He went over sand and splinter strands.

On bare feet he crossed the wide plain. The sun had already left him for hours, hiding behind mountains, coloring the horizon with a border of gold. He walked and walked without knowing where to go, felt sharply drawn grains on the soft skin of his feet, painting rivulets of blood behind him. His gaze was empty and his ears were deaf. The land was barren and rough like a single, choked out rock. Even the wind seemed poor in strength, blowing miserable through his ebony curls. His arms hung to his sides like metal, his eyes looked forward. In this state, Will fulfilled his way, went on a route he did not know. He was not able to remember where he had started and what was waiting at the finish line of this beginning. There was no aim for him anyway. The blood woven into the hard ground deposited in the drought, hovered in the cemented sky, broke a gurgling groan. Will did not care. He had to move forward.

Where are you going?
I ... I don't know.
Did you know it earlier?
Maybe ...

Will raised his head when he heard the familiar / strange clacking of hooves, operating near his continuous fornication. He peered out and found what he actually did not want to find. He stopped unsteadily.
The deer being, caught in a human skeleton stared at him with its emotionless, crystalline eye sockets. The bony shoulders reminded him of pointed hats fictional magicians kept wearing, the rib cage lifted tight and leathery from the parchment-like skin. Will watched as the creature breathed and the bones of the narrow chest rolled up and down. The monster was naked and dark and its limp cock hung like a dead oak leaf between his legs. Will did not like to admit that he also paid attention to this, but in fact, he did. He took all in what his feared sight had to offer, each intercellular detail bored into his corona and he knew he would never forget any of them.
First, the figure stood idly while copying his own staring with unbelievable indifference. Then, after a time that could not be measured here in this weird dimension, the nature went towards his direction. Slow, sluggish, but patiently it led its steps. And the sounds that caused its hoofed feet were swallowed by the sand with zealous hunger.
Will did not move from the spot, could not, it was as if his legs would fail to work, refuse to obey him. He could only stare, stare, stare, stare at this creature, this outgrowth, this gods curse. And just now he was the one it had chosen as its next victim. Him. Again and again. Why always him? Why not anyone else? Showed his empathy no limits? Did it even give shelter to mythological monstrosities? Will was instinctively aware of the ancient culture this creature had been taken from. Behind the antlers stuck a story, but he suspected that digging deeper would only bring more misery. He should not have to deal with situations which brought him closer to the origin and nature of the beast ... in the worst case, they would get used to each other and strive after closeness on own initiative. Will shuddered at the thought.
The deer man had arrived in front of him. They faced each other in silence. Filled with shared emptiness. Will soon noticed how his breathing rhythm involuntarily adapted to the beast's and he hated it, hated himself that he could not control it. His lips trembled, his fists clenched and his guts rumbled.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, his iris soaking in useless rage, as he sometimes drowned his throat in whiskey before going to bed. "Why don't you just leave me alone? What have I done to you to deserve this?" His voice sounded harsh and shrill in his ears at the same time. Two huge pendula rubbing at each other and starting to crumble at the edges. He wanted to scream, but his lungs did not allow this action. Thus unfolded an almost gentle, pitched tone to the essence that looked almost thoughtfully at him now. It tilted his head to the side, unleashed a crack, which would have hardly surpassed the breaking of a branch, and wandered with its white eyes over Will, head to toe. Except for boxer shorts and a worn-out, greyish shirt he wore nothing that could have protected him from intense scrutiny. Movement and escape were no options, so he let it go through. Every second felt like thousand tiny, red-hot needles poked under his skin, pierced the bonds of his muscles and the shell of his core. It was inexplicable to him, how a single, pupil-less look of this dark companion could give him such displeasure. Was it not like being touched by a blind man? (Then why should he be so scared?)

... No.
It wasn't.

A blind man could see nothing. For Will, however, it was like the creature saw everything, just because it should not see. Maybe this was what scared Will the most here. He avoided eye contact with good reason. He saw too much, he saw too little. He looked, and it was enough to bring his nerve to bite. But when he looked into the hungry skull holes of this existence, he saw in anyone's face - he saw his blurred deception, a hilly area of sooty mirror glass and was unable to allocate.
Whom would he recognize there when he washed the dirt from his sight? A friend? A lover? An enemy? Himself?
What if he regained his full memory? Did he really wanted everything back? Fill the gaps? His concern was still great, so why bother? He had a man who loved him, friends who cared about him, a work in which he promised murder victims higher justice by helping to catch their perpetrators.
Why? Why would he want to go back? Only for one person's sake? Or was there more he didn't know of…

Maybe he was better without those memories. Maybe there was something bad, something terribly ugly, and his mind had decided to leave damaged parts like these hidden.

Maybe.

But if this were true, why was this skinny creature here? Why did it haunt him, stood facing him, stretched out its claws and straddled his chest, pressed flat and light on the lukewarm meat plate under the chemically forfeited layer of fabric, right where his heart exercised its rapid beat rhythm. The touch was carefully rehearsing and so unspeakably/ indispensably cold that Will began to shiver and his pulse stopped for a reckless moment. His lips notched a fine line in his chin. Had he expected that it would feel like this? Had he already felt this kind of cold before?

