#why yes the blonde one was supposed to be not rail thin 3 years ago also and seeing how she looks now got me like 😬

[jellybeanium124]

redrew some girlfriends I invented 3 years ago

[dr-abel-gideon]

Fire and Darkness || Drabble

Triggers: This deals with Frederick Chilton after his encounter with Francis in Season 3 and his death. There’s also the mention of a child’s death. Ye are warned.

Word Count: 1536

Unblinking eyes were gazing up at nothing much but a slightly rippled white lined fabric, the prone form of a badly burned man laying within an oxygen tent, the clear plastic zipped up and around the bed making a large chamber around the man. 

The door to the room opened and close, footfalls slowly making way to the bed, muffled by shoe covers that would protect the patient from outside bacteria. 

Fingers deftly lifted the patient’s chart, flipping pages and reading the contents from behind a disposable clean suit, hair net and face mask. The doctor’s eyes then scanned the LED monitor that read the man’s vitals, the speakers already on silent so the constant sound didn’t drive the man on the bed mad.

The oxygen tent was then opened and the doctor stepped inside, zipping the side panel back into place. He lifted a bottle of eyedrops and squeezed liquid into each of Frederick Chilton’s eyes, keeping the corneas moist when eyelids could no longer spread moisture across them. 

Frederick’s vision was no longer great and the drops caused his sight to waver and become blurrier, but he did catch sight of a human form and the blue of the tissue suit and face mask that was worn. His vision became crisper as he watched gloved hands remove the mask and the face of a man peered down over his. 

“Hello Frederick.”

Though his earlobes had been almost entirely burned away by the fire that consumed the rest of his body, at the hands of Francis Dolarhyde, the critically ill man knew the voice as soon as he heard it. It was forever seared into his memory, as connected to hands that had disemboweled him years earlier. His mind raced with a mixture of feelings but he could only manage a weak and garbled “You’re dead,” from a mouth with no lips.  

“Yes I am,” Abel Gideon agreed with a small smile, leaning back with eyes glossing over Chilton’s burned body. His nose wrinkled at the scent of disinfectant and decay, charred flesh and salve, all made more prominent in the oxygen rich environment. “So either you’re hallucinating, which is highly probable, or I’m only officially dead. Seeing as I was wheeled out of your basement on a stretcher, or what was left of me anyway, the former seems pretty likely.”

Frederick moaned, attempting to move his head but found he was so numb the motion was difficult. His mind would never conjure such a perfectly infuriating copy of Gideon. “How?”

“Didn’t get a good look at me as I lay dying or dead, did you? I can guarantee that if you looked closely, you would see quite a few little discrepancies.”

Now that he mentioned it, the body pulled out was a little thin on hair, and it was a much paler color than what Abel’s brown tinted with the blonde and grey usually was. 

“Oh but Hannibal pulled a good switcheroo, didn’t he? He had to once I escaped from his little death trap,” Abel sighed and leaned against Frederick’s bed, looking off. “But then, I think he planned it that way. I was almost convinced that I was paralyzed and at his mercy. He didn’t plan on me waking from a chemical sleep when he was tapping my spine to make me numb from the waist down. Unless he did. Perhaps it was another of his tests. I bet he thought he was hilarious. Laughing to himself all the way to the oven when he popped in my leg.” Abel stopped, looking back on the grotesque form that remained of the man before him. “Cooked for hours to perfection and then I was made to eat it.” Pausing again, the doctor’s eyes blinked as he felt stomach acid rise up in memory. “Were you made to eat yourself? Autocannibalism isn’t something I would recommend. Ever.”

Chilton took a deep, raspy breath and coughed slightly from the char in his lungs. “Are you going to talk me to death? Please just end me now.”

