A/N: This an AU with a cross-over of movies Manhunter/SoTL and the book Hannibal. Inspired by the tv show Hannibal along with the song "Beautiful Crime" by Tamer (Go have a listen. It's a great song).

Pairing: Gil/Sara

Warnings: Mature T for murder, profanity, violence, mentions of cannibalism, and sexual activity.

Prologue:

1987

"Will, I'm leaving."

Will sat the bowl of water for the dogs down on the floor. "What time will you be back?"

Molly didn't answer him. He glanced at the door where no one stood. He was in his garage working (mostly drinking). Picking up the bottle of beer, he took another sip before going back to fixing the truck engine.

He heard the dogs barking outside. It was playful barking; nothing to worry about.

"Come on, Kevin!" he heard Molly call out. "Grab your bag."

Bag? What bag? He grabbed a rag off the worktable and wiped his greasy hands as he headed out to finally greet the day. The sun was beating down on him as he spotted Kevin's wide blue eyes under a mop of blond hair in the front passenger seat of Molly's car. Those who didn't know better always assumed they were father and son. They had no reason to doubt it.

"What's going on?" he asked while watching Molly put a suitcase into the trunk. Then she grabbed Kevin's bag. It was then that he realized what was actually happening. She was leaving. Fear shot through his heart. His anger followed. "The fuck do you think your doing?" he asked as he hurried over and grabbed a hold of the bag.

Molly yanked the bag out of his hand, causing him to close the distance between them. He pushed her up against the car as he grabbed her arm, but it wasn't to hurt her. He wanted to know why.

She yanked her arm away. "Damn it, Will."

"Mom?" Kevin was out of the car.

"Kevin—" he snapped at the kid.

"—Get back in the car," Molly's words followed. "It's okay."

Will glanced at Kevin who had fear in his eyes. Kevin was afraid of him? Guilt grabbed at his throat like a vice grip. Swallowing it away, he said, "Listen to your mother."

Kevin looked as if he didn't know what to do. Then he sat back down in the car but his eyes didn't look away. No matter how much Kevin loved him, he'd protect his mother first. Good kid.

Turning his attention back to his wife, he asked, "You're leaving me? Where are—Montana? You're going to stay with your father, aren't you?"

"I didn't want to do it this way." Molly's eyes were full of tears. Under the tears was hurt, and anger. So much of both directed right at him. "I've been waiting for you—"

"I'm right here."

She shook her head. "No, you're not. You've been too busy getting drunk every damn day and night—"

"I don't have a drinking—"

"It's nine in the morning," she told him. "You haven't slept—"

"Damn it, Molly, this isn't the time first time—"

"I know it's not," she shot back as she slammed the trunk shut. "That's the problem."

He searched her eyes as he shook his head. "What happened to 'time is love'?"

They'd met after he'd tangled with Hobbs and moved to Virginia. She'd been there for him after his breakdown. When he quit the FBI, they'd moved to Florida. It'd been good. Ocean air, warm nights, and sunny days. It'd been good until the days stopped. She said she'd been waiting for him.

Molly wanted to cry. There were tears but they didn't fall. Her sadness wasn't enough to get her to stay and he never wanted her to be there out of pity. "I guess our time ran out. I'm tired. Too tired to care about what happens to you. I have to do what's best for my son. It's not you."

He flinched back in pain. There it was: the truth hitting him in the face. He'd driven her away. All his anger was yanked away like the floor out from under his feet. He was falling. How hard was he going to hit bottom? Or, was this it? What was left inside was a sense of resolve. If she didn't want to be with him, so be it.

"I'll leave. You can keep the house—"

"It stopped being our house the day the police took me from it because you got too close. I can't live here." Molly touched his face and he closed his eyes against the warmth. She was so warm.

He felt cold. Numb. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.

She glanced at the house before telling him, "Promise me you won't drink yourself into an early grave."

He couldn't promise that. She saw it when he opened his eyes. Maybe an early grave was what he was chasing.

