[1]𝘾𝙃𝙄𝘼𝙍𝙊𝙎𝘾𝙐𝙍𝙊 | Hannibal Lecter✓

XI. Woman with a Parasol

_____

Claude Monet
1875
_____

3 Years Later

//long chapter

A CHOIR echoed in the back of his mind, and a woman danced slowly on her own, her dress was long, filled with veils and soft pastel fabrics that gave her a dreamy aspect as she spinned around for him. He could get lost in that vision for hours, days almost, and never get tired of it.

On the other side of the table, Alana Bloom talked with him, her semblant serious and soberb as always now. She felt superior to him after his arrestment.

"Bâtard-Montrachet and tartufi bianchi. How I found you in Florence." Alana declared as he tasted the wine and the food.

"Betrayed by good taste." The woman who was previously dancing giggled to him, leaning a bit and resting her elbows at the table, watching him savor the wine. Her smile was so sweet, so soft. "Remember when we used to drink that by the fireplace?"

He gave a half smile with nostalgia. Alana noticed it. It happened from time to time now, he'd stare at a blank spot with no reaction, sometimes smile, or don't say a thing. Only stay there, in his own imaginary world.

"Congratulations, Hannibal." Alana lifted her glass in the air. "You're officially insane."

"There's no consensus in the psychiatric community what I should be termed." He said, but his eyes couldn't drift away from the woman that teased him, playibh with the glass of wine he had on his hands and delivering gentle smiles to him. He just seemed silly next to her.

"You've long been regarded by your peers in psychiatry as something entirely Other." Alana declared. "For convenience, they term you a monster."

"Just as I called you when I broke your heart." The woman looked at him. Sonething in her blue eyes made his soul ache.

"What do you term me?" Hannibal turned to Alana.

"I don't. You defy categorisation."

"Do you still prefer beer to wine?"

"I stopped drinking beer when I found out
what you were putting in mine." She let it out bitterly.

"Who" The woman by his side corrected, he gave a small mischievous grin in response.

Alana watched Hannibal, now through the real lenses, as the real atmosphere they were was completely different than what he imagined.

There he was, stuck in a glass cell at Baltimore's State Hospital For the Criminally Instable, wearing a white jumpsuit and drawing on a sketchbook, while she watched from the other side, free.

His cell had quite some privileges for an inmate, he has always been very cultured, and liked to be spoiled for it. But in all those 3 years, Hannibal never received what he mostly wanted: a visit.