Hannibal: Season Four

by RealitySuks

The Fourth and Final Season of Hannibal wraps up all the lingering storylines left unanswered after Season Three left audiences on a literal cliffhanger. As was always the case with this scintillating show do not presume to know how it will all end. The final six episodes will leave you gawking and maybe even cause a nightmare or two.

5. Episode 5

It takes her twenty breaths to decide. Alana Bloom rises from her seat by the useless monitors - she no longer controls the building or security system, so what would be the point in watching, anyway, even if they did work? She leans on the cane at her side, but keeps the other arm raised, pistol pointed defensively before she even leaves the safety of the panic room.

Jack will have headed to Will's cell, she thinks. It would seem the logical place. She thinks of the strange posture of Will's arms and shoulders when she'd seen him last, of the way he'd looked in the moments before the security cameras went dead and her screens shattered into static. She turns left, toward the elevator, and punches the button for the first floor.

I could walk out the front doors, Alana thinks, get into my car and call the police and Kade Prurnell on my way out of town. Back to Margot. She imagines her wife sleeping peacefully in their bed, auburn curls spread across the pillows, Morgan clutched in her arms. Every part of her wants to be there with them, safe in a life she never thought possible and will likely die to defend.

---

Will Graham grips Hannibal's wrists, stares up into the familiar fond expression, and forces himself to breathe until the hallway and the rest of reality has time to congeal.

Home, he thinks, mind racing over all that Hannibal has just said, catching again and again on the promise of that one word. No longer a place, no longer a reference to a fixed location, but a state of being. Will knows that right now, with their hands clasped around one another, surrounded by the corpses they've made getting to one another, they are both home again.

A little whimper behind him draws his attention. He springs apart from Hannibal, both of them abruptly alert. Will wonders if Hannibal feels the same heightened awareness of him as he does of Hannibal.

The whimper comes again, and Will curses under his breath, darting forward to grab the guard and drag him forward by his collar. "What to do with you?" he muses, holding the fear stricken young man under the fluorescent light.

"Bring him with us," Hannibal says, slipping the dropped knife into one of Will's hands.

Will tightens his fingers around the knife, frowning. "What, seriously?"

"Yes," Hannibal says. "Let's go. Now." He grabs at Will's hand, and Will wraps his other arm around the guard's neck, dragging him along with the bared knife to his throat. The man comes willingly; too scared to resist, he stumbles along on feet clumsy with fear.

Will expects Hannibal to lead them down the stairwell, back the way he's come. Will lets his eyes rest on the body resting in a pool of its own blood at the top of the stairs, catching flashes of the ending - shrieks echoing off the walls, Hannibal moving, a thing of blood whose every motion is timed with dying screams; this one tried to run, movement drawing the predator's eye, it found itself trapped between the hunter and its true prey. But Hannibal pulls him down the hallway, away from the stairs and away from the book-less cell that's played home to them both now.

"Jack will be heading down the parallel hallway to your cell now," Hannibal tells him, words clipped by slight breathlessness as they run. "He'll follow the trail of bodies to the stairwell when he finds you've fled."

"We're taking the elevator," Will says. His voice is a deal more ragged than Hannibal's. "You'll need a separate code, I bet. Not one this kid is likely to know, either."

"I hacked the security and communications system from the control on the first floor," Hannibal tells him, as they come to a halt in front of the metal elevator doors. Hannibal presses the solitary button, and the downwards pointing arrow lights up green. Above the door, the number three lights up.

"We could go back for him," Will says, and feels Hannibal go rigid beside him. Four. "You wanted me to stand in judgment," Will says, hoisting the guard, whose legs have collapsed with a fit of trembling Will hopes is only temporary. "I judge Jack Crawford singularly guilty of destroying my life."

"I thought I was responsible for that," Hannibal says, voice carefully neutral.

Will smiles as the elevator doors slide open. The guard regains the use of his legs, and Will lugs him roughly towards the little box. "Another day, perhaps," he says, watching Hannibal's inscrutable face. It's been a long night, Will thinks, for both of them. And it's far from finished. "How many of them are left?" he asks, as Hannibal pushes the button for the bottom floor and the doors slide shut with infuriating sluggishness.

"None," Hannibal replies, and Will both hears and feels the wet sob that tears from the guard in his arms.

"God," the guard whispers weepingly. "Oh, God."

"Do we seem like monsters to you?" Hannibal asks. He tugs a lock of hair when the guard remains silent.

"Why do you do it?" he stutters. Will almost rolls his eyes. Just like Jack and everyone else he's known; they all want to know, to understand what makes someone kill the way Hannibal kills. They think that's what they want, anyway. But you can't understand Hannibal without changing, Will thinks. Without being changed by what understanding him entails.

"It feels good to do it," Hannibal answers him, voice frank and unrepentant. "I enjoy it. I don't have to do it. I can function perfectly without it. But I want to do it. That is reason enough."

"Why keep me alive?" The man manages to sound defiant, even if he has been sobbing since the moment Hannibal stepped through the stairwell doorway.

Red eyes meet Will's above the guard's head. "Someone must remain to tell the story," he says, simply.

Will's heart thuds. Hannibal's thumb skates along his knuckles as the floor jolts to halt beneath them. Will feels his stomach in his throat as the doors open. He's staring down the black circle of Alana's pistol before the doors are done opening.

"Oh," he manages to say, his arm tightening over the guard's chest. He brings the knife up to press against the man's throat, blade pressing an indentation across the jut of his Adam's apple. There's a mechanical sound as Alana swallows and presses the hammer back, gun trained on the bridge of Hannibal's nose.

Will can hear the click of Hannibal's throat as he swallows. "Alana," he says, bringing one hand to rest on Will's shoulder. His fingers rest against Will's clavicle, his thumb brushing the nape of Will's neck with languorous, unbothered swipes. Will can't help imagining how easily and swiftly the hand at his throat could tighten; he knows that Alana is picturing it as well, and that this was Hannibal's purpose, putting the image of Will in danger into her head. He wonders how far that act would go. How far he'd be willing to let it go. "Good to see you again."

"Get out of the elevator," Alana orders, forcing her foot into the door before either of them can press the button to close it. Will shuffles past her, but manages to keep himself positioned between her and Hannibal. He holds the guard against his chest like a shield. Alana frowns at him. She punches the button to send the elevator back up to the fifth floor, empty, a sure sign to Jack if he needs one. If he isn't already thundering down the stairs towards them.

"How do you imagine this ending, Alana?" Hannibal asks, his hand on Will's shoulder again, relaxed, still.

She keeps her gun trained on him, her mouth set in a hard line. For a moment Will thinks she won't answer. It would certainly be wisest of her not to engage. But then she says, "I don't imagine you'll come peacefully."

Hannibal's voice contains his smirk. "No, indeed not. When Jack or whatever other cavalry you've arranged arrives, Will is going to slit your man's throat. He'll be dead in minutes. You may manage to shoot one of us, but the other one will be on you in a matter of seconds, long before this unfortunate young man has time to bleed out."

Alana narrows her eyes at him. "I'm aiming for you," she tells him. "Is Will going to kill me after I shoot you?"

"I don't know," Hannibal says, "are you, Will?"

"Don't try to find out," Will grits. The knife in his hand is steady. He presses a fraction harder, and a small round garnet wells up at the tip.

"Whichever of us is left after you've been dispatched, he, or we, shall move on to killing Jack, and as many of the men and women who arrive to fight us as we can before sustaining mortal injury. You once told me that enough people had died," Hannibal continues speaking. "If you detain us here, more will die. Including this guard. Including you, Alana."

"More people will die whether I detain you or not," Alana says.

"Certainly," Hannibal admits, voice easy, untroubled. As if they're discussing his latest composition for the harpsichord. "But those people won't include you."

Alana raises one eyebrow, her gun arm unwavering. Hannibal answers her silent request for assurance. "We come again to that fateful moment," he says, accent rolling over the words. "You, with a gun to my head, and me with only my word to give. A second chance. Let us go, Alana, take the second chance to look away, and I'll promise never to fulfill my vow to kill you."

Will can feel the guard's heart beating frantically against his arm. He watches Alana, watches the stairwell doorway, watches the elevator behind her. Any second they could be interrupted. Will eyes Alana, calculating the distance between them, the force he would need in order to send the man in his arms crashing into her hard enough to stun them both.

"You'll break your word," she says, at last. The black circle of her gun shakes slightly. Will feels his muscles relaxing.

"I'll give it anew," Hannibal says. "A moment for second chances, Alana. The bitter heart eats its owner; don't cling to vengeance when what you crave is security."

When she lowers her arm, Will takes the gun from her. Her fingers loosen on it easily, sticking with a clammy sweat as he pulls the weapon away. He brings the handle down on the back of her head, and then the guard's, dropping them in an ungraceful pile.

There's an echo from the stairwell. Or maybe Will's imagining it. He fixes his eyes on Hannibal, on the small smile that plays on the other man's face. If he's regretting the rare display of mercy he doesn't show it. "Shall we leave?"

Will nods, sparing a glance back at Alana and the man Hannibal has spared to tell their story. Then he turns, and follows Hannibal out the front door and into the trees at the edge of the property.

---

Hannibal

Episode 5:

"Beauty is only Skin Deep"

Starring...

Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter

Hugh Dancy as Will Graham

Caroline Dhavernas as Alana Bloom

Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford

Lara Jean Chorostecki as Freddie Lounds

Raul Esparza as Frederick Chilton

Recurring...

Scott Thompson as Jimmy Price

Aaron Abrams as Brian Zeller

Tao Okamoto as Chiyoh

And

Katharine Isabelle as Margot Verger

Guest Starring...

Michael Cudlitz as Robert Clayton

John Doe as Calvin Martin

Special Appearance...

Jodie Foster as Senator Ruth Martin

---

Three Years Later

He's very much like the man Jack Crawford remembers. Not the feral, caged creature he was when they last met, but the man he was immediately before, when there still seemed to be hope of a normal life, despite all the odds, of a return to the quaint cottage life and his little pre-made family. There's a looseness to his shoulders, even as he's hoisted almost off his feet, hauled into the interrogation room and deposited roughly into the seat across from Jack at the little metal table.

Will Graham rolls his shoulders, his eyes narrowing at the airport security who now stand at attention, watching him only in their peripheral gaze. Jack nods his gratitude and dismissal at once, and the two men leave stiffly.

And then they are alone.

"Sorry about the welcoming committee," Jack says, when the silence has stretched for too long, when Will's expressionless gaze has begun to make his skin crawl like worms over his flesh. "Didn't want someone recognizing you and trying to claim the reward."

"You said removal from the FBI's vaunted Most Wanted list was part of the deal," Will says. He's staring hard at the center of Jack's face, not quite meeting his eyes. His voice is casual. Dangerous, Jack thinks. Casual and dangerous just like Hannibal Lecter.

"You were removed the minute you checked in for your flight," Jack says. "Your picture and description were both on the FBI's website for almost three years before last night, however, and attached to a sizable sum of reward money. And there's always the possibility of someone recognizing you from Chilton and Lounds' latest forays into the literary world."

He watches the corner of Will's mouth jerk. "What a blessing for the two great minds of our generation to find each other," he says, voice dripping with familiar contempt. Jack finds himself strangely comforted by it, if only as proof that some things about Will remain constant, will never change. "I read their recantation of Frederick's previous published work. Scintillating stuff."

Jack tries not to grimace, but he's certain some of his displeasure must show on his face. Hiding emotions from Will is an exercise in futility at the best of times. Still, he tries not to think about the trouble Chilton and Lounds have caused for him within the Bureau. The reviews, the investigations, the reprimands, the humiliating meetings with Prurnell. He coughs, not thinking of it. "There were pictures of you in that as well," he says.

"So you had me accosted by guards the second the plane landed," Will challenges. "For my own protection."

