bakerstreet | WHAT WAS THAT?

{{Ooc: Well shit this is the Letter canon is all over this. ~~Does anyone else even play from this game yet? XD}}~~

[Hidden horror is Hannibal's MO to a T. I'm game for him to be the hidden horror, for there to be some other horror to be faced together, or for your character to turn the tables on him.]

[I was thinking maybe Will decides to go along with Hannibal post season 1? Would prose be all right?]

[Prose is my preference, so yay! Not sure if you mean go along with in terms of leaving with him or going along with his nefarious shenanigans, but I can run with it either way.]

[All the things. I’m just gonna wing it some.]

Hannibal knew his way around a kitchen like he knew his way around a metaphor. They had been locked in a terrible waltz since they’d met and somewhere along the way, Will found himself taken in by the grace and the understanding and the true and genuine horror of everything that the man stood for. He was only human and Hannibal? Well he was certainly a fisher of men (in more ways than one). Will stopped struggling the net one night along the way, and that alone was the only reason he survived.

You see, the knife in his belly wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t an attempt for revenge or to break or mend a tea cup. The cup wasn’t the answer here, it was the tea itself. Hannibal had spilled the tea and now he needed to spill Will too.

It was the only way it would work.

A butcher and a surgeon, he’d known where to make the cuts. He’d known how to cause pain and to leave a mess on the floor. He knew that there would be almost too much there to think that Will was anything other than dead.

Will himself thought he was dead too, shivering in the other man’s arms as he stroked his hair and prattled on about porcelain and places that were made for their little family.

His legs failed him but Hannibal didn’t.

When Will woke, it was to the smell of garlic, to the sounds of birds and wind rustling sweet grasses. He woke to Abigail humming something he’d heard Hannibal play before, but he couldn’t place the name. He was groggy. His abdomen hurt when he tried to move so he closed his eyes and went back to laying still. He heard his name in a feminine voice and the. Feet — sneakers — on the carpet and then hardwood floors. This wasn’t a place he had been before and he had no idea how he had gotten here.

Downstairs, where he could not hear, Abigail told the man making breakfast that Will was awake. Or at least nearly so. And that was good. His bandages would need changing soon.

[Ah yes, a player after my own heart.]

Hannibal had come very close to ending everything. His heart wasn't broken, but it had definitely been bruised by Will's betrayal, and Hannibal hadn't ever had a reason to develop the healthy coping mechanisms that he'd spent his psychiatric career suggesting to one patient or another. It had occurred to him that letting go his dream of a family would help him let go of the pain, but in a moment of clarity, he'd seen a future in which he spun out with nothing to keep him centered as his bridges burned behind him.

Time would tell if he'd made the right choice, but he was at peace with it.

He murmured an acknowledgment to Abigail, tucked a few strands of her hair behind the ear he hadn't taken, and left her with instructions not to let the sausage scramble burn while he was away.

He rapped lightly on Will's door before entering, carrying a small glass of water with a straw that swayed with his steps, and a medical bag that he set on the floor by the bed. He had left behind his button-downs and french cuffs for now, wearing charcoal trousers and a dark gray long-sleeved t-shirt that was, for him at least, more about comfort than style, even if it likely cost more than most of Will's old wardrobe put together.

"I'm happy to see you awake." He pulled a chair closer to Will's bedside and without being asked, held the glass where Will could reach the straw. "Abigail wouldn't hear my reassurances until she saw you wake with her own two eyes."

Perfectly calm, perfectly normal, as if he hadn't surgically not-gutted Will not so long ago.

Good sense would tell anyone in Will’s current position to refuse all help, but he’d come to many conclusions all at once as he bled down the front of Hannibal’s shirt. The betrayal had hurt him too, for instance. He needed the man who had tried to destroy his mind (and for what that particular reason was, Will still could not say). It was why he tried so hard to make sure he escaped, after all, even if Hannibal had ruined all of that by waiting around for him. It all was murky, and thinking hurt too much so Will accepted the straw with parched lips and a seeking tongue to draw it towards them. Two sips was about all he could muster, an elbow slipping out from under him so his head reflattened his curls on the pillow.

“Why’m I not dead?” Will partially slurred, though he did not truthfully need the answer to that. He could read the situation if he tried just a little harder. He wasn’t dead because he hadn’t been wanted dead. So far as he could tell, aside the precision cut across the belly, he was actually all in one piece (minus three to three and a half pints of blood, of course). A nervous thumb ran just under the top hem of the bandage, visible for an inch or so over the expensive sheet keeping him as warm as he needed to be on this beautiful day.

