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.
"I'm out," she's got no doubts about that. Either there wasn't much in that second vial, or whatever that metal was burns a lot faster. Danae's Iron still sits in her belly like a tumor, palpable, but Triss recognizes the feel of it now. She's had Iron lumps before, maybe 'cuz of something she ate, and carrying them around never hurt her. In fact she's pretty sure they just go away on their own eventually? Will it work that way with all the metals? What if she ate, like, a penny?
She should totally eat a penny.
Triss has no real idea where the books are supposed to go. There're so many bookshelves in the house, most of them full of boring adult homework material. Has Hannibal been hiding the important stuff in plain sight, between academic journals and his old textbooks? That wouldn't be surprising, only she figures he wouldn't put these out in the living room or the kitchen, where any visitor might casually poke through the spines. The office is sorta out of the way, though, and then there's upstairs. A random magic book here and there would be pretty effective. Except this one's not magic, it sounds like, so if somebody found it there'd only be some raised eyebrows. Maybe not even that, since everybody who knows Hannibal figures he's eccentric pretty quick.
"Oh," she wrinkles her nose and sets it very carefully on the desk blotter, even if it's not magically combustable. "Why'd you even have it?"
One of the others had asked a similar question earlier, which he'd waved off with an explanation about preparing to parent a magical kid. But he's only had her for not even six months, and she didn't see him unpack crates of new books back in Boston. So this is stuff he already owned. "And where d'you find stuff like that?"
And here, right here, something is born. Hannibal had never had much desire for children before meeting Triss. To be entirely, completely, undesirably honest, he hadn't had much desire after meeting her, either. What he had wanted was to see where this newfound power would go. What it might grow into. What he could help shape it into.
But in this melding of his worlds - one of mutants and magic, and one of hiding that from the public - he is suddenly not alone in a way that's new as of today. Triss had been part of that hidden world, of course, but she'd been unhappy there. Now, she's still frightened of her own potential, but it's a fear she is going to work to overcome. Now that she's taking the first few steps of being inquisitive, in asking for his secrets...
...Hannibal realizes that he'd been missing that opportunity. To give over his secrets to a willing, deserved heir.
In that moment, Hannibal wants a child for reasons most parents want one: to be immortal through them, to watch their own worldviews be handed over and then energetically reshaped and repurposed.
More easily than he would have ever thought possible, Hannibal feels himself unfolding those secrets that he's never told another adult. "I collect books on every supernatural subject I can. Knowledge of a thing can reduce fear of it, and allow you to put it to its best possible use."
Hannibal is very carefully placing the books he was holding atop the one Triss has placed down. Everything stacks neatly on his desk. "And, before I found you, these books were some of my only contacts to people like myself. My only sense of family."
Triss eyes the book she's just set down, now pinned under four other volumes, with renewed interest. If it's not dangerously magical, could she pick it up and read it without getting into trouble? How useful would that be? So far a lot of the stuff she's been made to learn - like long division and geography - has been spectacularly useless. Sitting still for hours and hours just to pour facts she might not ever need into her head just seems like an offensive waste of time.
Then again, if she'd known what a kelpie was, and like, how to recognize one, she might not've ever gotten on that horse. She might've known she wasn't dreaming. There could even be some tips in those books for what to do when kidnapped by a faerie-horse. If this is gonna be her life, now, that could be a real compelling reason to crack a book.
"Am I allowed t'read them?" They haven't had any talks about Stuff She Can Touch. They haven't needed to; before she ended up in foster care, she'd been part of a family that had at least as much money as Hannibal does. She knows what's Not For Touching Or Playing With, as instinctively as she knows how to be quiet and avoid attracting attention. Just, sometimes she chooses not to do those things. So far she's been too nervous to mess with Hannibal's stuff, and she figures the books shouldn't be the first strike against her. They could be too important for that. If they're a 'family' thing. They could be...only for passing on to family, too.
