Consulting for the FBI had been one of the most stressful times in Will Graham's life. Nightmares kept him from sleeping more than about 4 hours a night. Each grisly murder scene he encountered sent him hurtling down another sick corridor of humanity, and it came close to overwhelming him. But at the same time, his years at the FBI had been the first time in his life he had successfully worked with a team. Beverly Katz had used to invite him out for drinks after work, and Alana had called him almost every day, just to check in. While Will struggled to swim against the tide of darkness in the world, he had a support group to get him through it. Then of course he found out that his therapist was actually the serial killer he had been hired to catch, which was pretty cataclysmic for his well-being.

All of this came flooding back to Will as he returned to the FBI headquarters where he used to work. It was easy to imagine everything back as it was. All of the new faces that he didn't recognize in the halls faded away. Alana was there, good old Alana, back when she was kind of frumpy and feminist and smiled a lot and drank beer. Beverly Katz stood next to him in a lab coat, cracking terribly insensitive jokes. Jack Crawford's office was full of his family photos and books and forgotten half empty coffee cups. He was Will Graham, FBI consultant and teacher. He was doing ok.

With a lurch he jumped back to reality. He was Will Graham, a bizarre, friendless car mechanic who lived in Florida and didn't help anyone, a Will Graham with a guest pass to his old workplace and subtle, under the table permission to look at Clarice Starling's office.

"Will?" A familiar man's voice called out. "No way… Will Graham?!" Jimmy Price was walking down the hallway, dressed in a suit like a real FBI agent. He had a few more lines on his face and crow's feet that crinkled around his eyes as he smiled, but it was still Jimmy. "Well hot dog!"

"You're still here?" Will asked.

"Are you kidding? Me and Brian are the only forensics fucked up enough to stick around!" Jimmy gave Will a quick hug and started walking down the hall with him. "You know the last doctor they sent in here quit after three days? He said it was too emotionally taxing! The only stiff he saw was a STABBING victim Will. A little gore, that's it. I saw a guys brain turned into a beehive, and I still eat honey grahams."

Will smiled in response, half amused, half weirded out.

"So what are you doing back?" Jimmy asked, fiddling with a pair of rubber gloves he had pulled out of his pocket. "I figured when you didn't show up for Jack's funeral I was never going to see you again."

"Oh… yes." A sick cold feeling spread through Will, starting from his gut. He had heard of Jack's heart attack from an email the FBI sent to his former colleagues. He had deleted it without looking at the date of the funeral. It was too horrible to think about. "How was it?"

"Just awful. Obviously his wife was already gone, he had no kids, and he fucked up literally everything he touched his last 10 years at the bureau. I mean, everybody tried to be nice, but he let Hannibal Lecter escape twice, Will, and kidnap another newbie." Jimmy shook his head. "You can't bounce back from that."

"That's… That's actually why I'm here." Will pushed his grief to the side for a moment. "Tell me what you know about Clarice Starling."

Somehow, by some miracle, Starling's "Catch Hannibal Cave" had remained unmolested by the FBI. As soon was Will walked in he realized that the big-wigs must have had no idea what the hell she was doing in there, or they would have torn it up for clues. The room looked like a half completed sitcom set of Hannibal Lecter's house, scattered with incongruous notebooks and forensic equipment. One corner was his psychiatrist office, his copper Elk statue looming ominously from a pile of books. Another corner was full of the kind of extremely nice equipment that had previously been hanging in Hannibal's kitchen. The kind of cookware that costs $1,500 a pan and makes all of one's murder victims crispy and succulent.

In the few months before Clarice's public shaming and dismissal from the FBI, she had been left almost entirely to her own devices. From the looks of it she had taken good advantage of the freedom.

"Dang." Jimmy said, looking at the expensive and tasteful clutter. "Most folks say she found him, or he found her, and they ran off together." Jimmy said, hands in his pockets.

"So, pretty much what they said about me?" Will noted.

"I wasn't going to say anything but… yup."

