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[Spam for Bruce]
[Just before the crash, when the wave of exhaustion seized him, Hannibal spent the last few moments of consciousness crossing his room to his pack. He wrapped his hand around its pack just before dropping, and that is how he wakes: on his side, grasping a bag full of semi-decent equipment and some of the silverware he bartered for in London Below.
There's no harm in wanting to bring civility with you, wherever you go.
His eyes adjust to the dark - he has always seen well in dim lighting. Fortunate, given how much work he gets done in the middle of the night. But it isn't night (he is certain it's morning). They are underground.
They. He is not alone.
Settling the pack on his shoulders, Hannibal reaches out to touch the other man's shoulder lightly. He knows that scent. He knows those curls. A broken neck is too good for him.]
Dr. Banner.
[Open Spam]
[After leaving Banner's body cross legged against a wall, in a pose of meditation (with words carved into the dirt of the wall beside him, 'Give me the strength to accept with serenity the thing that cannot be changed'), Hannibal moves on. There is blood on his pants, hidden by their dark color, and smudges on his collar and cuff. He is unconcerned by them: they will all be blooded, one way or another, by the time they return to the ship.
He wanders; he hunts. The natives, he learns quickly, are not very communicative. But they do understand one thing.
Hannibal kills three of them - the first with a fork, those after with its crude stone knife - before finding a small camp. It suits him - a city would be too much, too many. There is only one left to guard the site, and though the native hears him approach, he - she, perhaps? he cannot be certain - does not hear him in time to survive.
The body he leaves on the floor, finding instead cooking instruments - a campfire pot he cleans as well as possible, something that could pass for a plate - and starting a small fire.
He has never been one for camping, but needs must.]
[Just before the crash, when the wave of exhaustion seized him, Hannibal spent the last few moments of consciousness crossing his room to his pack. He wrapped his hand around its pack just before dropping, and that is how he wakes: on his side, grasping a bag full of semi-decent equipment and some of the silverware he bartered for in London Below.
There's no harm in wanting to bring civility with you, wherever you go.
His eyes adjust to the dark - he has always seen well in dim lighting. Fortunate, given how much work he gets done in the middle of the night. But it isn't night (he is certain it's morning). They are underground.
They. He is not alone.
Settling the pack on his shoulders, Hannibal reaches out to touch the other man's shoulder lightly. He knows that scent. He knows those curls. A broken neck is too good for him.]
Dr. Banner.
[Open Spam]
[After leaving Banner's body cross legged against a wall, in a pose of meditation (with words carved into the dirt of the wall beside him, 'Give me the strength to accept with serenity the thing that cannot be changed'), Hannibal moves on. There is blood on his pants, hidden by their dark color, and smudges on his collar and cuff. He is unconcerned by them: they will all be blooded, one way or another, by the time they return to the ship.
He wanders; he hunts. The natives, he learns quickly, are not very communicative. But they do understand one thing.
Hannibal kills three of them - the first with a fork, those after with its crude stone knife - before finding a small camp. It suits him - a city would be too much, too many. There is only one left to guard the site, and though the native hears him approach, he - she, perhaps? he cannot be certain - does not hear him in time to survive.
The body he leaves on the floor, finding instead cooking instruments - a campfire pot he cleans as well as possible, something that could pass for a plate - and starting a small fire.
He has never been one for camping, but needs must.]
no subject
Will hasn't done much sleeping in the last few days. He shuts his eyes and Harvey decides his fate with a flip of a coin, deeming him a liability. A pickaxe would do nicely. He shuts his eyes and he sees natives swarming, pulling him limb from limb for his crimes against their race. He trusts nothing of his surroundings, and though it's taking a toll, it doesn't stop him from wandering.
Harvey is asleep, and Will can't help but stretch his legs, restless in this place and the bleak, claustrophobic kind of atmosphere it presents. He makes his way through a tunnel, a slant upward and into a clearing, another camp close by that could have proved a problem, had they traveled much of the perimeter. Exhaustion has made him lazy, but he finds his tensions perking as he lays pressed up against the cavern wall, head cocked around the corner to get a better look.
It's not more natives. Though it is recognizable.
(He hears it vaguely, a huff of a stag trailing behind him.)
Savagery is easy to come by in a place like this, with beings so innately violent taking up residence. He sees a Hannibal Lecter mussed and bloodied. Sated. Alive. And intrigue has always been a large part of a very specific kind of downfall.
He approaches with his hands spread wide, not a sign of submission but certainly a placating one - 'I will not hurt you,' it says, even with Zane's gun is tucked into the waistline of his pants. (Savagery is often unpredictable, but that's not to say there's no preparing for it.) Even with his own clothes soaked red as well, blood caked randomly about his forearms - there's only so much he could wash off. ]
Making yourself at home, I see.
no subject
He smells roasting tongue and kidney, slightly less palatable for his lack of spices, slightly more for the fact that it is a warm meal in a place where warm meals are difficult to come by. He smells dirt and sweat, his own, objectionable but not unbearable. He smells burning wood from his spit (a necessary cooking tool, though he pines for his cast iron skillet), fat sizzling in the fire. He smells fire.
