Dolce
3x06
Hannibal Lecter x reader x Will Graham
Hannibal Re-Write Series Masterlist
Word Count: 2.9k
Warnings: spoilers for hannibal, murder, dead bodies, blood, drugs
Author’s Note: I don’t want to leave Florence :( but i do be missing the dogs
I used some direct quotes from the script so some things may seem familiar
Official Episode Summary: Jack seriously doubts Will's loyalties as the two renew their alliance. Mason Verger plots Hannibal Lecter's capture, while Lecter plans for his final stand.
I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director
Tag List (is always open!) : @llperfectsymmetryll @ericacactus @vlightning95 @sweetgoodangel
(not my gif)
all gifs @/rocktheholygrail
Hannibal sat in the bathtub. His head leaned against the side of it. Bedelia sat beside him. She wrung a sponge over his broken, beaten and cut body. Hannibal's eyes landed on hers and his pain saw you, wishing that you were there. He had been waiting for you and Will to arrive, wishing that it was going to happen. He wanted it to be you cleaning his wounds.
He needed it to be you cleaning his wounds.
His wish to have you come with him in the first place that was so strained he didn’t even realize the severity of it until just that moment. In pain, bleeding, sensing the end of something.
-
Jack Crawford looked at the dead body of Pazzi. It was being carted off by the police, the duck tape still pressed onto his face. Jack was tired. He had gotten a few scratches from his fight with Hannibal but none as severe as Hannibal’s.
Will walked up to Jack. Jack saw him out of the corner of his eye and situated himself toward his former colleague.
“He’s wounded and worried.” You emerged from the crowd behind Will and gave Jack a simple look. Both of you were scratched up. Dried blood covered Will’s forehead and there was a scratch on your cheek. You both clearly had been through something but Jack had not time to ask.
“Hannibal doesn’t worry. Knowing he’s in danger won’t rattle him any more than killing does,” Will said. The three of you looked into the Atrocious Torture Exhbiit, the place where Hannnibal and Jack had fought it out.
“If Rinaldo Pazzi decided to do his duty as an officer of the law, he could have detained Dr. Fell and determined very quickly that he was Hannibal Lecter. Would have taken thirty minutes to get a warrant,” Jack said solemnly.
“All those resources were denied to Pazzi. Once he decided to sell Hannibal, he became a bounty hunter,” Will stated. You scoffed.
“Serves him right. Mason Verger is trying to capture Hannibal himself for purposes of personal revenge. I've often wanted to use my own resources to drop him in his pig's den,” you muttered.
“Have you told la polizia they’re looking for Hannibal Lecter?” Will asked Jack.
“They’re motivated to find Dr. Fell inside the law. Knowing who he is..and what he’s worth, will just coax them out of bounds.”
“It would be a free-for-all,” Will pointed out.
“And Hannibal would slip away.” Jack paused. Both you and Will were facing opposite directions, looking at different artifacts. “Would you slip away with him?”
You and Will shared a look.
“Part of me will always want to,” Wil said.
“You have to cut that part out,” Jack argued.
“You aren’t FBI anymore Jack. You can’t tell either of us what to do,” you sneered. You believed that. Jack had no bearings over your feelings for Hannibal. You were annoyed he thought he had any.
“So you’ll go with him to jail?” Jack asked. You faced him completely.
“If I had come with him to Florence he wouldn’t be going to jail.”
“And that’s what you want?” Jack challenged. You stepped forward to him.
“I hate to see you win Jack.”
“You had him. He was beaten. Why didn’t you kill him?” Will asked, stepping in. Jack, eyes still on you, considered it.
“Maybe I need you to.”
-
Hannibal looked out the window. He was wearing a cozy sweater, cuddling into it for the last glimpse of hope he may get before a cage. He sketched into his book. Memories of Florence.
“I want to be able to draw these streets from memory. I want to be able to draw the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo,” Hannibal said whimsically. Bedelia approached him and took the book from his hand.
“You won’t be coming back here for a very long time,” she whispered.
“Memories of Florence will be all I have. Florence is where I became a man. I see my end in my beginning.”
“All of our endings can be found in our beginnings. History repeats itself and we can’t escape it,” Bedelia stated, turning into the home. Hannibal glanced at the small suitcase. Hsi coat was draped over it.
“You packed lightly,” he stated.
“I packed for you.” She paused a moment and off his questioning look, moved forward. “This is where I leave you. Or more accurately, where you leave me.”
Hannibal nodded slowly. His eyes scanned from the suitcase to her eyes. In essence he was aware he was giving up his Florence hope of you and him. He was aware that he was saying goodbye to Bedelia and also your alternate self.
In hopes to see you again, perhaps for real this time.
-
Bedelia put a needle carefully on her table. She saw the face of Chiyoh in the back of her mirror and turned around simply, confused at her presence.
“You must be looking for Hannibal Lecter. One of his patients?” she questioned.
“No, not a patient. Where is he?” Chiyoh asked. Her gun was in her hand delicately. It looked like it weighed a feather.
“Gone. Seeing how you let yourself in, I hope it’s not too forward to ask, who the hell are you?”
