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[ It's not something that really ever becomes routine, it doesn't matter how often he wakes up someplace strange and uncharted. The voice on the line sounds about as scattered as he feels. ]

My name is Will Graham, it's- [ He's pulling back his sleeve to look for a watch that's not there. ] I don't have the time. I don't- I don't have the time.

[ Hang on, don't get too lost. ]

It's not clear to me exactly where I am, but- [ a dry laugh ] you probably already knew that. This isn't even my phone. But you probably knew that too.

[ He's missing details. He's missing plenty. His voice trails off for a short while before he can get his bearings enough to speak again, and even then it's almost unconsciously. ] I don't know. I don't know.

[ It's as if the fact that he has no idea sparks him back into the present. His voice grows more composed, if somewhat cracked. ] So if you're hearing this, if anyone is hearing this - [ is anyone hearing this? ] - any singular indication will be key.

[ Another beat. ]

I feel as though I've strayed a long, long way from home.

[ The air goes dead, and then so does the line. ]

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[The thing is - the truly interesting thing, the end toward which they have been moving since they first met in Jack's office - is that there is no clear winner between a hornet and a spider. Speed against speed, venom against venom, wit against wit.

Hannibal wants and equal out of Will. He wasn't one, when last they spoke. But he could be. Will be. And perhaps now, he is.

Hannibal is waiting at the door. He had a scalpel, from the mirror Barge, but Mal was quick to remove it from him. He has no weapons, but that's all right. Will won't have any, either.

When he opens the door, the doctor smiles, and steps aside to invite his friend in.]

It's good to see you again. [I missed you. Underneath their layers, their text and subtext, somewhere there are plain words, and those are Hannibal's.]

[ It's good to see you, the greeting coils itself nastily inside of him, beckoning all the same. Will blinks evenly and neatly slips his glasses from his face. ]

Doctor Lecter.

[ He finds his greeting a certain degree more cautious than Hannibal's own, though it's not unpleasant. It's brand new, this charade in which he finds himself, and in an arena where he knows none of the rules. Comparatively, walking into Hannibal Lecter's office feels (miraculously, hilariously) more like playing on his own home field.

Like his cell, the attention to detail is uncanny. ]

Time - [ evidently, as it turns out, and Will stops in the middle of the room to give a cursory glance over the place, ] is suddenly a very loosely-based construct. [ His gaze shifts and settles, lighting upon Hannibal. He wonders here, too, what he can believe with his own two eyes. ] How long have you been here?

[The use of his title and surname is not an unexpected one: they left things on an uneven note. It does not bother him, and he closes the door behind Will to follow him into the office, moving to lean against his desk rather than hover. The office itself is much unchanged: the table in the corner has more drawings piled upon it than he did at home. Some of them are bloody, but the majority are still lives, etchings of things remembered, scattered bits of his memory palace that he retreats to when necessary. The picture of Will is gone, delivered to Alana's safekeeping, but there are a couple stray ones of Abigail, and more of faces Will doesn't yet know, some he will never know.

He has a great deal of time, here.

There is a door, too, where there wasn't one before, in the far corner of his office. It leads to his bedroom, mismatched and misplaced, but welcomed all the same. It is a shame the suit of armor did not make the journey as well.]

Time has been a loosely based construct for me for, oh. [He pauses as if to calculate the distance between them, though he knows the number between him and his memories of home.] Ten months, I would hazard.

[Ten months in a prison that is no real prison. He doesn't smile.]

How long has it been since your encephalitis was healed? [It's a gambit, but not a very dangerous one. He gave himself a coming out party on the Barge already, thinking it unlikely that anyone else would show. It already bit him, where Alana was concerned, though he imagines that might have happened eventually. His warden can be very changeable.

But Will. Will might be different.]

[ No real prison, but a prison nonetheless. That's ten months of - mild restriction, almost a mockery of his own vague (vivid) entertainments. Though certainly not without Hannibal's own breed of entertainment; he had quite the reputation here already. He thinks of Dr. Banner's harsh tones, "he fed people to my patients."

Hannibal's baser proclivities coming once again to light don't particularly shake him. It's the whole 'getting caught' thing that really throws him off.

And time. Beyond Hannibal, time is what eludes him. Ten months hardly matches up with yesterday, but he's been told more than once that there's a certain fluidity here with which he's - actually, unsurprisingly used to. This is something much greater than a few lost hours. But Hannibal brings up encephalitis and Will's face furrows minutely, puzzled, even as the fog clears from his eyes and he learns another one of two interesting things about the man:

The first came with the simple knowledge that he, too, was an inmate. He's also dead (supposedly, dubiously, and yet viscerally, he knows), and, knowing him as well as he does, was undoubtedly murdered. Entirely impossible - Hannibal's decidedly not dead where he comes from - and yet Will finds himself wondering by whose hand.

