In Lamb's Clothing @schoolsoutstarling - Tumblr Blog

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Florence had not changed except to say that the people that lived within that ancient and beautiful city were dressed differently and the skies had softened for summertime, blue and large over the bridges that crossed the Arno River. Passing shapes illuminated the interior of the supercharged Jaguar in slow traffic past the Palazzo Vecchio, and where once the spilled intestines of Commendatore Rinaldo Pazzi had stained the cobblestones below, only day-old rainwater pooled, now.

Scarlatti played on the car stereo and paperwork was neatly arranged in a briefcase in the back seat. Luggage filled the trunk and the rest of the spare room in the back. Clarice Starling sat passenger-side with wind ruffling her hair, and between brief periods of pulling forward in traffic, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, once known to Florence, Italy, as Dr. Fell, curator of the Capponi Library at the Palazzo Capponi, stole looks at her lovely face in the Tuscan sunshine.

It is said that a criminal always returns to the scenes of his crimes. But, in truth, Dr. Lecter had returned for two reasons, and two reasons alone: to show Clarice Starling the books he had fallen in love with in the Capponi Library, and to, upon her request, solve the mystery of a string of recent murders in the city.

The locals were calling the killer the new Il Mostro — recreating his predecessor’s crimes and posing his victims like the nymphs of Primavera, just as before.

"Nearly there," The doctor said serenely as the song on the stereo ended and the next began.

schoolsoutstarling

If Clarice had to encapsulate her relationship environment with Doctor Lecter in one word - and that is the environment, not the relationship itself - she would have to say 'exchange'. It was not a battle, nor a bartering of favors and gifts. It was an exchange. Give, and receive. Nothing was taken. Everything had some return for the giver. And in this case, it was Hannibal bringing Clarice to see the books of his time at the Capponi Library, something that would bring him great joy and satisfaction, and in return he would do something that would bring her - if not joy - then satisfaction, and that was solving crimes. Not because of the crime-solving in and of itself. But for the satisfaction of having done something with herself.

Clarice had also made sure to look appropriate. Though she would have preferred to wear a sweater, comfortable pants, and sneakers, she had instead chosen designer black jeans, a royal blue blouse, and a pair of modest black shoes - which bridged the gap between 'look nice' and 'capable of running in them'. In her lap she had the files of the case she was wanting to review, what could be bought or bartered for through illicit means and garnered from the police files, and what was publicly available all combined between the manila covers.

She was absorbed by the documentation before her, relatively oblivious to the surroundings. She looked up every now and again of course. One could not be surrounded by such a vista and not appreciate it. But it was clear where her priorities were.

Well, at least she wore a little makeup this time.

Her eyes lifted when Hannibal spoke, glancing at him, and then up at the scenery before her. Finally she closed the folder and leaned back, watching the approaching building with a gentle smile. Despite the exchange, it was not like she was reluctant to go to this place. But it was important for her to retain a level of power and control in their relationship. Thus, the exchange.

#ilmostro

dragon-rising-deactivated201405

schoolsoutstarling

Pushed from the nest

ilmxstro

Starling’s hostility was a beautiful and curious thing to watch unfold. She held in the aggression, the anger that he had caused — but only just. Perhaps she did it because, at this point, she had become used to hiding the severity of her emotions from men that had power. Perhaps she did it because she thought that, were she rude enough to him, he would kill and consume her. Or, perhaps, she did it because she genuinely respected him enough not to allow her emotions to get the better of her. Dr. Lecter posed that it was probably a combination of all possible elements at varying degrees, respectively, but he did examine her respect towards him with a special degree of scrutiny.

She was civil. Always civil. And that was her defining trait as a professional. Dr. Lecter glanced down to her cheap mug with her cheap coffee and his nostrils flared with the wafting scent of its inferior roast mixing with the residual aromas of the meals he had cooked. It was almost an insult — but only in an aesthetic sense, and that he was apt to forgive due to the simplicity of the situation.

