Chapter Text
The bathroom floor is a shivering cold surface for Bedelia to land on, and here she is again. Her stomach churns and she vomits pure acid into the toilet. Cold sweat pools in the furrow of her brows and her hands clamber for her husband. Hannibal holds her hair back with a firm grip. He stares into the toilet with disgust. When he helps Bedelia up, he smooths a hand through her hair, letting her fall against his chest.
“You need to feed,” he whispers into the crown of her head. “My love, you cannot starve like this.”
Bedelia makes an incoherent sound. Her nails dig into the wool of his sweater as the churning feeling threatens to stir inside her again. She stands there as his hands take hers, ready to guide her back to bed.
Hannibal lays her down, relenting her to the give of the mattress. He stares at her shaking breaths and silk nightgown. She’s so pale she nearly disappears into the bedsheets, save her necklace. A small golden ankh hangs below her clavicle above her non-beating heart. He presses a chaste kiss to her lips and shuts his eyes. Vampires do not sleep.
They do not sleep, but Bedelia still dreams. Her nightmares are flashes of her past life. The destruction of her career and her identity for the promise of eternal life, eternal youth. Her first kill, the blade of her necklace ending up in the throat of an enraged patient, the sickly sweetness of his blood in her mouth- And the sickly sweetness of Hannibal vowing his life to her after. That he would love her forever, for an eternity. She can only ache for that to be sincere.
---
Bedelia lingers in the doorway, watching Hannibal welcome in Abigail Hobbs. Her eyes strain as he leads her in towards the harpsichord. She has lessons with them twice a week. A lifetime ago, Bedelia was once a cellist. She occasionally accompanies Hannibal and the child, but her exhaustion this day was too great. She decides just to linger as Abigail starts with scales on her violin.
The girl’s bright eyes catch her attention as she completes her warm up. “Oh, Mrs. Lecter, you look nice today, what did you think about my playing?”
“It was lovely if not a bit saccharine,” she sighs. “It is a shame I do not feel well today, otherwise I would be accompanying you.”
“That’s unfortunate, you want some pills? My mom has plenty-”
“Abigail,” Hannibal scolds with a hiss.
“Sorry Han- Dr. Lecter.” Abigail sneaks a grin towards Bedelia before straightening her shoulders, readying herself to play again. Bedelia sits back and smiles with content.
Daylight pours in from the windows, splashing over billowing curtains. Abigail and Hannibal are painted in bright shades of blue and gray as they play their music. The way Hannibal strikes the harpsichord is more than enough to carry Abigail’s novice as they play through a tune that has yet to hear the light of day. In his fondness for the girl, Hannibal had composed her a sonata to play whenever she had her next recital. Bedelia never minded this fondness as Hannibal could only dream of having a child of his own. Not with any of his past lovers, much less her.
She asked him once why this was, when he was her patient. His eyes had glazed with tears, yet no light reflected out of them. As a boy, he ran away, fleeing an impending war with his baby sister, Mischa. A little girl with star shaped hands and his mother’s rosiness. Captured by fugitives, they were forced to hide out a freezing winter inside a cabin. When the food ran low, the fugitive soldiers killed Mischa to cannibalize. Hannibal had wept at the thought, of eating her, of remembering the little girl he held to his chest at night, cradling her head, with the promise that those evil men could not get to her. He is a man who disguises his failures because this one haunts him most of all.
By the time Abigail skips off their doorstep and waving fervently with sore fingers, Hannibal is quick to turn his attentions back to his wife. He lingers behind her as she finally lights a cigarette. He watches her bring it to her lips and inhale before deciding to comment. His nose wrinkles at the scent of smoke.
“Darling, it has simply been too long. You must feed yourself again before it’s too late-”
“Then kill me, Hannibal,” She interrupts cooly. Bedelia feels a firm hand press to her shoulder, then, fingers sliding up to cradle her neck. “I have toed the line between mortality and immortality long enough. Kill me.”
Hannibal sighs deeply. “I can’t,” he says, nearly whispering. “You know, my love, I can’t.”