He does wonder, but moreover he roils over the fact that Hannibal doesn't know. The answer to his own question, as though the last couple of months have blurred around him. (Momentarily, he ruminates upon the time lost and tries to hand-pluck Hannibal out of each scene. He might as well be trying to catch a fish with his bare hands.) Baltimore. The trial. Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter, and Matthew Brown, Chilton, Miriam, Randall, he doesn't know. ]

Weeks. [ he admits at first, but then too much has happened since then to quantify, and he has to settle on something more than that: ] I could potentially theorize that means our - agreed upon open and honest relationship no longer pertains.

[ Or maybe it will. He's not sure where this portion of the story is going to take him. A macabre Choose Your Own Adventure. Will chooses to wander, and finds himself idly sifting through the drawings laid out on the table. ]

Within one hour of my arrival, there was someone asking me if I would kill you for them, you know. [ There's a particularly cathartic drawing, in all its gory detailed glory, and Will pauses, his fingers pressed against the page. He looks back to Hannibal, and off-handedly imagines eviscerating him like the man in the drawing. ] I'm not. Here to kill you.

[The confusion, small though the gesture is, catches Hannibal's attention. He watches people like a predator, something he has often spun as polite attentiveness. He doesn't hide it; he embraces it. But his eyebrows rise, his interest further piqued.]

Potential theories are often unrealized. What were the parameters of this open and honest relationship?

[He does not mimic Will's inflections, but he is intrigued by it. Will was, upon first meeting, an animal that would not allow anyone to get too close. Hannibal coaxed the beast down from the balcony, down to the floor, and--the Admiral brought him here before he was able to see the fruition of it all, the beast coaxed into its cage.

It would not have remained there: if Hannibal was looking simply for someone to house the blame for the Ripper's murders, he would not have chosen the most interesting man he's come across in years. Of course, the plan had only been half formed, formed malleable under the knowledge that it would change with every action Will saw fit to take.

Plans are different now, still malleable for action and reaction. But he does feel some sense of loss at not having seen it through.

But Will did. Will saw it through to an open and honesty relationship. Hannibal is fascinated.

He drifts closer, standing adjacent to Will. He still gives the caged animal his space, tilting his head instead to see what has caught the other man's attention. He wonders how vivid Will Graham's mind can be, and swallows a smile.]

That is a comfort. [He says it like an offhand comment about the weather, how fortunate it won't rain during our picnic, that breeze is quite relaxing.]

Shall I guess who made the request?

[ Open and honest, though a label Will has put forth himself, is still a loose description at best. Hannibal deals in half-truths and metaphors, reflective questions where there could be answers. The strategy is about casual subterfuge, but more instinctively it is mere survival. Will similarly finds himself in a position of simply surviving, not unlike his counterpart. Where words are not comprised of letters but instead pieces from a chessboard.

Will regards Hannibal with caution, and yet speaks with contradictory insouciance: ] Just don't lie to me.

[ Which is remarkably simpler here, maybe, though especially when so many here seethe the name Hannibal Lecter as though mouthing through the bars of a cage. ]

And I won't lie to you.

[ Which could just as easily be a proffered deal as it could a lie in and of itself. He finds it difficult to side with any sort of immediate alliance, even though he's been warned off Hannibal more times than he cares to count.

By all means, by all omens, he probably shouldn't be here - there can be no promise of victory, no matter how slim, though he's not even sure what victory might look like when all is said and done. Psychologically speaking, Hannibal is very easily very bad for Will and he's more than well aware. This ship's occupants alone have demonstrated that any person within their right mind should steer a clear path.

No, he definitely shouldn't be here - shouldn't.

That's not to say 'wouldn't'. After all, here he stands. ]

Let's say it was a friend of a friend. [ Though 'friend' is such a funny word. ] Death here seems to be advertised as though some kind of histrionic nightmare, desperate to be noticed, to wreak discomfort and fear. You feel the pain, and then you don't. You awaken worse for wear, breathless, perspiring, pleading with whichever god might be listening for it not to happen to you again.

But eventually it goes away. Eventually everything goes away.

[ Very dryly, he adds: ] I read it in the brochure.

[Hannibal has been more open and honest here than he ever has been, though given his druthers that would be different. Murder is somewhat more difficult in a place where death has a way of not lasting. But even with a warden who owns his file, Hannibal has remained, in many ways, still distant.

He knows there are those that believe they know him and his motivations. He has no patience for those people, and sees nothing lost in the thought: his pride, to some extent, suffers a small bruise. But his ego is not so fragile as some would think.

There is another addition to the office: the espresso maker from his kitchen. Hannibal turns to it now, fixing that promised cup of coffee while he listens. The idea of honesty is an interesting one, he will not deny that. He has not been inclined to tell the whole truth in any one situation for a very long time, though: better to tease and twist it the better to suit an occasion. He has ever been interested in only his own end.

