🍴 ( 013 ) spam

[youwill]

[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.]

Comments

[exnihilo]

[She hadn't thought. She has no idea how long she's been roaming in the dark, even less than most, with her own circadian rhythms long since cast aside as she switched from planet to planet.]

Yes.

[She hovers, just inside the ring of light, and waits with thin hope, like a vampire, like an orphan, to be invited.]

[youwill]

[He lets the moment stretch, just long enough to make it abundnatly clear between them and to anyone observing. Then he gestures, and reaches into his pack for the small remnants of civilization that he brought with him, plate and fork. He uses his knife - mostly cleaned of blood - to cut the meat, giving her tongue and kidney both on the plate.]

Then join me.

[He holds it out over the fire, holds her gaze, and waits.]

[exnihilo]

[The transition is smooth, rather than sudden, despite the speed of it, each step toward the fire another iteration, from a nervous creep to a glide, adjusting to match his poise. It's a matter of respect, not deception; of matching decorum in kind. Her dress has gone dark grey and dapple-yellow, stone and firelight, like she is a translucent slip of smoke against the walls. She sits, tucks her legs and smoothes her skirt, lays the pickaxe neatly aside before accepting his gift.]

Thank you.

Have you been here this whole time?

[For days; forever. She wonders how long it will be before she forgets she was ever anywhere else.]

[youwill]

[She reflects their setting as she reflects him. A strange mirror, but one he rather likes. She reclaims civilization, and he watches her, holding the food steady until she is ready to take it. He doesn't serve himself immediately, observing her instead.]

A few hours, perhaps. [His body objects, questions, wonders, but his mind keeps track. He enforces his own system of time, refuses to let his body forget its passing. He reaches for another plate, another fork.]

I did not want the meat to go bad. I am afraid I didn't bring nearly enough salt.

[exnihilo]

Salt? Oh. Yes, I suppose that would work.

[The methods of preservation, the entire concept of raw materials, is so far removed from her normal existence that she's never considered them. But she knows enough chemistry to make the connections, when confronted. She digs into the kidney first. It's hot and fresh and ragged in the way that hand-searing over a fire inevitably produces. She hasn't had much to eat beside the fungus since she abandoned her pack - she can't remember when, or why - and devours what she's given with relish. Only after it's gone, and she's primly sucking the juices off her fingertips one by one, does she speak again.]

That was delicious.

[youwill]

[He watches her, serving himself and eating slowly. There is not much left on the spit, easy enough to save for later. Her compliment is received with gratitude, even humility, to an extent: this is not how he is accustomed to cooking, after all.]

I'm pleased you enjoyed it.

Have you been alone since we landed?

[exnihilo]

No.

[Raw honesty. She swallows after she says it, even though the meat is gone.]

I don't remember everything. It all went - strange. Like a storm in my head.

[Storms clear. And she remembers better than she usually does, even though the violence, the physiological violence, the destabilization, makes her hunch a little, scoot closer to the fire, as though she could ward off the chill of it. Normally, when she forgets, it's nothing like this: either total, leaving her clueless and clean, or after-the-fact, quiet fading into a close temporal horizon behind her when she isn't looking, a sweeping under the rug. Whatever she encountered before turning on Bush was - different.]