A translation of Reddition by Jainas.
Thank you to the marvellous Sunlit Stone for her beta.
This fic is part of (yet untranslated) bigger post-fall series, but can be read on it's own. I'm forever fascinated by the changes Hannibal went through for Will during the three seasons, and the ways they can go forward. Warning for mild masochism and pain-play.
Surrender
"What are you thinking?"
Hannibal can feel in his bones the tremors of the motor and every jolt of the car like a whisper, ever-present and almost pleasurable. After three years in the thin and carefully insipid atmosphere of the BHCI, every outside stimulus is welcome. Even the still perceptible chemical tang of fuel stinking up the gas station where they stopped earlier, or the entrenched smell of the skai seats of the old Ford they stole after getting rid of the van; even each pothole reverberating in the traumatized flesh of the bullet path through his abdomen. Each experience would be individually unpleasant but taken together they are enhanced, transcended: by freedom and by the most interesting stimulus of all, sitting right next to him.
Will insisted on taking the wheel in spite of his immobilized shoulder, arguing rightly that Hannibal can't really drive in his state… But Hannibal suspects that his companion's stubbornness about it has more to do with a last ditch effort to preserve his autonomy than it has to do with any doubt about his own capacity to stay conscious at the wheel, however legitimate.
Whatever it may be, Will is driving with one hand, his wounded arm resting against his torso in a makeshift sling, and in the grey afternoon light his paleness only makes more striking the scarlet stigma across his cheek, carefully stitched by Hannibal himself. His features are stark and aloof, crowned by the thorns of his messy dark curls. After three years of scarcity Hannibal has yet to get tired of scrutinizing him, especially when he can feel Will's tension grow with each new glance confirming him he is watched…
"What are you thinking?" asks Will again, and this time there is hostility in his voice, but also defiance.
It would be easy to obfuscate, or to answer something bland… but their renewed connection is still young and fragile. Risen from the watery grave as from a chrysalis, Will is a new creature, both familiar and unpredictable, something different and dangerous, still unknown… And Hannibal is buoyed by a curiosity that feels insatiable. He wants to know whatever Will Graham has become, unveil his new angles, his designs, his appetites; quantify the differences between the man who threw them from the cliff rather than Become, and the one who finally chose to live, who is sitting right here…
For that, honesty is probably his best tool. Whatever way Will chooses to answer will tell him a lot. And the possibility for his candor to be turned into a weapon, used against him… It's intriguing.
"I'm thinking about the discussions we've had, when I was in the good care of BHCI…"
He knows that Will took the bait at the subtle change of his posture, at the almost invisible shiver in the line of his jaw.
"We haven't seen each other in three years, barring the trial," he says. "And it's not like we even talked to each other then."
"You live in my mind palace…" answers Hannibal with a careful shrug and a small curl at the corner of his lips, knowing how dangerously revealing the words are. "You are not always the most courteous guest, but our conversations are nonetheless stimulating."
Will knows the shape of his vulnerability, already used it against Hannibal. And yet there is something heady in putting it into words, verbally handing him the hunting knife and offering his throat...
If one of his patients had told Hannibal about such feelings he would have improvised a speech about intimacy and vulnerability as powerful drives for interpersonal bonding, about the masochistic impulse and its deep link with the life drive… But it would have been nothing more than words, with no more bearing on himself that if he had been a blind man describing a color.
Before Will, pain or its prospect had always been irrelevant for him. Now however he is discovering that he can long for them, if they come from Will. This is… highly interesting. But Will does not take the offered knife, doesn't seems inclined to draw first blood, at least for now…
"Memories?" he asks, and ho, maybe he does after all. Hannibal is well aware of how deep words can cut, how cruel and raw laying oneself bare can be…
"Some, yes… Reconstructions, extrapolations also…"
"I thought I was the one with the overzealous imagination," says Will with cutting irony. Hannibal can't resist.
"As vivid and true to its template as it may be, I'm sure you will agree that imagination can be somewhat lacking faced with the real experience."
The allusion to the macabre mirror that is Will's mind is blatant, and an unsubtle reminder of the murders they committed together not that long ago, but Will only make a face and stares at the road.
"And what was it that you were imagining?"
"Things we never shared but could have, with more time. Meals I would have cooked for you, discussions about works I would have loved to get your perspective on. Conversations like the many we did have…"
"You were salting your wounds."