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. YES.

Noye. Yes and no.

I don't know!
You don't want to know!

"What - Who are you?" Will asked softly. "What do you need from me? What shall I give you?"

The creature did not move, nor it opened its thin mouth to an answer. (Whether it was able to speak at all?) Its touch remained, weighed like sclerosing honey on his skin. Will waited, breathing and alive, observing. There was an almost peaceful atmosphere, although the fear lasted about it, spread like a moth-eaten bridal veil.

He felt as wet streaks ran down his cheeks.
It took some time before he realized he was crying.

He was not sad, overall he felt very little. It took a little longer to realize that he had begun to empathyze with the creature and that its grief was reflected as his own. He looked up to a face that could have been carved in ebony or resin. A face without expression, without joy, without meaning.

This creature was like one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals. One could feed it, keep it warm, but no one would have put it on machines. A beast, a ghost, an agony raised to die. But it didn't die and that was the true shame of it all. And nobody could ever tell what it was.

It was a dreary imitation of being. A blink of an eye in the universe's context.

Will was still crying and forgot to be ashamed of it. It was a silent weeping, a shedding of dispassionate tears. Something Peinvolles glowed in the hollow coffin that had been stitched inside skin and horn. Something vulgar. An abnormality of grief. Will found no necessity to be sad, no pity, no tender feeling. However, he did not stop crying.

The sky above them darkened in fluid balance. The cloud carpet cracked, broke up and let rich rain drops of blood flow across the plain. The drops hung like chewy magma in Will's hair, clung to his temples, his forehead. It was a world-border contrast to the icy fingers of the antlers man and the profiler felt ambivalent, defenseless and totally out of place ...

At this moment, the hand of the beast fell without resistance into his chest and reached for the swelling organ beneath several layers of skin and bones. Will did not even gasp. Something told him what happened and that the cold worked within his body, clutching around organs and flesh, but he did not really feel it. His perception was inserted in cotton wool, dull and crude. He knew that the hand of the creature moved into his flesh, he knew that its spider fingers closed around something specific, fairly big and precious. He knew that the smacking meant a tearing inside him and that something was happening. That something was taken away.

He pushed down his eyelids, counted to five in spirit. When he flipped them open again, the beast held his heart in its claw, blood bathed and brilliantly shining red. Rain watered the frenzied cycle in which it steadily beated in the rosy Chrysalis. Will stared at it.

This ... is mine. it echoed in his brain, beat against the walls of his skull, generating waves of monotone agony.

He breathed. His lungs fanned up and curled back. There was no pain, no pain.

This is mine!

And Will, who had just been stripped of his license to live, saw the thief with the mocking antler crown, opened his mouth and screamed and cried and mated with the sobbing wail of the damned.

With a choppy panting ar seven o'clock in the morning, Will Graham woke up from his shattered sleep.

The first thing his tormented, slimy sticky / clogged sense strands detected on was the ringing. A horrible ringing, a terrible ringing, a monstrous, perverse, a bleeding ringing. It came from the left side, trembling, gasping on the bedside table. Will focused only on his breathing, tried to not forget, not to prevent, not to unlearn. In. Out. In. Out. Frederick lay beside him, softly snoring. He slept soundly. Wills shirt was drenched in sweat and his eyes blinked wet. Dully he sat up, leaned forward and reached for the phone. His fingers slipped off from the plastic as if they had been rubbed with butter milk. He needed two attempts to take the desired object from its holder and finally bring it to his ear.
"Will?" it cried into his ear like a demon bell. He fell back, leaning precariously on his elbows. The skin he wore suddenly felt too huge for him, too hot and washed out. He wished he could pull it off his shoulders but he could not, was not able to. It was the only one that suited him initially.
Jack calling him could only mean one thing. A new murder. I smell death in the line.
"I'm here." he replied weakly, sprightly, like an old man. And maybe it was not quite as wrong as it might have been in common parlance. His inner and outer age had increasingly moved with time and extended into opposite directions. He had seen too much of what others should not see and had lived too many lives that had not been his.
He was an acrobat on varying platforms and each time he took a step forward, he expected to plunge into the choking blackness under his feet.

"We have a fresh corpse." it answered him out of the apparatus.

Silence followed. Will's breath swept through the air. A salt-clad bead of sweat flowed over his neck.
Then.
"I'm sorry, but you should really take a look at this. It's urgent."

Will sighed quietly. Every muscle under his skin twitched like a cat when its fur drowned in rain, proven discomfort glinting in its eyes.

Two days whispered it devilishly cold in his skull. You bastard wanted to leave me alone. I have two days left and now? A week later and your trained bloodhound must arrive at the bomb field again and dig for some fresh bones. What would you do without me?

The dreams had returned three days ago. He had not even been near a crime scene, but Jack had had to send him photos. Photos and descriptions had been enough to pry open the gap into hell again. Today would make this even worse.
Like a hornet's sting, Dr. Lecter's voice flashed into his mind, penetrating and stabbing his nerve endings with bliss.

