Various points for this chapter:

1) I'm well aware I've been saying Freddie Lounds writes for The Tattler, rather , than TattleCrime in this fic. I apologise. I've been reading the books and watching the film series, and forgot. So instead, I've said that is the website for The Tattler paper, and she's been promoted (super sorry, guys).

2) The killer I'm introducing this chapter (hinted at in the last chapter) will be loosely based on Francis Dolarhyde (aka the Red Dragon) from Thomas Harris' 'Red Dragon', though I will be altering parts of his character to suit the fic.

Thanks for reading so far.

Chapter 4

'I want you to talk me through the FBI case you've been asked to work on. What made you think it was my work?'

It was late morning following Will's excessive drinking. He hadn't woken until late, when a warm aroma had forced his mind to stir. Hannibal was cooking. He wanted himself to panic at the thought, yet his body was in too much of a mess to reject the thought of any food, whatever form it took. He managed to push himself into a sitting position, slowly to avoid any sharp movements of his head, when Lecter brought a plate into him.

'What is it?'

'Whatever you had in your cupboards that I thought would benefit you this morning.' At Will's quizzical expression, he chuckled. 'You seem to think I've never been in your position, Will.'

Lecter drunk, now that was an amusing thought. He sat at the foot of the bed while Will ate, though whether out of choice or lack of anywhere else to sit was unclear to Graham. He sat watching him carefully, as if weighing up the situation. Occasionally, he opened his mouth as if to talk, before closing it quickly before Will expected conversation. Eventually, he waited until Will had finished eating before he finally said what had been plaguing his mind.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'The FBI has a new body that they believe was a victim of the Chesapeake Ripper. You told me this last night, if you can't remember.' His gaze was piercing, the light through the curtains just enough to illuminate the crimson flecks in his dark eyes. 'Jack sent for you to inspect the case. Tell me about it.'

'It's sensitive information. I can't just tell you.'

'That certainly never stopped you before.'

'You were my psychiatrist before, and consulted by the FBI of your own merit. The situation has changed.' It was the truth; FBI case information could hardly be passed around. Yet Will still felt a sharp stab of guilt, like every word he was speaking was a lie.

'You also think I am the killer.'

The bluntness forced Will to speak. 'No. No, this isn't a Ripper victim.'

'And you know this how?'

That stopped him suddenly. Lecter wasn't denying the murder. Not as Will had wanted him to. 'The body had some qualities of the Ripper. Not all of them, however.'

'What did it have?'

It was surreal. Even for Will, who was haunted by hallucinations and nightmares of the victims and their killer, actually sitting and discussing the Chesapeake Ripper, as if he wasn't sat in front of him, was twisted. 'The body was mutilated. The face was badly cut and there were bits of mirror lodged in the victim's eyes. There was also organ removal. The heart was missing. Required anatomical knowledge. The killer sewed the body back up, wiped it clean. They only found out about the missing organ when they autopsied the body.' He paused before the last point. 'It was also found in Wolf Trap.'

Hannibal sat silent for few moments after Will stopped speaking. He noticed how uncomfortable the agent suddenly was, his body tense, head bowed so as not to make any form of eye contact. He knew the body wasn't his. The last victim had been the detective while he was on the run. The previous one, Dr Du Maurier. Though her blood seemed to stick to his own hands, rather than those of the Ripper. 'And what reasons do you have for believing the victim is not that of the Chesapeake Ripper?'

'I was rather hoping you'd provide those for me, Dr Lecter,' he answered sarcastically, before sighing. 'The body wasn't publicly displayed, she was found in her home by a friend a few days after death.'

'And?'

'That's all.'

'Will, if the only reason you had to suspect the victim was killed by anyone other than myself was that the body was not publicly displayed, you'd have handed me over to the FBI almost instantly. You certainly would not have returned here, drunk, and openly accused me. There is another reason. One you believe to be so improbable that you are willing to ignore all other evidence pointing towards the Ripper, yet one not so impossible as not to accuse me. What else did you find?'