Jack spreads his hands, fingers wide, offering a truce, not quite an apology. "This was going to be an awkward reunion no matter what," he says, "might as well have it in the safest way possible."

Will arches an eyebrow at his words, but doesn't comment, and Jack finds himself wondering at the expression. "It's strange to see you again, Jack," Will says, after a brief silence. "How've you been?"

He exhales, air leaving his mouth accompanied by a soft noise of disbelief, or possibly frustration. Maybe some combination of the two, Jack thinks. "Fantastic," he barks. "Never better, just doing phenomenally well."

Lines form in the space between Will's brows. "Really?"

"No," Jack almost shouts, and Will only frowns deeper in response. "How do you think I've been? Trying to figure out where the hell you went and how to bring you back, dealing with that damned book, now this lunatic pops up and starts peeling people like oranges, how do you think I've been?"

"I'd guess not well," Will says, with infuriating sincerity.

Jack takes a slow breath and counts before releasing it. "Your freedom is contingent upon the capture - or termination - of the killer known as Buffalo Bill," he grits. "You will never return to the United States after this case is resolved; you will be, effectively, banished from this nation. We will no longer pursue you. You will never again return."

Will nods. "I want to sign something," he says. "I want something in writing, and I want copies mailed to my lawyer."

"You have a lawyer," Jack states, not quite a question.

"I have an address and a name to which I want you to mail copies of the documents you're going to prepare for me if you haven't already," Will answers. "I'm not consulting on anything until that's done."

Jack nods, as much at Will as at the agents they both know are listening from the other side of the mirror. "They're being drawn up. How about breakfast," he says to Will, "in the meanwhile? I know a spot nearby, does decent eggs."

He watches Will's nose wrinkle after half a second's hesitation. "Not worried about any enterprising locals recognizing me and attempting to collect on a freshly defunct bounty?"

"It's hole in the wall small," Jack reassures him.

"Just the two of us?"

He nods. "The tail can wait outside, get coffee to go."

"More decent eggs for us."

Jack can't help smiling. It's a weak, pale gesture, with no real mirth behind it, but it's a recognition of the familiarity of Will's mordant voice. He finds that he missed it, the bitterness like an old friend. The memory of their first meeting flashes to the front of his mind, suddenly, and he finds himself wanting to lean forward, push back glasses Will no longer wears, just to feel the momentary return to a simplicity his rational mind knows they'll never recapture. It was never simple, anyway.

"It's good to see you again," he says, although he'd promised himself he'd keep this as impersonal as possible.

"It's less awful seeing you than I had feared it would be," Will says, and the honesty forces a barking laugh from Jack. "Breakfast, please."

---

The eggs are better than decent, yolks running beautifully when Jack pierces them. He drags a hunk of brown toast across his plate, and watches Will mirror the motion. It was something he noticed about Will when they'd first met, long ago, the way Will tended to take on the speech patterns and syntax and even mimic the gestures of his conversational partners. At first, Jack had thought it was a conscious choice, a tactic to gain trust. He'd realized quickly it was involuntary.

"Why wait to contact me," Will asks, swallowing his mouthful. "You could have brought me in any time, I'm guessing. And this could be a very different conversation, with a very different deal on the table."

"A deal like letting you keep your books and your toilet if you cooperate in helping us capture Buffalo Bill?" Jack suggests, wry voiced. Will is silent, but arches an eyebrow in what might be agreement. "We got your location a week ago," he admits.

"Ah," Will says, forking another bite. "Mind if I ask how? It's not as if I'll be hiding from you after this, anyway, right? I won't need to."

"That's correct, Will," Jack answers the challenge in Will's voice sternly, before giving him an answer. "Video surveillance at one of the local department stores. Local police investigating another crime recognized you on the footage they were reviewing. The department store clerks were extremely helpful; they recognized your picture and gladly gave the police the address they had on file for furniture deliveries. You lived well in Argentina."

"Yes," Will says softly. "A life I'll miss."

"No reason you can't return to it after this."

"You always assume the work I do for you doesn't change me, Jack, in some fundamental way. I can't go back to the homes you pluck me out of when you're done using my imagination. Especially not when that always necessarily means engaging with Hannibal Lecter."

Jack's heart stutters, but he forces himself to remain calm, face still. "How long has it been since you saw him?"

Will lifts one shoulder in a slow half shrug, his expression shuttered and unreadable. "Why are you asking? Don't trust TattleCrime?"

Jack shifts. "Freddie's attributed a lot of crimes to the pair of you," he says, cautious of his voice and what his hands are doing. He forces himself to look Will full in the face as he speaks, watching for a shift in expression, a sign, but no sign comes. "We had no strong evidence linking you to any of them...after what we found in Florida." He swallows. "If you tell me you weren't involved in the things Freddie's accused you of, I'll believe you."

"Provided I'm also willing to consult on the Buffalo Bill murders," Will says, and raises a hand in objection before Jack's mouth is fully open. "We parted ways almost immediately," he says, "over two years ago. Haven't heard or seen sign of him since."

Jack's face feels frozen. "Just like that?"

"Yes," Will says, "just like that."

"Seems pretty easy."

That same aloof half shrug. "Depends on your definition of easy, I guess. We both lost about a quart of blood, and I spent a week and a half treating my injuries from my bed after persuading him to leave. Hannibal didn't fare a lot better. May have lost an eye, actually. Looking forward to finding out for sure. If it is him."

"You can't tell from the pictures?" Jack jumps on the last words. "It has to be him."

"I can't tell without those documents signed and delivered to my lawyer," Will clarifies. "And if it is him, I doubt I'll be returning to a quiet life in Argentina, or anywhere else he might be able to track me down."

"He won't be able to track you down," Jack says.

Will's expression is carefully blank for a moment, just long enough for it to be noticeable. Then his face slides into a scoff. "Because you'll have him in custody," he says, "or because you'll murder him?"

Jack shrugs. "Figured you might want the honors," he says, and watches as Will's face does something like closing. He frowns, not liking the chill that settles between them, but before he can question it there's a sharp buzz sounding from his jacket pocket.

"Yes," he barks into the phone, then listens to the earnest voiced agent on the other end informing him that the documents he asked for are ready. "Good," he replies succinctly, "have them sent to the Choptank team. We'll be there in an hour.

"Come on," he says, sliding the phone back into his pocket and pushing back from the table. "Your papers are ready, and the second you sign them you're getting to work."

---

The May morning sun glints off the waters of the Choptank, as Jack leads him along the bank, a ways from where they parked the car along the side of the road. The drive had been a long one, with arduous stretches of silence interrupted by Jack's throat clearing. Now and then, he made proclamations about the case, as if they were occurring to him in the moment -

"He keeps them alive for about a week after he takes them, we think," and, "The pupas we found in every body are identical to the ones we found in Bedelia Du Maurier's eye sockets," and finally, "He takes their skin, different shapes from each, removes it after they're dead." Will responded to none of it. Now they walk in silence. The mud sucks at his boots, releasing his feet with a reluctant squelching sound at each step.

"She was working security for one of those fancy grocery stores downtown," Jack says. "She'd fallen off my radar - off everyone's radar. When the hospital released her five years ago she made it a point to vanish. I only saw her once in all that time."

Will has to look down to keep his balance as they trek through the soft river bank. He remembers Miriam Lass vividly, despite the briefness of their acquaintance. The quiet, fervent sound of her breathing, and the fear in her eyes when they spoke of The Ripper came back to him easily. Will wonders if, like him, she regained some memories in time, and, if so, if it made things better or worse for her. It's not difficult to imagine the desire to disappear from that life.

"Oh yeah?" Will prompts.

"Right after her release," Jack says. "She told me she was very sorry but she felt she had to end her involvement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in light of everything that had happened, and she hoped I would understand." He gives a sad sound like laughter.

Will lets himself smile, lets a hint of sadness peer through in the corners of his eyes. "She must have felt like she was letting you down, stepping away like that," he says, and holds up a hand before Jack can object. "I'm sorry. I just...know the feeling. You know she referred to you as The Guru?"

"I know."

"Are we getting close?"

Jack nods. "There's not a lot left to see of the scene," he admits. "There never really was, to be honest. Just the body, pinned beneath a log. There were rope marks on her ankles, places where the rope had worn the flesh away in the water. We think he weighted her at the ankles, but the ropes must have come untied or become damaged after a time in the water. She floated down river half a mile, maybe, before catching on that log, there." Jack points. "That's where...that's where we found her."

Will can hear the sadness in his voice, feel the regret surrounding him like a thick cloud of smoke. "I'm not sure what I can do here," Will says, quietly. His voice comes out gentler than he's heard it in some time. Jack's only answer is to step back, out of his line of sight. Will sighs, looking out over the stretch of cold water. It's peaceful, bright and cold, the sound of birdsong and water filling him. He feels Jack pulsing with ambitious desire, the need to know all men like them lust after. He closes his eyes, and the day and the sun and the birds and Jack's fervent, zealous energy fade away into a deep, heavy darkness.

It's not enough to pile stones on top of her. I try, but some part of her is always bobbing up, caught in the current, hurtling against me. An inanimate object which moves, a paradox of moving but not moving. It's my first kill, the first body I'm handling, and I'm already a disappointment to myself in this, as in most everything else. A tiny life of petty grievances interspersed with true agonies that have provided me with far too much familiarity with violence and pain. A litany of failures and this is just one more. I am determined, though. This time will be something different - the beginning of a transformation, the catalyst for change. The water makes her arms move like she's trying to grab my legs when I attempt to stack more stones on her, and I scream, and fall, almost losing my grip on her, almost losing her down the river.

He can feel the wet spread of frigid water spilling over his body like a shock. It is dark at first, but his eyes adjust quickly to the pale glow of the horned moon hanging in the sky. Behind him, from the darkness, he can hear a soft flutter.

I can't fail this time. This can't be the end, already. I drag both our bodies to the bank, driven by determination more than strength, only to collapse in the mud, face to face with her battered visage. I see where the rocks have drawn bloodless cuts across her cheeks. Seeing her this way is terrifying. Will I ever grow accustomed to the fear? To the way they move and do not move?

Then it occurs to me to tie the weights to her, rather than stacking them atop her. Watching her body sink from view fills me with the same rush of quiet strength I felt when I opened her throat.

Not her. It.

It's throat.

It sinks out of view, and only I remain. Myself, and the things I took from it, the things I transformed into myself.

He pulls himself from the dark tank of the killer's mind like he's breaking through the surface of the water. He very nearly gasps for air. It's clear now why Jack wants to attribute these crimes to Hannibal Lecter- beyond Jack's own ambitions, beyond the curious reappearance of the chrysalises, there's a familiarity to the violence, to the coldness. But there's more there, a newness and a desperation. Will feels full of gripping cold panic, as if he's drowning. His head's above water, but he looks down to see one foot ankle deep in the icy water. He turns back to where Jack observes him with grim silence.

"Were you going to let me march into the river?"

"I was prepared to intervene if it became necessary," Jack says.

Will snorts. "Always willing to push me right to the edge," he scoffs. "Could my life ever have mattered more to you than all the lives we saved together?"

"It's because of those lives that you're here," Jack says, "instead of in a cell in Argentina awaiting extradition. And because of the lives you'll save now. What did you see?"

Will scowls, momentarily shaken by the force of the anger running through him. "It's not him, Jack. This was this killer's first kill," Will answers. "He wanted to feel like something other than a failure."

Jack scoffs. "And killing made him feel like a winner?"

Will shakes his head. "No - no he felt terrified by the body, had to pretend it wasn't a human being in order to regain any feeling of control. But something about killing helps him transform himself into something other than the loser he perceives himself to be. And that transformation is what he wants more than anything - to be something better, someone who isn't always coming in last place."

