Like a spirit in the night

[foreshadower]

WHO: SHADE and HANNIBAL
WHERE: Shade's mansion
WHEN: Uhhhh a week or so ago??
WARNINGS: Hannibal. Just Hannibal.
SUMMARY: Cooking bros being cooking bros
FORMAT: Quick!



[ Shade had invited Hannibal over to the mansion because he often seemed like the best sort of company Shade could ask for. Hannibal was posh, polished, and made a fantastic conversation partner. The worst part was that he was having trouble remaining human in the City, the same way he'd fallen further and further from it even in his own home, before he'd become even more invested in Opal's well-being. The issue was, he didn't think he would find the same thing happening to the City. It just didn't have the same...well, anything that Opal did.

Sitting in a seat in his parlor, he shfted, pulling a teacup from the sidetable, giving Hannibal a wan smile. Conversation was light, easy, but he found tthat the man was likely suffering from a similar sort of homesickness that Shade was. Having things be not the same as they had been for Shade for quite some time was difficult to handle. He suspected that Hannibal was the same way, used to his luxuries, and annoyed and frustrated that he didn't have what he wanted -- his every fancy not met.

He was used to that, being able to do what he wanted, but here it almost wasn't worth it. ]

Tell me, Hannibal, what have you found enjoyable thus far in the City?

Comments

[buttpatting]

[It's a true assessment, Hannibal being frustrated and annoyed (more than that, even) at his lack of control in the City. He had no real financial reserves, had no degrees and certificates to hang on his wall, had no ridiculously lavish kitchen to call his own. Being taken into a new universe was one thing; to be insulted with housing like the MAC? Another thing entirely. Of course, Hannibal's idea of an insult was always murky and hard to predict, but it was definitely a blow to his pride. His ego. Him and everything he (privately) stood for.

Thank God (if there was one) for Shade. A man who appreciated the finer things, who had access to the finer things, and was agreeable when it came to indulging them with Hannibal. He'd attracted powerful friends all his life. He'd been considered a powerful friend. To see that that part of him remained unchanged wherever he was wasn't a surprise, exactly, but it was refreshing to know he could still fall back on it, his charm and his cultured knowledge. He'd fall back on it as long as he possibly could.

And murder, of course, when he could manage it. Which was, oddly enough, not long before he'd come to Shade. He couldn't last forever with inferior food. To be expected of it was nothing short of insanity.]

It's nice to have similar work to what I am used to. [The words were weighed, trying to say there wasn't much without saying just that. He didn't want to come across as a man who complained whenever he could.] I don't think I told you...were you in that town a while ago? The one that was like an old cowboy movie but had dinosaurs [It sounds crazy. It must. But it's reality, and he has to accept it.] cohabiting with humanity? These powers, whatever you call them, I found one of mine there. I was thinking of returning to surgery with it...getting myself to working six or seven days a week to help move things along. [To get out of the MAC, in essence.] I've really, at this point, been keen to throw myself into work and save pleasures for later, once I've established myself properly.

[Perhaps it could be taken as him complaining about his lack of wealth, but the way he says it, his tone...he likes to think it would come across more as a man determined to work his way back into what he wants, not looking for sympathy. A handout. Completely driven to doing what he must, even if that means missing out on opera and symphonies and everything in between.]

[foreshadower]

[ Shade could sympathize, he really could, with Hannibal's plight. The poor guy liked a lot of the same things that Shade did, but he had to survive, whereas Shade simply had to exist. It was a different problem altogether between the two of them. Shade didn't need shelter, or sleep, or even food, and when he wanted them? Well, he could simply take them. Or amass a fortune in his own ways.

One of the paintings on the wall said enough of that, something he'd taken, of course, not too famous, nothing someone would miss, but delightful and lovely all the same. A museum had been keeping it in their archives, where it would not see the light of the day.

There was no worry about that here, either, and Shade would be able to appreciate it properly. ]

I'm afraid I did not get to go to this most recent trip, but what sorts of powers did you find that you had, and how did you find them?