Abel turned and sat lightly on the frame of the bed, resting against the rail to give his adjusting leg a bit of a rest. “He enjoyed testing me. After you left the hospital and went into psychiatry and before Hannibal did as well, there was a boy who was brought in while paramedics were doing chest compression. Hit by a car. He was brain dead but he was placed on life support so the parents could be notified and perhaps his organs used to save other lives. They wanted to keep him on life support just in case. I thought it was mad. The boy was dead but they were too stubborn to let him go. Then Hannibal whispered in my ear. If something happened to the boy, he would have to be harvested for organs and his suffering ended. After all, if allowed to waste away, the organs may not be viable for recipients.” 

Gideon paused again with a sigh. “I never told anyone. I thought about it. It wouldn’t take much. The boy wouldn’t feel anything, anyway. Then we could help others. I agonized over it for a few days but my decision never needed to be made as his parents decided to end it. I removed his organs and his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys went elsewhere. Sometime later Hannibal made a similar call, ending a life on the operating table. I’m also pretty sure when I had dinner at his home that night, he fed me that teenager’s sweetbreads.” Abel’s eyes looked to Frederick’s face again. “I never called him on it. I should have. But I suppose the past is funny that way.”

Pushing up from the bed, he looked over the burned figure again. “I’m not hesitating again. You’re in pain, Frederick.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“No. Of course you don’t.” Abel reached over and turned an IV fluid toward him. A rack with six packs hung from several metal hooks, dripping down and into the patient. “You have enough pain killers here to make a horse feel nothing. If I turned down the dosage you would probably be screaming in agony. Your body is dying, Frederick. Why do you think they haven’t bothered dressing your wounds? Hmm?” He passed a hand over Chilton’s form. “They know it’s a waste of resources. I’m actually stunned you’re not dead yet. No one recovers from this kind of burn, Frederick. You know that.”

Frederick coughed again, spasming slightly from it. When he settled, Gideon shook his head, gaze soft. 

“You may not believe this, but it pains me to see you like this, Frederick.” The former surgeon reached into a pocket, past the sterilized material. “It would have been kinder if you had died from your injuries. You could linger like this for months before your body finally succumbs to infection. This is no way to live.” Gideon pulled out a syringe already filled with a substance and pulled off the cap. “And so I am your angel of death, Frederick. No longer will nurses and staff look upon you pitiously. They will be grateful you’re gone so they no longer have to imagine the agony that is your existence.”

Saying nothing as Abel moved to the saline drip, Frederick growled something then said “You’re a bastard.”

“I never claimed I was a good man,” he uttered, plunging the needle into the tiny opening purposely reserved for administering medication. Gideon pressed the plunger in and delivered the chemical before withdrawing the syringe, capping it and sliding it back into his pocket. “But neither are you, no matter what you tell yourself. I’m merely doing what should have been done with that boy years ago.” 

Abel sniffed and turned back to Frederick, tying his face mask back into place. “For what it’s worth, I forgive you.”

“What?” garbled Chilton. 

“For what you did to me. Pumped me full of anti-psychotics, hypnotized me, told me I was the Chesapeake Ripper and made me believe I was a serial killer. Then I actually killed someone, much to your brazen horror. I know you had assistance in that venture. You were pushed into making me the Ripper from Hannibal.”

Frederick burbled something but Abel ignored it again. 

“Yes you did. I know Lecter coached you. There was simply no way you could have been that effective in making me believe that lie unless you were. Like I said, I forgive you.”

“Fuck you, Gideon.”

Abel tilted his head, looking at the mangled, burned body on the hospital med and silently sighed. “Goodbye, Frederick. Your heart will stop in a few minutes. Normally, you would be asleep before then, but you’re full of so many drugs you’ll not feel a thing. Your vision will go, then darkness will simply come.”

The doctor turned, opened the oxygen tent again, left it and closed it up. “Farewell,” he uttered as he moved toward the door, taking a few steps before his gait straightened from his artificial leg and Abel Gideon left, the man dying moments later and as staff rushed to his aid, he changed in a closet and slipped away.