Earnest eyes lifted towards Hannibal as if Will was channeling one of the dogs he constantly rescued, now hopefully well cared for by another as he didn’t think he’d be making it home again. The question still stood, now that he’d had his water, and clarity was returning to him as the mud washed away.

The question stood not because he didn’t have the answer, but because he wanted audible confirmation of the answer.

Will was hoping that there would be a soft landing since he’d already jumped feet first and hope was the only thing left to him.

Good sense likely should have told Will not to warn Hannibal of the last fraying thread holding his very own sword of Damocles suspended over his head.

He set the glass aside when Will dropped his head back to the pillow and leaned in to put a cool hand on Will's brow, more because he wanted to than out of any particular diagnostic intent. "You aren't dead because I didn't intend to kill you."

He smoothed Will's hair much as he had smoothed Abigail's hair minutes before, and his expression was, if not precisely warm, not hostile either. This wasn't how he'd wanted to bring Will here, but that bridge was burned, and he still had at least part of what he'd wanted. "Are you in pain?"

“You could say that,” Will’s reply came quickly, though he closed his eyes to the touch. It was equal parts pleasant and disturbing, which balanced out the way that Will felt in regards to the man offering the conflicting sensations. With his eyes closed, Will could still see Hannibal. He knew his face intimately, though in his mind’s eye, it was darker and oily, it was profoundly alien and familiar. The dichotomy that Hannibal presented here had Will’s eyes flutter open again. It had nothing to do with trust, for even though he was prone and recovering from a vicious attack, he could not help but trust the doctor. He simply did not care for the feeling of the shadow Hannibal at the moment. It ticked wrongly at his empathy and Will could not risk that when he was so weak.

Pain would fade in the days and weeks to come, but Will would push that timetable short. He wasn’t a man willing to lay around all day and be cared for, though he was sensitive to his current need to be. One hand, trembling as it had the night of what he was already terming his accident in his mind, lifted from the bandage around his abdomen to first brush against Hannibal’s wrist and then to wrap the first two digits around it until he was left just clutching at his sleeve hem like a babe.

“You could have tried a little harder to convince me to come here,” Will said, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly upward. “It didn’t have to be so dramatic.” Now that? That was laughably untrue.

The question of pain really had only one answer. Hannibal knew what he'd done to Will; it had been a matter of millimeters between an ugly scar and losing a stretch of intestine to go with the scar. Of course Will was in pain, and there was (large) part of Hannibal that thought that Will had earned it.

Even so, Will had gotten under his skin, had changed him in a way that Hannibal was still processing after denying it to himself for so long. Of course Will had changed him, why else were he and Abigail still alive? Why else did Hannibal's expression soften at the weak grasp at his wrist?

He turned his hand to wrap his fingers gently around Will's hand and covered it with his other hand for a moment. "I knew that you let Freddie Lounds live."

Knowing had felt much like being gutted.

He lightly squeezed Will's hand between his before guiding it back to lie on the bed. It wasn't a rejection, just a need to have both hands to retrieve the medical back and pull out a small kit - syringe and vial of morphine that he drew up into the syringe without further comment before injecting it into the IV port for the IV that had been keeping Will from hypovolemic shock and delivering regular doses of antibiotics.

“Was it that obvious?” Truth be told, there had been moments during the entire attempt at subterfuge that Will had wanted, so badly, to do whatever it took to keep Hannibal’s attention. There was a darkness inside of him that would have loved to fell head first into creating the beautiful displays of immortality he had come to know was part of Hannibal’s design. To allow his morality to rear it’s head before he could forever fall into the muddy water had been a betrayal to himself as well as to Hannibal. He should not lie here regretting it, but he did. It had torn him open as readily as the blade had. “No, don’t answer that.”

The hand that had been tenderly comforted tingled from exterior warmth for a few moments before the push of morphine made that feeling moot. His whole body swam pleasantly, reaching upwards like the petals of a rosebud. When he closed his eyes this time, Hannibal remained himself. The stag did not attempt to consume him or gore him open.

A slow, easy sigh escaped between Will’s lips and he drifted back to sleep under Hannibal’s watchful eye. He would put up no fuss about bandages needing to be checked or windows opened or closed. He wouldn’t even stir when Abigail called up that the eggs were just on the verge of being overdone.