She kissed him goodbye as his heart shattered into a million sharp shreds of glass. There was a tapping noise in the back of his head. The back-and-forth tap…tap…tap of a metronome. Only it sounded as if it were coming through a fog. It grew closer as the car drove away. He felt a breath on the nape of his neck. It could have been the breeze coming in off the ocean, however, in his mind, it was the hot sneering breath of the Red Dragon.

His hand went to his back pocket. Clipped there on the denim was a knife. His thumb flicked the knife open as the fear shook a breath out of his panicked chest. The breath was hot, its presence lingering as he turned around and stared into the glass eyes that reflected the sunlight.

The body looked like a mythological creature: half man, half dragon with wings protruding out of its back. Crooked fanged teeth smiled and he saw red blood in its mouth. There was black blood covering the bare body and hands.

A distant voice entered his head. It sounded nearly metallic. Dr. Lecter asked him, "Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black."

Then the crooked fanged teeth thing smiled as it said, "You owe me awe."

"I owe you shit." His fist clenched the knife until the glowing eyes faded along with the winged body.

The tapping stopped. The dragon was gone, but the fear remained.

In order to catch the serial killer who believed he was becoming William Blake's Great Red Dragon, Will had to become the Red Dragon. It wasn't Dolarhyde who had followed him home. Dolarhyde was dead. The dragon that haunted his mind was the one of his own making. It was the one he had become.

Walking back into the garage, he grabbed the beer bottle and took a hefty swig. Then he returned to repairing his truck engine.

1990

It had been nearly three years since Molly left when Will drove the rental car to the Madison Valley Medical Center in Montana. He sat in the car, stared up at the windows, and took one last long drag off his cigarette before flicking it out the window. As he walked through the front doors, the voice of a reporter broke through the silence. He walked up to the reception desk and stared at the news report being broadcasted from the television mounted in the corner of the wall.

"Shit."

Hannibal Lecter had escaped custody in Tennessee and was currently on the run.

He tore his eyes away from the screen as he started down the hallway.

He rode up the elevator, watched the numbers light up until it got to 4. Stepping off, he spotted Kevin almost immediately. He was sitting in a chair outside room 402. His fingers nervously tapping the arms of the chair. The last time he saw him he was twelve years old and his hair was still a darker shade of blond. Now, he was sixteen and his blond hair turned to a lighter shade of brown. He was taller, built but still lean from playing baseball.

Upon seeing him, Kevin stood and hurried over to him. He caught his stepson in a hug as he wrapped his arms around him. Even though a teenager, Kevin was still so much a child who was hurting. His mother was dying. Cancer had already taken his father. Now it was threatening to take his mother.

"How is she?"

"They said it's aggressive. Whatever the fuck that means." Hearing Kevin curse almost shocked him. "She's refusing treatment."

Will closed his eyes at those words. Of course she would. They'd talked about it before; one night while on their boat. Molly had started talking to him about Kevin's father. The chemo and doctors and the hope before his death. She had told him if she ever had to make the choice, she wouldn't put anyone through that. If it was aggressive, if there was nothing they could do but make her comfortable…

Keeping his arm around his shoulder, he pulled Kevin with him as he walked towards the room. Molly was in the bed, sheet pulled up to her chin, and her eyes were closed. Despite the illness he thought she was just as lovely as the day he'd met her.

He'd taken his seat along the third base sideline, pulled down his hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, as he scooted down in the seat and took a sip of the beer in his hand. It was a nice, breezy spring day in Maryland. It was the opening day of the Baltimore Orioles who were playing the Texas Rangers. He wasn't an Orioles fan in the least, but he was a baseball fan.

The tickets had come from Price in Latent Prints at the FBI crime lab. Price wound up not being able to go, so asked him if he wanted them. He took the tickets. There were two. It was only him, so he decided to give the other one away. Before the game, he stood next to the ticket booth and smoked a cigarette.