"She was his first," Jack repeats Will's words, unbelieving. "Seems like a pretty skilled kill for a fledgling, but okay, if she was the first, why her?"

Will frowns. "She was different from the others," he says, "I could tell from the pictures."

"How?"

"I don't know," he admits, "I just...knew."

"Different how?"

"He knew her," Will says. "She was familiar." He reaches into his jacket pocket to retrieve the photographs, pulling out one that shows her body, a mottled mess stretched out on the muddy bank. He touches the glossy surface lightly with the pad of his finger. "He wanted her to see him as something other than he was, as if her sight would change him."

"Why take her skin, then?" Jack presses. "Why not take her eyes?"

"I don't know," Will groans. "I can't tell you anything more, right now, Jack. I'm exhausted."

"Oh no," Jack says, "no rest yet. Are you certain it isn't him?"

"Who?" Will asks, voice biting.

"Don't start," Jack scolds. "Is. It. Lecter? Miriam Lass would definitely be different for him than the others."

Miriam, Will thinks, did it feel like you were in the garden at the eye of the hurricane with this one, too?

"I know you want it to be him," Will says. "It would put a bow on things, wouldn't it? You could punish him for what he did to Miriam, and to me, and to Alana and you and all those innocent people, and I could redeem myself - not enough to come home, of course . . . . But I really doubt this is him, Jack. It doesn't feel like him, so much as an imitation by someone with intimate details of the Ripper murders. I'm ready for a nap, now, okay?"

Jack scowls, and looks to be on the verge of administering an admonishment about the necessity of solving this case before another victim went missing, but then he stops, and looks over Will's shoulder with a deepening frown.

"What?" Will asks, and turns to look Freddie Lounds in the face.

---

She gets the pictures she needs first. If they spot her, she can publish speculations - clearly labelled as such, at the behest of her lawyers - but she can't fake images like these. Graham bears his teeth in a grimace that looks like a growl, eyes lidded and hair unkept. Demonic, she thinks, snapping the images and imagining headlines. "FBI Seeks Aid of Brainwashed Serial Killer." "Psychic Psycho Returns to United States: Why the FBI Won't Protect You." "By the Skin of Our Teeth: Hannibal the Cannibal's Boyfriend Consults on Buffalo Bill Murders." She thinks Will would be especially appreciative of the last one.

Pictures taken and camera stowed in her purse, Freddie slinks forward, tape recorder in hand. She catches just a snatch of conversation before they spot her.

" - really doubt this is him, Jack," Will is saying. "It doesn't feel like him, so much as an imitation by someone with intimate details of the Ripper murders. . . . What?" He turns, following Jack's perturbed gaze, and Freddie raises her hand in greeting at his scowl.

"I wish I could welcome you back to the country, Mr. Graham," she says, picking her way through the soft ground towards them, "but you aren't welcome here, even if the FBI seems to feel otherwise."

"Don't you have better things to do," Will asks, voice acerbic, "being a best selling author and all?"

The smile that tightens across her face feels unavoidable. "My duty is first and foremost to the truth," she says, "to giving the public the truth, as they deserve."

"Funny," Will says, "I thought your duty was to make sales. Hannibal and I have been your cash cows for some time now, haven't we? Maybe you ought to be paying me a portion of the profits. I have to hand it to you, you even managed to redeem Frederick in the general public's eye. No easy feat, that. He wasn't well liked before being set on fire."

"Dr. Chilton suffered enormously because of what you and Hannibal Lecter put him through over the years. He suffers still, the psychological effects of what you each did to him."

"You're breaking my heart," Will sneers. "I never laid a finger on him; you can ask him yourself."

"He's stronger than you think, though," Freddie continues. "He survived the pair of you, despite your best efforts."

Will's face looks like he is about to speak, but thinks better and catches the comment in time. Freddie silently laments his self control; she misses the days when he would all but openly threaten her on tape, in front of witnesses. The headlines wrote themselves.

"Come on," Jack says, clapping Will firmly on the back. Freddie notes the way Will's eyes widen and then narrow at the contact, the old gesture of familiarity that feels as wrong now to her as it must to him. Her eyes dart to Jack's face, which is pulled into tight painful lines.

"We're all walking through the ghost of the past," she says. "Jack Crawford seeking help from psychological wunderkind Will Graham in order to apprehend a killer one of them suspects is Hannibal Lecter."

"I think I'd have to be a little younger to count as a wunderkind," Will says. "It's not Lecter," Will says, feeling Jack's glare on the back of his neck, hearing the growl of warning rising in Jack's chest.

"Will - "

"You can tell your readers it's not him," Will forges ahead, careless of Jack's mounting anger, and Freddie's eyes flash at her unexpected good fortune. "This isn't the ending Hannibal would have planned for Miriam Lass. It's too sloppy for him, and it lacks all theatricality."

"Theatricality such as a house full of bones stacked like cordwood?" Freddie queries. Her voice comes out as ardent and steady as ever, despite the rapid pound of elation in her blood at Will's use of Lecter's first name; readers will notice. She'll make sure they do.

"Exactly," Will says, and feels Jack's hand come down hard on his shoulder at the same time he hears him making a sound like he's swallowed his own tongue.

"Will, we're leaving. Now."

"Bye," Will says, giving a half wave to the reporter before turning to face Jack as they begin a fast march back to the sedan.

---

Like Freddie, Jack wears an expression of absolute shock, but his is clearly outraged whereas hers had been delighted. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Jack snaps once they're out of what he must perceive to be earshot. "What are you thinking, talking to her like that? You practically admitted to Florida."

Will shrugs. "So? I'm about to earn diplomatic immunity, more or less. You had plenty of evidence for that already anyway."

Jack splutters, momentarily speechless with the force of his rage, and Will feels oddly calm in the face of it. Ordinarily, he'd feel the echo of anger rising in his own mind, find himself speechless and spluttering. But he's peaceful in spite of the strong vibrations Jack is sending into the air between them, as though he can see the emotion without feeling it. As if there's a wall between them.

The rest of the walk passes in silence, as Jack collects himself. By the time they reach their vehicle he's composed enough to stick a thick finger into Will's face and bark at him, "You do not speak to journalists while you work for me," he orders, and Will looks past the tip of his finger in order to meet his eyes. "You do not speak to anyone without my permission. Are we clear?"

"Don't point at me," Will replies, and opens the passenger door open to slide in.

Jack's hand on his shoulder hauls him back to his feet before he can fully sit, however. "I vouched for you," he says, "my reputation has suffered enormously because of what you did, and I've put what's left of it on the line to help you, now. Does that buy me any loyalty or even gratitude?"

"Your reputation is poor coin to spend, Jack," Will answers, shrugging out of Jack's grip. Or trying to, because Jack's fingers clamp down harder, digging into his shoulder until he winces. "You aren't doing this for me."

"Oh?" Jack says, sounding slightly frantic. "What do you think Prurnell and every other person in the FBI wanted to do the moment we had your location? I'll give you a hint - it sure as hell wasn't to cut a deal bargaining for your safety."

Will bites his tongue to keep from replying, because he's pretty sure I don't care is the last thing Jack wants to hear from him right now, and he's started to genuinely worry about the way one of Jack's hands is digging bruises into his shoulder while the other is clenching and unclenching by his side.

"Get in the car," Jack says at last, releasing him so abruptly that it forces Will to stumble back and catch himself with a hand on the side of the car. He straightens with a breath, rolling his neck and shoulders before sliding into the car and pulling the door closed.

---

The house is large - their voices almost echoing off the high ceiling in the sparsely decorated living room. An austere sofa, a polished cherry wood side table, brass lamp curving to a corona of light obscured by the simple grey shade. It has the look of a room not often used - no book laid open on the coffee table to resume the following night, no forgotten mug of coffee or tepid glass of water, no signs of life lived here. Jack leads him through the living room and towards a door at the end of the hallway. A framed photo of Jack's wedding day hangs on the wall across from the door, showing a smiling man Will's not sure he would recognize if it weren't for Bella in his arms.

"There's a bathroom attached to the guest room," Jack tells him, shifting his weight in a rare display of discomfort as Will's unfocused gaze rests on his face. They'd discussed this in the car. It hadn't gone well. "If you need something you can always call or text." Will doesn't answer, and Jack coughs into the silence. "Look, Will, you have to have expected we'd take some precautions after what happened last time."

"So if there's a fire or something," Will says, choosing not to respond directly to Jack's statement, nor to point out that the precautions they've attempted to take with him in the past have never done much good, "are you going to remember to come unlock the guest room?"

"For God's sake," Jack curses, voice raising, "how can you ask that? And nothing is going to happen. It's a temporary arrangement, anyway. The sooner you lead us to Buffalo Bill, the sooner you can be on your way. No more locked doors, no more federal bounty on your head. Think you can handle it till then?"

His skin itches at the sound of the door locking from the outside, head crowding with the sound of his own heartbeat and the memory of iron bars and unbreakable glass partitions, but he forces himself to breathe through the panic. It's for a short time only, he reminds himself. He could slip these bonds anytime if he chose. He is here by choice. He is not a prisoner.

I will never be a prisoner again.

Exhausted, Will falls back onto the bed, only bothering to kick off his shoes. It's cool in the room, but not actually cold. Reluctant to stand again, Will wriggles the throw blanket under him free and pulls it atop him before closing his eyes with a sigh.

---

"I know I said I was surprised you were back last time," Jimmy Price says, "and at the time I truly believed I was."

"Jimmy," Brian Zeller warns.

As per usual, warnings do no good. "But that was only because I didn't realize how surprised I would be now. Now saying I'm surprised to see you back doesn't even mean what it could have; I should have said I was something else, back then."

"You could say you're something else, now," Will offers, casually helpful. "You could be shocked now."

"I already used that word, too," Price says, "when you left last time."

"Last time you said it was good to see me," Will reminds him. There's an exam table between them, but for half a second the expression on Jimmy's face clearly communicates that obstacle might not be enough to keep Will's jaw unbruised. Then his face breaks into its usual expression of sardonic and benign amusement, and Will is hard pressed to say which presentation is the true expression of Price's interior self. Perhaps neither. More likely, both.

"It is good to see you," Price says, now, voice lighter. "It's always good to see you."

"That's a matter of opinion," Zeller chimes in, but he shoots Will a look that's almost kind. A little fearful, a little pitying, but free from overt malice. Gentle, almost. Not the way you'd look at a killer so much as the way you'd look at a survivor.

"No prints on any of the bodies," Price says, fiddling with a microscope as he speaks. "No evidence at all, in fact, except the cocoons."

"Cocoons," Will repeats, "Jack mentioned them. He said they're - "

"The same species we found rattling around in your former therapist's empty eye sockets," Zeller finishes, "except we found these ones lodged in the soft palates of all six of the victims, not in their eyes."

"He shoves bugs down his victims' throats," Price interjects, "a true monster."

"The insect larvae were placed post-mortem," Zeller clarifies. He opens a drawer to extract a clear glass specimen jar, a long brown object laying loose at the bottom. It looks like a mummy. Zeller extracts the object using a slender set of forceps, and places it on a sheet of white paper beneath the light on the exam table. He swings a magnifying glass on a flexible arm over it and Will leans in to examine the insect, sheathed in a semitransparent cover that follows its general outlines like a sarcophagus. He can see the appendages beneath the covering, bound so tightly against the body, they might be carved in low relief. The little face looks wise.

It certainly looks like the same kind of creature Jack and Alana brought to him during his second stay at the BSHCI, lending further credence to the theory that Hannibal is the killer.

"Could it have gotten into a victim's throat by mistake? While they were in the water?"

"We contacted the Smithsonian," Price answers, shaking his head, "just like we did with the ones we found in Dr. Du Maurier. It's a species of night moth called Erebus Odora, colloquially known as the Black Witch Moth. It's not common to this area, and wouldn't have been in the water, regardless."

