CHAPTER EIGHT: FIREWHISKEY

PART ONE

Will Graham's P.O.V

It was late at night. Too late for this. Will Graham knew that. Yet, he also, in spite of desperately telling himself that he must turn around, get back into his car, and drive back home, exactly where he ought to have been all along, still found himself lifting his hand and pounding in a rap of seven on the bulky oak door in front of him, and just for good measure, pressing the little silver button for the doorbell.

Will Graham needed to talk. To someone. Anyone. A friend. He'd been clutching it in for three days, three whole miserable days, retracting away in his little house, brooding Hemlock would call it. So, yes. Will Graham needed to talk. To someone. Anyone. A friend.

Sadly, Will didn't have many of those. Alana was a conclusive no go. He would rather skulk and stew than turn up at Jack's door at half eleven at night. Hemlock… No. Not for this. That left only one. How very, very, very fucking depressing. A bit pathetic too, Will thought.

The door did not creak or groan as it swung open. Expensive wood never really squealed. It glided, much like the man who appeared behind it. Back-lit by the hallway light, almost haloed in golden fluorescent, doctor Hannibal Lecter stood at the precipice of outside, dressed in slacks and a cosy, comfortable, equally expensive, grey jumper.

"Will, is everything alright?"

Will had never seen the doctor out of his iconic suits before. Always three piece. Always Italian. Always mind numbingly meticulous. Now, standing before him, snow drifting at his back, warmth rinsing at his face from the open door, Lecter almost looked… Domestic. Even his hair seemed relaxed, not as keenly combed back from his sharp angled face.

Will shouldn't have come.

Will needed to.

He shuffled on his spot, digging his hands deeper into the pockets of his tatty jacket.

"I need to talk."

The doctor swept aside, ushered Will in with an arch of his long arm, and before Will really knew it, they were in his chromatic kitchen, all snappy lines, cleanliness and almost utilitarian landscape. Hannibal at his counter, teapot in hand, Will near the shadowed door, underneath the cold, sterile light above, patrolling. It took to the whistling of the boiling kettle, right before the sound collapsed into a screech, for Will to break too.

"I kissed her."

Hannibal paused, kettle in hand, raised, water pouring down, steam rising up, and underneath Lecter's penetrating gaze, Will felt very much like that. Pitched down, small, rushing in one direction, yet unaccountably as uncatchable as the steam evaporating in the air.

"Dr. Bloom?"

Will shook his head, snatched his glasses from their perch on his nose, and frantically polished at the lenses with the hem of his jumper. It was good to keep the hands busy, Will thought, when one's mind was hectic too. It granted a sort of equilibrium that made it feel as if he wasn't spiralling out of control. Even if he really was. Sometimes, only some, feeling was more important than reality. Especially when facing one's sins.

"No. Hemlock. I-… I kissed her."

Hannibal nodded once. Much like Hemlock. Up, down, finish. Perhaps the latter had picked it up from the former subconsciously. Will had noticed Hemlock reaching for glasses on her face, though she did not wear them, once, as if she was going to scrub them as viciously as Will did his own. Again, he was hit with that horrid question.

How much was Hemlock… Hemlock? How much was truly the phenomenon known as her, and not some inadvertent amalgamation of that gift of hers seizing and adapting? If so, how much was Will… Will? How much was truly him, and not some variation of his own frightening gift, other's emotions masquerading as his own?

How much was anybody anybody, and not a response to outside stimuli, really?

"It's to be expected."

Hannibal peppered his statement with a dunk of his tea infuser, a little meshed ball on a fragile gold chain, into the glass teapot. Immediately, the water began to bleed purple. Lavender tea. Calming. Will's response was anything but calm.

"Going for a morning jog is to be expected. Getting post is to be expected. Stubbing a toe is to be expected. This… This is the opposite of something to be expected, doctor Lecter."

Hannibal sat down on the island stall, gently drove one of the teacups over in Will's general direction, nodding to the seat opposite him for Will to take. Will refused the offering. He felt… Energetic. Discharged. He was a live wire sparking in the night, he couldn't touch ground or he would pop and crackle and ignite. Hannibal didn't take it personally, he picked up his own drink, lightly blew little currents into the purple pool in his cup, and spoke as calmly as a fat cloud drifting in a blue sky.

"You both recently came out of very emotionally charged circumstances, Will. Seeking intimacy is a natural means to alleviate such critical events. It reinforces the notion that you survived. Yes, it is to be expected."

Will did take the seat now. He took it and sagged. Drooped. Bowed.

"So, I used her to ease my own psyche. Fantastic."

There was a particular bite to Hannibal's stare from over the rim of his cup, as he paused in a sip, that Will felt evocative of a noose. It swung, it caught, and it wouldn't let Will flee. Now Will was sure Hannibal had picked that unique look up from Hemlock, and not the other way around. She had a way of captivating people… Or imprisoning them. Will wasn't quite sure which one it was yet.

"Do not twist my words, Will. Alana was present. Abigail was present. Both having survived the same traumatic experience. Yet, you did not look at them. You chose to go with Hemlock in the car alone. You could have very easily drove Abigail and Alana back while I took Hemlock. You chose to initiate intimacy with her. In a time of emotional turmoil, you chose Hemlock. To feel guilty now is to renounce your choice. In short, reject Hemlock and your developing relationship. I don't believe you want to do that. Not if we are being honest."

Will reached for his cup. He held it in his hands. He took a long, dragging gulp. The tea burned his throat. He hated the taste of lavender. Absolutely loathed it. Yet, he went back for another guzzle. Another swig. Empty. Just like his voice.

