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.

6. Episode 6

"So you think he's a copy cat," Jack Crawford says, as he opens the door from the garage to the den and steps into the chilly house. He shrugs out of his heavy black outer coat, but retains the sweater and scarf beneath it.

Will Graham follows, slinking behind with furtive eyes. "No," he corrects, annoyance plane in his tone, "not a copy cat. I didn't say that."

"You said," Jack sighs, "that it felt familiar, similar in many ways to the Ripper killings, and almost definitely committed by someone with intimate knowledge of those cases."

"Someone aware of them, surely," Will says, "someone influenced, maybe directly impacted by them. But not someone copying. This is an original composition, Jack, played on a bold new instrument. The first of its kind. Our man would be insulted to be thought of as a mere imitator."

Jack huffs. Will takes a step further into the house, across the sparse room and towards the hallway door, and Jack trails him. "I don't really care about not hurting a serial killer's feelings," he says.

"Well," Will says, stepping from the den into the hallway, "not this serial killer's, anyway." He flicks the switch to bring the hallway lights to glowing life, and Jack's face is tense and humorless in the sudden illumination. "He's familiar," Will says. "He's someone we both know, someone who was connected to the Ripper investigation, touched by it."

"A victim's family?" Jack suggests.

Will shakes his head. "More of a victim," Will says, "someone who felt powerless, after whatever happened to him. Because of it. He sees this as his path to transformation," Will continues, watching Jack closely from the corner of his eye as they cross the hallway to the dining room side by side. "He takes something from each of his victims - a piece of the skin that covers them. He sees these people as possessing the qualities he feels he lacks himself. If he could just..."

He trails off for a second, feeling the twist of desire as if it is his own. His voice, when he speaks again, is lower, softer. Jack leans closer, in the dark doorway of the dining room, to hear what Will says. "If he could just cover himself in them, in the pieces he takes, he could take on those qualities."

"Are you saying he's wearing the victims?" Jack's voice is incredulous. Will thinks of the moment, years before, when he'd spoken to Jack from the wrong side of a set of iron bars, and told him he knew what the Chesapeake Ripper did with his trophies.

"He's making himself a person suit," Will confirms, "a totemic robe that will allow him to absorb the power of each donor." He takes a step into the dark dining room, the light from the hallways casting deep shadows around the long table and high backed chairs. "A raiment made from the flesh of those he reviles and admires."

"You're talking like you know who he is," Jack says, and Will can sense as well as hear the eagerness in his voice. It rises in him like a wave, the anticipation of knowing. The older man takes a step closer, towards Will, positioning himself between Will and the kitchen door, effectively trapping him against the hardwood table.

Will lets his hands trail over the back of one of the chairs, feeling the cool slopes of its wooden frame. He pictures the table set for dinner. "I have an idea," he admits, his fingers closing over the arched point of the seat. Behind Jack's shoulder, the light in the kitchen flicks on.

Jack's eyes widen, and he wheels to face the kitchen doorway. There's a dark shape standing there - tall and broad shouldered, impeccable angles contrasting dark with the brilliance of the light as Hannibal Lecter steps towards them.

"Hello, Jack," Hannibal says, voice almost sympathetic, after the lengthy silence that stretches between them. There's barely enough time and air for Will to draw breath before it starts, then, just like it did in his long ago vision of the best possible world, a world in which they all left together - him and Hannibal and Abigail.

Jack's right hand blurs towards the holster hidden under his jacket, and Will catches his wrist. Holds it, firm and final as steel shackles snapping shut. The look Jack gives him is familiar, even though he's never seen it in this life - Jack's eyes wide, mouth opening on a yell that won't come, an expression he hasn't seen before on Jack's face, but immediately recognizes as betrayal. Will stares back, meeting Jack's wide eyes with his own. And he knows, fully and clearly, the deal was real, Jack wanted to do right by him, as best he could. He knows, and it changes nothing.

Hannibal draws the kitchen knife along Jack's throat, like a paintbrush traversing a canvas, before the moment between them can break. The blade reveals meat and tissue, and Will watches as blood sprays from Jack's neck like a fountain, showering Hannibal's face, chest, and arms with crimson. Jack pivots on his heel, turning the hot rain of blood on Will now. His mouth opens wider, on a shout that still remains silent, save for a wet gurgle almost lost in the sound of Will's own shuddering breath, his deepening heartbeat. Jack's hands scramble at his, one wrist still locked in Will's grip, and his mouth opens to reveal a dark scarlet pit welling up from the back of his throat. Will's eyes widen and his heart quickens. And around them, the room fills with blood.

---

Hannibal

Episode 9:

"The Final Transformation"

Starring...

Hugh Dancy as Will Graham

Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter

Caroline Dhavernas as Alana Bloom

Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford

Lara Jean Chorostecki as Freddie Lounds

Raul Esparza as Frederick Chilton

Recurring...

John Doe as Calvin Martin

And

Katharine Isabelle as Margot Verger

---

before

The sky threatens rain, but Hannibal Lecter believes he will make it home before the deluge begins in earnest. Now and then a fat, cold droplet lands on and is quickly absorbed by the thick wool of his jacket. When one happens to land on his cheek, he lets it trail down his face like a teardrop, rather than rearrange the parcels in his arms to wipe it away. Home is just down the lane, beneath the shadows of the dormant jacaranda trees.

Home for now, anyway. They have been here five months, already, and Hannibal cannot say how much longer it will feel safe to stay. They've haven't stayed in one place longer than half a year, but Will hasn't mentioned moving on yet, and Hannibal finds himself reluctant to broach the subject himself. Another month without making plans won't hurt, he thinks, and knows he used to be more careful. Now he has more to protect, but finds himself having grown reckless, feckless, careless and impulsive. They're holding together, but he wonders how much longer it will be before one or both of them wants to tempt fate again.

For now they occupy a liminal space, somewhere between care and abandonment. When he stands close to Will, on nights when Will's body perks like a doberman's clipped ears, honing to their prey, Hannibal can feel the edges of his own being fraying, pulled by the vortex of Will's visions. They are cautious with their kills, while they remain in one place, but when they move on they leave displays of such grandeur Hannibal knows he never could have dreamed them - let alone created them - on his own. He remembers Will's first monument, the way he'd taken apart Randall Tier and re-assembled him as something greater and more fascinating than he had been in life. Such a promising beginning, and that imagination hasn't disappointed.

Hannibal lets his mind turn to the TattleCrime headlines - "Florida Death Disco; Beach House of Bones; Tijuana Torture Chamber; Carcasses in Caracas" - and a fond smile plays across his face as he recalls the hysterical tenor of Freddie Lounds' reporting. As they crept south, however, news of their works seemed to reach the US at a considerable delay. Hannibal has been tempted to send pictures of their last tableaux - twenty bodies in Chile hollowed out and lopped at wrists and ankles, stuffed with dry leaves that overfill their loosely stitched chests, and stood like scarecrows along the coastline. Their limbs sprouted golden foliage.

It's intimate on a larger scale, now. He used to feel connected to his victims in a way he could not feel for anyone whose life wasn't fading in his hands. Hannibal remembers an isolation so total it had filled him, as if he had fallen into a pit of ink that rushed over his skin and into his nose and over his open eyes and down his throat, till he had swallowed and breathed and become it. No part of him was clean, not an untouched part of his being left. Connection has always been difficult for him, and therefore important to him. He knows this - recognizes it about himself and accepts its unalterable nature. He can count on one hand the amount of people who have survived his attempts at intimacy for longer than half a decade.

If he tries, Hannibal can recall a time long ago when he could not even speak. Other people felt so distant, so impossible to understand. They feared and wanted without care, as unthinking and chaotic as fire crawling across the melting snow. They screamed and cried and laughed and smiled and sneered, driven by unseen desires Hannibal could not feel kin to. It was only when he took them apart that he could see how they worked. Then the world saw what he made, and it was as if they saw him, too.

Hannibal has considered sending one or two images from an anonymous email address. These days the world back home seems to have forgotten them. TattleCrime - and according to Lounds, the FBI as well - is occupied primarily with the recent string of flaying murders. Four women and a very young man so far, their bodies found in streams and rivers, swathes of skin cut from their backs.

Buffalo Bill, Lounds has taken to calling this new killer. Why Buffalo Bill, Hannibal cannot work out, but the name has caught on. Two big-city newspapers have found headlines in E.E. crummings' deadly little poem.

... and what i want to know is

how do you like your blue-eyed boy

Mister Death

Hannibal's own blue-eyed boy is waiting for him in the house at the end of the lane. There's a high fence of wide, wooden slats, and the windows on both stories show only perpetually drawn curtains of heavy dark velvet. It's not so different from his old house in Baltimore, on what feels like another planet now.

For years he had thought of unwinding time, un-shattering tea cups, had worked out pages of equations few minds could have read and comprehended in service of this pursuit. In the end he'd been unable to turn back the page; it was a far simpler thing to simply fold it in half and jump from their dimension into the adjacent one. In this new universe of light and blood and flesh and Will's storm colored eyes opening to his, morning after morning, Hannibal feels that foreign thrill of contentment everyday now. It scares him more than his desire ever did.

The front door is locked, but he can smell someone besides Will the second he walks into the foyer, and knows there is someone else in the house with them. Hannibal sniffs the air, searching for the familiar scent of Will's blood. He doesn't find it, and so makes his way to the kitchen to put the groceries he's brought with him in their place. Whatever Will wants him to find, it can certainly wait until after he's gotten the perishable items to the refrigerator.

The kitchen is his space, as it is in every dwelling they occupy, yet traces of Will have crept in here, in ways they had not done in any of their previous residences throughout the past three years. Doubtless, it is some combination of the amount of time they've spent together, coupled with the amount of time they've spent in one place. There's a small stack of books Will's wandered in reading and set down, and atop it, a beehive, fragile as paper, which Will found empty in the garden behind the house. It's in good shape, an excellent specimen. If they stay here for another month, Hannibal thinks he will try to find a small pedestal and bell jar to display it. They can use it as a centerpiece, for their final meals here - meats roasted in honey, honey comb spread over warm bread.

He closes the cabinet door on the last of his purchases, and turns to search the rest of the house for Will - and their mysterious guest.

He finds them in the master bedroom, which is somewhat of a surprise.