But the end with Will was, in so many ways, honesty. He cocks his head, waits till the noise of the machine quiets.]

Curious conversation topics, aren't they? Honesty and death.

[The cup is settled on a saucer, and Hannibal carries it to Will.]

There is little honesty in the act of dying, here. There is no honesty in the phantom pains that come after.

[He has died. He doesn't bother hiding it.]

And sometimes, there is death in honesty. [He arches his eyebrows at Will, leaves the question unspoken: was it Hannibal who sent him here, as it was Will who sent Hannibal?]

[ And the coffee, he does gladly take - though seemingly not to drink, at first. The saucer sits awkward in his hands, a finger curled around the handle of the cup. He stares, and watches the liquid ripple and settle with his hands. "Phantom pains," Hannibal describes it, and Will feels unsure about the ache in his gut he felt upon wakening. Then again, it wouldn't have been the first time he couldn't quite instantaneously wake himself out of a particularly nasty slumber. ]

I thought it a dream. How viscerally wounded I felt.

[ It's not, he's not dreaming. His two feet stand solidly on the ground and he feels it, continues to cling to the idea of his instincts' agreement with every person who came to him as a death omen. A gravestone, a grief counselor.

Honesty and death. They certainly no longer walked hand in hand here, although Will has been jaded, and has seen many a death that wasn't executed with any breed of particular honesty. Passion, certainly, and instinctive (animalistic) needs. He wonders what would count as an honest death. Is it going out quietly in your sleep? It would be non-accidental in nature; something earned, something with meaning.

Was it honest, he wants to ask, when he slit Abigail's throat and left her for dinner? Was it honest to leave Beverly a series of living blood slides, each one a carved masterpiece of - what? Triumph? ]

I was shot. [ he offers instead, almost dully. At the same time, it's an attempted confirmation: Not Hannibal's modus operandi by and usual means. ] But -

[ It's not in their best interests to get heated, as, at this point, he's not entirely sure where to make his stand. Hannibal has in the past and will continue to in the future think of Will as his friend. He's sure of this much, but so long as Hannibal is bringing up his encephalitis -

He recalls plenty at the time. Abel Gideon, holes in his chimney, and totems of his own making. He thinks of the last time he ever saw Abigail, and the way her breathing stuttered when the antlers bore through her chest. The Hobbs' bloodied kitchen floor. His finger is still curled around the mug handle, as if cradling a trigger. ]

I killed you.

[ He phrases it like a definitive statement, but there's a curl up at the end, almost a question. Somehow, impossibly, improbably?, but moreover confusingly. Time works strangely here, time works strangely here. It's a mantra he'll have to repeat, lest his days start bleeding one into the next. ]

[There is something about Will's way of speaking that Hannibal has always loved. His cadences, his poetry: it's not often brushed against in the world, not to Will's extent. When he speaks, Hannibal listens, visceral wounds and all. It makes the dull admittance - that he was shot, the utter lack of art or creativity or any sort of beauty all the sharper.

A butter knife will carve flesh, with enough force behind it. Hannibal knows that there is too much Will knows that he does not, now - that this could all be a clever, careful lie. But it would be a lie to say that he hopes the promise - however comedic its essence may be - of honesty and openness doesn't attract him.

Hannibal's eyes drop to the untouched coffee, to Will's finger and its tight curl. His mind builds a gun in place of the cup, one hand cupping the pistol's butt rather than a saucer. He sees a coat and a confused, horrified expression manifesting and spreading. He closes his eyes briefly and inhales slowly, opening on the exhale.]

Nearly, I think. But nearly has been enough for the Admiral.

[It was a risk he took, driving with Will, bringing him back to the site of so many beginnings. He could have found another way, but he hadn't wanted to. He had wanted, more than anything, to see what Will would do. There is so much still for him to learn and embrace, so much in him that is closer to the surface than Hannibal has ever seen.]

That's a comfort.

[ That could be construed as sarcasm, but the information in and of itself? ]

That's a relief, actually.

[ Everyone else just tells him that he's dead. It might be unfortunate just what this is, this small bit of sanity and from whom he has to hear it. Hannibal grounds just about as much as he upsets, intervenes. Nearly is good, though, nearly, he can deal with easier. He can play pretend and not invite himself into a world where it's Freddie Lounds who's shot and killed him. Freddie Lounds. He'd have almost rather it been Hannibal. An unjust death, but an earned death.

'Nearly,' he thinks, and it sets Will's mind spinning. When he speaks, he has careful control of what's coming out, but it almost sounds frazzled, or at the very least with some seriously stony sincerity. ] Very nearly. [ He'll admit to that. ] I didn't shoot you. [ Another beat. ] Jack shot me. [ But Will didn't shoot Hannibal.