Will took a deep breath and looked at the room again, trying to focus on the incongruous elements. The scattered notebooks with small, clear handwriting. The half finished cups of tea in mugs that said things like "LuRay Caverns 2007" and "You're 30? You gotta be KITTEN me!"

"She seems very… earnest." Will said, imagining the quick hands conscientiously writing down the labels of every wine bottle in Hannibal Lecter's cellar. Next to some of the extremely high prices she had drawn exclamation points.

"I never really got a read on her." Jimmy said. "Very pretty, Brian actually asked her out to coffee once, she turned him down so nicely he didn't realize he was rejected for like a week."

"Southern belle?"

"Southern something. In my opinion she was a backcountry girl who copied the UVA debutantes."

"I don't think I've ever met a debutante."

"They're awful, that's how you could tell she wasn't really one, she was too nice."

Will had come to this room to try to get a feel for Clarice Starling's personality. Sometimes Will's hyper-empathy party trick would kick in when he immersed himself in somebody else's space, never quite to the same degree as when he recreated a violent crime, but well enough to learn a bit about someone. The problem was, this space was focused almost entirely around Hannibal Lecter. Instead of gaining insight to Starling, the memories being jogged were deeply personal. He shivered when he saw a familiar wine glass, almost definitely one that had touched his lips multiple times. On the table next to the glass was a rolodex of recipes (C'mon Hannibal, what decade is it…) and a poster board, the type that elementary school teachers stock up on. In a tidy hand drawn diagram Will saw the recipe cards, many of them well loved with smears of oil and flour and blood and sauce, pinned next to, what, business cards? Pinned next to, dear lord, missing persons reports.

Will was more familiar with Hannibal's particular brutality than most, but seeing it all lined up, like a middle school book report, chilled him. This girl was good.

"Would you mind, uh, clearing out for a minute?"

"Oh!" Jimmy looked bemused, "You're gonna do the…" he rolled his eyes back in his head, waving his hands around like a crazy person, "thing?"

"I'm going to do the thing, yes."

"K. See you later." Jimmy exited the space.

Will took a deep breath and tried to focus on all of Clarice's influence in the room. He felt jumbled and unfocused, and it was hard to get his empathy to settle on one object. If worse came to worse he could do regular old detective work and dig through her stuff taking notes like a normal person. He glanced at her notebooks, but they didn't do much for him. He looked over at some of her piles of evidence from Hannibal's apartment and froze. In a plastic zipped up bag in the corner will saw a blanket with a familiar pattern, covered in dark brown stains. A pink post-it note on the plastic protective sheet read "Horse blood. ?!"

Before Will could stop it he closed his eyes. He felt his body shudder, and the world sank into darkness. He felt a wave of vertigo. Reality melted away, replaced by a vivid reflection of an incident that happened years ago. He was back in Hannibal's living room, clutching a horse-blood stained blanket around his shoulders. It was expensively soft. He was shaking, full of adrenaline. Very recently he had almost killed a man in cold blood, and he could still smell the very distinctive scent of horse entrails. He gagged, remembering the liquid way the intestines had spilled out of the carcass as Clark Ingram ripped himself out of his fleshy prison.

He hadn't killed Clark Ingram, but there had been a scuffle to capture him. Will had landed a few punches before Hannibal caught Clark in a headlock, and both of them had left the scene bloody and sweaty and disgusting. Hannibal had offered to take Will to his house for a drink, and Will, very aware of the loaded gun in his jacket pocket, had nodded yes.

Hannibal slid through the darkness of his living room carrying two clinking glasses of whiskey with ice. A fire crackled, filling the room with the comforting scent of wood smoke and an orange half-light. Hannibal's striking face looked even more unusual in half-shadow as he stood over Will and smiled.

"Feeling better?" Hannibal asked, lowering himself smoothly into the seat next to Will and handing him his whiskey.

"I don't think so." Will said, taking a sip. The drink burned all the way down to his stomach, giving off a false sensation of warmth. Hannibal was very close to him now. He had a sort of proprietary air with him that Will didn't necessarily like. It was as though if he had an eyelash on his cheek Hannibal would lick his thumb and wipe it off for him in a motherly, humiliating way.

