the door instead. This is the first anybody's said about hunting or enemies, except for the obvious fae, and she's not sure how to feel that people have written books about how much they hate her. But there's lots of stuff online and in newspapers about mutants, a lot of it terrible, so that's probably not new. She decides that doesn't bother her as much as belong to a 'they'. Well, that doesn't bother her, exactly, it's just a weird feeling. Like staring at a plate of something she's never eaten before - it could be good or it could be terrible and she won't know until she digs in. It's...distracting.
"Then why'd you use it?" she asks. Pushes, really, "You're s'posed to ask people what they wanna be called if you're not sure." Her teacher for the last half of second grade said that, which Triss only really remembers 'cuz she got in trouble for it with the principal later. Her squint pulls lower, into a true frown, "I'm just like them and you used the bad name for it." For us.
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Date: 2016-07-23 01:35 pm (UTC)Is she...trying to scold him?
It's not appropriate to laugh. Not even to smile. Luckily, Hannibal has been perfecting his poker face for the last few decades. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, drawing his face even closer to being level with hers.
His voice is still even and calm, clearly not rattled by her pressing him. "I wanted to confirm my suspicions, if that was what they were. And I wanted them to know that I was not as far in the dark as they thought I was." Hannibal's head tilts bare degrees to the left. "Words have the power to hurt, yes, but this word is a secretive one. It's not nearly the same as insults you may hear in the street or at school. There are implications about what one would go through to have learned the word I used. It is no casual term."
Hannibal's gaze doesn't waver from Triss. "If I am to trust them with instructing you, I would rather know now about how they react to unpleasant surprises. A rash temper wouldn't do for teaching a child with telekinetic abilities."
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Date: 2016-07-24 06:41 am (UTC)So really it's the last part that makes her cross her arms and scrunch up her face, her jaw jutting forward. What Hannibal said was pretty rude, and that's bad on its own, but the real reason he said it--
"But you didn't know when you called 'em names!" she says, high and angrily shrill, "You din't know what they could do at all but you knew I was like 'em and you know what I did so--so--!"
Triss has never been the greatest about following a thought down a coherent path even at the best of times, which this is not. This one branches off in too many possible directions: so they could've destroyed the house much easier than she had a whole church, so why would you mess with a buncha telepaths on purpose anyway, so they don't know enough about Triss' abilities to know what other non-house-destroying stuff Allomancers can even do, so that was really risky and pretty dumb and very scary but most of all totally unnecessary.
Her glare intensifies with the sheer volume of all those so's swelling her brain, her eyes burn with--no, not tears again. Triss blinks and scowls and somehow settles on "So that was dumb."
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Date: 2016-07-24 11:08 pm (UTC)She's more upset than he'd have guessed she would be. She hadn't reacted well at the time, of course, but Hannibal had assumed her fear would be the sort of short-lived overreaction that children have in droves. This lengthy attempt at telling him off isn't at all what he had expected, and that, more than the actual content of what she's saying, unbalances him.
Hannibal is silent for longer than he has been so far, wondering what angle to play now that she's discarded both previous attempts at deflecting her worry. Addressing it directly, perhaps? "I am sorry that I frightened you." Because that's what he thinks is at the root of this reprimand. "I would not have upset them if I truly believed they would be a danger to you."
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Date: 2016-07-25 12:16 am (UTC)To the house, since it looks more and more like whatever protection Hannibal's got on it is only for keeping things out, not for smothering magic on the inside (or else those books wouldn't work). To Hannibal, who doesn't seem to care that he was outnumbered or aware of what it looks like when all the metal stuff holding a building up gets told not to do its job anymore. And to her totally nonexistent control, with her sitting there with the fuel to mess with all that metal and no idea how not to. Danae had to stop her. Danae!
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Date: 2016-07-26 09:33 pm (UTC)So suddenly being faced with someone who does care is... Jarring. It's jarring. Hannibal's frames for reference are all negative - he never has much reason to care if he's upsetting someone else. It's often the point, or at least a welcome effect. But he didn't want to upset Triss. He very genuinely hadn't even thought of her reaction when he'd thrown those words out to the likely-armed-and-definitely-dangerous telekinetics at his table.