“I don’t want anything, Clarice. Does that surprise you?” he asked in return, brow furrowing, though not out of any degree of legitimate confusion. “It’s true, it is in my nature to act with reason, but that does not restrict me to do solely that. I am more than able to pursue things simply because I want them. I want your company, so I seek it. Is that strange to you? Strange to consider the possibility that you and I are, or could be, friends?”

schoolsoutstarling

"You don't have friends, Doctor Lecter." The response was immediate, the words calm. She did not doubt them. Not for a moment. "Not in the traditional sense of the word. Or even a literal definition. You have..." She hesitated, considering her word choice. "Uses for people. Either to alleviate your boredom or satiate your curiosity." Did Clarice even entertain the idea that she and Hannibal could be friends? Not for a second. She was of the fervent belief that he was only curious about her, and when that curiosity was sated, he would disappear to the wind, with or without killing her.

But she did believe that he wanted her company. He liked her, because for whatever reason, one she could not begin to fathom, she interested him. Something about her had piqued that curiosity of his. And he would poke and prod her like a lab experiment, listening to her reactions, for his own ends, irrespective of her own wants and desires. And that, as far as she was concerned, precluded any chance of anything resembling friendship.

She brought the coffee up, stabilising it with the tips of the fingers of her other hand, and took a sip. Licking her upper lip, she rested her elbows on the table and peered over the rim of it. She was making apparent to herself, and to him, that there was a difference to the Clarice here, and the Clarice he met in the bowels of Baltimore. "I believe you want my company." Her head tilted as she examined him. "But I don't think even you know why."

And it was one thing that Clarice quietly, and silently believed. That for as intelligent as Doctor Hannibal Lecter was, for as cunning and brutally efficient his mind was, for as well as he knew everyone around him, she would stake her very soul on the fact that Doctor Lecter knew, and understood, very little of himself. The question that plagued Clarice, however, was did he know that?

#ilmostro

schoolsoutstarling

Pushed from the nest

ilmxstro

In many ways, Clarice avoided the direct question and answered it all at once — a clever and practiced bureau strategy, though not at all something that Dr. Lecter was not intimately familiar with in his own endeavors regarding the evasion of questions like a proper politician. And yet, rather than chastising her, he well acknowledged that it was in all likelihood a matter of denial that kept her from looking the true issue square in the face and giving it a name — perhaps she feared that it was that integral piece that would empower it the most, like naming a demon or evil spirit.

No, rather, he was quiet for awhile, giving her a long and observational look that drank in the shape of her in all ways. Her brows, mouth, and eyes — expressive, however guardedly so. Her posture, the same. Her body, broken and battered, remained strong despite it all — and in all these things, there was great congruity with her spirit. He admired that in her and all at once, knew immediately that it was that heart that she held in her hands — stitched to her cuff, where she could hide it, perhaps, for professionalism’s sake, but never for too long — would be her inevitable downfall.

"You wanted a position in Jack Crawford’s fleet, Clarice. Crawford pushed for you to join him, but there was no luck, was there? You have barriers between you and what you’ve always wanted — what you’ve trained for all your life. Because of what? Tell me, Clarice, is it because you spat in another agent’s coffee? Did you… steal the Buffalo Bill case?” Despite how vicious he had suddenly become, and how his words were now all at once vaguely metallic in the way that they once had been in Chilton’s dungeon, he maintained an air that served to remind Starling that his insult, his mockery, and his criticism were the highest compliment he could afford a person.

"Is this person standing between you and Jack Crawford’s heels a man? I’d bet anything he is. And I’d bet he’s quite irritated that you’ve not been eager to slake his… shall we say, less than professional thirsts.”

schoolsoutstarling

Clarice inhaled slowly, ensuring that her stranglehold on her reactions remained in place. Planting one hand, she pushed herself from the table. She needed to move. To reclaim some power in her own goddamn home. She had played the rules as decreed by Lecter till now. But in that moment she needed to prove to herself that she was still in control.