His presence leaves her before she can even exhale, the smoke sitting heavy in her throat. She hears him click on the television, hears a voice she’s heard a million times.
---
“Goddamnit!” Will smacks his hands against the counter as his eyes gloss over data he’s seen a million times. Sweaty palms run through matted curls as he begins to shut down.
“Graham? Talk to me,” Beverly says, approaching him. Her head darts between the animal sealed away behind glass and her colleague. She stalls for a moment watching the monkey shriek and bang on the walls of its enclosure. Its joints have taken on a knobbiness it definitely did not have when it was shipped in.
Glints of overgrown teeth flash in Will’s glasses as he attempts to collect himself. The animal’s howling echoed against his skull in ways that made him want to tear it open. “It’s not working. The treatment is doing absolutely nothing to stop the thing’s rate of aging,” Will grumbles. “I can run the labs again, check newer variables, but there’s nothing I can do.”
A deep frown sets itself into Bev’s face as she tries and comes up with something comforting to offer. “Your life’s work isn’t thrown away for nothing, Graham. Your focus was to help with human aging, not progeria in primates .”
Will bites down instead of retorting because she was in fact correct. He wants to go straight for the jump and explain how terrifying this genetic anomaly was and what this could mean for humans. No animal should be aging several years over the span of an hour, the process speeding up exponentially by his results. Does she know what this meant to the world of- No. She was right, he did have his dissertation published, after all.
---
Hannibal’s eyes trace over that familiar face for seemingly the hundredth time. He watches the recording with intent, tuning in closer every time. Dr. Will Graham: A promising man, a new breakout gerontologist. Hannibal is almost sure he has the cure for Bedelia. He owns the first copy of Will’s book. “Sleep and Aging,” he’s read it cover to cover. Dr. Graham has moved his research out to Baltimore and Hannibal could not be more thrilled.
“Now we don’t know what causes this rapid deterioration. We suspect it has something to do with malfunctions in cell division. Oscillating rapidly between periods of nearly cancerous division and stagnation. We’re also investigating the nature of this disease as something autoimmune as it presents in humans. Are white blood cells doing the killing? And whatnot.”
“Dr. Graham, is this condition communicable through bodily fluids like blood and saliva?”
“No, as far as we know it will not transfer to humans as long as these animals are not consumed. I heavily doubt that it's even communicable that way. We are sure that the sickness is not transmitted through saliva-”
“But what about blood?”
Hannibal snarls at the rudeness of the interviewer. He thinks about what he’d make of that man, string him up in front of his station. A voyeuristic mockery of his hideous discourtesy was all he deserved. Will deserved the world and more for his brilliance.
“It is not necessary to figure that out just yet. I’m studying aging not diseases as a whole.”
Bedelia watches her husband’s back. His figure is engulfed in an the artificial glow of the screen, and he sits perfectly still. She feels it, the man on the screen, he will be Hannibal’s newest victim.
“Bedelia,” He calls, eyes still glued to the screen. “I know you’re there, come, sit by me.”
She rolls her eyes, yet obeys.
“Are you in love with him?” She asks, eyes downcast.
“He can cure you. Treat your ails and perhaps get you to kill once again.”
The vile illness courses through Bedelia once again, she notices the liver spots that were not on her hands yesterday.There’s a looseness in her skin when she smiles. “I think I must let go,” she responds, swallowing back both angering nausea and nauseating anger. “Hannibal, you cannot control whom which you fall in love. You must let me go as well. I can feel you pulling away. ” She knows deep down that her husband has to eat him. He would eat Will Graham alive if he could.
Hannibal turns to face her for the first time. “Never,” he grabs her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Never, would I pull away from you.” Hannibal trails desperate kisses from her wrist to the palm of her hand. Pity swells within her, she wants to believe her husband’s obvious lies.
When he meets her gaze yet again, he looks nearly satisfied. “Now, what would you like to have for dinner?”
“You mean who.”
He smiles.
“Yes. Who. ”