"That's it, though, doctor. I don't feel guilty."

He sighed sincerely.

"I should. I know I should. But I don't. Hemlock… She's young. Clever. So clever. She could be so much. Do so much. She has such… Promise."

Hannibal perked at the word, Will spotted. It wasn't anything superficially identifiable. Many people would miss it completely. There was no straightening of spine, or puffing of chest or hunching shoulder, flickering of nostril or expansion of pupil that usually came with interest. It was… It was a serpentine movement, if Will had to ever describe it. A ripple under scales. A trundling spread of muscle flaring, right beneath the surface, priming, excited.

"And I… I'll stain that. Spoil it. I'll only drag her down. I should feel guilty about that, I know, but I can't bring myself to."

Hannibal grinned.

"Believe me, Will, whatever potential Hemlock has, you will not ruin it. In fact, I think you can only help her reach it. I believe she can help you reach yours too."

Lecter took one final drink from his cup before he placed it down before him neatly, primly turning the cup so the handle pointed outwards. Hemlock did the same with her drinks. Neither had picked it up from the other, they had only gained it from coming from the old world, with old world manners, from old world families, with older world money.

Will normally just ditched his used mugs wherever they had fallen like soldiers on a battlefield. He didn't come from Lithuanian Count stock like Lecter though, nor heroic breeds of English aristocracy as Hemlock did. Will came from a humbler, muddier strain of seafaring fisherman. In normal circumstances, in a normal world, if they had lived normal lives, he should have never met these two. Who was he kidding?

None of them were normal.

"Additionally, Will, you are currently patronizing yourself. This is your insecurities speaking. In her time of crisis, instability, she chose you as you chose her. Do not belittle that choice of hers. You both suffer from the same pathology."

Will slanted a brow and Hannibal's smile grew, much like his under-skin ripple, serpentine and winding.

"It is not in my habit to share sessions with my patients outside those directly involved. Yet, I will make one concession here, Will. Hemlock suffers from anti-social personality disorder. Severely. It disrupts nearly all aspects of her life, and she does struggle terribly with it. It's what allows her to be a brilliant tracker, yet cuts her off from the rest of the world in cruel seclusion. Human connection does not come easy to our Hemlock. You already know this. She knows you do; I know you do. However, as much as you claim you fall on the autism spectrum, we both know this is not entirely true either. You too show clear, distinctive anti-social traits. Given, it is not as…"

Hannibal took a short while to find the right word. It wasn't often the elegant doctor struggled to find eloquence. Will enjoyed it immensely.

"Pronounced in you as it is Hemlock, but it is there all the same. Conflictingly, you're both stricken with the saviour complex. You both view yourselves as the villains and vagabonds of your own story. Saint and sinner. Protagonist and antagonist. You both believe the other needs safeguarding from yourselves, and have personally taken on the duty of doing so. You're equally stronger than the other believes you to be, similarly as cunning too, and it is time to start seeing that. If I were to give you some advice, it would be this. Have faith in the other. Anti-social personality disorder or not, you will never find one more loyal then Hemlock."

Will chuckled dryly, flicking a fingernail on the china of his teacup, listening to the clip it chimed. He thought it sounded too much like Hemlock laughing.

"I don't have much faith in anything anymore, doctor Lecter."

Hannibal regarded him steadily, carefully. He sounded sad then, as if he was speaking from personal experience.

"That is the only time you can have faith, Will. When things seem bleakest. Put that faith in Hemlock, as she has obviously done with you."

Another strike of fingernail on china, another spell of Hemlock's laughter echoing in the air between them, and Will stared down relentlessly into the empty cup.

"I think I already have."

When he glanced up, back to Hannibal, his gaze slid, he spied the suitcases in the corner of the kitchen, half buried in shade, nestled together in a bundle of fine leather and brass near the wine room just offshoot of Hannibal's kitchen. Will frowned.

"Are you going somewhere, Lecter?"

Hannibal rose, plucked up the two cups and took them to the sink with the teapot, where he tugged up his sleeves and set to washing. When he spoke, his voice bounced off the white tile, recoiling off the stainless steel like bullets fired in a mortuary.

"I have a conference in Copenhagen to attend. My flight is in an hour. The annual board of psychiatry is meeting about the new reforms to our procedures, and I'm afraid I must be present. I will only be gone a week."

Will laughed, adding drums to the gunfire.

"Hemlock's not going to like that."

Hannibal glanced over his shoulder to Will, brutal, antiseptic cool light to his back, obscuring his face in gloom. Will couldn't see that the other man was smiling, but he knew Lecter was.

"I'll be sure to bring her back a present."

Hemlock's P.O.V

Hannibal Lecter was gone for seven bloody days, and Hemlock hated it. Not because she missed him particularly bad. Not because she, especially, needed him. Not even because she appreciated his company, as much as that exasperated her. She supposed she could hate it for all those reasons, but she didn't. Not primarily, at least. She hated it for one straightforward reason.

It didn't make sense.

Hemlock had opened his world up beyond belief, showed him things that shouldn't exist, possibilities thought unimaginable, expanded the horizon of reality itself… And no questions came. Nothing. He fucking left to go to a conference of all things. As soon as they touched down in Baltimore, it seemed, he was off, away, gone, on his merry fucking way as if everything was exactly the same as it had been before. Normal and completely, blandly, exceedingly muggle.

It didn't make sense.

