Elizabeth's eyes fluttered opened and she felt cold air on her naked back causing her to turn around in the bed. The sheet being held tightly against her chest when she sat up. She glanced around and saw her clothes nicely folded near the fireplace. She stood up and put on her clothes, vaguely hearing her phone ring somewhere.
Elizabeth made the bed, not liking it messy and unmade. She searched for her phone and found it in her coat pocket, answering it immediately.
"Yes?"
"It's Gideon. He's killed again. Go on Tattle Crime." Jack told her.
"I'll come to the office and go to Katz and the kids."
"Kids? Clever." Jack mused before he hung up.
Elizabeth out her phone back into her back pocket before walking out of the room, wondering where Hannibal was. She glanced at the clock and noticed that it was seven o'clock. She followed the delicious smell of breakfast that led to the kitchen which held Hannibal cooking a "feast". She saw him making eggs, toast, pancakes, bacon, sausage, coffee, and vegetables in various pans all over the kitchen counters.
She smirked as she leaned against the wall, musing in question, "So who else is going to be joining us on this beautiful morning, Dr. Lecter?"
Hannibal looked up then smiled as he wiped his hands on the towel nearby. "I didn't know what you liked."
Elizabeth chuckled and walked towards him. "How long have you been up? It must've taken a long time to create all of this."
He shook his head. "Not that long actually. I woke up an hour ago."
He suddenly kissed her lips passionately and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to his body. He gripped her hair into his hand and his other hand tailed under her shirt. His fingers touched her bare skin and then turned her around, her back to his chest. Elizabeth felt his fingers dip into her pants and then her panties. She shook her head and murmured, "No…have to go to…t-to the office. Murder."
"Hannibal," she moaned softly when his fingers started to rub her clit slowly.
"I like it when you say my name for some reason," he murmured against her throat. "You confuse me."
"Well, you consume me," Elizabeth told him as his fingers moved inside of her.
"I know," Hannibal replied slowly then moved away from her. "Which us why you tend to push me away."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Rule number one of our relationship has to be that we can't psychoanalyze each other especially you."
"Why is that?" He asked as he washes his hands in the sink.
"Because I don't want to be treated as one of your patients, Hannibal. I'd prefer it if we actually talked like a couple. I want this relationship to be different than my last unsuccessful ones. I like talking to you."
"I would hope so because if you did not then it would be quite a confusing relationship." He chuckled. "I would never treat you like that."
"No, you're just too polite to say anything," Elizabeth joked.
He shook his head firmly and cupped the side of her face gently. "I wish you would believe me when I tell you that you can trust my words-trust me."
She sighed heavily, "Trust is earned. I can't just magically hand it over."
She rubbed her eyes and told him, "Listen, I have to go. Jack wants me over at the office. Gideon's killed again. I need to go."
"You haven't eaten breakfast yet." He reminded her. "I've made all of this for you."
Elizabeth immediately felt guilty. "If I stay, then Jack will have my head because I'm late."
Hannibal walked closer to her and his fingers touched her hand. "I want to eat breakfast with you, Elizabeth. Guess you could say that I want to know the feeling of the normalcy it brings."
After a moment, she nodded. "Alright."
"Here. Take these. It's Advil," Hannibal told her, holding out his hand with two white pills in the palm of his hand. "I know how much your head's been hurting."
She gave him a grateful smile and took the pills from him, swallowing them down with a gulp of water.
"So glad that you could join us, Elizabeth," Jack greeted sarcastically.
"Sorry," she mumbled. "What happened?"
She looked closely at the three men spread out on metal tables across the room. The most recent one caught her eye since his tongue was somehow pulled from out of his mouth and lying on his chest, still connected to his throat. The scene looked too familiar.
"Dr. Carson Nahn. He's the psychiatric attending at Western General. He interviewed Dr. Gideon for the same psychopathy survey I participated in two years go." Alana explained to them.
"Total frenectomy, webbing under the tongue; even the connective tissue all the way into the throat is cut free and pulled through for the, uh, desired effect," Brian informed.
Jack sighed. "Still no word from Dr. Chilton?"
"He hasn't answered his phone since yesterday, didn't show up for work today," Alana replied, glancing at her and Will.
