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When Alana falls back, Mason Verger’s body slowly sinking beneath her, the first thing she does is look at her hands.
They’re wet and clean, the vivid red of her still-fresh manicure the closest thing to blood she can find on them. She wiggles her fingers, water falling from them in heavy drops, and decides that they don’t look any different. She can’t help but think of that old cliché, out damn’d spot, and nearly laughs in relief as the words ring hollowly in her head, muted and devoid of any real meaning. The words are soon joined by Will’s -- or is it Hannibal’s? -- no, Will’s: you have to spill blood, and she does laugh this time, because those are empty, too, desperate in their stilted persuasion and so, so wrong.
The sound of her laugh, sharp and triumphant, shocks her back into the scene around her, the once-clear pool beneath her inky with blood and darkened by the shadowy corpse now occupying it. Hell is murky, she recalls, but it’s distant from her now. She’s out of it.
She turns to Margot and finds her still, her black-smeared eyes staring down into the watery hell she has created, her hands clean but eyes vacant and cloudy as the tank below her. Her back is tense, posture defensive as if she’s waiting for something to emerge and drag her down alongside her brother. Alana feels the closest thing she’s felt to guilt since walking into Mason’s room, and decides it’s time for both of them to get up and away, anywhere else.
Alana stands up first, hooking an arm around Margot’s chest once she’s up and pulling her up with her.
You’re safe now, Alana whispers into her ear, the shell of it cold and soaked.
Margot turns to face her, breath shaky but her eyes clearing.
“We can’t leave him there,” Margot says finally, quavering. “The hair…”
“We can deal with it later,” Alana replies, gently guiding Margot out of the room. “Everyone here is dead. It’s just us.”
Margot is quiet, but cooperates as Alana walks them both through the door. Margot’s legs move jerkily and Alana walks with pained effort, her cane god-knows-where, but they slowly make it to Margot’s room, neither acknowledging the bloodied bodies strewn about.
Alana sits Margot on the edge of their shared bed, pulling the pins out of her limp wet hair. The shiny gold of her top is next, sticking wet and uncomfortable to Margot’s skin. Margot’s arms move to help her but she stares off elsewhere, mouth slightly open.
Standing up, Alana runs her hands over the tops in Margot’s closet, almost landing on a black one before reconsidering, grabbing a loose forest green one instead, long-sleeved and thick. They will not mourn, not tonight. The time for that will come, when the baby is properly dealt with. But not tonight.
Alana runs a towel over Margot’s chest and middle before sliding the top on over her head, her skin warming when Margot’s head pops up through the hole, a small smile on her lips.
“Thank you,” Margot manages, eyes glittery and her voice thick, but she does not cry. There’s been enough of that today. “For everything.”
“Of course,” Alana replies, and she doesn’t think anymore needs to be said. She suddenly remembers the vial of sperm still sitting in her pocket and moves to the corner of the room, carefully placing it inside the cyrotank they’d ordered exactly for this purpose.
“I need to go somewhere,” Margot says after a few moments, voice steadier and steadier with each word. “Somewhere less...haunted.”
Alana offers Margot her hand and Margot takes it, raising herself up. Alana remembers the feel of Margot’s soft hand under her own underwater, both of them pinning Mason’s shoulder down. Margot smiles at her again, no doubt recalling the same tactile feel, and in this moment Alana has never felt closer to anybody.
Margot tucks her blouse into the tight black of her skirt, arms sure and fluid.
They walk arm in arm to Alana’s car, still too shell-shocked to register the cold. Once they’re in, Alana blasts the heater and drives for twenty minutes in blank contented silence until she finds a bar, the only place open at this hour.
It isn’t until they’re both inside, Margot seated elegantly at a dingy booth as Alana orders her a whiskey and a beer for herself, that she realizes this is the first time they’ve ever been anywhere outside of Muskrat together. It’s a ridiculous thought, but true nonetheless.
Alana takes a seat next to her rather than across from her, handing her the warm glass. She takes a sip from her own, the beer cold but bitter, and turns to look at Margot. Her hair has mostly dried, the stray flakes of eyeliner clinging to her cheeks the only physical reminder of everything they’ve been through today.
“I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve taken you anywhere,” Alana says finally, light and flirty like they’re a normal couple, happy and removed from slaughter. Like Alana doesn’t have the hair of a serial killer sitting in her pocket.