“Family,” Chiyoh landed on.
“Ah. You’ve come a long way from home,” Bedelia pointed out.
“Who are you?”
“I’m his psychiatrist.” Chiyoh glanced at the ampoule and needle. Bedelia shrugged.
“Medicinal purposes.” Chiyoh studied her further, her eyes narrowed.
“You’re like his bird. I’m his bird, too. I met another one, on the train ride here. He puts us in cages to see what we’ll do.”
“Fly away or dash ourselves dead against the bars,” Bedelia suggested.
“You haven’t flown away.”
-
Hannibal Lecter looked between the Primavera and his sketchbook. He was drawing it for the thousandth time but this time, in place of the garlanded nymph was your face. In place of pale zephyrus was Will.
Over Hannibal’s shoulder, Will walked into the room. Slowly, the suit that he was wearing suddenly seeming so stuffy. Will’s eyes landed on Hannibal for the first time since Hannibal gutted him. Both men battered and bruised.
He moved forward and gently laid a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder. Hannibal looked up at Will and smiled, pleased to see him. Will sat down beside Hannibal and for a moment they both absorbed the moment.
“Good to see you,” Will said.
“If I saw you everyday forever, Will, I would remember this time,” Hannibal said as he stared at the man that he loved. They stared at each other for a moment and Will’s smile seemed the brightest thing Hannibal had seen in so long.
“Strange to see you in front of me. Been staring at afterimages of you in places you haven’t been in years,” Will stated.
“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig,” Hannibal said lightly.
“I looked up at the night sky there. Orion above the horizon and, near it, Jupiter. I wondered if you could see it, too. She wondered if our stars were the same.”
She.
You.
“I believe some of our stars will always be the same. You entered the foyer of my mind and stumbled down the hall of my beginnings.”
“I wanted to understand you before I laid eyes on you again. I needed it to be clear what I was seeing,” Will explained.
“Where does difference between the past and the future come from?” Hannibal questioned.
“Mine? Before you and after you.” He paused. “Yours? It’s all starting to blur. Mischa. Abigail. Chiyoh.”
“How is Chiyoh?”
Between both boys shoulders, you emerged. You were wearing a gorgeous dress that you usually wouldn’t have pulled out. You bought it here in Florence. It reminded you of Hannibal. Plus your other clothes were bloodied. You looked just as battered and bruised as they did.
You all pulled it off with a regal amount of elegance.
“She pushed us off a train,” you said. Hannibal turned around to see you. The first time you had laid eyes on each other since you had kissed. It was interesting for Hannibal now. He had to double check that Will had heard you too.
“Atta girl.”
“Ah, it hurt,” you said. You walked around the bench and sat between them. They allowed you enough room. You looked at Hannibal and smiled. He smiled back at you.
“We have begun to blur,” Will said after a moment more of absorbing.
“Isn’t that how you found me?” Hannibal questioned.
“Even as the possibility of free will dissipates, my experience of it remains the same. I continue to feel and act as though I have it.”
You looked over at Will and then back at Hannibal. You placed your hands on your lap.
“Why did you let Bedelia live?” you asked. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I figured she had been long dead, gone through and out of your digestive system at this point. There should not have been an ounce of her left so imagine my surprise when I see her completely alive. Confused and lying, but alive.” Hannibal looked into your eyes and you understood.
“I think you know why.”
You held your gaze and then had to leave it in fear of getting emotional.
“Every crime of yours feels like one I am guilty of. Not just Abigail’s murder, but every murder streching backward and forward in time,” Will said after a moment.
“Then what’s left to do? Freeing yourself from me and me freeing myself from you, they’re the same. No longer seeing you in people who aren’t you Y/N. You are part of his equation just as much as Will and I.”
You smiled solemnly.
“We’re conjoined. Curious if any of us can survive separation,” you mused.
“Now’s the hardest test: not letting rage and frustration, nor forgiveness, keep you from thinking.” Hannibal stood up and gestured for you to take his hand. “Shall we?” You took it and stood. Will’s hand was already interlaced between yours, something you did subconsciously when you sat down.
You all stood.
“After you,” Will muttered.
Together the three of you left the gallery. Worse for wear but something blossomed in your hearts, something that only the other two could bring out. You had walked only a few steps before Will was shot to the ground.
-
Hannibal held Will close to him, trying to get him into the chair. You stood beside him, helping him take his jacket off. Will winced and fell forward, his chin on your shoulder.
“I’ve got you,” you whispered. Will’s shirt was soaked with blood. It was dripping down his arm from where the bullet wound entered.
“The bullet is still inside you. This will hurt.” Hannibal took the jacket all the way off and Will watched as Hannibal cut off his shirt. The three of you hadn’t been this close since you were last covered in Will’s blood.
“Chiyoh’s always been very protective of me,” Hannibal said as he looked into the wound.
“Tell her to back the hell off,” you sneered.
“Did she kill her tenant or did you?”
“She did,” Will choked out.
“Excellent.” Hannibal took Will’s knife you didn’t know he had with him, back into his limp hand. “You dropped your forgiveness, Will.” You stared at the blade, bloodied. You caught Will’s eyes. He hadn’t told you he had brought a weapon. “You forgive how God forgives. Would you have done it quickly, or would you have stopped to gloat?”