"The guys at the Smithsonian felt that these specimens were raised by hand," Zeller adds. "Something about their molting and the seasons - they were some weird dudes, I'm not going to lie. Studying bugs all day must do something to a person's mind, over time."

"Right," says Will, deciding to forego commenting on the normality of the work Zeller and Price do, the study of violent deaths as opposed to insects. "So we're looking for someone raising giant moths at home? Is that a popular hobby?"

"Oh yes," Price says, "huge hit with the ladies."

"It's less popular than you'd imagine," Zeller corrects, "and you probably don't think it's very popular."

"It's mostly entomologists," Price says, "and the silk industry, though they don't raise this particular species, the Smithsonian guys said. The odd collector now and then."

"Odd's the right word for it," Zeller says. "Who'd want a bunch of big furry bugs flapping around their house? Gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"I don't know," Price says, "I kind of find moths fascinating after all those guys at the Smithsonian told us. Did you know, there's a species of moth that lives exclusively on the tears of large mammals? Fascinating!"

"Fascinating," Will agrees, voice soft, "but often destructive. There's a reason most people prefer butterflies."

"Personally, I prefer cats."

"The cocoons are one of three consistencies in all the kills," Zeller forges ahead, and Will examines the insect beneath the glass as he listens. "All found in water, all gagged with cocoons, and all flayed - different sizes and shapes of skin missing but he takes it the same way each time. Their skin is loose - not just from their time in the water, but like they just lost weight."

"He starves them," Will says, "make it easier to skin them afterwards."

Zeller nods. "That's the going theory. And the patches he takes seem intentional, neat, even."

"Why those shapes?" Will wonders. "What's he doing with it?" He stares down into the wise mummy face, as if the unborn insect will have the answers he seeks.

The sound of the door to the lab opening, of heels clicking on the linoleum floor, interrupts the conversation. Will looks up from the magnified insect swaddled like an infant in fine silk, and his forehead immediately creases in a deep furrow.

"Watch out if you decide to leave the building any time soon," Alana Bloom says, looking down at the umbrella she's setting against the wall, and momentarily unaware that Will is standing eight feet in front of her. "Freddie's prowling around the parking lot pouncing on possible 'inside sources' for 'inside scoops' on what lengths Jack Crawford is willing to go to in order to bring in Buffalo Bill."

Her words taper off into silence, and then into a shuddering exhalation, when she lifts her eyes and sees him standing there. It feels to him then as if the air has left the room, and they stand frozen in one breathless silent second in which none of them know what to say. Price shifts behind him, the squeak of his shoes the only sound in the room.

"Hey," Will says, finally, and his voice sounds cracked and dry to his own ears. He coughs, and opens his mouth to say more, but, finding no words to say, shuts it again and lets his eyes rest on the top button of her coat. He can feel the nervous energy, the fear and rage, and beneath that hints of pity and affection, still, all overlaid by a patina of confusion.

"Will," she manages, finally, mouth doing something that isn't smiling, so much as a desperate attempt at it. "Jack told me you might be coming."

"Didn't expect me to accept the invitation?" he asks, "Pass up the chance to see all my old friends?"

Her face clouds at the words. "We've all worried about you," she says, careful. "I'm glad you're well."

"So, I shouldn't worry that you'll want to strap me down and drug me against my will, again?" The words are out before he can stop them, cutting through the frail peace in the laboratory. He can hear Zeller suck air through his teeth behind him, sees the way Alana's mouth flattens into a stern line, the way her eyes narrow.

"If we want to talk about inappropriate past behavior," Alana answers, after a lengthy pause, her voice both wary and warning, "I think we'd better start with yours. Probably best to table discussions of the past for now, don't you think?"

There's a smoothness to her voice, a measure of control that isn't natural to her, but rather something learned. It's impossible to speak with her without noticing the ways she's been forced to evolve for survival. The changes to her voice, her gaze, her face, her stance, stand out like lurid handprints, and Will knows exactly whose palm would fit into each one.

Still, he can't quite fight his desire to push back, the anger that rushes through him, even though he knows he'll regret fueling this animosity, hardly conducive. "I never touched you, Alana, even after you used me, violated my mind, held me against my will."

"Well honestly, anyone would be forgiven in assuming you liked that kind of thing," she snaps, and then clamps her mouth shut tight as if to prevent anything more from escaping.

From behind the exam table, Price emits a low whistle. "Hey now you two," he says, attempting for a light voice, "we don't use that kind of language in this lab."

"I'm leaving," Alana announces, retrieving her umbrella. "Sorry for the interruption." She halts by the door, sparing a glance back to meet Will's eyes with her hardened jewel blue ones. "Watch out for Freddie whenever you're leaving the building, Will. She's looking for you, I'm sure. I told her she'd be smart to avoid you, but when has she ever taken a single piece of good advice?"

He catches up with her in the foyer, as she's reaching for the door, and stops her with a hand on her shoulder and the sound of her name. He withdraws the hand quickly, when she rounds on him, wide-eyed and terrified.

Hands raised in truce, he apologizes quickly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have touched you," he says, voice high and earnest. "I shouldn't have reacted to you like that, either. I was surprised. I apologize, okay?"

Her eyes narrow, but Alana nods, warily. "I can understand the feeling," she says, "it was a shock learning you were back in town."

"Yeah, I bet," Will replies. "Listen, I really am sorry. I didn't think I'd ever see you again, but I thought a lot about what it would be like on the flight from Argentina, and this wasn't how I wanted it to be." He takes a step closer, hands still raised in supplication, and Alana's eyes flicker over his face but she doesn't back down. Always so brave, Will thinks, too brave for her own good. "I doubt we'll ever be friends again, but I'd like to be amicable, if it's possible." He watches as her expression softens, and drops his hands when her eyes contain more pity than fear.

"It's good to see you like this," she says, "you seem more like your old self than you did...the last time."

Will nods. "I know," he says. "Hey, can we talk somewhere? I could use a bite to eat and some coffee, if you're game."

"I don't know," Alana says, looking down. She bites her lip in that undecided way he recognizes from a time long before they became so intimately familiar with betrayal and pain.

He smiles. "I'm allowed to leave campus," he adds, teasingly, "with a chaperone." His smile grows at the way her expression shifts, resolve breaking.

"Lunch," Alana says. "Your treat."

---

The cafe's dim lighting and deep set booths provide a safe place for the two of them to dine, uninterrupted by strangers and reporters alike. Will chews his sandwich deliberately, studying Alana's face - the familiar waves of her hair shot woven throughout with the still rare thread of silver, the edges of her mouth sporting new lines, though from smiles or frowns Will would be hard-pressed to guess.

"How have you been?" he says, finally, because there's really nothing else to say in this situation. "Price said something about you stepping down from your position at the BSHCI?"

Alana nods, her dark hair waving about her face. "I stepped down while the choice was still mine. Lounds and Chilton did a number on my reputation - and Jack's - with that retraction Frederick made to his previous statements, and that damned book." She pauses, maybe waiting for Will to express sympathy. When he doesn't, she continues, unfazed. "It was just as well. Without Hannibal in residence, my reasons for being there were minimal," she shrugs, "I never wanted that sort of power or responsibility."

"It seemed a trifle ostentatious," he says, "that title and that office. Not at all the kind of life I would have imagined you enjoying. Back when I first knew you, I mean, when you were all wrap dresses and adopting mutts from the pound."

Alana's smile is a little sad, but there's a spark of humor in her eyes at his words. "Simpler times," she acknowledges. "I'm afraid my current life would probably seem ostentatious as well; I left the BSCHI so Margot and I could focus on the Verger Estate's philanthropic efforts."

Will arches an eyebrow. "Bible camp for at risk youth?" he guesses.

"Animal rights," Alana corrects, raising her cup of coffee with a smirk. "Margot's idea."

"How's Margot?"

"She's well," Alana answers. She laughs, and, shaking her head, reaches into her purse for her phone, flipping through photos with a finger while she speaks. "We decided to homeschool Morgan, and Margot's taken charge of history lessons." She extends her arm, offering him the phone, screen lit by the image of Alana's happy family, standing on the front porch on a bright sunny day. The very picture of domestic bliss. Margot's copper curls have grown, swinging four or five inches past her collarbone. She wears a smile, and it occurs to Will that he never saw her smile in person. In front of Margot, a small boy stands, dressed in a miniature of Athenian panoply and staring with fierce determination as his mother takes his picture.

Will examines the picture with keen interest, memorizing the curve of Margot's smooth shoulder and the determination in the little soldier's eyes. He forces his face into a calm smile, returns the phone casually. "You seem happy," he says.

"I am happy," she says. "I didn't think I'd ever have this. And then - "

"Then you worried you wouldn't be able to keep it," he says. This should be an awkward conversation - beyond awkward - but one thing he's learned through his association with Hannibal is that moments are only awkward when one lets them be. Humans with a normal amount of empathy will still pick up and imitate the attitude of the person with whom they interact. He forces himself to sound open and casual, knowing Alana will mirror him. "I know. I'm glad for you. I'm glad one of us got to keep that life. I sometimes wish..." he trails off, shrugs, smiling, looking away. "I know what you're thinking. If what I wanted was a peaceful life of domestic bliss, I sure barked up the wrong tree."

"When did you see him last?" she asks, voice quieter than before, and Will lifts his eyes to see her looking down into the depths of her coffee.

"More than two years ago," Will answers. "We went our separate ways after Florida."

"Why?" she asks, and Will frowns.

"We had...disagreements, about what life should look like long-term," Will says, hoping she'll let him leave things vague. But her eyes are back on him now, gaze demanding, and he senses it will be easier to give her some further explanation. "I wanted to disappear, live simply somewhere we wouldn't be recognized. He wanted . . . more than that. He said . . . now that our lives had aligned, it was time for us to paint the world red."

"Oh Will," she sighs.

"You tried to warn me," he says.

"I'm not here to say I told you so," she says, "I know what that feels like, with Hannibal. Warnings don't work. He has a way of getting into your head."

He smiles, instead, the corners of his mouth and eyes gentle with sorrow. "Yeah, well," he says, "I, of all people, should have known better." He lets out a self-deprecating laugh. "You told me so, huh? But I went ahead and ruined my life anyway."

She covers his hand with one of her own, her blue eyes peering sincerely into his. "This is your chance to get it back," she says.

"I know," he breathes, his voice quavers on the words. He squeezes her hand in return. "I feel so stupid. So grateful to have friends like you and Jack. I'm - I'm sorry. About earlier. And, you know, earlier than that."

"It's okay," she says. "We both messed up. I don't blame you, or myself."

"No," he says, "we have Hannibal to blame."

"Exactly," she says, eyes flashing, "and soon we'll be able to hold him accountable. I can't believe he was foolish enough to return to Baltimore; what could he have been thinking?" She laughs. "I guess that's what you're here to figure out, right?"

He frowns. "Miriam Lass told me that The Ripper intended to kill her last. Even after she was free of him, she carried on in the conviction that, as long as he lived, she'd never be free."

"Explains why she was so quick to shoot Chilton," Alana muses, "when she believed it was him. She must have felt like her life was on the line."

Will knows that horrible, heart throbbing sensation too intimately to respond to the statement with more than a faint hum. "What was her treatment like?" he asks. "Was it successful?"

"What would success look like?" Alana counters. "In time she accepted that her memories had been manufactured, that she'd shot an innocent man. I think she regained some memories - I wasn't involved with her treatment, really, but whoever handled her case judged her enough of a success to release her. She was deemed capable of living a normal life, no longer a threat to herself or others."

"Did she still think she'd be The Ripper's last victim?" he asks. "I don't know how she came to that conclusion in the first place, if it was an assumption on her part or if it was something Hannibal said, or something he simply suggested because he wanted her to believe it. But when he gives his word, he usually keeps it. Whoever killed Miriam didn't stop with her."

