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
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.