(She's saving the appliances for her first occasion of testing boundaries anyway. One day in the near future there's gonna be an Epic Pancake Mishap involving the blender, the food processor, the juicer and probably the Kitchen Aid, and that's just how it's gonna be)
He says he 'found her' like he's the one who can see magic, not like she got randomly assigned to one of his probono rotations. Triss almost snorts, but that choice of words makes her wonder... "But, how'd you find these?" Her fingers drum the desk blotter beside the books, not quite willing to touch without permission. Yet. "I bet they're real secret, right? Extra secret if they're the magic ones. Can you--" her eyes widen at the sudden clicking of two previously separate thoughts, "Can you smell magic?!"
"Yes." Surely anyone can sense that there's a but about to follow that allowance, though. "Please always check with me about which book, however. Some are more fragile - or even dangerous - than others." Yes, Triss, even the ones that are kept in public spaces. You've just mentally clocked his weird adrenaline habit - having supernatural items in plain sight is just one facet among many.
But this is an opportunity for an encouragement, as well, and it's one he won't miss. He leans one hand, and then that hip, against his desk, nearly sitting on the edge so he can watch her without simply looming straight up. "But, once you are comfortable enough with fueling your powers that you can see whether or not a book is magical on your own, you are welcome to touch any you'd like that wouldn't pose a hazard."
And then he gets to listen to Triss work herself through the logic of his power to a conclusion that is... It's endearingly hopeful, if nothing else. "Only in the sense that I can smell its components and its practitioners. It sounds as though yours is the sort of power that I usually need to outsource to for my finds." Will she consider it - thievery, recon - as a potential job when she's older? Will him planting the seeds now be to blame, or simply fate? "I find these books by the quiet channels that metas use for passing along tips and information. If I find one myself and I'm unsure about its properties, I use those same avenues to locate someone like yourself, or like Argus, who can examine it more thoroughly than I could."
He's leaning back fully against the desk now, hands folded in front of his hips. "Anything that anyone gets accomplished in our community, they often had help from others. It's a large extended family, even if most of us claim to be solitary."
Triss is eight, she has a connoisseur's ear for the hovering but, and equal odds of obeying or disregarding depending on the stuff that follows. This time she listens intently, the thin lines of her face straining like a dog waiting for a ball to fly. It's just lucky for both of them that she already knows the risks of messing with magic she doesn't understand - if he tried for a dozen years and put all his considerable brainpower to it, Hannibal couldn't've come up with a more effective lesson than the one she brought down on herself. She's quick to nod agreement to his terms.
"I'll be careful," careful not to set them off or damage the books. To Triss, these are practically equivalent sins. "Can I read this one?" Her hands frame the book now buried at the bottom of the pile, but she doesn't tug it out. Hannibal said it wasn't magic, and he probably wouldn't have handed her anything she could break, but she literally just agreed to check with him first. A book about potentially dangerous magical creatures sounds like the exactly the sort of thing she oughta be cramming into her head.
She runs her fingers over the silver endcaps while he explains that, no, he can't just sniff out the right kind of books. He kinda makes it sound like people who use magic have a smell, though? Or 'components' do? Triss gets a little stuck on those words, as well as 'outsource', but it doesn't take a perfect SAT vocab score to understand that he gets other people to find magic for him. People who can detect it more directly.
(Though if she can see magic and Argus can hear it, couldn't there be an Allomancer who smells it?)
"Then...I can help?" Triss looks up from the book's embossed spine, the crinkle of a frown smoothing out in a wide-eyed blink. "So you won't hafta ask Argus or, um, so other people can learn about stuff they need?"
It's the first time anyone's suggested there might be some benefit to her powers. So far she's been A) dangerous to others, B) dangerous to herself or C) so much of A and B that there are things out there who want her dead. The beauty of seeing magic was enough to leech away some of that horror, but she hadn't understood, just then, that she could really do anything with it. Hannibal speaks of family, sort of, and Triss thinks maybe she can see what her place might look like in it.