By day two of his speedy departure, Hemlock had reasoned that it could be expected. Some people, when their world was shattered, needed to retreat and reacclimatize to the new, shiny realm they found themselves in. She had never taken doctor Lecter as one of those people, who needed to be preoccupied from fact, but, well, perhaps he was. Hemlock highly doubted it, but there was a chance, she thought begrudgingly.

By day three, Hemlock had given herself her own distraction. She'd begun working Abigail Hobbs. She slathered on smiles, visited her hospital bed, adding a theatrical limp to her walk, making sure Abigail noticed her crutches. Look at me, look at the sacrifice I've given you, I've bled for you, look at how much pain I'm in for you… Look and feel guilty… And give me what the fuck I want.

Pretending to have a gimp leg was a chore in and off itself, she would admit. Hemlock had healed her wound the same night they arrived back in Baltimore with a few stashed potions she had at Alana's, but when needs must… It was a talent, Hemlock thought. In a battle, be it physical or mental, it was best to pretend to be weaker than you were. Let the other think they had you on the ropes, the poor girl in crutches, easy prey, and then, when they least expected it, drive that not so gimp leg right through their chest.

Hemlock couldn't do that to Abigail, of course, but she could unearth misplaced sympathy, and that, in this case, was wholly more worth the annoyance it was becoming to hop along. Bit by bit, act by act, Hemlock was cornering Abigail. It was almost sad the other girl couldn't see it. Almost.

She brought her flowers and chocolates, those sappy little balloons with get well soon scrawled across a cartoon heart, the kind people bought because they thought it made them quirky. She went at daybreak and only left at nightfall, and she always pretended to argue with the matron to stay. It was too early to query the man on the phone, the Copycat, but the time would come. Abigail would break. Hemlock knew it. She just had to have patience.

Worst case scenario, Hemlock could legilimency the girl. Parasitize her mind, steal the info she needed, and, because, as Snape would have attested if he were still alive, Hemlock was a rough hand at mind magic, Obliviate being one of the few spells she could properly cast in mind magic if she concentrated hard enough and went as gentle as possible, she would completely devastate Abigail's head. Abigail would likely be a blubbering mess by the end, hardly know her own name, dribble all over herself. Yet, she'd have a comfy life in a psych ward, wouldn't she?

No. Best Hemlock give her some time to give the information over willingly. Will liked Abigail with her mind as it was, Merlin knows why. Hemlock thought he might be a tad upset if Abigail could only ever repeat duck, duck, goose again. Hemlock didn't like seeing Will upset. So she would wait.

For a little bit.

"You haven't missed a lot while you were away. Abigail's going to be moving to the less secure ward this weekend. Will's found another stray. He's called her Bonny. She has a fucked-up leg, like me. I don't think she's going to survive, but you try telling Will that. Alana's writing a paper on Boyle and the murder of Marissa Schurr. She's using Will's profile. She wants to publish it in a few months. She asked me for input. Me. That's funny, isn't it? I'm going to be involved in my own scapegoat's psych profile. Perhaps I should say Boyle was a pyromaniac too… But, then again, that would be a bit ham fisted, wouldn't it Doc?"

Doctor Lecter crossed one of his long legs over the other, folding his hands in his lap, regal in his low-backed leather Chester chair, as he craned his neck back to look up at her. Tranquil. Effortless. Bastard. He'd been back two days now. Hemlock had waited to book her next therapy session through Alana, not wanting to give away how eager she was, and here she stood. In his expansive office. Hemlock was up on the top deck, traversing his books, thumbing leather spines, acting for all the world to be as likewise serene and effortless as the good doctor below her.

"You and Will Graham kissed."

With her back turned to his face, Hannibal could not see the sweep of her tongue over teeth, the flick over fang. Will Graham. If Hemlock could give trouble a face, she would give it Will's. Freely. He was rapidly becoming the bane of her existence. Not him, himself. Never him. It was what he made her.

Hemlock had practically, in all but words, told him she was Marissa Schurr's executioner. She refused to think or say killer. She wasn't a killer. Hemlock had purpose outside her own personal desires. Killer's killed for egotistical needs. Executioners passed judgement. Yes, executioner fit better. Homey and snug like a well-worn scarf. Still, she had gift wrapped it for Will. Laid it all out on the table like glossy, fresh blueprints. She had nearly bloody outed herself in a small beat-down Volvo of all fucking things.

And it had all been so very out of her control.

She just… Did it. Told him without really telling him. Nearly gave it all away. She had looked into those eyes, saw the honesty there, the aching realness of him, and she had spilled all. Hemlock didn't like that. Hemlock didn't like that at all.

Snatching free an edition of Edgar Allen Poe poems from the mahogany bookcase, Hemlock turned around and lent on the polished railing of the upper stairs by her elbow, half facing Hannibal, casually flipping through thick vellum pages fringed with gold leaf. Her voice nearly sang in the splendidly acoustical room.

"No we didn't."

Hemlock could hear the smile in Hannibal's voice. It eerily paired with the illustration of the raven in flight on the paper she was currently perusing.

"Hemlock now is not the time to see if I can pick up on your lies. I assure you, I can. Will told me himself the night I left."

Now it was Hemlock's turn to grin as she closed the book with a thud and spun to face Lecter head on.

"Ah, but if I said yes, you would have never told me Will told you. By saying no, I now know how you know. I also know Will was obviously… Disjointed enough about it to go running to you for advice. See? No lies, just long winded duplicity."