It is their sanctuary, a place generally kept free of the extracurricular hobbies that they both had a predilection for indulging in the late hours of the night. It was a room where they slept together in a platonic capacity, not romantically linked together but somehow psychically linked. After three years of being in each other's company, it has become a natural accommodation. One did not go far without the other and they never confused the need to be together as something involving attraction of the physical sense but it was definitely an attraction of the mental sense. The tabloids could identify and label their relationship however they wanted, Hannibal and Will knew what they were and they knew that the common world can never fathom the connection between them.

"Do you know that you've been home over half an hour," Will says crossly, the moment Hannibal crosses the threshold and freezes, face frozen and blank. "It's taken you thirty-two minutes to find us."

"I had to put away the groceries," Hannibal explains, after a pause. His voice is casual, his eyes trained not on Will but on the man Will has bound and gagged, spread out in a wide X across their bed. "Is he wearing one of my suits?"

"You already know the answer to that is yes," Will says, his annoyance still coming across loudly.

Hannibal feels the corner of his lips twitch. "Very well," he says, stepping further into the room, and towards the bed where the man in his suit blinks blearily up at him, just beginning to come round. The first blush of blue roses blossom at his throat. Hannibal takes in the contusions, the soft fall of sandy hair shot with strands of silver, the cheekbones that cut shadows across the man's face, and he pictures Will strangling this mirror image of himself into unconsciousness. "Why is he wearing my suit, then?"

Will smooths a hand lightly over the man's forearm, and Hannibal feels the ghost of the touch beneath his sleeve. "Do you remember," Will begins, unnecessarily because he knows Hannibal always remembers, "when you told me that you wanted it to be me who killed you, when the time came?"

He notices the scissors on the bedside table - and the knives - and the dusting of cut hair around the pillows. Will has carved his image from the marble block of some tourist, and Hannibal can't help the shudder that runs up his spine. "I remember," he says, unnecessarily, because Will knows he always does. "Has the time come, then?"

Will snorts. "You'd give me more of a fight than that," he says, "if you thought it really had. Think of this as a preview."

Will gestures to the high backed arm chair he's dragged to the foot of the bed, and Hannibal examines him without expression. "An opportunity to sit back and watch myself die at your hands," Hannibal says. "That is quite the gesture, Will."

It's then that the man serving as his proxy regains the strength and presence of mind needed to struggle against the ropes binding him to the bed. Hannibal takes the offered seat, leaning forward in anticipation of what it is Will has dreamed up. "For what sins does our dear friend pay?" he asks. "Or could you just not stand to waste the opportunity when you came upon my doppelganger?"

Will scoffs with a short sound like laughter. "He was hardly that when I spotted him," Will says, "dressed in tattered khakis and sporting a man bun, but there was obvious potential. He also happened to recklessly run over a dog without so much as trying to hit his brakes when I first saw him."

The emotion filling Hannibal's chest might be pride. "And how do you plan on punishing me?" he wonders.

The man on the bed twists, pulling at the braces at his wrists and ankles. Will makes a soothing noise, runs a gentle hand down the side of the man's face. There's nothing comforting about his expression, however, and the man's struggles only intensify.

Will turns from him to examine the knives arrayed upon the bedside table. "The divine punishment of a sinner mirrors the sin being punished," he breathes, and his fingers close around the smooth black handle of his sharp selection. Hannibal watches the curving of his fingers, as tied to physical reality in these moments as Will is loosed from it. He wonders, not for the first time, what it is Will sees.

"And what is my sin?" Too many to count.

The man on the bed freezes for a moment when the knife comes into view, held above his eyes for him to see. Then the muffled sounds of screams begin again, shriller and more pitiful than before. Will turns the knife, letting it catch the lamp light that slices through the room. His eyes are fixed on the other man's face. "Seeing me for who I am," he says, drawing a line in the air above the man's wide and fearful eyes. He moves the knife closer to the top of his skull. "Making me give you my mind and soul."

Will's eyes glitter as they meet Hannibal's, and the knife turns in the light a moment before Will pushes it into the man's skull.

Every house they've stayed in together they have glutted with blood. Hannibal imagines vengeful spirits, feeding on the living, growing strong and solid on their diet of carnage. He has no fear of spirits, however, and yet his heart trembles at the sight of Will's hands, buried in gore as blood comes pouring out of the man's head. The man's eyes roll in the back of his head as his mind is fractured by the knife's forceful entry inside his cranium. Will then snatches the blade out and more gore shoots onto the bed from the freshly made aperture in his skull. It doesn't take long before the damaged brain stops functioning and the man is finally still in his final embrace with death.

"What do we do with the brain that once housed my mind," Hannibal asks.

Will observes his handiwork and then quietly says, "Nothing. Your mind was a work of art and too precious for us to ingest. We leave it where it is."

Hannibal frowns, "Such a waste." They both study the dead man clad in Hannibal's clothes for a long moment and then he asks, "And what becomes of my soul?"

Will shrugs, "Nothing. Your soul died a long time ago, just the same as mine."

Hannibal smirks, "Such a tragedy."

---

Hannibal watches the pad of butter melt and spread across the dark iron skillet, and the aroma of garlic and fresh herbs fills the air. The liver sizzles, and Hannibal lets it cook for a moment as he takes a mouthful of wine. Perched on a stool at the expansive kitchen island, Will sips from his own glass, his eyes fixed on the page of his book. Hannibal examines him, unobserved, noting the rapid motion of Will's eyes across the page. He recognizes the book as one he had purchased the previous week, from a roadside book vendor, surprised to see his favorite translation of a well loved text in so unlikely a spot. He'd set it down beside Will's stack on the counter, and Will has evidently claimed it as one of his own. He's been reading the same page for close to three minutes.

They spend much of their time in comfortable silence, now, both accustomed to living alone and with quiet space for thought. The silence continues to linger as Will reads from the book and Hannibal continues preparing the meal.

Before Hannibal can pronounce dinner ready, three loud raps on the front door echo through the house.

In the wake of the sound, the kitchen is bizarrely silent. Hannibal locks eyes with Will, and knows everything he needs to know about how they will proceed in this moment at once, as if they have spoken, as if they have discussed and decided together on the best course of action.

"I'll see who it is," Will says, though it's not necessary for him to speak. Hannibal nods, out of politeness rather than necessity. He picks up their plates and moves towards the dining room. Will slides from the counter, pocketing one of Hannibal's boning knives as he moves in the opposite direction, towards the hallway and the front door.

For a long while, the only sound he can make out is that of the bone china plates settling on the oak table. He concentrates on that, on setting the plates at the correct angles, instead of on the sweat gathering at the nape of his neck, the fluttering feeling of his heartbeat as he waits for some kind of sign.

And then Will walks into the room, entirely whole and well, and clutching a thick manilla envelope between his hands. Hannibal lets himself breathe, relief slackening his shoulders for half a moment. Perhaps it is time to discuss moving on after all, he thinks to himself, as his heart rate spikes and then begins to normalize once more. This place no longer feels safe.

His relief, then, at seeing Will returned from nothing more than a parcel delivery, is extreme. And yet he cannot help but note the grim expression that twists Will's mouth. He cocks a brow in question.

"It's addressed to me," Will says, "from Jack Crawford."

---

Dinner sits forgotten at their usual seats as they devour the contents of the envelope, spread over the rest of the oversized oak table. There are six small sets of photographs and coroner's reports, each clipped together with one of the stainless steel gator clips Hannibal remembers Jack favoring for any important document. He can recall a folder of papers - prescriptions, pamphlets on treatments, articles on experimental remedies - flung onto the armchair in Hannibal's office, steel clip flashing briefly in the autumn sunlight. The artifact transports him back abruptly, involuntarily. Hannibal frowns, just a slight downward quirk of his lips. It is unlike him, to lose control of the flow of his thoughts in this way.

There is a flat, cream colored envelope, as well. Will taps it on the table, listening for the slide of the paper within, then sets it aside to first examine the pictures.

It turns out to be five women and a very young man. The most recently discovered victim's face is bloated and shredded from the time she spent in the water, but somehow Hannibal recognizes her without need of the corner's report. Perhaps it is the determination in her desiccated jaw, even hanging limp from the socket as it does in the pictures.

"A poor ending for Miss Lass," he says, fingering the photo. The one below shows her naked back, with its two diamonds of missing skin.

"She escaped from one monster only to find herself snatched up by another," Will says, voice shaky. Hannibal looks up from the photos to watch him. It's the same look he's seen a hundred times and more since they stepped off their boat in Florida: Judgment.

Will used to do this for Jack Crawford, for the FBI. He's known this and has always known it, and yet it seems less and less possibly by the day. The thought of Will, beautiful and entranced with his breath coming faster, his eyes flicking beneath their lids, on display for anyone stumbling by with a badge, turns his blood white with a bitter plaguing anger. This sight should be his alone, his and the men and women for whom Will's oracular maneuvers compose a rapturous and terrifying final sight.

"The others were random," Will says, several minutes later, as if he's been silent for only a matter of seconds. "They were just convenient, safe choices. Miriam Lass was different though. He knew her."

"How can you tell?" Hannibal asks. There is sweat on Will's upper lip, the faintest shimmer of perspiration.

"She feels different," he says, teeth bared in frustration. It's an expression Hannibal recognizes from a long time ago, another world now. He watches Will's eyes moving over the pictures, over the coroner's report. "Wait," he says, "that's it. She's not the most recent. Just the opposite; she was his first victim. Look at the dates." His frown deepens. "Look at her face, at the state of her. The others were bloated but she's dissolving."

"The first killed," Hannibal says, "the last to be found. Why was this one so difficult to locate?"

"He weighted her down," Will says, as if it's just occurred to him. As if he's always known it. "He weighted her body but he didn't bother with the others. With the ones who came after."

Will looks up, and his pupils are wide and black as the night sky, rimmed faintly by daylight blue irises. "He chose her," Will reiterates. "The others are meaningless. Livestock. He takes what he needs and discards the rest."

It's a familiar statement, but if Will feels that way, too, he doesn't show it, face drawn in lines of stress and wonder. Hannibal's eyes flicker towards the sealed envelope resting amidst the bloody pictures. Jack can hardly say more to ensnare Will; his best hand is already dealt, and Hannibal can see the way Will jerks towards the lure. "What does Uncle Jack have to say?" he asks. "Should we be packing our bags?"

Will scowls, momentarily returned to the mundane world of prison bars and extradition laws. His fingers twitch over the envelope, plucking it up and slitting it open with one of the knives set for their abandoned meal. Its contents slide easily onto the table, a single sheet of white paper embossed with Jack's forceful scrawl.

Call.

Will frowns at the number beneath the single word message. "It's not his number," he says.

"A burner phone, perhaps," Hannibal offers, "or an attempt to suggest he has one."

