Fandom Counseling, Friday

[sharp_man]

It looked to be a good day today, and Hannibal even had hope of a few more patients, so he was in his office doing paperwork and trying to find the next outlet for his hobby. Outside, in the breezeway between the office and his house, Joni and the flamingo were chasing each other back and forth, while Beethoven and the rest of the glittery flock watched. They'd probably be sharing long-suffering looks if they could.

Fandom Counseling was open!

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[white_oleander]

Implicating herself as a potential accessory to the murder that put her mother in jail wasn't exactly the way Astrid had imagined her session with Dr. Lecter last week to have gone, and it was enough to make her wonder if once was enough. But it had been oddly cathartic to actually let that out of her, to dredge up all the muck that had been sitting there in her gut, festering like the corpse of Barry Kolker himself, after all these years. Besides, last weekend had been...a lot. She had done a good job of mostly putting it aside and focusing on the day-to-day, but she still hadn't quite recovered from Parents' Weekend, and then this island had to go and open up a whole new tumultuous world of who she might have been if she had never come to this island, and the results were....

...well, it was no surprise, knowing what she knew now, that ever since Claire, she was confident that there was nothing Fandom could throw at her that could be worse than the real world. If anything, last weekend had only just proven that to her in spades.

And with a convenient excuse of the school trip as a reason to not come next week, it was with all these things bundled up inside of her that she returned to Dr. Lecter's office at around the same time she did last week, a little uncertain if she should knock first, or just let herself in, and then deciding to simply do the former, while calling out, "Dr. Lecter? Are you in? It's Astrid."

[sharp_man]

Hannibal looked up from his desk and smiled. "Astrid, good afternoon. How are you doing today?"

[white_oleander]

Astrid shrugged a little as she made her way in a little more and gave an honest enough answer with her, "Okay, I guess."

A slight hesitation before she added: "A lot to think about, since last week." She looked toward the chair she'd occupied then and gestured idly toward it. "May I?"

[sharp_man]

"Of course." Hannibal gestured her to the chair and stood. "Water again? Or would you prefer something else?"

[white_oleander]

Astrid almost went with the water again, but seemed to reconsider it a little, as she got comfortable--as comfortable as she could, in the circumstances--in the chair.

"You said you had green tea?" she asked.

[sharp_man]

"I do." Hannibal nodded and went to make some. "Do you take sugar or lemon?"

[white_oleander]

"Lemon would be good," Astrid decided, then, a moment later, as if an afterthought, or as if she hadn't initially want to ask too much and then figured it didn't matter, "Maybe a little sugar, too."

[sharp_man]

Hannibal nodded and made up a tray with a teapot and cup on it, then added some lemon slices and a sugar bowl. "It'll only be a minute to brew. How has your week been?"

[white_oleander]

"Mostly quiet," Astrid answered with a lift of her shoulder. "The weeks usually are. I wish I could say the same for the weekends, though."

That, she felt, was as good as a segue into last weekend as any.

[sharp_man]

"Those are often interesting, yes," Hannibal acknowledged. "Were you someone else this past weekend?"

He'd handwavily been an ancient warrior. He'd spent a lot of time on Monday taking a shower.

[white_oleander]

Astrid had had a weekend like that her first time; if she'd had a choice this time around, she'd have much preferred being a viking again.

"Yes," she answered, but continued, "and no. I was still myself, just...different."

There was another moment of hesitation as she figured that it probably didn't help her much to make Hannibal work for all the details. "I think," she said, "I was a version of myself that never came to Fandom."

And cast by a different actress, because why not?

[sharp_man]

Hannibal had no problem working for it, but if Astrid wanted to speak, that was good, too.

He nodded. "I imagine you were very different. This place does tend to change us."

[white_oleander]

There was a long pause at that statement, Astrid's forehead wrinkling with a deep frown, and she shook her head.

"Staying in California," she said, "changed me much more than I think Fandom ever could."

And the worst things that happened to this version of herself happened whenever she went home.

The frown deepened more. "I used to think that maybe I was just a bad luck person," she said, "but now I wonder if maybe it's just a bad luck place."

[sharp_man]

"What was that version of you like?" Hannibal asked.

[white_oleander]

"She was a lot...harder," Astrid said, "inside and out, but still...me." And if Ingrid had been shocked by Astrid's current form, how much more disturbed would she be by that one? "But she'd been through a lot more, too. She'd never spent two weeks hundreds of feet underneath the ground or anything, but I've never been shot, or mauled by dogs, or starved before, either..."

She just had odd, disjointed memories-that-weren't-really about those things now.

[sharp_man]

"Fandom's hardships are certainly of a different variety," Hannibal acknowledged. "And they come with the knowledge that they are almost always solved with nobody the worse for wear physically. There is something to be said for that safety.

"Apart from the reasons for it, which of the two of you do you prefer?"

[white_oleander]

That question inspired another deep frown on Astrid's face.

"What do you mean," she asked, "apart from the reasons? Aren't the reasons the the cause for the differences even existing?"

She had an answer, of course, at least a knee-jerk one that she felt would have stood up to stronger scrutiny than just her initial response, and maybe one of these days, she might be able to stop trying to analyze how Hannibal was going about analyzing her, but that day was still likely far, far away.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. "They are. But if you could have her mindset, her 'hardness', without having to be mauled by dogs or starved, would you? Is that an approach to the world you would like to work toward?"

[white_oleander]

Despite herself, Astrid had to laugh softly at the question, shaking her head.

"No," she realized, marveling a little at the little hint of illumination there that she'd somehow missed entirely. "I wouldn't. That kind of hardness, without having earned it, would just make me like my mother."

The look she gave Hannibal then was almost apologetic, but also helpless, because of course it wouldn't take them long to circle around to that.

"Always the victim," she said, "without ever having been actually victimized."

[sharp_man]

Hannibal gave her a small smile at the realization.

"So, tell me about your mother." He chuckled. "I've been informed that's 'lazy psychiatry', but it does seem to be relevant here."

[white_oleander]

Astrid sighed and settled back into her chair with her own sort of resignation to that fact, then took a moment to consider exactly how to approach the massive ivory elephant taking over the entire room.

"I almost don't even know where to start," she admitted. "Ingrid Magnussen is...a force. A sun, at the center of her own universe, which leaves you no choice to either fall into place on an orbit around her or risk being sucked in by her gravity and burned even before impact. She's a poet, first and foremost..."

She trailed off a little, as if her own attempt at a poetic description was losing its purchase.

"I still remember feeling shocked and amazed that no one had even really heard of her here," she added. "I mean, she wasn't mainsteam popular, or anyhting, but in the literary circles she ran with, she was kind of a big deal."

[sharp_man]

"Was that a good shock or a bad one?" Hannibal asked. "Did you mourn the loss of that notoriety, or enjoy the lack of expectations?"