Another pause. Graham licked his dry lips nervously before speaking. 'The victim had been assaulted before death. She was raped.'

Even as he said it, it felt wrong. Like trying to finish a jigsaw and realising halfway through that all of the pieces are wrong and you're following the wrong picture. Hannibal wasn't the killer. That was clear now. What wasn't clear was how he could ever have suspected such a thing to begin with.

'And you think I would be capable of that?' Lecter's voice remained unchanged, still steady, still calm. But it was different. He was angry. Upset. Betrayed. A current invisible on the surface, yet threatened to drown Will should he step too deep.

'No, not you. But the Chesapeake Ripper...'

'I am the Chesapeake Ripper, Will. We are the same being, something you seem to struggle grasping.' There was something strange about saying it openly, as though it was a fact that should always be known, yet never spoken. Something that merely hung in the air like a spider on a thread.

'I saw a man sat in Church with his tongue used as a page-marker. That was the Chesapeake Ripper, but that wasn't you.'

'When I returned, you saw me only as the Chesapeake Ripper; the rest was lost to you. Now, I feel, you have lost sight of the Ripper as you attempt to wrestle with our deepening relationship. You have yet to unite the two.'

'You talk about it like it's nothing. It isn't nothing. These are lives, and real people and...'

'And you're worried that by merging your thoughts about the Chesapeake Ripper and your feelings towards me, you'll lose them both.'

'It'll be different. You'll be different.'

'No, I'll be the same person I always have been. The memories you have of our time spent together will remain the same, the time we spend together in the future will remain the same. But you'll be looking through eyes that see the whole of me, rather than just what you have previously only wanted to see.' He paused, watching with his dark eyes piercing, for any sign of reaction from Graham. 'You'll see both the Ripper and myself in your memories.'

'The Ripper killed Miriam Lass and dangled her arm in front of Jack like a carrot for a donkey. That was the Ripper. You invited Jack over for dinner to express sympathy, discuss her case…'

'And if you merge the two memories, you'll realise I killed Agent Lass three years ago, froze her body, and then cooked her remains for Jack the evening I invited him over to discuss his missing agent,' Lecter said plainly, and Will's head rose quickly, then regretted it as pain shot through, and he met Hannibal's eyes.

'And you question why the FBI, and myself, struggle to believe you can be capable of murder, and cruelty, but not rape?'

'Death is beautiful, just as beautiful as life is. Yet, it is under-appreciated. Death is mystifying, and intriguing, and pure, despite the morbidity that surrounds it. I merely take death and create art from it. The same with the victims. In life, they were rude, obnoxious, vicious. In death, they become beautiful. They served in death that which they refused to serve in life. Death is natural, it isn't cruel.' His eyes remained level the whole time, he spoke without flinching, unafraid of his words. 'But rape, rape is cruel. Rape is power play. Rape is an act that allows those who are plagued with insecurity to feel better about themselves by forcing themselves and their weaknesses onto others. Yet, it fails, as they still remain weak, they have just damaged another in the process. It is ugly, unnatural, an act reminiscent of our ancestors' years of slavery and entitlement. That you cannot see the difference is surprising.'

'The FBI...'

'You aren't the FBI, Will. The FBI is Jack Crawford, to whom the World is clear cut and simple, and Alana Bloom, who knows of the complexities but can't bring herself to look at them. You are different. I was hoping you would see that.' He stood slowly, casting a glance to the window, the curtains still closed yet light still shining dimly through the thin material. 'I believe, Will, today it is my turn to walk the moors aimlessly. Should I not return, I'll grant you full visitation rights at the Baltimore Hospital.'

For you or me, Will wanted to ask, yet the doctor had already left the room.

He thought Will would understand. Not everything. Just the idea. Life was beautiful, everything about it. To live was to experience lights and airs and motions. It was to wake in the morning and feel the potential of the day ahead, enough to make your heart flutter. It was to savour every second, and every encounter, as each fanned the fire that burnt inside your chest. Life was beautiful.

