Author's Note: Yes, yes, I know I go out of order a bit, and take some creative liberties in omitting Tobias and his mouth-breathing friend. Maybe they'll appear in the next chapter, I dunno. I'm not sold on them.

Sorry it's been so long, my darlings. Twenty credit hours and job hunting take up some time. I want to kick my own ass into pounding out the remaining chapters before Hannibal comes back on Feb. 28 (YAY!). So fill up my review tank, please! I need some fuel and feedback! As always, thank you for your support!

The perfect alignment of planets presents itself: another organ stealer comes down the BAU's pipeline, and Hannibal is given reign to throw a dinner party. But first, preparation.

The killing is meditative. He hums the operetta diva's melody as he performs his libations. It's with the air of a monk chanting mantras that he glides through this victims' flesh and bone with a knife, gutting them for the sake of gluttony. As his blade parts their warm skin like scissors at the perfect angle through wrapping paper, his mind is freer than anytime else. He drifts in a safety net of practiced ease and control, muscle memory and inane decision making (Heart or lungs? Recovering from bronchitis, I see. Heart, then.). He is free to think on other things that make him happy, too.

Maryann's sweet smile over a toned shoulder. Putting a hand at the small of her back and aching to dig a thumb into the dimples there. When she raised her arm to let a butterfly loose, seeing the taut stripe of muscle under thin tanned skin that stretched from the junction of clavicle and scapula, down her arm.

He wanted to taste her. Carnally, but not in the way he took his meals (not yet). Hannibal craved her reaction: to hear how teeth inspired her cries, how fingernails hitched her breath, how a too-sharp knife made her tremble as his tongue followed the blade's path...

His mouth watered at the combination of fantasy and his hands' occupation. "Soon," he murmured. Storing the heart in a small cooler with great reverence, Hannibal took his leave. The medical examiner had once been rude to Hannibal: it was only fitting that an ethical butcher take strides to extract recompense.

The man in the bathtub with his kidney removed is almost like a balm to Will Graham's battered mind. It mildly disturbs him to think that all it takes is stepped-down violence to soothe him.

But underneath it all, there is the stench of inferiority that wars with the stench of death. And although he grasps at the tail of his calm, it's gone.

"It's the Ripper," Brian Zeller declared, crouching to take photos from a more adoring angle.

The team surmise that the cut in the victim's chest is to enable one's - presumably the murderer's - hand to palpitate the heart manually in an attempt to keep it beating. The kidney removal was not designed to kill, and that sets off klaxons in Will's skull.

He sees it, he feel it in his bones: copycat, fraud, fake. It doesn't even feel intentional! Sure enough, the examiners find the kidney had been shoddily removed, then sewn back in. But cases cannot hinge on the urgings of his gut, or even the insight of his deplorably creative mind. Evidence must back up his inferences.

Jack Crawford is brooding over it. He regrets Miriam Lass' disappearance, blames the Chesapeake Ripper. Will can sense the coiled tension in the man. In the brief flickers when Will lets his eyes rest on someone's face, he sees deep shadows under Jack's eyes. Will is pushed harder and harder by his taskmaster.

Will is given the opportunity to candle the egg by the discovery of a medical examiner's body on a bus, artfully arranged with a missing heart. Four more victims appear soon, in the course of days, each with a different missing organ.

Will is reminded of a question in a kindergartener's coloring book.

Choose which of these does not belong...

They track down the paramedic with doctoral aspirations, and the man is buried up to his wrists in a victim's thoracic cavity. As the FBI train guns on him, he strikes Jack Crawford as a caught cat, backed into a pantry with no escape.

At war in the killer's eyes is the duality of his neurosis: the need to prove himself capable of being a medical professional, and the need to murder.

Crawford assesses the situation before roaring over his shoulder, "Doctor Lecter!"

In seconds, the tall, accented man is by his side. With terse direction, he slides into the ambulance, pulls on a latex glove, and slides his fingers in alongside the murderer's.

Hannibal feels a flicker of kinship with the murderous paramedic as their warm hands tangle in the victim's side. Their fingers vie for a clamping hold on a vein. If the paramedic wasn't tense and in the ruined cloud of his impending arrest, they might have shared a knowing look with each other. They might have recognized the darkness in one another: lifted scalpels together in a delightful artform so very precious to those who perpetrated it.

But he must mute it, hide it. There are others watching, especially Will.

