Doctor Hannibal Lecter is tall, blonde, and significantly more female than previously anticipated. Wilhelmina Graham shrinks before her. It's not that Will doesn't think she's attractive, she's well aware that dark, curly hair, blue eyes, and a petite stature are all pluses on her side. However, she's also dressed entirely in comfortable flannel, with her hair in tangles the very first time she meets Doctor Lecter. It's a bit of a difference, is all she's saying.
Hannibal introduces herself as 'Hanna,' but Will can't help but impose 'Dr. Lecter' over that in her thoughts. Hanna is a nickname, a closeness that Will cannot afford. The only reason Dr. Lecter is here is to make sure Will's not too crazy, because any woman like her could only be crazy.
Will doesn't see crime scenes, she becomes them. She feels heartbeats and blood and breath under her skin, until her flesh crawls with it and the nightmares come home to roost. It is entirely possible that she is crazy. She tries not to think about it.
Dr. Lecter invites her for dinner. She declines
Dr. Lecter is a chef. This is something Will finds out very quickly, largely since no one will shut up about it. Apparently, beyond her skills as a psychologist, Dr. Lecter is the ideal woman. She cooks, she holds dinner parties, she goes to the opera. She's a regular debutante.
The first time she cooks for Will, bringing a small tupperware container to their meeting, Will understands the fuss almost instantly. The meat bursts sharp and savory in her mouth, and for once, she cleans her plate. Food was, more often than not, a means to an end for Will, just a way to fuel her body from one project to another. Food, for Hanna Lecter, was an art form, and one even Will could appreciate.
Dr. Lecter invites her for a more formal dinner, and again she declines.
It's not that Will doesn't find women attractive. She is aware of the appeal of the feminine figure. She's looked before. Alana Bloom is a co worker, and a friend, and she cuts a stunning figure in a skirt. Her legs seem to go on forever, and if Will were the staring type, she could get lost in them.
But Will isn't the staring type. or the dating type. Or the people type. She appreciates a woman from a distance, files the thought away in the back of her mind, and does nothing for it.
Dr. Lecter, though… She lingers. Fair hair falling over her shoulders, never out of place. Quite the contrast to the short, messy curls Will keeps. There's a curve and softness to her, despite her thin, tall build. She sticks in Will's mind like a song, just a handful of lines, over and over again. The line of her lips, curving up when she speaks to Will. The lines of her body, intoxicating. The line of her back, arched as she reaches for something. Will has been told that to watch Dr. Lecter cook is to watch art itself. She suspects she's too closely attached already to risk feeding that curiosity.
There is something that sparks in the air between them, too much, too sharp, too bright. Will can't afford the distraction, and it would never develop anyway. She's not going to let Lecter, or anyone else, into the madness of her head. She will not go for dinner.
The Chesapeake Ripper is known for his post-mortem mutilation. And mid-mortem, if that were in fact a word. Technically, the cause of death is poison, an injection delivered to the artery just under the jaw. In actuality, the poison is what stops the heart, but it paralyzes its victims first. They're still conscious long enough to feel it when the ripper starts tearing into their flesh. He collects trophies from each victim. It is that and the needle mark that lead Will to realize there is a copycat following their Shrike around. And who it is.
"You're looking for a small man." Will tells them. "I… He poisons them because then they cannot overpower him. Maybe he feels stepped on, belittled. While they're paralyzed, he has the power. He can literally reach into their chest and hold their life in his hands."
Will's heart is thumping in her chest. She can feel the organs squish under her hands. Her clean, dry, empty hands. The Chesapeake Ripper crawls into the back of her brain and builds his nest.
Her students may crack jokes about coffins or about her haunting the campus, but Will dreams just like anybody else. She's not asexual, either. Doctor Hannibal Lecter's soft skin is usually the star, though other actors occasionally drift by. In her dreams, she can touch, taste. In her dreams, she has nothing to worry about. It's her nightmares that are the problem.
In the middle of the night, in the middle of arched backs and taunting tongues, the shadows rise. Hanna's long hair draped over her thighs is a tantalizing distraction, until it gives way beneath Will's fingers. Black horns raise from between Will's thighs, claws dig into her flesh, and she is screamingscreamingscreaming.
She wakes, gasping and shaking. Her sheets are sweat-soaked and there is a slickness between her thighs. It's not blood, but arousal, and in the wake of the sudden nightmarish twist, this is somehow worse.
She could finish herself off. Will is no stranger to the needs and wants of her own body. But while she struggles to shake off sleep, the stag stands in human form in the corner of her room. She chooses not to acknowledge it. It will vanish when the shadow of nightmare no longer hangs over her. "So never, then." She mutters, hating herself for it. The shadow chooses not to respond.
Abigail Hobbs is taller than Will, but underneath Will's palms, she seems infinitely smaller. Will clutches at Abigail's throat, sobbing as the blood thump-thump-thumps out between her fingers. Abigail's life was coating Will's hands to the beat of Will's own, racing out so fast she could barely think.
