Author's Note: We all remember that Season 2 started off with a time-jump of twelve weeks forward, to that really nasty fight between Hannibal and Crawford. I am avoiding including that jump in the interest of more seamless storytelling. Not that I minded it in the show, rest assured!
Also, I just realized this story is #3 in the fandom in regards to review count! :D :D :D Much thankies to all the fans!
Of the top three, I'm currently the only one updating. Whadaya say, readers: take me to the top?
Hannibal was reading his morning paper with a fresh French press steaming at hand when Maryann sleepily floated downstairs the next morning, rubbing her eyes. She was wearing the guest robe of fine kimono silk, but clearly had undressed to her nightclothes at some point in the night. With a squeaking squeal like a baby pterodactyl she pressed one hip to the wall to balance her long, ambitious stretch. Hannibal licked his lips as her joints and ligaments popped and creaked, from spine to fingertips. "Good morning, Maryann." He kept most of the huskiness from his voice.
She smiled sleepily at him, dropping her upstretched arms. "Good morning!" she replied.
"How did you sleep?" he asked, pouring her a cup of coffee while she settled in the opposite barstool.
"Like the dead," she declared, inhaling the steam of the cup deeply. "Like a baby. Like a dead baby."
Hannibal's lips twitched. "When I came in last night, you had not stirred from your naptime position. The hospital must have drained you."
Her humph of agreement was tempered with a moan of appreciation at the first sip of hot brew. "Funny how that happens, isn't it? You go somewhere for healing and it winds up..." She sipped again and shrugged. "I guess healing and energizing aren't mutually inclusive."
Just as passion and pain are not mutually exclusive, the doctor thought pensively, eyes flickering to the edge of the bandage peeking beneath the collar of the folded down his paper and asked, "What would you like to eat for breakfast?"
Her face betrayed a flicker of guilt. "You waited?"
Hannibal crossed the kitchen and took a colander off the pot rack. "Only because I require your expertise."
Minutes later they were traipsing the dew-drenched garden and marveling, though Hannibal was more intrigued by Maryann's excitement than the garden itself. "Don't be afraid to use this spinach, right down to the stems," Maryann declared, picking a leaf low and crunching the stem. "Instinct says that it's mature and tough because of it, but it stays sweet and soft in this weather."
Hannibal picked one himself and tried it, finding her assertions accurate. He sincerely enjoyed being taught the vast wonders of a tiny, controlled world. Farming made men gods of a small plot, writers of inconsequential history.
"Some of these are big enough to be used like straws," Hannibal commented.
"I'm thinking of a Bloody Mary, how about you?" Maryann said conspiratorially.
Hannibal smirked. She had no idea.
They prepared the ingredients for omelets together, across the marble countertop. At his direction, she set about sous chefing the vegetables, her knife skills practiced and easy. "I like these knives," she commented, hefting the work blade admiringly. "What are they, Damascus steel?"
Hannibal's eyes flickered over the natural way she held the blade. "Japanese," he corrected. "I've yet to find a better source." He sidled around the counter to approach her from behind. Bending low enough to hook his chin over her shoulder, he murmured, "Do you see the tiny lateral layers in the blade?"
"I see them," she replied, so evenly Hannibal was proud. Maryann's swallow was audible as he ghosted his hand from her elbow to her fingers, but she kept her caution under wraps. It was understandable: the last time they'd held a knife together had left her with stitches (that would surely scar magnificently).
"The cutler folds the steel in the forge," Hannibal said, warming her ear with his breath and her back with his heat. "Thousands of times, in some cases. It gives the finished product integrity." He wrapped her hand over the handle, covering it with his own large one. "Do you know the differences between a cutler, a blacksmith, and a swordsmith?"
Her hair tickled his neck as she shook her head.
"Two make tools. Two make weapons. Only one makes both."
The two doctors and the lawman sit down at a table again: this time, with an agent of the Inspector General's office to recount the morbid tale leading up to Will's arrest in all its gloriously ineptly handled detail. Kade Purnell is a ruthless perpetuator of efficiency, and as such, she urges Alana Bloom to recant her statement about Crawford's mishandling of Will's delicate nature.
It's the smartest solution to the mess, really. Hannibal can see it from the perspective of the FBI's legal team: insisting on treating Will's near-preternatural cognition of murderer's minds as anything but an accessory to his alleged killing of Abigail was to bury the lead. It was a sucking void of a distraction, a smokescreen over what the FBI wanted to do: wash their hands of Will.
And Alana's statement on record was the only thing truly keeping that from happening quietly and quickly.