“Will?” you whispered.
“Does God gloat?” Will asked.
“Often,” Hannibal answered.
Hannibal moved a sharp needle into Will before you even noticed he had it. Will dropped the blade into Hannibal’s waiting hand. Will passed out.
Your mouth hung open as your gaze held the knife. You still had your hand putting pressure into Will’s wound but it loosened.
“I didn’t know,” you whispered, looking up at Hannibal.
“I know,” Hannibal responded. “You wouldn’t have done it anyway. I’m going to dress his wound and get the bullet out. Would you mind waiting in the kitchen? Dinner is almost ready.”
You were so stunned that you stood up. You felt the pull of needing to be by Will but wondered what he would have done to Hannibal. Would you have gone with it?
Chiyoh was right.
You were not the kind of girl who followed a man's lead.
You grabbed Hannibal’s shoulder and pulled him up.
“Why are you staying?”
“Why didn’t you come with me?”
You stared at each other.
“I love Will.”
“The Bloody Valentines.” You scoffed and took the knife from Hannibal’s hands. You threw it off to the side.
“Will is drugged.”
“Are you going to drug me Hannibal?” You stared at each other and he kissed you feverishly, the way he had wanted to since you kissed him last. You wrapped your arms around his neck and held onto him for dear life. You hadn’t touched him in so long.
You pulled away after a moment.
“I wanted to go,” you whispered. “I regretted now going.” You pulled away and stepped back. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Please fix Will.”
-
Will’s eyes fluttered open. Hannibal walked into the dining room with a large bowl in his hands. Will had a dish set out in front of him.
“I do not indulge much in regret, but I am sorry to be leaving Italy. There were things in the Palazzo Capponi I would have liked to read,” Hannibal admitted. In from the kitchen came you, holding a different dish. You placed it on the table.
A last dodge attempt at normalcy.
“I would have liked to play the clavier and perhaps compose. I might have cooked for the Widow Pazzi, when she overcame her grief. I would have liked to show you both Florence.”
You sat down beside Will and spoon fed him some soup. He looked over at you, confused, doped up.
“The soup isn’t very good,” he slurred.
“It’s a parsley-and-thyme infusion, and more for my sake than yours. Have another sip, let it circulate,” Hannibal explained. Will took another spoon from you. Will and you finally noticed the final place setting at the end of the table.
“Are we expecting company?”
-
Hannibal grabbed your arm tightly and stood you up.
“It will be Jack,” he told you.
You glanced at Will, out of his mind and slowly losing sight. Hannibal was giving you the invitation you had wanted since Jack stepped into Will’s classroom to talk about Garret Jacob Hobbs.
-
Jack opened the door to Pazzi’s home. He had his gun held up high as he looked around every corner before he stepped forward. Eventually, Will at the end of the table came into view.
He walked forward and up to Will who blinked, focused on Jack and took a deep breath.
“Hannibal’s under the table, Jack,” Will muttered. Before Jack could react you had grabbed him from behind and a blade slashed Jack’s achilles heel.
Jack dropped hard.
Hannibal turned to you and his gaze softened.
“You will not join me in prison,” he whispered. Your eyebrows furrowed. He grabbed your arm and shoved a needle into your side. You let out a small, betrayed sigh and passed out.
-
Jack came to and found himself seated opposite Will.
“I’ve taken the liberty of giving you something to help you relax. Won’t be able to do much more than chew, but that’s all you’ll need to do. I didn’t have an opportunity to ask you during our last encounter, but did you enjoy the exhibition? A different kind of evil minds museum,” Hannibal said to Jack.
“Not so different,” Jack retored. He noticed you were gone from the room.
“The promoters are failed taxidermists who formerly got along by eating offal from the trophies they mounted things that bring people together.”
“We were supposed to sit down together back in Baltimore...the three of us. And Y/N.”
“You were to be the guest of honor,” Hannibal said, ignoring the mention of your name. Hannibal poured himself a glass of wine and took a leisurely sip.
“Where…” Will started but he didn’t finish.
“Jack was the first to suggest getting inside your head,” Hannibal said. “Now be both have the opportunity to chew quite literally what we’ve only chewed figuratively.”
Hannibal held a bone saw in his hands. Jack suddenly realized what was going on. For a moment, all Jack could think about was what you would say if you were in the room.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Blood trickled down Will’s head despite his protests.
3x07
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MANNA- CHAPTER SEVEN: LAMB
Dark!Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Dark!Will Graham AU fic
TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, drugging, Daddy kink, implied child abuse, self harm
This is chronologically the seventh chapter in the series
---
The kitchen is a quiet chaos— Hannibal standing over the hob, his beautiful hands precise at their work, Will slouched, sulking prettily against a countertop, looking into the bottom of a wine glass.
His temper billows about the room. It's a wonder anyone can breathe through such smoke.
You hover at an anxious distance, afflicted by delectable smells and the scar of what you’ve done. Shame beats, eviscerated, under the boards of you; you chose to taunt and then to touch Will Graham, a conscious participant in this play of a poisonous home.
