i can't stay here ; {{ d r a b b l e }}
Eldon could see her, sometimes.
The woman he'd murdered. Funny how a guilty conscience can turn a mind mad--he swore, sometimes he could see Dr. Lussac in the corner of his eye, staring over her clipboard as she jotted down notes. Sometimes he saw her in the mirror. In his lab. In the flickers of shadows just before he turned on the light in his bunk. The woman was a regular visitor in the flickering gaps between his sanity and his sense.
He was glad that Herc wasn't around to see him like this. That no one was around to see him like this. The ecologist had locked himself away in either lab or bunk, back and forth, refusing to do much beyond feed his macaw and try to avoid Max at all costs. That fucking dog always managed to get around him, though--even now, it was sprawled near his desk, snoring to disrupt the deafening silence his lab often created. Graham was asleep as well; Eldon wasn't.
He didn't recall the last time he slept. He'd read somewhere that after a few days, the body starts shutting down without rest, but he didn't care--he kept a steady diet of coffee and nothing else, and his fingers trembled violently without fail. He found himself shaking like a leaf when he wasn't paying attention, as of late, and he wasn't sure if he was cold or if his body was just confused.
Eldon was sad to admit that he was right about the taste of fear. It ate him right back with a vengeance, and the only distraction he had to offer himself was his daily conversations with Herc--usually, he tried to keep them as text. Because he knew for certain that if he slipped up, if he cracked and Hansen heard, it would end in disaster. No one could ever know what he had done. What he'd allowed to happen.
That was a secret only he and Dr. Lecter would share.
But the problem with this secret was that it was unbearable to keep--he wanted desperately to talk about it, to scream at the top of his lungs, but there was no one he could talk to. Even if Hannibal was the one who helped him, voicing his concerns to the man was the worst thing he could imagine. If he opened up, if he exposed that vulnerability, what would Dr. Lecter do? Encourage him? Tell him it gets easier over time? That it gets easier after the first time?
That was what sickened him. That he knew, deep down, this wouldn't be the only time he'd do this. If his life was threatened by forces he could not control, he would control them or destroy them. He just hoped that he'd never have to do it with his bare hands. If he was already guilty for making Hannibal do it, he was sure that trying to do it himself would break him.
He was broken enough already, and breaking down more and more every day. He'd had two episodes in the past few days, each vicious and exhausting, and he'd been a nervous wreck ever since. It took all of his willpower to sound relaxed on the phone. To pretend he was normal. If anything, his calls with Hansen were like practice; he used the other man to see how well he was at faking it, and he was a welcome distraction from the chaos of Eldon's muddled thoughts.
That was why he was so open. So easy. Because he was desperate, and Hansen was a outlet so he could try and pretend everything was okay. He was scared for what the other man would do when they saw each other again; if he noticed something wrong, he'd refuse to let it go, and Eldon didn't have the strength to resist an interrogation.
But if he told Herc, the fear would eat him alive. He'd have to get rid of him, too.
"I can't do that." He pressed clammy palms over his face, letting out a ragged sigh. "I can't, I can't, I can't--I'm not going to!" The ecologist's nails pressed into his ashen skin, trying to pull him back to his senses. It didn't work very well. "I just--c-can't tell him--or a-anybody, I have to--to--"
And here, his head lifted, staring through the gaps in his fingers. His lab, once a safe place, now felt like it was haunted by the guilt he harbored. He trembled. "I have to leave the Shatterdome." His voice was quiet. Quavering, as he felt tears welling in his eyes. All this that he'd worked so hard for, now making him so profoundly miserable that he had to abandon it or go insane and fess up--it was heartbreaking.
Quietly, the ecologist dropped his hands and procured his phone, looking through his contacts and staring at one in particular. 'Chau'. His eyes pressed tightly shut, and he dropped his forehead onto his desk. "I have t'wait." He shook his head, and his voice was slurring as he tried to speak through the beginning of a hysterical breakdown, "I have t'wait for Herc, so m'not--m'not gone before he gets back." He set his phone down, then buried his face in his hands and collapsed into himself.
This was going to be a long, long few weeks.