Chapter Text
It was that terrible scent that gave him away. Hannibal knew that Will would find him again, but he was elated that it had happened so soon.
“Same unfortunate aftershave,” he said, not letting his excitement affect his tone as he turned to take in the sight of Will standing in his kitchen once more. “Too long in the bottle.” Hannibal is still holding the empty wine glass he had gotten out before his nose caught the awful aroma. He was not expecting to see a gun slowly being raised, pointed directly at his face. Hannibal was also not expecting to feel so let down. Surely, after his time in the BSHCI, Will had outgrown his need to kill with something so mundane as his firearm.
“Our last kitchen conversation was interrupted by Jack Crawford. I’d like to pick up where we left off.”
Though disappointed with his methods, Hannibal couldn’t help but admire Will, beautiful in his composed and righteous fury.
“If memory serves,” Will adds, “you were asking me… if it would feel good to kill you.”
It was not how he wanted Will to accept his darkness, but it was a step in the right direction. He could never truly predict Will’s responses, but if possible, Hannibal wanted to see if he could prolong his own life enough to see Will’s true becoming.
“You’ve given that some thought,” he says, slowly, as not to trigger Will into doing anything unfortunate.
“You wanted me to embrace my nature, Doctor. I’m just following the urges I kept down for so long. Cultivating them, as the inspirations they are.”
Hannibal watches as Will trembles, not with fear or hesitation, but with the anger behind his words. It’s truly exquisite, seeing him disregarding the FBI to deal with Hannibal himself.
“You never answered my question”
Will still doesn’t answer, watching Hannibal speak from behind the barrel of his gun.
“How would killing make you feel?
That seemed to spur Will into moving.
“Righteous,” he spits out, shaking as he tightens his grip on the gun.
“Aren’t you curious Will?” Hannibal says, as he tries to step out of aim. “Why you? Why Miriam Lass? What does the Chesapeake Ripper want with you?”
Will is no longer shying from eye contact, his striking blue eyes completely level with Hannibal’s. There’s not a shred of doubt in them. Gone is the man that was unsure of his own memories, scared of his unstable mind.
“No,” he responds furiously, “you tell me.”
Hannibal watches with a neutral expression as something seems to occur to Will.
“How did Miriam lass find you? You made sure no one could find you that way again”
Hannibal swallows, mouth dry before responding. He has never feared death, not even when he and Will were in the same position a few months before. But now, Hannibal wants to see everything that he could create with Will, watch him as he evolves and transforms into something marvelous.
“If I’m not the Ripper, you murder an innocent man.You, better than anoyne knows what it means to be wrongly accused.”
Hannibal sets the empty wineglass on his polished counter, knowing the words would not be convincing enough to rid Will of his doubts. They both knew what Hannibal was. He wanted to appeal to Will’s empathy, hoping it would cloud his logic, even if only for a moment.
“You were innocent and no one saw it.”
“No, I’m not innocent. You saw to that.”
Perhaps if his empathy isn’t enough of a reason, Hannibal considered, his curiosity might be.
“If I am the Ripper and you kill me,” he suggests, “ who will answer your questions? Don’t you want to know how this ends?”
Will steps forward, quickly raising the gun to point closer at Hannibal’s face. Hannibal flinches, turning his head and closing his eyes. The gun clicks. Hannibal is shocked, again, at his burning desire to live. Images he had unknowingly filed away in his memory palace play behind his closed eyelids.
The first time he laid eyes upon Will, watching as his sour expression did nothing to mar the beauty of the darkness swimming behind those stormy cobalt blue eyes. Will bathed in the blood of the Hobbs family, wild and fascinating after his first kill. How Will described his tableus as art in front of his students. Will’s unwavering gaze as Hannibal saved the man in the ambulance. The sight of Will, battered, bruised, and breathtakingly alive, walking through his office door after he had thought Budge had stolen him away. His shaking form as he stood, disoriented, in Hannibal’s waiting room, frantic from his loss of time. The scent of his fever and encephalitis peaking as he appeared at his door, Abel Gideon in tow. And finally, Will sitting on his porch, barefoot and freezing, as he trembled with what he thought he had done.
Though Hannibal was aware of his fondness for Will, as was apparent through his loneliness when he was incarcerated, it wasn’t until he was faced with his own mortality that he truly realized how far he had fallen for the man pointing the gun at his face.
Hannibal decided that if this was where he breathed his last, he wanted to do it while looking into Will’s eyes. With that in mind, he slowly raised his eyelids, preparing to see Will’s finger squeezing the trigger.
But what he saw was his empty kitchen. Will was gone. While Hannibal was buried deep within his memory palace reliving the moments they had shared, he had slipped away. As the smell of his awful aftershave grew faint, Hannibal released a shaky breath.
He had never put much thought into his future, even as he was going through medical school. His parents had left a big enough fortune to indulge whatever whims interested him at any given time. He simply enjoyed what life had to offer, when work in the ER grew mundane, he switched to psychiatry. Now, whatever his future held, he desperately wanted to share it with Will.