Hannibal shifts off of the desk, pivoting carefully so he can begin to stack the three topmost books off to the side on the blotter. "Yes, you may." Because this one happens to be in English, modern English even. Triss may find the eclectic languages of fae- and meta-record keeping to be frustrating in the future, but today she can read all about kelpies in her native language. "And if you have questions, you are more than welcome to ask me." He's not certain if he should expect questions or not. He fully expects her to have questions, after all, but would she actually bring them to him? Would they be things she'd want him to know she's wondering or worrying about?
She's showered off the grit and smell of the kelpie and whatever harbor it dunked her in, but Hannibal is already wondering if there will be nightmares in the future about this incident. He can't imagine that even her best intentions about arming herself with knowledge won't give her more reasons to fear what may try to snatch her next.
'Then...I can help?' She's hit on it immediately. Hannibal's smile reaches his eyes, an honest happiness at thinking they might ever work together. Triss embracing her gifts for any reason is going to be a sight to behold.
"I was hoping so, Triss." The offered book is now bare, and Hannibal simply leaves it be, for her to reclaim. "I would love to see you use your gifts for something you can be proud of."
She's known for a long time now that Hannibal knows all kinds of things. She has managed, at a younger age than most, to get over the idea that adults know everything, but Triss hasn't aged into the certainty that they don't know anything, yet. It seems totally reasonable that he should be able to answer any questions she might have about whatever's in these books, because surely he's read them all. Forty something is so many years, he's probably read everything he owns at last twice.
Triss takes the book back every bit as carefully as she picked it up the first time. This office is for working, not for sitting and reading in - there aren't any comfy chairs or blankets or anything. Actually there aren't many places in the house that encourage sprawling or napping; that, too, is similar to her old life, but at least back then she'd had a native's disregard and permission to crawl under the furniture so long as nobody important was looking. She could take it back up to her room, but...
It still smells funny up there. Like beached fish and bad water and the sick taste of a near-miss. No. Weighed against that, the upright armchairs in the den will do just fine.
"I could do that," she says, just as wondering but a little more firmly, this time. It'd be neat, to sit in one of those chairs and look over the bookshelves and immediately know which ones she'd helped to find. What other sort of magic stuff could there be out there to bring back and set on a shelf? Storybooks are full of enchanted gems and jewelry and stuff, but just as many frogs. Triss has seen enough real magic now to know that dancing candlesticks and teapots are unlikely, but is it silly to think that people like her and Hannibal might have a reason to enchant a clock or a wardrobe?
She shifts in place, torn between retreating to read (ie: fall safely asleep over the book, the eventual outcome no matter what) or this unusual opportunity to talk to Hannibal about magic without wanting to frustration-cry. "What--what're you gonna do? Now, I mean, 'cuz you're not at work 'cuz'a what happened..." She does not say 'because of me', not because she's not thinking it but because she's learned better than to let on about those thoughts.
It's an odd question. Not because children are so self-centered that they never ask what adults are doing, but because Triss doesn't often interrogate Hannibal about anything personal. If she plans on going upstairs to read, whatever he's doing elsewhere in the house wouldn't bother her in the slightest, which must mean she has another reason for asking--
Which Hannibal thinks he discovers as she finishes that thought. 'Cause of what happened'' is hardly a stinging indictment, but there is the hint of 'cause of what I did' that can't help but slink along after the phrase, like a guilty dog hiding under a kitchen table. Hannibal has a few decades of experience in acting unaffected by events, a practice evident in how he smiles and leans a bit heavier against his own desk. Nonchalance is projected with a crisp elegance that nonchalance seldom has. "Aside from enjoying my sudden day off, you mean?" Is she old enough to have noticed the way adults jokingly always want to get out of work, the same way children try to get out of school? "It's very likely I'm going to read quite a bit, myself."
