"I cannot describe the look you are giving me."

Will jumped slightly, forcing himself to relax. The fire burned lowly in the mantle, and he ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth, watching the wisps of smoke that escaped the front grate. He'd forgotten it could happen this easily. With proper storytelling, with enough emotional elements in place, and the overall gravity of Hannibal's presence, he'd followed him like a pied piper down into that dream. It clung to him like a spider web. The vague sense of desolation lingered, a fine dust floating between them, the ashes of a vibrant moment. He was there, in that wasteland, but the doctor still existed separately from him, and for that he was grateful. "I…am trying to stay afloat in your dream, at the moment. Something about it is visceral. My ears are ringing again."

"Visceral is a perfect word, I think. I had not intended to bring you there with me." Hannibal did not sound angry, but there was something strange on his features. The micro-expressions he used to communicate were exaggerated by the dying light, stains of pained satisfaction lingering. "There are more questions, aren't there? Ask them."

There was a pause, and Will curled his leg underneath him. He had been here before, several times over the course of his life. People that he knew with various degrees of familiarity would work their way to this conversation with him, usually in similar context, a dark room or nighttime bonfire. It was always a poorly crafted invitation to fix them. Will's nature was to nurture, and his ability was to reflect and give others a new perspective of themselves...to give them the opportunity to stand before a mirror of emotion and motive. Few realized how draining that could be for him. When he was younger, he'd had great difficulty refusing people, and the constant burden of harboring pieces of people within himself had left him raw, a scalded mess of nerves. Years ago, though. When he was a kinder person. It had been a long time since he'd accepted a personal invitation into someone else's mind.

That left actually exploring it, however. The beaten path here had no lights, no map, and no compass, moral or otherwise. Hannibal's existence belied those things, his mind crafted more intricately than anyone Will had encountered prior to him. At least he had the assurance that Hannibal didn't need to be fixed. Instead, a vast library of stories greeted him, each waiting patiently in its place to be turned over and examined. That begged the question of whether or not he wanted to explore…wanted to know the man watching him so carefully from behind his tacit expression.

He thought, faintly, that the answer was yes. King's gestures aside, it would be thrilling to know how deep it went, whether the labyrinth made sense at its core. He cleared his throat quietly, choosing his words and trying to keep his tone even. "…Sorry. I'm still…hearing it. The wind, the grinding stone. It's hard to stay grounded when I've been drinking."

"I will keep it in mind."

Will nodded again, clenching and unclenching his fist as he stretched his mind in that place, the threshold of Hannibal, and felt around. The new headspace was more than enough to hold him, where others felt like poorly tailored clothes, glimpses through dirty windows. He took a deep breath, and slowly, elements of the dream came to the surface. An impression of violence lingered, and murder, too, but nothing so concrete that he wanted to withdraw. He thought there may be a cataclysmic loss somewhere, and yet it was hushed, filed away in some corner that he knew existed but could never hope to unlock. The walls hummed with the oceans they held. It was distracting. "Is there any truth in it? Have you ever been sexually violent with someone?"

"Yes."

"Consensual?"

"Dubious."

The answer dropped like a hammer between them, and Will's throat worked as he waited to feel…something. Disgust, rage, fear, anything that he was told he was supposed to feel. In that quiet place, the world with no light and mountains of ash, nothing answered. It felt carefully empty of emotional clutter, with a hush as thick as fallen snow. A dull ache in his heart answered it after a moment…he recognized it as loneliness, but it was his response to the quiet, not Hannibal's. His compassion would be the death of him, but Hannibal's silence stretched on, ignoring it. Will didn't want to speak. Didn't need to, really.

"Will?"

"I'm not…thinking, right now." Will muttered, trying to what? Reassure him? This wasn't judgment; he wanted that to be clear. "I'm just…here. Breathing."

Hannibal's gaze became less expectant, his voice quiet. "How do you breathe?"

"iQuietly/i, Hannibal." Will shook his head, rubbing both hands over his face as he let his head rest against the chair. "I…understand the loss. I heard it. I understand how the vibrancy of what you encountered would be unsettling. And right now, in this moment, I understand your reaction. That may not be true tomorrow, in the light of day, but that won't matter."

Hannibal didn't answer, so Will continued.

"I think it's not in your nature to reach for people. For anything. Hunting, relentless search for your small satisfactions, ithat/i I can feel, but the overall tone of this place in your head feels…distanced? And yet encompassing." And just like that, words failed him. He made some inane gesture into the air, sighing. "I can overlap this place with my idea of you very easily, so the concept of you as a sexually violent person is not completely outside my interpretation, but I'd imagine it's…a hard part of you to reach, and isolate."

"It is, and I would not necessarily tie the elements of sex and violence together so tightly."