Will's frown deepens, dark lines creasing his brow. "What the hell is he doing?" Will mutters.

Hannibal lifts his shoulder in a half shrug. "I should think it obvious," he says. "He is attempting to elicit your aid in apprehending Buffalo Bill."

The sneer Will gives him is vulgar and vicious, and Hannibal feels the heat of it settling into his belly like a shot of liquor. "Don't call him that," Will scoffs. "Another of Freddie's stupid monickers."

"Not so different from the Tooth Fairy," Hannibal muses. He can't help the wry look he sends Will, can't help wanting to see the way his eyes cloud in anger. "Or Murder Husbands."

"Or Hannibal the Cannibal," Will is quick to retort. Hannibal just smiles, benignly. Any annoyance he has felt at either of these unfortunate sobriquets is lessened significantly by the radiance of frustration it produces in Will's tempestuous face. "Jack can't seriously believe I would help him solve a case again."

"He believed you would after you were incarcerated, diagnosed with a brain disease, and attempted to have me killed. He believed you would after you warned me, and after you admitted to wanting to run away with me, and after you - briefly - ran away after me. And you always did." Hannibal lifts the glass of wine that's sat forgotten by his elbow all the while. It possess a rich, dark flavor, and would have complimented the dish well. "Jack's behavior is predictable. When his investigation hits a wall, and when the stakes are high enough, he invariably turns to you."

"Is my behavior predictable then, as well?" Will asks. "After all, I always say yes."

"Indeed," Hannibal answers, voice careful, "you do."

A second of silence. Then Will huffs, raking his fingers through his hair and completely disheveling it in the process. "How did he even find us?" he asks, voice mournful. "Why didn't he just come here himself? This feels like a trap. But why bother with a trap?"

Hannibal's mind is racing over the same questions, the same scenarios and possibilities he knows Will must be considering. "He does want your help," he says, slowly, "or he wouldn't have bothered with a letter. He's hoping to gain your trust because he's desperate for your help. Again."

"He'll have something to offer," Will adds, "in exchange for my cooperation."

"It would have to be something quite compelling," Hannibal says.

They drain and refill their wine glasses, and eventually Hannibal clears the table and returns with a tray of cured meat and olives. He watches Will's fingers as he eats.

Eventually they agree on only one certainty (Jack is sincerely seeking Will's help in the Buffalo Bill murders), and several uncertainties (is Jack contacting Will through his official capacity within the Bureau; is this a trap; how does he know where Will is; should Will call this number). As ever, it seems they are left with more doubts than convictions. Will's expression certainly says as much.

"Will you call?" Hannibal asks. He thinks of a letter he wrote, long ago, in another life, in another world, and he can't bear to look at Will in this moment. Because he has one certainty he has not shared, but which he knows Will must also realize, although perhaps cannot admit to himself as true: If Will calls Jack, he will leave Argentina, they will separate - forever or for a while - and this part of their lives will be over.

"I don't know," Will says. Hannibal doesn't need to look to guess at his expression - he knows that look of tortured conflict well. "What do you want me to do?"

His smile is, perhaps, a little sad. He doesn't expect pity, and there is none present on Will's face when at last Hannibal looks up at him. "What you were meant to do," he says. Judge. Punish. Consume. And Will's face breaks, sudden and sorrowful. It's as if the strings holding him up are cut, and he sags with exhaustion and confusion. "You're exhausted," Hannibal says. "You look empty."

"I feel like I've lost blood," Will laughs, and it's a dry and scratchy sound.

Hannibal places a comforting arm around Will's shoulders. It is still foreign, still strange, to feel himself the comforter with no hidden knife. It's been a long time, he thinks, since he loved without ulterior motive. The past couple years have been enough to familiarize him with the sensation, but not long enough to allow him to grow accustomed to the feeling. As often happens in these moments, Mischa's eyes flash briefly, dangerously, the swing of her fine golden hair, before she vanishes down one of the darker corridors of his memory. As if she's been hiding behind a closed door, Hannibal thinks, listening. Hoping for a way back into this world, a place I never managed to carve out for her.

There are times when he suspects he's found her, or brought a piece of her ghost over, when Will looks at him with that trusting, inquisitive look so like hers. In those instants, Hannibal finds his mind flooded with the memory of her - sweet and succulent and delicious on his parched and starving tongue. His first spring lamb. He drinks the memories like poison.

"You can decide later," Hannibal says, but the heaviest part of his heart already knows what the decision will be. "We can figure out the details in the morning," he says, a more accurate statement by far.

Will regards him with one weary eyebrow cocked. "You're not going to push us towards your own desired outcome?"

"I have hardly pushed," Hannibal says, "since you left with me. This is my desired outcome, Will."

He watches the dark circle of pupil in the center of Will's eyes widen, like spreading puddles of ink on a blue-grey page. "Seems like you'd be extra keen to manipulate the situation, then," he says, without malice, "to protect what you've sacrificed so much to achieve."

"Any sacrifice I have made has been well worth the results," Hannibal smoothly replies. "You are well past my ability to manipulate, now, Will. And I think I do not need to. You will not abandon this life. I can do more than trust in our joint ability to preserve our lives and freedom."

"I could be deciding our ending," Will presses, and Hannibal feels the pressure of his searching gaze, watching for a tell, a sign of something Hannibal can't put a name to. Doubt, or dishonesty perhaps.

"I do not think so," he answers, finally. "But if so, let us give them such an ending as to be remembered and feared long after we are gone. Let us give them something to speak of in hushed voices in the years to come. I would end in such a way with you, Will, and be more than satisfied with what my life had been."

---

Will Graham makes the call on a burner phone of their own, sitting at the dining room table. The centerpiece is a firework of flowers, purchased in loose stems from a local florist and arranged at home, which Hannibal now realizes dominates the room inelegantly. It's early afternoon, and grey winter sunlight illuminates the room. They've been sitting at this table, or pacing beside it, since Will awoke that morning and ventured out to join Hannibal at the unnecessarily extravagant breakfast spread he'd created. Hannibal hadn't bothered asking whether Will intended to contact Jack; the important thing now was the details. It had taken them half the day to determine what those should be.

Now the table is cleared - apart from overbearing floral displays - and Hannibal watches Will's tightly drawn face. He holds the phone cupped against his scarred cheek, frowning as it rings. Once, twice. Hannibal hears Jack's voice, muffled against Will's face, before the third ring sounds.

"Hello, Jack," Will says. He pauses, and Hannibal listens to the indecipherable murmur of Jack's voice on the other end of the line. Somewhere far away, he hopes. He thinks. It's unlikely Jack would send Will the number and pictures, if he intended to come all this way in person. Hannibal imagines him in his office in Quantico, or possibly on his deck at home. Distant, remote, a vague threat they could go on ignoring if they so chose. But he knows already what their choice is, and he supposes it's his choice as much as it is Will's. He wonders, briefly and, shockingly, for the first time, if he could stop Will from pursuing this course of action, if that was his desire.

"Yes, I thought you might," Will says, and falls silent a moment more. "I'm supposed to trust that offer, Jack? You must think I'm stupid as well as insane. Has Prurnell even heard of this deal? Does she even know you're contacting me?" His voice is disdainful, harsh. "What makes you think I even care about helping you catch him?"

There's a long pause, then, and Hannibal watches in fascination at the way Will's expression clouds. Something he didn't expect to hear. Will's eyes flick towards his and linger, and Hannibal abruptly regrets their decision not to put Jack on speaker phone - risking Jack's suspicion at the tinny echo of Will's voice no longer seems unnecessarily dangerous.

"I need to think about it," Will says, and scowls at the murmur of Jack's voice. "I'll think about it," he says again, more firmly, and then presses the button to end the call, and drops the phone wearily onto the table between them, and drops his head into his hands.

"Will," Hannibal says, when he finds himself unable to endure the silence any longer.

Still, it takes a long moment for Will to respond, for him to lift his head from his palms and fix his gaze to a place on the wall just to the left of Hannibal's head. "He's offering me clemency in exchange for aide in solving the Buffalo Bill case," Will says.

"As we suspected he would," Hannibal says, pressing for more. There is something more, he knows.

"He thinks...he thinks you're the killer," Will says. "There are some details they kept from the press. They found...cocoons. In the throat of every victim." Hannibal blinks at him, unable to understand for a second, what Will is saying. "You know, the same sort you put in Bedelia's skull," Will says, and it slides into place at once.

"Jack doesn't realize your fate and mine are still entwined," he says. He remembers Will's words, voice quivering. The others are meaningless. Livestock. It had sounded familiar, and it seems so obvious now, why. "They're offering your freedom in exchange for my capture."

"Deja vu?" Will guesses, mouth quirking in a mirthless smile. "It feels like I'm usually being asked to trade your life for mine." The smile fades as fast as it bloomed, giving way to a cloudy scowl. "I hate to admit it, but I'm curious."

About who this killer is, and why he leaves the same calling card I once used. About what Jack knows and what he truly intends. About what it would be like to return. About what we can get away with. What we could accomplish, back in the States. Hannibal can't deny the curiosity coursing through his own brain with every pump of fresh blood, but, he thinks, this might have been one occasion on which the preservation of peace would outweigh his innate inquisitiveness. If not for Will. Above all things, and as ever, he is curious about what Will will do.

"We have already established you're going," Hannibal replies. "Why bother feeling guilty about the curiosity you'll soon be able to sate?"

"We're both going," Will says, aggravated. "We'll only be apart a short while." He stands, moving to the window to look out across the fenced in yard. It is not raining, but the sky is overcast, casting a veil over the sun.

Hannibal takes a step towards him, rests a cautious hand upon Will's shoulder. "I have concerns about this plan," he says. "I won't pretend otherwise."

Will shrugs, "I have concerns, too. Doesn't mean it's not the best course of action."

"Perhaps," Hannibal muses. "Perhaps best is also relative, though."

"Is our aim the preservation of our own lives," Will asks, "or is it the pursuit of ecstasy and forbidden knowledge?"

"My aim is to be by your side," Hannibal answers. "You described killing with me as a high, once. Do you still feel that way?"

Will nods. "Oh yes." Hannibal thinks of the way the younger man's heart beats slow and steady, the way his eyes grow glassy and distant, the deep slow rises and falls of his chest when they kill together.

"A high you have not come down from," he forces himself to say, "since that first night when we slew a dragon beneath the full moon, years ago."

Will frowns at the words. "That's your concern," he says, sounding incredulous. "That Jack and Alana's plan to quarantine me from you till I returned to my senses would actually have worked, on a long enough timeline?"

