Hannibal - and what the heck, it's pretty much Jono's - house, FRIDAY night

[sharp_as_knives]

[OOC: Continuation of a thread from here that went private. Warnings for discussion of canon unpleasantness for probably both of them.]



Hannibal lit the fire in the library and settled on the couch, tugging Jono after him. The short walk from the dance had been quiet, but Jono still seemed disinclined to say more, so Hannibal began where they'd left off. Which included his arms around him again.

"I told you once that I was marrying all of you. Do you doubt that?"

Comments

[furnaceface]

Yes, well, Jono was going to ignore that last bit.

//They... they have every reason to trouble me,// he noted, softly. //I don't hold it against them, Hannibal. I have no right to.//

[sharp_as_knives]

"You may not, but I have every right to do so," Hannibal asked. "On my own behalf and yours. And even should you believe they've a right to exist, there's a difference between that and letting them cripple you."

His voice was firm, and he was not going to concede on this point. Ghosts (with the possible occasional exception) did not deserve more of a place in the world as the living, and his concern was very much Jono, not any of them.

[furnaceface]

//But they...// Jono faltered and shook his head. Okay, no, he couldn't say they didn't hold him back. They did, some days in a big way. But that was through no fault of their own. //Fine. Right. If you want to face them... that can be arranged, too.//

It meant dredging them up. It meant opening his head and showing Hannibal the shadows that crept around the edges.

Nobody got to see those shadows.

Hannibal would get to see those shadows.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal already had a fairly good idea of the nature of those shadows. And he looked forward to killing as many of them as possible.

He would have to tread carefully between art, revenge, and Jono.

"If you're amenable, there's no time like the present."

[furnaceface]

//I suppose there's not.//

And that was when the room around them melted away, and inside Jonothon's mind's eye, they were standing at the edge of a deep pit, with a thousand screaming faces with grabbing hands all looking up at them from below.

Jonothon, face whole and eyes on fire, took one look at Hannibal.

Then stepped over the edge.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal reached out and caught Jono's hand, eyes on his face.

Then stepped off to follow him down.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon hadn't expected that.

Admittedly, he wasn't certain what it was that he had expected. Hannibal to make a grab for him but to remain at the top, perhaps. For him to do something more calculated than simply take the leap with him. But Hannibal was full of surprises. Maybe someday, Jono would remember that.

They hit the bottom of the drop as if crashing into a waiting sea, arms grabbing at them and pulling them under, trying to pull their clasped hands apart. They had little interest in Hannibal. Hannibal wasn't the one who had wronged them. But Jonothon? They clawed at Jonothon. Hissed and bit and grabbed at his face and tried to gouge out his eyes and pull at his hair, tried to rend him from limb to limb. They were angry. They were violent. Of course they were.

He'd killed them.

[sharp_as_knives]

But taking this leap was entirely calculated; Hannibal would learn very little staying at the top.

Here, he looked around at all the faces; there was little here he hadn't expected, but the particulars were interesting. The ones that seemed more hurt and hopeless, he pushed away. The vicious ones he slashed back at with the scalpel from his pocket. He watched them all, learning what he could of them, searching for the best offence even as he concentrated on carving them a bubble of calm.

The one thing he did not do was let go of Jono. Not even close. This was a mindscape, and he knew enough to let the physical appearance reflect his reality. He locked his leg around Jono's and kept firm hold of his hand. Nothing was tearing them apart.

[furnaceface]

At first, it seemed as though Hannibal's lashing out was making no difference. Those who had been pushed away lingered out of arm's reach for a moment, and then slowly shuffled back, crying, begging, pleading for mercy they hadn't been shown before. Those who were slashed at jerked away, though there were rarely the marks of a blade on their bodies. A few did have them, but the marks never did quite seem to marry up with where Hannibal's scalpel landed. And every wound that did show on them was quite certainly a fatal one.

Jono didn't struggle. Hell, he didn't even make a motion to wrap himself around Hannibal, in turn. He let him hold on, just as readily as he let the faces gouge at him. A bite out of his shoulder here, a lucky gouge at his eye with clawed mutant fingertips. He didn't wince. Just remained still, and bled.

Maybe that was why, when Hannibal struck out at the most vicious of them, they fell back and remained there, watching warily with milky dead eyes as their fresh wounds bled and their skin burned to char and their flesh peeled away. They weren't used to somebody fighting back, in here.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smiled grimly as the space immediately around them cleared. It made it easier to see the individuals among the crowd. He searched them until he found what he was looking for.

He recognized the winged creature from around the island the last time things had invaded, and from past discussions with Jono and Karla. He grabbed the Jhinka by the wing and hauled it closer. He didn't waste words with it, just turned it around and threw it back at the crowd.

[furnaceface]

Jono watched quietly from where he was laying, the eye that wasn't bleeding and useless still burning intensely. The Jhinka had been the first time he'd killed other people in a fight, however necessary those deaths had been.

He... he really didn't count the monsters from Silent Hill as people. They took up residence in a different, more twisted corner of his nightmares.

The Jhinka screamed as he was shoved back into the crowd, not at all pleased at being repelled away from his intended target. In his frustration, he lashed out a wickedly curved blade at anybody who was unfortunate enough to be within his range.

[sharp_as_knives]

There were other Jhinka nearby, and they matched his scream, tearing into everyone and everything that they could reach. A roiling mass of violence started in that section and spread out as some of the others started to fight back.

