It was eight weeks before Will asked for the list of names. He had wanted it after six weeks, and then he had waited two more because somehow it seemed like the thing to do.

He finally asked for it early one afternoon, as they sat at home in companionable silence, Will sprawled on the couch with a book and Hannibal at the table with his drawings. Suddenly it was just time. He glanced up from his book and looked over at Hannibal and asked, a little too casually, "Is it ready?"

He saw the tiniest little thrill run through Hannibal's body before, equally casually, he said, "Yes. Would you like to discuss it tonight, after dinner?"

"Sounds good," said Will.

And then Hannibal gave him a quick smile and went back to his drawing, and Will went back to his book, and neither of them found it at all possible to concentrate.

It was the same after-dinner scene as always – drawn curtains, fire in the fireplace, sparkling whiskey glasses – but this time, when Will followed Hannibal into the living room, he saw on the coffee table in front of the couch a stack of black hardbound notebooks, each with a name in white on its spine. There were dozens of them.

"Christ," said Will. "And here I thought I was special."

Hannibal chose not to dignify that bit of baiting with a response.

"They may not all be up to your standards," he said instead, sinking onto the couch as Will went to pour the whiskey. "Many of them were manipulated quite heavily, and will never kill again, at least not without my influence. But I thought I might as well be thorough."

"You thought you might as well show off, that's what you thought," Will said, and a quickly suppressed grin from Hannibal showed him he was right.

Unbelievable.

Will sat down next to Hannibal and handed him his glass and asked, "How did you choose all of these people, anyway?"

"They chose themselves," said Hannibal. "Or rather, they demonstrated their potential by responding appropriately when prodded. Then it was simply a matter of continuing to prod, and seeing who continued to respond, and in what ways."

Just briefly, there was a cold feeling in the pit of Will's stomach. He remembered the day he'd met Hannibal; how he'd glowered over the rim of his glasses as Hannibal asked him cheerfully invasive questions; how he'd muttered 'my thoughts are often not tasty.'

God. He must have thought he'd won the damn lottery. If I could have just managed to act normal, for once…

Oh, well.

He put out the coldness in his stomach with a swallow of whiskey, and he picked up a book.

They spent close to two hours just sorting through them, briefly discussing each student – each 'case,' as Will couldn't help calling them – and setting aside the ones Will deemed undeserving of death. He wasn't interested in people who had killed out of desperation or panic, or because Hannibal had somehow tricked them into it. He only wanted the passionate ones. The artists.

Hannibal wondered if Will had been thinking of Abigail, when he came up with those criteria. But he didn't ask. Her name was one of those things he did not mention around Will unless Will mentioned it first.

In the middle of the pile, Will found one notebook each for Alana, Margot, and Bedelia. He put those aside without opening them or looking at Hannibal, although for a split second his hand had lingered over the last one. But he really didn't think she'd kill again, and although he hated her with an almost irrational passion, she had been the one who'd believed him when no one else had. It had saved his sanity. He couldn't kill her, although he sort of wished he could.

And then, finally, they were finished, and the floor in front of their feet was covered with piles of discards, and a neat stack of eleven notebooks remained on the table.

Will finished his most recent glass of whiskey and said, "That seems, um… manageable."

He was feeling oddly panicky, all of a sudden – eleven, I have to kill eleven people, I've decided to kill eleven people – but he couldn't pretend he wasn't oddly thrilled, as well. And for that matter, he couldn't pretend he wasn't oddly enjoying what all of this was doing to Hannibal. He was as composed as ever, but underneath the composure he was clearly a giddy mess. It was kind of great.

"How many of them would have done it," Will asked, "if it wasn't for you?"

"Of these? Perhaps… half," said Hannibal. "And most of the others were only held back, in the beginning, by their fear of being caught. But we never truly live, if we let our fears rule us."

"Thanks, Murder Socrates." Will picked up the book at the top of the stack and flipped it open again. "Tell me more about this one. Arthur Shore."

"Oh yes, Shore. Lovely work. The papers call him Geppetto, but I'm certain he doesn't like it."