Hannibal keeps his face carefully blank. "You can honestly say you do not harbor any doubts, about what you will think and feel when we are parted."

Will's eyes rake over his face, searching. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, finally. His voice suggests he can think of nothing else to say. "Not really. It's been years. I didn't realize you had these kinds of doubts." There's a thickness in his voice. Pain, Hannibal thinks, familiar, bittersweet.

"I don't doubt you," he says, truthfully. "Not usually."

"This is what's happening," Will says, voice harsh. Not cold, though, no. Will is always fire, a smolder or a blaze, but filled to overflowing with a hot red passion. Hannibal feels the heat of his words. "If we don't deal with this now like I thought we had already planned, then we'll just have to keep on the move until we're forced to deal with it later. I want to deal with it," Will admits, softly, after a moment of silent soothing, during which time his annoyance slowly lifts. "We left things unfinished. And...I want to know more about this killer. Something about him feels familiar, but distorted. Like a reflection in a fun-house mirror."

---

after

The walls are scarlet, melting. They stand in a house made of blood - Will Graham and Jack Crawford clinging to each other's hands, and Hannibal, his cold face dripping with gore, standing apart and watching. Will can feel his gaze, as red and violent as the liquifying walls. Jack gurgles, choking on blood but still strong enough to claw at Will's arms and jacket.

Will shakes him off, freeing his hands to clamp one, palm down, over the ragged wound traversing Jack's throat. He can feel the blood pumping hot against his fingers, and brings the other hand up as well, to cradle the back of Jack's neck, forcing more pressure to slow the flow of blood. Jack leans on him, hands tangling in the sleeves of his jacket, his eyes wide and frantic as Will holds him for a moment on this side of death. It can only be for a moment, he knows; nothing either of them do could save Jack's life now. Nothing anyone could do, to make Jack's life last longer than a moment. But a moment is all Will needs.

"Shhhh," he says, to the wet, strangled noise Jack is making. His voice is gentle. "Listen, Jack. You can't talk anymore, so just listen.

"There's a reason everyone holds you accountable for my actions, Jack. I was harmless when you came to me." Will's lip twitches. "More or less. You forced me to look at the darkness that was out there, to see the darkness in myself resonating there. You were relentless, Jack. So many times you could have let me go."

Jack splutters, trying but unable to speak. His lips part on a red bubble of blood, and Will's mouth twists into a sneer. His fingers press into the flesh of Jack's neck, holding him tighter, delaying the inevitable, holding him quite literally in the moment before death.

"You can feel yourself dying, can't you?" Will murmurs, voice thick. "A part of you knows you deserve this. A large part of you, I think. In a way, this must be a relief.

"You made me what I am, Jack, every bit as much as Hannibal. The deaths I've caused, I lay at your feet. You are responsible. This is what you deserve."

He releases Jack's throat, then, letting the other man's blood rain over him again. Jack's eyes widen, and his hands scramble at Will. Only for a moment, though. The jet of blood slows, and Jack's eyes begin to droop as he sinks heavily to his knees, no longer supported by Will's hands at his throat. Will watches him sway, watches the blood flow, sputter, and slow as the light in Jack's eyes dims. Jack falls, at last, slumping to his side in the red pool of blood on the floor, and Will lifts his eyes to Hannibal, standing on the other side of Jack's lifeless body.

And his breath comes in a sudden, ragged gasp, as if he's been holding it for days without noticing. Hannibal stares back, as slick with red as Will himself, his expression frozen, eyes burning.

"I missed you," Will manages to say. "What took you so long?"

Hannibal's chuckle is almost soundless. "Always so impatient," he answers. "I'm here now, anyway."

"Finally," he sighs. "You brought the boy?"

"He's here," Hannibal answers.

"We have to act fast, before Jack's missed." He pushes past him, not wanting to interrupt their reunion but knowing one of them needs to, and Hannibal steps aside after a pause.

The sound of a soft chime is heard and Hannibal draws a small black rectangle from his back pocket. Will can see Alana's name lighting up the screen.

"The bodyguard's phone," Hannibal explains, reaching into his jacket pocket as he speaks. "The protective lioness checking in on her cub."

Will barks a laugh as he takes the phone from Hannibal's hand and swipes to bring the screen to life. Hannibal must have disabled the passcode, Will thinks idly, reading Alana's text to himself.

How's Morgan?

He scrolls upward with the drag of his finger, reading back far enough to get the gist of the guard's text pattern before replying in like style.

Safe. Enjoying the woods. Bad reception.

It only takes a second for her reply to flash across the screen.

Good. Keep him there till the weekend.

Will passes the phone back to Hannibal, and runs the back of his hand across his mouth. There's a bad taste there, as if something inside of him has begun to rot and the stench is rising up his esophagus before any outward signs of decay become visible. He's too aware of the way Hannibal is watching him, the way those inquisitive red eyes follow him as he retrieves Jack's phone from his pocket. There's a passcode required, of course, but Jack's enabled touch ID, so it's just a matter of wiping one of Jack's fingers dry enough to unlock it.

Will opens Jack's messages. Alana's name is near the top. He spares a second to read back through their previous conversation, learning Jack's texting pattern with her. He's gentler with Alana over text than Will's ever heard him in person, but not by much. Courteous might be a better word than gentle, Will considers. He grimaces at the texts concerning him - Jack insisting he'd be their best shot at apprehending Buffalo Bill, Alana objecting it was too dangerous - then he pulls up the keyboard and begins to type.

Hannibal watches him, his face betraying no emotion besides curiosity. Will ignores him. He finishes his message and hits send, then passes the phone to Hannibal.

"You start dinner," Will says. "I'll start cleaning."

Hannibal says, "You should know that the bodyguard tried giving the child a merciful death before I begin our preparations for The Last Supper."

"That's...unexpected," Will says. "Please tell me that Morgan Verger survived the attempt."

Hannibal smirks, "I told the bodyguard that more than one dose would be lethal to a child Morgan Verger's size and he administered two doses."

Will studies Hannibal darkly as an unquenchable rage begins to take root within the pit of his stomach, "What are you saying? The child is an innocent, Hannibal. You couldn't stop him? We don't hurt the undeserving. Tell me he's not dead."

Hannibal smiles fondly at his protege, "You do suffer so beautifully, Will. Like a saint, shot through with arrows, or Christ himself on the cross. Seeing you in agony would be a worthwhile goal in itself." Will glares at him, his nostrils flaring in rage, but Hannibal's face is calm. "But no, the child is not dead. He is still very much drugged and unconscious but it would have taken about four doses to have been truly lethal to the child."

Will isn't sure if the sound welling in his throat is a sob or a laugh or a scream. He grits his teeth against whatever it is, and only a rush of air escapes him. Hannibal watches, that familiar, maddening curiosity written across his face. Will wants to grab him, wants to sink his fingers into the soft skin and wrench something hot and fierce from him. "Why? Why did you make me think that he was dead for that brief moment," he demands, voice barely controlled, and Hannibal blinks, expression shifting.

"To watch you in the final stages of your transformation is a beautiful thing and I must confess that a part of me considered ending the boy's life to see what path you would ultimately take," Hannibal says.

Will's anger remains for a few more moments, but then his shoulders sag in resignation. "My path is for now and always going to be wherever you are and wherever you go, my dearest friend. No more tests of my loyalty to you are necessary, Hannibal. Had you killed the child I would have been livid, but I also couldn't make myself leave your side. Never again. Your fate is my fate."

Hannibal smiles at him and places his blood smeared hand alongside Will's scarred cheek. "My dear Will, you truly are a spectacle to behold. I never thought I'd care for somebody again as much as I once cared for my sweet Mischa but then you came along. I sometimes think that you are her spirit, reincarnated anew, so that I might have a second chance to be the big protective brother that I should've been for her."

Hearing such words coming from Hannibal brought tears to Will's eyes. He knew how deeply he had cared for his sister and her loss had been truly devastating for him. Especially the fact that he knew he had partaken of her flesh in some capacity or another and that was in some ways how the origin of his cannibalism had begun. Will doubts that he'll ever truly learn the exact details of what had happened in that dark abyss of a past that Hannibal rarely shared with others, but he knew that being made a comparison to Mischa Lecter was perhaps the highest honor that could come from his mouth and the gesture is overwhelming to Will.

"I love you, Hannibal." Will pronounces wholeheartedly.

Hannibal embraces Will, similar to the embrace they shared over three years ago by the cliff, just after having killed the Red Dragon. "I love you, Will," he says.

After the moment has passed, they relinquish their embrace and Will asks, "Would you really have killed the kid out of a curiosity just to see how I would react?"

"I'm a monster," Hannibal smirks, "but I'm not a monstrous monster."

It's dark, and Freddie Lounds' throat burns as if she's inhaled fire when she awakes. She's aware of the pain before she's aware of the darkness. At first, when she opens her eyes and sees nothing, she thinks he's blinded her in addition to the strangulation. It's only after her eyes have had a few moments to adjust to the dim light that she realizes the truth: there's nothing to see.

The room is a small circle, seven feet in diameter at most, she guesses. There's a mattress with a lump of blankets resting atop it, and a bucket beside it, across from her. She's laying on the concrete floor, she realizes, and pushes herself carefully to her feet. Around her, walls stretch up, towards a dim bulb hanging far above. She's in the bottom of a well, she realizes, or some other sort of pit.

Freddie reaches a hand out to trail over the rough wall in front of her. It feels cold, hard but crumbling slightly, light brick, or dry mud. Not something she could dig into or climb. She runs her fingers over the surface, looking for a handhold. She finds someone else's torn off nail, instead, and wonders how long it will take before she's clawing her own fingers to shreds attempting to escape.

She swallows, trying to moisten her bruised esophagus. Her first attempt at a cry dissolves into coughing. "Frederick!" she manages to croak, when the coughing subsides. "Frederick!"

From somewhere high up, over the circular lip of the pit, Freddie can hear music. She screams again, wordless frustration culminating in frantic gulps for air. When she catches her breath she stares up at the dim corona surrounding the bare bulb, silent for a second. Then something closer draws her eye.

Across from her, close enough to touch, the dark mass of blankets atop the bare mattress begins to move. Freddie screams, her voice cracking, and she manages to avoid another round of coughing as she backs up against the curving wall. The shape unfolds, growing longer and shedding its covering to reveal a man. A disheveled but familiar man.

"Hey," Freddie manages to say in a tone somewhere between a croak and a whisper. "I know you. You're Calvin Martin, the Senator's missing son."

