The Patient

Title: The Patient

Author: ExcentrykeMuse

Word Count: 1k

Rating: PG-PG13

Prompt: Amaelle15: I don’t think it will work for an invit. But I would love to see a Bella/Hannibal Lecter. “What if Edward couldn’t read Bella’s mind because Bella didn’t accept her true nature: a killer? What if after he leaves, Hannibal becomes her psychiatrist and helps Bella discover her true nature?”

The Patient

“They’re back,” Bella breathed into the room, not looking at her psychiatrist.

There was silence for a long moment as Dr. Lecter pondered the statement.  He regarded her, as he would a bird in a cage.  “What was your gut impulse when you heard the news?”  His voice was accented, melodious, haunting, like a dark honey poured over chocolate.

Bella was addicted to the voice.  She heard it in her dreams.  When before she would wander in the woods and desperately search for Edward, now she dreamt of Dr. Lecter whispering dark secrets in her ear that she couldn’t quite understand but yearned for anyway.

Picking at a hangnail on her thumb, Bella admitted.  “They were at school.  As if nothing had happened.  Edward was at his locker.  I wanted—” she hesitated and looked to the side.

Dr. Lecter patiently gazed at her.  Dipping his head to better see her deep brown eyes, he prodded, “We’ve talked about this, Isabella.  Please, finish your thought.”

Isabella.  No one called her Isabella except for Dr. Lecter.  He insisted on using her proper given name as it was only polite to do so.  Not even Renee had called her Isabella when she got into trouble as a child, not that Renee cared to notice if Bella did something wrong.

Bella took a deep breath, “I wanted to stab a stake through his heart.”

Dr. Lecter smiled.  The smile was small, only at the tips of his lips.  It was only there if someone truly looked for it—but Bella was looking.  She was hungry for any show of approval from her psychiatrist… and he certainly approved of her murderous impulses.

“To stab our foe through the heart, Isabella,” Dr. Lecter explained, “is to hurt them at their very core, to injure them where they are most vulnerable.  Edward Cullen has wounded you exceedingly.  It is only natural that you would want to wound him in equal measure.”

Impulsively, Bella told him, “It’s also how you kill a vampire.”

Dr. Lecter looked intrigued.  “Vampires are the stuff of legend.  A fiend that preys on humans and suck their very lifeforce from them.  Is that how you view Edward?”  He cocked his head to the side, ready to listen.

Bella breathed in to steady herself.  She knew she could trust Dr. Lecter, but part of her didn’t trust herself.  Had Edward made up all that nonsense about lions and lambs?  About Bella being his own personal brand of heroin?  Had she in her desperation to be loved made a god out of Edward Cullen as Dr. Lecter believed she had, impervious to the faults of mere mortals?  And had she twisted that and called it a vampire?

She didn’t know anymore.  She couldn’t trust her memory.  She couldn’t trust her feelings.  She could only trust Dr. Lecter. 

“Edward—took from me,” she told Dr. Lecter slowly.

He considered this.  “What would stabbing Edward in the heart look like?  Would you fashion a wooden stake and plunge it into his chest?  Would you take a golf club to his sports car?  Or,” and here Dr. Lecter paused, “would you take your father’s shotgun and wield it with deadly force?”

At the suggestion, Bella glanced up, startled.

“These are merely options,” Dr. Lecter explained when their eyes met.  “How would you do it?”

Bella was confused.  Her eyes flitted back and forth and her mind turned to Edward, standing there at Forks High, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t left the previous October, as if he hadn’t abandoned her in the woods behind her house.

Then the memory of him sparkling in the sun hit her, all those tiny diamonds, and she realized she could never plunge a stake through his heart.  She just wasn’t strong enough.

She visibly deflated in her chair across from Dr. Lecter.  “I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Dr. Lecter wouldn’t let her off the hook so easily, though.  “Let’s not think of capabilities, Isabella.  He may be physically stronger than you, but what is your impulse?  What is your desire?”  His brown eyes gleamed a deep maroon as he sat slightly forward in his chair.  “This is the boy who injured you, who caused you to doubt yourself, who had your father considering sending you to an institution—”

Yes, Charlie had considered that.  Fortunately, he had chosen to send her to the highly renowned Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Seattle instead.  His office was spacious, with floor to ceiling bookshelves, a grandfather clock, an ornate desk, and even a working fireplace that Dr. Lecter kept lit from late Autumn to early Spring.  The psychiatrist himself was different from anyone Bella had ever encountered.  He was wealthy, surely, but completely unlike the Cullens.  Dr. Lecter was cultured.  He always appeared in a vibrantly colored suit and waistcoat, tiepin in place, with a handkerchief in his front pocket. 

And Bella was head over heels in love with him.  She knew that Dr. Lecter knew.  Dr. Lecter knew everything, but he had never said.  Instead, they had their hourly sessions once a week where he coddled and prodded and encouraged her, and if she began to dream more and more of murder, Bella never quite attributed it to him.

“I would break his hands,” Bella breathed out, thinking of doing just that, so he would never be able to touch her again.

“And when his hands were broken?” Dr. Lecter asked calmly.

“I’d—” she paused.  What would she do?  “I’d suck his heart out,” she whispered hoarsely as she realized the horrible truth to herself, “since he has no heart left.”

The smile widened on Dr. Lecter’s face.  “So you would take his heart from him, sweet Isabella, since he tried to take your heart from you.”  His words were measured, but his satisfaction was palpable in the room between them.

Bella seized on it.  “Exactly.”

“And when you had his heart?  What would you do with it?”  This was now more off hand, as if Dr. Lecter didn’t think Edward’s heart worth having.

Bella’s eyes flicked down and then she looked up at him through her lashes.  “I’d—”  She licked her lips, suddenly nervous.

He tilted his head.  “Yes, Isabella?” he encouraged.

“I’d give it to you,” she whispered.

The End.