Will cuts his eyes to Alana's pallid face, before letting his gaze dart away again. Her voice, when she speaks after a long silence, sounds stricken. "Hannibal has been known to change his mind," she says.

"I don't think it's Hannibal, Alana," he says. "I really don't. And if Jack really wants to catch this killer before anyone else goes missing, then I think he should listen to me, or at least be more open to the idea that the killer is someone other than Hannibal Lecter."

"If it's not him, then who is it? You said yourself the killer felt familiar."

Will's expression darkens further. He feels the prickle of an answer at the back of his mind, waiting to be shaken loose so it can drift to the forefront. Feels the familiar tickle of irritation at a mystery he can't yet solve. "I don't know," he says, "yet, but I'll find out."

"Let's hope so," she says, "for your sake as much as any future victims'."

---

Frederick Chilton hears the front gate swing shut, and steps into the kitchen, taking care to shut the basement door behind him. There's the sound of a latch turning, then all noise from downstairs immediately stops - the heavy door blocking sound completely.

He's standing at the kitchen island, pouring two glasses of white wine, when she walks through the front door. He hears her heels clicking, then a pause, then the soft slide of her stockinged footsteps after she slides off her shoes at the front door. He waits, heart hammering in sudden anticipation, till she steps into the kitchen a moment later. She throws her keys onto the island and takes the offered glass with a grateful smile.

"Long day?" he asks, basking in the radiance of her beaming smile. But her expression clouds at his question, and his heart sinks at her frown.

"Will Graham is back in town," Freddie Lounds tells him, tasting the wine before taking a deeper drink. "Jack offered him something - some kind of immunity, most likely - in exchange for consultation on Buffalo Bill."

"Not even Jack could be so foolish," Frederick jeers, but he knows Jack well enough to know that this is exactly how foolish he can be when there's a case to solve, and when Will Graham is involved. He feels his heart stutter at her words, before it kicks into overdrive. He takes a long drink, then a longer breath. Tries not to think of the way his voice has gone raspy, as if his throat were freshly scorched.

"Alana warned me to stay away from him," Freddie continues, considering him with a slow smile and a toss of her head. Scarlet waves bounce around her shimmering skin, a red sea stroking the effervescent white sands of the shore. It is so perfect, so cream smooth and strawberry pink, even when she lets him run his reconstructed fingers over her, he knows he cannot fully feel the silken softness of her with his rebuilt nerves and grafted skin.

"You should stay away from him," Frederick says, voice sincere and quavering just a little. After months of speech therapy, after all the reconstructive procedures, his voice sounds like him again. He hears the familiar way it breaks in fear. "After what we've written about him, neither of us needs to risk drawing his attention any further."

"I spoke to him," Freddie soldiers on, taking another sip and ignoring his frustrated groan. She is so brave, so reckless and beautiful; each time she visits him here, strolling in with the ease of someone who knows they are wanted, knows they belong, he feels as if he's lured a wild animal into his home. He watches her throat work. Pictures his hands as soft and sensitive as her skin is, as fresh and alive as it. "He practically admitted to Florida, and he called Lecter by his first name. You should have heard how he talked about him, too, like he admired him, absolutely adoring. I can't believe Jack doesn't hear it. He must."

He can hear the excitement in her voice, and her whole body seems to vibrate with frenetic energy. "Fredricka, please," he implores, "he burned me alive when he was still holding himself in check. He has nothing to lose now. Do not put yourself in his way."

"You want to just let him do what he pleases? Come and go as he likes? No consequences for the deaths he caused, for the lives he took - for what he did to you?"

"I would like nothing more," Frederick says, "than justice. Or vengeance. But I lose something in each encounter with the pair of them, and there's only so much a man can lose."

Her eyes don't soften, but there's a smoothing at the corners of her mouth that signals deep emotion. "It's time to take back some of what was lost," she says.

"There's no getting that back," he says. She hasn't paid the price he has - he prays she never will. "All of us whose lives intersected with theirs," he tells her, "found ourselves altered, formed into distorted reflections."

"Not me," she says.

"Not you," he concedes with a pained laugh, and wonders, for the thousandth time, why that is. How marvelous she is! So untouched - both her unburdened mind and her unblemished skin. His own shines strangely, stretched and imperfectly rebuilt. He's no stranger to makeup, of course, and his new routine is well-practiced by now. Why, it takes no time at all, making his face look like his face once more. He covers as much of the rest of him in clothing as he can.

"Take back what was lost," he repeats her words, pensive as he watches her gleaming like pale stone in sunlight.

---

It's the young man's voice that attracts Frederick's attention, and his face that holds it. His green eyes peering from beneath the flutter of heavy lids, the boy is olive skinned, with the sweet roundness of youth still clinging to his cheeks and mouth.

His voice, however, holds no sweetness as he lifts it in a yell directed at the two men sneering at him.

"Get the hell out of this neighborhood," the young man hurls his words towards the pair. "Every time the two of you show up, someone's car window gets busted, or someone's bicycle goes missing. People suddenly mislay their wallets and phones. The cops won't step in, so I'm telling you - stay the hell off this block."

His words and the passionate flush spreading across his comely face are enough to halt Frederick in his steps - his car keys still dangling by the ring as he pauses, arms laden with dry cleaning, to listen in on the dramatic conversation.

"You accusing us of something?" one of the men is saying, and the other spits onto the ground in front of the angry young man's feet. "Why aren't the police here, if we're being accused?"

"I don't want trouble," the young man says, his voice steady. The dusky blush of rage sitting on his cheeks is the only sign of his emotion. He shifts his weight, balancing light on the balls of his feet. Ready to move fast. "You don't want the kind of trouble you'll get if you don't move on, either. It isn't worth your time." His eyes narrow. "Or teeth."

Frederick holds his breath in the silence that follows, wondering whether he ought to be dialing the police - or paramedics - in this moment. Then one of the men laughs - the one who had spit before - and the other one speaks. "No point hanging around a dump like this one," he says, and gestures to his friend, and together the two men turn and carry on down the street, leaving the youth to collapse, and Frederick to stare on in amazement.

Such courage! Such verve! Those men could have clobbered him, but the young man never flinched. No, at no point did he seem to fear the beating Frederick had felt certain his words would draw. What reckless bravery, to risk life and limb in defense of the meager duplexes and crumbling three story apartment building that make up the "neighborhood." Student housing, for the nearby college, Frederick reckons, and figures the heroic young man must be both a student and resident.

He returns much later, after the sun has set, with a car that isn't registered in his name, wearing clothes he'd never wear in his normal day to day. He parks the van beneath the street lamp opposite the ground floor apartment he'd seen the young man enter earlier in the day, and unloads the couch from the back quickly, lest anyone see. He's reclaimed much of his upper body strength, though strenuous work like this must be done carefully. In fact, there are times when Frederick believes that what he's become is infinitely stronger than what he was before fate and a trio of serial killers disassembled him one piece at a time. What he's rebuilt from the scraps they left him is better, bolder, braver, and strong in a way the mewling dandy he was before couldn't even pretend to be.

Couch unloaded, Frederick pauses to wipe his forehead, handkerchief clutched in leather gloved hands that brush cool against his hot skin. He takes the sling from his jacket pocket, and wrestles his right arm into it with a practiced motion. He lets his right shoulder droop, and leaves his sterling headed cane laying against the van's interior wall, ready for a fast retrieval when the time comes. Then he walks to the far side of the couch and begins to push half heartedly, cursing each time its weight fails to move under his pretend attempts to get it up the ramp and back into the van.

It takes longer than it should for Calvin to walk by and notice him; by the time the young man's voice interrupts his curses Frederick is damp with sweat and must look a deal more convincing than he'd even intended.

"Need some help?" Calvin asks.

Frederick nearly sobs with relief. "Oh, thank you," he says. "I'd do it myself if it weren't for..." He lifts his right shoulder, gesturing to the sling with a forced smile. "Say, you look strong."

"Strong enough to move a couch, I hope," the young man says, and Frederick steps out of his way to let him push the couch up the ramp, till it teeters, half in the van and half out.

"Can you get around the other side," Frederick suggests, "I can push with my good arm while you pull."

Calvin hops into the van without a moment's hesitation, so good hearted and trusting Frederick wants to cry. "Ready!" he calls, from the rear of the van, and Frederick heaves against the couch and simultaneously slips his arm free of the sling, the fingers of his right hand closing around the cool wooden end of his cane.

---

The champagne gold four door parked across the street draws far less attention than a black Bentley or white van would - in fact, no one in the residence takes notice of the vehicle in the slightest. There's no reason to - and so many much more interesting and important things happening inside and around the well-kept two story home that the three occupants could hardly be expected to take note of something as mundane and unconcerning as a new car parked in front of the neighbor's. It arrives mid-morning, and remains until the afternoon, and none of them - woman, man, or child - spare a second glance for it, or a second thought as to what or who might be behind the tinted back seat windows.

Margot's attention is all for lesson planning. Her prodigy - young as he is - shows an aptitude for history she hopes to foster and guide. The boy's wardrobe stands as testament to his mother's efforts; costumes fill the right hand side, one for each civilization they've studied so far. Little suits of armor - from Athens, England, and Japan. A zip-up onesie wrapped in winding, tea-stained bandages. A crown and scepter, made of cardboard and painted with a child's uneven strokes (and Margot's careful touch-ups). She's learned to sew and hem and plan, learned about ziggurats and pharaohs and wars and gods. She's learned the heavy throb of love in her breast when Morgans's small fingers close around his chubby pencil to practice his letters on paper with lines wider than her smiles.

She sits alone in the upstairs office, by the window that overlooks the street where the unremarkable car continues to cause no alarm. Today is Thursday, and on Thursdays they go out. Sometimes it is to the beach, or an art gallery, or to tour a factory, or to a museum or a children's play. Today it will be the zoo, to see the reptiles with which Morgan has developed a fascination since beginning to study them with Clayton. In the adjacent room, Morgan stares out the window as Clayton prepares his warm outer clothes, laying them out on the bed in meticulous neat rows. Morgan sees the car, but does not notice it, simply marks its presence as he would that of a squirrel or bird. Clayton calls him over to dress, and he moves from the window without complaint.

"Will there be snakes there?" Morgan asks.

"You've asked me before," his guard and tutor answers.

"I forget."

"There will be snakes," the man says, pulling the boy's sweater over his head and working the sleeves down his small arms, "and lizards and a gila monster."

"Can I pet them?" Morgan asks next.

Clayton sighs. "Maybe," he says.

"Probably not." Morgan pouts, but lets himself be dressed without a fuss. When he's bundled in sweater and jacket and scarf - the spring air still chilly for someone so diminutive - Clayton leads him to the foyer, where his mother waits, smiling and ready to sweep him up in her peony-scented arms.

"My bright boy," she coos, and Morgan twists his fingers into her curls. "Are you ready to go to the zoo and see the monsters?"

"They aren't really monsters," Morgan tells her solemnly. "They're lizards. Monsters don't exist."

"Some do," Margot tells him, stroking his soft cheek with her thumb to soothe away the frown that forms at her words. "Some escape from their zoos. We've got mommy to protect us though, don't we?"

Morgan nods, characteristic look of somber and sincere reflection plastered to his face. Margot has never seen a child so serious. It's ironic, for he's brought her a measure of light and joy that she hadn't known she'd been capable of experiencing. There are times when the emotion threatens to crush her with how huge it is.

Robert Clayton watches mother and child from a respectful distance. When it is polite to do so, he nods to his employer, signaling his intention to prepare the car. He leaves them to follow, after Margot has had her fill of fussing needlessly and maternally over Morgan's clothes. She could have dressed him, Clayton thinks, if she had wanted to. She prefers to straighten his clothes unnecessarily once he's already dressed, prefers cooing over the little prince he becomes after Clayton oversees his dressing and grooming. He's not complaining; it's a good job. Pays well. Less stressful than Secret Service work had been, though that's not saying much. He supposes, after all these years, he should feel a stronger sense of attachment to the family he protects. He has no family of his own, and very few friends.