That's when he saw the beautiful blond with a kid on her hip. The kid was a toddler, around two or three years old. He had his mother's eyes. And his mother's eyes were the bluest blue that he'd ever seen. She needed a ticket, her kid was free, but given the fact it was opening day she'd just missed the last one sold.

"I have an extra ticket."

The woman turned and when she saw him, smiled. He was taken back; completely blown away. Then he quickly glanced to her left hand that held the kid and saw no ring on her finger. At least she wasn't married. She could have a boyfriend. He gave her the ticket anyway. He hadn't been trying to pick up a date.

Not long after he'd sat down, so did she. Her son was on her lap. He wore a baseball cap but it wasn't of either of the teams that were playing. It wasn't a pro team at all. "What team's that?" he asked.

"Triple A team in Florida. His father played for them."

"Not anymore?"

She smiled at her son who leaned back and looked up at her. There was a sadness that settled over her, grief. "He died."

He was an idiot. "I'm sorry—"

"It's okay," she told him. "Are you from Maryland?"

"No," he said as he kept his eyes on her and paid very little attention to the baseball game. "California, actually. I moved here for work. You?"

"My mother lives here. I needed help with this little guy."

The way her eyes lit up as she kept talking to him made his stomach twist up, but in a good way. He was smitten. He realized that he had no idea what her name was. "I'm Will."

"Molly. This is Kevin."

They spent the rest of the game talking while only looking up when they heard the solid hit of the bat against the ball. Neither were interested in the game anymore. As she kept talking to him, all he could think was how precious the moment was. How it was too good to be true. This could never happen again.

"What was that?"

"What?" he asked, a little startled.

"A shadow came across your face. What were you thinking?"

He hesitated for a moment, wondering if she'd been appreciating the moment as much as him. "That…this is too good to relive."

She smiled. God, what a beautiful smile. He wanted to take her to dinner. Afterwards, she wanted to take him to bed.

He let her.

Sitting down on the edge of the hospital bed, Will took her thin frail hand in his and gave it a squeeze. A grief came over him as he fought down the tears that wanted to well up. Kevin was already a mess. He came there for two reasons: to say goodbye to the woman he loved and to make sure her son was okay.

"Where's your grandfather?"

Kevin was still wiping his face as he told him, "He just left to get something to eat. I told them I'd stay and wait for you. He wasn't too happy about it."

Molly's dad never did like him very much. "Are you hungry?"

Kevin gave a nod. "We've been here all night." It was two in the afternoon. "Afraid that if we leave…"

"Hey," he said, drawing Kevin's eyes to him. "Don't think like that. Your mom would want you to take care of yourself. The doctor said that they gave her something for the pain to put her to sleep, so she might not wake up for hours. I haven't eaten either. I came straight here when you called. C'mon, let's go get something and when we get back she should be awake."

Hospital food wasn't too bad, but he didn't want to eat hospital food. It reminded him of being in the hospital. They went to a decent burger place not too far from the hospital and he got a cheeseburger, fries, and a beer. Kevin got the same, minus the beer, but with that mouth of his it wouldn't be long.

Looking at the kid, he smiled. The kid was only sixteen but already a senior in high school. He shouldn't be surprised. When he was sixteen he already had a Bachelor's degree. He'd always pushed Kevin to do better in school, to take extra classes, summer school, and advance quickly. He saw his talent not only as an athlete but a scholar. The kid was smart and had a drive that would do him good in life.

"I saw you pitch."

"Little League?" Kevin asked in amusement.

"No…last year. The National Classic out in California. I was there."

Kevin chewed on a fry as he asked, "Why didn't you—"

"I wanted to. I did. Then I saw your mother, your grandfather, and I thought…I don't know. That I wasn't welcomed." He smiled as he recalled the memory. "You threw a no-hitter. It was a great game."

Kevin was blushing as he tried not to meet his eyes. "I've missed you, dad. I wish I could live with you."