The young man blinks up at her from his position sitting cross legged on the mattress. His eyes look large in his face, and Freddie thinks about him, down here in this pit for the past two days. She thinks about how she will look, two days from now, if Frederick chooses to leave her here.

"Everyone is looking for you," Freddie says. "Your mother has the FBI on it day and night." She pauses, noting the way his face doesn't change at her words. "What happened to you?"

He's quiet for so long, she thinks at first that he won't answer. Then, "I was taking the trash out," Calvin says, "and there was a man across the street, trying to push a couch into the back of his van. His arm was in a sling, and it looked like his leg was hurt, too. I watched him fall before I crossed to help.

"I asked if he needed help and he said, yes, he did. He asked me to pull the couch into the van - I remember, I thought that was weird. I could have pushed it in fine. But he insisted he could help me by pushing it if I got in and pulled, so I said sure, and hopped in," Calvin says, trailing off for a moment. His breath is shaky, and Freddie can feel his wide-eyed gaze drilling into her. "We got the couch in, no problem, and I started to make my way back out of the van, when he pulled his arm out of the sling and grabbed something like a heavy stick from the van's floor. I tried to dart past him...and I felt whatever he had coming down on my head," he raises his hands, touching the back of his skull, "and when I woke up again I was here."

Freddie waits, but Calvin Martin has nothing else to add. "What did he look like?" she asks, at last.

"Older than me," Calvin says, after another pause. "Dark hair. About my height."

Suddenly she can feel the chill that's seeping into her muscles from the damp coldness of the pit they're in. "We need to get out of here," she murmurs, and tries not to hear the panic rising in her voice. This can't be happening, she thinks, even though she knows it is. This can't be real.

There's the sound of music, louder, from up above, and then the slamming of a door. Then Frederick Chilton's face appears, and even though he's far above, Freddie can tell he's doing his best not to look at her face.

"Frederick!" she rasps, cupping her hands around her mouth. "I'm hurt! Please help me out of here!"

Calvin laughs bitterly beside her. Above them, Chilton makes a breathy sound, eyes fixed on a spot to her left, always to her left or right, or just above or below, even when she moves. Then his eyes are on something in his hands, and when he looks back up, through the scope of the gun, his eyes are fixed directly on her at last.

The dart hits her just above the collar bone, and the hand she lifts to tear at it is already lethargic and heavy. Freddie slides into unconsciousness seconds later and collapses.

---

The setting sun paints long shadows across the lawn as Alana pulls into Jack's driveway, and dusk settles heavy and abrupt over the house and car. Beside her, Margot's curls catch fire in the gold glint of the sunset, and Alana feels her fingers tighten reflexively around the black leather wheel.

She forces her hands to relax, lays them in her lap, then fishes her phone from her pocket and reads the text Jack sent to both of them a couple of hours earlier.

Dinner at eight at my house. Bring Margot. We've got him. Will's leaving the country tomorrow.

He hadn't bothered responding to any of her replies. She gnaws on her lip, until Margot's thumb glides across it and makes her aware of the nervous tic. "Remind me why we even came here?" her wife asks, voice terse. She lets her hand rest over Alana's, and Alana tangles their fingers gratefully.

"We're saying goodbye," Alana says with a shrug.

Margot sighs. "Closure is important," she concedes, frowning, then tilts her head toward the door. "Shall we?"

Alana follows her lead, out of the car and up the walkway to Jack's front door. It opens before they set foot on the porch, and Alana takes a jerking half step back as Will greets them with a smile that's almost a grimace.

"Alana, Margot," he says, and Alana can't quite still her heart, "it's good to see you. One last time."

He steps back and gestures to welcome them inside. Alana's heartbeat hammers, her chest filling with a sudden overwhelming panic. Margot steps forward without pause, however, and Alana moves along at the tug of their interlinked hands. Into the door that gapes like a maw, swallowing them whole. She takes a deep breath, and the image dissipates.

"I suppose Jack told you we have reason to celebrate," Will is saying, leading them both down the hall toward the dining room. The curtains are drawn back to reveal the fading crimson of the setting sun, shadows of trees lengthening over the back lawn in the gloaming. The room is softly lit, dim wall sconces and candles on the table. "This time tomorrow Buffalo Bill won't be a threat to anyone."

Questions crowd Alana's head as she watches Will and Margot moving - so calm, so natural, as if this were all just normal. Why are they waiting till tomorrow to apprehend Buffalo Bill? Who is Buffalo Bill? How does Will know? (How does he ever?) Why this elaborate dinner party, inevitably haunted by the memory of other dinners over other tables, long ago? But the most pressing question is the one she gives voice to: "Where's Jack?"

Will looks back towards her with a smile. He seems serene now, but she has no doubt he can feel the panic bristling within her. "Didn't he text you? He had to run to the store for dessert."

As if on cue there's a vibration against her hip, and she sees Margot reaching for her own phone. Jack's text to them reads, What flavor of ice-cream do you prefer? There's an attached photo showing four different flavors of a high end brand gelato in what appears to be the frozen foods area of a grocery store.

Salted caramel, Margot's text flashes at the bottom of Alana's screen with a buzz as she reads. She looks up to see Margot sliding her phone back into her pocket with a half smile aimed back at her. In the soft light she appears cherubic, with her round face and pink cheeks framed by blazing curls. "You know me," she says lightly, "incurable sweet tooth."

There's another buzz from her phone. This time Margot doesn't bother, just waits for Alana to read. "He says we should start dinner without him," she reports, "there's some kind of accident blocking traffic."

"What's for dinner?" Margot queries.

"Lamb," Will says. "Don't worry - Jack made it. I helped minimally." He smiles, and it feels so normal and harmless, even with the suggestion in his words, so like the old Will she knew when she was still her old self. She thinks of those versions of themselves as children now, beings at a different stage of development and maturity. Back then an innocence clung to them she wishes she could reclaim. Maybe the best way, she thinks, is simply to trust.

"How about a glass of wine and some hors d'oeuvres first?" Will suggests. "Give Jack some time to get here."

"I think we could all do with a drink," Margot agrees, darting an amused glance back at Alana's pale face. "But is wine the best we can do?"

Will smirks. "I think I saw a bottle of Bruichladdich in Jack's pantry. I'm sure he wouldn't mind, given the occasion."

"I'm sure," Margot smiles. "On the rocks, if you don't mind."

"Neat," Alana remembers to say before the pause lengthens too uncomfortably. Will steps from the dining room with an incline of his head that almost feels like a bow. Theatrical, Alana thinks. The gesture is familiar, in a way that has nothing to do with Will Graham.

"I'll be back," Alana declares, unnecessarily, and follows Will into the kitchen without looking at her wife's face. She's not sure what she's expecting to see, but the view is entirely normal. Her heart stumbles, slowing towards calm. There's nothing shocking, nothing gruesome. There are three tumblers already waiting on the granite kitchen island. Will emerges from the pantry with the black bottle in hand, and smiles at her.

"Hey," he says, voice as rough and guileless as it always was, when his pain and torment simmered upon the surface for anyone to see, nothing hidden, nothing held in. His pleasure, too, his happiness, so clear and untainted. Like one of his dogs, she supposes, a being of pure unclouded feeling. So different from the way he's become.

"Hey," she says, and follows the word with a nervous burst of laughter. "Sorry, it's just -"

"I know," he says, cutting her off, and she finds herself relieved at not having to finish her sentence. "It's one thing to grab lunch in a public place and another to be alone with me."

She nods, stiffly, not wanting to admit it but unable to deny it. "I suppose we'll get along easier with that out in the open," she says.

"It's only reasonable," Will replies, keeping his eyes on the drinks he's preparing. "But it is a shame. Hannibal twisted us around until we were tearing each other apart. I regret the loss of our friendship, Alana. We'll never get it back, but I asked Jack to invite you and Margot here tonight because I'd like to leave on good terms with the three of you."

"Closure," Alana murmurs, and takes the glass Will passes her.

"Something like that," Will replies, and brings their glasses together with a chiming crystal collision.

Will produces a circle of steaming golden pastry from the oven, sliding it carefully onto a waiting platter of toasted bread. "Baked brie," he tells her, "with honey and chopped pecans. Shall we?"

She takes her drink in one hand and follows him back to the dining room. Margot smiles at them as they return, and Will sets the platter on the table, handing the knife to Alana to slice into the hot pastry, releasing a flood of melted cheese and honey. Margot coos in delight.

"Looks delicious!" she exclaims. "Pity Jack isn't here to enjoy it."

Alana frowns, but lets the feeling of unease pass over her. The scotch is good, and so is the food and the conversation. Will tells them about his travels, how he hopped continents to explore Cambodia and Thailand for a year after parting ways with Hannibal, then worked on a shipping line and crossed the Pacific to start fresh in Argentina. His stories focus on the local flora and fauna, the cuisine and culture, the scent and sound of crowded streets, more than they do on evading detection and illegally crossing borders. There's an air of mystery and danger to his tales, but the way he spins them makes it seem charming in a way she knows it shouldn't. In a way it really isn't. Charming, she thinks, was never a word anyone would have associated with Will in the old days.

"You make it sound so pleasant," she laughs, a short breathy sound somewhere between amusement and exasperation."The fugitive lifestyle."

Will laughs as well, and it's a far gentler sound coming from him, which seems somehow unfair, all things considered. "Uh, I'm not sure pleasant is the word I would choose," he rejoins, voice warmed by the rich scotch. He licks a droplet of sweet cheese from the webbing betwixt his thumb and index finger, eyes closing for a moment at the taste, and Alana frowns at something familiar, something half remembered jostled loose in her memory by the motion. "It's been stressful, mostly. But I guess in some ways it's forced me to change, live a life I wouldn't have pursued but that I find myself oddly suited to. Still," he continues, "I regret what it took, to bring me to this life." He pauses, long enough that Alana lifts her eyes to his face, to see him staring intently back. "I'm sorry, Alana, for hurting you."

Will was never one for eye contact, but now Alana finds that she is the one squirming to look away, only she finds herself fixed, unable to drop his gaze. She can feel herself flushing, hot from alcohol and emotion.

"I'm sorry, too," she says, almost whispering, and he nods with the slightest incline of his head.

"Where is Jack?" Margot asks, stepping closer to disrupt the tension between them. Will drops his gaze and Alana breathes a sigh of relief, suddenly able to breathe deeply again. She says a silent prayer for Margot. "Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"I texted him ten minutes ago," Alana confesses. "He hasn't texted back."