As it was, Hannibal toiled in his own ruined cloud: the miasma of his persona of a good ex-M.D. and a man of honor. "Got it," he says finally, meaning the vein keeping the murderer from withdrawing his inept hand.

Crawford orders the murderer out of the ambulance, and Hannibal works quickly to stitch and rearranged and blot and sterilize. He's more shaken than he wishes to show, but allows it to evidence itself on his face to encourage the perception of normalcy. He's a once-doctor of medicine that was just put on the spot: he is entitled to mild emotion! But what beholders cannot fathom is the true reason behind his wide eyes.

For the first time, he had a taste of companionship through a would-be kill. It was in a clumsy, stupid, ill-adept paramedic with aspirations of doctoral status, but it was there.

Hannibal wondered, as he coaxed slick fingers and thread into piecing back together a life, if he might apply this to his overall scheme with Maryann.

He knew he wanted to corrupt her: but he had to find weakness within her and exploit it first. She'd shown him the depth of her emotional scars a few days previous while sitting on that garden bench, but he needed more canvas for the masterpiece he planned to enact.

The first and most logical step was one his inner beast seethed with pleasure in realizing: to get close enough to corrupt her, he first needed to gain access to her heart. Well, her metaphorical one.

And as for her physical one... well, that would come in time.

As Hannibal withdrew to let real, competent paramedics take over the care of the victim, he concluded he needed to make Maryann fall in love with him.

Every part of that idea agreed with every part of him: man to beast, mind to body, brain to soul.

Now, he thought, stripping the red smeared gloves from his hands. To woo the gardener.

Will Graham's sweaty fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, pulsing in a white-knuckled grip. It was just after noon on a Thursday, and he was en route to his therapy appointment with Hannibal. Driving always made him a little nervous. With the way his brain tended to short out with more frequency than a cheap Dell, all he needed was to wreck a car.

Jack Crawford wouldn't much care for that. Honestly, it would serve him right for pushing Will into such straights lately, working him and his fragile mind so hard. But still, Will wasn't suicidal.

Will swallowed compulsively. Nope, not even his baked brain could convince him to kill himself. He clung to that.

He pulled into Hannibal's driveway and was taken thoroughly aback by the large expanse of newly turned earth. A older blue truck was poised on the plot's edge, and black mesh flats of varied green plants were in the bed and perched on the tailgate. A woman was bent over a slightly raised bed, planting with mechanical motions.

Her long, tanned legs nearly made Will nudge a wheel off the gravel drive. He corrected the car, parked it. Hannibal hired a gardener? Curiosity rose in him, a blessed distraction from the crazed tangle in his head, but he dared not approach the upturned dirt. His personality was too... out there, for most people. Best to stay away. He dug around in his dog-hair-seasoned car for a moment, looking for the pamphlet Jack had asked him to return to Hannibal.

Just as he lay hands on the paper and extricated himself from the vehicle, a throat cleared behind him, making him flinch.

"Oh, sorry!" said the woman as he jerked around to face her. "I didn't mean to scare you." She had an open, heart-shaped face framed by escaping strands of blonde from her ponytail, practical and dirt-smudged clothes, and long-fingered hands. The creases of her knees also had dirt.

She smelled like tree roots and mint, and it was an absolute comfort. The degree of comfort was so profound and so psychologically deep, in fact, that Will had to fish for a reply. "It's alright," he managed finally, awkward as ever.

"I'm Maryann Shule," she said, offering a hand. With a wince and a pointed glance at her dirty palm, she retracted it and extended an elbow self-deprecatingly. She genuinely seemed to regret the opportunity to shake palm to palm.

With equal awkwardness, but a little more humor, Will touched his elbow to hers. He'd had a germaphobic roommate in college: he knew the gesture. "Will Graham," he replied. "Special Agent. I work with Hannibal in the FBI."

"Oh, wow!" she exclaimed. "Doctor Lecter's told me a little about the FBI work he consults on. It sounds exciting."

Will shrugged, pleased but trying to hide it. "Exciting is one word for it."

She seemed to sense he didn't wish to dwell on the subject. "So," she said conspiratorially. "I saw you gawking on the way in."

Will fought down his stiffen.

"The garden, I mean. Would you like a tour?"