When Will woke again, it would be darkness save for the ambiance of candlelight picking its way through the velvety darkness. The pain was back, but part of Will was sure he earned it. Like this, he was vulnerable to the emotions of others. He wasn’t the only one with a problem burrowed under his skin. Hannibal had gone a step further and was in his head now too. And right now? Will wanted him there. He didn’t even think about escape.

No, it hadn't been that obvious. Hannibal had been well and truly deceived. He wasn't the fisher of men, Will was. He'd dangled bait that Hannibal hadn't even known he wanted until he'd met Will - to be seen, to be understood, and to be accepted. He'd been hooked, and the only way to get off the line had been to cut himself free.

He watched the morphine carry Will away, musing on the question of what dreams Morpheus might bring him.

The day slipped by quickly as he took shifts with Abigail to stay with Will. He found time to search local news sites and learn that the manhunt was on, Jack and Alana had survived, and evidence suggested that Special Agent Graham was either badly wounded or dead. Jack would use Miriam Lass as reason to hold to hope that Will was alive, but it could only be a faint one as the FBI explored his home, his kitchen, and most especially his basement, and learned more than anyone had really wanted to know.

He was seated at Will's bedside, dozing lightly when he heard Will's breathing change and raised his head. Other than a split lip, it was hard to tell that he'd taken quite a beating recently, which was as he preferred it.

"Welcome back," he said gently.

Reality fell like feathers instead of lead and it took a moment or two of softly ticking moments for Will to respond. He did it on an exhale, dreamlike and sweet, growth on his cheeks the only sign that time had indeed passed for sleeping beauty. “Back with you,” Will agreed. He listened for Abigail but it must be late. The nocturnal animals and insects were playing their musics in full swing, the warm up had passed.

He imagined, briefly, how her day had been. Hannibal had cooked for her, of course. She’d likely checked in on him several times. Maybe she spoke with him too, but given Abigail, it was just as likely that she sat where Hannibal sat and held her hand as he’d held hers. She likely had explored the gardens, perhaps Hannibal taught her the plants and the birds and the insects that existed in this particular eco system outside of Maryland. They would have had dinner together, by candlelight.

“What did you have for dinner?” Will asked, morbidly curious, eyes still closed by the corners of his mouth drifting up as if attached to the string of a balloon. He couldn’t bring himself to be bothered. He didn’t want to be and so, just like that, he wasn’t.

The question and it’s answered mattered little, though. Will had come to love the sound of Hannibal’s voice. It had such a guiding way to it and he felt so lost now. His eyes cracked open, unrested and once more clouded in pain. It would be the way of things for a week or two more. But then, Hannibal had always seemed to find interest in him when he was at his weakest.

"You don't seem troubled by that," Hannibal observed. Will's face was more shadows than highlights in the candlelight, but he didn't need to see Will's face to read him tonight. If Will held to his deceptions now, reaching sunrise wasn't guaranteed.

Although, if he was honest with himself, it was unlikely that he would kill Will now when he had chosen not to in Baltimore. He could still see the shape of a shared life sketched out in the negative spaces they'd left after Hannibal had burned bridges for all three of them.

He leaned closer, covering Will's hand with one of his own, just as he had held Abigail's hand when he'd waited at her bedside a lifetime ago. "Cutlets with cantaloupe salad. I have a light broth ready for you when you feel ready."

He'd found interest in making Will weak to see what he'd do with it. He'd honed his recovery to a razor's edge and turned that blade against Hannibal. He brushed his thumb over the back of Will's hand and mused that he felt many things for and about Will, but the one thing lacking was trust. He cared enough about Will to let him live, but that caring didn't mean that he expected Will not to cut or bite as soon as he was able.

In total fairness, it was very likely that Will might regress to that feral state of a cornered animal just as Hannibal predicted. Not everything that Will had done with the man had been deception, however, and Hannibal hadn’t really needed to whittle down the moral north of his compass so much as gently shift the size and weight of the floating cork so that the needle, little by little, drifted away towards the East. It would take time to cultivate Will, but wasn’t anything worth having better if prepared slowly?