Some of those others were Kaeleeran, from their dress; Hannibal watched them for a moment, then singled out a particularly vicious one. He fought a Jhinka, but not far away were a teenager and a younger child, huddled together looking miserable.

Hannibal stepped up behind the man, who shifted slightly to avoid him, the children coming into his field of vision. "Are you truly angry with the Jhinka?" Hannibal murmured. "Look at the Jewel-less children."

Nothing else, no additional prodding, only bringing them to his attention.

[furnaceface]

Really, it didn't take any additional prodding. The man curled his lip as he saw the huddling children, looking every inch landen, even if the tattered, dirty clothes they were wearing were unfamiliar to him.

"Landen brats," he hissed. "The whole Territory will go to waifs like them if that upstart bitch Queen has her way."

That statement grabbed the attention of a few more men, a few more Blood. Even the Jhinka turned their attention to look.

To some, those children were an obstacle. To others, they were prey. Either way, there were a few who were closing in on them while the kids huddled and the teen tried her best to keep the little one safe.

Jonothon's own gaze followed as Hannibal pulled him around, though he didn't seem to notice the manhandling, either.

His attention was locked very firmly on the children.

[sharp_as_knives]

They weren't the only children in this place, either. The only easy prey. All those saddened ones, those faces here that hadn't begun vicious, were tinder in the angry fire of the ones that had. The ones that lived for taking advantage, for their own violence.

And Hannibal had lit a match.

[furnaceface]

Jono watched silently as the first Jhinka reached the first child, watched as big, terrified eyes looked up at another person who would happily kill them where they stood for no crime beyond being what they were.

He watched as the blade came down.

The blade that came to a grinding stop just a breath above the child's head, stopped dead cold at the sound of a telepathic howl. That very same howl that had killed so many of the jhinka in the crowd. Fierce eyes turned back toward Jonothon as the entire pack of winged creatures remembered who it was here that they loathed the most.

Jono stood where he was, his face melting away and so much of his shape shifting to flame that it was a wonder there had ever been any flesh on him at all. The Jhinka lunged at him, and a few of the Blood continued stepping toward the cowering children, having been given no reason to fear the howl or the flame. Those who had died in the war had been given a different death to fear.

That just meant that the fire that swept around the room, devouring any face that had been turned against the children a moment before, managed to catch that many more of them by surprise.

[sharp_as_knives]

The hand that Hannibal held melted back and forth between fire and flesh, but he never let go of it. He watched with no little satisfaction as Jono burned away the majority of the shades.

He was under no illusion that this would keep them gone for good, but this was the first step: remembering that he'd had a reason for killing them, and would do so again. Their foothold wasn't in their deaths; it was in Jono's guilt and regret. That was what he needed to burn away.

[furnaceface]

It was a significantly quieter place without Blood and Jhinka screaming around the edges, at least for the most part. There were still the innocents, cowering away from him or begging, pleading to know what they'd done to deserve to die so horribly. There ere those people that he'd killed for different reasons entirely. A man he'd murdered with a 'would you kindly,' skulking in the shadows. People who had slaughtered unicorns, who had been told the land was rightly theirs, who had no interest in human death but who had seen no worth in an entire race of Kindred. Alien kidnappers who had been unfortunate enough to be in Jonothon's way as he tried to find where they were keeping Hannibal.

There were still a good many faces, some of them still angry, but the area around them was much quieter still. Much less bloodthirsty.

[sharp_as_knives]

Some of them Hannibal didn't know, but he nodded toward the aliens and the remaining Kaeleerans. "Do they belong here?"

[furnaceface]

Jono watched them silently, his flesh creeping back over the flame, his injuries slowly mending as he did so.

//No.//

Of course they didn't. They'd gotten what they had been asking for, bringing their war and murder to Fandom, to Sceval. They... they didn't get to haunt him, either.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal nodded and squeezed Jono's hand, leaving it to him to take action.

[furnaceface]

Jono nodded, holding to Hannibal's hand a little more tightly as he looked at those who remained in the space around them. The sorceress who had once tried to destroy Rinoa. The Glacian Blood who had tried to take advantage of Karla's time without Caft to commit regicide. Cultists who had been desperate to simply lay their hands on Eleanor...

They, too, were reduced to ash.

It was much quieter, now. Only the terrified remained.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smiled at Jono. "You see, the sharks are here, too; they simply take different form. They lie to you or twist the truth. They get you to doubt yourself, in order to carve a place for themselves. But they only survive if you feed them."

He wrapped his free arm around Jono to pull him in for a hug. "You're doing very well so far. Are you ready to face the rest of them?"

This, he knew well, would be harder.

[furnaceface]

Jono lifted his arms to hold tightly to Hannibal, burying his face in his shoulder and refusing to let go. He seemed smaller, then. Maybe he was smaller, or maybe it was a trick of the mind's eye. He was tired, though, and hollow, his fire barely a dim flicker beneath a ruined jaw and a gaping chest wound.

//Face them...?//

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal hummed soothingly. "Not yet, then." He sat, coaxing Jono along with him, and simply held him for a while, murmuring and thinking protective, soothing thoughts at him. There was a fierce possessiveness there that some wouldn't call love, but it was all Hannibal, and Jono knew who he was marrying.

[furnaceface]

And as much as Jono could be a hopeless romantic, he didn't put nearly as much stock these days in the power of love as some would.

Hannibal's protectiveness felt so much safer, after all.

//Not yet,// he echoed, softly. //I don't... I can't... Haven't got th'right...//