The air is chilly, and his breath hangs in the spring air as he makes his way to the town car parked in the driveway. Usually, Margot prefers that the car remain in the garage, but it's been left out in the driveway today following a unplanned trip to the grocer for milk this morning. The windows are rolled up, and Clayton hears the locks sliding back with a click when he presses the button on the key fob, yet someone has clearly been inside the vehicle. A single maroon envelope rests on the black leather driver's seat.

Clayton picks the object up and stares down the street as he holds it. His index finger brushes over the back, feeling the thickness of the paper, rough and grainy, something made carefully, something rarer than what you'd buy from a drugstore's stationary section. It seems needless to Clayton, to put whatever message awaits inside an envelope like this. His eyes scanning the empty street, he notices the champagne colored car across the street for the first time, and pauses.

If a person were to attack Morgan then Clayton would be on them before they'd gotten close enough to touch the boy. His training is the best; when they are out together, he is constantly alert for potential threats. This envelope feels like a threat. He taps the paper lightly against his hip, eyes locked on the apparently empty car, and slips the envelope into his back pocket just as Morgan and his mother appear at the front door.

"Ma'am," he says with a nod, opening the backseat door and stepping politely to the side so that Margot and the boy can enter. Neither mother nor child look at him as they slide into their seats, and Clayton stands like a soldier at attention for a second longer than usual, his eyes still on the tinted windows of the car across the street.

---

"What good is it going to do?" Will demands, hoping to keep up with Jack's long, determined strides down the hallway towards the Senator's office. "I deal with the dead, Jack, with crime scenes and evidence."

"You deal with reading people," Jack says. "You think she's hiding something?" Jack stops, and turns abruptly, causing Will to nearly collide with him. He scowls, and Jack glowers down at him in response. "I think you'll know more after you meet her than you do now," he says, "and that will be useful. And who knows. Maybe you'll help her find Calvin."

"Yeah, right," Will mutters, and hurries after Jack, once again on the move.

They'd gotten the call about Calvin Martin over a late breakfast of scrambled eggs and sullen silence. He hadn't been missing long - neighbors had seen him less than eighteen hours ago - but he'd missed a morning appointment with his acupuncturist, and a friend had arrived at his apartment at an agreed upon time to find the door unlocked and the lights on, and Calvin nowhere to be found. Local detectives examining the area found a long, brown, insect cocoon in the tire treads left in the soft earth across the street from Calvin Martin's apartment.

Calvin's disappearance raised added concern because of his family; his mother, Senator Ruth Martin, specifically. Senator Martin, currently pacing the floor before her neat wooden writing desk, welcomes them into her office with a barked order to enter in response to Jack's curt knock. She nods to them. "Thank you for coming," she says, voice tinged by a Southern twang.

"Senator," Jack nods, "by all means. I want to assure you that finding Calvin is our top priority at this time. We have our best people on this."

"People like you," Senator Martin says, looking to Will. "What you did was unforgivable. Unpardonable. If it were up to me - "

"Fortunately for Calvin," Will says, "it's not up to you."

He hears Jack's sound of choked fury, and the look the Senator gives him is cold enough to freeze fire. He thinks for just a second that she might actually slap him, or start shouting. But she breaks eye contact before he does, dipping her head. "I need your help," she admits, voice gentler, though with no additional warmth. "How do I save my son?"

There's a sharp wrap on the door, and a familiar form steps through to join them in the room before anyone can speak. Will can't help the smile that spreads across his face, despite the disapproving glare Jack is casting at him. "Hello Frederick."

"Mr. Graham," Frederick says, after an extended pause. His voice is a good deal easier to understand than it was the last time Will saw him. His face is vastly improved as well. "I was told you had returned to the country, though I admit I had not expected to find you here."

"With all due respect," Jack says, voice straining for cordiality, "why are you here, Dr. Chilton?"

Will looks between them, notes the shuffle of Frederick's feet, the rigid line of Jack's spine. He can feel the animosity between them, the rage and resentment and humiliation rolling off Jack like fog off a mountain; the nervous frustration that clings to Frederick like a familiar stench. And something else, beneath that rot, something cold and hard edged that makes Will stand up straighter. He narrows his eyes, examining Frederick anew.

"I came to offer my services to Senator Martin," Frederick says, in that familiar high pitched whine that grates on Will fiercely. The reconstructed doctor turns to Senator Martin. Addresses her. "Senator, I am so deeply sorry to hear about Calvin's abduction. I come to offer my counsel. I have some...experience, let us say? With sociopaths, I mean." His eyes cut to Will for a flicker of a second.

"How many have you managed to catch?" Will asks. He takes a step towards Frederick, immensely satisfied when the other man steps back in submission, in terror. But there's something beneath the meekness and fear. Will feels as if he's balancing upon a fulcrum, awaiting epiphany. "Senator, we don't have time for this. If you want to save Calvin, you'll listen to me. The news cameras are on there way; there's a good chance our man will be watching. These kinds of people often want to hear about themselves."

"People like you?" Frederick cuts in.

Will carries on without reacting. "Buffalo Bill works hard to distance himself from his victims," Will says. "He wants to view them as pieces of his transformation - he tries not to see them as people, as equals, but the truth is he does. He knows how base he is, knows he's not above any of the people he takes. You need to remind him, force him out of the vision he endures for himself. Make him remember Calvin is a human being, not a thing."

"No," Frederick says, voice faint. Will looks to him, and the burned man shakes his head as if to clear it. "No," he says again, louder now. "Respectfully, Senator, neither Will Graham nor Jack Crawford can be trusted. Crawford has proven himself dangerously irresponsible numerous times over," Chilton's whining draws a look of such ire from Jack, Will can feel his scarcely contained anger flowing over him like hot water. He closes his eyes against it for a second, forces himself to breathe slow, till he's back in control of himself, certain the feelings he feels are his own. Chilton keeps talking, "And Graham - well, he learned from the best. Talking to him is practically an engraved invitation for him to sneak into your head and rearrange your thoughts."

"Maybe my mind isn't as malleable as yours," Senator Martin retorts. Will can feel the urgent, frustrated determination surrounding her. Fortunately, much of the frustration now seems directed at Chilton, rather than at himself. Curious, Will thinks, for someone's instincts to lead them to trust a confessed killer over a reputable doctor. Then again, Chilton always was off-putting.

"You have my advice," Will says calmly with a shrug, making careful eye contact with the Senator as he speaks. He keeps his gaze as tranquil as his tone. "Use your TV spot to humanize him - show pictures, use his name, force Buffalo Bill out of the illusion he's building for himself and back into the reality where Calvin is a human being just like him. It probably won't encourage him to release him, but it could buy us more time to find him."

"Oh and I'm sure you're on the brink of discovery," Chilton shoots, eyes wide. His voice is sarcastic, biting, but Will hears a high thread of fear stitched across the words as well. He wonders at it. Something sits in the back of his mind like a beast crouching in shadows, waiting to spring into fatal illumination. "Jack Crawford with his psychopathic bloodhound, sniffing out serial killers by means of psychic vibrations. Hardly the most scientific of methods."

Will shrugs. "Gets results."

"We'll find him, Senator," Jack speaks up, deep voice booming with sincerity and reassurance. "We're close."

Senator Ruth Martin scowls back at him. She is fifty-one years old, has been a single mother for the past two decades, and has climbed the ranks of the government in that time. Will imagines there've been precious little obstacles she hasn't managed to overcome; the woman radiates indomitability.

A polite knock breaks the silence, and a moment later an intern's head and shoulders appear in the door frame. "The news crew is here, Senator," the young man informs them. "Would you like me to bring them in?"

"Yes, please, Javier," Senator Martin nods back. "Gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'll ask you now to be on your way. Dr. Chilton, thank you for your offer. Agent Crawford," her voice lowers, eyes clouding, "do your job and find my son."

"Yes, Senator," Jack barks, stiff-backed and reminiscent of a toy soldier in Will's opinion. Will nods to the Senator, then follows Jack out of the room.

"What the hell are you doing," Jack growls, rounding on Chilton the moment they are in the elevator. "Stay the hell out of this and let us do our jobs. Surely you have some slanderous sequel to work on."

"Only it isn't slander, is it?" Chilton's smarmy voice makes Will feel as if his mouth is full of live worms. He remembers that voice floating to him through a drug haze, remembers Chilton sitting in the witness box and declaring him a sociopath. "Everything I've said about you is true," Chilton says, staring hard at Jack, "or else why haven't you taken me to court? You and I both know, you don't have a case. Everyone else knows it too, Jack."

"You aren't worth my time," Jack glowers. "Some of us have work to do, Dr. Chilton. So I'll say this only once: stay out of my way."

The elevator bounces to a half on the ground floor, and Chilton's eyebrow shoots up. Will can see the glisten of scar tissue in a place by his temple where the makeup has been rubbed off. "Is that a threat, Agent Crawford?"

"It's an order." The doors slide open, and Jack shoves past Frederick and heads towards the front door without turning around to see if Will follows. He waits a moment, long enough for Frederick to look his way, long enough to look into those flawed blue eyes. His expression clouds.

"Bye for now, Frederick," Will says. "I'll be seeing you soon."

He can feel Frederick's eyes watching him - or his one functional eye watching - as he stalks off towards the parking lot, but, like Jack, he doesn't look back.

---

It's a strange feeling, being inside another person's skin. Even stranger to be inside several peoples' skins at once. Frederick is no stranger to the sensation, but the experience is not usually so straight forward and literal.

His original plan had been a ribbon. Peel them like oranges, he'd thought, imagining one winding crimson tape, but it had been harder than he'd guessed. He'd planned on wrapping himself like a mummy, back then, winding ribbon after ribbon of gleaming skin around his limbs and torso. The idea had lacked elegance in addition to practicality.

The sound of screaming filters through the half-closed door. Frederick frowns, his hand reaching for the volume button to boost the crashing sound of strings, music swelling nearly loud enough to drown out the shrieking. He can still hear it, though, wailing from the well in the room across the hall, like a strange instrument played out of tune. He's not sure whether he enjoys the way it makes him feel. It certainly affects him.

One of the large, dark moths he's been raising below in this subterranean world flutters by, lighting briefly on his shoulder, before finding a comfortable perch spread across the upper right hand corner of the full length mirror in front of him. The creature doesn't startle him; there are many of them down here, descendants of the original insects he had ordered as pupae. They have never made him afraid. He'd watched the first one spin its chrysalis, watched it vanish in slow segments till it hung like a minuscule mummy from the juniper branch in its tank. When he watched it emerge, wings wet and dark as tar, spreading slow, he'd felt a strong connection to the little animal that experienced such significant change. Frederick has experienced such alterations in his own life, though rarely as graceful or self-directed as this.

He straightens his back and examines his reflection more closely. A well made garment should hug the body, accentuate strengths while minimizing flaws. He's hardly a tailor, but his hands, miraculously, remain steady when he needs them too. He's worked slowly, taking great care, wasting nothing. The result of his careful labor is profoundly satisfying, if as yet incomplete.

It will only take a few more to complete the coat. The one in the pit now will fit nicely across the breast. It's a good one - possibly the best, or second best - unblemished and bursting with righteous bravery. Yet Frederick can't help the way his mind turns to a different donor entirely.

He's been expecting Will Graham's reappearance since he began taking donations. It had taken the Bureau longer than he'd anticipated to contact the shepherd dog that savaged their sheep; in the end, Jack had needed the push that the discovery of Miriam's body had provided. Frederick remembers the way the body sank, its arms trailing up, finger tips and floating hair the last sign of it. He wonders what it looked like by the time Jack's team found it. By then it must have been hard for even them to see it as a human being.