If your hosts were to give you but a minute apart from them you’d chastise yourself for your abasement: three stiff, sweat-inducing planks, a lap of your room, a prison yard exhaustion.
But they keep you under their eye, knowing, like a child, you’d surely run to burn your hand on the stove.
“How do you want me to be around him?” you ask, as Hannibal tastes a truffle sauce with a look of indecision. “Your Agent Crawford. He doesn’t know about us, does he?”
“As I have assured you, it is between you, Will, and I,” Dr Lecter answers. “Therefore, as far as any visitor is concerned, you remain my patient. That is all.”
How easily you are expected to step from one evanescent role to the other. Should your tongue slip, you may damn him and Will both, yet you know Hannibal is without fear as surely as though you had your fingers to his wrist, timing the pulse of his slow calm.
“And what am I to Will today?” you ask.
“A ward, of sorts, for now.”
The word conjures images of chill cells, bed pans, wilful neglect. Something Victorian in its sensibilities.
“A ward,” you repeat. “Right.”
In the peripheries of vision Will sets down his glass with an icy clink.
“Are you intending to be civilised at dinner," he asks, "or do we have to prepare for another devolution into infantile behaviour?”
You’d expected Will to be smug, glutted from his fill, but your mouth upon him has only calcified his antagonism into some crueller compound, still. He does not like that he has taken pleasure from you, is in denial of it, a steadfast separation.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” you say. “I never know what’s going to happen. Usually I’m... not myself.”
Will folds his arms in an impassable cross.
“You’re not being medicated tonight. Your actions will be your responsibility.”
The prospect of sobriety has little power to cheer. You’d rather the drooling oblivion of a dose over the chess match of having to divine the correct answer and micro-expression to every aside.
Intuiting your distress, Hannibal says, “You'll be eating from a slightly different menu to the rest of the table. Light portions, with attention to your safe foods.”
In disbelief, you take stock of the simmering pans, their contents once the meat of your routine.
“My... my safe foods,” you repeat. “But I didn’t even tell you what they were.”
What should comfort holds the sinister weight of interred dead, so familiar as to be uncanny.
“I have observed your preferences,” says Dr Lecter. “Thus, I am able to accommodate.”
He offers you a spoon to taste, which you decline.
“You’re making it easier for me to stick to my old ways,” you point out. “That doesn’t seem right. What’s going on?”
“I’m allowing you space to devote your energy to an unexpected social situation. I know they are not your strong suit, and I wish you to be relaxed. It will benefit us all.”
There is no pretence here of pure intentions; you acknowledge the respect that has been awarded to you in the absence of a lie.
“Thank you,” you say. “Could you do this... more, please?”
“If you continue to fulfil your role satisfactorily, yes.”
Hannibal glances at Will, whose breath of harsh laughter pars the conversation like a shank, short and sharp.
“You remain against her, then.”
“I don’t see that she has any genuine interest in evolving,” says Will, as though you are not there. “Just a cuckoo in an empty nest.”
The phrasing catches like a coat on brambled hedgerow. Alert, you examine your younger captor, interpreting the set of his harsh look.
“What are you to each other, really?” you ask.
“Friends,” says Will, bluntly.
The speed with which he speaks betrays a not-quite lie, a sentence with a postluding clause.
“We are aesthetes of an uncommon kind,” Dr Lecter interjects, over a pearl string of steam. “It adds dimension to our relationship few will ever perceive. In time, I expect you will.”
The kitchen, though of minimal colour—greys, black, pure, clinical white—develops a peculiar warmth. There is invitation, here, open-armed acceptance into domesticity, and whatever midnight cabal weds these two men in their brotherhood.
“I don’t think you want me,” you say, as Hannibal rinses cutlery at the sink. “I’m not interesting. I don’t talk like you. I don’t really understand art, or books, or poetry. I’m not even smart.”
Will’s head turns, the sly incline an eel from a cave mouth.
“Hannibal tells me you were academic, once. What happened?”
Seldom do you care to recollect your school days, which were lived painfully, as a mute ghost at the back of the class.
Attempts to decipher screens and pages through tears that had fallen without sound, and were, thus, philosophically inexistent. Whispers passed down through seated rows. Meetings with teachers and welfare staff on seats of poster blue plastic, your foot shaken against scuffed tiles in soothing motion.
The books and television series you’d once absorbed with eager voracity were parched of their appeal, by then. Your only reading was the secretive message boards into which you’d recessed like a forest to band with others of your starving ilk.
Such memories, and others arise to you. Your grades you can less easily recall.
“I’m only good at one thing anymore,” you say, aloud. “And I’m not allowed to do it here.”
Hannibal begins stacking washed dishes back into the cupboard, undeterred by your ceaseless denial.
“We will not chastise you for your simplicity. The palate can be developed, after all.”
“And not just for the food,” says Will. “Though that would be a start.”
“What if I embarrass you in front of Jack?” you ask; you’re losing this argument, and continue it only to prolong your defeat.
