oom: mind palace

[abyssum_invocat]

The walk to her room is short, thankfully, and Sinthia sits on the edge of the bed, poised and contained.

"It might feel strange. You might experience phantom tastes or smells as those areas of the brain are stimulated. It varies from person to person. But it shouldn't hurt."

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

"I need to be aware of the experience," Hannibal says. "See what you see. Allow me to escort you through my mind palace."

[abyssum_invocat]

"You should relax," she says, holding his gaze as he voice shifts from spoken to not. "Let me in."

The feeling of pressure, not unlike a sinus headache, was easily spotted as Sinthia imagined herself outside herself--the residual self-image, as it was called. They stood in the Norman Chapel in Palermo, the wooing-or-praying skeleton beneath their feet. "Macabre. But pretty."

[cook_the_rude]

"This is the Norman Chapel in Palermo, Italy," Hannibal explains. "I like to start here on my meanderings. Where would you like to go first?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"I would like to see your first memory of eating another human," she says. "And to observe whatever we pass along the way."

She's only very vaguely familiar with the concept of a mind palace, still, but she's willing to negotiate within the metaphor, as it were. "How do you build a place like this?"

[cook_the_rude]

"Free association while walking in it," Hannibal says. "See that painting of a dog? That's where I store my knowledge of FBI procedure, because Will Graham has dogs, and he's the one on whose account I started working with the FBI."

It's a classical 19th century hunting scene, but the dog looks rather like a certain Winston...

[abyssum_invocat]

"That must be a very heavy painting," she remarks idly. "How do you know what a place like this looks like to start walking in it? It's like nothing I've ever seen before. Mostly it's just blank space."

[cook_the_rude]

"I just walk, and think, and the mind palace grows around me, naturally," he says.

[abyssum_invocat]

She makes a soft noise of though at that, wandering ahead; she brushes by the painting, skimming fingers over the entirely solid yet imaginary surface, and turns back to Hannibal for a moment.

"I would like to see deeoer. It ay be uncomfortable," she says, though it's a wholly new experience for her to be talking with someone whose mind she's also reading. It's nearly unfathomable that they'd be walking along inside it with her. As they go deeper, the phantom taste of dark, bitter chocolate and the scent of clean machinery oil present themselves, fading and growing in intensity with their movements.

[cook_the_rude]

"You are adding to the experience," Hannibal observes. "The engine oil is Will's, but the chocolate is yours. Where is it from?"

[abyssum_invocat]

For a moment she's quiet, and merely shrugs, rubbing her thumb over her fingertips. "When I was very little, I remember one of the American soldiers giving it to me. I'd never had it before."

He must have hoped, she assumes, that she wouldn't kill him if he showed her kindness, and truthfully told she hadn't wanted to. But orders, even then, were orders. She'd already known what the consequence would be for breaking them.

[cook_the_rude]

"How did you meet him? What year was it?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"He was a prisoner of war. But I don't remember what year it was," she said, shaking her head. The fact that she retains any memory at all after the number of times almost everything had been erased is frankly a miracle.

[cook_the_rude]

"Which war?"

[abyssum_invocat]

"The second world war."

She can put that together from what she knows; she had spoken German, the chocolate wrapper had been in that curious military print and in English. "Why?"

[cook_the_rude]

"Our wars define us," Hannibal says, after a short pause for cogitation.

[abyssum_invocat]

"I've been in many," Sinthia replies after a moment of pause. Too many, most would say.

She might agree with that. But even while her forehead creases in thought, she turns and keeps going down the hall, expecting him to follow.

[cook_the_rude]

And follow he will.

"There have been too many," he says, "but that is human nature. Blood must flow."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Too many is a value judgement," she says lightly, pausing to look down a hallway. "It varies from person to person."

[cook_the_rude]

"How much war is enough?"