Hannibal had seen the darkness in him and while the world struggled so hard to keep Will from dropping away into the madness his empathy could bring, this one man who held his hand more tenderly than anyone ever had in his life before, his mother included, fitted him with a harness to ease his progress. Will could slip and Will could fall but if Hannibal guided him, darkness could be a welcome home and Hannibal might indeed find the partner he had hoped Will would be hiding in the shadows.

It would just require patience. Will already had a taste for what life with Hannibal could be like. He just needed a constant pressure and a gentle reminder that he actually wanted it.

“I’m not troubled by it,” he said after a moment, “I think I’m better off here than in your kitchen.” The dig was multifaceted. “And I think I would like some broth.”

But in a moment. Will had already turned his hand to grip Hannibal’s back.

"The question," Hannibal said softly, more as if he were asking himself than Will, "is whether you truly want to be here with me and with Abigail or if you're choosing this equanimity while you bide your time and regain your strength."

Was it really a question? Yes. Will sent mixed messages with his choices, luring Will into Jack's trap and then warning Hannibal moments before it was to close. Hannibal was making his own choice to see that dichotomy as Will's fundamental nature warring with the demands of a society that barely wanted him to begin with.

"We made a place for you here. What you must do while you heal and ponder that question for yourself, is to decide whether any of the three of us will be better off if you follow through on the plans you made with dear Uncle Jack. Then you'll know whether you're with us or against us."

He carefully extricated his hand from Will's hold and stood, looking down at him for a moment before picking up the bag from which he'd earlier taken the morphine vial and syringe that had sent Will back into the arms of his dreams. "I'm giving you a lower dose for now. Then I'll return with your broth."

Will opened and shut his mouth without speaking. Hannibal was a trained therapist and he was keenly intuitive about his subjects. Will didn’t have any other design about this moment that to know that Hannibal had seen through his own past and current indecision and was merely laying it out on the table so that the ink could dry. They were in agreement here.

Will needed to choose. And while a human being was typically interested in self preservation, Will felt as if that choice had just been removed from the equation, leaving him able to really weigh out his options without life and death pressuring one side or another.

He settled back against the pillow after watching the dose added to his IV and he waited the seconds it would take for that dose to kick in. He felt it like a welcome reprieve, not because it so much took him from the world as it gave him the chance to formate his pros and his cons.

Over the next week and a half, Will graduated from broth to genuine soup. Abigail made sure he walked and Hannibal kept his wound from getting infect. Conversation tended to be light, not because Will knew that Hannibal was watching him for whichever way he was leaning but because Will himself was focused on recovery of his body.

Some days he thought about escape. Sometimes that escape took the form of lying to Abigail and playing her off of Hannibal. Other times, Will brought the girl with him. Some days, however, when he’d made it down the stairs to sit in the walled garden, he spotted an interesting bird or animal or insect he thought might make a beautiful sculpture—

On his thirteenth day of more or less studied captivity, after Abigail had gone to sleep, Will, using a cane, carefully wandered down the dreaded stairs towards Hannibal’s study. He paused in the doorway, trying to hide a grimace.

“It’s occurred to me that I haven’t once tried to see if the doors or the gate is locked. I’m not sure if it’s because I know that they are or if it’s because I don’t want to go.”

Hannibal had spent the almost two weeks of Will's recovery establishing a kind of normalcy and routine in the household that was as much for Abigail's benefit as Will's. She was accustomed to having to stay hidden, but the circumstances of their coming to this new home with Will in the condition he was in had been difficult for her. She vacillated between blaming herself, blaming Hannibal, and blaming Will. There was, he assured her, no reason for her to blame herself, and if she could be patient, she would have the family he'd promised her. It was a mild lie, as lies went.

The juggling act was enough to keep him well occupied immersed in practicalities. At least the rise of food subscription boxes and online orders and deliveries made it possible to keep the household well-stocked without ever having to venture out in public.

Eventually he'd have to go out to restock the special cuts of meat he preferred, but that could wait.

He let Will make his explorations without hovering, though there was no doubt that he was aware of where Will was at any given time, nor was he entirely unaware of the games Will played with Abigail. He allowed those for now, curious to see where Will would take them.

He raised his head from his drawing and tilted his head at Will before rising from his desk and wordlessly approaching. He put a hand on Will's shoulder and said, "Come with me."

The front door wasn't far, and the walk would be much easier for Will than the effort of getting down the stairs. "Try it."

