A Doe in a Room
Jun. 12th, 2026 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deantestineswritingTitle: A Doe in a Room || Ao3
Fandom: Hannibal (Books)
Rating: PG-13
Ship: None!
Warnings: Unrealistic, non-graphic depictions of violence and blood. Dead deer.
Word Count: 456
Whats in here?: Serendipity, Trauma
Summary: A palace built for memories stores bad memories, too.
For: 10 out of 20 challenge in sweetandshort.
Intricate designs weave themselves across the floor. Hannibal traces them with his eyes. The smell of remnants of hand soap on a strangers hands, a woman he had met once in Bulgaria. He breathes it in. A faint song plays in the background. He had heard a man play it on the streets. A violinist. He never got to ask the song, perhaps it was original. He'd dropped a hundred dollar bill in the man's hat.
He takes one very dramatic step closer to his destination, then farther from. He considers his walking very seriously, each footfall calculated as he peruses paintings hung on the walls of his mind palace, his skull.
Then, the lily-scented soap's aroma fades. Fight or flight, a roulette wheel spins in his head. It slows on fight, lands on freeze creeping up his back in a moment so unpleasant it's alien here. With effort, the scent — not the stench he'd caught the tail end of in the fade — reverses itself into fashion.
He relaxes, dislodged from his prison in the thick air.
That stench. No, he doesn't have the time for a leisurely stroll. He has dinner to prepare. The palace will wait for him.
First, quickly, the intention of his visit.
Fast down into a side-room decorated the same as a place he'd called home. Dressers act in the role of filing cabinets. Their designs are intricate wood carvings and lack any stale metal or manila folders.
This time, the first thing to fade is the music. Then the scent, and it's all so fast it can't be willed away. Nausea possesses him. Quicker. He finds himself at the drawer with the information he needs.
A picture of Mischa. In their home, playing with some expensive wooden toys. One was broken. She was 3.
The scent of blood, unmistakably familiar, oozes into his nostrils. It stings his eyes.
Running now, each step remains deliberate — a side effect of him. A doe, dead in the middle of the foyer, leaking more blood than she'd have. It pools under Hannibal's feet. About 50 yards from the door, now, and light pours through it. Taunting blue skies from the most beautiful day he'd ever seen. The doe has an arrow through her, her legs chopped off.
His own head starts to leak red from no wound and it runs down his neck, past his arms, and off his hands to join the pool chasing him.
He makes it out. Vision comes back to him.
Skies with just the right amount of clouds to look like a painting. Benches scatter around a circle of concrete. A fountain in the middle, penny-filled.
What only looks like paint stains the picture of Mischa, obscuring her face.
Fandom: Hannibal (Books)
Rating: PG-13
Ship: None!
Warnings: Unrealistic, non-graphic depictions of violence and blood. Dead deer.
Word Count: 456
Whats in here?: Serendipity, Trauma
Summary: A palace built for memories stores bad memories, too.
For: 10 out of 20 challenge in sweetandshort.
Intricate designs weave themselves across the floor. Hannibal traces them with his eyes. The smell of remnants of hand soap on a strangers hands, a woman he had met once in Bulgaria. He breathes it in. A faint song plays in the background. He had heard a man play it on the streets. A violinist. He never got to ask the song, perhaps it was original. He'd dropped a hundred dollar bill in the man's hat.
He takes one very dramatic step closer to his destination, then farther from. He considers his walking very seriously, each footfall calculated as he peruses paintings hung on the walls of his mind palace, his skull.
Then, the lily-scented soap's aroma fades. Fight or flight, a roulette wheel spins in his head. It slows on fight, lands on freeze creeping up his back in a moment so unpleasant it's alien here. With effort, the scent — not the stench he'd caught the tail end of in the fade — reverses itself into fashion.
He relaxes, dislodged from his prison in the thick air.
That stench. No, he doesn't have the time for a leisurely stroll. He has dinner to prepare. The palace will wait for him.
First, quickly, the intention of his visit.
Fast down into a side-room decorated the same as a place he'd called home. Dressers act in the role of filing cabinets. Their designs are intricate wood carvings and lack any stale metal or manila folders.
This time, the first thing to fade is the music. Then the scent, and it's all so fast it can't be willed away. Nausea possesses him. Quicker. He finds himself at the drawer with the information he needs.
A picture of Mischa. In their home, playing with some expensive wooden toys. One was broken. She was 3.
The scent of blood, unmistakably familiar, oozes into his nostrils. It stings his eyes.
Running now, each step remains deliberate — a side effect of him. A doe, dead in the middle of the foyer, leaking more blood than she'd have. It pools under Hannibal's feet. About 50 yards from the door, now, and light pours through it. Taunting blue skies from the most beautiful day he'd ever seen. The doe has an arrow through her, her legs chopped off.
His own head starts to leak red from no wound and it runs down his neck, past his arms, and off his hands to join the pool chasing him.
He makes it out. Vision comes back to him.
Skies with just the right amount of clouds to look like a painting. Benches scatter around a circle of concrete. A fountain in the middle, penny-filled.
What only looks like paint stains the picture of Mischa, obscuring her face.