“And all it took was some murder,” Margot replies drily, but not without amusement.
Alana smiles, but wonders if they should be more cautious. The bar is sparsely populated, not empty.
“Relax,” Margot laughs, reading the paranoia on Alana’s face. “Everyone in here is too drunk to pay attention to us.”
“I know. I’m just processing.”
“Strange to think that this can be my life now,” Margot looks down into her glass wistfully, swirling its contents. “Bars and dates and tipsy tedium.”
Alana only stares at her. It hadn’t occurred to her to consider what came next.
Margot stares back, quirking an eyebrow up.
“Our life now,” she corrects herself, her hand finding Alana’s knee.
“It’s a lovely thought,” Alana agrees, quietly relieved. Margot has been all that’s kept her connected to her past self, that old version of Alana who loved and drank beer and didn’t dream of driving bullets into Hannibal Lecter’s head. She can’t imagine losing her now. Alana thinks her hands feel clean only because she can remember the feel of Margot’s beneath them.
Margot smiles and the two sit quietly for several minutes, sipping at their respective drinks and enjoying, as ever, the casual feel of their bodies brushing together.
“How are you feeling now that you’ve found some distance from it all?” Alana’s voice is carefully measured. She can forget, sometimes, how to sound like a partner and not a therapist.
“Better,” The word is punctuated by Margot draining what’s left of her glass.
Margot places the empty glass down, a finger tracing the rim of it. She stares down into it as she’d stared down into Mason’s tank, dead-eyed and inky.
“Still panic-stricken,” Margot admits when Alana doesn’t reply, looking up finally.
“Because of what we did?”
“Because I’m worried what we did won’t be enough to save me. Death has never stopped the men of my family from taking everything from me.”
“It will now,” Alana promises. I’ll see to that, she thinks but does not say, reminded of what they took from Mason with Hannibal’s aid. She will do all she must, and gladly.
Margot squeezes the knee her hand is still resting on, grateful.
“We helped Hannibal escape,” Margot reminds her, eyeing her intently. “We’ll have to deal with the disemboweled reminders of that whenever we get back to Muskrat.”
“Yes,” Alana replies. The reality of it weighs heavily on her.
“He threatened you just before you let him go,” Margot presses.
“Yes,” Alana remembers, of course. She’d never thought a promise could be so ugly. “It wasn’t lost on me.”
“You’re not feeling panic-stricken?”
Alana considers the question before shrugging.
“Hannibal’s jig is just about up, regardless of Mason’s failure,” Alana stiffens slightly, the phantom feel of his large palm on her neck creeping up her damaged spine. “I feel closure on the horizon, whatever he may have said.”
“I don’t believe in closure,” Margot intones, that same stained look back in her eye.
Alana thinks of Mason still hanging in that tank, of Margot’s baby lying dead wrapped in a towel, his sliced-open surrogate by his side. Thinks of Hannibal reminding her of a promise before cutting himself loose, of Hannibal’s words always spilling out of Will’s mouth. Of Abigail, dead, then alive, then dead again.
“Yeah,” Alana confesses, chest tight. “Me neither.”
Alana moves an arm around Margot’s waist, resting her head in the tender crook of Margot’s neck. Her hair is still slightly damp.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Margot half-laughs. “I need to get up and order us another round in a second.”
And with that, they’re just another normal-sad couple in a random bar in the dead of night. Tipsy tedium, Alana mouths into Margot’s neck, tongue lightly dragging against her salty skin.
“Now that’s the kind of forward thinking I feel equipped to take on tonight,” Margot’s voice is sly, her neck warm.
“Good,” Alana suddenly feels the effects of the beer she imbibed, all at once, sights and sounds around her blurry and soft.
Margot moves to stand up, but Alana gingerly tugs her back down.
“You’re going to be okay,” she whispers, inches away from Margot’s face. “I always keep my promises, too.”
“Then promise me you’ll be okay, not just me,” Margot’s voice is not as light as she intends it to be, Alana suspects.
“Fine. We’ll both be okay,” Alana presses her lips against Margot’s cheek, sloppy and loving. Tipsy tedium, she reminds herself.
As Margot laughs and stands up, Alana watches her go and tries desperately not to dwell on the lie she suspects she just told.