One toe pivoted sharply as she turned away from the table and crossed to her coffee machine. She knew better than to ask him to prepare the drink. It was her kitchen, after all. "Forgive the rudeness," she said, "but I need a coffee." She put a sachet of coffee into the device and switched it on, retrieving a bottle of milk from the fridge. She used the time to process what had happened, his question, what she thought he wanted. What she thought she should do in response.

She poured milk into her coffee, watching the dark liquid pale to a light caramel. Returning the milk, she returned to the table and sat down with her drink, setting it on the table between them. An oddity to the carefully prepared meal. Cheap coffee, cheap milk, a plain, cheap cup. Keeping her hand wrapped through the handle, and aware of what that meant as she clutched the one thing on the table prepared for herself, by herself, she stared across the barely-touched meal to Doctor Hannibal Lecter.

"Are you trying to insult both of our intelligences by asking me questions we both know answers to?" she asked quietly. There was an edge to her voice. But no heat. She refused to be reduced to a terrified lamb because the glass was not between them. "Or just mine?"

Doctor Lecter likes me. She knew that much. And not in any childish way, or way of affection that the lay man might be used to. But in his own way, she knew he liked her. The way one particularly liked a flower that bloomed on a bush according to their aesthetic approval. He liked her more than the rest, but that did not mean he would mourn if she died.

"There is nothing to be achieved in my professional life by reacting to the situation emotionally," she continued. "The men - and yes it is men, plural - who stand in the way of success," she stressed that part, not Jack Crawford's proximity, "of any woman in the Bureau do so for reasons entrenched in their own psyche. Reasons that will cause them to react unfavorably to an angry woman. So. I will not become angry. And I will play by the rules they set up. Because it's their game. And I will beat them at it." She leaned forward, fixing him with a stare. "What do you want, Doctor Lecter? You came here for a reason. You had a purpose in mind. What was it? Nothing so simple as to cook for me, I am sure. You could cook for anyone."

#ilmostro

Friendly reminder that you can tag me in a starter any time ^_^

#outofgunpowder

schoolsoutstarling

Pushed from the nest

ilmxstro

Chewing, himself, Dr. Lecter watched Starling from across the breadth of her shared duplex kitchen, complete with humming florescent bulbs and chintz drapery on the windows. He watched her, a lion sitting across from a lamb in the soft womb of the place that, perhaps, the lamb thought herself safest. Once, unbeknownst to Dr. Lecter, Clarice had described the difference between understanding and empathy to Jack Crawford. She had said to him that it’s hard, sometimes, to think that a person can understand you without even liking you. Perhaps, in her understanding of that solemn fact, was the most profound truth behind their little unconventional exchanges. Clarice Starling understood Hannibal Lecter. She did not necessarily like what she understood, not without exception and unconditionally, but it was obvious that she did respect at least some of what she saw while looking back at him.

Quite a bit like Mischa who never feared putting her small, star-shaped hands on his face, Clarice sat at her own table and consumed human blood because she trusted Dr. Lecter’s sense of decency not to feed her taboo meat. He would, perhaps, then, save the truth of that particular matter for another time. He felt no remorse, watching her calculate her next move and ultimately choose something that she would, inevitably, regret later. Though it was that likeness to Mischa that gave him pause to smile at her quite genuinely and laugh and shake his head. Trust. Not trust because he lied and mislead to achieve it — because he had a goal and sought to achieve it. But trust because she felt she understood him. He respected that.

In fact, were the constituents of the meal inhuman, it would have been a profound disservice to her. Why, what other way could he credit her with the fullness of this test — and, ever the curious creature, that was exactly what this was — and detract from the gravity of its results when she bit into the blood of a pig or a cow?

There was, of course, no poetry in consuming a pound of flesh unless, of course, it was human.

He felt inwardly quite smug about that — his insatiable ego preening when she swallowed.