Hannibal was aware of Alana's multiple approaches of Jack. He knew she'd vehemently protested Will's every step down the dark road, beckoned and spurred in turn by Jack (and, more subtly, by Hannibal himself). Since it was too late for her to get what she wanted, Alana would tie herself to the wheel of the ship and Captain it right down to Davy Jones' locker. "The truth must go on record," she emphatically asserted, giving Crawford sharp eyes.
Hannibal watched the tiny shift in Jack's posture, wondering how a man so deflated could still hold up. The accented man understood Alana's anger, even if he didn't ascribe to it. She'd watched the man whose heart she'd become entangled with decline mentally and physically, declaring his journey worthwhile even as he dissolved with each step into the things he was chasing.
Perhaps Alana avoided placing any real blame on Hannibal because she believed him to be helping Will piece himself back together, same as she. What she did not see was that Hannibal was plucking the pieces of Will that floated away like feathers and crafting them back in place to his own designs: clinging the loose bits with pitch and tar and sticky blood.
The look of the six bodies pulled from the beaver dam reminded Hannibal of a terrarium plant without oxygen; anaerobic rot. It was queerly beautiful, in its own way, to see nature fighting to take its course despite preservative. The blotches of green and puce on the resin-coated skin were fields of tiny organisms' births, intent on breaking down the corpses come hell or, literally, high water.
What thrilled Hannibal even more, however, was where he stood: in Will Graham's shoes. The sheer power that surged through him at the realization was delicious, an orgasm of pride.
He maintained his humility, like a sultan walking amongst peasants for better to understand them.
Seeing the discarded, imperfect pieces of a much greater mosaic made him think of Will. Truthfully, quite a bit brought his thoughts around to the dark-haired empath, but the offcasts of this killer's art form made Hannibal reflect on his own imperfect offcasts. All along their relationship, from the day he'd learned of Will's gifts, Hannibal had anticipated one of two outcomes: crafting the ideal companion for himself, or the ideal patsy. He'd favored the former, wanted it deeply, but the failure of his first attempt at forming his Eve had had a silver lining.
Yes, he would never have had room in his heart and mind for Maryann if Will had not first vacated.
Perhaps his initial try to breathe life into clay nostrils had detonated because his Eve had not been the correct gender. Perhaps it had not, for all the evidence to the contrary, been the correct person. Hannibal had thought to take the stirrings of a predominantly unstable, shadowed soul and mold them. Logic would insist it would be easier.
Maybe... the opposite case would prove more fruitful. Will had found and embraced his own darkness, and used it to the betterment of mankind. As canvasses went, Will's already had spatters and streaks and swipes across it: however skilled an artist Hannibal was, he could only do so much with someone else's work.
Maryann had only tasted darkness perpetrated upon her person: she had yet to experience it from within. That, more than anything else, gave Hannibal hope that he would find success in this attempt.
At the very least, he would have just as much fun as he had in the previous.
Alana acquiesced to Will's requests for hypnotism with some measure of reluctance. She treated him, in her heart of hearts, like he was made of glass. It was a selfish notion, though, and one she had to fight not to indulge. She knew that her feelings for Will made her want to protect him, thereby protecting herself. But Will was not an antique medieval sword, hung on a wall to gather dust and rust and dismissive glances. He was a bow, newly strung and carved from fine, flexible wood that would send arrows of truth and illumination into the dark world of a killer.
In essence, Alana had to nock an arrow, bring the fletch to her cheek, and trust in his resilience.
To Will, the ticking of the metronome made him sink deep into himself. He was momentarily relieved to be in a room with a doctor that he trusted, and fleetingly realized it had been a long while since he'd experienced that. Alana's voice wrapped around him like inky tendrils of night, like the darkness that fell behind his eyelids when he drifted to sleep.
Even though the hypnosis session was disappointing, after surfacing from the trance and leaving her presence, he no longer felt like the weight of his shackles was so heavy.
The dream quickly turned to a nightmare when he had a jarring, terrifying flashback. Hannibal stood over his paralyzed, weak, fevered self and jammed a feeding tube down his esophagus. Though Will's delirium had been complete, he could still feel the scrapes and tugs as Abigail's ear is shoved into his gullet.
Will broke from the waking nightmare choking on his hospital food, shaking, yearning for the death-like darkness of Alana's trance.