[ He paused, knowing that this was probably not for polite conversation, but he and Hannibal seemed to be getting to the stage where questions like that could surface. He filed the rest away for later, to bring up momentarily. ]

I'm curious about that sort of thing, I found my powers in a most unique way, and yet I still find new things about them occasionally. [ Once every decade or so. ]

[buttpatting]

[Hannibal required shelter, sleep, and food. That was the only life he had ever known. Once upon a time, his food choices had been quite mundane. Normal. Things happened in life, though, terrible things in the snow that he had never been able to put out of his mind entirely. Things that were enough to drive a man to complete insanity and have him introduce cannibalism as part of his regular diet. Of course, he couldn't simply use it for his, and once he achieved the level of gourmet, what else was there to do with his delightful recipes other than share?

He would, of course, see how Shade would react to it. The man was a gourmet. How skilled would he be if he could get someone with that palate to believe they were eating what he said they were? He could do it.

At least, he could try. What would be the worst thing that could happen? The man moved shadows, from what Hannibal had seen. Surely a bit of murder wasn't so beyond him. And as for murder? Well. It had begun, though he'd never tell anyone straight up.]

I stopped by a saloon after seeing someone I've spoken to working behind the bar. [He's not going to say he spotted him spitting in a drink, of course not.] We talked, and he mentioned the poor working conditions. He'd cut his finger on a nail and the bandage did not look very clean. So I asked to see it, assured him I knew how to handle basic injuries, and when I touched it? I just moved my finger over it like I've done a thousand times before. It disappeared. It healed up without my having to do anything other than touch it. [If he's a little uncomfortable discussing it, it doesn't show. He is, in a way, because it's simply not heard of where he's from.] I suppose you could say it would be something like healing hands. It makes me wonder, then, if everything I may have been granted has to do with medical abilities, and how the others might manifest. I hardly think that qualifies as unique, though. What was unique about yours?

[foreshadower]

My, that is a talent! [ He chuckled, low in his throat. In one hand, he held his tea, sipping at it for a moment, almost mild in the way he did so. ] I find that there can never be too many who can heal. Not all of us are immune to, well, everything.

[ With that, he set the cup down. He didn't speak of his powers, or how he found his powers often. It was a time so long gone, and it wasn't even if he really, truly wanted to hide it. Some parts of his past, yes. Culp, Mauguerite, he didn't wish to think on those any more than necessary.

Opening to Jack Knight had been something of a catharsis, and now he found it was easier to think on. ]

After the ritual that gave me my power, I was struck with amnesia, I'm afraid. I was taken in by a family who had cared for me over several weeks. It was only later that I found that they intended to kill me, and place the blame for another murder on my head.

[ He laughed, perhaps not particularly low and dark, but it was a hair's breadth away from being so. ]

I found my powers on that night. I murdered their entire family, save for the children -- a mistake in its own right. It was not until my friend Charles found me later, that I began to remember who I was.

[ And that was how Shade had incurred the wrath of an entire family for over two-hundred years. ]

[buttpatting]

[The praise of his power—talent, however Shade wants to refer to it—gets a smile from him. It's not something he ever expected to have, hands that really healed, but hearing that it's as great a thing to have as he honestly thinks it is? Something he quite likes.

That smile falls away and his face becomes neutral as he listens, his own drink ignored so he can portray that his full focus is on him. If it wasn't, the mention of murder would be enough to get it. It's hardly what he's expecting to hear, and he's quiet for a while after hearing it.

Not what he expected at all. The man has a strange way of moving shadows (for lack of anything better to call it), something he wouldn't expect from anyone who didn't have some darkness in their life, but the idea of murdering an entire family? Not what he was imagining.

His world had hardly prepared him for what sort of people he'd meet in the City.]

Save for the children. [He heard that. What was that he heard, though, was it a moment of mercy or Shade having some sort of line he wouldn't cross?] You say it was a mistake. I assume, then, that those children could not find it in their hearts to let their family rest in peace, and instead took it upon themselves to seek some sort of revenge for their dead. Was that what made you think of it as a mistake?

[Hardly polite conversation, but having been steeped in murder for the past near year since he'd come here, he was more used to talking about it than he had before. Before, when he'd never talked about it. That would be what he'd fall back on if asked, not his own place in the world in regards to death.]

[foreshadower]

[ Shade sighed, sipping mildly at his tea again. The story about the Ludlows was intwined with his history in a unique way. They may not be immortal, but the family had this way of seeming so. He'd only reconciled with one -- whom he'd thought was the last -- until the Spider appeared in Opal.