But death was equally so. Just as life created, death created also. What it created, and inspired, was darker, true, but humanity needed such gloom. Just as man created God, and only seconds later created Satan, death's beauty served to illuminate life in a way otherwise impossible. And life turned death into art.

Hannibal had walked halfway across the fields, and he stopped suddenly before turning to face Will's house. He remembered Will once saying that he always felt safe looking upon it. Closing his eyes, Lecter tried to picture it, put himself in Will's position just as he'd tried so many to do with him. Night. Cold air. Mist swirling across the ground like cool breath. Across, the house lights remained on, a beacon as if to guide him home. Or maybe to warn him of oncoming danger. He didn't feel safe. He felt marooned.

Will had swallowed a couple aspirin, and was reaching for a glass of water when the phone rang, only heightening the pounding of his head.

'Hello?'

'Hi, Will.'

'Alana?' He felt himself frown as he spoke. 'Is this about the case? Does Jack have another body?'

'No, this isn't an FBI thing.' Her tone dropped, her previous openness replaced by a dull monotone.

He'd offended her by assuming she only wanted to call him about work. Or maybe that he only associated her with work. Will felt a sharp stab of guilt. 'Oh. Are you well?'

'I've been better.' She realised instantly after saying it that it was the wrong thing to say. Too much for so soon. 'That isn't why I phoned though, Will. I was glad we met yesterday, for however brief a time. I've missed...'

Will didn't want to hear the rest of her sentence. He wasn't sure how he'd cope. 'Yeah, me too.'

'I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner tonight. Nothing special. I could bring something round to yours, or you could come over? I'll cook, though I can't promise it will be impressive.'

'Yours is probably better.' He thought of Lecter, walking the fields outside. 'I've got a new stray. He doesn't take well to people.'

'How many does this one take you to now?'

'Eight. Eight altogether. And myself.'

'You aren't a stray, Will.' She smiled to herself as she spoke. 'You just haven't found anyone to whom you can belong yet.' Again, she silently cursed herself as she heard the silence on the phone and realised she'd made things too awkward. 'I'll see you later, then.'

'Yeah.' He nodded, before quickly adding, 'Thanks, for calling. If it had been left to me, we'd have been doing this in another year or something.'

It wasn't easy to admit, but he knew it would make her smile.

She smiled warmly as she opened the door to the ex-Agent that evening, one of the few, genuine smiles to cross her lips over the past few months. She noticed he'd tried dress up, a shirt, a sweater. He almost looked like his old self again, long before the Hobbs case.

'Please, Will.' She gestured inside, holding the door behind her. She felt too wooden, too formal, like she was hosting a grand dinner party rather than merely dinner for a friend.

'I forgot how nice your house was.' He stepped in awkwardly, a bottle in his hand. At her glance, he held it up sheepishly. 'I brought a bottle of wine, got halfway here and remembered that you drink beer. As gifts go, it's pretty awful, but know the thought was there.'

She chuckled. 'You're lucky I have beer in the fridge then. The wine is all yours.'

She was grateful for his mistake, in a way. It seemed to have lightened the tone, reminded them both who the other was. Will Graham, awkward ex-Special Agent, complete with a strange enthusiasm for fishing and the inability to turn a stray from his door. Alana Bloom, psychiatrist, who never quite grew sophisticated enough to put down the beer in exchange for wine, despite the rest of her femininity.

She'd set the mood just right, Will felt. Informal, yet just a slight hint of dress, in case the night went disastrously wrong so they could both pass it off as a work meeting. She looked just right, also, he couldn't help but notice. She'd dug out some of her old clothes, brightly coloured, a change from the dull tones he'd seen her in for the previous few months. She was still pale, her eyes still dark, but the genuine happiness she seemed to have around him almost hid the ill effects the FBI had had on her.

'Do you want beer, Will? Or will you be sticking with your wine?' She called from the kitchen, as she opened a bottle for herself.

'I'll stick with the wine, I think. It might be easier on my head.'

'You were drinking last night then, I guess?' She came back into the dining room from the kitchen, holding an empty glass for her guest and his plate of food. She placed them both in front of him before returning to fetch her own.

