/Audio Recording Edited for Content (Federal Authorization: 70392 - Crawford, Jack; 6/19/2018)/

*Recording Start*

LECTER: "Jack. It's been so long since we've had a nice chat-"

CRAWFORD: "Put Will on the phone."

LECTER: "…I am quite afraid that Will won't be doing much speaking in the near future. He was not as cooperative as I had hoped he would be. Certain measures had to be taken."

CRAWFORD: "What have you done?"

LECTER: "Do you remember that evening several years ago where you and your lovely wife joined me for dinner, and we indulged in a superb veal cutlet? Well, it has come to my attention that the creature was not euthanized as humanely as I was led to believe, but I am planning on employing a more reliable butcher and attempting the dish again."

CRAWFORD: "What have you done with Graham?"

LECTER: "Now, Jack, I am graciously offering to supply the meal for our little reunion, and all you can think about is poor Will. I have about sixteen hours before I make the state line, so, shall we say seven tomorrow evening for dinner?"

CRAWFORD: "What have you done to Graham?"

LECTER: "Your persistence is quite unnecessary. Dear Will is going to be our guest of honor. In fact, he's so angry I ruined the surprise I had to leave him to, how should I put this, 'stew in his own juices' for a short while. Don't worry, I'm sure he'll have softened up quite nicely by the time we meet."

CRAWFORD: "I'll-"

LECTER: "Seven, Jack. If your dear wife is still breathing, she's welcome to attend."

*End Recording*

It is a curious surprise that Will moves toward him, rather than away, as Hannibal has anticipated to have to run the man down; envisioning a feckless chase through the brush, culminating in a reluctant, if anticipated, reunion. Today, however, Hannibal knows the other man will be emotionally compromised; just as Hannibal is anticipatory, flush with excitement and no small amount of pleasure at the circumstances that have brought him to this point.

Maybe it's just the progression of time or simply the fact that Hannibal has slowly been deteriorating all these years, but the pleasure of watching Will come into his field of vision has become significant in ways Hannibal would have previously disregarded as fallacies of irrational thought. Perhaps this is the reason Hannibal neglects to respond appropriately when Will lunges across the small space and connects his fist with Hannibal's cheek.

The act does little to daze him beyond the initial surprise that follows the sharp, biting pain in his cheek. When Hannibal has straightened, he finds Will standing before him, evidently making no move to do any more than he has already.

The facial distortion he had previously believed to be due to the bungalow's poor lighting is something else entirely; and the truth behind Mason's vague commentary on Will's appearance becomes clear. The man's once pleasingly symmetrical features are lopsided: to the left, Will is as Hannibal remembers. To the right, the man's face is a mess of sun-bleached scar tissue and damaged muscle.

Anger tears through Hannibal, his blood burning hot with jealousy and no small amount of envy. The wound is a betrayal of everything they are, everything they are meant to have. The scarring is beautiful and hideous and none of it is his. The scar that must be on Will's abdomen, that is Hannibal's mark, a sign of ownership; but this, this is lasting, masterful and disgusting and it isn't his.

"You let him touch you?" Hannibal demands, too furious to make the words come out as more than a hoarse demand. "You let him mark you?"

Will blinks in momentary confusion, but his expression turns dark when he realizes to what Hannibal is referring.

"You seem surprised." Will motions to his face as if there is nothing particularly interesting about his disfigurement. "Don't you like it? I understand you had something to do with it."

Hannibal cannot take his eyes away from the ropey white flesh that winds across Will's cheek like long dead ivy. He doesn't respond to Will's question. He can't. Much to his own chagrin, words have failed him. He wants to touch, to bite, to rend flesh from bone, but he's here, lost in his own mind, writhing beneath Will's heel like an insect.

"I wondered if you'd ever try to contact me. After everything you did."

Will pinches the bridge of his nose hard, rubbing at a line of pale pink scar tissue with the pad of his thumb as he pauses to take a breath - body tense like the action pains him - and his fingers move south to ghost over the scarring on his lips.

"You told him to kill my family. To kill me. You remember, don't you? What was done on your order?"

"Did he succeed?" Hannibal asks finally, adjust his posture in an attempt to regain some semblance of normalcy. "Did Dolarhyde actually kill you? Or dear Molly?"