"Hanna!" The name cracks out of Will's throat in a painful burst, high and sharp in the silent air. Dr. Lecter is frozen in the doorway. In a moment of hysteria, Will realizes her cream heels were stained pink. Mrs. Hobbs bled out on the porch and now Will was on her knees in the remains of the Hobbs family. "Help her, please. She's still here."
Hannibal Lecter, always clean and neat and put together, joins Will in the pool of blood.
The first night of Abigail's hospital stay, Hanna and Will fall asleep in opposite chairs, both unwilling to leave her side. Hanna had disappeared only long enough to bathe; Will still has flakes of red deep under her fingernails.
Abigail is quiet. Anyone would be. Except for The Question, the one Will knew would come. "You're the woman who killed my dad, right?" And Will knew they couldn't avoid it but she dies a little anyway.
Will visits Abigail as often as she can, in between cases. There is something in her that is drawn to the girl. "Responsibility." Alana suggests. "You feel guilty for the death of her parents. Will, you shouldn't blame yourself. You saved that girl's life."
Alana is sweet and well-intentioned, but she doesn't understand. Will doesn't feel guilt for killing Abigail's father. The man was a monster trying to murder his own flesh and blood. No, Will feels guilty because she liked it.
It's not like Will thinks she's some subdued, oppressed little snowflake. But the opportunities for positions of power for women always seemed to come less often than they did for her male associates. The opportunities for a crazy woman were pretty much nonexistent.
In the Hobbs' kitchen, Will had dominion over life and death. She held Garrett Jacob Hobbs' pulse between her fingers, and with a squeeze, she extinguished it.
"It is natural to take pride in a good deed." Hanna tells her during one of their private, off-the-record sessions. "And the expression 'power mad' exists for a reason." They are seated across from each other. Will's half-slumped over in her seat, fisting her curls and glaring sullenly at the floor. Hanna's chair is more a throne. She sits with her legs crossed, skirt riding up over her knees but never once tipping over into indecency. It's a nice thing to focus on, when Will gets tired of thinking of the blood on her hands.
"You enjoy feeling strong." Hanna suggests, sipping her tea. "You enjoy knowing that in that moment, you held all the cards. And it is this which makes you perfectly normal."
Will shifts a bit, all oversized flannels and curls in her eyes. She feels like she might merge with the fabric of the armchair. She's okay with this.
"Will." Somehow, while Will was pouting, Hanna had crossed the room. She tucks a piece of hair behind Will's hair, and Will stares up and through her. "We're going to be ok."
Will goes for dinner, because she and Hannibal have a person in common now. Abigail, on her better days, sits between them, one of the adults on either end of the table and her, the child, seated at the side.
"I see family." She told them once, but Will was 97% sure her medication had gotten her high that day. She kept beaming at them, and nearly knocked her glass over twice.
It becomes a strange sort of normal, the three of them. They all share a mutual lack of family, and Will's attachment to Abigail is slowly returned.
And then there's Hanna. Hanna, who had knelt in a puddle of blood and placed her hand over Will's and held together a life like stitches. Hanna, who understands the way Garret Jacob Hobbs lives inside Will's head.
Hanna, who lurks in the peripheral of Will's dreams, all slick skin and heat and shadows.
"You're not sleeping." She says the next time they met for not-therapy. Will slouches a little bit further down and closes her eyes.
"What was the giveaway?"
Hanna brushes a delicate hand under Will's eyes. Will makes a soft noise of want, then twists her head down and chokes on a cough, concealing.
"You look unwell, Will. You should speak to a doctor." Hanna kneels down, catching her gaze.
"I speak to you." There 's a look of something that might be pride behind Hanna's eyes. Something warm and pleased, intertwined with the hazel.
Three weeks from now, Will will screw up every ounce of courage that has ever resided in her body and kiss Hanna.
Two months from this moment, in an over-sized bed on silk sheets in Hanna's home, they will spill over each other, clamoring for touch, kissing and biting, and it will be glorious.
It will stay glorious for four weeks. Four weeks in which Will feels whole and wanted. Four weeks in which Will learns Hanna, the curve of her hip, the silk of her thighs. Will learns her intimately.
But not personally.
And so, over four weeks, Will's brain lights up like a Christmas tree. Four weeks and then Doctor Hannibal Lecter murders their... Their Abigail, and frames Will for every violent murder she's committed.
But right now, in this moment, in this office, they are connected.
A/N: This was written for a prompt on tumblr. Notes about the changes in the universe: 1) Fem!Hannibal's name is Hannibal. I feel no shame. 2) In this universe, Will's gender has changed but not sexuality, leading us to a female Will Graham who is still attracted to women. It also allows me to avoid three seasons of slow burn because I'm not playing the 'but I'm not gay' game. 3) I read somewhere that women are less likely to kill via violent methods (Like throwing their victims onto stag heads), likely because women, ON AVERAGE tend to be smaller and… I don't want to say weaker, but basically, if you took your average woman off the streets (And yes I know there are exceptions) and asked her to recreate Hannibal Lecter's murders, it is likely she would find it difficult. On the other hand, a lot of the 'historical' female serial killers killed with poison. So we have a compromise here.