"You could stop."

Yes, what would you do without me, Jack?

But these considerations were washed away quickly. He knew his position, his task. His raison d'être.

"Where?" he just asked. Jack gave him a State, a distance about two hours from Baltimore away and that a helicopter waited at the police headquarter and would bring him to this the crime scene instantly. The profiler hung up without saying goodbye. The handset banged hard like cracking thunder into the holder. In the next second, Will cursed quietly. He thought that Frederick would awake now, winking at him sleepily and muttering angrily about his fucking disorder.
Nothing like that happened. Frederick slept like a stone. Although Will guessed that the helicopter was waiting for him and any unnecessary minute he wasted would cost him something, but he took his time to study Frederick's completely relaxed face. The crow's feet around his eyes had stretched out smooth and invisible over his pale skin. A beard shadow surrounded his jaw and thin lips, that blew rumbling air out of a narrow gap. His arms wrapped around his torso unconsciously, the back had a gentle curve inwards, which made Will think vaguely of his dogs, curled peacefully dozing on the lower floor in the living room. He held out his hand, stopped a few moments in nervous suspense before he weighed it on the back of Frederick's head and ruffled his hair. Without the gel, the psychatrist used more frequently than Will would have liked to, feel the dark tuft of soft, wiry hair. He loved that. It was a small change to his own outrageous curls. The sleeper did not move, gave no sign as to whether he noticed the contact or not.

Frederick looked old and worn out, even in twilight. Older than usual, careworn, but that did no harm to Will's affection for this man. He knew only too well that Frederick Chilton could definitely behave more youthful than he always seemed to be. Often enough he surprised him with his frenzied outbursts, this pure, unprecedented emotions he put on daily. The arrogant, pushy, conniving layer, he buttoned upon his suit each morning was just a mask, one of many Will had met within these months. Not everything that glittered consisted of gold, but Frederick had let the profiler dig a bit deeper so that he could find some gems. Maybe he had found even more in the past. Although his memory was splintered when he wanted to remind their first meeting or date or recall their impending antipathy, then sympathy or the foundations of their burgeoning relationship… he simply blamed it on the aftermath of the car accident and hoped those images would clarify in the near future and paint him truth.
Until then, he would do exactly what he did for more than a week now - living with this man and give him what he'd otherwise never given to another person. Himself.

And he prayed that the psychiatrist did not intend to waste him for pure joy.

He got out of bed and dressed as quietly as possible. A kiss on Frederick's cheek was all he could offer him at this early hour without depriving him from his punctured salvation. Then he went downstairs, gathered up his car keys and slipped into winter-proof boots and a thick jacket. He scribbled a quick note on a little slip of paper. (I'm sorry. stood there in waey letters among other things. Will harbored the increasing need to apologize, which he even noticed himself and wondered. However, he was never able to shut it down. Maybe it would vary in time.) and fixed it after some hesitation at the coffee machine, an object of which he knew without doubt that his fiance visited it shortly after waking up.

Then, he had to hurry up.

The flies had already started to lie their eggs when Will visited the crime scene. But it was still too early for the insects to grow into maggots and to feed on rotting flesh – the corpse was just a few days old.

The profiler trudged with Jack at his side through the muddy morass yesterday's downpour had left over several states. There was a smacking, greedy noise when he put his shoe soles on the treacherous ground and with every step he felt a little, claustrophobic sinking when he paused and stood too long in the same place.
The murder scene was generously fenced with neon yellow tape, trying to put the passers-by outside. But it could not stop the curious crowds to stand behind the barrier, gossiping and freezing in their fur-lined clothing and curiously stretching their necks like giraffes.
Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather it roared in Will's thoughts and he admitted that the quote was aptly chosen. But could he really blame them? Death fascinated everyone somehow and nobody was ashamed , no one wanted to taboo this subject. Well, even the Old Testament of the Bible was defiled and stained on multiple pages with murder. It was morbid, dramatic, yes, but not illegal to take a look and talk, to hide and bask in disgust and adversity, provoking such scenes in almost all populations.

It was almost human.

Will licked his lips, tasted polynuclear frost dust on his tongue. The wind was harsh, carving invisible knives scraping against his cheekbones, numb and cold as prison chains. Except for the fluffy blanket of snow and the silent cobalt sky this place could have been the one in his gruesome nightmare. The striking resemblance brought him a stomach turning and it was as if the victim had not been unloaded and prepared here without reason. He found himself biting the inside of his right cheek, sipping with his tongue tip on bare flesh until Jack lightly touched his shoulder, involuntarily pulling him out of his half-finished trance to confront him with the bloody ceremonial spectacle in all its sharpness and salty odyssey of pain.

An inclined side glance to the earth was enough to suggest Jack some distance. He heard his stumping steps and how they went away, his heavy breath plowing the air while he inhaled. He caught a single, rambling thought of Bella, garnished with tingling fear of loss and regret to see her in pain and being powerless on the other hand. He'd like to offer commiserations and pronounce his sympathy… if he had been aware that some clever words would have given even an ounce of comfort to this man. He did not like lying to himself. He knew that only one message Jack Crawford could provide a wave of honest joy in his personal disaster - the news that Bella's cancer had miraculously found its end, that it had dried out and wrinkled like a sunburnt plant, thirsty for rain that had never dare to come.