He looked past Maryann to the plot. He really did want the excuse to poke around. He was an outdoors enthusiast: fly-fishing, hiking, running around the heath with his dogs. Gardening required too much presence of mind, though, so after the tragic tomato incident he avoided it. But that didn't stop him from admiring the gardens of others. "I hate to break your stride..." he muttered.

But he'd made the mistake of showing an inkling of interest, and the woman pounced on it. "Nonsense!" she snorted, coming abreast and looping an arm through his. "I insist!"

Will was dragged all too willingly along, and only released when he'd firmly crossed the threshold of grass and soil. "Hannibal hired you?" he surmised.

"Yep. Bee All Gardening is my company. I install and maintain four-season gardens and landscaping for clients with discerning taste."

Will chuckled. "Hannibal has that, in spades."

Maryann grinned. "Tell me about it."

He wasn't making eye contact again, but somehow, it didn't seem to deter Maryann. He worked with people who were basically paid to put up with him for his genius insight, but aside from Alana Bloom and Hannibal, they were not his friends. He knew why, and didn't blame them. He wouldn't be friends with someone as weird as him, either. Between the garish cognition of the minds of killers and the somewhat lacking personal skills, Will wasn't the easiest person to get along with.

But as he followed with pocketed hands, Will was surprised to find his trepidations bleeding away. Maryann was effortlessly compensating for his inherent strangeness, and what's more, seemed not to even care. Gracious was the word that came to Will's mind. Kind.

Maryann explained the four quadrant system, showed him the baby salad greens and tiny radishes and turnips. But too soon, Will glanced at his phone and saw he was nearly late for his appointment.

"Um, I'm really sorry, Maryann. I have to go."

"Ah, sorry, I get a little carried away," apologized the gardener sheepishly.

"No, no, I enjoyed the tour," replied Will, daring to glance at her face in vehemence. "I can't wait to come back and see what's changed."

"That's half the fun, isn't it?" Maryann said wistfully, sweeping some dirt over an exposed lettuce plant's rootball. "I get so literally nose-to-the-ground, I often can't see the grand differences that time makes. I see minute things, tiny changes, but I don't often note the privilege of a before/after. It's a little like being robbed."

Will found he could do nothing but nod. There was no way she could know the wisdom of that statement.

"When you go in, would you please tell Dr. Lecter the first round of arugula is ready for light picking?" Maryann vaulted several beds in a gazelle-like jump that made Will's breath still. He watched her pick a handful of dark green obovate leaves and some tiny turnips and radishes, then perform the same leap to place them in his palm: leaves in one, roots in the other. "A few for you, a few for him. I'd wash the roots, though. "

Will scrutinized the leaves, the heady mint-pepper-basil smell rising to his nose. "Thank you."

As he walked towards the stately house, he nibbled on a leaf. The taste was good, permeating all his olfactory relations all the way to his sinuses, but the butter-smooth texture of the baby leaf faded quickly. There was very slight grit, but not enough to be bothered by, in his opinion. He knocked, and Hannibal opened the door in seconds.

"Will," greeted the accented man pleasantly. He seemed to have stood slightly further from the door than usual, beyond the reach of errant knuckles. "Come in, come in."

"Met Maryann," Will said, mouth full of potent greens. "She said these are for you, and there's more where they came from."

Hannibal pinched a few of the leaves from Will's palm. "Did she?" he asked evenly. Will was no expert in the mannerisms of normal people, but he thought he detected a hint of jealousy in the psychiatrist's tone.

Will perched on a barstool while Hannibal collandered the leaves in the sink, then dumped them in a salad spinner. He was used to a somewhat informal air to their therapy sessions: it made him more comfortable (which, granted, was a relative term). "Here's the pamphlet Jack asked me to return," Will said, pulling it out of his inner pocket and sliding it across the cold marble countertop.

Hannibal glanced over, seemingly to check the paper for creases. "Look it over, if you like. It's for Maryann's company."

Will hadn't looked at the thing long enough to read it, and just now noticed the title. As Hannibal fussed with something on a plate, Will thumbed through the pamphlet. "This is actually pretty ingenious," he commented. "How'd you find Maryann?"

The psychiatrist smiled faintly in remembrance, and Will noticed a certain warmth colored his words. "She found me. Knocked on my door one day, and simply sold me," Hannibal replied, putting a plate down between them and taking the second barstool. The plate had each leaf arranged singularly, with a individual pomegranate seed in the cup, a dot each of some thin oil and balsamic vinegar, and a translucent slice of pink-edged radish and pure white turnip. The whole thing reminded Will of something one overpaid for in a ridiculous restaurant: artful and contrived.