“Jack isn’t easily embarrassed,” says Dr Lecter. “Besides, he has been adequately prepared. You may rest in your room before dinner, little one. Sleep can do wonders for the appetite.”
He walks you to the kitchen door with a subtle insistence— like Will, he yearns to be alone.
Mumbling thanks that border on sincere, you make your egress via the stairs, glad to leave the kitchen and its tiers of expectation in your wake.
Passing Hannibal’s room, you find the door stood ajar. Curiosity draws you in, then, not to the bed—a symbol of tragedy—but to the conjoined bathroom, it, too, unlocked.
It is larger than your own, though similarly tiled in ivory and obsidian; there is a bathtub elevated on ornate feet, a shower walled in opaque glass, a sink with toothbrush and paste arranged like trophies, each surface of a bleached, crystalline sheen.
On the floor lies a set of scales, an oblong of clearest glass.
You had known that he would have one in the house, a man so fastidious in hygiene and health. Standing flat against one wall, you tilt your head, listening for an approach on the stairs, a change in the direction of the voices beneath.
When you are convinced of your privacy you strip of every garment and stand upon the scales, your hands braced at your sides in anticipation.
Even before the numbers flash on the mite screen you know that you’ve gained weight, have felt the itching progress of it across your hips and stomach.
The figure, as you glance down, is far higher than anticipated. Were it not imperative to be silent, you would scream.
You settle to hit yourself, instead, closed-fisted blows into your temple, left to right; only your reflection in the bathroom mirror stays your hand, a corpulent rendering of flesh.
This image has always shifted, for you, between your mental interpretation and its reality. Now they are one and the same, and you will never forgive your kidnappers for having altered your sight, as well.
Whose eyes have they given you, to make out this monster? One each of their own— you close the lids, and see the red of meat in the darkness behind them.
Later, when you return, dressed and sleep-dulled, to wait for dinner, you practice such restraint over your emotion that the effect is a noiseless hysteria. Catching sight of your face in any polished surface reveals a sickly visage, eyes bright and excitable, the skin dull, as of the grave.
Will regards you with a default scepticism, venturing no word. Hannibal, instantly perceptive, takes hold of your face in his cool hands and looks into your eyes.
“Is there something the matter?” he asks, and there is glass under the suede of his soft voice, a cutting menace.
There is a rap upon the door, and Dr Lecter steps free of you to answer. He returns shortly, followed by a man you recognise from the news, broad shouldered in a casual suit. His hair is closely cut, a trimmed goatee on a face that would have been handsome, in youth, and is presently so, though worn between the brows from the stress of his work.
“Good to see you, Will,” says Jack, shaking the younger man’s hand and pulling him into a half embrace. “You look well. Been taking care of yourself, I hope.”
Will smiles. His face is briefly pleasant, the dour mouth creasing at the corners.
“As well as I can,” he says. “The dogs keep me active.”
“Nice to hear you’re still running with the pack,” Jack replies. “How are the little rascals?”
You wait for the smalltalk to end, filing away what information sifts through that may be of note.
At last Jack turns to you, taking your hand lightly in his.
“So I finally get to meet you. Hannibal’s told me all about you, you know.”
A falsified minimum, you think.
Aloud, you ask, “He has?”
“Just enough,” says Dr Lecter. “Now, I must be temporarily rude and make myself scarce; I have unfinished work awaiting me in the kitchen.”
Jack releases your hand.
“Point taken,” he says. “Let's move this conversation to the dinner table, shall we?”
To your relief, once all are seated Jack manoeuvres the subject tactfully away to other things. The men speak of the weather—"I don’t care what anybody says; we don’t need that much rain this side of the Great Flood"—Jack’s wife—who is mortally ill, and immeasurably loved—and of mutual friends, whose names and various details you struggle to map in your ignorance of their world.
You eat with little attention to what crosses your lips; the day, in that aspect, is spoiled, and you cast it from you like a fruit’s rotten core.
Though Jack and Hannibal both attempt to include you in the chatter at points, you do not care to. There is the feeling of being presented to Jack like a shrewdly bargained for article of rare furniture; any comment from you is performance for these men to digest and enjoy, as they do all at this table.
It is Dr Lecter, however, that successfully extracts your opinion on a topic of his choosing. With an ingenuity that renders the shift in topic almost organic, he addresses his colleagues on the matter of their latest case.
“Surely our man will be on the move again,” he says, lifting a shred of lamb to his lips. “He may already be grooming his next subject.”
“He is,” says Will, flatly. “I’ve spent enough time thinking like him to know his heartbreak over losing the last one won’t last long.”
Jack raises his eyebrows, turning from one man to the other with a look that suggests he is almost as nonplussed by their union as you are.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to discuss this in front of your patient, Dr Lecter? The details of this case are particularly disturbing, as you already know. Will showed you photographs from the crime scene.”
“Indeed he did,” says Hannibal. “I will not easily forget it. However, as long as my guest resides under my roof I believe it’s only fair that she is involved in general discussion. Confidential matters of the case will, of course, be between us. But anything that is public knowledge I believe she has the right to know.”
“Fodder for Tattle Crime, you mean,” Will interjects, stabbing at his meal with spiteful vigour. “Freddie Lounds has covered these particular murders with a lurid relish. You’re aware that she’s already named the killer?"