Try it and feel the knob turn and the latch disengage without any resistance at all. Try it and open the door onto a scene that explained why Hannibal could leave the door unlocked and still sleep soundly at night - thick trees that encroached up to the cleared fire zone around the house and walled garden and one narrow track that was clearly meant to be navigated with a four-wheel drive vehicle or not at all. It was at the end of that track, several miles away, that Hannibal periodically picked up packages from the delivery box.

In Will's current condition, he had no chance of getting that far.

The absurdity of the entire exercise was not at all lost to Will. This particular game had been a dangerous one, one that could stop the pendulum on either side for a double heartbeat. As the knob turned in the palm not occupied by a cane, Will felt his heart leap up into his chest. There was hope there, hope that he’d regained some trust, little good it might do him since he’d yet decided if good or evil would have his soul. That hope was dashed, however, as the well lit garden opened for him to reveal truth instead of trust.

It burst in his throat with a laugh that sounded almost maddened.

“Prisoner then,” he concluded, not bothering to step outside. He didn’t care to go. The air was colder out there and Will spent his days in soft pants with ties at the waist instead of elastic and a variety of plain t-shirts. He sometimes wore slippers to enjoy the garden during the day but they were resting at the back door in a storage case so that Hannibal’s aesthetic wasn’t ruined by Will’s practicality. “Why? To protect yourself or to protect me?”

"To protect us all," Hannibal said, gently closing the door now that Will had seen what there was to see. "Where did you expect I would put a retreat meant for the day I entered the public consciousness as the man behind the Chesapeake Ripper?"

He had other retreats, other bolt holes, and other plans for the future, but this had been the home best suited to rehabilitating someone he wanted to trust but couldn't.

He reached out, a light touch meant to turn Will away from the door. "Has knowing clarified whether you want to leave?"

“Not yet.” There was no point in lying to Hannibal. The man knew all of his tells. He knew all of his facets. The truth, however, was that Will wanted the answer to be that he wanted to stay. It was simply that a small part of him could not give up his freedom.

And giving into Hannibal would mean that he would be caged forever. There was a certain bliss is being cared for in that fashion but the costs had yet to be listed out. Will was hesitating in that regard.

Why? Should the tally come out to favor either side, Will was sure he would lose. This was a testament of wills. Two men, both stubborn, could not easily come to a truce.

Will turned as Hannibal led, relying less on the cane than he had the day before. “I won’t ask where you have us stashed away, but I do want to know if there’s more dessert stashed away.”

He didn’t need Hannibal to lead him to the kitchen. He knew the way. It was home turf for his jailer, for the man he was simultaneously in love with and in fear of. Will didn’t bother to be ashamed by either prospect. He hadn’t needed anyone’s help to identity his feelings, though he wished he knew if they were indeed his or if he had somehow taken on both Abigail’s and Hannibal’s instead.

It didn’t matter. He accepted them as his own either way.

Any other answer would have been a lie, and he would like to think that they'd cut away the veil of lies between them in recent weeks.

"There is always more dessert, depending upon how patient you are." His tendency to meticulously plan meals meant that most leftovers had a planned purpose for future meals, but dessert with a teenager in the house required leftovers almost as a matter of self-preservation. "There are some berry tarts if that will suit." Otherwise he had no objection to a bit of cooking. The kitchen really was the heart of the home for Hannibal. A dark heart, if one read too much Tattlecrime, but that was neither here nor there.

He walked with Will and pulled out the comfortable chair that was meant for whoever was playing audience for his culinary theater that day. "Just tell me what you want, Will."

Sitting down was worse than standing and walking combined. Hannibal had managed to just him exactly where his body naturally bent and the constriction of his muscles hurt like hell. He didn’t bother to hide the hiss, which either was because he wanted the man to know he was in pain or because of the no lie clause that they were enjoying. He set his hand over the wound and glanced at what was on the counter.

“I had my heart set on some of the mousse from yesterday. Abigail got to it first?” The conversation, as Hannibal donned his apron and pulled out his ingredients, had become something out of television show. It was concise, mostly small talk, but it was what Will needed to settle down. “Are there whole raspberries left?”

He leaned to the left and craned his neck as best he was able, eyebrow lifting curiously.

Though he had pulled Hannibal from the task he had been doing, Will was pretty sure that the other man didn’t mind. These were moments of bonding, though Will was reluctant to call it that. He needed a clear head to decide his path, though Hannibal made it difficult to concentrate.

