latsypie

Perhaps it was hubris driving you to the edge of the wild garden both Will and Hannibal had cultivated for the past few years. Or perhaps you had just grown accustomed to interpreting your hunger for freedom as pride. Sheer audacity in the eyes of the Fates. 

To stay off the feeling of pride, earned or not, you had elected to become detached. Or practiced in the ways of disassociation. With relatively little interference, you had found yourself capable of voiding your mind of impractical thought while preserving the modest ability to act of your own accord. 

Up, over, around, retrace, pull tight, but not too tight. 

With a rope from the garden shed in hand, you worked the length of it around each one of your legs at the juncture of thigh and hip bone, weaving the tether around your extremities with enough left over to fall over to your destination. 

The other side of the garden fence. 

Garden fence was the rather tame term used broadly to refer to the monumental gate Hannibal had installed in the name of privacy. A structure to keep hypothetical others from seeing in, with the added benefit of keeping you from the outside world. 

No, a pathetic gate of a mere single story would not do when two would be so much more effective. The sight of the iron finials, pointed with the potential to puncture, had been enough to keep your visions of escape within the realm of indulgent fantasy. Many a solitary night confined to your bedroom you divined visions of vaulting yourself over the gate, digging under its goliath stature, and even pushing your body in between the slats despite the minimal space between each one. 

Now, tossing the rope over the other side of the gate, the allure of escape dulled without the glossy veneer of longing. 

Freedom from the unrepentant white hand of Hannibal and Will in his own scheming ways encouraged your every step. For each inch you clambered up the unrelenting gate, the rope dubiously kept your body in a state of relative equilibrium. In such a time as this, you wished sincerely that you possessed a shoe other than the flat trainers you had grown accustomed to. Though your hands offered a more grip, your shoddily covered feet tended to slip and falter, gliding over the iron surface of the slats. 

With the coordination of a clumsy mammal clawing for upward momentum, and after a full ten minutes of upper-body strain, you grasped the top of the gate using the dregs of your waning strength. 

Every smoke feathered breath from your fluttering lungs bled into the frigid air, conspiring with January’s biting winds before dissipating into nothingness. 

Poised at the top, you had begun to plan your descent, and subsequent headlong rush into the trees and shrubs that so surrounded the Lecter estate. But the noble act of  ascension is often much less intimidating than plunging down from a giant’s gate with nothing more than a modest coil of fraying rope. 

As if settling into a saddle, you swung your dominant leg over the top, over the finials, with every intention of exercising a valiant sense of caution. But your hands, gloveless and wondrously smooth from the winter’s fickle touch, left you suddenly without an assured grip. And in your first shift down from the top of the gate, the terror of slipping many feet down met you without the courtesy of stagnation. 

Captured by the motion of freefall, you fully expected to feel the sudden, thunderous sensation of your body meeting an icy floor, but in its stead remained a few feet of plush, untouched snow. While it braced your fall rather brilliantly, it truly only served to keep you from a grisly fate. 

Will, with Winston predictably at his side, found you only a paltry ten minutes later. 

Sensors. 

The gate must have been lined with them from top to bottom, you could only assume given Will’s prompt arrival so soon after your humiliating disaster. It would have been dizzingly easy to commit to the futile realization that all your efforts had been in vain, but at the very least you would not freeze to death . 

“Like a felled bird.” Was all Will could mutter to himself before gathering your bruised form in his arms. 

Had he been an undignified man, you could have pictured Hannibal laughing at your pointless hope. Perhaps, with a petty indifference, he might have ignored you entirely, but this was Hannibal. The same man who fretted over you if you so much as nicked your finger with a steak knife at the dinner table. Admonishment from Hannibal never encroached into the realm of cruelty, not with you. Not after a largely unnamed other. Knowing his own habits, Hannibal’s cruelty only extended towards the barriers devised to keep you within the family. 

On the couch in the main living room is where Will laid you as Winston rested his perfectly fluffy head atop your stomach. He settled into a painstakingly unholstered arm chair while Hannibal entered with a tray of medical supplies. 

“I suspect on account of the fresh snowfall, you did not break anything. Though, you might have come quite close.” Lecter spoke mildly while using his two hands to feel your arms and legs to ensure nothing was truly fractured. “In the interest of my own curiosity, what was it like? To be so high above?”

Not even a single reprimand for attempting to run away? Was this truly your own reality? 

You could only wonder hazily as your father looked over your dominant hand. In the motion of the fall, you had inadvertently cut open your palm on one of the iron finials.

“It was beautiful.” You recalled, only the brief frame of the world as it was from such a lofty, perilous perch. 

The snow, how it seemed to crest over the mountains like foam crowned waves. 

That brilliant incessant hum of the forest and its limitless residents wandering about the night. 

And the moon. Coyly curved in on herself and so arresting against the blue-black sky, you had found yourself wishing you could pluck it from among the stars and tuck it into your pocket. 

The sensation of Hannibal using a bottled antiseptic unforgivingly pulled you from your memory. 

“Terrifying and beautiful.” Was all you could manage while trying to will away the pained tears that also clambered for freedom. 

“Well. To ensure you are not confronted with a similar terror again, why don’t we all keep ourselves from such unnecessary adventures?”

You could hear Will snort at Hannibal’s rather plain comment, but his snark remained brief. While his husband busied himself with cleaning up the instruments used to tend to your mild wounds, he retrieved a book from the oak shelf that stood from floor to ceiling. 

Only a few days ago, you all had finished the last few pages of a poetry collection for which you cared very little. In the hopes of meeting Hannibal’s refined tastes, his own penchant for the strange and your own appetite for questionable exploits, Will plucked a rather solid tome from the shelf.