A pain filled his chest along with a warmth. The warmth was from the love he felt. The pain was due to the fact that he was going to have to let the kid down. He had forgotten how to live. How to love and connect. It was as if he was stuck in that psychiatric ward except it had been his own mind that'd entrapped him. He'd become a drunk.

It was out of anger and fear because he couldn't stop feeling, and seeing, and dreaming of death. He'd killed Dolarhyde, but he hadn't killed the Red Dragon he'd become in order to catch him. It'd been three years of living in that hell. He'd been able to find his way out before, but for some reason he couldn't escape the labyrinth of his mind this time. Every tunnel led to either a dead end or more monsters.

"I would like that, I would, but…"

"You're still drinking." Kevin grabbed his drink as he shook his head in disappointment.

He was a failure. He failed Molly, Kevin, but mostly, he'd failed himself. Saved so many lives except his own. He didn't know how. Didn't even know where to start. And now, Lecter was out. He was in danger. First and foremost, he wanted to protect his son.

"You have a bright future ahead of you. Baseball scholarship offers to three universities?"

"Are you checking up on me?"

"Of course. I never stopped thinking about you or your mother. I never stopped loving you. You're my son. I wish things had been different. I hurt Molly too much, and I never wanted any of this…" But this was how it was now. He couldn't change that. "What are your options for school?"

"Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Florida State."

He gave a nod. "You're leaning towards Stanford."

Kevin finished the soda. "I was. I might go to Florida. I miss it there." Florida was Kevin's home. It was the closest he could get back to him, and the furthest he could get away from Montana.

"I'm not staying in Florida. Don't base your decision on me, okay? No matter what you choose, your mom will be proud. I know I am."

There were more tears in Kevin's eyes. He reached up and wiped them away as he looked out the window. "This sucks."

"Yeah; it does." He downed the beer, paid, and drove Kevin back to the hospital to say goodbye to his mother.

They stood outside the hospital room as a doctor went in and checked vitals. She never woke back up. They never got to say goodbye. It was early the next morning, as the sun was breaking over the horizon, when Molly took her last breath.

Catching up with Kevin in the parking garage, he grabbed his shoulder to stop him. "Kevin—"

He shook off his hand as he turned and shoved him hard in the chest. "Fuck you, Will." There were angry hot tears in his eyes as he said, "Coward! Where were you? When she needed you, where were you?!"

He went to speak but nothing came out. Kevin was just angry. He knew the pain of losing a parent. He let him yell. Blame him.

"Maybe if you'd been there she wouldn't have given up. She would have fought—"

He pulled Kevin into a hug and held on tight as the kid broke down. He felt the tears on his neck as he closed his eyes. Letting out a breath, all he could say was, "I'm so sorry."

He didn't cry until he was alone in the hotel room that night. When the quiet got too quiet and the dark too dark. Then he couldn't sleep for days. Weeks. The alcohol helped, but the screaming still filled his head. Molly's death weighed on his chest, making it hard to breathe. Kevin's anger lingered in his heart.

He tossed and turned on the single bed and shook violently as twisted memories flooded his dreams.

The ground under his feet felt like quicksand as he paced back-and-forth across the deserted road. The moon was high in the sky, blinking yellow lights flashed across the pavement, and in front of him the stalking eyes of a dog. They followed him as it paced along with his long strides. Both feeling scared, trapped, but desperate for a hand to feed it. To reach out and touch it; save it. His soul, like the dog's belly, was starved.

As he knelt down to reach out for the dog, a hand reached back. It was a woman's hand covered in blood. He grabbed the dog's fur the moment the woman's hand grabbed his shirt.

He was no longer on the dark road but on the front porch of the serial killer Garret Jacob Hobbs. Under him, gasping for a breath through the blood sputtering out of her throat was Hobbs' wife. He'd slit her throat and tossed her out of the door when he saw him coming up the steps.

The woman gasped, eyes wide with fear, then her body went slack. Life was gone from her eyes.