Hannibal's expression is at the edge of a cliff - tentative, cautious, moving slowly to avoid upsetting his footing. It's openly hesitant, which is perhaps his only saving grace. Maybe the fact that he's not coolly brushing her off will help smooth things out, even if Hannibal now feels a little lost about how to go about that himself.
"I may have been hasty," he finally allows. His voice sounds uncharacteristically small in the wide space of the kitchen.
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Date: 2016-07-28 01:19 am (UTC)That thing he's doing right now, with the ghosts of his eyebrows and the way he sorta sucks in his bottom lip, is definitely not planned. At least she doesn't think so. She's seen Hannibal make lots of faces at lots of people for lots of reasons, many she didn't and still doesn't understand, so she can't say why exactly this strikes her as different. Maybe 'cuz he doesn't ever go for stuff that make him look like he's wrong?
(The word she wants is vulnerable. Somehow, despite everything, that one hasn't found its way into her vocabulary yet.)
"Okay," she says, which is Triss-shorthand for a lot of things. Things like 'it's fine,' 'it's not fine but I don't wanna deal with it,' 'I'm happy but this is a lot to take in,' 'I'm upset but nothing I say or do is gonna change anything anyway,' and 'I get what you're saying even if you don't know how to say it but I don't know how to say that either.' This is the last one. She sells it with a small but firm nod, like a pact-sealing handshake, and then leaves the doorway to come over to the table.
"Can I help put stuff away?"
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Date: 2016-08-03 12:41 am (UTC)It is...surprisingly dangerous and difficult, lying to a child. And if Hannibal is truthful, then being honest with them feels only marginally safer.
"Of course." He stands back up, pushing the chair back towards the table. He regathers his stack of texts, but watches the few left on the table consideringly. "The one furthest from you, with the dark brown cover and the silver metal fastenings. Could you very carefully help me put that back in the study?" Extra trust and responsibility. If Triss is going to have an altered relationship with her powers, Hannibal can choose to block or enable the confidence she might need.
He would rather her feel that he trusts her to be responsible and helpful, when given the opportunity.
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Date: 2016-08-03 04:14 am (UTC)Patricia doesn't think about any of that, because she tells herself she doesn't think about her parents at all. It's a new thing she's trying out, and she's getting pretty good at it during daylight hours.
She walks over to the books and reaches out for the brown and silver one, movements as telegraphed as if it might bite. Although she squints hard enough to summon up a twinge in her temples, no magical colors pop up. It really only works when she's got the right metals, doesn't it? She kinda likes that she could just turn her magic off whenever she wanted, except what if one time she really needed it and didn't have it? They didn't even get around to what all the metals are before calling it a day, an oversight she both resents and (kinda) understands. She's so stupid-tired right now she might not remember, no matter how important it is, and she's still got to convince them she's not stupid-stupid.
For now she's got to not drop the valuable book, which weighs as much as a largish cat. Triss holds it to her chest, figuring it's better if it touches cotton than skin. She's heard all about how skin oils can destroy old stuff on field trips before.
"What's this one do?" she asks as she follows Hannibal to the study. "I can't tell ennymore if it's magic."
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Date: 2016-08-06 12:28 pm (UTC)What sort of burn outs will Triss experience, if any? What price is paid for their abilities, aside from being hunted throughout the centuries?
When Triss admits aloud that she can't see the magic anymore, Hannibal's smile becomes a public affair. "Because you snuffed the flame, or because you're out of fuel?" He asks, for more than simple curiosity - how far does their fuel go? Will there be a chance of her accidentally 'lighting' it later on? But he is more concerned with answering her question, make no mistake.
He continues smoothly, slowly leading through the kitchen to the living room. A downstairs office of sorts is on the ground floor and, while the book Triss is holding should be sorted upstairs in the proper study, Hannibal prefers the idea of her helping to the idea of getting the book placed back immediately. "That one is only a reference book, however. About water-born creatures." The scent in her room had given Hannibal a bit fat clue about where to start looking, after all.
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