Jack chuckles.
“'The Silicone Lover,'” he says. “It certainly lacks poetry in comparison to some of the others that are being thrown around, but it’s got that Lounds touch. It’s catchy, I’ll give her that.”
You drop your fork upon your plate with a jarring clash of steel and porcelain. Hannibal’s face stills in subtle displeasure, and you make a cringing gesture of apology, your mouth puckered at one corner.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” you say, “but... I remember reading about that case. I’ve always been kind of interested in true crime. I don’t know why. Books, documentaries, all that stuff; I’ve seen them all. But this killer— he’s in my city. Everybody’s been talking about it.”
It’s the most conversation you’ve volunteered all evening, and you sense the interest of your fellow guests open to you like a late bloom.
“I hope you’ve been taking precautions, young lady,” says Jack, bringing his knife to a pat of oozing meat until his plate is a bloody eclipse. “You’re aware you fit the profile of his victims.”
You stutter out an uncomfortable laugh.
“I... I don’t go out much. So I’ve been okay.”
Even before your captivity you’d been a recluse, dissuaded from venturing outdoors by an aversion to being perceived. Short, rushed jaunts to the store had been the sum of your travels, and it occurs to you now that you should have savoured the world beyond the house: the grumbling traffic, the turned dirt scent of rain, all of it, everything. The beautiful mundane.
“Staying indoors won’t keep the Silicone Lover from making you his paramour,” says Will, shortly, one arm flung in a mode of disdain across the back of his chair. “His targets always let him into their homes willingly, and there are no defensive wounds, suggesting he makes himself known to his victims some time before he abducts them. He always gets close enough to either drug or hit them over the head without suspicion.”
“I know,” you say. “I’ve read Tattle Crime, too.”
Will sneers.
“Of course you have. She’s a provocateur. Just your type.”
“Tell us what you know of this case, then,” Hannibal says to you, smoothly diffusing the tension. “Perhaps we will benefit from a fresh perspective, especially from an individual so closely fitting the profile of those unfortunate victims.”
He looks at Agent Crawford, seeking an unspoken permission.
“Go ahead,” says Jack. “As long as you feel up to it, that is.”
His voice softens as he speaks to you, and you think of his wife, folding slowly into the ravening void of cancer. This is a man who understands illness, and has a sensitivity for it; it comforts you, to have him here, obscured though his view of his friends.
Offering Jack a shy smile, you say, “I’ll be alright. It’s just that I don’t want to put anyone off their food.”
There is laughter around the table; even Will smirks, though the expression falls as he catches you looking. You wonder again at his distaste for you, surmising with a coolly adult rationality that he is jealous of you having come between him and his mentor.
“Well?” says Will, with the rudeness of a spoiled prince. “What’s the Lover’s modus operandi?”
You catch Jack’s dark eyes squinting a fraction, and though he says nothing you rally at the knowledge that he has not entirely succumbed to Will and Hannibal’s spell.
“The dead girls are always found in rivers around the city,” you say, “sealed inside hollowed out rubber dolls. You know the kind I mean. The killer cuts open the dolls and mutilates the women to fit them inside, then seals them back up again. Keeps them in there till they suffocate, or starve to death.
Some of the women die within hours, others a few days. They must be so scared, in so much pain. But obviously that’s what he wants. Every three months or so he does it all over again.”
“Meaning we don’t have long before he takes a seventh lover,” says Will. “Fortunately for you, staying here will protect you, to an extent. You’re too far out of the killer’s hunting range for him to take an interest.”
“Can’t keep the princess locked up in her tower forever,” says Jack, cleaning his hands on a napkin. “We'd better hurry up and catch him. Now, if you’ll all excuse me—”
He rises from his seat; a bathroom visit, you realise, and an opening to speak to him alone.
Thinking quickly, you reach for your water glass and dash it across your lap. Your hand is shaking enough for the accident to seem convincing.
Both remaining men glance up from the table, startled. Will all but rolls his eyes.
“Sorry,” you say, in a grovelling squeak. “I’ll go and change, if that’s alright.”
Dr Lecter, as always, is crisply polite.
“You may go. But hurry. Our guest will expect you to return.”
For once, Will makes no comment, only returns to his food with the reverence of accepting the wafer at communion.
You pad along the corridor towards the downstairs bathroom, waiting for Jack to emerge. From what you know of Hannibal’s close relationship with the police you cannot rest your hopes of escape entirely on Agent Crawford, but you have seen the occasional teeter of trust, the unspoken perplexity with which he regards the dynamics of the household.
You may yet sway his sympathies, if you are careful. Still, you are so certain of failure that you tremble with mirth, like a drunk.
Jack steps out of the bathroom, stopping short as he notices you wincing in the shadows.
“Hey, there. Are you alright? You look a little green around the gills.”
“Agent Crawford,” you say, in a half-whisper. “I was wondering if you could help me. You know Will and Hannibal pretty well, right?”
“It’s Jack when I’m not working. And, uh, reasonably so, I’d say. Is something wrong?”