Though she was smiling, bile lashed at the delicate flesh of her throat. Will had gone running to Hannibal. Will had kissed her… And then scampered to a head shrink. That was a smooth blow to her ego, she would admit. Still, whatever the two had talked about, hashed out, Will had come around and been… Well, Will. She had seen him every single day so far. He had even taken her to meet his dogs. They had laughed and joked and, though they had not kissed again, neither did they breach the subject of it, there was a…

Tenderness, yes, tenderness there, blanketing them now. Hands staying in hands, smiles just a shade softer, laughter lingering for a moment longer, all the good stuff that made Hemlock all the more fucking selfish. Turns out, growing up as an abused kid, with fists for breakfast and kicks for supper, this kind of touch, touch that didn't hurt, touch you never knew existed previously, became something you craved.

Hemlock was starved.

"Does it gladden you that Will told me? That he was open about it?"

Hemlock rolled the book in her hands, feeling the aged leather wrinkle. It did. And that was the problem. Hemlock wanted more. She always wanted more. She was sure, so certain now, that when it came to Will, nothing would ever be enough. She could devour him, suck the very marrow from his carcass, and she would still thirst for more.

She'd imagined just that last night. Picking her teeth with Will Graham shaped bones. His nectar still sticky on her fingers. She'd imagined and she'd gone hurtling for her file on the Copycat killer hoarded underneath her mattress, just to stop herself from imagining anymore.

"I've been thinking, especially this morning, about killing him."

Hemlock glanced over to the large bay windows of Hannibal's office. The outside world was foggy through the shades. Ink on snow.

"It would be easy. Will trusts me. I know where he lives. He's dogs like me. He's not exactly innocent, either, is he? He's killed. I can't do it as I did Marissa. That face is meant to be Boyle now. But I have the Copycat's modus operandi. I can stage it. Of course, I'll make it quick. Painless. He doesn't deserve to suffer. I'm not a monster."

Hemlock looked back to Hannibal. Tranquil, calm, and absolutely maddening Hannibal. He wasn't shocked. He wasn't alarmed. He wasn't even angry. In fact, he looked as he always did. As if this was precisely what he anticipated.

"You won't, Hemlock. You don't want to kill Will. You wish to stop yourself from opening up any further. You think by taking Will out of the equation, someone who has gotten so deep under your skin, made you lose control of yourself, something no one else, apart from Tom Riddle I suspect, has ever done to you, that you can return to being in control fully."

He stretched over to his little side-table, plucked up his fountain pen and notebook and balanced them, open, in his lap. He didn't write a single word down.

"You won't get that control back. You won't kill Will Graham. You might bluster and curse that you will, but you won't. You like him, and it scares you. In the past, the only way to defeat your fear has been killing those who caused it. That won't fix this type of fear, Hemlock. Death will not vanquish your apprehension of intimacy and affection."

Perhaps Hemlock had been too busy looking in the wrong direction. A mistake she would not be making again. Will knew her, yes, knew her better than anyone else… But Hannibal Lecter did too. There was a terrifying familiarity in that alone. To have someone know you better than you know yourself. Some, perhaps Hemlock too, would argue that there was no stronger intimacy than that. Sex, kissing, touching, they all paled in the face of a man who spoke your words before they left your lips.

"If death could, maybe I should kill you instead."

Hannibal smiled at her. Broadly. He took it for what it was. A threat, of course, Hemlock couldn't help herself with that, it was almost a natural state of being now, but more than a modest warning. A compliment. That's what she liked about Hannibal; he understood the layers she worked in.

Because he painted in them too.

"And how would you kill me? Like Will? Peacefully? Painlessly? Or would you deconstruct my sins and place them for display in one of your assemblage tableaux like Marissa Schurr?"

Hemlock shook her head.

"Privately, I think. No one would ever find your body. Only I would ever know where you went, where you were, what happened to you. I think… I think I might visit the site some days. I might even talk to it, as we are talking now. I might even pretend you're answering back. I'll leave your ghost some Châteauneuf Du Pape and some white truffles. Would you like that?"

Her voice was pale, smooth, a little absent, as if she was planning a vacation and was trying to compartmentalize all the little nitty gritty details. Hemlock questioned whether these were the organisational skills Hermione had always harped onto her about correcting. Hannibal tapped the tip of his fountain pen in a sunder of three on the edge of his notebook. He was still smiling. Hemlock liked it. Hemlock hated it.

"Alone forever with only you for company. That's a very possessive death, Hemlock."

Possessive of Hannibal Lecter? Hemlock let that thought sway about her mind, felt it, tasted it, a wave lapping at the shore with sea salt cresting on her lips. Could that be the reason for her annoyance at his sudden disappearance without so much as a goodbye, see you later? At least part of the reason? Coldly, Hemlock thought it could. She thought of it in a way a predator thinks about why it prefers rabbits over mice, and why it still yearns for rabbit after eating said scrawny, skeletal rodents.

There was a divide there, Hemlock knew. When people, other people she thought, missed someone, they didn't really go through it logically. They cried and wept and screamed, and were utterly too messy for Hemlock's taste. They felt. That's all. They felt and they thoughtlessly acted through that feeling. She saw it in the Weasley's after Fred's death. She saw it in Neville's face when he spoke of his parents. She saw it in the war memorial they built, a thousand names written on marbled money that could have gone to rebuilding Hogwarts. A more sensible pressing matter than a slab of stone that would gather moss.