But this was merely a figment of imagination, a wishful thinking, similar to how it might occur in some serial killers' heads from time to time.

I'll stop.

At some point I stop.

Only this one.

I just want one.

He will be my last.

Then it's over.

This time.

Never again.

Forever.

Gone.

Over.

One could have compared it with the dependence of a drug addict. They talked about it, said they'd have it under control, were able to stop instantly. Perhaps this was even possible, for a few weeks, months, half a year in which they were devoured by no more than memories, always unreal, always clumsy and battered while rushing through empty nights ... nothing was meant to last forever. Not even a self-initiated end.

Eventually it was stirring again anyway. The animal in man, the monster in the childish cosmos of evolution, scratching on the walls of its breathing and sore vessel with long nails, screaming in need, mouth wide open and spread like the ruby throat of a goldfinch and craving for fresh, for wet vats of bronzen blood. It was born out of greed and would never get enough. It was doomed to indulge in a never cooling hunger. Neither God nor Lucifer would have been able to change that.

Will had encountered this animal in man for countless times, slipped under the skin and carved with its fangs over the victims' flesh. He had shared the hunger and loneliness with it, the longing for fulfillment / redemption, the hubris of its actions that became their actions.
The murderer and he, he, and the murderer - where did the one began and the other stop?
Sometimes, they would blend into each other,mutate and merge into a single colossus of sin. Like a couple of inseparably entangled limbs at the climax of the sexual act, embracing each other and rubbing, bumping into and cry cry cry until either blood or semen or both covered their skin with sticky smears.

Will stood in front of the center of the murder scene, trying to keep a steady breathing rhythm. When he was sure that his heart was calm and strong, he closed his eyes and plunged into the sea of known blackness that had accompanied him all the previous times. He saw himself floating in the bottomless air as the golden pendulum swung behind his eyelids, watching how the corpse dissolved in various stages a few meters in front of him. He observed how peeled flesh was seamlessly drawn across the gleaming muscles again and torn fingernails and toenails were added to their rightful place, saw dim blood and scratches fading into the void. He looked at so much that he forgot to see, his eyes hurt he felt horrible and yet it was as a living opera house opened, greeting him as honored guest of the premiere. He was welcomed. Someone had awaited him for a long time.

He walked through the corridors of his blind, empathic perception, sensed an ordered chaos, the desire to kill, the dying swan in headless blood ballet. Locked doors, dead ends, there were no walls, just endless, cruel, barrier-free width. A deceptive prairie of thought.

Will sank into the darkness of another mind and was caught there like a moth in a dew glistening spider web, fought, suffocated. Gave freely and finally willing to be what / who he was.

A monster.
A monster with eleven fingers, hands, and eight thousand mouths. Kali in a man jacket.

Will opened his eyes.
He was no longer Will.
He was the murderer. He was Kali.

The air tastes dry and cold like sand dunes in October night.
My chest rises and falls in obscenely uneventful order. Day after day the same game, the borrowed heat under my skin a parody of the steady decline of my cells.

You're lying in front of me on the table, chained with straps on wrists and ankles. Your tears glow like dirty wax drops in your eyes, shovel bright streaks in your fatty degeneration of welding temples until they sag in your close-cropped dark hair and suck in. You're naked, pale as chalk and helpless as a newborn blindly crawling forward because it smells its mother. You are not blind, you're awake and staring at me with these yellow eyes. The rings of your iris are thin, swallowed by the darkness of your compressed pupils, dilated with panic. Your tolerably corrected harelip jitters along with your lips in rushing clock. Yes, I see the scars. They stand out phantom white, glued on the rosy color of your flesh. How often did you have to expose yourself to ridicule? How often did you have to suffer under the laughter of others? How often do you have to endure it today?
It does not matter, you've done your duty on earth. Today is the last day that you must be ashamed of your deformity. Today is the last day your voice will lisp.
I offer you salvation. A life for a life, isn't that fair?
I am a generous man.
My scalpel hovers over your warm skin, shapes here and there deeply with a sharp blade. Whining rises, as the first thick drops of red fall to the ground. Whine, scream, beg, curse as loud as you want, no one hears. We are alone, alone with God and his shadow that ensnares the world.
The cuts lie down and deep, stoke to patterns that I distribute on your chest. Small scratches, edges, straight lines and angles, symmetric pointed and craters. You are the soft sheet I hack my message in. Don't move, or you'll taint the word.
This is my gift to you. I'll create a new destiny, make you better than you are and will ever be. I release you from the monotony of your existence, the suffering you caused other people by your mere presence.
Be grateful.
I am your Messiah. Worship me.
I will remove your eyelids so that you remain vigilant. Pull the skin of your feet and arms, tear your nails from the sore, rosy flesh. Your sounds reverberate unabated in the room. I cut off your tongue.
Better. Must be careful that you don't choke on your own blood. Suck. Rusty tears on my hands. I wipe them off on your shoulders.
Another cut, very long, very deep. Chattering like a zipper when I split your skin. A hole in your chest. Your heart in my hand. It is pounding and pounding and pounding.
Not mine, but mine become.
(I want it back, have it again)
It stops. You still shrug. Reflexively. Your breath stuttering, spitting, a gurgle.
The voice of your blood.