"He's probably driving," Will says. "Or the bureau may have called him in for something."

"Does this mean you'll tell us Bill's identity before Jack gets back?" Alana asks, quickly. "Why are you being so secretive about it, anyway?"

"Patience," Will scolds lightly. "Let's eat first." He gestures to the table, moving to draw out the chair at one end for Alana. The place at the head of the table is set for Jack, and Will stakes his claim to the spot on the right by placing his glass down there. "I'll be back in a moment," he promises.

"How about another drink?" Margot calls after him.

"I'll bring the whole damn bottle," he calls back.

"Won't Jack mind?" Margot says, to Alana, once Will has vanished into the kitchen.

"I suppose he should hurry up and get here, if he does," Alana says with a shrug. She finishes the last of her drink and sets the glass down with a defiant firmness. "I don't like him not being here," she says. "It's not like him."

"It's completely like him," Margot laughs. "From what you've told me the man is impulsive and risk prone - that's what makes him so good. For all we know he's gone after Buffalo Bill himself."

Alana frowns. It's not entirely untrue. And yet she can't help feeling there is more here than meets the eye, something simmering beneath the surface.

Will re-enters the room, wheeling a serving cart with a heavy covered dish, its belled lid reflecting the flickering candlelight. He pulls the black bottle from the lower shelf and tosses it almost carelessly to Margot, who catches it, fortunately. Will hoists the tray onto the table as she pours them their second round, and removes the lid with a flourish. The scent of sweet, succulent meat wafts from the roast - Alana inhales the scent of lemon and peppercorns, sighing in delight. "Jack made this?"

"I helped," Will admits. "He let me chop the vegetables." He carves the roast, lifting hunks of juicy lamb and braised vegetables onto each of their plates, except Jack's. "Should we serve him as well?" Will asks, tilting his head to indicate the empty seat at the head of the table. "A serving at an empty seat, like a dish laid out for a prophet or a god." He lifts an eyebrow at her, smiling so easily that she finds herself mirroring the gesture, as if he's turned his empathy inside out and now projects his emotions onto the canvas of her brain.

"Isn't there a seat left empty for the prophet Elijah at Passover meals?" Margot asks, before lifting a bite to her lips. "My god, this is delicious."

"Mmmm," Alana agrees, as the flavor bursts against her palate, juices running thick down her throat. "I can't believe Jack made this. He's a fine chef, but this is beyond anything he's ever served, to me at any rate."

Will smiles at her, at Margot, looking peaceful. Again, she can't help smiling back, and can't help bringing another mouthful of glistening meat to her lips. Will mirrors her, closing his eyes at the first bite. "He's definitely outdone himself," he breathes.

"Yes," agrees Margot, "a pity he doesn't seem to be joining us any time soon."

"Alana," Will says, fixing his eyes on her with an intensity that is as unfamiliar as it is overwhelming. She feels herself resisting the urge to squirm under the burn of his gaze. The way the shadows dance in the candlelight makes it hard to look him firmly in the eyes, but she gives it her best attempt.

"Yes, Will?"

"Are you enjoying the meal?"

"Oh, yes, of course, Will," she smiles, and takes another bite as if to prove her enjoyment. Will's smile seems to creep over his face like vines.

"I'm happy to hear it," he replies, "and happy we could come together like this, one final time before I leave for good. We've been many things to each other, haven't we? Over the years?"

Alana shrugs one shoulder, frowning. The food is delicious - distractingly so - but there's something in the way Will speaks that makes her stomach lurch, even though he's said nothing untoward. A premonition, maybe, though she's not sure she believes in them. "Many things," she agrees, "but above all I hope we have been friends."

Will hums, and lifts his glass to her. "Friends," he says, "colleagues, almost lovers." Alana feels her lip twitch, and notes the huff of air Margot exhales through her nose. Will seems oblivious to any discomfort his dredging up of the past has caused. "Hunter and hunted," he says, no longer smiling, "jailer and prisoner."

Alana doesn't speak. She puts down her fork, the ding of silver on the plate absurdly loud in the growing quiet. She clears her throat, but no words come, and Will speaks before any can. "Do you ever think about the day Jack Crawford came to you about my consulting for the FBI?"

She nods her head, feels the tear drops dislodged by the motion. They cling to her lashes like mist in tall trees. "Yes," she says, "I think about that day a lot."

"What do you think about, Alana?"

"I think," she starts, feeling pulled by the heaviness of his tone, the simpleness of his question, "about the consequences of that day. I think about how much pain and death would come from it, that none of us could have foreseen."

"Do you ever think," Will continues, and she recognizes an edge in his voice that brings her back to a pale winter morning in Wolf Trap when she'd told him he'd defied her expectations, "you should have said or done something to keep Jack from ruining my life?"

"Will," Alana half sobs, suddenly overcome, at the same moment Margot barks, "What the hell."

"I tried, Will," Alana pushes on, over her wife's indignation. "I really did. I told him - "

Will remains calm and cool, though, taking a bite of his dinner before speaking again. "You told him, what?" Will says. "Don't let me get too close? Made him promise you he'd be careful with me? Refused to evaluate me yourself because you were just that noble? You gave Jack free access to my mind and pushed me right into the hands of Hannibal Lecter, Alana." He raises his glass to her again, this time standing as he does so, his black suit seeming to drink the light around him. "Behold, the spring you stained with mud! We wouldn't be here without you, Alana, our guest of honor."

There's a clatter of dinnerware and cutlery as Margot begins to stand as well, a little too drunk to do so gracefully. Her hand knocks the glass of amber scotch over, and she sinks back into her chair, watching the liquid spread across the dark surface of the wood table with a look of utter dread. Will bends, drawing something small and flat from his pocket and holding it toward her. Alana watches her take the object with one subtly trembling hand, watches her brow furrow as she turns it over to examine.

The sound of Margot's shriek slices through her like a blade, and reality snaps back into place. Alana's head jerks up, her eyes locking onto her wife, who has unfurled the flat little object and revealed it to be a white cotton handkerchief monogrammed M.B.V. in flowery embroidered script. Alana's stomach turns, her jaw locking before a scream can escape.

Margot screams for her. Again and again, her high voice piercing the air in waves of panic. Alana can see the realization in Margot's eyes - the same one shaking through her own mind and turning her blood to ice - that wasn't lamb he served them. Alana's eyes dart across the scene - Margot's wide mouth, Will standing calmly over them with a crystal tumbler raised to his lips, the table laden for feasting.

"No," Alana managed to say as bile rose in her throat and tears welled in her eyes. "Not Morgan..."

Will grins as he sips from the tumbler, "Are you not enjoying your lamb, Alana?"

There's a tray still covered with a silver lid - something saved for Jack, she'd assumed - and she bats at the lid with her hand. It rattles out of place and clatters to the floor, revealing the severed head of Jack Crawford, whose wide open eyes stared at Alana and Margot as if in accusation, but was actually the last look he had when death had consumed him. A look of shock and ultimately betrayal.

"Jack is the lamb?" She gasps, as tears fall down her cheeks.

"Of course," Will confirms. "Who did you think it was?" He asks, knowing very well who she thought it was.

Alana closes her eyes in relief, but is immediately ashamed that she's more relieved to be eating Jack as opposed to her own son. She glances at Margot who has fainted once the truth was revealed that she hadn't just been eating Morgan Verger.

Alana managed to stay conscious, but just barely. She looks accusing at Will and practically shouts hysterically, "Then where is my son!?"

Then comes the sound of Hannibal's feet, moving towards them from the kitchen. "The gods delight in tragedy, Alana," Hannibal speaks, words rolling rich and velvety. "Like the earth, you have swallowed your own increase. Fortunately for you, the only tragedy here is the passing of dear Agent Crawford? I made you a new promise, if you recall the last time we spoke. You and your family are safe because you did the right thing and stepped aside. Had you not, this reunion would have a went in a drastically different direction."

Her eyes widen in shock at the arrival of Hannibal. She looks from him to Will and shouts, "Where is my son!?" Will and Hannibal share a look before Will leaves the dining room and disappears up the stairs.

"You shouldn't shout, Alana," Hannibal admonishes her. "It's incredibly rude and you know well enough that I'm not fond of rude behavior."

"Stop playing with your food, Hannibal," Alana sneers through gritted teeth. "If you're going to kill us then just do it already."

Hannibal smirks at her, "You never were any fun, Alana. An insufferable bore, lacking any real imagination or creativity, and if I might add, easy to manipulate."

"Thanks to you, I'll never be easy to manipulate again." Alana argues.

Hannibal cocks his head in that curious way that he sometimes does, "Is that so? How, pray tell, did you end up here at this delicious supper I've prepared for us, if you are no longer easy to manipulate. Will managed to manipulate you and Margot into coming here more easily than I managed to manipulate you into my own bed."

Alana is about to retort when she notices Will returning down the stairs with a still sleeping Morgan cradled in his arms. Alana rushes to them and Will allows her to grab him. She looks at him closely and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that he is in fact just sleeping.

"What's wrong with him?" Alana asks.

"Your former bodyguard had a notion that he was going to kill your son by overdosing him with the medication that I prescribed," Hannibal answers. "He gave him two doses which turned out to not be lethal. He will be asleep until well into tomorrow, however."

"What is all of this about," Alana asks, looking to Will and Hannibal for answers.

"Closure," Will answers. "I want you to apologize for how you've treated me in the past and then I want to have a proper goodbye."

She scoffs at him, "Apologize? I suppose you're a victim in all this, Will. Is that what you think?" She glances at Jack's head still lying on the tray, "Did you ask for an apology from Jack also? He was your friend and you murdered him."

Will nods, "Yes he was and yes we did. Jack would never stop hunting Hannibal and I can't abide that. This was always how it was going to end with us. You, however, have everything to lose and I'm willing to forgive you and give you your happy ending."

She looks from Will to Hannibal, who has stepped back as an observer of the situation. She then looks at Margot who was still unconscious and then at Morgan, sleeping soundly in her arms. Tears pour down her cheeks as she says, "I truly am sorry, Will. I'm sorry for my culpability in delivering you to the devil and thereby causing a good man to transcend into the monster you have now become."

Will smiles menacingly, "That's all I needed to hear. I forgive you, Alana. If you ever attempt to try and find us again then Hannibal's new promise to you is off the board. Enjoy your happy family and remember that I showed you mercy here tonight." He takes out a syringe, "This is goodbye forever, Alana Bloom."