He strokes the smooth leather at his shoulders, and his body shivers with a sudden elation. In the mirror, his eyes gaze back, charged with a fresh strength, an unfamiliar bravery. Will Graham has returned, as Frederick has known all along he would. The man who took his skin from him - burned it from his body just as surely as Dolarhyde did. He may as well have lit the match himself. And now here he is, come home at the perfect moment to repay Frederick for what he took from him.

The scream reaches a thin, high wail, a jumble of words, begging, desperate. Frederick frowns. He prefers it when they don't speak; it helps when he can pretend they don't even know how. The thing in the pit gives him no such comfort, babbling on nonsensically until Frederick adjusts the volume on the stereo again. In a few minutes he'll take off his work in progress, and return to the kitchen upstairs, and the screams will continue on unheard, blocked by the heavy metal door.

He smooths his hands over the home-made leather. Hunted, harvested, and tanned at home, with his own steady hands. There's a freckle at the elbow of one sleeve.

As he drapes the fleshy jacket back over the sewing dummy - feeling the touch of hands on his own patched together skin as he smooths his fingers over the supple leather shoulders of the garment - Frederick is wrenched back to reality by the gentle buzz vibrating against his left buttocks. He draws the phone from his pocket to read the message illuminating the little screen. It's from Freddie.

Lunch?

Frederick hums, a smile spreading like an oil slick across his reformed visage. As he ascends the stairs, eyes on the message he's typing in reply, Frederick barely recognizes the sounds that follow him up through the dark as human.

---

The place that Hannibal Lecter has decided upon for their rendezvous is aptly chosen. He waits, his chin and nose wrapped in gauze and bandages, in the bar of the Marcus Hotel, located directly across from one of Baltimore's most popular plastic surgery clinics. It's a popular destination for wealthy patients wanting a place to recover away from prying eyes, in luxury and privacy. His bandaged face and dark sunglasses are unremarkable in this bar.

Grim-faced and scared, Robert Clayton could pass easily for a patient checking in pre-op. Enjoying one final drink to calm his nerves before bed, destined to reappear here tomorrow with lips bloated like grave worms, skin shiny and raw from being resurfaced with lasers, ordering an overpriced mineral water or snake oil juice elixir, or, Hannibal notes with a glance at the other patrons seated around the bar, ignoring doctor's orders altogether to mix martinis with pain medication. Clayton glances around the establishment, but gives no sign of recognition. He strides purposefully towards the bar, hands in his jacket pockets. Hannibal can hear him humming along to the Cole Porter tune being played on the bar piano.

He waits until Clayton has received his drink and found a seat at a booth in an unoccupied corner of the room before joining him. "Mister Clayton," he greets, with a slight incline of his bandaged head. "Mind if I join you?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't want you to join me," the other man says gruffly, gesturing open palmed to the empty side of the booth. Hannibal slides in, face cool and unreadable beneath the gauze. It had been a risk, contacting the bodyguard, giving him an exact time and location. Hannibal hadn't been sure Clayton would show, still can't discount that this is some kind of trap, or that he may betray him later. So far his boldness appears to have paid off. "Let's say you have my interest."

"But money alone won't sway you to disloyalty," Hannibal finishes for him, "not with Dr. Bloom and Ms. Verger paying you so much already."

"I highly doubt you can match my rates," Clayton agrees, taking a sip of his beer before brushing the foam from his upper lip.

Hannibal smiles. "You might be surprised," he counters, "but what I have to offer you is something your current employers cannot."

He shoves the envelope across the table, and Clayton takes it without another word. His expression darkens, face clouding like a stormy day as he withdraws the stack of photographs. "Where did you get these?"

Hannibal shrugs. The memory of Chiyoh's dark gloved hand passing him the envelope as they passed one another in the crowd outside the art museum earlier today flashes briefly through his mind. Where she had found them, he hadn't asked.

"The CIA couldn't get these," Clayton insists, voice an urgent hiss. "No one in the government could locate her."

"No one chose to locate her," Hannibal amends, "no matter what you were told."

Clayton stares in silence, his face a mask of concentration and disbelief as he scans the photographs diligently. The girl is the right age, her hair the right shade of chestnut brown, eyes the right almond shape, and he knows, he knows. "How?"

"It doesn't matter," Hannibal says. "How I found her or what I want for her doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that I can take you to her."

Clayton's breath is harsh. His beer sweats forgotten by his elbow as he chews his lip at the photos spread across the table. Her face stares up at him again and again and again. That familiar smile. Hannibal can smell the rush of relief, sweet as dry grass. "She's safe," Clayton breathes. "She's smiling."

"She's been well cared for," Hannibal agrees, "but she will only be safe once the two of you are reunited."

Clayton shakes himself, almost literally, his head wagging as he comes back to himself. "What do you want?"

Clouds of white cotton obscure Hannibal's crooked smile. "Could anything I ask for possibly be too much for what I'm offering?" he asks. Clayton doesn't answer, but the look in his eyes is the only agreement Hannibal needs. "The boy," Hannibal says. "You will bring me Morgan Verger, and I will tell you where you can find your daughter."

Silence. Clayton shifts, the vinyl seat creaking beneath him. He cups the sweating glass with both hands, rotating it as he thinks. "What do you want with him?"

Hannibal shrugs, aggressively nonchalant. "It doesn't matter," he says.

The bodyguard chews his lips again. Hannibal watches, his red eyes hawkish. "What if I go back and tell Ms. Verger about this conversation?" Clayton asks.

Hannibal's smile grows. "In the long run," he says, "that won't matter either."

None of this will matter, he thinks but doesn't say. Whether you give in or fight, the outcome will be exactly the same.

Clayton leaves with the photographs, returned to their envelope, and a second envelope, crammed with cash and a phone number printed neatly on the back of a coaster. Hannibal watches him go, watches his back disappear past the lobby's main doors, before flagging down a waiter and ordering a glass of white wine for himself.

"Are you sure that will be alright," the young man asks, "with your medications?"

Hannibal smirks benevolently at the boy. No doubt he is new to the business. "I'm certain it will be alright," Hannibal informs him, gently. "If I were you, I would trust your patrons to know what is best for their health in the future."

"Of course, sir," the waiter flushes. "Can I bring you anything else?"

"Nothing," Hannibal says. "And take this beer away, please."

---

I could go to Jack now, Will thinks, as he turns the corner towards Chilton's office - thoroughly redone in deep reds and browns since he's been reinstated as the head of the BSHCI. As a former inmate under both Chilton and Alana's reigns, Will has to say he wouldn't have been thrilled with Chilton's triumphant and wholly unexpected return to managing and directing the hospital, had he remained an inmate in the facility.

I could go to Jack and he could take it from there, he thinks.

But he knows he won't change course, knows he can't. By the time he walks into Chilton's office, hands in his coat pockets, forcibly nonchalant, Will knows it's too late to back down. He thinks of Mason Verger, thinks of that night in his house back in Wolftrap, standing off with Hannibal over which of them would dispose of the butcher's boy. How much simpler life would have been for them if one of them had ended Mason's life that night. How much simpler if they never left threads like Mason and Chilton hanging.

In some other world, Will imagines, where Mason died that night he fed his own face to the dogs, Hannibal managed to saw his head open and serve his brains as Jack's last supper, uninterrupted by police turned bounty hunters.

"Mr. Graham." Chilton's voice is high and needling, irritating in a way Will recognizes from their long familiarity. His words are clear, voice un-slurred by careful hours with a speech therapist, Will guesses. All that hard work, and they couldn't make him sound less whiney.

"Hello, Frederick," Will says, unsmiling. "I wanted to apologize for any tension between us the other day when we consulted on Senator Martin's son's case."

Chilton's jaw twitches, an expression closer to a flinch than a smile flitting over his face. He stands, behind his desk, resting weight carefully on the cane at his side. "Is that what you wanted to apologize for?"

Will sniffs. He can feel the fear and excitement and loathing, and above it all the roaring indignation, the unfairness of it all. He has a mental image of Chilton as a very small child, fists clenched, foot stamping. It's not fair, it's not fair. It isn't fair. Will remembers the feeling, the despairing disbelief. And suddenly, he also remembers a still morning that winter he was released from the BSHCI, when the snow clung to the ground like a thick wet blanket, and Chilton had shown up on his porch, dripping with blood and looking for a shower. It's not fair. Will had been someone he'd trusted, once, an ally of sorts.

"We have matching scars," Will says softly, and hears the words echo through the corridors of his memory as he speaks. He takes a step further into the room, closer to the desk, and to Chilton, standing behind it. "I have to say, your recovery is simply remarkable. You seem to have regained yourself and then some. Remade a whole new man, as it were. I'm learning all kinds of new things about you these days, Frederick."

There's a flash of panic in Chilton's watery eyes, a jolt of anxiety that slides along Will's skin like a cold wet tongue before dissolving away as Chilton gets ahold of himself. "I am learning all sorts of new things about myself these days, as well," the psychiatrist agrees. "What you did to me - " he holds up a hand, as if expecting Will to object, "what you ensured was done to me, gave me an opportunity. To rebuild."

"The doctors who stitched up your skin suit are to be commended," Will sneers. "Perhaps, however, this one isn't entirely to your liking. Not satisfying enough?"

"Oh, I am fully satisfied," Chilton's voice cuts icily through the scant space between them. This close, Will can see the line, just above his collar, where Chilton's skillful makeup work ends, giving way to a ring of glistening scar tissue. "Or I will be, soon enough."

Will shakes his head. "Quite the transformation," he murmurs. "You're as thoroughly changed as any of the Dragon's other victims. You just happened to survive."

Chilton shrugs with one ruined and rebuilt shoulder. "You made me a sacrifice to your dragon, Mr. Graham, but I managed to walk away from it. Francis Dolarhyde provided the catalyst for my transformation," Chilton admits, "but I consider myself a self-made man."

Will can't quite suppress the snort of laughter the remark inspires. "A self-made facsimile of the Chesapeake Ripper," he sneers. "And a decent one, at that. You have Jack convinced Hannibal's returned."

Chilton smirks across the table at him. The expression makes Will's skin crawl. He imagines the way Chilton must have worked the knife beneath the flesh of his victims, imagines the disdainful and discomforted face he would have made. A decent enough copy to fool Jack, maybe, but Chilton cannot begin to approach the delight and exuberance of a true Ripper killing.

"Compulsive imitation pays off at last," Chilton says. "But Jack's right, isn't he?" He raises one eyebrow, and Will frowns. "Hannibal has returned, if you have."

"We parted ways years ago," Will begins to insist. "In Florida."

"Of course you did nothing of the sort," Chilton smiles. "Unlike your friends in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I have no personal bias blinding me to what you are. I never have. It's why I've always been able to see through the disguise you use to fool the rest of them so consistently. I see what you are beneath."

"And what am I?" Will snaps, surprised at the annoyance that creeps into his voice. The conversation isn't turning out as he'd anticipated. There's something about the way Chilton is speaking to him, the way he's afraid, but not afraid enough, and certainly not surprised by Will's presence, by what Will is revealing he knows. "Beneath my disguise, what am I?"

Chilton considers him in silence, briefly. Then, "You are what you once told me I was not," he says, "a killer, Will."

Will pulls his face into something like a smile. "I was wrong about you," he says, but Chilton shakes his head.

"Not wrong," he says, watery eyes flashing. "As they say, people change. And none more than I, it would seem."

"I have great empathy for you, Frederick," Will says, "both of us eviscerated and reformed. Both of us accused while innocent."

"You're no longer innocent," Chilton rejoins.

"No more than you," Will agrees, and he sees the gleam of a threat in Chilton's weak blue gaze. "I'm not going to Jack," Will says. "You know I could."