You pause, labouring over your response. To imply your wardens are the enemy will surely strike Jack as too outlandish, the mumblings of the mad.
“This treatment isn’t right for me,” you say, rather weakly. “It’s too much, and I don’t think they’re really listening to me. I miss my parents, my own room. I’m suffocating here. I was wondering if you could talk to Will and Dr Lecter. Encourage them to let me go home.”
Jack’s dark eyes soften, and he stoops slightly over you, as he might in order to speak to a small child.
“Dr Lecter told me you might ask me that. The road you’re on is a tough one, young lady, but you’ve got to stick it out. Not just for yourself, but for everybody who cares about you. Besides, I’m pretty damn sure Will and Hannibal would be disappointed to see you go home so soon.”
You turn your head into your shoulder, your neck caught in a miserable spasm.
“Will doesn’t like me at all.”
“That’s just the way he is. Prickly with just about everyone he encounters. Imagine the strain on me, having to keep him in line.”
You do laugh, then, and Jack flashes you a gap-toothed grin.
“He’ll warm up to you. Though to be honest, I don’t know why Hannibal’s getting Will involved in all this when he already has enough on his plate. Between work and those episodes of his, I don’t know if he ought to take on too many other responsibilities. But I guess Dr Lecter knows what he’s doing.”
Episodes?
You’d noticed Will’s fits of illness, a certain fragility; to hear it confirmed is a gold coin in your hand to spend in the future to come.
“I’m going to head back to the table,” says Jack. “Let’s give all this a little more time. If it doesn’t work over the next couple of months I might put a word in for you, suggest therapy sessions over inpatient treatment. But I can’t push it, kid. You’re not my patient. I can’t overstep the line, here. But I’m on your side. You keep up what you’re doing, alright?”
He leaves you there, knuckling tears from your eyes. Regretting that you hadn’t spoken the truth, in all its risk.
*
You go to your room, meaning only to dress. In the end you cannot resist returning to Hannibal’s scales on the way back, called by a manic self-flagellating urge to know much further weight you’ve gained from the meal.
You are not free, will never be free, are worth nothing but numbers. They've become all you are.
It’s as you’re stepping, naked, stupid with despair onto the scale that you hear a voice behind you.
“You must learn to restrain these impulses, little one.”
You turn so sharply that something strains in your neck again. Your hands strive to cover your nakedness. A futility, considering what he has seen, that he has fucked you.
“I assume that you have also spoken to Jack Crawford,” says Hannibal. “Pleading your case to be released. How naughty you have been.”
How handsome he looks, almost young, in the tasteful bathroom light. There is something like death in his sudden beauty, a void coldness.
Terror, a stake of ice from throat to cunt.
He means to kill you, if not now, then soon.
You know of only one way he might forgive so many missteps. Another course: you eat your pride.
“I didn’t mean to, Daddy,” you say. “Please don’t tell Will.”
You lower your arms, forging a sword of your vulnerability. Hannibal glances down only once, and with more amusement, then, than thirst.
“He will never know,” he says. “If you come to my room tonight. There is a lesson you must learn. It cannot wait.”
*
There is a tension about the residence of waiting, after Will and Jack have gone, the dry-mouthed breath before the silver lipped drop of the guillotine.
There is motion about the house, yet you feel rather than hear it; Hannibal has a way of carrying his physicality that seems to possess no weight at all. Ghoulish, his haunting of the rooms below as you sit on his bed, to await him.
You arrange yourself on the dark sheets in sacrificial mode, so ill with fear that it seems all your organs are in torsion, a helix of flesh from chest to womb.
It strikes you that you’d lain so, once, a night your father's friend, Leland Frost, had stumbled the many stairs to your room, beer the umber of his breath as he’d kissed you goodnight.
You had let him touch you, then, as you will let the devil touch you, now. As a child, as an adult, you are absolved: animals must eat, and their prey bear no fault when the hand of God steers them in the direction of hunger.
Hannibal ascends the stairs, each footfall making you jump. Stiff-backed, you turn to a sleek alarm clock on the bedside table, vowing to fix your eyes to its sympathetic face until the hour is done.
A name—yours—blackens your ear, a knell of things more wicked than death.
“Little one,” says Hannibal. “I will not hurt you. This lesson involves no corporal punishment.”
You sit up slightly, slippery in grey silk pyjamas, of whose cost you dare not think.
“Not the lights,” you say, hastily. “Or that metronome thing. I hated it.”
Dr Lecter removes his jacket, socks, and shoes, the quiet process of putting them away a careful rite, his prayer unspoken.
“To begin with,” he says, “I’d like to ask you some questions about your personal habits.”
He speaks delicately, but with an undertone of velvet sensuality that delivers you into fear you cannot resist.
“How often do you pleasure yourself, little one?”
“I don't,” you say.
The words form with such stumbling velocity that you cringe at your own lie.
Hannibal looks down at you with a sort of sorrow.
“If that is your response, then I must teach you.”
“No! I mean, don’t. I’m sorry. I do... do that. But it’s embarrassing to talk about it. I don’t want to.”
“I’m afraid you must. To be a fully-fledged adult it is important to embrace all facets of yourself, including sexuality. So, please address my question.”