"Exactly." Will pointed at the floor, talking with his hands as Hannibal yanked that analogy from his head like a tooth. "They aren't. Not with you. That…manifestation of your desire to consume doesn't really fit, somehow. There is virtually no circumstance that comes to mind that would bring you to that particular physical solution. That's not to say that you're incapable of it, because I tend to believe the mental wiring is very much in place. But…I don't see a perfect cocktail of circumstance that would lead to your committing the physical act of rape. Consumption is the only word."

"For the act of the rape, or for arriving at that solution?"

Will frowned, tripped by his own phrasing. "…I think you would find a more elegant way to consume, but if you were ever driven to something as crass and tactless as rape, it would be in the name of consumption. That's why I believe there was a physical component in the sarcophagi to begin with. Rape has never been a purely physical act; the very essence of it is bound to dominance, control, destruction. But I can see a distance between you and those emotional elements. I can feel this…disconnect. It's strange. I think my understanding the scenario is limited to the sarcophagus, and if you, through some miracle, deigned to rape someone, it would in essence be the ifirst/i rape, all over again."

"You are more adept at this than you credit yourself." Hannibal laced his fingers, making a dismissive motion with his shoulders, "Or, honestly, than I credited you, as well."

And Will knew in that moment that he was not the first person to receive such an invitation. "No?"

"No. I have…put you in a unique position, to understand elements of me as they are, and not as I would usually have them interpreted. I know for certain now that I was not wrong in assuming that you could gain a perspective."

"Now that I'm here, it makes a little more sense."

"It's interesting to me that you interpret the emotional impact of other people on your mind as going to a 'place'. You keep mentioning being 'here', with me." Hannibal watched the fire through his crystal. "It makes me wonder if such experiences could be tailored for the ease of translation."

"That would be…leading, and ultimately dishonest, I think. Whether you intended to deceive me or not, it's an emotional process, not a logical one. You're attempting to cover or change what I experience would only be the same sentence in a different language. The message doesn't change."

"I believe I disagree, but I want your experience of me to be genuine."

"Why?"

"Everyone wants to be seen, Will."

XXXX

Will hovered in the doorway with his file tucked under his arm, hands loosely in his pockets. His every effort to shut the dream out of his mind had failed. He lay awake for hours, until the alcohol picked up the story and took him deep into sleep. There he wandered, listening intently for Hannibal and the telltale sound of this dream coffin sliding open. He never found them, but felt that they existed always just on the edge of his vision, between folds in the air. He awoke late, but rested, with his brain still metaphorically on fire.

Hannibal sipped his tea and gestured to the chair across from himself at the breakfast table. He looked vastly different in the sunlight, but Will was not quick to dismiss the person he'd met the night before. He pulled the chair out and seated himself, splaying his hands over the open file. "I keep searching for better ways to phrase my questions, but I'm not…capable, right now. I want to be blunt. I think it's best if we were blunt with each other. "

Hannibal nodded, the curl of his lips almost feline. "As you wish."

"I am not trying to insult you." Will hedged carefully, resting back against his chair. "But…I don't want you be my therapist. And you don't want to live with a patient. And it seems you're not…entirely boring."

"…You could try harder." The older man didn't quite chuckle, reaching for another tea cup from the carousel centerpiece and pouring Will a cup; the scent chamomile and blueberries filled the pause in conversation. "I will admit the question surprised me. I had expected something more…conversational."

"I don't actually do conversation well." Will offered with a half-smile. "I wanted to know why you're so intent on my knowing you better. I'm not really your type. From what I've heard."

"No. My professional friends are typically useful to me, in some way. Rich, affluent, educated…"Hannibal lifted a brow. "Empty. If I'm to be completely honest, I'm not sure why I want you to know me. I cannot justify it to myself. I just know that last night is the first time in a long time that I have had to think about what I wanted to say. A majority of my conversations begin and end with my spoon-feeding to others answers to questions they weren't aware they were asking. And you're my antithesis…you tend to get lost with them, working from within, out. I can't stand doing that myself. You are…a mirror."

"That's the second time you've taken something directly from my head and said it aloud." Will's fingers drummed, his expression skeptical. "And you strike me as a man who knows himself very well."

"You know what to expect when you go the mirror, but you still go, Will." Hannibal countered easily, his oddly colored eyes brighter in the sunlight. They looked more alive than they had the night before. "I am not asking for a profile of myself, just…curious as to what your impression will be, when you're done."

Will was quiet for a moment, then "Don't lead me. I've never…just…reached like this, before. You're asking me to haul the guts of your subconscious out onto a table for inspection. Usually, I'm after something very specific, something highlighted by a long line of broken ideas and screwed psychology. If you want it to be genuine, iyou/i have to be genuine."

"To the best of my ability." Hannibal replied, pushing his chair back. "I have to prepare for work. I will see you tonight for dinner."