Then silence.
The silence of the dead.

... I'm cold.
I miss the warmth of my mate.

When Will finally got out of his trance, the hand of his watch had moved shortly after twelve o'clock. Neither the mutinous crowd of spectators nor the BAU team had gone. Will exhaled sharply. His boot soles sunk in sludge and frosty earth. 14 minutes had elapsed, during which he had not done anything (for passersby) than to stand in place and obstruct the already limited view of the disfigured corpse. No one knew that he had reconstructed a murder in his mind and it did not interest anyone except the wanted list of the FBI. Trembling slightly, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The old migraine climbed nimbly up behind his cranial cavity, almost mischievously tapping against his bones. The lines of an old song soared in Will's corresponding thoughts.

Hellodarkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping

His migraine knocked briskly to the clock. His temples were its drum. He raised his head, looked at the victim one last time. They had impaled him on a torture stake, as Vlad the Impaler had massively used it during his ruthless domination. The wood drilled directly through the point at which would have been the dead heart otherwise. But it was not there. Just as the eyelids, which should cover the yellow eyes, but they appeared naked and cloudy. Will knew why. For a moment he had been there. The victim was a man with dark, thinning hair and had neither clothes nor any grace left. It had been taken away from him. His dignity, pride, compassion ... and then… his life.

Will watched as the silhouette of the antlers being from his dreams stepped to his side and stared at the work with a unique curiosity. The profiler shivered. He pressed his jacket tighter against his body and waited for Jack to approach him, asking about his progress. Then he could get out of here.
He felt very miserable.

And thevision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

"Will, look into my eyes. Please."

Will focused on the seams of his beige-colored jeans. He did not dare to meet the older man's gaze.

"Why?" he asked grudgingly, reminded himself of a petulant child who crouched in front of the closed rectorate and regretted his tone. His voice pulled himself dull and narrow-minded through the atmosphere. A tingle stabbed in the inner tunnel of his larynx. Only with coarse effort he suppressed a sore yawn.

A few meters towards him leaning Dr. Lecter on his chair, tapping the index finger of his right hand periodically on his knee. He looked completely in balance with himself and his environment, the body tension held minimal stress or pain. Will did not need to take a direct look at this man in order to know this. He felt it, sensed the microbial changes in the seething air. The images of past days, the nightmares involving the murder of Dolarhyde, tingled like drooling pitch over his shoulder blades, each time when his lids fell over his eyeballs and the darkness built itself in bloody concoction of bone wax and networks of muscle fibers. He did not believe for a single second that he could conceal his current sleep deprivation from the psychiatrist. For this, the beleaguered shadow in the hatch of his eyes was too deep and the sporadic view at the carpet beneath his feet too twisted and idle.

"I want you to look at me directly while I talk to you."

Will shook his head in afflicting reflex. Slow, very slow motion, one to the left, then right. Expertly. Exhaustion bit in his synapses, as well as in the pitcher of his clumsy manners.

„I can't." he said. "Eyes are deceiving. You see too much, you don't see enough. It's an exhaustive circle."

Dr. Lecter bowed his head gently. Even reverently, although this term did not play a special role in Will's vocabulary anymore. Within a few days and three sessions, his heart had rigorously recognized that every move, every twitch and every tongue licked word that emanated from this man possessed a personal, dominant devotion. An elegance and grace that one might not expect from a masculine specimen of the genus homo sapiens otherwise. Explanations seemed not explicitly needed here, and he was, however, too tired to afford the far-reaching speculations for them, but the aura of the psychiatrist, it was ... unlike anything he had experienced before in exchange of social attraction and disappointments. When Will entered the practice, a blanket of dark forebodings was hovering above him, folded into the optical spectra of the blue-violet evening. When the psychiatrist held out his hand for an innocent shak then, though it was clear that his patient was not fond of closer physical contact, Will sometimes got lost in the bloody brown of this silently rushing iris. And even if Will never took the proffered hand, it seemed always to him as if this man was touching him anyway. With eyes that flowed over him like water, words that slid similar to silk from his thin-lipped mouth, with gestures that he performed only to make Will give him a pleasing smile or a cooperative reaction at least.
Will's empathy neither stopped at crime scenes, nor it started there. It was a part of him and accompanied him everywhere working unintentionally, played and extended his sensations, uncorked his sensitive feeling and left it without breath and heartbeat.

"You seem to be exhausted anyway." murmured Lecter's voice in his ears. It reminded him of cold melting honey and it relieved the feverish dull, that ruled in his brain. A bit. "Do you dream much, Will?"

Will still had that much presence of mind to snort.