Hannibal didn't say anything, he just took a sip of his own drink and settled back into the couch, running his eyes up and down his guest's small frame. Will pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, and, while he would have told anyone that would stop long enough to listen that Hannibal Lecter was a murderer and a monster who would die by his own hand, nonetheless, he leaned back and snuggled his head into Hannibal's shoulder.

It was the first time something like this had happened between the two of them, so Will was surprised when Hannibal's only response was to calmly stroke the back of his neck as though this was all no big thing.

Despite himself, Will felt the tension melt out of him. He shut his eyes, and was overcome with a feeling of relaxation and well-being that he hadn't felt since before his time in prison. The closest he'd felt to it was when he had been imagining Hannibal's grisly murder.

"Did you drug me or something?" Will muttered, snuggling closer into Hannibals warmth.

"No. I imagine you must be exhausted, you've been through quite a lot."

"You've put me through quite a lot, you mean."

Hannibal guided Will's face towards his, stroking his cheek.

"You're all right, Will." Hannibal said. "You should forgive yourself."

"Forgive myself?" Will laughed bitterly. "I haven't done anything wrong."

Hannibal tilted his head slightly, face emotionless. He kissed Will then, on the mouth, slowly and deeply. Will leaned into it with a little subconscious moan. When Hannibal pulled back he looked up at him with glassy, needy eyes.

"Have you done anything wrong now?" Hannibal whispered, brushing some of Will's newly cut and styled hair out of his eyes.

Will didn't allow himself to think about that, he just kissed Hannibal again, more violently. Hannibal was strong, surprisingly strong, and pulled Will into him with force.

And Will was in the present again, staring at a gross blanket, standing in FBI headquarters, feeling shaky and sick to his stomach. Trembling slightly, he rushed back out of the office into the hallway, where he met a nonchalant Jimmy munching on a chocolate bar.

"Ooh, did you get one your vibes? Do you know where he is?"

Will flushed and muttered something noncommittal, escaping down the hallway. If Clarice Starling had a knack for this business, and by all evidence she certainly did, there was a very strong chance that she was going to know all about Will's relationship with Hannibal Lecter. And that relationship was not something Will was comfortable with, yet.

Clarice Starling stumbled, slightly tipsily, onto the antique four-post bed in her and Hannibal's new Havana hideout. The house was the sort of thing that interior decorators tack onto the walls of their cubicles: flaking bright blue paint over historic plaster walls, European neo-classical architecture heavily spiced up with the colors and textures of native cubanos. Clarice didn't notice her heavenly surroundings, she was too busy trying to pull a $3,000 high heel off of her tired, aching foot.

Hannibal was still out. He had heard rumors of some really fancy liquor or cigars or something and, after gaining Clarice's permission, had left with a cohort of disgustingly wealthy young futbol players in search for their object. Clarice was tired and drunk and had danced all motherfucking night, to paraphrase the popular showtune, and was now ready for some sleep.

She stretched out on the bed, curling her recently freed toes and taking in the muggy breezes from her window.

There was a sound.

Clarice sat up in the dark room, muscles tense. If she was at home, in her apartment, she would have reached for the gun she kept in her bedside table. The 1750s catfoot end table three inches to her left just held her wallet and her completely dead disposable cell phone.

She had almost decided that she had imagined the noise when it happened again, a muffled sound of a man's voice, indistinct but apparent, coming from the door at the foot of the stairs.

She had been too tired to take off her dress, so now Clarice found that her tight ballgown to be a hindrance to movement. She slipped it off as quick as she could and pulled on a tank top and pair of sweats from her dresser. If she was going to fight somebody damned if she was going to do it in her undies. She kept her feet bare, trying to make as little sound as possible, and slipped out the window of the second floor bedroom and down the fire escape. The kitchen had a very small window that was a tight squeeze even for somebody as small as Clarice to fit through, but she gymnasticked her way in there and grabbed a medium sized cooking knife. With a weapon her breath grew steady, her movements more confident. She paused, waiting for the intruder to make a sound.