As the days after Will's incarceration, Hannibal and Maryann fell into a rhythm of life. Though the doctor considered himself an early riser, he'd often wake and find Maryann already awake, usually toeing on her shoes with a haste that implied she wanted to sneak out into the garden without his warnings about her stitches. "I have to earn my keep," she insisted, pecking him on the lips before scampering out the door.
Hannibal always felt uniquely short-chained after this, but the bounty she brought back inside took the edge off. He discovered that she could be persuaded to his table with the smell of breakfast.
He abided by her vegetarianism only because it suited him. He would address such a deficit at a later time.
They had not yet been intimate. Although they had spent several nights drinking expensive foreign wine and waxing on various topics, Maryann seemed content to take his cohabitation proposal at face value: streamlining of purposes. Were she not contractually engaged, she might have been driven to sleep with him to justify her presence in his home. Alas, that was not Hannibal's gardener. He hesitance dumped the ball into his lap.
At any given time, he could take her: a dab more passionate insistence in their kisses, and he knew he could break her will to resist. But no: he had decided when he gave her a separate room in his home that she would set the pace. She knew as much, yet still held back. It begged the question: what was Maryann waiting for?
"No, no, I'm serious Hannibal!" Maryann gasp-laughed as the killer pulled her feet into his lap. She quickly put her wineglass on the side table and pressed her palms into the sofa, trying to wriggle away with a laugh that dissolved into a hissed, "Ow ow ow!" as she pulled her stitches.
Hannibal wrestled her with no real trouble, shackling her ankles with his long fingers and pulling her laterally back towards him, rendering her flat on the sofa. "You are not going anywhere, anytime soon Maryann," he said with lip-twitching sternness. "So get comfortable.'
Maryann pouted but did as bade. "Nobody touches my feet, Hannibal," she whined. "They're too awful to see the light of day."
The doctor slid one fingertip under the cuff of her ankle sock, circling the delicate bone therein while he gave her a hungry look. "There is not a part of you that severe."
Maryann blushed mightily. "I heap abuse on those things, and am too tired to mess with them most of the time - !"
Hannibal interrupted her protest by dragging his hooked finger, carrying her sock with it. In the context, it felt more like he'd divested her of her negligee.
The gardener exhaled with the smallest of shakes. "Hannibal, my scar is pretty gnarly, I don't think you should have to - "
He graced her with a look that clearly spoke of his intent to do exactly what he wanted, and wrapped his lips around her middle toe.
Maryann's breath hitched hard, but not as hard as the sudden tilt of her pelvis. When he sucked lightly, she took a fistful of the leather and shut her eyes with a suck of her own.
When Hannibal leaned back up with a smug heat in his expression only once he'd rendered his gardener open mouthed. "How the hell?" she asked.
"You don't ask a magician how," Hannibal replied.
"But you do ask a doctor," Maryann retorted, expression sharpening in that eagerness to understand Hannibal did so appreciate.
Her wit never failed to amuse him, even when she was being stubborn. "Reflexology," he said simply. "An Asian medicine. The masters found that different areas of the foot correspond to different organs and systems in the body."
Maryann's nose wrinkled. "That sounds like malarkey, Hannibal."
"Oh?" he asked archly. "Did that feel like malarkey?"
The gardener rolled her eyes with recalcitrance, playing hard to get. "Next you'll be talking about chakras and energy." But she made a show of folding her fingers over her belly as though getting settled. "You've got me, mister," she said coyly. "Whatcha gonna do with me?"
Hannibal's maroon eyes flickered with shadow, the obscene or grotesque or both things he could do running through his mind. he settled for driving his point home. "If you think of nerves as pathways for and sources of energy, even the energy of superstition and lore, one can find that much of science and spirituality coincide." He hooked a finger under the remaining sock, a farce of asking permission coloring his tone. "Let me touch you, Maryann."
The surrender was palpable and mildly arousing to Hannibal. All the tension went out of Maryann's legs, and the cannibal knew he had won. Sex and sensuality stood victor over scars, in the right setting: a useful fact about the gardener.
"We both know it's only because you dislike rough feet in bed," she said with a lazy grin, sliding one arch against his suited thigh.
Hannibal permitted the assumption, and the blatant flirt. She was hiding her fleeting discomfort in flippancy, but he would soon rid her of that need. "In Biblical times and their enduring cultures, washing the feet of ones' guests was a job for slaves," he replied, capturing the errant foot. "It was a sign of a good host. Did not Jesus wash the feet of his disciples, to demonstrate emulable humility?"
Maryann arranged an arm behind her head, disagreement written between her brows. "Well sure, when Jesus did it, it was. It was Jesus." As though in experimentation, she flexed her foot in his hand, testing his gentle hold. "Washing, pedicures, massages... I've always viewed the acts as trapping."
