Chapter Text
There was a knocking on the door. Three solid, unselfconscious thumps. When he opened it, Hannibal Lecter was there, smiling like a skeleton.
Will held up his hand and blinked into the sun, displeasure swelling beneath his breastbone. He wouldn’t have been terribly upset to be woken, though he could have used a few more hours of rest. But there was only so much precious time in between the hours of sleeping and having to venture out into the world, a world full of people who stared too much, insisting on eye contact while firing a thousand questions at him. Forcing him to empathize, forcing him to become them. It was too much, all too much, and Will liked the spaces in between, as much as he could like anything.
Which wasn’t really a lot. Will wasn’t sure he really liked life in general, if he had to think about it too hard. Life was a big confusing jumble with an unrepentantly ugly period at the end. One composed of the withering away of whatever consciousness made up a person, leaving only putrid, rotting corpses.
But in the end, the corpses weren’t people, and they didn’t require Will’s empathy. Didn’t force it like a too-large pill down Will’s throat. Sometimes he preferred the corpses.
Will felt certain that Hannibal Lecter, this strange invader making himself at home in Will’s temporary safe space, would probably have made a nuisance of himself even as a corpse.
Will had been prepared to dislike the food, what Hannibal called a “protein scramble.” It sounded perfunctory, a necessity rather than a delight. Most meals in Will’s life had been boiled down to only what was necessary; he might have been a better cook once, but now the idea had lost its thrill.
“Mm,” he found himself saying, begrudgingly. “It’s delicious, thank you.”
It was enough, he thought, avoiding Hannibal’s eyes just as he avoided everyone else’s. The food was good enough to make this forced interaction almost worth it.
Will desperately tried to have them “keep it professional.” His one last bastion against the intrusive, unpleasant routine that was psychiatric scrutiny. His curt tone had often been enough to make kinder people back down. Unfortunately, Will admitted to himself, it didn’t always work on assholes. But at least his demeanor ruffled them. Threw them off their game.
Hannibal took a different tactic. Seemed unfazed by Will’s bluntness.
That’s not like him, Will thought to himself. Hannibal hates rudeness. Briefly, like a bubble rising through dark waters, he wondered why he’d thought such a thing. Even with his empathy disorder, Hannibal was something of a closed book. Not like most people, flinging their emotions around every space in which they found themselves. Like a dog eternally shaking muddy water out of its coat.
“God forbid we become friendly,” Hannibal was saying.
“I don’t find you that interesting,” Will replied into his coffee.
“You will.” There was something in the breathy, confident way he said it. Something that made Will glance up, unnerved. The words, and the man, felt all at once larger. You will rang like a bell in Will’s mind. His brain interpreted it as a promise. Or perhaps a curse.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He looked up, alarmed, and Hannibal’s eyes met his. Serene. Pensive. But something more writhed behind them, something feral. Something... keen. Will wondered how he’d never seen it before.
“Jack Crawford tells me you have a knack for the monsters.” Hannibal was speaking again, and Will remembered where he was, what he was supposed to be doing and saying. Hannibal was right. He did have a knack for them.
That’s what it was, wasn’t it? Just a knack?
“It’s like he had to show me a negative so that I could see the positive.” Will rubbed his hands over his eyes.
“The mathematics of human behavior.” Will was taken aback at how much he enjoyed the disapproval in the other man’s voice. “All those ugly variables.”
If Will had been paying better attention to himself, he might have realized that the conversation was, unlike so many conversations he was used to having, going well. Transitioning smoothly from jaded mistrust to a kind of ironic, playful humor.
“You and I are just alike,” Hannibal said. If he’d been anyone else, or if it had been only a few moments earlier, Will would have scoffed. He would not have, he was certain, felt the first faint spark of something like camaraderie. A thin line of trust, growing in the pit of his stomach. “Problem free.”
Will chanced a glance up, and Hannibal was looking right back at him, seeing something in Will that Will didn’t know was there. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Whatever it was, Will was terrified of it, and even more terrified that Hannibal saw it and didn’t seem to fear it at all. “Nothing,” Hannibal said gently, his eyes never leaving Will’s, “about us to feel horrible about.”
Will felt something in his chest. Like a bird, trapped, wanting to live, even though it was stuck inside a corpse. The thought was a strange one, even for him. But then Hannibal was speaking again, and the moment broke open like a wound and was forgotten.
“You know Will, I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup.”
