Nostalgia

“I’m going to prescribe you some medication,” Dr. Maurier spoke quietly. “With your recent attack, I’ve noticed your anxiety levels have increased quite a bit,” she explained as she began to write a prescription on her pad.

Hannibal internally chuckled, but proposed a stoic and intrigued facade as he thought on her words: though the attack upon him by Tobias had shaken him up, only just a bit, it was the investigation into the Chesapeake Ripper, and Jack Crawford’s never-ending supply of persistence to catch the serial killer that had truly been grating at his nerves. He found it all amusing—a game to suit his never ending boredom—yet at the same time he had to be more than cautious. Any slip could unintentionally reveal his identity, and the game would fall to shambles.

He took the flittering paper from her fingers with grace and looked it over. A standard medication for anxiety, one he had prescribed to his own patients many times—he found it ironic. He knew he was perfectly sane—as he always was. There wasn’t a bone in him that called for adjustment, however, he couldn’t deny his curiosity, nor his impending stress levels that gathered from every aspect of his life.

He sighed silently as he tucked it in his breast pocket.

“You can begin it at any time you’d like,” she nodded as she stood. 

“Thank you, Bedelia,” he smiled lightly, and did so as well. “I look forward to seeing you next week,” he bowed his head slightly as he saw himself out.

A few hours later, he found himself at home alone with a finished plate and half a glass of wine—his third one that night. Cool air wafted in from the window behind him, which was cracked open just a few inches—the winter breezes mixing in harmony with the opera he had on record playing quietly in the background. It was soothing, and yet he found himself anxious as he tossed in his hand the new and unopened medicine bottle he’d acquired from his pharmacy and debated whether or not to take a capsule. He found it suiting in some grim way. He was a psychiatrist, a doctor, a judge and a jury—he was in every way perfect to and for himself, and there was no one who would tell him different. Except for himself.

Narcissism paid great wonders to self-esteem, it’s comforts and joys could be seen by everyone, but what it asked for in return was sometimes unbearable:

Insecurity. Insecurity that seldom crept through his neurons and nerves, but every so often, when the soft tissue and flesh passed between his fingers and the life blood of his victims slipped through his skin and clung to his nails, a silent hesitation, a memory, tingled its way through all of his thoughts. Its power was so great, every move he made was scrutinised by one worse than everyone on the planet:

Himself. 

He bit down hastily as he opened it and popped a blue pill in his mouth. He swallowed it dryly with ease, then stood up to take his dishes to the kitchen and clean up everything he’d used. The dull loneliness he had spoken of to Will coursed through his veins as he watched the warm, sudsy water pass over his hands, in a sort of melancholy yet stoic trance, while the plate became cleaner and more pure with every wash of the cloth in his hands.

He wished so desperately the waters that cleansed the blemishes among the snow white plate could blot out memories and thoughts that seemed to collect in the darkened corners of his mind.

He didn’t used to only cook for one.

Hannibal suppressed a shudder—though he had not a notion of whom he was hiding from, but he realised he wasn’t hiding from anyone, he was hiding from the remembrances themselves, as though they were some sort of demons possessing a bit in his mouth, that reigned where his mind would travel. He was haunted by them, and yet, he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, purge himself of them.