Méchanceté
nightmares
They compare and contrast and yet somehow, when they’re sitting opposite each other in that impossible office, they reflect each other entirely. They aren’t that different after all, really, and it’s less about the dichotomy of their expressions or their clothes or the way they sit, and more about the fact, the unchallengeable knowledge that deep down they are one and the same.
(the raven-feathered stag drags a hoof along the floor and its breaths are misting in the chill)
“What do you see in him, Will?”
They’re talking about him. That figure, just beyond Will’s reach but he’s there, he’s right there, he’s close enough to touch but somehow Will can’t stretch his arm out long enough. The Chesapeake Ripper.
“I see malice.” He watches the strange, angular face opposite melt into a frown, urging him onwards. “He’s malicious, but not spiteful. It’s not the kind of...” he tastes the words in his mouth before he says them. “It’s not childish. He takes pleasure from being hidden.”
(antlers scrape the sky and scour the ground and will holds fast and does not move even though his heart is a clock in his chest tick tocking timing counting down until he has to wake up)
“He’s a mask wearing a mask.”
The eyes meet his and for a second he barely even realises it, and for a second or an hour they just stare at one another until Will drags himself out of that questioning gaze.
“The Ripper wears a mask, but the Ripper is a mask. He hides himself, ingratiates himself into society, and laughs because it’s funny that nobody can see—”
(see? see? hobbs asks as he drives his knife through the filmy curtain of skin again and again and again and again)
“—nobody can see the truth; nobody can see what he really is. But what he really is, that isn’t the Ripper. The Ripper isn’t what the mask is hiding. The Ripper is hiding something else, something...” He almost doesn’t say it, but he does. “Something human.”
(the stag is behind him he can feel the warmth of breath on the back of his neck but he can see it too watching from a distance observing like it’s taking notes and will hopes to god it’s published posthumously)
“Are you sure about that?”
The accent hides the words from Will’s understanding for a moment or two but eventually he looks up and over and clutches the arms of the chair as if they’re the only things keeping him on the ground and says, “Positive.”
Hannibal steeples his fingers like he’s about to pray. “What if the mask is hiding something worse?”
“What’s worse than the Ripper?” Will asks it like it’s a joke, and Hannibal waits expectantly for the punchline. They both smile. “You are.”
His eyes droop and his eyelashes become bars in front of his eyes and Hannibal says, “I resent the term malicious,” and Will wakes up with sweat drenching the orange fabric blood-red and the stag in the corner of his cell and its face seems to say
(YOU’RE THE MONSTER)
♠ ♠ ♠
my view of this is as follows: meh.