Chapter Text
He circles around her, like a great vulture, hunting down on the remains of the woman below him, the greatest prize he could have seated in his hospital (voluntarily of course) with great long locks like golden blades that hide her true nature. Though features are long and greek-like, the goddess is not yet revealing the power she beholds beneath her stone like pores, scaled tightly together to hide inside the great powerful rays that are bound beneath her exterior.
Chilton feels profoundly lucky to have such a unique vision in his company. Though very wealthy and amicably considered as charming, Frederick Chilton does not often find himself in the company of women like her. He has relatively simple tastes, almost vulgar really, and though his often judges the bed mate by the form of her supple body, he could see himself amongst the sheets with this….dangerous, yet wondrous beauty. She is perched, so lovely, in velveteen chairs that it’s like Hannibal dropped her from the sky as a gift herself, after all, psychiatrists like themselves do have to stick together.
But there is an overwhelming sense that this Roman goddess is in a class of her own, far outside the realms of such an ornery men like Chilton himself. With glassy eyes the woman studies him, finally dressed in nice but flashy clothing, a diamond here, silver there-each flash shows off a display of great wealth, a display of absence of power. Bedelia is power, she is grace and glory and all of those things one would pray about in church, a worshipped woman like the many books relay about her. There is nothing about her that screams ordinary, and he pales in comparison next to her.
While he has heard of her, she has not much heard of him. Only through her narrow scope of a lens on Hannibal has she seen him, and the opinion she has gathered is warped by manipulation, a judgement far too collapsed upon itself to be worthy of anything new. So instead she studies the room with quiet glances, her facial features are twisted like the great vines of trees, barely visible through the dense forest, hiding her nature, the beast within. Not that she will ever admit openly there is such a beast within her-the more damsel she can play, the better this meeting may go for her.
Once thoroughly stalked around the room, eyes sweeping back and forth from her frame and her clothes to the ornate hospital office desk before him-he sweeps rather unceremoniously into the seat before her. It is the first time the pair is eye to eye and she wears nothing but a great look of contentment for him. the power dynamic is clear, and Chilton will have an uphill battle for the upper hand in the situation-something he has never openly been good at gaining.
“Doctor Bedelia Du Maurier-” his voice lilts out, with a familiar cadence and song. He hasn’t quite gotten used to the facial prosthetic that holds up that side of his face, nor do the contacts do much to mask how he cannot see with that eye. He appears so normal, and were it another man, or patient, his foundation is matched so perfectly one would not be able to tell he’s got make up one. Still, Frederick smiles. “You look lovely. I have to say I haven’t heardanything about you.”
His words have bite to them, but if they sting she doesn’t show it, only letting the teeth sink into her armor and break away on the steel-pounded down for centuries until it is thin, dull and transparent…suitable armor for a lady as herself. There isn’t a thing in the world that can peel back that cool demeanor, if anything, words only add to it.
“Psychiatric circles,” Bedelia begins slowly, “Grow larger every day. It is not unheard of for some of us to…slip through the cracks.”
Fredrick smiles.
“Fair enough, I suppose. Though I rather curious as to why you’d think you could slip through the cracks. You were, or are, after all, the most discussed topic around. Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist, what an unusual title to hold. Tell me, Doctor Du Maurier, how is Italy this time of year?”
The accusation catches her off guard, though it is not particularly unfounded. Still, the composed woman does not let on to what she knows, knew or maintains as secrets for the grotesque man left on the shores of Europe so long ago.
“The fishermen are heading out to sea…there is a-demand for tuna now that it has swam to harbor. Though I suspect you do not do much of eating fish.”
It was a silent jab at the facts that Hannibal once told her-his gutting and resassembly sounds like a remarkably difficult feat. Bedelia sees him standing with assistance, a scar left to smile at whomever is caught in his cage, trapped like a shark, waiting with sharp, angry teeth to sink into her supple flesh. But she is no fish, there are too many thorns for him to navigate-Bedelia would kill him before he ever channeled the attempt to sink his great greedy jaws into her.
