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.
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timeasmymeasure
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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.
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.
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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?"
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.