"So what will you do now, little Starling?" he issued, voice low and metallic like their days in the dungeon. "With your hearing coming up for the massacre at the fish market, it’s food for thought, certainly. Of course, I don’t expect you to have the answer now."

schoolsoutstarling

Would Clarice suspect that she had consumed even a small portion of taboo food? No. She was confident in her estimation. As confident as one could be when dealing with someone like Doctor Hannibal Lecter. Which meant that even as she chewed and swallowed, the nauseating sense of doubt that curled in her stomach caused her appetite to be small. She barely touched the rest, eating a small portion from each part so as to not offend, before placing her knife and fork down.

The removal of her sense of safety and security made her skin prickle. His presence in that dungeon of a cell at Baltimore had been bad enough. The reinforced surface of the glass between them having afforded her almost no sense of safety. No, not at all. It was when she had begun to converse with him that she thought she was safe. That she thought she had some ground. And then he was in that cage, like a lion in a circus, but smarter than any lion on God's Earth. Smarter than any human. A predator in the rawest sense of the word. And her understanding was thrown askew again.

Clarice looked down at her place, feeling very much like a child under the critical eye of an adult. Hannibal's intellect would always be vastly superior to hers, and it would be no feat of strength of bravery to deny that. But because he was smarter did not make him automatically better. She fought to remember that.

"What I do now is follow procedure," she said, almost mechanically. "I have completed and submitted a full incident report, documented the discharges from my firearm, and now I wait for further instruction." She paused. She knew it was going to be a political shitstorm. She knew she was going to be dragged over the coals. The female FBI agent. A woman in a man's world. She was unwanted and she knew it. Her jaw worked. She knew she was going to be the scapegoat. She didn't like it. But she knew it.

"I have done what I can. For now."

#ilmostro

7bluebirdssing

Word Porn

#the temptation of eve

psych-facts

Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.

Les Brown (via psych-facts)

bertinelli

schoolsoutstarling

what became of your lamb, clarice?

#Filed under: Doctor Hannibal Lecter

I really want to do a thread

with Clarice and Hannibal being caught

and Will is interrogating her

and it's like a discussion of two of Hanni's victims

but polar opposite outcomes

I need this...

#outofgunpowder

the-winnowing-wind

Watch “Kaiseki” from the hit NBC Drama, Hannibal.

GUYS PLEASE REWATCH WITH THIS LINK. IT IS THE OFFICIAL LINK, THE MORE HITS THEY SEE THE BETTER.

THIS IS GOING TO BE A CRUCIAL PART OF OUR BATTLE FOR S.3

violeta9312

THIS. LISTEN UP, GUYS!

awildcreature-deactivated202110

SIGNAL BOOST, JUST PLAY IT IN THE BACKGROUND ON MUTE WHILE U DO DOOT DOOT INTERNETS STUFF

schoolsoutstarling

Pushed from the nest

ilmxstro

Giving her his back, the doctor moved to his seat at her table and sat down, unfolding his napkin to place it in his lap. His satisfaction in her apparent surprise was no secret, and yet it remained somewhat akin to the expression of humor that a paternal figure might reflect towards an unruly child surprised at lack of punishment. Taking up his fork, he sampled the sausage first and hummed a comfortable bit of pleasure with the flavor. Exquisite. Swallowing, he regarded Starling once more with a relentless and merciless look in his eye that said he would push her just a little farther before letting her find respite in a lack of mental assault on his behalf.

"You look upon this experience as a tragedy. You see the deaths of those involved, the late Officer Brigham a prime example — to be a personal failure. When you fail, Clarice, you feel a shame so visceral and profound that I would not feel too bold to postulate you wish you had never tried to follow in your father’s footsteps. And perhaps that feeling is too deeply buried under years of determination to be readily seen at this particular point in time…

“And yet the fact of the matter is that you were afforded two choices: kill, or be killed. Survive, and see that others who are innocent also survive, or suffer a failure far, far worse than the deaths of your enemies and the loss of your allies.