Elizabeth's phone ringed and she gave an apologetic smile to Jack as they others continued their conversation while she answered, "Hello?"
"Hi, my name is Jane Goode. Is this Elizabeth Graham?"
"Yes, this is she. What is going on?"
"Um, I was wondering if you knew where Meredith Hopkins is. She isn't answering her phone and hasn't come into work. I'm her boss and a concerned friend."
A chill went up her spine. "Has she been missing since yesterday?"
"I believe so. How did you know that?"
"Listen, I'm going to have to call you back. Just tell them that I am sick." Elizabeth told her. "Oh, wait."
"Yes?"
"How did you get this number?"
"Why you're her emergency contact, Ms. Graham? We require all of our employees to have someone to call."
"Require? What exactly does Meredith do?" She asked suspiciously.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Graham. I'm not at liberty to say. Have a nice day." Jane quickly snapped and hung up.
Elizabeth stared stunned at the door and turned around as Jack asked, "Is everything alright?"
"No, it's not."
"What happened?" Will asked.
"Gideon took Meredith. She's been missing since yesterday."
"Why would Gideon take Meredith?" Will thought aloud.
Elizabeth sighed and said softly, "Because Dr. Chilton is practically in love with her."
"And how do you know this?" Jack interrogated her.
"They used to date each other a while back. She broke it off for some reason. He's always been in love with her, acted like puppy dog following her back then. Meredith Hopkins is Frederick Chilton's love of his life and all the crap. Gideon found out about her, took her because she represents his weakness…"
"Meredith is also Elizabeth's best friend," Will added. "Chilton has been very interested in you, remember? And something tells me you've been pressing his buttons lately."
Elizabeth glared at her brother, snapping coldly, "Look, if she dies it will only kill Dr. Chilton that the only woman he has ever loved died because of him, but Gideon knows how much she means to me. It will kill me too if she's dead."
"Two birds, one stone," Jack realized as he nodded.
"Exactly. So, Will, why don't save this bullshit lecture for later on after we find them. Hopefully still alive," Elizabeth barked lowly at him. "Do we know where they are?"
"The Ripper is telling us where he is." Jack explained to her. "Remember where we last saw a severed arm?"
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "I'm coming with you."
"No-" Jack started to protest.
"I need to know if she's okay. It's my fault that she's even in this mess."
"No, Lizzie, this is on Dr. Chilton," Jack reminded her. "He scrambled Gideon's mind and now Gideon is looking for revenge."
"Then why the hell is the ripper in on this then? Why go after Meredith? She's an innocent."
Will shook his head. "Perhaps she crossed his path-I don't know honestly. Or it could be the fact that they both know how much she means to you?"
"Has he contacted with you?" Jack asked.
Elizabeth sighed. "Yes."
They all turned to her and Alana was the first to ask, "When?"
"How?" Will asked next.
"And why didn't you tell us?"
She licked her lips and gulped nervously. "He broke into my house again, the same night that he broke into the first time. It was a poem he placed under my pillow while I was sleeping…I'm sure that it was not there before I went to sleep. I told Frederick about it when we went to go see him."
"You're close with him." Jack said.
She nodded. "Close, but not close enough to where I share everything with him. He says that that the ripper did it to show me how easy it is to kill me."
"He must know about you and Hannibal." Alana added on.
Elizabeth shook her head. "No, this has nothing to do that. I think that he's doing it for his own amusement now. He likes to see me get frightened which is why I've been staying at Hannibal's and then Meredith came into town and was staying at my house."
"Let's move out then. Will you ride with me and Lizzie-"
"I'll drive myself," Elizabeth immediately interrupted and turned around, striding towards the doors.
It it felt long on the road as she drove up there alone.
So many scenarios ran through her mind while she was driving that eventually her head started to hurt. As she drove on the quite road, she reached into her bag to grab the pill bottle that Hannibal gave her to relieve the pain of her headache which seemed to increase now. She opened it up with the fling of her thumb before popping some on them in mouth.
A few minutes after swallowing them did her head start tot hurt again. Elizabeth's hands flexed and unflexed around the wheel, suddenly feeling that they were numb. She kept on clenching them into fists and then spreading them as she tried to man the wheel with her forearms.