“No, no,” the man chuckles, looking down at folded fingers before him, “I don’t eat many animal proteins, which is perhaps for the best, given the history of Hannibal’s lavish dinner parties. I don’t recall ever seeing someone as lovely as yourself in attendance.”
“I find that…people do not often extend their invitations to their equals. You cannot impress the unimpressionable.”
“Are you calling yourself an equal of Doctor Lecter, Doctor Du Maurier?”
The woman gives him a tight, almost smug smile in return for his comment, recomposing herself before giving back an answer. Cattiness is only in her nature when unprovoked-this man, Frederick Chilton, is doing his best to provoke her a response. But she is far too cool for this, far too whole.
“I presume you have-corralled me into this room so that you may get some kind of…answers you feel entitled to. I am going to disappoint you in that I will not have them. May I suggest the FBI?”
The end of her words hang heavy with the bitter taste of snark like an over ripe berry waiting to be dropped from the vine. The woman doesn’t really watch for his facial features to fall or rise (he does, after all have half a prosthetic face) instead keeping her gaze at the edges of her facial features. The man is gruff but not necessarily an unattractive being, but the off putting of his personality is enough to slow time between them and rub her the wrong way.
Chilton stands now, and from the corner of the room his eye level is meeting her square on, focused solely on those eyes that don’t show anything. He has met only one other person with eyes as dead as hers before, and so much of that man is reflected here, in her clothes, her posture, her attitude-it would not surprise him if she claimed the title of the Ripper-it would be hard to convince himself otherwise.
“Is it chilly in here, Doctor?”
The words are meant to be malicious, a poor attempt to stab at her last stab for him. The FBI would never give him what he really wanted, her, coerced and sedated, words spilling from her lips like wax from burning candles, dripping into the salacious palms that eagerly want them. His obsession withcatching the man has gone so far as to consider the improbable attempt of coercion under entraptment. As if someone like him could wrap his fingers around the long neck of someone so god like as her.
“You are the only one to survive Hannibal, Bedelia,” he reveals her first name, as if he has any right to spill it from his lips, “Not once but twice. You hold a value to him. He has let you go, released you to return home-we both know that you were not conveniently in the same realm of space as your former patient. Rumors can be quite nasty.”
“Rumors, Frederick,” she turns quickly, keeping her eye on him as he attempts to pace her in the space, “Come from those who want something from a person. Willfully believing half truths-conceived variations of what could be a truth of a person.”
“Do you know why you are here today, Doctor Du Maurier?”
“You have..a subpoena.”
“Court mandated therapy,” he sing songs, watching her fail to turn her head to meet him as he vultures around her back. The high back of her Alexander Wang blazer meets the curl of sunshine waves, untrussed by movement, keeps his focus, an attempt to dominate the dominating woman. “It’s a curious thing, when the body goes through trauma…more curious when one doesn’t want to receive the help they often require. I’m here to lend you a helping hand, Doctor Du Maurier, a nudge in the right direction. After all, we don’t want anyone to think you are as capable as the Ripper do you?”
His smug, thinly veiled distaste expression returns it’s full circle to come and rest right in front of her, hers level with the middle of the suit. She notes that he has lost a few pounds, the strain on the center button is gone. It takes her a moment to compose her features, dragging those shades of blue to meet his gaze. If looks could kill, the phrase often over used, was so relatively important in this moment. Normally stoic, emotionless eyes glaze over in a look that is reserved for only the rudest of the rude-those Bedelia would rather not associate herself with.
Here with Chilton, the song bird is caged, no longer whistling to the sounds that her heart makes, locked into the iron bar cage of a phony mandate of court, an excuse for the progressive man to study what he’s always wanted-Hannibal Lecter through the only survivor intended to live. Bedelia is the perfect specimen for containment.
But she will never comply willingly.