'Yeah. Rather a lot, I'm afraid.' He examined the food while she was out the room. He made no comment on the absence of meat in the dish. 'I don't think my liver or my head will be pleased in the morning if I drink too much tonight.'

'Is that what you've been doing these past few months? Drinking?' She said it with a playful smile as she sat down opposite him, but Will knew she was asking more seriously than she was letting on. They were silent while they both ate, merely exchanging glances every so often as if in a bid to entice the other to conversation. Eventually, Alana put down her cutlery and leant forward slightly, arms resting on the table. 'What have you been doing, Will?'

'Nothing, really. With just me and the dogs, I've been able to get by without finding other work.' He couldn't really say how he'd occupied his time. He couldn't remember. Not before Hannibal. 'I took fishing up again recently. I have been drinking more, but that's all really. You're still working at the academy though, right?'

'Yes. I took on some of your classes when you left. Not many, just enough to ensure they didn't need to employ anyone else. Jack also asked me to consult on a few of his cases. He was looking for someone to do what you did; he thought I'd be next best, having worked with you, and being a specialist myself. He was disappointed. I could do the looking. I could do the thinking. But, I couldn't do the two together. I couldn't be you. As hard as I tried, I couldn't see past the sad photos of the victims to see what the killer saw in them alive. I couldn't piece the thinking together the way you used to, Will.' She took a sip of beer while toying with her leftover food with her fork. She was trying to find words, Will knew the look. 'Sometimes, I feel I shouldn't even be at the academy anymore. Never mind working on the cases.'

'You're a talented professor, Alana, and the FBI need you. They've been relying on your profiles for months, you deserve your place there as much as anyone.' Will looked up, making brief eye contact with her, before she looked away quickly. 'If you're worried about becoming me, you don't need to. Only I could make myself fall so far so quickly. Jack didn't push me, he won't push you.'

'He's been pushing already.' She sighed. 'But that's not what I meant, Will. How can you say all those things about me when I've been so ignorant? I knew him years; he was my mentor, and a colleague. Not to mention someone I thought of as a friend. How could I not see through him? And how can I try catch a killer I've never met, when I couldn't see Hannibal right in front of me? How can I honestly sit in front of a lecture theatre and teach psychiatry, when I couldn't diagnose him?' She dabbed under her eyes with her fingers, the beginnings of tears glistening in her eyes. 'Ah shit. I thought I did all this months ago. God, I'm so sorry, Will, I doubt this was the sort of evening you were entirely hoping for.'

'Hannibal is different. You could never have seen it. No-one did. He wasn't crazy. He had no motive. He wasn't a loner, or a drifter. No-one could have seen that. Sometimes I think I still don't. He's not a psychopath.'

'He's a monster.'

'He's an artist.' He couldn't help but remember his conversation with Hannibal that morning, and a grim smile through gritted teeth crossed his face. 'The Chesapeake Ripper was a painter, a sculptor. He just worked with death and grief as his materials, rather than canvas and oil. Every death was made to work as a spectacle, something to be in awe at, whether in disgust or shock or pleasure.'

'I'm not sure Jack will be glad to hear that.' Alana shook her head, pressing her hand to her mouth as if trying to force herself to absorb the information without preventing further emotion to escape. 'You sound like you understand him better now. But, you could never empathise with him while you worked on the case.'

'No. I could never understand the lack of motive, the change in technique. But with nothing else to think about, I suppose I eventually got into his head somehow.' He let me in. He couldn't ever say that, he finally felt that Alana was seeing him through eyes not distorted by his own instability. 'How is Jack? I haven't seen or heard from him since I left the bureau.'

'He's been struggling. I rarely see him, only if there's a new case. He didn't need the Ripper case when it happened.' At Will's confused face, she frowned. 'Did you not hear about his wife? Bella?'

'Nothing.'

