I Owe You Not a Kindness || Hannibal Rising AU || CLOSED

quitethehumanitarian:

       The littler boys at the school all slept in a room together, lined up on their cots from one end to the other along the walls. Like coffins in a graveyard but those boys were not nearly as still, little ones as young as six and as old as twelve, all of whom thrashed in their grey blankets and cried for the lost loved ones whose deaths brought them to the orphanage.

       Hannibal slept poorly for the four years he spent in his cot against the wall, slipped into his own grave of a bed right beneath the drafty window through which cold air always chilled him in the winters. He tossed and turned and sobbed like the rest of them, silent as a statue as he was during the day, but his nights were full of screams - “Mischa! Mischa!“ as frozen links of chain cut at his neck and his sister was dragged from him - rather then quiet sobs. The other boys were disturbed by him, the staff said. Disturbing little Hannibal who couldn’t speak a word when spoken to but couldn’t keep his mouth shut in the throes of nightmares.

       Hannibal who spent the nights when his screams woke the staff too in the headmaster’s office with a belt cutting at the flesh of his back and hot breath in his face as large hands pushed his legs apart.

       He didn’t speak even then, but he had his own bedroom now, reaching the age of thirteen being the badge of honor that earned him a place in the dormitories with the older boys. The room was small, walls paneled with wood, and it held two little desks with chairs, a rickety metal bunk bed between them. Another boy would share his space, but only the one. He knew the child’s name, too - Will Graham. Another orphan, of course, there were only orphans here. Hannibal knew not what had happened to Graham’s family, but he did not have it in him to care.

       He sat on the top bunk of the bed, sketchpad spread over his legs as he sketched away in charcoal, the form of a fair little girl with blond hair carved out of the whiteness of the page as the door opened.

       Hannibal looked to the doorway, and the scrawny boy with dark curls and glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose, gently inclining his head. A wordless greeting before his attention returned to the charcoal in his hand.

       Will hastily pressed his glasses into their usual position, perching them precariously halfway down his nose. They provided him with a flimsy barrier against the stares of the other boys and the staff.

       He barely had time to give an answering nod before the other boy had buried himself in his drawing again. It didn’t faze him anymore, though the first few times had been slightly disconcerting. Having a nearly mute roommate would be odd, but it would be a welcome break from the constant chattering and whispering that always seemed to be surrounding him.

       Not that he expected the silence to be the equivalent of getting much needed sleep. He may have spent the last year at the opposite end of the room lined with cots but the other boy’s desperate screams had been enough to keep him awake. And to leave him wondering what his voice would sound like when it wasn’t unleashing blood-curdling screams that kept him up for the rest of the night, even once they were long over and Hannibal had been taken from the room.

       Will made his way to the small desk he had claimed as his own and set the book he had brought with him on the wooden surface. One book. Not that he was particularly used to having everything he wished for, but his books had always brought a sense of comfort. But one book, and in French at that, was not of much use to him.

       He folded his glasses and carefully placed them on top of the book before crawling onto the lower bunk and staring blankly up at bottom of his roommate’s mattress. Hannibal, was his name. It wasn’t that hard to remember seeing as the staff had regularly burst into the room yelling it out, barely distinguishable over the combination of Hannibal’s screams and their barked orders.

       The lack of noise in the room, apart from the scratching of charcoal on paper, was beginning to get to him. Maybe the silence wasn’t so welcome. "My dad used to tell me that it was better to work on an easel when using charcoal. Something about a vertical surface.”