There it was, louder this time, more like a groan. It was coming from a vent near the floor in the kitchens. For the first time Clarice remembered that this historic house had a basement and rooms for servants to stay.

Slowly, carefully, Clarice opened the door to the basement. It would be impossible to descend those water damaged wooden stairs without any creaking noises, her intruder would know where she was and that would ruin her very tentative advantage. That said, he couldn't come up without her knowing about it either. She stood perfectly still at the head of the stairs, framed by the little bit of moonlight still shining through the kitchen windows. There was no movement. She heard the sound again, much more clearly this time, and lowered the knife to her side.

"Who's down there?" She called out.

"MMMMFH! MMMMGH! MMMMMMMMMFGGHHH!" The response was in desperate guttural mutters. Clarice bit the inside of her cheek and descended the creaking stairs without fear.

A man was tied in the corner of the basement, head restrained with straps, arms wrapped around his back in an uncomfortable position and held there with black tape, legs strapped to large wooden planks to restrict movement. He had clearly undergone a great deal of plastic surgery, but there wasn't much one could do for a burn victim that wholly consumed by flame. It took her a few moments to recognize the emaciated man.

"Dr… Chilton?"

"MMMMMGH! GMAMMMRMMMMGH!" Tears streamed down his face, and Dr. Frederick Chilton tried to shake himself free from his ties.

Clarice sat down at the foot of the stairs.

"That son of a bitch." She muttered, making no move to help him. She saw the hope in Chilton's eyes fade as realization dawned. This was not an FBI rescue. Clarice Starling was not a good guy anymore.

Frederick Chilton, not for the first time in his life, regretted not choosing another line of work.

The moment Hannibal Lecter had returned home, very expensive cigars in hand, he was accosted by an irate tiny Louisanian holding a kitchen knife. She had dragged him down into the cellar and asked to explain himself. They had not been to bed since, and Clarice was not even close to backing down from the fight.

Frederick Chilton, Hannibal explained, was an incompetent, glory hungry, tasteless, garbage pile of a human being. He reminded her of when she first came to visit him in the mental hospital and Chilton had made a humiliating pass at her. Clarice had forgotten that even happened, clumsy fumbling passes by middle-aged men were so omnipresent in her life that they rarely reached long-term memory storage. Hannibal found that depressing.

"Wait, you weren't even there when he hit on me. How do you remember that?" Clarice asked.

"I know Chilton. I know you. It had to have happened."

Chilton, still bound and gagged in the corner, resented the fact that he couldn't defend himself from this slander. His pride was stung.

"The fact remains, you have been starving and torturing a man in the basement of OUR HOUSE, and you didn't TELL ME."

"You cannot be surprised by that." Hannibal said. "You knew exactly who I was when you agreed to travel with me."

"Yes, but…" Clarice wasn't sure how to continue. The last few weeks had been amazing. Already her life at the Bureau, at the farm, it all seemed like a weird, uncomfortable dream compared to her vivid, delectable present. Hannibal was an excellent conversationalist, he doted upon her, and slipping out of the bonds of her constricting morality had felt almost rapturously freeing. But there, to her left, was Frederick Chilton. Without his replacement jaw half his face was sunken; his pale chest rose and fell too quickly, a sign of panic. It went against every fiber in her being not to let him free. "he's so pathetic."

"He has always been pathetic." Hannibal sneered. Clarice bit her cheek. Three months of constant companionship had peeled away some of Hannibal's carefully maintained layers of self-preservation. He was bitter about having been imprisoned by someone he felt to be intellectually inferior, and he was going to murder and eat him.

Eating Paul had felt triumphant. Again, she met Frederick's eyes for a moment as they darted back and forth between Hannibal and herself. Would this feel the same?

"Give me a few days to adjust." She said. "this is all new for me, you know."

A few tears started to leak from the sides of Chilton's eyes, rolling down his temples and into his ears.

"Of course, my darling." Hannibal stroked the side of Clarice's perfect, marble white face. "Of course." He kissed her nose. Clarice felt the first stirrings of unease that she had felt in a very long time.