Ah, but how well had that turned out for him, hm? Hopefully, he didn't have another bastard lingering somewhere out there, learning to hate him like all of his family had. He was the bogeyman, the creature who would come to take little Ludlow children at night, and he assumed that fear held until the discovered he wasn't a figment, and then the hatred already had time to fester and grow. ]

I thought them innocent of their family's misgivings. It turned out, as I discovered a few years later, that they were no better than the tree they had fell from. They'd sworn revenge, and the boy shot me in the streets.

This was, of course, before I had discovered my immortality. I thought myself bleeding out when I killed him, but I lay there, thinking my life slipping away, until I discovered that perhaps the boy hadn't succeeded, and I wasn't dying a long and painful death.

The boy had made certain to continue this cycle, as well. The sister, he told me, had spent her entire life mothering children.

[ Shade pulled a pipe from his jacket, tapping it gently into an ashtray, before pulling a small jar from his side table. ]

Would this bother you?

[buttpatting]

["The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," he hears, and there's a wealth of psychological reasoning behind the why of it that he has no desire to get into. Shade isn't his patient. They're not in Hannibal's office. There's no one around to hear them who might later ask why he didn't latch onto that line of thought and do something, say, enlightening in regards to it.

He's absorbing every word of the story like a sponge, and when the pipe appears, he finally leans back, letting out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Shade was rapidly becoming the most interesting person in the City, as far as Hannibal was concerned.]

It wouldn't bother me at all. [They were Shade's lungs. Hannibal had no intention of doing anything with them himself, not even before the fact of the matter that he was immortal came into the mix. He'd heard it before, yes, but now that he was openly discussing it...] Does that not impact you? Being immortal, are you also immune to disease?

[Things Hannibal never thought would seriously come out of his mouth: that.]

[foreshadower]

It wouldn't be a very interesting immortality if I could so easily die of cancer, or perhaps something worse, would it?

[ He asked it, but he still lit up. Shade was too old to care about what could happen to him anymore, and despite his exuberance and enjoyment from what he found, the future, it was still something that after some time got a bit old.

What other reason would an old man like him have for becoming a supervillain. ]

I've found no ailment to destroy me. No wound that could kill me. [ He smiled around his pipe, while he inhaled. ] I took a bomb, once.

I'm sure there's something but I'm not quite sure what it is yet.

[buttpatting]

[With each new bit of information, Hannibal's mind turned veered from a dark path to an even darker one. What would the biology of an immortal look like, if all that was true? Could he cut Shade open and remove his organs only for them to grow back? Had his blood changed, could he run tests and never fully understand it because it was no longer human? If he was faced with extreme pain, would he bear it or would he pass out?

Most of those were rude to ask, of course, so they'd never be asked. As far as he was concerned, Shade was not at all rude, so there was no reason for him to ever "wonder" such things aloud, even with all the medical science behind such question. At least, he wouldn't ask them now, and certainly not without thinking them through in the least worrisome of ways.]

I hope you never find what that something is here in the City. [He'd spoken to that crass young man about death's lack of permanence, though apparently sometimes those who passed didn't come back. It wasn't a chance Hannibal wanted to take. Shade had wealth, and with wealth came power.

And a very fine selection of wine.] I would think it a true insult for any of us pulled here to be inhumed or entombed or cremated in this place and not our homes. Rude enough to be taken away, ruder still to take it that far. I have talked to a young man here who said that people can die and return, but sometimes they do not return—perhaps that means they return home, then, and their bodies do not stay here? Do you know?

[foreshadower]

Indeed, I know some of it. Obviously, my experience with death here is much like it is in my home, a casual observer at best. [ Occasionally, the one who brought it on, of course. Shade had been the man to bring a great many deaths, but it was often on his own terms. Nobody elses; as Necron had found out, offering Shade a deal to cause more malice -- and yet with nothing to truly offer in return for that. Shade was hardly power-hungry enough to thirst for that. ]

I have seen many die, and then return, and then some who have never come back after passing, and some who disappear at some time later. Some who die come back much later, or so I am told. I would suspect that if one does not return, they would find themselves back where they come from.

Yet, I'm not quite willing to chance that, as I'm sure you can understand. There is tempting fate, and then there is... [ He waved a hand, gesturing. ] Being rather stupid, don't you agree?