There were photographs, probably sourced from Internet shock sites or , of the nine victims. They were pasted into the notebook in the order of their deaths. The first few had been brutally clawed at, muscles and gore exposed on their necks and hands and arms. After that, they were different - he'd begun to use a knife, and Will could see his design more clearly. He hadn't meant to tear them up that way. He had just been looking for the veins.

On the later victims, the veins had been excised and pulled out whole, dozens of them. They spiraled from the bodies, coiling on the floor around them as if they were trying to crawl away; or maybe it was more like the bodies were sea anemones, their tentacles waving in the current.

It looked as if he had cut their throats first, which was a small mercy.

Will asked, after he'd finished paging through the photos, "Why does he do it?"

"Because he thinks they want to get out," said Hannibal. "Look at them there on the back of your hand – isn't it just a bit maddening, how they barely bulge above the surface? How the blue of them stands out so strongly against the paleness of your skin? To him, it's completely unbearable. The only thing that matters to him is setting them free. As a matter of fact, he began by trying to do it to himself; he has terrible scars. On his last attempt he dug too far and nearly bled to death, and his family believed it was a suicide attempt. They insisted that he go to therapy."

"I don't know about you," said Will, after a moment, "but I think I need another drink."

"I wouldn't mind one." Hannibal picked up the book and flipped through it with a faraway look on his face. "It was a subtle push, with him. I don't believe he even knew that I knew. Of course, if he follows the news, he certainly knows now. Or suspects."

Will thought again about the mutilated bodies, and said, "A subtle push? What the hell did you say to him?"

"The compulsion to harm oneself is often a manifestation of an overwhelming emotion, turned inward," said Hannibal. "I merely began to suggest, in various ways, that he might try turning his emotions outward instead, and see where that led him. When I saw the first body on the news, I knew that we were making progress.

"His earliest attempts were quite rough, as you noticed. Those first few have never been officially linked to the Geppetto case. I believe he was using his fingers. But one day I allowed him to see me using my scalpel to sharpen a pencil, and told him offhand that a scalpel was the only thing for truly fine detail work. His art became much more precise after that."

Was Hannibal actually bragging? There had been a time, even after they'd run away together, when he had been careful not to say things like that around Will at all. He's really turned off the filter now that he's not in mixed company anymore. Relax, have a drink, we're all murderers here.

Will said, "Let's start with him. How should we take him?"

"He would come with me willingly," said Hannibal. "He trusts me. I could bring him straight to you."

Something about that made Will feel a little ill, but it was obviously the cleanest way. "Works for me," he said.

"How will you do it?"

Will considered it. "Is he strong? Could he put up a fight?"

"I believe he could, yes."

"Good," said Will. "Don't restrain him. Just make sure he isn't armed."

The next day, they packed their bags and started driving. There was planning to do, but they could do that in the car during the sixteen-hour trip to the town where Shore lived, or in the motel once they got there. There didn't seem to be much of a reason to wait; neither of them could afford to overthink this any more than they already had.

And besides, for Will, it was going to be easier to talk through it in the car than it would have been at home. In the car, he wouldn't have to make eye contact. The way Hannibal sometimes looked at him these days, when Will talked about killing, was… well, it made him uncomfortable.

He was also pretty sure he liked it, and that made him even more uncomfortable.

So as they drove through hours and hours' worth of flat, endless fields of corn and soybeans, switching off every few hours and scrupulously obeying every single traffic law for fear of being pulled over, Will fixed his eyes on the center line while they talked about how he would kill his next victim.

The main thing was, they needed to figure out the best place to do it. He lived much too far away to safely transport him back to their house, and it was too risky to do him in his own home, like Will had done with Weldon. He'd gotten a hell of an earful about that, once Hannibal's afterglow had faded a bit, and even though he hadn't appreciated the lecture – seeing as how he was a damned ex-cop and leading forensics expert who knew perfectly well how to secure and clean up his own crime scenes, thank you very much – still, he knew it had been reckless of him. There was no reason to take unnecessary risks this time.

