Yearn | Hannigram

you are the coffin

In Baltimore, a new ruin stands smoking, one of ash and bone. A skeleton of the darkness that has long lived in these streets. One covered with nauseous yellow tape and crawling with police. Poe's early madness saw a city that thousands would haunt, and he wrote gory premonitions like a sick prophet.

Now, where he once wondered the streets in drunken stupor, there is a new temple to the macabre. Rivaling his black rose grave. Once a church; rebuilt into a home, and today a charred crime scene. The home of the Chesapeake Ripper.

Alana was sitting outside, her car off. Just watching the cops, arson specialists, and agents go in and out. Where the building once stood there is a halo of black ash, spreading with tire tracks like a stain across the block.

She was shocked Hannibal had burnt it down, given the amount of clothes and expensive things he'd left behind. She remembers too many times she'd walked blindly into that lions den. Her stomach turning when thinking of the dinners and conversations they had right over top of a graveyard. Alana has been trying to stop thinking she knew anything about Hannibal Lecter; try to block out those feelings of loss. Even though he had killed Jack so savagely, killed Will and did god knows what to his body, she still cared for him. It all happened so fast, the phone call from the fire department, the realization that Hannibal was nowhere to be found.

First they had thought he had died in the fire. She cried on her way to Baltimore, worried for his life. Oh, how wrong they were. It only took a few minutes after the fire had been put out for the rest of the police force and FBI to show up. Alana was screaming, crying, begging to know what happened. Then she saw Jimmy pulling a gurney with a large biohazard bag.

She ran, rolling her ankle as she pushed through the crowd. "Hannibal's dead?" She sobbed.

"Alana..." Jimmy sighed, wiping off a tear from his cheek. Signaling for someone to put the body into the truck. "It's Jack. Not Hannibal."

Her mind was whirling, trying to understand why Jack was even there in the first place. "Wha- what?" Her throat was dry and she wanted to scream.

"We found Will's blood... Jack's body was mutilated...no sign of Lecter anywhere."

Nothing in Alana's life made sense after that. Jimmy's words sunk into her like poison, sending her reeling for days with nausea and hopelessness. She's been living in limbo. Trying desperately to hold onto some sense of normalcy but without Hannibal, Will, or Jack, she felt aimless. Like she was drifting off the coast, walking on wobbly knees and a stomach of seasick.

She barely remembered what happened after that, she got home, tried to shower but couldn't breathe in the hot humid air. Smoked a cigarette a girl she'd met after a night out left on the side of her bed. Throwing out the homemade beer Hannibal had gifted her for a promotion.

Everything makes her sick, and she feels she doesn't wish to assist the FBI anymore. Her job was everything to her, but how could she truly do it well when none of them could see what Will did; no one realized there was a beast amongst them.

Even now, after being interviewed by the higher ups, scrambling to figure out how they allowed the very killer they were searching for to work on his own case. To say they were facing a lot of shame would be an understatement. The head of the behavioral unit and the best investigator they had, have been killed. And now that everyone is dead, the halls of the bureau are barren and a thick fog of embarrassment clogs the vents. Alana barely sleeps, feeling as if she'd barely escaped Hannibal's wrath.

——-

Will and Hannibal headed out to the shops near the edge of the city, where the wealthy have vacation homes that are practically vacant this time of year. There's snow dotting the ground but the sun shines as they arrive. It's the perfect ghost town for Hannibal to find his lover a few proper suits, and to dye his hair. Hannibal was fairly attached to his blonde-silver locks. But they were a give away to his age and identity, he'd dye it dark brown, and try his best to mask his true self.