Her eyes went shut as she gripped her head, pulling off into the side of the road quickly. She stumbled out of her car and towards the woods area, hearing voices inside of her head. She fell to her knees, still gripping her head as it pounded furiously.
A branch that cracked behind her caught her attention and without even thinking, she turned around, seeing Roger there looking deader with his body torn, and split open like before. She saw him stagger closer to her, saying softly, "Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, you're going crazy."
She cocked her gun and pointed it at him. "Stay the hell away from me. You're dead."
"Not in your head I'm not. I'm missing apparently," he taunted with a smirk. "I'm supposed to be in the prison right, but you switched me out with someone else, remember?"
Elizabeth firmly pointed her gun at him. "I killed you; you were going to kill Will."
He nodded. "I'm your dirty little secret, aren't I? No one knows that you killed me. They'll think that I somehow escaped. I bet it's just eating you up right now that you're just like me."
"Fuck you! I'm nothing like you! You're a monster!" She yelled at him, tears burning her eyes.
"And you're a murderer." He sang happily. "Let's face it! Letting me rot in prison, wasn't enough for you. Come on, don't use Will as an excuse. Deep down you want to end my life…and now you feel so guilty that I'm inside of your head everyday now forever and ever."
"AH!" Elizabeth screamed and she fired her gun at him, shooting him over and over and over again uncontrollably.
"He's had a mild seizure," Hannibal told Gideon after he checked Will and took the gun out from his hands, inspecting it.
"That doesn't seem to bother you," Gideon observed curiously.
The mask of fake genuine he usually put on his face for others now slipped away when he looked up at Gideon, reminding him almost callously, "I said it was mild."
After a moment of letting his words sink into Gideon's mind, Hannibal sets the gun down onto the table as he sat down, inquiring, "Are you the man who claimed to be the Chesapeake Ripper?"
"Why do you say 'claimed'?"
Hannibal almost scoffed at Gideon's question, but he tamed that part of him.
For now.
"Because you're not. You know you're not, and you don't know much more about who you are beyond that."
"Are you the Ripper?"
"A terrible thing…to have your identity taken from you." Hannibal replied calmly.
"Well, I'm taking it back, one piece at a time," Gideon held defiantly. "One piece at a time. You should see the pieces I got out of my psychiatrist."
"Alana Bloom was one of your psychiatrists too. Is that right?"
"Yes, Dr. Bloom," he drawled out.
Hannibal looked over at Will who was still unconscious, stuck in between realities he couldn't lift himself out of. His thoughts drifted towards Elizabeth, the woman who was beginning to surprise him. She somehow figured him out in the moment that they met then most do in years like his colleagues for example. Hannibal wondered what would happen if she got too close to who he really was. Where would we be in the future? Who would she be for me? What dark secrets is she hiding from me?
"I can tell you where to find her," Hannibal finally came to conclusion. "If you give me back Meredith Hopkins."
"I have no idea who you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." Hannibal immediately snapped in a composed voice. "She wasn't with Dr. Chilton and Ms. Lounds when Jack Crawford found them. Where did you put her?"
Gideon let his lips curve. "I noticed that your house smells fantastic…like lavender and…and roses. Elizabeth has been here often. I hear she's fond of roses-well, used to be at least until you ruined that for her of course."
"Why are you interested in Elizabeth?"
"Why are you?" Gideon threw back at him. "I think it's clever what you're doing with her actually. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. She'll be broken if she falls for you and then finds out who you really are. It'll crush her…just like the Bayard Butcher did. You know I found something very interesting in his files."
"Why should this concern me?"
"Because you should really look at the prisoner. Appearances can be very deceiving in this case." Gideon answered.
"You give me Meredith Hopkins and I will give you Alana Bloom."
"Why do you want Meredith so badly anyways?" Gideon inquired intriguingly.
"Well, let's just say that history likes to repeat itself," Hannibal told him.
His phone rang once Will left, his plan slowly coming into order. He answered it to a hyperventilating Elizabeth, she seemed almost psychotic which made Hannibal smirk the entire drive up there. He easily found her car on the side of the road. He followed her footsteps into the snow and found her staring blankly at something.