Later, while the mousse was chilling and Will was picking on the tart, when the conversation had died away, he lifted his eyes towards the strangely handsome and utterly unique face that was directly across from him.

“What would happen if I decided to stay?”

There were more raspberries and there could be more mousse shortly. Hannibal was inclined to indulge Will, given the circumstances. In truth he was generally inclined to indulge Will. How else to explain the man's survival after cutting Hannibal more deeply than Hannibal had subsequently cut him?

Cooking was soothing, practical, necessary for life, but a shorthand for comfort and home as well. There was a routine to it, a familiarity in having Will in his kitchen while he heated, melted, and whisked, all because Will had a taste for mousse tonight.

At some point while chocolate shavings had been melting in a double boiler, Hannibal had briefly excused himself, returning with a pill bottle that now sat on the table near Will's water glass. Pain medication was something he kept close track of, lest Will try to harm himself or Hannibal. He had no fear for Abigail; he knew Will too well.

For himself, he had a glass of wine, nothing more, and he sipped it while he let Will's question briefly hang in the air. "Italy, I think. My mother was Italian, did you know? I would love to introduce you and Abigail to Florence, but that doesn't answer the heart of your question, does it?"

Will knew so very little about Hannibal. He wished he had more of the man’s background on file in his mind to peek through and draw conclusions from, but he simply did not. His motivations were a mystery. How did this incredible artist and surgeon get to be the way he was? When did healing hands turn instead towards such artistic killings? Will had gotten into his mindspace many times. He’d seen and learned much about Hannibal through his crime scenes, but that was one thing that he could never have true answers for.

The profiler put away his tools, mentally, and the man sat across from Hannibal put down his fork. The tart was gone anyway, and it would be some time before the mousse (which Will still had room for), was ready for consumption. He did take the medication, however, vaguely aware that he could be poisoning himself. His trust for Hannibal had peaks and valleys and was just as complicated as the rest.

“I don’t know if we’ll have Florence,” Will said. “But I would like to.” He was not buttering Hannibal up. The man was keeping him lightly drugged and Will didn’t have the capacity of mind to be manipulative at the moment. “But you’re right. That’s not what I was asking. I always imagined that there would be a wide array of travel plans with you.”

Some details of his background were matters of public record. Jack had made that clear the first time he'd come to Hannibal's office. Perhaps Will had avoided those records to avoid clouding his assessments of Hannibal as he was with details of where he'd been.

He watched Will choose to take the pills. He offered Will more choices than he was given credit for, but that was no surprise in the circumstances. "You wonder if I'll demand that you join me in killing, or if I'll resume my unorthodox therapies with you and mold you into something other than who you believe yourself to be."

He set his glass down and leaned forward slightly, eyes never wavering from Will's face. "Since your release, you've taken your becoming into your own hands. You beat Randall Tier to death with your bare hands. You put him on display. You ate at my table having provided the meat. You would have killed Clark Ingram in cold blood without my intervention. I don't need to mold you into anything."

Good will had a way of being used up when one too many buttons were pushed one too many times. Randall Teir was one of those buttons, but not exactly for the way that Hannibal might thing. Killing a killer had been easy, and almost a moral duty to society. It helped that Will was part of a law enforcement group. He could rationalize it so easily. He could even rationalize his display. To catch a killer, he needed to worm himself into the world of a killer. Abigail’s father had been in the forefront of his mind during most of the process, yes, but he always had wanted to impress Hannibal with his conclusion. The dressing had been just as important as the reason Jack needed proof of this magnitude.

So where then was the problem?

Will hadn’t just butchered Randall, hadn’t just brought the gift for Hannibal’s table. He’d done so much worse. The contents of that cooler in his shed proved it. To boil it down, Will hadn’t been playing sides at all. With Hannibal, in those glorious moments, he was no longer attempting to manipulate, no longer trying to make the man believe that they were kindred.

They were actually kindred. The killing and displaying of Randall Tier had been a genuine act of affection towards Hannibal Lecter. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Jack had snapped him back.

“It doesn’t matter if it was your intention to mold me or not. You classified me. You know who and what I am. You know my soul and you used that. And I let you. Everything that’s happened to me-- That’s you pulling the strings. I didn’t cut them in time. I still haven’t. I don’t know anything about my ‘becoming,’ Hannibal. I’m crazy, remember? I’m crazy to trust you after all of this…even knowing that you’ll never trust me again.” That last word, that ‘me’ made him smirk. “You know me better than I’ll ever know myself. Maybe that’s why I’m letting you drug me and not trying to escape. You’ve made me need you.”