There is no judgment either in Will's voice or his face, it's an abstracted observation, uncaring; a handful more of salt even if Hannibal knows the lack of interest is only apparent. His mouth is dry and he can feel the flutter of blood in his throat. How sharp and glorious, the cruelty of what Will has become!
"Maybe."
"You know I'm not the man in your mind."
"You said it yourself. I don't have your imagination. The man in my mind can't surprise me."
"Nor hurt you."
"Do you want it, to hurt me?"
Will stays silent for a long time, eyes on the road, a silence that has fangs, that makes blood well with a prickling both new and familiar
"You were right about one thing about me," he finally whispers, without granting Hannibal the mercy of a glance. "I like to do bad things to bad people."
It could just be the confirmation of something he has long sensed, but in Will's mouth it is more. It is the light shining on the wings of the creature finally arisen from the chrysalis, a confession. A promise, and Hannibal can't totally hold his smile.
"Is that all?"
His mastery over his voice has slipped: something of the glorious turbulence of his feelings can be heard. The anxiety. The exultation. The endless hunger.
"I like to do bad things to bad people," repeats Will. His good hand is holding on the wheel so tight that his knuckles are white. "I want to do bad things to bad people."
Only then does he look at Hannibal, fleetingly, and the fire in the dark of his gaze is arresting.
"This is my design."
The road is almost empty, but Will still puts on the turn signal before driving the car into a deserted parking area. The tires squeak on the black gravel and they come to a stop, turned toward each other like two planets caught in a closing orbit, on a collision trajectory that can't be avoided anymore. Will wets his lips, the first mark of real uneasiness since the beginning of the conversation, and Hannibal can't resist the desire to dig deeper, to push him again.
"Is your design revenge?"
"You know it's not. Revenge was Florence, and you saw where it led us. I can't kill you."
"But you can make me hurt."
"I can," says Will simply, admitting in two words the immensity of the power he holds over Hannibal. His good hand leaves the wheel and he turns a little more, lets it rest on Hannibal, just over the wound on his belly, flat on the low-thread shirt, over the bandages he helped adjust.
He pushes, light at first, the endless mirror of his eyes anchored in Hannibal's as pain rises, flares; tremendous and pulsating. For the first time in forever he chooses not to minimize it at the back of his mind, but welcomes it fully, like Job struck down by the Almighty's arrows. His mouth opens in a silent breath, the corners of his sight become hazy.
"It is strange," murmurs Will. "Cruelty has always been yours."
"For someone else you may be cruel. But I only see a ferocity intimate and sublime, unfolding at last."
Will's fingers dig and disembowel, or at least it's how it feels, even if Hannibal knows that the barrier of the shirt is still between them. The smell of fever and blood welling in the reopened scar fills the confined space and they breath the same air, pant quietly in concert. Just as Will is different, the pain he inflicts has nothing to do with anything Hannibal has suffered before. It is binding them together now, a reverse reflection of the pain he visited upon Will, the tangible proof of Will's sloughing. It satiates something ravenous in him.
Then, much too soon, Will draws his hand back, gazes upon him panting and trembling, with a look Hannibal can't read. The sun refracting through the windshield crowns him with light, and for a blinding instant Hannibal can see perfectly the icon he would worship, tremendous and primal, Will Pantocrator in all the glory of his becoming.
"Is that new for you?"
Still that same unhesitating cruelty, just asking Hannibal to articulate his weakness out loud, asking him to offer up his pride. The man he was only four years ago would have killed Will for that.
Tried to, in truth.
The man he is today smiles in spite of the physical pain and intellectual humiliation. How can such an intimate undoing be such a victory?
"You know it is, Will."
And Will nods, maybe because his empathy allows him to perceive the breadth of the surrender, the empire of who Hannibal was laid at his feet, the predator who bore chains for him… But only now does he have the strength to pick them up, and by doing so he makes the surrender undeniable, final. Giving himself up to the FBI was nothing, compared to the hand of Will Graham upon his wounds, compared to the fire burning in his dark eyes now that he has stopped running.
Will smiles back, without hesitation, full of promises and danger; and at this moment Hannibal's victory is as complete as his surrender.
For the Almighty has struck me down with his arrows. Their poison infects my spirit. God's terrors are lined up against me.
(...) I cry to you, O God, but you do not answer. I stand before you, but you do not even look.
Job 6:4 & 20:30