A primal scream pierced his ears. There was someone else in the house with Hobbs. The daughter. The door was locked from the inside and his shoulder throbbed as he threw his body into the door until it busted open. Swinging his gun around in front of him, he followed the screaming as he yelled out, "Garrett Jacob Hobbs! FBI!"

His face paled as he saw them in the kitchen. Hobbs had a hold of his daughter from behind and was covered in his wife's blood. The daughter was a match to the physical description of all of Hobb's victims. Blue eyes, long auburn hair parted in the middle. Young. The knife against the girl's neck moved.

Gunfire erupted in his ears as he fired. He kept firing as bullets slammed into the murderer's chest. Upon hearing the click-click-click of the empty chamber, he shivered breathlessly as he lowered the gun. Blood splattered coved the kitchen, his face and body. His hands grew cold as ice as the gun slipped from his loose fingers.

He heard the gun hit the wood floor with a loud clunk right before he hit the floor at the same time Hobbs' body fell. The taste of copper was on his tongue and blood coughed out of his mouth. Breathing became harder as he struggled to stay alive. His hands roamed over his own body and stopped on a warm wetness. As his hands rose up, he saw blood.

Confusion and fear set in as he stared across the floor at the other body riddled with bullets. Hobbs, blood soaked and dying in front of him, smiled as he said, "See—"

A laugh started to build in his throat, warm and full of clarity, as he repeated back, "See—"

"Us," Hobbs finished saying.

They were the same. Kill one, he thought, and we both die.

The cloudiness of the nightmare faded as his eyes opened only to stare into darkness. A burning filled his chest before he finally sucked in a deep breath. He was shivering. Cold and wet. Once he got his legs working, he pulled off his sweat-soaked t-shirt as he hurried down the hall.

Cabinets flew open then bounced off of other cabinets as he frantically searched for a bottle of anything. The sight of the pint of whiskey on the counter nearly made him collapse from relief. He didn't even bother to get a glass before he started gulping the liquor; he choked on it when he tried to swallow too much at once.

He slumped against the stove and stared at the chipped wallpaper as the world spun. A whimper from his dog filled his head before it contacted the floor. He was already too far gone to feel the pain that rippled through it. In the morning he'd feel like he had died, just like every morning. And like every morning he would be disappointed that he hadn't.

He waited a month. A month for a madman to walk into his apartment to finish the job he started. When Lecter never arrived, he got tired of waiting. It was time to move. Pack his shit up and go.

It was time to leave Florida for good and to say adios to Will Graham. Time to finally quit his job repairing boat motors, to put the hackling of Jack Crawford and the FBI behind him, and to leave the thoughts of past evils where they belonged. It was time to focus on a new beginning. If Hannibal Lecter was on the run, then so was he.

Before he left he shaved off the beard. He needed a change. The clean-shaven face was exactly what he needed to become a new man.

"Goodbye, Will," he whispered to his reflection.

He took his suitcase out from the back of the closet and threw his six pairs of clothes into it, emptied out his two drawers of socks, underwear, and sweats, and then piled in his toiletries. Two boxes were all that consisted of his personal belongings. One consisted of pictures of Kevin, Molly and himself and the other of personal papers and belongings.

The back of his truck was filled with the boxes and his one suitcase. Sitting in the passenger seat was his dog Winston. "Ready to go, ?"

Winston was greying all over. He'd almost hit the german shepherd while driving home late one night in Virginia. Sixteen years ago. Pulling over onto the side of the road, it took almost an hour to coax the pup into his arms. Winston was the first dog he ever had. All the other dogs he gave away to loving families, but not the old dog. Winston wouldn't be around much longer, and he didn't want anyone else to be there when he left the world.

He looked around the run-down apartment complex with beige paint, palm trees, and grey concrete. He had sold the house a year ago and moved into his place. There was no way in hell he'd miss it. The truck backed out of the parking space and then turned onto the main street. He knew exactly where he was going.