They'd shared something truly special standing in that museum, looking at what Will had done to elevate a man who'd never felt human. There had been the kind of beauty that could move him to tears for a work of transcendent art or a perfectly sung aria. He'd thought that he and Will had found equilibrium.

The best lies were pearls accreted around a grain of truth. Will's truth was that he and Will were very much alike; the lovely lie was that Will would take the hand that Hannibal had offered him to leave behind a world that couldn't appreciate him the way Hannibal could.

"You aren't crazy, Will. You were ill and that illness was treated." He tilted his head and didn't look away or change his expression. He wasn't apologetic and he wouldn't insult either of them by pretending to be. "Not by me, but it was successfully treated. The drugs, as you say, are nothing more insidious than hydrocodone. I would recommend against taking it for an extended time, but it will not render you more susceptible to suggestion."

He didn't sound tired, he didn't sound frustrated or impatient or offended that Will was disputing what he saw as truth. He also didn't have the warmth to his tone that so often characterized talking to Will and Abigail, his would-be adoptive family.

"If you choose not to stay with us when you're healed, I won't kill you. I'll lock you in your room and Abigail and I will drive down that road and you will never see us again. You'll break out of your room easily enough, hike down to the nearest connecting road, and you can be the man who survived the Chesapeake Ripper."

He picked up his wine and drank again, putting the glass down only when it was empty. "And you will know that you chose poorly." Again.

Disappointment colored Will’s cheeks, and shame followed it’s heels. During the period of time where he was convincing himself, and Hannibal, of his lies, Will had felt truly happy and truly fulfilled. He’d questioned if that was due to Jack’s desire or Hannibal’s but he had never stopped to ask if it was his own real feeling or just a scraping from a man he was close to.

Will stayed silent for a long time, drawing his hands to fold in front of his wound, elbows on the arm of the chair. He no longer wanted the mousse, but he would eat it Hannibal’s creation as readily as ever. He did not know if it would nourish him the same way it had when he had initially asked for it, however.

The silent hurt after the speech and Will couldn’t stand the look in Hannibal’s eyes. He did everything, in fact, to keep from looking at him, though he twitched between smile and frown the way he sometimes did when he couldn’t focus himself. “I think I would feel better to know—” What? That Hannibal would kill him and select a fine meal to prepare him in? He couldn’t say that out loud. “That I was always with you.”

The confession was not one given lightly.

“You’ll never trust me again. My fate is going to be that room.” And why did that anger him so? Will cast around for his cane and, spotting it a little too far away, pushed himself up with the armrests. He sounded for all the world like a petulant child.

Hannibal was impassive in the face of Will's shifting emotions, but that impassivity was a well-constructed mask over his own sense of betrayal and impatience with the situation. He made no effort to help Will get his cane. He stayed in his chair and simply watched Will trying to stand.

After several slow breaths to ensure that he had his feelings locked down, he said, "I have told you that whether you stay or not will be your decision. If you make that decision solely because you think that I'll never trust you again, ask yourself why you should ever trust me. Ask yourself if you can ever learn to trust even with all the doubts."

He said that last with a quote from William Blake in mind, Love is weak when there is more doubt than there is trust, but love is most strong when you learn to trust even with all the doubts.

It was foolish to get worked up when these games with Hannibal were long, slow burns. Whatever Will felt needed not be picked apart, thread by thread, because the tapestry was so massive that a single thread would be of little consequence. Will clenched his jaw from effort, leaning now on the table. He did not cut an impressive figure in the slightest. Though he was well on his way to healing, though he exercised his body to prepare himself for when the pain had fled, it had not gotten too far out of hand just yet.

“.You’ve toyed with me since the moment we met, but I can’t stay away from you. And you? You can’t stay away from me either. Do you know what I trust? Right now? I’m pretty sure that even if you did leave me here, that wouldn’t be it. You’d come back. You’d find a way.” It might sound like Will was convincing himself but the truth of the matter was simple.

Hannibal and he were a pair. One without the other was less.

And Will’s anger now was cast boldly towards himself and it fizzled in magnificent realization as he let himself slip back down to the chair. He was strong enough, physically, to move. He just didn’t really want to.

