Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: The knife returns to his neck.

"I intend to honour every part of you."

Author's Notes: I struggled with this last chapter. I didn't want this fic to end! I just wanted to go on believing that Will and Hannibal were traveling around Europe like an old married couple. The new season looms though, so this had to get concluded. Stay tuned for the epilogue!

I do owe a great debt to the readers of this fic: this he-ate-us was a lot harder than the one between season 1 and 2. I could not have done this without your kind support. Thank you so much for joining me! I hope you enjoy this penultimate installment. Cheers!

Ten

Will doesn't give Hannibal the chance to turn around. He storms into the kitchen and pounces on the doctor from behind, landing blow after blow after blow.

One for Jack.

One for Alana.

One for Abigail.

More for Abigail.

He wraps himself in a knot around Hannibal's limbs and successfully knocks the knife from the fight. "You were supposed to leave that night," Will hisses. He pulls his arm more tightly against Hannibal's neck. "You were supposed to be gone before Jack got there."

Hannibal fights weakly, more to escape than to harm. He doesn't want to hurt Will from this position. His grunting grows feeble, as do his movements. Will pulls his arm tighter. "I hate you…" he breaks under pressure. Tears run from his eyes. "I hate you so much. And I think…I think the only thing I hate more than you…is the fact that I find myself not hating you at all."

He lets go. Takes a step back. Readies his fists again. Hannibal's on all fours, coughing and spluttering. It takes him several long minutes before he remembers how to breathe. Will gives him the opportunity as he retrieves the knife Hannibal dropped earlier.

The blade catches the doctor's reflection. His expression is a bizarre cocktail of curiosity and tragedy. "I thought…you were going to kill me…with your hands…" he wheezes.

Will wipes at his tears furiously. He trembles on the edge of his unravelled morality, gazing down the face of a sheer precipice between him and satisfaction. As usual, he keeps his feet firmly on solid ground, "I'm not going to kill you, Dr. Lector."

Hannibal hangs his head, "You're going to give me to Jack?"

"No," Will shakes his head. He heaves a shuddering breath. "I'm going to let you go. Just go. You leave, and I won't follow."

"That's not life."

"It's survival."

"We needn't be parallel lines."

"Yes, we do."

"You're that terrified of becoming me?"

"I'm that…awestruck by you. By the sheer monstrosity of you. By the sheer…" Will chuckles, "by the sheer monstrosity of me."

"We would have made quite a pair," Hannibal rubs his hand along his lip, collecting a line of blood across his knuckles. "We still can."

"No. We both know where this ends," Will replies.

"Yes," Hannibal agrees. "We do."

Will doesn't see the attack coming, not until the air's knocked out of his lungs and the knife falls from his hand across the floor. The floor catches his head, shooting stars through his vision. He is pulled across the floor by an ankle. When he kicks, Will gets grabbed by the hair and yanked to his knees.

Hannibal lifts Will to his feet and embraces him from behind. Will's struggle is halted when the cold steel of a knife blade presses against his jugular.

"I don't want this to be over," Hannibal says matter-of-factly.

"You kill me, it ends pretty quickly," Will reminds him.

He's calm. He doesn't know why he's so calm. Maybe it's because he has already died once before this way: on Hannibal's kitchen floor, watching Abigail bleed out from her neck.

"I've already seen you suffer," Hannibal presses the knife point deeper. Will can feel his skin split. He grabs Hannibal's wrist and nearly risks the knife going deeper.

Blood starts dribbling down his neck. Will lets out a shout.

The knife retracts, rises. Hannibal's knife hand runs down Will's face while the other clamps over the tiny wound he's just created. He's made their position all too literal: stay and die; leave and die. Hannibal is God and the devil all rolled into one.

"Tonight was supposed to be about our unification," Hannibal laments.

"You can still run," Will tells him.

"But where would I go if not with you?" Hannibal wonders aloud. "I made a life in Florence, Will, and it was beautiful but empty, like that mask you wore when you killed Randall Tier. I thought it was Bedelia's observations that drained my enjoyment from the experience. It wasn't until your arrival that I realized this is the life I had intended for us: you, me, Abigail."