She tries to recoil but he is too quick as he injects the syringe into her neck. The side effects are immediate and before she can fall, he catches her before she hits the ground and keeps the child from falling from her limp arms. He stares at her unconscious body for several moments.

Hannibal approaches and places a hand on his shoulder, "Are you okay, Will?"

"Yes," Will says. "It's just become apparent to me that this time it is real. There is no going back after this. Will Graham as he once was is now truly dead."

Hannibal smiles encouragingly and squeezes his shoulder, "We can never come back to America, Will. I'm fully confident that Alana will forever be grateful that we spared her and her little family today, but after what we've done to dear Uncle Jack here...you've lost your last ally to the Will Graham of old. The FBI will show no mercy now."

Will moves a strand of Alana's loose hair behind her ear, "There is nothing left for me here anyway. All that I need is you, my closest friend, by my side."

Hannibal nods, "It's time for us to leave."

Will stands and shakes his head. "There's one last thing we need to do before we go."

---

When she wakes again there's a pain in her head that doesn't feel healthy. Something abnormal, she thinks, not just a bump to the head when I fell. She remembers the stinging sensation she'd experienced in her hip a moment before Frederick's horribly contorted face began to bend and streak across her vision. Reaching down, she extracts the dart from her skin. She winces as she pulls the syringe free, then clutches it tightly in her fist as she scans her surroundings, blinking fast.

It's all very much like it was before. She's at the bottom of a well with unclimbable packed earth walls, a dirty twin mattress and a pile of blankets shoved against one wall and a stinking bucket pushed close to the other. There's still no light, except the faintest glow shining distant beyond the ringed horizon high above. There's still a foul smell in the frigid air. But now, Freddie sees, she is alone.

A wave of pain slams through her head, and her stomach twists. She rolls onto her back, and pushes herself into a sitting position, her back against the wall. Whatever he gave her, it's not out of her system yet. The walls crawl like cracking brown serpents, and the pain washes over her again with such intensity she thinks she's about to lose consciousness again. The dark world blurs, somehow, gray shapes losing clear edges.

Calvin is gone. She has to mouth the words to understand them, her dry lips cracking around the silent syllables. What she wouldn't give for a bottle of water and an aspirin.

What she wouldn't give to wake up and realize this has all been a dream, a twisted nightmare. It feels like a nightmare, like something unreal. Her throbbing brain cannot wrap itself around this reality.

The hardest thing to accept is that she didn't see this coming. For all her cleverness and keen observations, she overlooked something vital. Consequences, she thinks, and frowns at the wall before her face. There are scratch marks etched into the earthen surface. Freddie's stomach pitches at the sight.

She draws her knees up to her chest, presses her eyes shut. Forcing herself to breathe deep and slow, she sinks into a deeper darkness, a place where her only aim is to remain calm, not wonder where Calvin has gone or what has become of him, as she waits for inspiration or doom to strike her from above.

---

They park Jack Crawford's car in the driveway of Frederick Chilton's aggressively modern house, and move in silence up the dark path to the front door. In his chest, Will's heart is a steady drum. He doesn't start at the light touch Hannibal lays on his wrist, only inclines his head to catch Hannibal's eye before the taller man steps off the path and vanishes into the shadows around the corner of Chilton's home. He understands, without discussion or explanation. In his mind there's the echo of words that aren't exactly memories, but maybe something said at this moment in a parallel world similar to this one. Let me be your sword, the flaming blade of the angel of justice. Let me be the instrument of punishment you wield against the deserving.

He carries on towards the front door alone, then, but with the pressure of Hannibal's presence pressing against the stem of his brain. For a moment, as his finger presses the doorbell, he scents blood in the air, and licks at his lips to be sure it's not there.

From the left side of the house, Hannibal hears the bell chiming within. The sound is loudest to his left, where light streams from a cracked window out onto the black lawn. He waits crouched beneath the sill until he hears the sound of footsteps passing inside, then swings himself up, over the window sill and into the familiar kitchen. Hannibal scans the austere room, listening for the sound of Chilton's footsteps moving further, towards the front door.

His eyes catch on a heavy looking metal door along the back wall. He remembers there is a stairway behind it, leading to a basement and a wine cellar, but the last time he was here there was no door. He moves towards it, noting with gratitude that the door is still ajar. There's a rank smell wafting up the dark spiral of the stairs, the faint odor of decay riding the cool air below. Hannibal opens the door wider, peering down into the darkness.

There's something at the bottom of this darkness that needs to be seen. Hannibal takes a step down, letting the door close behind him with a muted clunk, and finds himself blind at the top of the stairs. He lets his hand rest on the balustrade, surprised when his fingers close around a cloth strap. He pulls the object off the railing, examining with his touch before bringing the goggles over his head and flicking them on.

The stairwell lights up in red. From somewhere below, there's a groaning sound that escalates abruptly into screaming. Hannibal makes his way down, towards the sound.

---

Frederick Chilton has been expecting Will, expecting the knock on the door, imagining it so hard he's almost unsure whether it's real now, as he opens the door to greet Will Graham, standing in the circle of porch light with a characteristically grim look on his slim face.

"Good evening, Will," he says, feigning a calm he doesn't feel, because even if this is a figment of his imagination, Frederick still desperately wants to appear in control. For once, he thinks, finally. His stomach churns like it's crammed with fluttering dark wings.

But he stands aside, face placid and movements unhurried and unbothered, his arm extended to welcome Will. It's almost too much, when Will steps inside, and when the door clicks shut and the deadbolt thuds into place Chilton thinks for a moment that he's going to pass out from sheer excitement. How many times he's pictured it, looking and feeling exactly like this.

"I suppose you've been expecting me," Will asks, and the tilt of his head could almost be described as coy. His hair is neat, clothes clean, but there's a smear of blood behind his left ear, visible when he turns his head. Frederick's mind reels at the spot, at what it could mean, and at the thoughtless way in which Will bears his neck to him, as if he senses no threat. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting."

"You aren't the only visitor I've been expecting," Frederick says, a beat too late, perhaps, for the words to sound unaffected. Surely Will hasn't come here alone; Frederick had been so certain it would be the both of them.

"It's just the two of us, Frederick," Will says, lifting a cool eyebrow. "Just us left to contend with one another."

Frederick's eyes flicker involuntarily to the dark smudge of dried blood on the back of Will's neck. He stands a little taller, resting one hand on the back of the sofa for balance. "I'd like to show you something in my basement," he says. It's not subtle, but he doesn't think it has to be subtle to work on Will this time. They both know what this is going to come down to - only Will doesn't yet realize they won't be contending on a level playing field.

"Alright," Will says, "lead the way."

Heart hammering, Frederick walks Will through the house, into the kitchen, and towards the heavy metal door. He plucks a flashlight from the counter beside the door, flicking it on as he lets the door swing open. "After you," he gestures, and Will gives him a hard look before stepping downwards, in the stripe of light Frederick provides him.

Frederick smiles, unseen. His hand reaches for the strap of the night vision goggles, but they aren't where they should be, and his smile creases into a grimace at the unexpected set back. He curses himself for his carelessness; they must be somewhere in the house upstairs, or perhaps he left them somewhere in the basement when he was dealing with what remained of the last donor.

A minor inconvenience, Frederick decides, stepping after Will, flashlight held aloft. The door thuds shut behind them, and Frederick touches the key in his pocket at the sound. Even without the goggles, the upper hand is his. He knows the landscape of the basement, every hard edge and hole. It won't be hard to lure Will, in the dark, to the edge of the well, and push him in. Frederick can already imagine how that skin will feel, laid bare and lying cold for the harvest.

"You want me to see something down here?" Will asks, voice laden with irony.

"Well," Frederick admits, his finger resting heavily on the switch of the flashlight, "not exactly." He flicks the switch and the room plummets into pitch black.

---

For a paralyzing moment, the darkness presses in hot and horrendous, like oil filling his nose and ears. Will Graham can feel his heart racing, unsteady and frantic where it had been calm a moment before, and there's a cold sheen of sweat forming on the skin beneath his shirt.

He can feel himself relaxing into the blank blackness, and realizes he hasn't moved, hasn't stepped in any direction. Frederick is watching him blindly, Will knows, but they aren't alone down here. He can sense Hannibal, lurking somewhere in the darkness, as if his presence causes the air to glow faintly. Will can feel his hunger on the air, that familiar insatiable desire for blood. Let me be the flaming sword of righteousness, wield me as a weapon to cleave the wicked.

"It's no use, Frederick." Will hears his voice echoing through the basement.

He wants to take a step, wants to run in any direction, back up the stairs towards the door he knows must certainly be locked. His heart has slowed, but still flutters in his chest, and his instincts are screaming for him to flee. He forces himself to be still. There are traps here, he thinks, traps you find when you try to run.

"You think you can kill us," Will calls to the darkness, "and then what? Wear our skin? Eat our flesh? Become us? You can't even become yourself." There's a noise to his left, and Will's head jerks towards it, but of course it's impossible to see. The darkness is like a heavy curtain. Will has to close his eyes for a moment, dizzy with vertigo from staring and not seeing. He waits, but Chilton doesn't speak.

"You accused me of setting you up," he calls into the darkness. It's so black his eyes are beginning to see sparkles in the air, illusions, as if the air is black silk. "Do you know why I did it?"

A rustle of sound behind him. Will wheels to face it, uselessly. He plants his feet, bracing himself. "I did it," Will says, "because you deserved it. I couldn't have done it otherwise. But doing bad things to bad people feels good, and you, Frederick, are a bad person." This time, when he hears something behind him, Will stays put, not bothering to do more than tilt his head so that one ear faces the sound. "Don't believe me? Just look what you've become. A killer? The king of the bottomless pit."

Will breathes deep, feels a shudder run through him. He feels himself expanding, feels himself blending and blurring, and for a second the room around him is bathed in red light, and he sees it so clearly, sees the blood streaked floor, the body of Calvin Martin slumped against an antique sewing table, the edge of a well, Chilton's contorted face frothing blindly at him, and behind him, staring right into Will's eyes, Hannibal, knife in hand. Will breathes out, and the lights dim, and he's not sure, can't be sure. What's real. If any of this is happening. If he's even still alive. But the feeling unfurls within him, leaves him hot and panting and overcome, so that it doesn't matter.

"Hear this, Frederick," Will shouts towards the empty space in front of him, and somehow he knows that Frederick, standing across from him in the void, flinches. He isn't sure where the words come from, though they sound like something he's heard before. They bubble over, and he manages to keep his voice just short of a scream. "If you still have ears, listen: judgement is living and active, justice sharper than any two-edged sword. I see you, Frederick, down to your joints and marrow, soul and spirit."