"More than I'd like to." he said dryly. And in the last few days he hadn't meant anything more honest than this one sentence.

"Tell me about them."

Of course, this question had to come. Will squinted carefully, leaned back deeper in his chair.

"I dream of how I commit the murder. And of… someone who watches me while doing it." he said haltingly.

"Who would this be?"

Will took his time with the answer.

"A strange root od my own gloomy fantasy." he replied hesitantly."I - well, its appearance is hard to describe. It's tall and thin, so thin that its skin stretches over the bare rib cage like film. It's nude and black from head to toe, has hooves and claws. Its eyes have neither pupil nor iris and huge antlers protrude from its head like a crown and ..." He paused. His index finger painted dimpled circles in the leather upholstery of his seat. "I think it has no heart."

Although he did not look at Dr. Lecter, he knew that the other man carefully tilted his head to the left.

"Why?"

"He wanted mine" Will replied simply, shrugged a shoulder. "In a dream he tore it from my chest."

"Why do you now refer to a masculine gender instead of neutral one?"

"It's a male creature." Will himself did not know why he had changed the sex. He knew, however, that this was a step in the wrong direction - seeing the monster as a person, equipped with individually identifying characteristics, behavior and genitals – all of this would make it all the more difficult to banish the beast from his thoughts. "And he seems to be fixed on me in some way. That's all I know for sure. I'm not aware of his true intentions ."

Dr. Lecter tapped thoughtfully against his chin. He considered possibilities.

"Hm ... I think I've already encountered a similar nature in the depths of my library." he then announced slowly. "Wait a minute." He got up from his chair and used the ladder to reach his specialized collection upstairs. Will's gaze followed unobtrusively his strong, imposing figure. Today, the expensive fabric of his fine clothes seemed to wrap sinfully tight around the body. He recognized the scent of an aftershave in the air, one he had also perceived in recent sessions. He had already begun to unconsciously associate it with Hannibal Lecter's pure state of being.

He rose from his chair, fought with the dizziness that threatened to attack his attitude. He hoped the sleep deprivation would not let him doze off on the highway or collapse on the sidewalk.

„The victim wore a sign on his chest." he said disjointed, loud and clear in order to focus his thoughts on clearer circumstances and force himself to remain receptive, so that his own condition would not betray him. He fumbled in his pocket while Dr. Lecter busily plowed through the shelves above. He pulled out one of the photos that had been taken of the crime scene. He looked at it a lot before he spoke again. The flesh painting still sent him a shiver down his spine. "Brian said, it's a Nordic rune. Anything to say about this?"

"I should have a book about ancient Germanic roots and writing somewhere." it rang unimpressed from the counter above. Will heard the characteristic sound of heavy books being pushed back, the fluttering noise of trembling pages. The music of quiet word and printed ink. "Here, catch this."

Will had almost dropped the book, which flew out of the blue. He owed it to his natural reflexes that he caught it. He tucked accidentally a corner of the paper that he immediately sought to smooth over again immediately. He didn't want to be rude and damage things of other people.

"You're interested in almost everything, eh?" he asked, half-serious, half-jokingly. He studied the psychiatrist while he climbed down the rungs and how the hem of his suit jacket pushed up a bit, revealing a clean white shirt underneath. A few ash-blond strands had jumped loose from the carefully combed-back hair and hung in his front, but it did not detract his professionally established elegance for one second. There was something about this sight that brought Will to quickly turn his eyes away, squinting. He did not know why, but it hurt. And what hurts, one does not like to repeat. Like a child that reached out for a candle flame and burned its fingers.

"It's always beneficial to broaden one's intellectual horizon. I'm not a supporter of stagnations." said the psychiatrist, entered beside him with a self-evident manner without really touching him. Will could feel the heat radiating from his opponent's body like his own. And suddenly, the imagery of a candle flame melting under his flesh seemed not as far away as before.

I miss the warmth of my mate.

He swallowed. Traces of subliminal mourning had shrouded the murderer like a prison cell. Who could this mate be? He had meant the world to the killer, worth enough to create such a bloody fiasco with the victim.

"Let me see - here, this could perhaps coincide with the signs." Hannibal looked at the book Will had opened aimlessly, skipped two chapters until he tapped on a page with an enlarged color illustration. "Mannaz. Based on the concepts of Moon, archetype of month, male, man, divine structure in each individual, blood brothers, intelligence, community and humanity. The meanings pile up."

"Like Japanese characters." judged Will. Gently he ran the tip of his index finger over the photo, meticulously avoiding to meet the fingers of the doctor by accident. "Kanji have several meanings, too."

„Not surprising. Each language is a bud, fed by the same parent root of past eras." Lecter looked at him closely. "Well, what deduces your mind by given these information?"

Will's mouth proceeded in a clumsy, edged curve.

"Seriously? Very little. Each meaning is irratating." he grumbled. "I ... he…we've put a lot of dedication to the rune. We wanted to cut the lines as accurate as possible, so it has to be important. Or we just like to be a pure perfectionist."

Dr. Lecter passed the we deliberately. Will was grateful to him for that.

"A ritual murder?" he said. Will thought about that.