Will couldn’t help the laugh, the chuckle boiling up unbidden from someplace that Will was certain had almost forgotten how to laugh like that. Hannibal smiled back. A shared joke. A shared understanding.
Will felt it, he realized with a start. However brief and fleeting, however inexplicable, he felt it: Bliss.
He was about to ask how Hannibal saw him, genuinely curious, all discomfort and mistrust temporarily on hold.
But there came another knocking at the door. “Hmm,” he said, giving Hannibal a thin smile. But the connection was still there, already established, and now a difficult thing to snap. “Housekeeping? Or maybe Jack’s court session was delayed.”
*
It was Alana.
The air around his little house was chill and crisp. They walked the fields like old friends. Will wasn’t sure if they were that, yet. But if they weren’t, one day they would be. Of this, he was certain, and in the knowledge of his certainty, an uncertainty crept in. He shouldn’t want them to be friends, not now, he was supposed to want...
“It’s hard for me to wrangle a wounded animal by myself,” he was saying. Whatever he was and wasn’t supposed to want blended and merged until there was nothing but the smell of old snow and the warmth of Alana by his side. “Did you think it was a date?”
“Honestly it never crossed my mind.”
Will made an injured sound, and it came out more resigned than he liked. He chuckled, more at himself than anything else. “Why not?”
“You just don’t seem like you date.” This seemed a strange thing to say, a strange thing to think about Will. Alana must know that wasn’t true. She had to know that Will had - his face twisted as his thoughts moved sluggishly around something important he couldn’t quite latch onto - passions.
“Oh.” He put his hand, self-deprecating, across his chest. “Too broken to date?”
She laughed. “You’re not broken.” It was something said easily, but there was a truth there, buried deeper, that he heard in her voice. He wasn’t broken, he knew she believed that. But he wasn’t... he wasn’t okay, either.
“Why are you assuming I don’t date?” she asked.
“Well, do you?”
“No.” She paused. “Seems like something for somebody else.” They had been trouncing easily through the frozen fields, side-by-side, but now she stopped, gripped his arm, gently turned Will to face her. He frowned. “I’m sure I’ll become that person someday, but right now, in this moment? I am thinking too much.”
He shifted. He was comfortable with her, he was almost always comfortable with Alana. That comfort only grew the more time they spent together. But something in her words had the opposite effect. It was like an insistent knocking. Trying to get in.
“So,” he asked, shifting on his feet. “Are you gonna try to think less, or are you just going to wait ‘til it happens naturally?”
He tried to push on, but she held tight to his arm. “Are you seeing anything?”
He swallowed, looked around at the ground for something that might give a clue what sort of wounded animal they were hunting. “No, actually. I’m not even seeing any...”
But there were tracks, there on the ground. Something big. Bipedal. Starting right where they were, and making their way back down the hill. “C’mon,” he motioned to Alana. But somehow he was certain she was behind him, standing still, not following.
*
Will found himself in a stream. The most familiar stream, the one he always returned to. He cast his line, the pleasant smells of fresh water and autumnal rot squeezing into his lungs, and looked down, expecting to see the bodies. The great teeming school of bodies floating by, no longer sleeping or awake, disinterested in the lure he’d laid.
But there were only two. Pale and gray, distorted through the ripples of the pond. He was grateful for the distortion. He didn’t know if he was ready to see the stillness on their faces.
Will frowned. There should have been more.
A buzzer sounded, and Will opened his eyes.
*
He wasn’t in his stream. He never had been. He’d only been standing, staring at nothing as the images of fall leaves played itself out on the back of his eyes. These visions cut a steep contrast with the stark ice of his cell, lost in the bowels of Baltimore’s premiere hospital for the criminally insane.
“I don’t know you,” he said. But it didn’t feel true.
“My name is Bedelia Du Maurier.”
“You’re Hannibal Lecter’s therapist.” He chuckled. “What’s that like.”
“I’ve heard so much about you I feel I almost know you.”
“You don’t.”
No, I don’t, he expected her to reply.
She didn’t. Will frowned, but she kept speaking, in that quiet, gentle, pitying way that Will had seen only rarely, in their early meetings, and then never again. She didn’t know him now, but she knew him after. They hadn’t been close, and yet she’d seen Will Graham better than almost anyone, seen parts of him that no one else could see, or chose not to. And with her knowledge, came a kind of sardonic contempt that he could never shake. In that contempt, there was a truth that Will could never help but resent.