Hannibal led the charge, pinching up a leaf in his fingertips. "After some back and forth regarding the design, she hooked me."

It still tasted good, though. Will liked the unpretentious sweetness of the turnip and the slight, repentant bite of radish. The balsamic rounded the mouthful, and the pomegranate was a sweet finish. "Pretty effective selling skills," he mused.

"She's... persuasive," allowed Hannibal. There was something in the depths of his eyes, hiding in the corners, but Will chose not to dwell on it.

When the plate was empty, they adjourned to the study as usual. The conversation guided them to their familiar chairs, but new topics.

"How long have you been seeing a psychiatrist?" Will asked, surprised.

Hannibal smiled. "As long as I've been a psychiatrist."

The topic of their therapy sessions is more or less whatever is bothering Will most at the moment, so inevitably work comes up. They talk more about the Chesapeake Ripper case, and Hannibal brings up some interesting perspective. He contends that the Ripper might be two, or even more people. He also debates with Will the possibility of the Ripper selling the organs he harvests from his victims. By the time Will is ready to leave, he feels a little more at ease than before. Talking with a friend like Hannibal helps calm his mind.

The blue truck is gone by the time he emerges from the house, but there is a pamphlet, business card, and plastic baggy filled with lightly sweated greens and tapered red, pink, purple, and white roots on his dashboard. Will smiles despite himself. Perhaps he's not such a pariah, after all.

Jack Crawford can't decide if he has to force himself to go see the severed arm of Miriam Lass, or force himself not to. He feels so incredibly drawn to the fateful coroner's cabinet gleaming in the stark halogens, but simultaneously repulsed to the point of nausea. He hesitates with his hand on the cabinet pull, wondering if it's worth yanking the scab off a barely crusted wound.

The arm is missing.

For a moment, Jack is relieved. He was so geared up to see the limb that manifests so much of his regret, it is the only logical reaction. Then a bolt of panic hits him, and he whirls to yank open another cabinet.

The steel table of this one is heavier, rolls smoother. Will is on it, pale as a drowned corpse, his chest split open and crudely sewn back in the Y-shape of an autopsy - missing an arm.

Jack reels back, heart pounding and breath heaving, and watches with horror as the corpse of Will rises from the cold metal, disparaging and blame-filled eyes fixed hollowly on Jack.

Jack reels again, and comes back to himself with a gasp. His own internal struggle becomes piercingly, painfully clear in a fell swoop of his guilt-ridden heart overriding his mind. Jack drove Miriam after the Ripper all those years ago, and subsequently into an early grave. He knows this. He is haunted by it.

But is he doing the same to Will, now? Is he destined to mechanize fate's repetition and doomed to watch it, too?

He decides that Will is the key, the instrumental piece in catching this thrice-kill repeater, before he disappears again. Alana Bloom's warnings ring in Jack's head, then fade as he galvanizes his stubbornness.

Will wasn't there last time the Ripper surfaced. If he had been, the Ripper might not have gotten away. Jack can feel the noose tightening, the pressure of the final chess pieces' looming moves. Jack has no choice. They all have a job to do, a part to play.

Inviting Alana Bloom over for dinner is an idle notion to Hannibal. He always tends to dwell in the lowest tier of Maslow's hierarchy after so much killing. She is flirtatious but ladylike, and compliments his new salad. She is politely interested as Hannibal shows her the garden with a flashlight. He recognizes that doing so with guests is becoming a habit. He doesn't mind.

Seeing Maryann's finger indentions and shoeprints in the ground both dampens and enflames his ardor in frustrating equality. He is no longer piqued for Bloom: her hair is not light enough, her skin is too paled by halogens. She smells of paper and shampoo, not sun and peat and flowers.

In the dark of his study once Bloom is gone, Hannibal nurses a wineglass and contemplates the first move to make on Maryann. According to surreptitiously plucked information from Will, she is still calling him Doctor Lecter, even in the presence of others.

Wending his way into the gardener's heart will be challenging, if not outright difficult. She's been burned by lovers before - literally. Hannibal guesses he will need to take an unconventional approach.

The wine glides smoothly over his lips, down his throat, feeding the beast.