When Hemlock missed someone, it was more… Detached. Separated. She didn't think she missed the person, per say. She missed what they could do for her. She didn't miss Tom Riddle for Tom Riddle, she missed him for the fight, the adrenaline, the understanding he offered her. She didn't miss Sirius Black for Black, she missed his broken promises of a warm home that she knew would never come true but found comfort in all the same, she missed that he would bring her breakfast in bed, she missed the blind loyalty. She missed Dobby for his unwavering resoluteness to stand at her side, even if she was wrong.

It was never really about the people themselves.

Perhaps there was a hollowness to Hemlock's feelings then. A sort of greedy shallowness. With her, logic came first, feeling and action came after as a by-product of it. She didn't know. She had only ever felt what she had, but she did know it was different. All the weeping, messy faces after the war and her blank façade was proof enough. Yet, she didn't think it made her emotions any less than anybody else's. It was still love, still missing, still happiness and anger. They were just in black and white, missing the richness of colour.

Possibly, that's why Hannibal and Will confused her so much.

There was no logic, not a single strand of it, to be found within her feelings to them. She had missed Lecter for missing him, not for what he could do for her. In reality, he hindered her a lot more than helped. It would have been entirely better if he had stayed gone. Yet, fucking yet, she was happy he was back. She still had to wear a mask with him, more translucent, but still there, and she was bloody happy he was here despite having to keep playing human. She would miss Will too, she knew. She could kill him, she should kill him, it would make everything so much easier, but she couldn't. She'd miss him.

With Hannibal and Will, feelings came first, action and logic followed.

Hemlock didn't know how to walk in a world of colour.

"I did tell Will I was selfish, Doc."

But that didn't mean she didn't want to try.

Hannibal did write something down this time. Something long and sprawling, with a sweep of the wrist at the end. She tried to picture his blood running between them, soaking in the cracks of the floorboards as if it was creating an antique map, pointing her in the right direction, a compass heading home, as long and sprawling as his writing. A quick severing hex to his neck could give her that. Right through the carotid artery. It would spray, she knew. Arching, wild. The thought gave her no satisfaction. She felt… She felt… Queasy.

Had she eaten something spoiled for breakfast?

"You won't kill me, Hemlock. As you won't kill Will Graham."

With a crack of air splitting, Hemlock apparated down, close, right on the Persian rug in front of Hannibal. This time, he did startle. He gripped his pen tight. His eyes flashed. His nostrils flared. Hemlock laughed. Loudly. He didn't know she could teleport.

"How can you be so sure? You know what I've done. You know what I plan to do. If I were you or Will, Doc, I'd be afraid. Very afraid."

So why wasn't he freaking out? Why was a tighter grip on a pen, a widening of eyelid and a quiver of nostril, all the surprise she could get out of him? No matter what she did or said?

"Because you like us. It frightens you, but it excites you at the same time. You won't risk prematurely losing that thrill by ending the game so soon. As much as you fear intimacy and affection, you crave it similarly. You desire to be understood and accepted… Loved, as who and what you are. Will does too, as you know. As do I. There's a connection there that you won't jeopardize, no matter what comes. It's not in you to do so. You are not Tom Riddle. You won't destroy love, be it in its many forms, familial, platonic, romantic. I suspect, I and Will, out of all, are the safest people around you. "

You're not Tom Riddle. Will had told her that, what felt like a lifetime ago. Now Hannibal. And they were right. She wasn't Tom Riddle. She wouldn't kill them. She didn't want to go back to that horrendous black and white world, not now that she had sipped from the chalice of wonderful colour. Hannibal pulled back from his notebook, flipped it closed, placing it on the side-table beside him. His pen returned to his suit jacket pocket.

"Nevertheless, the same cannot be said of this Copycat, can it? What do you plan to do if you get close to him or her? If you find them? When you have them in your hands?"

Hemlock vanished the book back to where it too belonged, and promptly sat right on the rug in front of Hannibal, crossed legged, elbows on knees, head resting on fists. Like an impatient child sitting down for story time.

"What do you think I'm going to do? I'm going to kill him."

There was an impish tone to her voice, all Peter Pan and Wendy Darling. Hannibal slipped off his seat, down to the ground, to the very rug Hemlock rested on, and sat down directly in front of her, crossed legged also. Hemlock wondered if she moved left if Hannibal would too, like some great invisible mirror was splitting them, mirroring. She wondered if she threw her fist back and sent it flying, if his face would break like glass and cut up her knuckles. Hannibal lent closer.

"Why?"

Hemlock's fist fell, hand flopping into lap, head rising, face cocking to the side.

"What do you mean why? Because… Because it's balance, isn't it? He needs to total what he's took. I'm matching the cheque book. You heard what Will said, you heard what he called me, a fucking sociopath… But I have morals. I have… Something. I-… I need to set the balance right."

Hannibal blinked at her, and yes, there was a mirror there, be it real or in her mind, his head turning to match hers. Eye to eye.

"Why?"

No wonder his voice fitted the bird in flight. He reminded her of the raven, knock, knock, knocking on her chamber door. Nevermore. She knew, this time, unlike the mirror, that the sense of feathers stroking her face was all in her deranged little head.

"Because I have to. I-… I have to. He needs to die. He-… Death. He feels like Tom, but he's not. He's not and he is and-… He needs to go. I have to kill him."

He reached for her slowly, her Nevermore doctor. He gave her chance to back away, maybe nip at his fingers as most skittish dogs do, but she didn't. She waited, felt a hand on top of her prone one laying limp on her knee. It was large. Larger than Wills. Cooler too. Much cooler. Real doctor hands. His fingers wrapped around her wrist, palm to palm, and if she wanted, really wanted, she could wrap her own around his wrist.

"Have you ever considered you might be trapped in a cycle, Hemlock?"