There were only two people he knew that would help him get a new identity: James Price in Latent Prints and Lloyd Bowman who worked Documents. The drive from Florida to Virginia was almost fourteen hours. Both Price and Bowman would be there. They would help him. They had to. He had no other choice other than to drink himself to death on the beach. And he was starting to hate sand.

1991

He was sitting in his newly bought '90 Mercedes, staring at the driver's license, as Winston stuck his head out the passenger window. He had money from selling the house, and money he'd saved up for years that he'd never dipped into. In his head he had envisioned buying a bigger boat and sailing the ocean in his retirement years. That was still a dream of his and he would have to start a new retirement fund with this new career. And the career that he had chosen wasn't far from his expertise.

After all, he had trained as a CSI, worked in the FBI's crime lab, and was an entomologist. He'd even written a book and had taught forensic courses at the FBI Academy along with profiling. However, there would be no more profiling for him these days. It was going to be all about the evidence. His new life as Dr. Gilbert Arthur Grissom was going to be just that: a new life. And it took a couple of good friends to get him there.

"Witness Protection is just that, Will," Price told him, "it's for your protection. Lecter might come after you, so it'll be best for you to keep a low profile. Are you sure you want to continue in the field of forensics?"

"What would you rather I do, Jimmy, repair boat motors?"

Price's cheeks grew red from embarrassment. "Good point. Can I ask why Las Vegas?"

He actually smiled as he told Price, "It's the last place on earth Lecter would ever visit. He wouldn't follow Vegas news or the papers. Everything about it would be an assault on his sense of taste."

Price frowned and shook his head. "You would know better than any of us."

Bowman turned in his chair and handed him the papers and documents for his new identification while saying, "Everything you need to start a new life, my friend."

"You said you can erase Will Graham from history, Lloyd? You and the Bureau can do that. How?"

Bowman gave a nod, saying, "I'll get a hold of Crawford. We'll do what we can to remove any known photographs of Will Graham from databases and files. Textbooks can be revised without your photo. The only ones who will know the face of the man are those who were there and remember. Give it time, and soon enough Will Graham will fade into folklore and legend. I bet that in a few years, you could lecture all over the country and no one would know you weren't who you say you are."

"I appreciate it."

Bowman just smiled before shaking his hand. "Good luck, Gilbert."

"It's Gil."

"Gil...Will, not much of a difference."

"That's the point. Easier for me to respond to than say John or Mike. Besides, Gilbert was my grandfather's name."

"And Grissom?" Price asked.

He paused a moment before answering, "My mother's maiden name."

Price frowned at him and said, "You're not really hiding. It wouldn't take a genius to make the connection."

"Only if Will Graham existed in the first place. The name Will Graham is already in the minds of everyone who heard of the Minnesota Strike and Hannibal Lecter and Francis Dolarhyde...but they don't know him as a forensic scientist, or as a once coroner in L.A., do they? The FBI can have Graham, the profiler, but they can't have the rest of it. I want my life back. The one I had before the FBI entered it."

Bowman thought about that for a moment and gave a nod. "You know, one day everything's going to be on computers and the world-wide web. We're supposed to start transferring all files and documents into the mainframe soon. I bet we can make files disappear for good, and the ones you want for Grissom...all it requires is a change in name. Anyone looking into Graham's past would be chasing a ghost that only existed inside the FBI and nowhere else."

That sounded perfect. Exactly what was needed. "You think you can do that for my complete history?"

"We can try. We are the Feds. Making up fake histories for our undercovers is one thing, swapping one name with another should be a piece of cake."

"Better start making that cake. I want to start interviewing for a job as soon as possible."

Bowman asked, "Why don't you go talk to Crawford yourself? He's out in Washington now, but—"

"No," he said, cutting him off. "If I wait to talk to Jack…" He left the rest unsaid.

Price picked up on his concern. "You're afraid he'll talk you into going after Lecter."

He gave a nod. "Yeah. I can't do that right now." It wasn't just his physical health he was worried about, but his mental one.