Shore lived in a post-industrial Southeastern town, the type that was bound to be full of long-since-abandoned factory buildings. They'd choose one of those, they decided – maybe something damaged by fire or flooding, a place no one would normally choose to go. They'd stake it out, check it for squatters, make sure there was no fresh graffiti. And then they'd find a place in the basement where the floor was dirt or the concrete was cracked, and they'd dig a grave. There weren't going to be any displays, not with these victims. All of them could be traced back to Hannibal, no matter how well he had covered his tracks, and Hannibal was supposed to be dead. Both of them wanted to keep it that way.

As they talked through the basics of the plan, fine-tuning it, bouncing ideas off each other, Will started to feel a bizarre sense of déjà vu. In his previous line of work, essentially this same conversation would come up every now and then, on a drunken night out with colleagues – the 'how would you get away with murder' conversation. Will had always found it tasteless, but he'd indulged in it once or twice anyway, mostly when somebody else was just so totally wrong that he couldn't stand it anymore and he had to jump in. And on those occasions, he'd had this odd feeling – this kind of surety. This sense that, yes, this was just a stupid game, but… I could, couldn't I? Knowing everything I know? I could absolutely get away with it.

Even way back then, before Jack, before Hannibal, a part of him had liked that feeling.

They found a horrible motel in the next town over from Shore's, the kind of place that would take payment in cash and not ask for ID. They were being extra cautious, now – they didn't want to link any of their false identities to this time and place, not even the throwaways.

Will had expected Hannibal to be scandalized by the motel, but he had underestimated him. Will didn't hear a single complaint. And throughout the next week, as they selected and prepared the building they planned to use, as they laid the groundwork for the murder, Will realized that he had never, in all the years they had known each other, seen Hannibal's mind more engaged.

Hannibal could lose himself in so many different passions; when he cooked, or composed, or sketched, he sometimes almost seemed to slip into the act of creation the same way Will slipped into his reconstructions. But now Will saw that those passions of his were mere hobbies and pastimes, compared to this. This was, so clearly, his life's purpose.

Will almost felt guilty that he'd kept it from him for so long. Not quite, but almost.

And then, finally, the grave had been dug and Will's knife had been sharpened, and it was almost time.

Will couldn't fall asleep the night before; Hannibal had anticipated this and given him some pills, but he hadn't taken them yet. Instead, he just lay there underneath the scratchy sheets and watched Hannibal's sleeping form on the other bed, and brooded over what they were about to do.

When he'd decided he could stand to become a murderer, he had tied himself to Hannibal irrevocably; this was going to tie them together even more. As close as they had been before this, as much as they had already shared with each other, this was going to mean something new. He wondered if it was ever going to stop – if they'd ever reach a point where they couldn't get any more conjoined without one of them breaking. Time after time, Will had thought they'd hit that point, and then time after time they had barreled right past it.

He knew it wasn't healthy – he knew it was codependency – and yet it was so strangely comforting. He had alienated so many people in his life, had driven so many people away, and he had never imagined that he'd meet someone who refused, categorically, to be driven away. Someone who could love every part of him. Who could see the most appalling, unspeakable thoughts in his head, and could love them.

Will realized that Hannibal must have thought something very like that, when they had first met.

Well, of course he did. Isn't that why he took the rest of my life away? So that I'd have no choice but to love him back?

He sighed. This wasn't going anywhere productive. He sat up and took his pills and lay back down again, and after a while, he slept.

Hannibal felt a bit wistful, that next afternoon, as he crunched through the dried leaves covering Arthur Shore's front walkway. He had liked Shore, and he didn't like all of them; after all, a therapist's job was not to like the patient, but to help him. But this one… he had such a fascinating perspective on his world. And his work was so delicate. It was going to be such a shame to see him go.

Not even for a fraction of a second did Hannibal have second thoughts.

He rang the doorbell and waited. After a minute he saw a tall, thin man with darting eyes peering at him through the screen door.

He watched surprise and shock dawn on the man's face. "Doctor Lecter?" he said. "You're… sorry, I mean, but… aren't you dead?"

"Evidently not," said Hannibal. He gave the man a broad, affectionate smile. "May I come inside, Arthur? I wanted to talk to you, just for a moment, about your wonderful progress."