"I do," Chilton agrees, "which forces me to question why you've decided against the most logical course of action. Why did you come here? It can't have been easy to shake your FBI escorts for the time this conversation is taking."

Will shakes his head, jaw set. "You wanted me back here," he says, "and Hannibal, too. Do you want to tell me the reason? Or should I guess?"

"You don't need to guess."

"I don't," Will agrees. "Eager to count us amongst your donors, Dr. Chilton?"

"It would certainly be fitting," he replies. "Dr. Bloom once told me I wouldn't be comfortable in Hannibal's skin if I couldn't be comfortable in my own."

"Has something changed since then?" Will asks, eyebrow raised at Chilton's willingness to share.

"Oh yes," Chilton breathes. "You've changed. And so, I trust, has he. I know why you won't go to Jack, Will. When the time comes, both you and Hannibal Lecter will come to me."

---

The wet grass squishes beneath his shoes, slick and slippery so that he finds himself watching his own feet, and the way the wet earth wells up around them with each footfall, almost as much as he watches his young charge, trekking diligently along beside him. Their pace is slow enough to accommodate the boy's short legs. For someone so young, he shows signs already of being an experienced hiker, the result of many such journeys before. His experience is evident in the careful way he places his feet, in the silence of his steady breath, in the way he does not pester Clayton with complaints and questions about distance.

It had taken some convincing, Robert Clayton recalls, the first time he'd approached his employers about the possibility of extending the boy's education into wilderness survival. It was what he would have wanted for the boy, had he been his parent. A little more than a year ago he had made the case that the boy was old enough to begin acquiring a familiarity with the wild.

"Not camping yet," he'd been quick to clarify. "I own a cabin about two miles off the road."

"The boy can scarcely walk on carpet," Dr. Bloom had rejoined sharply, "and you're proposing to take him hiking through the forests of West Virginia."

"I can carry him most of the way," Clayton had insisted. "And what better way to gain balance than through practice. He'll be safe with me."

That had been the final word. By then, he'd been with the family long enough to earn trust. His mistresses knew their son would never be safer than he was with Clayton guiding him, watching him. And so the trips into the forest became a sporadic but common occurrence. This time the women had jumped at his suggestion; with Will Graham back in the country, dragging the memory of Hannibal Lecter behind him like a bridal train, Dr. Bloom and Ms. Verger no doubt saw an obscure cabin in the uncharted backwoods as the safest place for their son.

Clayton watches the little figure walking at his side, and feels a surge of almost paternal pride for the boy. He squashes the feeling at once. This isn't his child. Whatever skills the boy has learned from him, whatever character traits he's developed under his tutelage, he cannot claim the title of blood kin. Somewhere else in the world, there is one who already owns such a distinction, and Clayton can afford no distraction in finding his way back to her.

"Look, look!" the boy's call cuts through his thoughts, and Clayton follows the boy's pointing finger and gaze, to the doe that plucks its way gingerly through the undergrowth a dozen feet ahead of them. It places its feet gently, deliberately. Like a dancer.

He can remember another life, half a dozen years before, when he'd still had a wife and daughter to come home to, attending ballet recitals after work, arriving, the hero, with the forgotten slippers yet again. She always forgot something.

Clayton watches the doe, one hand on Morgan's shoulder, fingers a fraction tighter than they need to be. He remembers something besides his daughter's graceful body maneuvering on the stage - a story, a very old story he heard long ago, about a father who sacrifices his child to the gods. Crueler than any Christian tale, this story ends with bloodshed, the only glimmer of hope the hint that maybe the child is replaced at the last fateful second with a doe, whose throat opens under the ceremonial knife in her place. The work of a benevolent deity, he remembers, remembers how in those ancient stories the gods were always crueler, always kinder, with loves more fierce than mortals, passions too strong for mortal bodies to contain.

Morgan twists in his grip, wanting to step closer to the creature. Of course she startles at his approach, and the last they see of her is a flash of black tail vanishing into the trees.

They make the rest of the hike in quiet, watching out for her, for other forms of wildlife. Clayton tries not to think about what it is Lecter plans to do with the boy, but it is inevitable that this is where his mind would turn. The child is not his son; he does not need to remind himself who commands his loyalty. But it is difficult to imagine the boy coming to harm. The image of him suffering is anathema to Clayton, who has given years of his life to the companionship of this child.

"That was a good long walk," Clayton says, when they reach the cabin. "Do you fancy a snack and something to drink?"

Morgan nods, solemn faced, though Lars can tell the boy is enjoying himself. "Yes, please."

Clayton leaves the boy to take off his shoes and jacket, and heads towards the kitchen with the phantom of Morgan's tortured future in his mind's eye. His employers had given him a very thorough briefing when he first began working for them, so that he would be fully aware, they said, of the threat he was agreeing to face in order to protect them and their son.

"Surely he wouldn't harm the child," he had argued at the time. "He swore to kill Dr. Bloom, no one else."

"And then he swore not to," the doctor had stated coldly. "In exchange for stepping aside, I earned his word that he wouldn't kill me. But Hannibal never lets anything go. He told me once that my family belonged to him. He has a history of hurting children. Killing them. He sent Francis Dolarhyde after Will Graham's step-son. He mutilated and murdered a teenage girl with whom he'd formed a close attachment. And what we've managed to piece together of his early years indicates he may have developed his unique tastes after eating his younger sister."

She'd given him a hard look, eyes clear and brilliant, unclouded by hysteria. "Believe me when I tell you, it is in his character to sacrifice a child to spite someone else. And I will not have that happen to Morgan."

She'd given him pages and pages of articles and reports. He'd dreamt of them for weeks after, of victims screaming as their lungs were wrenched from their chests, as knives pierced their flesh in careful patterns, as flesh peeled away to reveal muscle and fat and nerve and bone. He had sworn to himself, he would never let such a fate befall the stern faced infant in his care.

Clayton frowns as he pulls the loaf of bread from his pack, and finds the jar of peanut butter in the cabinet above the kitchen counter. He finds a plate in the next cabinet, and begins to assemble the sandwich mechanically. Lecter had been right, when he'd said there was nothing he could ask for that would be too high a price to pay to have his daughter back. Clayton would give anything. Even this. Even Morgan. He will give the boy over to death for her, he thinks, but not to gratuitous torture.

He pulls the pills from his front pocket, shaking them from the bottle onto the counter beside the open faced peanut butter sandwich. One pill, Lecter had said, would be enough to put the boy to sleep for eight to ten hours.

"If you need to give him the second, be sure to give him water between doses," Lecter had said, pressing the bottle into his hand. "Space out the doses if you can. Or give him only the one dose, if possible. That would be best."

Clayton considers the two white tablets, his heart beating steady but his head a fog of pounding blood. He watches his hand lift a spoon to crush both tablets into a fine powder against the cutting board, watches himself sprinkle the powder over the two slices of peanut buttered bread. He adds a drizzle of honey, to disguise any bitterness from the drugs, and closes the sandwich before returning to the main room of the cabin, a smile forced over his face.

---

There's little illumination in the cabin when Hannibal Lecter arrives. The curtains are drawn, allowing scant light, filtered through the forest canopy already, to enter. There's a solar powered lantern on a low coffee table, providing a wash of dim white light. Hannibal blinks, standing in the doorway, and allows himself a moment for his eyes to adjust before he steps further into the little dwelling.

Robert Clayton is sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his cupped hands. The little figure in the bed beside him is still as death.

"How long ago did you administer the first dosage?" Hannibal asks, stepping closer to check the boy's pulse while he waits for Clayton to answer.

"He's ready to go," the man stands up, voice thick with emotion.

There's an edge on Hannibal's voice that wasn't there a moment before. "Was there some misunderstanding? I requested the boy be delivered to me alive." He surveys the silent form with a disdainful frown.

"No misunderstanding," Clayton replies, voice steady and rough. There are tears behind his words, burning and unshed. "I figured I'd save you the trouble. Let him go peacefully."

"You're so certain I planned this for him," Hannibal murmurs. "Of course, Alana would have explained that my profile made it plausible I would murder a child."

"Wouldn't you?" Clayton demands.

Just then, the still form of the child moans. The child he thought he'd given a merciful death, was in fact, very much alive.

"I thought two of those pills would have killed him." Clayton says.

"Naturally," Hannibal says. "I led you to believe that, thinking you might try something of this nature. In fact it would have taken four of these pills to accomplish that feat and I very much need the child alive...for now."

Clayton blinks at him, eyes red rimmed despite their dryness. They look painful, and his stare is full of pain. "I'm not going to allow you to make Morgan suffer."

"Feel free to try and interfere if you think you can," Hannibal challenges.

He moves at the same moment Clayton does. Hannibal side steps, maneuvering quickly to place himself behind the roaring man. The large man turns to face him too slowly, and in the time it takes for Clayton to redirect his attack Hannibal has launched his body forward, hooking one arm firmly about the thick throat of his victim. Clayton uses his dwindling oxygen on an abbreviated howl, the sound ending with a choking gasp as Hannibal hangs on, tightening his grip even as he feels Clayton twisting so violently that Hannibal's feet momentarily leave the floor.

The pair come crashing down a moment later as the bigger man loses consciousness. It's easy work, then, dispatching him to the afterlife. Hannibal grabs for the nearest weapon-like object, a heavy iron fire poker, and brings it down hard, point first, on Lars' reddened throat. Most of the blood misses him, but a thin spray pulses over his right cheek and jaw. Hannibal wipes at his face, and wipes his bloodied hand onto Clayton's still dry pant leg.

Hannibal stands over the bodyguards dead body. Clayton's large frame gives a twitch as the nervous system dies. Hannibal kicks disinterestedly at his leg, then turns his attention to the sleeping child.

---

"Your place always smells so good," Freddie Lounds announces, taking a mirthfully deep breath as she steps through the front door ahead of Frederick. "Aaaah. It always smells like something is baking, but I know there's nothing baking."

"There's nothing baking," Frederick confirms, "but that doesn't mean no dessert."

Late lunch and drinks by the water had been glorious. Frederick is full of radiance, the kind of brilliant warm glow Freddie emanates. He loves to spend time with her, loves to bathe himself in that glow, hopes always that some of it will someday choose to stick to him, and make him shine with the bright clever energy that sings from her skin.

Freddie plops onto the plump leather sofa, kicks off her leopard print pumps, and smiles up at him with just a hint of mischief. "I don't think I could eat another bite," she says, "those oysters were incredible."

"You may change your mind when you see what I have," Frederick hums, leaving the room reluctantly, if only for the time it takes to retrieve the bottle and two glasses from his kitchen. Freddie chirrups in delight when he returns to pour the rose. With the pink wine held against the backdrop of her red red curls and flushing face she looks like a Valentine. When they kiss, after a few comfortable moments of silence punctuated only by Freddie's small sounds of enjoyment, she tastes as sweet and cool as the wine, and he buries his hands in her hair with careful precision. This is the most he's usually capable of, after what his body has gone through, but she never seems discontent.

He remembers their earliest encounter, when she'd seen him taken apart and held his life in her careful hands. She'd seemed like an angel, as she stood over his dying form and forced air into him. White wings and red curls, the light shining behind her. He'd woken up in the hospital room alone.

She is so powerful and so good, her mind like a diamond, her smile like pearls. Frederick feels overwhelmed, bowled over by her utter perfection. His arms draw tighter around her. Tighter. If he could only hold her, like this, so close they are almost one, so close he could slip into her and touch the bright crimson core of her power.

She is so powerful and so good, and if Frederick could only be like her he would never fall victim to the wolves of the world again. Her Valentine face is framed by red fire, by battling flames, beating wings. A great red moth, copper wings unfurling, rises from behind her. From within her. His hands grab, beat, subdue, and finally hold.

The End of Episode Five