Joined a crossover challenge. Naturally, this came to me, as I love Hannibal Lecter.
The hallway was long and cold. She could hear whispers and cackles. If she weren't used to such things already, she would have found such a place creepy.
Yes, the people here were insane.
She could tell right away, the patterns to their speech and the fact that they were all behind bars. Some glass. She thought that maybe it was a basement, or something similar.
As she approached it, the cell at the end, closed off but for its ventilation, all she heard was a voice. A very calm and cultured and pleasant male voice.
"Hello Lucrecia," he said.
---
"You're still having those dreams?"
Her new husband was looking at her strangely, laying next to her. She must have been talking in her sleep again, or gritting her teeth. Hojo was a light sleeper, so anything she did seemed to affect his comfort.
"It's nothing."
He gave her that sourball displeased expression. She had married him for his brains, certainly not his empathy.
"It's not nothing. You need to have your head on properly." He got up from the bed then and rummaged around in his coat, which was hanging from the chair in the room. "I'm going to call a colleague of mine, he's a psychologist."
Lucrecia frowned. Despite what some people thought, she hadn't been dragged kicking and screaming into the marriage. But sometimes Hojo relied a little too much on clinical knowledge. She imagined that an average husband would just ask her about her dreams and reassure her.
Still, this was better than marrying some horrible romantic or something.
He babbled in Wutain--great, a Wutain psychologist--for a few minutes before snapping the phone shut. It was five am, they both seemed to note at the same time.
Neither of them wanted to waste any working time. They dressed in silence.
---
"Hello Lucrecia."
She nearly dropped the tray of various dishes filled with single-celled cocktails she was going to wash out in the kitchen. Lucrecia hadn't thought she'd gotten to the point of hearing voices, and she could have sworn that was the one, the exact same one she'd been hearing in that dream for the past week.
When she stopped to look at the walls of the lab, they were even similar. Odd.
"Do I know you?" Probably in his fifties, though an attractive fifties, in a way. For some reason he made it difficult to look at his eyes, despite his manners.
"Your husband referred you to me, I'm Dr. Lecter."
Definitely not a Wutain. Bilingual people were tricky, she'd found. He had their kind of formality, but with a Midgarian enough bent to not make her feel uncomfortable like Hojo's family had made her feel when she spoke to them once on the phone.
"You're the psychologist then. Have you traveled far?"
"A bit. Is there anywhere I can wait for you to finish up with your work?"
Predatory. Yes, there was something predatory about this man.
"Oh, I can talk with you now. I was just moving some things around."
She guided him out of the kitchen with the kind of grace that she wished she really had. Lucrecia didn't like to think on how clumsy she was getting that often anymore, what with so much work to do on the project. But something about the class of the man made her step more carefully. Gently. Like her high heels would bruise the floor.
She also thought that maybe she shouldn't have left that tray in the kitchen. Hopefully Gast wouldn't mind her momentary lapse.
"Just over here." It had been a while since she'd been in this room, or above ground except to sleep. The curtains were getting moth-eaten. She'd have to tell Hojo to call someone about that.
Dr. Lecter took in the surroundings before taking a seat in the chair. That left her the couch. How appropriate.
"So your dreams are troubled?"
He went straight to the point. She had to wonder that if someone were to ask him a question if he would be so direct, or meander around.
So she would be direct. "I keep seeing a mental institution, only, more like a prison. Hojo used to work in one, you know. An institution."
He curled his fingers a little. Lucrecia thought she might have seen an extra on one hand. "You call your husband by his last name?"
She hadn't expected him to ask that. "It's just more familiar."
"Well, the Wutains do have their names... backwards to some of our sensibilities."
She frowned. "Did you want to hear about my dreams?"
"Not really. But I'd like to hear about you, Lucrecia. Sometimes the heart of the matter isn't what is visably wrong, but what it right in front of us." He seemed amused.
She scoffed. "Should I tell you about my mother?"
"Other ilk in my profession would ask about your father, in your case."
She'd gotten acid on her skirt again. There were little holes from the splatter. Why Lucrecia was examining that certainly wasn't because she couldn't look this man in the eye.
"I don't have a father to talk about."
His smile was like the steel jaws of a snare. "Just a last name, then. Some token of a role, not really a person."
The implication was certainly bold. "You're trying to bait me. Yes, there are problems in my marriage, but if you know any intellectuals, you would also know that they are difficult people. It's the best either of us can do."
"Of course, it takes trust to bury bodies in the basement."
"What?" It nearly winded her to say that. No, she couldn't look at his eyes.
"But the child was your idea, wasn't it? History will forget your contribution, painting only the victim portrait. Do you know why you're wearing white, Lucrecia?"
"This isn't real..."
"So the blood shows up better."
Red, red, red, in his eyes and on her hands and on the walls and on the couch and... and...
---
Yes, it had been a dream--everything from Hojo to those fabricated dreams to the psychologist. Lucrecia was still cold, so cold since the blood stopped flowing in her own veins. It was just the ice and the cave and herself.
Her memories and her dreams weren't making sense. She wasn't even sure if Dr. Lecter existed or if he was... Back when she was a scientist would have isolated and studied all his features against the framework of her own life. But there was no life anymore. And no death. Just this.
The facts and the details and the desires and dreams were becoming muddled. Eventually she wouldn't have a mind at all. Only this.
Lucrecia hoped no one found her. She hoped no one stumbled in, that everyone forgot her. People didn't feel guilt for the things done to them. They felt guilt for what they did.
And for that, there was no difference between dreaming and awake.