Silence barely has time to settle in after his words before Hannibal continues. "Would you want to read in the same room?" That freshly-ironed nonchalance envelops the last sentence as well, perhaps a bit more tightly than anything else so far.
"Yes!" Triss blurts. Therapy taught her how to wield silence, not how to convincingly mask her motivation. She's only as opaque as most eight year olds, which is to say: not very at all when she's angling for something. Playing it cool may never be a tactic that works for her, even with Hannibal's detached model to follow.
She's self aware enough to look a little embarrassed, at least, an unsure smile crimping her mouth at his joke. Do adults enjoy not working? Her list of Things Grown Ups Do When They're Not At Work' is pretty short, beginning with 'pay bills' and ending with 'argue with other grown ups on the phone'. The list splits into subsections for foster homes, where the adults are more likely to also cook and clean, and households, where they can pay other people to do that for them. Except for Hannibal who likes cooking and sort of saves that for himself. That's another sub-sub list that should probably have 'read about magic' on it somewhere.
Once she's run through those lists and decided he's not secretly joking or humoring her, she darts on ahead to the den. The chairs might be posture-conscious but there's a heavy throw over the back of the sofa, all drapey and warm and geometric shapes. Triss pulls it around herself and clambers into a wingback, the book clasped carefully under her arm. Once she's safely crosslegged, tented under the blanket, it unfolds over her knees. The pages are thick, crackly and dry, so she turns them carefully by the edges as she waits for Hannibal to find his own book and join her. It might take a while, he can be so picky.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
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..
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-06 08:48 pm (UTC)She should totally eat a penny.
Triss has no real idea where the books are supposed to go. There're so many bookshelves in the house, most of them full of boring adult homework material. Has Hannibal been hiding the important stuff in plain sight, between academic journals and his old textbooks? That wouldn't be surprising, only she figures he wouldn't put these out in the living room or the kitchen, where any visitor might casually poke through the spines. The office is sorta out of the way, though, and then there's upstairs. A random magic book here and there would be pretty effective. Except this one's not magic, it sounds like, so if somebody found it there'd only be some raised eyebrows. Maybe not even that, since everybody who knows Hannibal figures he's eccentric pretty quick.
"Oh," she wrinkles her nose and sets it very carefully on the desk blotter, even if it's not magically combustable. "Why'd you even have it?"
One of the others had asked a similar question earlier, which he'd waved off with an explanation about preparing to parent a magical kid. But he's only had her for not even six months, and she didn't see him unpack crates of new books back in Boston. So this is stuff he already owned. "And where d'you find stuff like that?"
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 01:48 pm (UTC)But in this melding of his worlds - one of mutants and magic, and one of hiding that from the public - he is suddenly not alone in a way that's new as of today. Triss had been part of that hidden world, of course, but she'd been unhappy there. Now, she's still frightened of her own potential, but it's a fear she is going to work to overcome. Now that she's taking the first few steps of being inquisitive, in asking for his secrets...
...Hannibal realizes that he'd been missing that opportunity. To give over his secrets to a willing, deserved heir.
In that moment, Hannibal wants a child for reasons most parents want one: to be immortal through them, to watch their own worldviews be handed over and then energetically reshaped and repurposed.
More easily than he would have ever thought possible, Hannibal feels himself unfolding those secrets that he's never told another adult. "I collect books on every supernatural subject I can. Knowledge of a thing can reduce fear of it, and allow you to put it to its best possible use."
Hannibal is very carefully placing the books he was holding atop the one Triss has placed down. Everything stacks neatly on his desk. "And, before I found you, these books were some of my only contacts to people like myself. My only sense of family."
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 09:51 pm (UTC)Then again, if she'd known what a kelpie was, and like, how to recognize one, she might not've ever gotten on that horse. She might've known she wasn't dreaming. There could even be some tips in those books for what to do when kidnapped by a faerie-horse. If this is gonna be her life, now, that could be a real compelling reason to crack a book.