And under that resentment, buried deep, deep down, was another truth. Some long-dormant thing with horns and hooves. Something that snorted and stamped at the ground excitedly, thrilling to be seen.
Will frowned.
This wasn’t right.
It was too soon. He wasn’t supposed to know this, any of these things, yet.
Bedelia was speaking. “I understand you better than I thought. I wanted to meet you again before I withdraw.”
“Again? This is supposed to be our first meeting.” He took a breath. Forgot what he’d been about to say. His thoughts were a tangled haze, but he didn't know what to do about it except press forward. “What are you withdrawing from.”
“Social ties.”
“With whom?” No, that wasn’t right. He shook his head. “Isn’t our sense of self a consequence of social ties?”
Bedelia smiled at him sadly. More sadly than he thought she should have. “They are, aren’t they? And all of our social ties are knotted so tightly together it’s impossible to unstring them.” She paused. “Unless you’ve found a way. To untie the knot for all the rest of us. To untie yourself from the rest of us.” Will didn’t know why, but he found it hard to breathe. Like water filling up his lungs. “But yes,” Bedelia replied, back on script for a moment. “Social ties. Sense of Self. They certainly are in your case. It may be small comfort, but I am convinced you have done what you honestly believe is best for everyone.” Will frowned. “For yourself. For your wife. For Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom. For me. And even for Hannibal, in a way.”
“No, that isn’t small comfort, that would be no comfort,” Will said, because it was what he was supposed to say. But the words came out wrong, more a question than an accusation. This conversation felt wrong, the notes of it grating, like a theremin in the hands of a novice. “I didn’t intend for Hannibal to be caught a second time.” There were tears in the corners of his eyes. He felt very sad, but wasn’t sure why.
Bedelia stepped over the line and close to the bars. Will expected alarms, admonitions, but they never came. She gave him a small, bracing smile. “The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive. You can survive this happening to you.”
“Happening to me?”
“Happening because of you? Does that sound more like the truth you carry?”
Will swallowed, thick and viscous. “I didn’t want anyone to die for me. Not even-” The words stuck in his throat, and Bedelia reached through the bars, running a gentle hand down his arm.
“I... believe... you.”
It shouldn’t have made him feel better. But it did.
It always did.
*
The klaxon blared, and it turned into a solid, wooden sound, the sound of a door sliding open. Will turned around and stopped, snow still melting in his hair.
On the table before him, Randall Tier lay, eyes open, splayed out like a threat. Or an offering. Or an invitation.
He could hear Hannibal moving in the room beyond. Coming closer.
It’s been so long, Will thought, nonsensically. He had seen Hannibal earlier only the previous day. Hadn’t he? It’s been so long since I last laid eyes on you.
Hannibal slid the door open. The first thing he saw was Will. His eyes dropped to the table. Will felt a thrill, a heady swirl of anticipation. He didn’t know what he wanted to happen next, what he expected, but he wanted it, oh he wanted-
But Hannibal stared at the body on the table. His face fell into an expression of disgust, then a kind of blank, expressionless mask, but behind it, Will knew Hannibal well enough now to know, a storm of unspeakable violence brewed.
In between, Will couldn't be sure, but there might have been the briefest flicker of something closer to despair than Will had ever seen.
Will’s pride was quenched when he looked down at the body again, and was shocked to see not Randall Tier, but Hannibal himself.
Will’s chest heaved, but no longer with anticipation.
There was a great, bloodless gash in the side of Hannibal’s head; his eyes were open and devoid of color. The skin looked slick and unsolid, like a jello just starting to lose its shape. All around Hannibal, across the wide, noble planes of his cheeks and brow, plotted across his artist’s fingers, were tiny pockmarks, as if a school of something small and harmless had been nibbling at him.
Will looked up, breath caught in his throat, shame and panic crashing over everything like the pounding of waves. Hannibal, the living Hannibal at the end of the table, was still staring down at the corpse like it had offended him. Like seeing the body sprawled out dead on the table was the very height of discourtesy.
“Will?” Hannibal’s voice sounded small and restrained. And underneath, eternally sad.
“Hannibal,” Will breathed. There was too much empathy, too much understanding. He didn’t want Hannibal to look like that or sound like that or feel like that, ever. He tried to rush forward, almost couldn’t help propelling himself toward this other Hannibal, the quickened one.