Hannibal tightens his grasp on Will's neck, avoiding his legs as they flail. "I won't have a world without you, not anymore," he directs Will's attention to the man on the table. "I believe we will be having dinner together tonight after all. Though I should apologize in advance for the change of the main course."

Here, Will feels the panic he should have when Hannibal first put the knife to his neck. He starts to fight back in whatever way he can. Hannibal holds fast to him though, hushing him gently, as if he's a child having a tantrum. "Relax, Will. I don't want you to feel any pain. Not this time."

The knife returns to his neck.

"I intend to honour every part of you."

"Hannibal…"

He grabs Hannibal's wrist with one hand and elbows him in the chest with the other. The action does very little to increase the distance between himself and the blade. Hannibal still has him impossibly in his grasp, wrapped up in a hold that doesn't seem to have an escape. The blade finds his cheek, his jaw, his shoulder, nicking and biting, reminding him that he is alive, in this moment. He is Alive and Hannibal is Killing Him.

The thought brings a renewed sense of life to his limbs. Will forces his arm between the knife and his neck and wraps his hand around Hannibal's cheek. He ignores the blood that spurts from his cut wrist, ignores the pain, and pushes. Pushes hard. Pushes until Hannibal has no choice but to yield to the pressure. Then Will slams his fist into Hannibal's face.

And he doesn't stop.

Light returns first, then music. Vide Cor Meum. Perfect music for a perfect morning.

The swell of the soprano's voice becomes the ringing in his ears and is almost lost behind the waves of blood crushing against the front of his skull. Hannibal's mind is a lazy ocean after an oil spill, waters thick and polluted. He raises his head for clarity and ends up blinded by the powdery blue of the morning sky.

Pain asserts itself dully. It has difficulty navigating through his concussion. All the bruising in his brain is tripping up sensations. For instance, it takes Hannibal an eternity to register that his hands are secured behind his back, that his arms are wrapped around the trunk of a tree, that his head is in agony, sheer agony.

He lets his swollen head drop. It bobs on his neck for a while, riding waves of pressure. The bruising on his face must be considerable for his skin to feel this inflamed.

Hannibal gives himself time to awaken; he's not going anywhere fast as it is. The ropes are well tied. Will's used plenty of complicated knots – some that he recognizes, others that he does not – and none of them yield to his clumsy hand movements.

Hannibal raises his aching skull to find the young man standing before him, armed with the kitchen knife that nearly took his life the night before.

"You asked me once how I would kill you," Will notes.

Hannibal nods and nearly succumbs to unconsciousness again. He lets the pain draw him back into wakefulness, "You promised me intimacy."

"Intimacy was what I wanted at the time," Will doesn't dare meet Hannibal's eyes. He looks through the trees, searching for something Hannibal knows he won't find. "I once fantasized having you crushed to death like this. Let you explode into a great firework of blood."

"I wasn't going to eat you because you're rude," Hannibal offers in defence of his previous actions.

"I know. Perhaps it's my rudeness that keeps me from being flattered by the gesture."

Hannibal shifts as much as he can in his bonds. There's no give. Will's left nothing to chance. He's given Hannibal the same chance as he was given in Baltimore: run as a coward and live, stay as a friend and die. "I think it rude that you would hang me from a tree to kill me."

Will laughs darkly, sadly, "I'm not going to kill you, Dr. Lecter. I'm going to leave you here for the animals or Jack Crawford: whoever comes first."

"Jack Crawford will come for you as much as he will come for me."

"Yes, but Jack Crawford will let me go if I tell him to," Will speaks with such certainty.

"How do you know that?" Hannibal asks.

"Because you don't want me to believe that. You want me to run with you? I'm tired…I'm so tired of running with you. I have carried you in my head since the day we met."

"You will never be rid of me, Will. I am in those scars on your abdomen. The new scars on your face and wrist."

"I am not my scars," Will snaps. He begins to walk away.

"You're right," Hannibal agrees. "I am."

The barb should have stopped him, but aside for a stutter in Will's gait, it has no effect. Will Graham forces one foot in front of the other and disappears into the trees.

Hannibal Lecter sets to work on his bonds. He manages only to loosen them slightly around his chest before his hands go numb.

He's almost grateful when, hours later, Jack Crawford cuts him down from the tree personally.

Almost.

Happy reading!