"Am I allowed t'read them?" They haven't had any talks about Stuff She Can Touch. They haven't needed to; before she ended up in foster care, she'd been part of a family that had at least as much money as Hannibal does. She knows what's Not For Touching Or Playing With, as instinctively as she knows how to be quiet and avoid attracting attention. Just, sometimes she chooses not to do those things. So far she's been too nervous to mess with Hannibal's stuff, and she figures the books shouldn't be the first strike against her. They could be too important for that. If they're a 'family' thing. They could be...only for passing on to family, too.
(She's saving the appliances for her first occasion of testing boundaries anyway. One day in the near future there's gonna be an Epic Pancake Mishap involving the blender, the food processor, the juicer and probably the Kitchen Aid, and that's just how it's gonna be)
He says he 'found her' like he's the one who can see magic, not like she got randomly assigned to one of his probono rotations. Triss almost snorts, but that choice of words makes her wonder... "But, how'd you find these?" Her fingers drum the desk blotter beside the books, not quite willing to touch without permission. Yet. "I bet they're real secret, right? Extra secret if they're the magic ones. Can you--" her eyes widen at the sudden clicking of two previously separate thoughts, "Can you smell magic?!"
no subject
Date: 2016-08-08 06:36 pm (UTC)But this is an opportunity for an encouragement, as well, and it's one he won't miss. He leans one hand, and then that hip, against his desk, nearly sitting on the edge so he can watch her without simply looming straight up. "But, once you are comfortable enough with fueling your powers that you can see whether or not a book is magical on your own, you are welcome to touch any you'd like that wouldn't pose a hazard."
And then he gets to listen to Triss work herself through the logic of his power to a conclusion that is... It's endearingly hopeful, if nothing else. "Only in the sense that I can smell its components and its practitioners. It sounds as though yours is the sort of power that I usually need to outsource to for my finds." Will she consider it - thievery, recon - as a potential job when she's older? Will him planting the seeds now be to blame, or simply fate? "I find these books by the quiet channels that metas use for passing along tips and information. If I find one myself and I'm unsure about its properties, I use those same avenues to locate someone like yourself, or like Argus, who can examine it more thoroughly than I could."
He's leaning back fully against the desk now, hands folded in front of his hips. "Anything that anyone gets accomplished in our community, they often had help from others. It's a large extended family, even if most of us claim to be solitary."
no subject
Date: 2016-08-09 12:34 am (UTC)"I'll be careful," careful not to set them off or damage the books. To Triss, these are practically equivalent sins. "Can I read this one?" Her hands frame the book now buried at the bottom of the pile, but she doesn't tug it out. Hannibal said it wasn't magic, and he probably wouldn't have handed her anything she could break, but she literally just agreed to check with him first. A book about potentially dangerous magical creatures sounds like the exactly the sort of thing she oughta be cramming into her head.
She runs her fingers over the silver endcaps while he explains that, no, he can't just sniff out the right kind of books. He kinda makes it sound like people who use magic have a smell, though? Or 'components' do? Triss gets a little stuck on those words, as well as 'outsource', but it doesn't take a perfect SAT vocab score to understand that he gets other people to find magic for him. People who can detect it more directly.
(Though if she can see magic and Argus can hear it, couldn't there be an Allomancer who smells it?)
"Then...I can help?" Triss looks up from the book's embossed spine, the crinkle of a frown smoothing out in a wide-eyed blink. "So you won't hafta ask Argus or, um, so other people can learn about stuff they need?"
It's the first time anyone's suggested there might be some benefit to her powers. So far she's been A) dangerous to others, B) dangerous to herself or C) so much of A and B that there are things out there who want her dead. The beauty of seeing magic was enough to leech away some of that horror, but she hadn't understood, just then, that she could really do anything with it. Hannibal speaks of family, sort of, and Triss thinks maybe she can see what her place might look like in it.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-10 12:20 am (UTC)She's showered off the grit and smell of the kelpie and whatever harbor it dunked her in, but Hannibal is already wondering if there will be nightmares in the future about this incident. He can't imagine that even her best intentions about arming herself with knowledge won't give her more reasons to fear what may try to snatch her next.