There's a shriek from five feet in front of him. The sound of tearing flesh, then, and a series of screams, but still nothing to see. Will's chest heaves. The feeling of vertigo he experienced before returns, and he stumbles backwards half a step, trying to keep himself still, trying to remember the exact location of the well he'd seen in the maybe-real flash of red he'd envisioned. Someone's hand closes over his right arm, firm as shackles.

---

Hannibal Lecter watches Will move with a swell of indescribable pride. More than any composition or drawing, any arrangement or meal, Will is his finest artistic effort, a living and evolving masterpiece. Hannibal would hesitate to say that Will is a finished piece; there was a time in his life when he thought in such absolutes, but that time has been erased by the spectacle of Will's transformation. Each new iteration eclipsing the last, his metamorphosis has reached an apparent crescendo, but Hannibal still would not pronounce him done, would not pronounce either of them done. Who can say what they may yet become in the coming years, however many they have left?

There was a time when Hannibal considered himself a finished piece, unchangeable, static. It was a comfortable way of life, but not one he misses. Staring through the darkness, at a world painted red, listening to Will's voice prophesying doom reverberating off the basement walls, Hannibal's heart feels too large and hot in his chest. A creature dies shortly after reaching its final form, and so perhaps mutability, however painful, will prove their immortality.

Hannibal forces his attention back onto the figure between himself and Will. Chilton wears a half finished coat of mottled leather. Hannibal recognizes human skin when he sees it. Chilton's done as clumsy a job tanning the hides as he has assembling them into a garment. He looks a proper monster, something from the silent film era, a living gargoyle. Hannibal allows himself to sneer, unseen, at the mess Chilton has become.

He keeps his shoulders pointed at Chilton, but flickers his eyes briefly to Freddie's figure, bound and gagged and glaring. He'd found her at the bottom of the well, and bargained quickly. Miss Lounds had always been passably intelligent, for all her shortcomings; faced with certain death and an uncertain future as a serial killer's hostage she made the right choice. He'd apologized for the gag, but feels certain, watching her now, that she must understand this as the safest course of action.

A movement draws Hannibal's eyes back. Chilton stumbles towards Will, teeth bared in a snarl. The half-finished cloak of mismatched skin flutters around him like wings - not red and leathery like the Dragon's, but pale and ashy as moth wings, frantic with anxious energy. Hannibal breathes slow, noting the curve of wings, the glow beneath the skin. A vision, he knows, a vivid projection from Will's imagination and memory, pushing through to his mind where the distinction between their thoughts has blurred. It is a breathtaking experience, Hannibal reflects, to view the world as Will does.

Chilton is bathed in red by the night vision goggles, as if shining with a sheen of blood. And then Hannibal steps forward, blade bared to Chilton's unguarded throat, and the man does shine with a sheen of blood as well, now. His shriek pierces the air, and Hannibal can see and hear Will gasp, over Chilton's bleeding shoulder. The scent of fresh blood floods his nostrils, and he finds his mouth inexplicably filled with saliva.

He brings the knife down again, and again, sloppy and cathartic, giving in to all the carefully held emotions. There's a freedom in the darkness, in knowing no one will see if he deigns to be inelegant in this instant. He can feel Will's excitement, hurrying his hand on.

At last his hands are soaked with blood, and Chilton's screams have ceased. Hannibal looks up, in time to see Will stepping backwards, his heel inches from the rim of the well. Hannibal lets the knife drop, steps forward and takes Will's wrist without hesitation. The little sound of surprise, and maybe fear, brings a snarl to his lips, and Hannibal tugs him close, out of harm's way - or into its embrace.

Will clings to him. For him, Hannibal knows, the world is nothing but darkness. Hannibal closes his eyes, but it's not enough. He reaches up to flick the goggles off, and joins Will in the total dark.

---

The air seems crisper, the light brighter. The kitchen smells pleasantly of something freshly baked, though she knows it is only some candle or air freshener. The sound of ice rattling from the dispenser in the fridge door into the glass Will holds sounds impossibly loud and clear, almost like the clanging of a bell. She watches him fill a tall glass of water, listens to the fountain like stream. He puts the glass of ice water down on the kitchen island between them. He lets her make eye contact, then, and she keeps her gaze on him as she reaches warily towards the glass.

It tastes so good - so pure and fresh, the best thing she's ever tasted - that she knows it's not drugged.

"Thank you," Will says, and she blinks across the slab of granite in silence. "For not writing about Abigail. In your book."

"She deserved better," Freddie mutters.

"We agree on that, at least," Will says. There's the sound of a car engine starting outside. Will begins to round the kitchen island, coming towards her like a dark wave. "Time to go."

He takes both her wrists in one hand before she can run, and she follows him to the front door and into the backseat of the town car in the driveway. Hannibal turns to smile at the two of them from the front. Freddie resists the urge to spit in his smug face. Barely.

"Let's get out of here," Will says, forcing the seatbelt onto Freddie and then sits back to look out the tinted window.

"Whatever you say, Will," Hannibal agrees pleasantly. The car glides onto the road, and Freddie tries to memorize the turns they make. Her mind turns to bread crumbs, as they merge onto the freeway, heading north, about a trail of white stones gleaming in the moonlight.

She lets herself glance, from the corner of her eye, at Will Graham. He's still staring out the window, but she knows he can see her reflection in the glass, just as she can see the terse line of his jaw reflected back at them. He doesn't have a weapon visible - no gun trained on her, not even a knife. But then, he doesn't need one. He is a weapon. He himself is a bigger threat than any pistol could be. She remembers fleeing from him, many years before, through the snow near his old house, remembers the strength in his hands as he'd knocked her car's window in and dragged her through the snow towards his shed. She'd been certain he meant to kill her, and equally certain that he could do it. His hands were so strong on her, she could easily imagine the way her neck would snap between them.

She's imagined it on many nights since then.

Even if she managed to incapacitate or kill him before he gouged her eyes out and twisted her neck into a pretzel, Freddie knows there's no escape with Hannibal Lecter at the wheel. If she were to somehow kill Will, she can easily imagine the older man driving the two of them into oncoming traffic. One last grand gesture, turning themselves into a blazing funeral pyre.

"Did you two know Frederick was Buffalo Bill?" Freddie asks. If they're going to kill her, they'll kill her whether she's quiet or not. If she somehow, miraculously, makes it out of this alive, she'll wish she was dead if she doesn't get some good quotes from them now.

Will snorts at the question. "You certainly didn't," he replies. "Were you two dating?"

Freddie glares across the back seat. "You're hardly one to criticize," she says, with a sniff. "We had a mutually beneficial relationship. How did you know?"

"It's my job to know, Freddie," Will answers. "You spend so much time publishing articles about how it takes a psycho to catch a psycho, and suddenly you're surprised that I caught one?"

"What the two of you did to Frederick doesn't count as catching," she says with a shiver. Will practically snarls.

"She has a point, dear Will," Hannibal says from the front seat, and Freddie's skin crawls at the casual term of endearment, the teasing levity in Hannibal's voice. If I survive, she thinks, my readers will devour this.

"I don't care about semantics," Will growls, "or anything you have to say, in general, Freddie, so take this opportunity to reflect in silence."

She does. For about twelve seconds. "You're driving North," she says. "Heading for the border? How do you expect to get across?"

They don't answer her, and after several seconds she gives an exasperated huff and resigns herself to staring out the window. Her head still hurts, and there are aches in her limbs that should be checked out by a medical professional not well known for cannibalism. She rests her head against the cool glass of the window, watching the trees blur by. At some point she must fall asleep, because the sun is overhead, climbing the sky, when Will shakes her awake. The car is stopped, pulled over on the side of an empty forest road. "Come on," he says, "time to go."

"Where are we?" she asks, but she isn't surprised when she receives no answer. Will starts to walk into the trees without looking back at her. There are no keys in the ignition. Freddie clambers from the vehicle, casting her eyes up and down the road for some clue to their location.

"You heard the man," Hannibal's elegant voice rolls languidly from the other side of the car. He smirks across the hood at her. "Time to go."

She follows Will's path reluctantly. With one of them behind her and one ahead, in the midst of an unfamiliar forest, Freddie's not sure what the best course of action is, or what they intend with her. There's a thread of anxiety unspooling in her gut, but she forces her mind off it. She always feels better asking questions; it makes her feel in control, somehow. "How far are we going?" she asks.

"Not far," Will answers, barely visible ahead of them. She's following the sound of his footsteps through the undergrowth, as much as the sight of him through the trees.

"You're not planning to kill me," she says, and hopes that it's the truth. "You wouldn't have bothered taking me with you. You'd have left me in the well or killed me back at Frederick's."

"Maybe we decided you're more trouble than you're worth," Will offers. "I've been known to change my mind about things on occasion."

She keeps quiet after that, and follows the sound of trampled leaves deeper into the tall trees. She can hear Hannibal at her back. The sun climbs higher, until at last, with it hanging overhead, they stop.

"This should be far enough," Will says.

"I think so," Hannibal agrees. He tosses something to Freddie, who just barely manages to pluck it from the air. She lifts a quizzical gaze to him. "Your phone," Hannibal explains, though it's hardly the explanation she desires, "I found it in the basement."

"And?"

"You'll need it to call help." Freddie glances down at the screen, pressing the center button with no effect. "There's about 20% of battery life left," Hannibal says. "I ran it out on purpose before turning it off. You'll want to wait to switch it on. There's no reception this far out. If you walk straight forward for about an hour you'll come back to the road; it curves around a lake. You can follow it until you reach somewhere civilized, or until a car picks you up, whichever comes first." He looks up at the sky, at the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Shadows move on his face. "You should make it to a gas station before nightfall, even with your injuries."

"Don't follow us," Will says. "You can tell anyone you want what we were driving; by the time you get to the police it won't matter."

He turns, and begins to walk back through the forest in the direction they came, without so much as a parting word. Hannibal smiles briefly at her, then turns as well. "Wait!" she calls, suddenly breathless when they do. "Why leave me alive?"

"We talked about it," Will says, "while you were sleeping."

"Someone has to tell the story," Hannibal says, his smile aimed at Will now, and Freddie's stomach pitches at the look that passes between the two of them.

"What happens to you next?" she presses, before they can turn again. "Where will you go?"

"Now," Will says, and he steps further into the trees, with Hannibal following along, so that his answer reaches her as a disembodied voice, "we'll disappear."

The End of the Sixth and Final Episode