He would either die or be put in a mental institution for the rest of his life. He wanted neither.

Tomorrow was his first day at the Las Vegas Crime Lab and he made a conscious decision to be as vague with his background as possible to anyone who asked. There was no point in trying to come up with a completely fabricated history on Gil Grissom. It would be too much. To keep things as simple as possible he wouldn't lie directly about his past. Omitting the truth was easier to remember than faking a story.

All facts of his life were true. He'd been born in Santa Monica, California, had moved to Louisiana after his father's death to be near his mother's parents, and then they returned to L.A. so he could attend UCLA. He'd been fourteen years old. Two years later, after he obtained his Bachelor's, he started working with the coroner's office. He got his Master's at George Washington University when he was eighteen.

At nineteen, when he was working on obtaining his Doctorate from the University of Chicago, he met Philip Gerard who steered him towards the field of forensics. It was Gerard who asked him in the spring of '76 to train as a CSI under him in Minnesota.

In the summer of '76, college girls in Minnesota started to go missing only to be found dead in the fall; they'd been impaled on buck antlers. They worked the scenes and it wasn't long before they realized that they had a serial killer on their hands. The newspapers called the killer the Minnesota Shrike.

"What the hell's a shrike anyway?"

He spotted the tall man wearing a brown trench coat over a rumpled suit in the lead detective's office when he arrived to deliver the results of blood testing he'd done.

Standing in the doorway, he answered the man's question, "Shrike's a bird. The family name Lanius is derived from the Latin word for 'butcher'." As he walked into the room, the man turned to face him as he dropped the newspaper back down onto the detective's desk. "Shrike's are known to catch their prey in their hooked beaks and then impaling them on thorns, branches, even barbed-wire. The bird then can tear the flesh of their prey into smaller pieces before eating them. This killer impales his victims on objects, specifically buck antlers, before doing the same. I'm thinking that he eats them to either own them completely, or…he doesn't want them to go to waste. I've talked to some hunters and they said that they kill deers not only for their meat, but also to make things out of other parts of the animal. Nothing goes to waste. They view it as a form of respect."

The man stared at him for a long moment, glanced at Detective Gus Wharton, and then asked, "Who the hell's this guy?"

Wharton said, "He's the one with the crime lab—"

"I'm Will Graham," he introduced himself as he handed the file with the blood results over to Detective Wharton.

The man snatched it away before Gus could get a finger on it. "Jack Crawford. FBI. I think you're the one I'm supposed to be talking to. Some sort of genius, right? Got a Ph.D. already at twenty. That right?"

He glanced at Detective Wharton before answering, "I wouldn't classify myself as a genius, but I did just receive my Ph.D."

"What'd you classify yourself as then? A Vulcan?"

He nearly smiled. "I have an exceptional memory. I'm an eideteker."

"Eiddy-what-now?"

"It means I have an eidetic memory. Visual memory. I can remember things I see in vivid detail even if I've only seen it once, like looking at a photograph. That, and I, uh, study real hard."

Crawford nodded, still studying him like he was some sort of alien, before saying, "Come on, I want to show you something. See if you've seen it before," as he clasped him on the shoulder to turn him around towards the door.

Taking one last glance back at the detective, he followed Crawford out of the office.

It was during that investigation when he had first gotten into the head of a killer by using more than the forensic evidence found at the scene. And due to his empathy, how his mind worked and how he dreamed, it had led him to not only identifying the killer as Garret Jacob Hobbs, but it had led him to kill him by shooting him to death.

Once the case was over, Crawford took a special interest in his ability to recreate crime scenes by not only the interpretation of the evidence, but by getting inside the heads of the killer. Jack asked him to join the FBI so they could work together some more. However, his ability to empathize, which made him perfect for profiling, made him unfit to be an FBI agent. When he was rejected for—as they put it—mental instability, Crawford got him on with the crime lab.