'Then...I can help?' She's hit on it immediately. Hannibal's smile reaches his eyes, an honest happiness at thinking they might ever work together. Triss embracing her gifts for any reason is going to be a sight to behold.
"I was hoping so, Triss." The offered book is now bare, and Hannibal simply leaves it be, for her to reclaim. "I would love to see you use your gifts for something you can be proud of."
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 12:43 am (UTC)Triss takes the book back every bit as carefully as she picked it up the first time. This office is for working, not for sitting and reading in - there aren't any comfy chairs or blankets or anything. Actually there aren't many places in the house that encourage sprawling or napping; that, too, is similar to her old life, but at least back then she'd had a native's disregard and permission to crawl under the furniture so long as nobody important was looking. She could take it back up to her room, but...
It still smells funny up there. Like beached fish and bad water and the sick taste of a near-miss. No. Weighed against that, the upright armchairs in the den will do just fine.
"I could do that," she says, just as wondering but a little more firmly, this time. It'd be neat, to sit in one of those chairs and look over the bookshelves and immediately know which ones she'd helped to find. What other sort of magic stuff could there be out there to bring back and set on a shelf? Storybooks are full of enchanted gems and jewelry and stuff, but just as many frogs. Triss has seen enough real magic now to know that dancing candlesticks and teapots are unlikely, but is it silly to think that people like her and Hannibal might have a reason to enchant a clock or a wardrobe?
She shifts in place, torn between retreating to read (ie: fall safely asleep over the book, the eventual outcome no matter what) or this unusual opportunity to talk to Hannibal about magic without wanting to frustration-cry. "What--what're you gonna do? Now, I mean, 'cuz you're not at work 'cuz'a what happened..." She does not say 'because of me', not because she's not thinking it but because she's learned better than to let on about those thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-08 05:50 pm (UTC)Which Hannibal thinks he discovers as she finishes that thought. 'Cause of what happened'' is hardly a stinging indictment, but there is the hint of 'cause of what I did' that can't help but slink along after the phrase, like a guilty dog hiding under a kitchen table. Hannibal has a few decades of experience in acting unaffected by events, a practice evident in how he smiles and leans a bit heavier against his own desk. Nonchalance is projected with a crisp elegance that nonchalance seldom has. "Aside from enjoying my sudden day off, you mean?" Is she old enough to have noticed the way adults jokingly always want to get out of work, the same way children try to get out of school? "It's very likely I'm going to read quite a bit, myself."
Silence barely has time to settle in after his words before Hannibal continues. "Would you want to read in the same room?" That freshly-ironed nonchalance envelops the last sentence as well, perhaps a bit more tightly than anything else so far.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-19 12:41 am (UTC)She's self aware enough to look a little embarrassed, at least, an unsure smile crimping her mouth at his joke. Do adults enjoy not working? Her list of Things Grown Ups Do When They're Not At Work' is pretty short, beginning with 'pay bills' and ending with 'argue with other grown ups on the phone'. The list splits into subsections for foster homes, where the adults are more likely to also cook and clean, and households, where they can pay other people to do that for them. Except for Hannibal who likes cooking and sort of saves that for himself. That's another sub-sub list that should probably have 'read about magic' on it somewhere.
Once she's run through those lists and decided he's not secretly joking or humoring her, she darts on ahead to the den. The chairs might be posture-conscious but there's a heavy throw over the back of the sofa, all drapey and warm and geometric shapes. Triss pulls it around herself and clambers into a wingback, the book clasped carefully under her arm. Once she's safely crosslegged, tented under the blanket, it unfolds over her knees. The pages are thick, crackly and dry, so she turns them carefully by the edges as she waits for Hannibal to find his own book and join her. It might take a while, he can be so picky.