Her lip curled, her fingers wrapped, and she was sure her blunt nails scratched him. You don't spur flint without expecting a spark. He didn't flinch.

"Cycle?"

His thumb stroked at the pale blue veins of her wrist. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Tap, tap, tap. Repeat. Her numbers. Three and seven. The numbers she had to do, had to have, had to create. It was strange, having those numbers with her now, how fast she calmed down and stopped thinking of digging her nails in further and splitting her Nevermore doctors arm wide open. Maybe pull and play with his own blue veins.

"In incidents of highest emotional, psychological and physical trauma, we often find ourselves trying to recapture that instant where we survived, where we won, and all those emotions and thoughts that came with that one instance of victory. There have been records of people in rather nasty car crashes who will purposefully repeat another crash days later in an attempt to imitate that first life altering collision. We call it repetition compulsion. Look… You're doing it right now. Three and seven. Repetition. It's calming, isn't it? Makes it all feel as if everything is exactly how it should be? Secure? Predictable? You know what to do with three and seven, you've lived them before Hemlock, and so, you search for them again, in everything you do, to find that steadiness that you once had."

Hannibal chuckled and nodded down to their joined hands.

"You're doing it to me too, see? Six. The age my sister, Mischa… Died. You likely picked up the number subconsciously with your remarkable observation skills. See, I too know how it feels. To search and search, and only ever find scraps. To hold on so very tightly to those crumbs, numbers, just because that is all you think you have left."

Hemlock didn't know exactly when her nails stopped burrowing, and her thumb started stroking, but Hannibal was right. Six sweeps. Tap. Six sweeps. Tap. She didn't stop. Hannibal didn't either.

"When that traumatic event involves the killing of another human being, as yours does, it creates a specific cycle. One I believe you are currently experiencing. You wish to replicate that final fight with Tom Riddle, with the Copycat in his place, another who has killed unrepentantly, as you call him, the Tom-not-Tom. You're looking for another imitation."

His thumb stopped and the calm, the comfort, the safety, flew away on the back of black wings.

"The problem you will face, Hemlock, is there is no other Tom Riddle. There will never be another perfect replication of that day where he died and you survived. You will never get that moment in time back. You will never, no matter how much you wish to, change that day. You will only ever repeat it in cheap procreation. When you drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose, you're not satisfied when it doesn't gather itself up again. I know that feeling all too well."

Hemlock swallowed deeply. Something callous caught in her throat. It felt like Will's wishbone.

"Then what else am I meant to do? I have to… I have to… There's something sick in me, Hannibal. Something really fucking sick. I can't-. What else is there? This… This is all I know."

I can't walk in your world of colour. It's blinding. How do I walk when I can't see? Blinded. That's how Hemlock felt around Will and Hannibal. Blinded. There was colour, there was life, there was emotion in full scope and Hemlock was blinded by it all.

"Break the cycle, Hemlock. Change that day. Don't repeat. When, and I am sure it is when, you find this Copycat, don't do as you did all those months ago with Tom, what you are always trying to fix and change but never can, leave that broken teacup behind… Don't kill him. Don't kill the Copycat. Break the cycle."

Don't kill the Tom-not-Tom? Preposterous. Unbearable. A vase shattered somewhere behind her. Perhaps one of Hannibal's expensive statues. Her fingers were back to tunnelling again, raking, scouring. Hannibal was definitely bleeding this time. She could feel the trickle of it, warm and wet and tacky between her fingers, dripping on her knee. He didn't cringe or recoil. He held solid, constant. True.

Safe.

"Someone has to pay the price for the blood spilled. The scales need to level, Hannibal. They have to as I have to."

Hannibal's eyes were so extraordinary in moments like these, Hemlock thought. Softer than she knew eyes could be. Her Nevermore doctor's gone, the one who pokes and probes her into reflections and insights she never wanted to glimpse, and in his place is a man who sees all the colours of the world, all the colours Hemlock never understood existed before he and Will ambled into her monochromatic prison. With colour comes feeling, and with feeling comes life, and with life comes… Humanity. Yes, Hemlock thought. Humanity.

That's the thing about monsters, they all craved to be human in the end.

If Hannibal were anyone else, if she saw colour and life and humanity in any other eyes but his, Hermione's or Ron's, Alana's or Jack's, she would have dropped her gaze. Withdrew. Appalled. Offended by it. Repulsed. Instead, with Hannibal, she was drawn to it closer, wanting more, always more, and there it is again, this shallowness to her monochromatic emotions. A craving for colour that she, herself, does not possess, but it didn't make it any less real and devastatingly painful.

He released her wrist. It rose. There was blood on his cuff. Not much. A splash of crimson. It had felt like more in her own hand. As did most things in life. However, it had seeped up his hand, across his palm, down his fingers, and as Hannibal reached forth, skimmed fingertip across cheekbone, brushed a stray curl behind her ear, he branded her with a trail of garnet.

Hannibal tarnished her with colour, and Hemlock would never be the same again.

"And I am sure there are many others who have debts to pay, as Marissa Schurr did. She didn't fit Tom's profile, not remotely, and yet you still pursued her. That means you can deviate from the cycle at least a fraction currently. I'm sure other's alike are out there. Other's that can fill in without being a duplication."

Hemlock felt like she was a relapsing, jittery crack addict, and Hannibal fucking Lecter was her personal sponsor. Don't go straight for the meth, Hemlock dear girl. Never go straight for the meth. Try some cigarettes. Some booze? Take the edge off. Just stay away from the meth. Fill one addition with another, lesser, weaker strain, and hope its enough to suture the haemorrhaging laceration close.