'She died a few months ago. Lung cancer. I thought someone would have told you. Jack was already having problems. Her death tipped him over. He's refusing to see anyone, though.' Will went to apologise, express some sympathy for the absent FBI boss, but the words caught in his throat, swallowed by the silence. The quiet continued while they both took a drink, both trying to work out what next to say. Alana spoke first, breaking the momentary silence. 'Are you stable, Will? Do you feel stable?'

'I thought I did. Or, I was. I don't know anymore.'

'I don't. All the times I tried talking to you about how you felt, I thought I could understand it because I read it somewhere, and I'd studied it, and I'd questioned people, I knew nothing. I thought I could study the mind without really knowing my own. And now I know it too well.' He wanted to respond, he wanted to say something that could comfort her, yet nothing came to him. Instead, he just watched as more tears began to slip down her face, betraying her usual, solid demeanour. 'At night, I see Abigail Hobbs, as she was alive. Talking. Smiling. She's the innocent girl you saved, and I treated. And then I wake, and all I remember that she wasn't innocent. She helped her father just as everyone suspected all along. And I remember that she's dead, and all I can see are her glassy eyes staring at me, and her throat bloody. How was her death art, Will? Hannibal claimed to care for her, and he cut her up like any other of his victims. Where was the art there?'

'He did care for her; he just…had to kill her. The art wasn't in her death, but in what her death would have meant ultimately. Her death was going to be the defining piece in his plan to frame…'

'Frame you,' she whispered, standing up and walking away from the table, hiding her distraught face from Will. 'And everyone would have believed it too. No-one would have questioned why you'd have done it.'

'That's not your fault.'

'I CAN FEEL HER BLOOD ON MY HANDS, WILL.' Alana spun round suddenly, her voice almost at a scream, as if she thought she could chase the feeling away. She frowned once more, trying to get herself under control. When she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper. 'Her blood is all over my hands. It drips wherever I go, leaving this bloody trail that can always be traced back to me, for everyone to see. I can feel all their blood, every single victim that Dr Lecter took that I didn't see. Every Ripper victim. Every copycat victim. Any blood he's spilt has ended up on my hands. Because I didn't see it. I didn't see the murder, the manipulation.'

Will stood too, taking slow steps towards her. 'Alana…'

'How many people do you think he cut up and cooked, Will? How many people did he feed us? Every meal? Because that's a lot. That's more than I can stomach, Will.' She was openly sobbing by now, mascara running down her face like inky tears. 'It took me weeks before I could bear to look at food again. Real food, anyway. Jack still can't. Do you think he knows what he's done to us? Wouldn't you just like to see him again, just to show him the mess he's created? The chaos he left in his 'artistic' wake?'

'No.' He shook his head slowly. 'No, I wouldn't. I know if Lecter showed up again, it isn't this that he'd see. You'd want to show him, you'd desperately want to show him everything he's done, but you couldn't. Because you're not angry at him, you're angry at the Chesapeake Ripper. The copycat killer. Two invented personas. Neither of them truly real in your mind, just fairytale villains. And hard as you try, you could never fully transfer your anger at them to Hannibal. Because he is real. Because when you saw him, you'd see more than the mythical Ripper. You'd see everything you thought he was too. And you'd see reasons he might be who he has become. And he'd disarm you all over again.'

'You aren't angry at him?' She looked up, staring directly at the agent, stood only a few steps away from her.

'I'm furious. I'm also disappointed, and disgusted, and sad, but I can't quite bring myself to feel everything against Hannibal.'

'You know, Freddie Lounds christened you the 'Groom of Frankenstein' during the investigation, when it came to yours and Hannibal's relationship. Did you see that?'

'No, I tried to avoid any piece of Tattle gossip, whether the actual paper or the website, as best I could. I didn't think Freddie Lounds would be very good for me. It seems not.'

'She was the only person who came out of Lecter's house still moral. He couldn't pull his trick on her. She made sure that was in every article she ever wrote.'

'She was wrong.' He remembered Hannibal remarking on it a week or so ago, and the memory caused a sly smile to pass across Will's lips. 'I think I read in one of Lecter's journals that her salad dressing wasn't entirely vegetarian.'