And he smells something else enter the mix, something acrid and exhausted. Sweat, sleepless sweat, has its own damp, cool scent. Hannibal glances up from his work, and a slow smile pulls at his lips.]
It's hardly comparable.
[He sees the gun, wonders if he will smell gunpowder when Will is near enough. He sees the blood, and relies on his eyes, for the moment, to search for a source.]
Have you been hurt?
no subject
They had to be put down, was all. Or that's what it's easier to tell himself.
He smells the distinctive scent of flesh cooking, the sizzle of meat roasting on the spit in front of him. Even if he had seen any sign of wildlife - tracks, droppings, or a single animal - it wouldn't be too difficult a leap to figure just what is on that spit. His options meander between the natives of these caves and a member of the barge itself, but, well. It is a camp. It had to have been occupied at some point.
The smell in the air is at once nauseating (for obvious reasons) and intoxicating (mainly, mostly, absolutely because his rations only spread so far, and he hadn't rightly eaten in what had to be two days; there was no time, down here). ]
It's not my blood. [ His hands start to drop, and he does have to hold back a wince when he touches at the back of his forearm. There's a sizable gash there, no longer weeping but still red and angry. A hooklike blade that he now kept in his pack did the damage, and Will bends his elbow to gesture vaguely. ]
Most of it. It'll scar, but it's nothing a little Neosporin [ and maybe a couple of stitches ] can't fix.
[ He steps closer to the fire, letting the warmth bathe over him and eyeing Hannibal with all the wariness of a scavenger. It had been nonstop, seemingly never-ending, and he'd be lying if he'd said that he hadn't doubted his own sanity at some point during the experience. A portion of the cave water, at the least, had been bled from his system, but there's still a bit of a wild look in his eyes. ]
I - used my pickaxe.
no subject
He misses the sun - even the false sun of the Barge - as surely as he misses clean clothes and proper food. But he keeps his count in the back of his head, operating on the solid, steady metronome of his heartbeat.
Eyeing the gash with a faint frown - wondering where the weapon wound up - Hannibal arches his eyebrows. Will will need stitches, he can see that much. He does not remark on it further, though: the blood loss would not have been excessive. He will survive.
Instead, Hannibal judges the way Will holds himself, the wariness and the exhaustion. The wildness - that is his favorite part.
He gestures across the fire, to one of the rocks pulled up around the pit in mute invitation.]
Not your hands?
no subject
Into the lair of the beast, though it isn't really his lair, is it? He's only taking up residence. There is no home field advantage, and neither of them has a particular upper hand. Both armed, both dangerous, though Will teetering on the edge of something that he can't quite put a name to. 'Depravity' is closest.
At any rate, it feels good to sit. Present company included, he feels, for the first time since he's arrived in these caverns, almost relaxed.
If not for the topic of conversation.
He splays his hands out for himself to see and assess, some knuckles bruised, some various scrapes and scratches from climbing, falling, fighting. They're washed now, but they're not clean.
Open and honest. Harvey knows, Harvey's seen. It feels almost as if he ought to give Hannibal the privilege as well, even though he owes him absolutely nothing. ]
The pickaxe struck his side, and - there was a sound not unlike ground meat, a squelch within him. [ Obviously, this was not enough to bring down the native. He presumably attacked back. ] And I took his skull and slammed it against the wall until he was rendered faceless.
[ He pauses, glancing upwards at the cave ceiling. ] I can still smell the copper. The distinctive feeling of - grey matter sluicing down my arms and onto the floor.
no subject
Inhaling silently, Hannibal smells the copper under Will's finger nails, the flecks of blood and the water that scrubbed over them. He smells the parts that Will missed, smells what he does not doubt was a sense of power and indecision. Perhaps there is still fear in him, fear for his dark nature, what he could be without the moral bounds of society cinching tight.]
When you scoured yourself clean--[a glance, as clean as possible]-- was it out of panicked need, or did it come from a place of logic?
[Hands tacky with hot blood will cool quickly. They will freeze and stiffen, they will be slippery and then sticky, they will provide less grip for the next swing of the pickaxe, the next man, woman, to render faceless.]
no subject
[ He chooses his words as carefully as ever, rubbing at his knuckles even now as if he can feel the sensation of that blood and skull, sludge left in the native's head to drip down over his fingers. He stood there for a long time, his fingers dripping, the bodies of strewn natives before his feet - Harvey's too. Harvey had seen. Hannibal hadn't got to. ]
Their graves positively scream for recognition, for humanity - they're crafted so intricately and so profoundly, as if a crying need to be remembered as human in death.
[ There's still that harsh smell of meat in the air, of the organs roasting right before him that he can very correctly guess not only its nature but where exactly Hannibal got this all from. No spices, he supposes. ]
They feel lesser than. They want to be equal to. [ He stretches out his recently bloodied fingers and feels that drip, drip, drip of grey matter off of the tips. A knowing smile curves at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes flicker towards Hannibal. ]
They can't be, not after all of this.