"You chose correctly, Clarice. And you teeter on the brink of knowing that, yourself. It is only your own mind that stands between the differentiation of pride and shame — and you choose how to define this event. Is it truly a failure? Daddy may be weeping high in heaven, but I, certainly, am not."

schoolsoutstarling

Clarice closed her eyes and slowly built a wall of composure around her emotions and her actions. She would not allow herself to react, only to act, with thought behind every decision. When her eyes opened again, she was sitting across the table from Hannibal Lecter, with a meal he had prepared between them. She exhaled slowly and looked down at the table, examining what had been offered to her. Would Hannibal have served something human to her? Would he have placed a silent offering of taboo meat to include her in his perverse deviancy?

She stumbled over that thought. Perverse deviancy? Her mind had stumbled onto crass definitions born from assuming minds. She looked up at Lecter again. He was not perverse. In the definition of 'normal' folk, perhaps. But Hannibal functioned on a level all on his own. For her to be able to understand him, at all, for her to be able to act and not react, she had to figure out the lay of the land upon which he had built his own thoughts.

Clarice picked up her knife and fork. She did not respond to his words. Not immediately. She was still asking herself. Was the black pudding human? Would he slip her human meat? She felt decisive with her response. No. Not yet, at least. She did not think he would judge it as right, at that moment. He was there for her, to care for her. Would it be too easy to do so? No. He gained no victory from it. She was vulnerable, now. Not a challenge. Not a conquest. Getting her to consume human flesh was no achievement for him.

She cut into the black pudding, picked up a slice with her fork, and slipped it between her lips.

#ilmostro

schoolsoutstarling

Pushed from the nest

ilmxstro

The gravity of Clarice’s shame was not lost on the doctor, despite his postulation on what fear of him she might have. She fled eye contact as she obliged him, jaw set and eyes steeled. She looked very stoney, then — like a statue of a wounded valkyrie showing her disregard for the agony of transient flesh with the cold expression of her face. Dr. Lecter sat in silence for a fraction of a second, looking up at that face of hers with calculative admiration.

When he leaned forward and reached out to test the temperature and swelling of the wound, his stoic expression fractured around the corners of his mouth and he appeared all at once somewhat bittersweet — as if deeply lost in thought. ”I imagine you must think of your father, now, looking down on you from wherever he is now…” he murmured intimately, gently testing the tenderness of the area before leaning back. “How disappointed he must be to see you fall so far. I imagine that now, showing me that wound, you feel very much like your mother, cleaning up stained bedsheets in motels. Cheap.”

Once again on his feet, he paused beside Starling, once again paying her eye contact though she might not necessarily elect to return it.

“I, however, am proud of what you’ve done, Clarice.”

schoolsoutstarling

There was a flash thought that winged behind Clarice's eyes, reflecting steel through the stony gaze. She had been shot in the side through no fault of her own. Her father had been shot in the head due to his own carelessness and the itchy finger of some terrified thieves who likely had had no intent to kill.

But she was appalled at that thought, drowning it within her well of control before it was able to fully manifest, aborting the sentiment immediately upon conception.

She didn't react when Hannibal touched her wound, testing it with a surgeon's clinical detachment. Or at least what she interpreted to be thusly. She refused to consider that there might be any care within that gesture.

Clarice lowered her shirt and glanced at Hannibal when he spoke again, surprise plain on her features. Then suspicion. She was too exhausted, and in too much pain, to play games with him at that moment. "What?"

#ilmostro

psych-facts

Listening to sad songs probably creates happier emotions because the sad person is feeling understood, like they aren’t the only person feeling that pain.

(via psych-facts)

psych-facts

The human attention span maxes out at about 10 minutes, over that and we will tend to revert to daydreaming.

(via psych-facts)

psych-facts

When it comes to attraction, there’s a difference between finding someone aesthetically pleasing, being sexually attracted to someone and being romantically attracted to someone.

(via psych-facts)

psych-facts

According to Sternberg’s Love Theory, there are three components of love. They are commitment, passion, and intimacy.

(via psych-facts)

#Dance with the devil

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