Alana let herself laugh at that, though her cheeks were still damp with the remnants of her tears. The laugh felt bitter, hollow, but it was more than she'd felt in a while. 'If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be laughing at the thought of Freddie Lounds eating human remains, I don't know what I'd have said.'

'If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be stood here with you, when you'd struggled to even be alone in a room with me before, I don't know what I'd have said.'

'I've missed you, Will. I don't think how much I really realised it until yesterday, but I've missed you. You seemed to make the FBI more human. You seem to make everything more human. Even me.' She stepped closer to him, close enough to rest her hand against his face, feeling the brush of stubble beneath her fingertips. 'Especially me, Will.'

She leant up, and kissed him softly on the lips. Barely anything, but enough for each of them to feel the other. Then, slowly, he began to kiss her back. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her the remainder of the distance between them until they were pressed together, and her hands were getting tangled in his hair. The kiss didn't feel like before. Will didn't feel unequal to her, he felt stable. Solid. She wasn't kissing her subject this time. She was kissing him.

She broke it off first, yet remained against his chest, her words barely audible even in the silence. 'You could stay, Will. You could stay here tonight.'

He wanted to nod, to say yes. He wanted to stay with her, his lips to hers, for as long as he possibly could. Yet some part of him couldn't shake the image of Hannibal, his dark eyes pained, the feeling of his arm wrapped tightly around Will's waist only the night before, and the way that had made his heart pound. 'I can't. I'm sorry, but I need to go. The dogs…'

He cursed himself for the whole drive home, as he remembered Alana's crestfallen face as she closed the door behind him when he left, and he felt the cold hit his cheek where her warm hand had been only moments ago.

Hannibal was sat in Will's chair, facing the door, when Will finally walked in. The room was dark, with just enough light coming through the windows to illuminate the doctor's high cheekbones and dark eyes.

'You kissed Alana Bloom, Will,' he said slowly, only moments after Will had closed the door. 'I can smell her on you. Too strong for a simple embrace, not strong enough for any other form of act. Nor do you smell of sweat, either hers or your own. Why did you not stay the night?'

'I don't need to explain myself to you,' he snapped, frustrated more at himself than anyone, though Lecter was not helping his mood. 'I'm going to sleep in here tonight. You can take the bed.'

'You don't want to sleep alone knowing you could have had the warmth of Alana Bloom beside you.'

'I just want to sleep in here.' He was too tired for psychology, or philosophy, or whatever Lecter was saying. He was too empty to care.

'Very well, Will. Have a pleasant sleep.'

Freddie Lounds was sat late in her office when the phone rang. Ordinarily, she could have got one of the lesser reporters to answer it for her. They knew better than to question her. She smiled to herself smugly, they knew better than to question the lead reporter for The Tattler. She didn't miss the old life. The moving around for a good story, the constant need to shock in order to get ratings. Of course, TattleCrime had been fun. She was never censored; she could print what she wanted, when she wanted to. But, it was hardly journalism. Not as she doing now. And she had the Chesapeake Ripper to thank for it all.

The phone was still ringing. She stood, stretching her legs after being sat at her desk for the past three hours. She ran a hand through her hair as she picked up the receiver.

'Hello. Ms Freddie Lounds at The Tattler speaking.'

No response. She could hear something on the other end. Heavy breathing. Prank call.

'Hello?'

'Ms Lounds?' A gruff voice, most likely faked. Definitely male.

'Yes, speaking.'

'Good evening, Ms Lounds.' He continued in the low voice, yet there was some edge of charm to it. She felt like he was watching her over the phone. 'I trust you're having a pleasant evening, Ms Lounds. I'm about to improve it for you. I would like you to fetch a pen and paper and write down the address I am about to give you. After I have given it to you, I want you to leave the building immediately and drive straight to the said address. Do not delay in the slightest. Now, this could be a hoax call. You may not believe me. All I can say is that I am an avid fan of your work, Ms Lounds, and I want to help you out in any way I possibly can. So, I'm about to give you a story, Ms Lounds, and you will not want to miss it for the World.'