Nor the other time. A time Hannibal doesn't remember. In fact, there have been a number of points where it would have been so easy to prey upon him, slit his throat while he slept, hang him from the highest tree and watch his feet thrash and thrash and still, so still, all at once. ]

None of it seems apropos. The ways in which I've thought of killing you.

[ Despite the topic of conversation, he sounds quite calm, largely detached from the idea of it. ]

I used to lie within my dreams, pricked and prodded by a bed of nails that the weight, the sheer weight of something unexplained. I thought its name to be Hannibal Lecter. [ Hannibal doesn't get a glance tossed his way, rather Will actually starts to lift the cup. ] And nobody could quite see it happening.

[ He sips once, wets his lips and watches the tea. ]

I have traveled - a weary road of acceptance to get to where I am with you now, Doctor Lecter. [ The formality, he doesn't quite know how to drop; maybe it's that layer of detachment again. ] A way paved with thorns and intermittently sprung bear traps.

[ There's a level of compliment underneath that, almost. A 'you should be proud of yourself'. ]

[Hannibal weaves a path between tone and words, said and unsaid. He watches the ripple of liquid in the cup, smells the heavy smell of coffee beans and reunion in the air. The latter doesn't have a true smell, of course, just a weight on the palate, a heaviness on the roof of his mouth.

He isn't perturbed by Will's confession, not about Jack - he thought Jack might follow - and not about his fantasy. Will lives in a world full of fantasy, weaves them into his reality in elaborate and beautiful tapestries.

He wonders how Will killed him in his dreams, how many different ways, how often hands wrapped around his throat. Abigail dreams of gutting them both, and he encourages and discourages them at once. He will always encourage Will to give voice to his darkest thoughts, even if they involve Hannibal's own demise.

Death is nothing to be feared, after all.

The unuttered compliment is noticed, of course: Hannibal does not smile and duck his head, there is no point in being humble when he is not. Shifts his head, adjusts his shoulders, gives the vaguest semblance of gratitude. He is proud.]

You saw it happening.

[The road unfolded before him, bear traps and all. Hannibal can imagine them: there were so many thorns to lay down in his path, still, when the Admiral snatched him away from the creature comforts of his home.]

But no one would bear the weight with you.

Because you - made it that way - [ It's a little vindictive, tightly said, too quick on the draw, but he settles down fast enough. One of his thumbs scratches at a brow. ] 'Saw' being the operative word, I didn't - [ see see see ] see until later on.

[ The thorns, the bear traps, even as they were accumulating about his legs, bearing him down. ] Hindsight is always 20/20.

[ But he does have one thing, and he watches Hannibal's shoulders shift, he takes in careful consideration of all of these reactions he gives, minute and muted as they may be, but each one a story regardless. Sometimes he knows where the tale is going, sometimes he's thrown for a loop.

Here and now, they each have their own separate semblances of control - Hannibal has home team advantage for the time being, absolutely. But Will knows more than he does, and can reveal as much or as little as he likes in tiny rattlesnake strikes. ]

I remember it all now, you know. Alana, [ he says the name carefully, a tentative list of who may be in his corner rather than in Hannibal's, ] she helped me. In the only way she knew how, but she gave me something - awfully important. A clearer picture.

[ Not that she believed him. ]

[It is always about seeing between them. Seeing the truth, seeing what is and is not there, seeing the divide and the lack thereof. The distance of separation has decreased between them, it has decreased greatly, and Hannibal is almost jealous of the time Will has gathered around him, the experiences and knowledge that surround him like armor.

Experience and knowledge that Hannibal has not.

He is jealous, in that way.

Alana's name inches out of Will's mouth, and Hannibal wonders what the other man would do if he drew up a list for him, handed over the information as clear as day for him to do with what he would.

It would be almost comedic, he thinks: distrust would reign, but so would surprise. Hannibal would never be so open as that. The idea does amuse him.]

What did she paint for you?

A mural.

[ His teeth grit as he recalls, once and all over again - the tube down his throat, the perfect means through which Hannibal framed him, it always stands all too clear in his mind now. ] A masterpiece, a palette of whites and greens and all too much grey filter, at first, like an old movie -

[ All dedicated to Hannibal. ]

These lost memories - [ his gaze is fleeting, towards Hannibal, a darkened look that blames, what you took from me ] - they blaze much brighter than what surrounds it, begging to be noticed with their unlock from the confines of my mind.

[ In boxes, in cages, in mislabeled file folders. His mind is a mess. But he knows where just about everything is inside of it. That doesn't mean he chooses his words any less thoughtfully, or that he knows which ones to grasp for next.

You used me. You abandoned me. I thought we were friends. A long time ago. ]

Doctor Bloom helped clear my mind, so to speak. Swept some of the clutter out from underneath the threadbare rugs.

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01 | 🕐 | audio

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