He didn't let her flex out of his grasp, maroon eyes pinning hers with the indolence of a lion with a mouse underpaw. "How so?"
It was her turn to gift him the conciliating smile, having illustrated her point. "No matter how you look at it or what the act involves, it's still barring the capacity to flee."
Hannibal mulled this while he stroked a thumb over one roughed pad, under the smallest toe. He found the sentiment not untrue, and a secretive upturn of his lips showed as much. "But hardly is it a barrier to fighting," he said, slipping a hand down to hers and forming it into a claw.
She chuckled, low and throaty, but threaded her fingers with his and brought them to her lips. "As if," she whispered to his knuckles.
Hannibal took the moment to run a thumbnail up the instep of her foot, causing her to spasm and yelp. "Hey!" she chided. "You wanna send me through the roof?"
"Not in this particular way," he conceded, a predatory glint to his eye.
She smirked and shook her head at his forwardness, but settled once more and cocked her head in a dare. "You gonna hold 'em all night, or get to work?" she teased. She received another thumbnail's flick in response, as Hannibal enjoyed watching the zing of her nerves lighting all the way up her leg in a convulsion bordering comedic. But, realizing her status as trapped and at his mercy, she allowed a beseeching expression to come over her face.
His point given example, Hannibal's long fingers set upon her peds. "Close your eyes," he murmured, and was exceedingly gratified when she complied. "These scars have sensitivity that goes beyond the skin, Maryann," he says, gently tracing the outline of the shiny pink mark. "I'm going to test your sensitivity before I do anything else."
She nodded, folding her hands over her belly again to signify her comfort in staying put for the ride, however long it might take.
Hannibal removed his hands completely for five long seconds before beginning. He touched a fingertip to the point of the scar that started over her largest toe's first joint. The skin was thin there, and the bone clearly outlined through a few millimeters of dermis. Hannibal imagined all it would take to bare the white bone would be a sharp fingernail. He ran a very slow path down to the ball of her foot, where the skin started to thicken into her sole, and tested the callous with a firmer rub. It would need some work.
He reversed direction back to the top of her foot, regaining the edge of the scar. The way the skin went from worn soft to utterly infantile with the change in tissue enamored him. A particular fold of the pink skin over a vein engrossed his attention. The calf muscle on his leg twitched. "How do you feel?" he asked quietly.
The calf forcibly relaxed as she fought her demons and won. "Fine," she whispered in reply. "Just dandy."
Hannibal contrasted the scarred foot with the unmarred one, and marveled at the translucent nature of the perfect veins, spidering out from a graceful ankle. Giving the scar and its stirrings a momentary rest, he traced each of the powder blue lines to termination, ever-so-slightly pressing down on one to feel it leap under his fingertip.
Inquisitively, he suddenly raked the pads of all four fingers from ankle to toes, thrilling to the gasp it elicited. "Ticklish?" he teased.
"No," she declared with an octave's rise that indicated otherwise.
Hannibal was pleased to find that her eyes were still closed, albeit with more wariness now. With a delicacy belying the sensuous threat, he repeated the rake with less speed. "That is a subject to be explored at another time," he purred, though judging by the shiver he doubted it sounded particularly reassuring.
Having noted the pattern of the veins on the perfect foot, he took to finding their counterparts in the scarred one. Soft probes located, and when the faintly throbbing trail was lost a rubbed circle found it again.
He watched the swell and ebb of the tide of discomfort in Maryann. He watched her beat down the Black Sheep repeatedly, using the claws he'd reminded her of. Trapped though she may have been by one psychopath, it was a suitable anchor for keeping her in the ring to face another.
He slipped all four fingers between her toes, the hitch of her breath denoting the sensitivity. Her lids fluttered as she very nearly opened her eyes, fingers closing to loose fists on her stomach as she tried to discern if the touch was unpleasant, or soon to turn so. When she found the pressure between her phalanges unyielding, and the initial tickle fading, she calmed once more.
The drag as he extracted the digits was met with a soft moan. Hannibal smiled yet again, unseen, but glorying in the minor victory.
Hannibal gathered the slender ankles in one hand to arrange a towel over his lap, and soon the slow, quiet rasp of a pumice rock brought to bear on tortured soles filled the air. He grew so intently focused that he didn't notice her stoic tears until she sniffled.
A flicker of a smile reassured him, and after producing a pocket hanky, he went back to work. Passion and pain, my dear.