"And what about the Copycat? I will find him. If I don't, Will will. So I have to get to him first. What do I do with him then? Give him to the fucking FBI? Let him live in some asylum, pleading insanity, and be on his jaunty way? If he really is anything like Tom, like me, he won't go. He won't. Not without a fight. Not without at least one body dropping. One last fill before they make him starve. I don't intend to have that corpse be mine, Will's or yours."

Hemlock only noted his hand pulling away, not that it had lingered in her hair. Blind. Completely blind. Like those mice.

"Do what you wished you had done with Tom. Talk to him, in that unique way you two talk. Understand him. Become… Friends."

Hemlock thought about it. Really thought. Hard. Persistently. Relentlessly. The hand was brushing another curl from her face. Another brand. Another flavour of colour. Could she do it?

Hemlock was standing in the remnants of Hogwarts, blood on the floor, bodies crashed over stone, and she saw him. Tom. Across from her. Wand in hand. Cold courage. He looked as he always looked in her mind when she remembered him. Not as the grotesque husk he had become, but her Tom, Tommy from the diary, her first real friend who smiled so charmingly. Her friend who understood, whose own world was black and white.

She stared at him. Tom stared back. It was silent here. Quiet. Just them. He raised his wand. Hemlock glanced down to hers. Could she do it? Stand here, as she had that day, with the Tom-not-Tom, and not lift her own wand? She looked up once more, Tom was gone. And there he stood.

She pictured him as rose scented smoke. She knew it would itch like anthrax if it touched her. There was a face there, prowling in the black smoke, unseen. It was watching her with garnet eyes as she watched him. She lifted up her hand… She waved. It waved back. Her wand hand twitched. Could she do it? Drop her wand? Not take aim and fire? Break the cycle?

If Hemlock did… What came after that? How do you walk off a battlefield you never really left in the first place? Where would she go? What would she do? She took a step forward, the smoke followed her, closer, step, closer, step. She could touch it now, if she wanted. She could stretch up and dip her fingers into smoke and feel all the colours of the world and-

Hands from behind enveloped her jaw, her neck, and twisted.

They won't give up, Jack. It's not in them.

She came careening back to herself with the sound of Will's voice in her head, the feel of his calloused hand on her throat and chin, the rush of breath, and the smell of his cheap aftershave tickling her nose. Hemlock leapt up, away from Hannibal, leaving his hand hanging woefully in the air.

"I'm sorry, Doc. He has to die. I have to do it."

Hannibal was trying to help her, she knew. Help her stop, break from this crash, change course, help her escape the battlefield, to finally stop reciting and duplicating and echoing. But Hemlock was shallow, hollow, a cavern where a thousand voices like choirs sang. None of them her own.

Hannibal was a good person. Too good. He hadn't outed her to Alana, nor to Jack, or, Morgana forbid, Will. He had kept her nasty little secret. Why? Possibly because he was implicit in her actions, not that he could gave stopped her, but the law wouldn't see it that way. Maybe it too could be to help protect Abigail. If he gave Hemlock away, he'd have to out Abigail too. Perhaps, though, maybe, just maybe, Hannibal Lecter had a slice of hope for Hemlock.

A hope she could be more than what she was.

As misplaced and bleak as that hope was, Hemlock thought it felt nice. Not for what it could do for her. Not for what she could use it for. Not for any logical reason other than it felt nice to have someone have hope for her. A bewildering, chaotic world of colour.

"Tell me, Hemlock, if it is repetition you are after, if it is another Tom you seek, why do you not search inwards? You two are, or should I say were, extremely similar. I first suspected you would try to commit suicide when I first met you. I even warned your aunt, Alana, of such a possibility."

Hannibal said as he too stood up, tugging on his suit jacket to straighten out the imaginary creases. Hemlock gave a merciless laugh. As much as Hermione or Ron might argue otherwise, parading Hemlock's many seemingly 'suicide runs' in a never-ending conveyor belt, Hemlock herself had never been of that persuasion. She had never wanted to die.

She didn't fear it, not like Tom, not in the typical sense. She knew, one day, she would die as everyone else would. Permanently this time. It was the way of the world. You came from nothing, you returned to nothing. But she was greedy and slim, still the orphan chit locked in a cupboard in some way, famished for all the pretty things she never had, and she wanted to do as much as she could, live as much as she could, before her name was called.

"What do you think all this is? I have a price to pay too. One day, perhaps even with this Copycat, when we meet… He might win. Someone will eventually. They'll kill me, I know that, and my own debt will be paid… But only after I've finished doing what I have to do. What I want to do. And there's so much of that. My list is long, Doc. Very fucking long. I don't plan to bow out of the great game until I've had my fill of all of life's little pleasure."

Hannibal smiled at her, overflowing with shades and colours and tastes. The winter sun shimmering in through the blinds made it seem slick, fluid. Hemlock thought she might live a thousand more years, and if she never saw her Nevermore doctor again after today, she would still always come back to that smile, remember it as clearly as she was seeing it now, and plainly feel.

"And the Teacup finally comes back together. The day changes. Tom survives… You die. Just how you wished that day had really gone. I worry about you, Hemlock. I, dreadfully, do not wish to see you die. At least think over what I have said. Think of breaking that cycle."

In doctor Lecter's large office, Hemlock on one side of the rug, Hannibal standing proud at the other, there was something intoxicating obscuring the space between them, closing the distance. Poignant. Sincere. Hemlock tasted the colour purple.