Crawford wanted him in the field, even as a "Special Investigator", but the Bureau viewed him as the fox who guarded the hen house due to his mental instability. Simply put, the FBI didn't trust him. His mental health was a problem they needed to address. Killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs had become a problem that he needed to address. Therapy was agreed upon.

Dr. Bloom would have been his psychiatrist except they were colleagues and Bloom didn't want to ruin their friendship. Plus, as Bloom told Crawford once, he didn't want to be left alone in a room with him. So, instead of Bloom, the FBI—Crawford specifically–referred him to a colleague of Bloom's. A highly respected forensic psychiatrist who had helped Crawford on previous cases: Dr. Hannibal Lecter, M.D.

Soon after he would not only be working with the FBI crime lab, but he'd also be teaching at the FBI Academy in Quantico. He'd been twenty-one years old. A few months later, he would meet Molly and her son Kevin and fall in love for the first time. They would get married. Two years later, at twenty-three years old, he would catch Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, aka the Chesapeake Ripper, and his life would be changed forever.

He would quit. Move to Florida. Bring home stray dogs. Obsess over them. Repair boat motors, fish, drink beer, and get a tan. Learn how to be a dad and husband.

At twenty-eight, Crawford would show up with a picture of the Leeds family. The family who'd been murdered by a serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy due to the fact that he liked to leave bite marks. He would promise Molly that he wouldn't get involved with the profiling; it'd only be about the evidence. He'd look at pictures. He would never meet the killer. He'd be at arm's length.

Jack would see to it. Jack promised he wouldn't let him get in too deep or go too far.

Everything would be fine.

They had been damn good liars.

"How does working on this case affect your sex life?" Freddie Lounds had asked him.

"Mine? It doesn't affect mine, it affects yours. Go fuck yourself."

Little did he know that Freddy Lounds was right. The case ended up affecting more than just his sex life. It affected every aspect of his life. He remembered removing his wedding ring and tossing it into the ocean. He remembered staring into mirrors and for a brief moment not seeing himself at all. In those cloudy drunken pupils he'd seen glowing glass eyes reminiscent of that of the Red Dragon.

But even now he still felt the burning of fingertips, a tight death-like grip around his neck, and a sharp throb of pain in his face as Dolarhyde sliced him with the knife across his face. Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw his clean-shaven face that held no scars. The scar was gone. At least the visible scar. The internal scars were still healing. Time heals all wounds.

He was thirty-two, and his new life as Gil Grissom was about to begin. His past history had been changed but only slightly. As far as anyone in Las Vegas was concerned, instead of going to the FBI, he had stayed in Minnesota and then returned to L.A. to work as a CSI before moving to Vegas. He even contacted his old mentor, Philip Gerard, to confirm his work history. Gerard understood the stakes, so it wasn't hard to get him to agree to verify his work history—and to call him Gil. Philip actually found it amusing; telling him it wasn't much of an identity change.

That was probably the point. He didn't want to actually change his identity with this new life. He wanted to regain it. Will Graham stopped being the man he was meant to be. He had turned into a drunk on the beach repairing boat motors instead of continuing his life as a forensic scientist and entomologist.

Will Graham had given up his identity. Gil Grissom was taking it back. This was who he was and what he should have been doing all along.

Entomology had always been his field of study. One he enjoyed to no end, but now to have it as his whole career was a little challenging. He would take that challenge over pursuing Hannibal Lecter any day. Gil Grissom was a man interested in the science of it all, not the mentality. No more getting inside the mind of the criminals and empathizing with them. He could recreate the crime scenes by use of forensics alone and nothing else.

With a satisfied smirk, he finally pocketed the driver's license into his wallet and started the car. Looking at his dog, he asked, "Ready, Old Man?"

Winston laid his head down on his lap and closed his eyes.

He was currently staying at a hotel but had seen an ad in the paper about a townhouse for sale and was due to meet with the realtor in an hour. Pulling out into traffic, he slid on his sunglasses as he took in the palm tree, casinos, and desert sand.

More sand. He really did hate it.

TBC…