But Hannibal twitched, and pulled back into the room beyond, slamming the sliding doors closed in Will’s face. Leaving him alone with no Hannibal but the unliving reminder of what he’d done, laid out accusingly behind him.
*
Will wrenched the doors open, finally, and stumbled out into the gradually encroaching blue-gray of dusk at the Lecter estate.
He lowered his binoculars, and let Hannibal’s words fill the spaces in his mind.
“It’s not healing to see your childhood home,” Hannibal Lecter admitted. Will thrilled to know that he was seeing something behind the veil, something that Hannibal kept personal and secret and safe. Locked in rooms behind solid doors in the central depths of himself.
“I want to know,” Will said. There was nothing in the world he could imagine taking the place of this burning need inside him, this consuming thing that wanted and wanted and wanted everything that Hannibal was, everything he had. Wanted to know all the ways Hannibal was broken. Still refusing to let himself ask why he wanted. “Is this where construction began?”
“On my memory palace? Or yours?” Will frowned, but Hannibal just continued, bemused, as if he’d not said anything out of place. “Its door at the center of my mind. Which door will open to show the beating heart of yours, I wonder.” He regarded Will with knowing eyes, pushing him to figure out some intricate puzzle that only a mind like Hannibal’s was capable of unlocking.
The space shifted and changed, and they weren’t sitting in the brambles of the Lecter family childhood home, but rather back in a jagged, crystalline copy of Dr. Lecter’s office.
Will looked around, unsettled but not yet alarmed. “We’re in the wrong chairs. I’m meant to be in yours this time. I’m the one chasing you.”
Hannibal looked at him, from the seat he’d sat in every single time they’d met, staring across at each other. Performing their private, intimate dance, the one that Will often didn’t learn the steps to until too late. “This isn’t real, Will.”
“No. That’s why I’m supposed to be in your chair. I could only ever catch you in my mind. You were always slippery. Like trying to hold onto flesh in water with bare hands.” Will tilted his head. “You always got away.”
“Did I.” Hannibal linked his fingers and crossed his legs. “If I got away, then why are we back here?”
Will looked at Hannibal, with his pristine ties and perfect suits and the tiny little fringe of hair that liked to artfully fall forward, making him look softer than the predator Will knew him to be. He glanced around the room they were in, with its bright, almost-happy light streaming in through the windows, illuminating the stylish, eclectic blend of antique and modern. Feeling the give of the chair beneath him, watching the fire burn where once Hannibal and Will had burned their pasts together. Watching the stag, still as a statue, cry eternally from its position by the door.
“This room holds sound and motion,” Will explained, trying to catch the light refracted in Hannibal’s eyes. “Great snakes heaving and wrestling in the dark.” Will felt, as he had innumerable times before, something heaving and wrestling low in his belly, at the way Hannibal’s eyes danced when they looked at him. “I never want to leave this place,” Will whispered, so low that even this mock version of Hannibal, made up in the frightened, embarrassed corners of his own mind, could not hear.
“There are other rooms, though.” Hannibal leaned forward, trying to convey something with his eyes. “Like painted shards of glass. This place is no more real than they, but there is something deeper still. Layers upon layers of reality.”
Will couldn't help himself from leaning forward, too. Hannibal was close enough to touch. "Something is wrong." Will took in a shaky breath. “I think it's been wrong for a while now." He swallowed. "Then all this... truly isn’t real?”
“You are in a unique position, Will. What is real and what is dreaming are not always different. The dreams can be real. What is real can be faint and fading. But to sleep too deeply without finding what you seek? There are several kinds of tragedies. I am not Hannibal. I am you. And I think that would be the worst kind.”
Will took a breath. “Everything keyed to memories. Leading to... other memories.” Will squinted. “Rooms you can’t bring yourself to go. Nothing escapes from them that causes you any comfort.” Did that mean anything? It was difficult to tell. Everything, everything was a fog.
Hannibal tilted his head, just slightly. “Is that the stage we’re at, Will? Is that what you’re ready for? To go barging into dreams where even Hannibal fears to tread?” He paused. “Do you hear music, Will?”
“Music?”
“There are two songs being sung, I think, and more hidden truths than that. There must be an order to things, or you will not be ready to enter those cruel and terrible rooms.”
“They’re in your memory palace, not mine.”
Hannibal gave Will a reproachful look. Will flinched as a gun went off somewhere nearby.