„No." he decided. "I don't think that this murderer will kill in the same way ever again. The motive that prompted him was personally and therefore unique."

"How do you know that?"

"The attention in the details." Will closed the book and put it on Lecter's desk, leaned against it, his arms folded in front of his chest. "The clinical passion of his marks ,the controlled rage between. He has suffered and enjoyed. He has planned everything. He must have shadowed the victim for days."

Hannibal stared at him for a long time. For Will it felt as if the eyes of the doctor wanted to melt a hole in his skin.

"What has he made of him, Will?" The heavy accent held a certain expectation that confused Will a bit, for he would have expected this from Jack. Nevertheless, he was ready to follow the unspoken command.

"A portrait of his pain." he said. His nails dug deeper into the fabric of his lavender shirt. His nostrils flared gently as he inhaled deeply. "A masterpiece of his own purgatory."

At the same moment he realized what he had just said out loud, and how this might sound to other people. He lowered his eyes, his body followed with a stiff rigidity. Always the same. This fear, to do something wrong to or perverse. This fear of being labeled as crazy and sick. The whispers, the hissing, the looks. The disgust in them. The desire of abstinence. All these years he had felt them on his back, sticking to him like crowded worm traces. He hated this feeling and clenched a mental fist in malaise, and he damned his own uncertainty social interactions caused. He was excluded from normal society since his birth. He had grown up to host monsters with a human face and what they left him were the dreams that hid in their shade. He was plagued by their true nature, forced to put a splinter of compassion in his flesh, because he knew what excited them, what emotions they brought into this world. He called the murder practice a work of art because the murderer himself would call it a work of art. Clotted blood as his paint, the knife as his brush. Shattered bones building the framework. Will saw it all so terribly clear before him, that he was ashamed. He understood what others refused to understand for they called it inhumane. His mind being held by perversion and ecstasy and the rusty remnants of other people.

It was sad, somehow. But he did not know it differently and that made it even more sad for him. The knowledge to be alone, despite colleagues, friends and despite Frederick, was sad. hurt. It always hurt and the dagger's tip of aching certainty sharpened with each additional year he lived on this earth.
He could be surrounded by truckloads full of people and still feel lonely.

Lonely, lonely, lonely.

Outcast.

"Will?"

Will blinked. Like fresh dew a few tears fell from his lashes and shone on his cheeks. The sudden moisture on his heated front and self-loathing skin irritated him like a young wild that had heard a shot.

Dr. Lecter's voice, his presence itself was unbearable for him in this situation and when the doctor went slowly beside him, he tensed even more. Every hair, every twitching muscle, every ounce of his mind struggled in him, telling him to open the door, leaving into the cold of the balmy evening and into the dry, stale seclusion of his car.
He wondered whether Dr. Lecter would touch him, try to pacify him with physical contact and shared warmth of another wellspring of life.

He caught a movement from the left side, eyes narrowed in affect at the forthcoming to get over with quickly ... and waited. In vain.

"Will, please open your eyes. You don't need to fear anything from me."

Will hesitated, but then peeked through two ice-blue slots. The psychiatrist discreetly lent him a handkerchief. Will hesitated. Finally, he reached for it. His fingers shivered as if he had bathed in frost. Embarrassment and fear surged over him like Noah's flood. He behaved incredibly stupid, childish,like a teenager in his adolescent elegy.
„I'm sorry." he said, his voice low and rough. "I ... I don't know where this came from." He dabbed his tears. The salty mixture soaked greedily into the cottony fabric.

"I think you know it all too well." danced the melodic baritone in his ear, rubbed his angered soul, soothed it. "Don't be ashamed. You've been through a lot and sleep deprivation promotes your mental irritation. Never be afraid to reveal your feelings here, Will. You are safe with me."

Will looked up. Dr. Lecter remained with him, looked at him, calm and collected. The tide of an ocean.

He lacks the flood that waters his sand.

Two of the psychatrist's fingers sank mindfully into Will's shirt sleeve and drew his arms gently from their brutal anchorage before he spoke again. Later, the profiler would be grateful to him for that. He was not aware of it now, but under the fabric first blue bruises grew on his skin.

"You have seen through the eyes of a killer and discovered art. That's no shame. How terrifying is it for you to look into my eyes, then?"

Will managed a sad smile that rocked into a coma far too soon.

"It doesn't matter whether I look into your eyes or the murderer's. I always see too much." he assured. He breathed freer. Lecter raised an eyebrow.

"Take your pick. You may always be honest with me."

Will laughed quietly. It was strange to be so encouraged, when thereby no FBI agent or a psychological study sat in his neck. He had believed the efforts of the Doctor would make him shy. Instead ...

Will fell into the blood-stained mahogany and forgot to intentionally open the parachute. It poked a little, this direct visual contact. But it was not as uncomfortable as he had imagined. The eyes of the doctor were like iron filaments, they held him, cooled his skin and strangled his throat.

"I see death." he revealed and surprised himself how easily the truth ran from his lips when Lecter granted him permission to speak openly.