"Don't count me out so soon, Lecter. I'm not going down that easily. I do have magic on my side. Not many people can say the same."

Hannibal's gaze immediately fell to the wand pierced through her tangled bun. His smile was less now, muted, attentive but calm. He strolled over to his chair, sat once more, and Hemlock, as she always did, mirrored and echoed, and sat down in the chair opposite him, where traditional, normal patients would sit and moan and cry about their lives. Idly, she speculated if she would be able to feel their passions imprinted in the leather. Maybe feel their tears. She couldn't.

It was just fucking leather.

"Why, yes, how could I ever forget. Magic, you call it? Is there more of those like you? I assume Tom Riddle was?"

Hemlock shrugged and patted at the arm of the chair, following the stitches. Lecter's blood was crusting on her fingernails. Blood always dried so quickly. It flaked off and Hemlock rubbed the rust into the mottled green leather. She might not be able to feel anything from leather, but if anybody could, Will would be able to. She bet he sat right here in his own sessions. She thought she might like to see what he would do, sitting in his chair, talking to Hannibal, and, perhaps, feel Hannibal's blood underneath his own hand and the essence of Hemlock lingering in the brass tacks of the chair.

"The story is exactly the same, add or take some Goblins, dragons, horcruxes and death. But… Yes. Tom was like me. We're not a lot, my people, but there's enough of us. We have our own government. Our own towns. Our own laws and institutions. My school, that boarding school, was for those like me. We call people like you, people who aren't capable of magic, muggles. Tom wanted your kind annihilated. He thought you were all worthless. Barbaric."

Swiftly, she changed tactics, without a single hitch to her stride.

"You likely pass us in the street. There's no biological difference. None we can tell so far. Brains, systems, organs, blood, everything's the same, we're just… Different. Well, we need more sugar than you guys. It's one of the only ways to point us out of the crowd. That old lady you pass in the street munching candy-canes in June? One of us. The man at the diner pouring sachet after sachet of sugar in his bargain coffee? One of us. We can-"

Hannibal cut her off.

"As fascinating as I am sure this is, and as much as I am sure I will be delighted to listen about it later, I am not concerned with others, Hemlock. I never have been. I am interested in you. So, tell me. Tell me your story. The true one. Not the one falsified in your files, erased from its exceptionalism, but the honest one. Tell me about you."

Hemlock stiffened. She had name dropped Goblins, dragons, death, an entire new world with whole other governments, eluded to the extermination of his own people… And he wanted to hear about her? Hemlock? She didn't need therapy. Hannibal Lecter did. Yet, something kindled in the cavity of her chest, deep inside the empty cavern, a candle, warm and light and flickering in the dark, and the thousand singing voices settled to silence as she heard the spectre of the flames spluttering in her ear. It was a good sort of burn.

"Where do I even begin?"

"The beginning is always a good place to start."

Hemlock kept back on the lies, biting them before they could flee her fanged mouth. They burst like grapes on her forked tongue. She could feel it coming again, the big spilling, the out of control expulsion. Hemlock fought against it. She really, honestly, truly did. She wanted to tell Hannibal some deformed Oliver Twist knock-off. Maybe Hamlet, though, with his taste in classical, he would likely pick that one right up. But his smile was purified to colours. Pink lip, white tooth, red gum, milky-peach skin, leaping, flowing, glorious colours, and as she had done with Will, without purpose, without rationality, without thought, Hemlock let it go. She let it all go. It felt good to spill, as it felt good to walk in colours, as it, irrationally, felt good to be blinded.

It felt good to feel.

"I think my story began centuries before I was born. You see, there were three brothers. Brother's like me, wizards… There were three brothers who tried to cross a bridge. Death had been waiting-"

Hemlock talked for hours, she thought. She talked until her voice was hoarse and words hurt. She talked until there was nothing left to spill. She talked about it all, everything, in pining candor, for the first time in her life. Albus. Tom. Ron. Hermione. Her aunt. Her uncle. Her hippogriff flight. The Weasley's Sunday lunches. Ollivander and what it felt like to get her wand for the first time. The power in her palm. The first time she threw a Crucio. She talked of dying and how peaceful it was, over there, wherever she had gone, imaginary or not. She talked of the agony of coming back, how she had never realised, until she had savoured that peace, how very fucking loud the world really was. Hemlock told him all, because, in the end, monster's just wanted to be human, and to be human was to be understood.

And Hannibal Listened to it all.

NEXT CHAPTER: Alana just wants to protect her niece, Hemlock get's a special delivery at Crawford's office, Hannibal makes his move, and Will struggles with what is right and what he wants…

Thoughts?

NEXT UPDATE- This was originally part of the next chapter, but I had to split them as together, they were over fourteen thousand lol. So, I thought instead of waiting two weeks for the whole chapter to be published as posting once a week would do, I would split them this way, and post this one tonight while I still can. I'm busy with Uni work this week, I've got two presentations and an essay, so I can't promise much, but I will hopefully post part 2 by the end of the week, if all goes well.

For those wondering when we are going to have some solid trio bonding, do not fear, it is coming! It's not next chapter, but the chapter after. I can't give too much away, but I will say shit hits the fan next chapter, Hannibal is Hannibal, and always five steps ahead of everybody. I hope you are look forward to it!

Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! This one's for you! I hope you liked it and are looking forward to what's to come! Thank you for all the follows and favourites as well! If you have a spare moment, drop a review, let me know what you think, you really do give me inspiration, and, hopefully, I will see you guys soon!