Hannibal steps towards the bed, not with threat, but to pursue the lost treasure of your secret.
“Twice a week, maybe,” you admit. “At night.”
“How do you masturbate?”
You’d never expected the world from Dr Lecter. He speaks it factually, without humour, priestly severe.
“With my hands,” you say. “My fingers.”
You’d been too embarrassed to order toys to the house, which still you share with your family, the humiliation of an accidentally opened box an unimaginable discomfort.
“What do you think about as you climax, little one?” asks Hannibal, a question worse still than those before it in the nature of your answer.
You’d watch videos, often violent, peruse literature online which you hastily erased from your history, afterwards. It almost seems you beckoned in this abuse, through your interests, aroused only by cruelty, and the dark.
“I don’t know,” you say. “Different things. Nothing specific.”
Hannibal takes another step towards the bed.
“Answer again.”
Tears char your vision into soot.
“I hate you,” you say, fiercely. “More than I hate Will.”
“Because I cannot be moved in my resolve, as he can,” says Hannibal. “Will is suggestible, to an extent, whereas I am sure in my standing. It sears your ego to obey a man so entirely.”
He pads, barefoot, in a half circle around the bed, a panther uncaged.
“So,” says Dr Lecter. “Speak. What do you think of when you touch yourself?”
You open your mouth, and find yourself mute, truly incapable of speech.
Hannibal seems to understand this, however, for he does not insist again.
“Undress for me. I would like to see you demonstrate.”
Your head swings in a rattling ‘no’.
“Very well. I will attempt it.”
Again you shake your head, and in cumbersome, unlovely motions you struggle out of the pyjamas, ashamed of how clumsy you appear before him.
Naked, you sit up on your knees, covering yourself with your arms as best you can.
“Legs apart, please,” says Hannibal. “Then do as you normally would. I will merely watch.”
He reclines in one of the chairs in the room, his eyes like foreign seas, reflecting the night.
Scalded with humiliation, you bring your fingertips between your thighs and stroke in looping circles. The skin there is parched, unresponsive, unyielding; to be watched in such intimacy takes the pleasure from the act, which has always been in realms of secret sin.
“I can’t do it, Hannibal,” you say. “Nothing’s happening. I don’t feel good.”
It is the only time you’ve used his first name to his face, a trespass into familiarity you do not share.
“Is it because you don’t have access to the usual stimulating material?” he asks, ignoring your blunder.
You snap your knees shut upon your hands.
“I don’t use any.”
Hannibal takes your calves in his hands, a grip which might break.
“I know that you do. When I accepted you as my patient I made a point to visit your house, when no one was home. Your room was as I expected it to be. Juvenile, and stale aired from many days spent there alone. Your laptop was open. It wasn’t difficult to breach. Your password was the title of a book on your shelf.”
Wintergirls. Laurie Halse Anderson had been a staple of your literary youth, and it had never occurred to you that anyone might guess it.
“You didn’t clear your history as thoroughly as you believed,” says Hannibal. “I was intrigued by what I found there.”
You do not resist as he opens your legs, so limp are you in your horror.
“I— what you saw— it doesn’t mean I want this. It’s not the same.”
Hannibal blinks slowly.
“No. I would be uninterested if it was.”
He sits upright again, folding his hands in his lap. How pure they look, a harpsichordist’s tools, an illustrator’s. Evil, beautiful things.
“Begin again,” says Hannibal. “Think of Will and I. What we have done to you. Our touch. Our words. The imposition of power. The ineludible fact of your belonging to us.”
Femoral heat. Your core rings crimson bronze, and your fingers follow its kulning. You want to stop, but Hannibal’s voice alone is a hypnosis, effective even without the ticking and the lights.
“Imagine Will’s hand across your cheek. Around your throat. Envision my own.”
You make some noise, not quite a moan.
Dr Lecter lowers himself down until his breath mists your cunt, and the sensation has you writhing beneath it, maddened by the ephemeral touch of air, and needing it to finish.
He looks up, and his eyes are a reveller’s, a satyr of ancient land.
“How sweet you must taste. I have prepared your meals specifically to assure that you do.”
Your hand cycles in motion, compelled by his mystical art.
Hannibal remains over you, too close, at too great a distance.
“Stop,” he says. “That is enough.”
You are so close that the command is more craven in its dealings than Will’s palm across your face.
Your breaths are the sunken heat of a pagan sun. You burn and burn.
“Why should I give you what is so unwanted?” asks Hannibal, and pauses, as though you might beg.
Speech is inconceivable to your mind, as it is now, a concept like the colour of dying. You only sit with the head of a God between your legs, forced to such a brink that your weakness rides through you like a drug.
Eyes of night pleasure, of deathly ritual—
He laps your cunt for scarcely half a minute before you career over your edge, stacked orgasms that render you sightless with their power. You arc from the bed like an antler, a horn cry blown through your soul.
The pleasure is a stellar whiteness. You writhe up towards his tongue like a wave.
“Poor girl,” says Hannibal, as you lie piteously beneath him. “You can do nothing without me. Even this.”
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