“I want to trust you. Even if I might always have doubts.”

Will didn’t need guidance. He needed companionship. He was just terrible at asking for it.

There is a term that describes the phenomenon (natural or human-aided) in which two trees grow intertwined. They're inosculated, a term also applied to surgical skin grafts when blood flow is established between host and graft. Any attempt to separate inosculated trees is likely to result in both trees' death.

They're also known as marriage trees.

Whether Hannibal liked it or not, whether Will welcomed it or not, they were inosculated. How else to explain Will's survival when so many others had perished for far lesser offenses against Hannibal's sensibilities?

He listened to Will, thinking of inosculation and separation, providing an outwardly impassive, but attentive audience for his anger and for his prediction that Hannibal wouldn't be able to leave him for good, and when Will said he wanted to trust him, he inclined his head to acknowledge that.

"What are you most afraid of if you choose to stay with me? With us?" he asked.

Though Will lifted his eyes towards Hannibal, his gaze hovered at his right ear and then the part of his hair before dropping to his shoulder. He’d gotten better at eye contact, he’d gotten better at being more human in social situations. But this was a query that put him in a terrible position. The sponge that was his empathy seemed to stick on the edge of a nail.

What was he afraid of? Everything, the answer came easily. He was afraid of losing himself, of finding himself, of slipping into blackness and of discovering the light. He was afraid of being happy and of never being happy again. He was afraid of his headaches and his insight and his dreams—

He was so very afraid of his dreams.

But Hannibal had asked what Will was most afraid of. ‘Everything’ was not an answer that would bring them both satisfaction.

His eyes shifted back to the wine glass, the last few droplets of drink clinging stubbornly to the well by the stem. “I’m afraid of finding out that I’ve been fighting something that I should have embraced a long, long time ago.” He eased himself back in the seat. “And maybe secondary, I’m afraid that I stopped being Will and started being Garrett Jacob Hobbs... and if I stay, that’s all I’ll ever be.”

He offered half a crooked smile at that. Hobbs had never left him, but Hannibal knew that. He’d watched it happen.

Hannibal watched the familiar obstacle course of eye contact avoidance that Will so often ran when he was conflicted. His gaze had rarely done that during the period when he had been courting Hannibal with lies and murder. Despite the betrayal that had been behind that calm, Hannibal wanted that sharp-edged Will Graham back.

"Garret Jacob Hobbs was a hunter of girls. You are a fisher of men. Your reasons for what you do aren't his. You are not Garret Jacob Hobbs." He kept his gaze fixed on Will's face even if Will couldn't look him in the eye and said it slowly and with complete authority. It came easily when he believed what he was saying and wasn't just trying to guide Will in a particular direction.

He was the calm center around which Will could circle and storm. "Don't fear embracing this change. Fear going back to a life where your meaning was defined by how much more Jack could wring out of you before you broke irreparably and all the king's horses and all the king's men wouldn't be able to put you back together again."

Will was already damaged goods. He didn’t so much mean the wound across his belly, he didn’t mean the way his mind had fractured, either. Hannibal had touched him and Will had never been the same again. That too was Jack’s doing with a small assistance of an Alana Bloom name drop. But then, this had always been the outcome, hadn’t it? He was destined to have met Hannibal, to be taken in like one of Will’s on strays and given a home that was suited to nurture.

Will ignoring the pull on his wound as he hunched forward. The opioids helped take the edge off anyway. He rubbed at his forehead, keeping thoughts in or trying to wipe their stains away. Will was hard to crack, despite how many fault lines coursed across his shell.

After a moment, his hand fell towards Hannibal, knuckles to the table and palm up. Reaching, but not reaching. He again was able to look the man in the eye, for s moment, and there was an amused curve to his lower lip.

“You know, we’ve been focused on if I’ll stay when we should have taken it from the reverse approach. I know that I don’t want to go back. I can’t. I can’t be that Will Graham anymore. You know, I don’t even to.” And not simply because Hannibal wasn’t there. Jack suppressed, yanking him away whenever he came close to a real breakthrough, and Hannibal encouraged. Jack took choice away when Hannibal gave it back.

Will lifted his hand back to his face to rub his lips and laughed genuinely, shaking his head.

He wasn’t damaged. He was cracked because he needed to be in order to break out of this shell.

“All right—. All right, Hannibal. I’ll stay with you. With you both.” And they could be a family.