The older man gave him an impassive look. It impressed Will a little. He had expected indignation.

"Mine or yours?" asked the doctor, his voice burdened with real interest. Will bowed his head.

"None of both." he admitted. "I see death and fire. The death of a ... dragon."

"Dragons are associated with different values. Might. Willpower. Destruction. Rebirth. Freedom. What do you connect with these creatures?"

"Hiding. The need to curl. Or to unfold..."

He saw Lecter's hasty tongue strolling out and licking his lips. Their velvety luster mocked him.

"Do you think I'm a person who wants to hide from the outside world?"

"Not in this form, no. You're not a dragon."

"So what am I?"

One breath in silence.

"You tell me."

Abrupt calmness filled the room. Then- a low, dark, rough laugh.

"Will, who treats who?"

The profiler looked down. Oh dear.

„Sorry." He cleared his throat. "Seems like this is my limit, right?"

Dr. Lecter raised his hand as he would want to stop a march.

"No apologies, please. I challenged it." He advised the knot of his tie, fastened it tightly around his throat. "Some limits are irreconcilable. Others are meant to be broken after a certain amount of time."

Will snorted. A spark of curiosity germinated in his blood.

"Did I have previously given you any limits?"

"Well ... you've told me neither about your mother nor your father before. Even the mythical creature you pictured, is a new terrain I haven't put foot on yet. Do you think that being existed before your accident as well?"

„Maybe." Will bit his lower lip, started to pull it between his teeth.. "He is... 'familiar' to me, as strange as that may sound. But it doesn't change the fact that I watch him with healthy suspicion."

The psychiatrist pressed his lips into a thin line.

"I think I know what this could be."

He took the second book at hand, which he had removed from his private library. It was thinner than the other, but the paper was colored in a yellowish tone. Its print had to be much older. Will leaned forward and looked at the drawn portrait of the monster's face that disturbed his sleep. On the next page deposed a squiggly text in a language he did not know.
„The monster you described to me is, inter alia, known as the Wendigo." headed Dr. Lecter in explanatory, as he felt the embarrassment of the younger man. "According to the mythology of the Anishinabe, Cree and other ethnicities, it's a supernatural being. It symbolizes gluttony. Wendigo is known for his cruelty and his taste for human flesh. The Native Americans believe that anyone who eats human flesh, becomes the Wendigo itself and is tortured forever by an insatiable hunger. Wendigowak prefer to live in forests."

"A cannibal monster." Will ran a hand through his hair. A gentle hum drew buzzing circles in his head. "What does this say, Dr. Lecter? Is it a reprojection of dead Garrett Jacob Hobbs?"

„ I can neither promote nor exclude this possibility now." Lecter said. "It's told that the Wendigo possesses a heart of ice. You said he had snatched yours from you. Maybe he only wanted a warm-up."

"Or a snack." added Will drily.

"I guess that amounts to the same thing with this beast." his counterpart replied noncholantly. Pushing back his sleeve and peered at his watch. "Our time is up, Will. Tuesday, same time?"

As if I had a choice.

Will smirked. The smell of salt hung in his nostrils.

"I guess I have nothing else further to do, Doktor."

Lecter nodded. He seemed to have expected no other answer. If he had tolerated another?

The psychiatrist accompanied his patient / friend to the door, where he gave him his jacket.

"Will?"

Named turned his head.

"Hm?"

"I know it's hard, but try to get some sleep. Pardon me, but you look like you'd be ready to fall into a coffin any minute."

The tone almost bordered on admonishing concern. It brought a little smile upon Will's lips.

"I know." he said. "Thanks for your honesty." He wanted to walk through the door, but stopped again on the threshold. "Thank you for all that you do for me."

Lecter nodded.

"Thank me by doing something for yourself."

With these words he closed the door and left the profiler alone in the waiting room.

When Will got in the car and fumbled for his keys, he found the doctor's hopelessly crumpled handkerchief in his right fist and then realized that he had clutched it all the time.

This was none of the usual paper-handkerchiefs that were mass produced, but made of more noble material, provided with golden embossed letters.

WL

He frowned. As far as he knew, his psychiatrist was unmarried and childless. L certainly stood for the family name Lecter, but for whowas this determined W? Strange ... and why did it interest him at all !?

He thought about whether he should give it back to Lecter now or not. Maybe it was a precious little thing for a very special person. An assumption that tasted bad for him for some unknown reason.
He looked at his watch and realized that if he still squandered time, he would be home late. Again.
He hesitated, weighed Frederick's anger against Lecter's. He thought of his eyes, the darkness in them. Were they ever capable to target him with anger? And did he really want to find out?

You tell me.

On an impulse, he pocketed it. He would deliver it to him at their next meeting and this would be enough.
Until then, he would keep it near his reach.
Finally, it was just a printed towel, not the world.
A cloth with a monogram that coined the name of a person he did not know, but would have liked to if he had been honest with himself. But he wasn't.
The bitter nuance that incarnated his mouth accompanied him all the way home.

And he didn't know why.

...Sooo, I hope you liked this chap.^^ Any comments to this?

Love,

Rose