Hannibal stood beside her as he too stared down at the man's dead corpse, his blood staining the snow around him. He bent down and pulled the body over which he now laid on his back. This man was a stranger and very much dead as there were multiple gun wounds in the chest, suggesting overkill.
"What happened?" Hannibal asked her softly as he sat down next to her.
"My headaches have been getting worse and those pills you gave me aren't really working I think. I-I thought that he was Roger and-and I lost it."
"Elizabeth, you have to tell me what happened to Roger to make you overkill a man."
"Oh, God, I did overkill on him," she whispered in horror. "I am a murderer, just like Roger said I was. I-I didn't mean to kill Roger-"
"You killed Roger?" Hannibal asked surprised at the new information. He wondered if this was her big dark secret. That would explain why she never wanted to talk to me about Roger. Because he was the man she killed carelessly.
She nodded furiously. "He killed all these girls that looked like me, Hannibal. He played with me, he was so horrible. Before he was arrested, he tried to rape me and was going to skin me alive. He kept on taunting me about everyone he ever killed. I hated him. I felt like justice wasn't served and that prison would be letting him go too easy. So I switched him out of prison with someone else. I brought him to the woods and stabbed him over and over again until my hands were covered in blood. I don't regret killing him and that's what scares me, Hannibal. I liked killing him…does that make me a cold blooded killer now?"
Hannibal smiled softly and cupped the side of her face when she looked at him with her innocent doe eyes. "No. They haven't caught you and never will. I'll help you move this man's body. I'll lie for you if I have to. You were at my house all night; we stayed up and watched movies while I read a couple of books, alright?"
Elizabeth exhaled in relief and nodded. "Thank you."
They stood up and Hannibal said, "I brought shovels. Let's dig."
After putting the body six feet in the ground, Hannibal walked over to Elizabeth who stared at the ground which held the body inside of it.
They leaned their foreheads against each other's and she kissed his lips. Hannibal threaded his hand through her curls, pulling her closer to him. He backed her into the tree and kissed her neck. Elizabeth removed their coats, never taking her eyes off of Hannibal as she also unbuttons his vest and unbuckles him.
Elizabeth didn't really know what possessed her to even think about having sex with Hannibal after they just buried a body together…but she felt this intimacy with him. She felt like she could trust him.
Hannibal saw what she was thinking in her eyes and led her to the ground with him on top. The coldness didn't matter to him or her as he ripped a hole in her leggings that she complimented with a beige skirt. Elizabeth gasped at the sudden beastly action that he did to her leggings, opening her wetness to the cold breeze.
Hannibal crashed his lips into hers as he unzipped his pants and took out his hard cock, entering her in one quick movement. She wrapped her hands around his biceps as he thrust into her, groaning lowly. She bit her lip and arched her back in pleasure, moaning loudly.
"Elizabeth," he sighed in satisfaction.
Her legs tightened around him as she gripped him suddenly. "I trust you, Hannibal. I trust you. I trust you, oh God!"
Hannibal wanted to rip her shirt open and nuzzle his nose into her breasts, but her black turtleneck stopped him since he had already ruined one article of clothing and didn't want to ruin another.
Elizabeth whimpered before climaxing hard, "Hannibal."
TBC…
THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS, FOLLOWS, AND FAVORITES! It astounds me how much you like the story, but makes me extremely happy. The relationship between Hannibal and Elizabeth will get toxic and twisted within time. It'll get pretty crazy.
I wanted Elizabeth to feel extremely guilty for killing Roger because he's one of her dark secrets. This only influences Hannibal to continue his treatment on her. I mean we all know what he does to Will and I wanted to make those situations familiar, but not at all the same. Hannibal now realizes that she's very good at masking her emotions like he said before; she hasn't gotten caught for killing him. What he does to Meredith is pretty fucked up, but that won't come up now sadly. Elizabeth will slowly start to feel like she's losing her mind and guess what? Hannibal will be there "somehow" to save the day to the point where now she's depending on him.
The sex scene in the woods symbolizes a change within their relationship that there is an intimate bond between them that no one can really break. Also that there is something dark that is growing inside of Elizabeth. I hoped you liked this chapter.
REVIEW. FOLLOW. FAVORITE. Until next time…