Will smile is tight; whether that is a byproduct of the sub-dermal tissue damage or the man's emotional state, Hannibal cannot say.

"You called me your friend, and then you attempted to eviscerate me. You claimed to love me, and you sent a psychopath to slaughter my family-" Hannibal laughs at the wording, though Will chooses to ignore him, continuing on with growing fervor. "The relative successes and failures of those events hinged on little besides circumstance, which you knew; but your intent," Will's expression turns sour as he motions again to his mutilated cheek. "Your intent has made all of this a much more visceral experience for me."

"I never wanted you dead," Hannibal rebuts, forcing himself not to think of Dolarhyde. "Only incapacitated. Malleable. Though you know all of this, so why question me now, when there are so many other things we could be discussing."

"You're the psychiatrist, Dr. Lecter. Tell me, if you were in my position, confronted with a man who had torn your world from you, had destroyed everything you loved and ruined your chances to ever be seen as normal, even human, again, what would you do? Would you listen while he explains how everything he did was for your own good? I can only assume that's why you're here now," Will looks over Hannibal's shoulder at the place settings on the dining room table. "Cooking me dinner and not impaling me on a spit."

Will taps his fingers rhythmically on the countertop; a nervous one-two pattern Hannibal recognizes from their long-dismissed therapy sessions and Will's time with Chilton.

"You ruined me: physically, emotionally, mentally," Will sucks in a rough breath on 'mentally' like speaking the word hurts him physically. Hallie, who up until this point has been out of Hannibal's line of sight, is confused by the sound and rushes past Hannibal to the kitchen door, her tail shedding wiry hairs on his pant leg.

"Please, tell me. What would you do?" Will asks, face angry but eyes pleading for an honest answer.

"Are you expecting some kind of absolution? I will tell you what I did in your position," Hannibal responds, keeping his eyes locked with Will's own. "However, what has, regretfully, been taken from you is arguably quite insubstantial compared to what was taken from myself." The statement does nothing to placate Will, his expression twisting distastefully, and the tapping continues.

"I would assume it was terrible, given the monster you've proved to be." Will bites, teeth bared momentarily, and the action reminds Hannibal of a feral animal before taking no small amount of offense at Will's dismissal. His displeasure must show in his face, because Will, for a brief moment, is taken aback; cowed into silence.

"I lost a great deal more than you may ever truly comprehend, should I ever deign to share that tale with you in it's entirety. Now, make no mistake, just because I did not personally skin and devour those precious to you does not mean I am incapable of such a task. I am human, I have morals and restraint."

"So your argument is not that you are a monster, but that you are a psychopath? You sound like Chilton. What makes you better than them, Hannibal? What, exactly, makes you more human than those that obviously did this to you?"

Hannibal knows what he is, what he has done, and if Will is expecting him to break, to collapse into a mess of repressed memory and emotion, he will be sorely disappointed.

"By the standards of many, nothing. I have no illusions as to who I am or what I have become. My nature is my own, and despite your arguments to the contrary I am the only living individual that will ever come close to comprehending your Alighieri-esq labyrinth of a mind." Hannibal rolls his shoulders and inhales, allowing his chest to expand in a subtle expression of dominance despite his restrained position. "I have killed a great many people for you, Will; but truly, do you know how many? How much of that blood should rightfully be on your hands?"

Will's eyes have gone dark; his nostrils flared and his twisted lips pulled into a frown. If Hannibal didn't know better, he'd say the man was angry.

"So, before we go pointing fingers and demanding proof of humanity," Hannibal continues. "Tell me, Will Graham, what, exactly, makes you human? Is it your dissociative personality? Your ability to mentally empathize with the most sadistic, arguably inhuman, individuals imaginable? Or is it that the only significant emotional attraction you have ever felt is to the man that showed you the color of your own intestines?"

Will lunges forward, his hands gripping tight around Hannibal's neck; thumbs cutting off oxygen and blurring his vision as Will brings his marred face in close.

"Is this what you've wanted from me all along?" Will seethes, teeth bared, snarling like one of his precious dogs. "I'm 'sane' now, Doctor; no one would believe this was anything but self-defense; because you're a monster." Will's hands are tight around his neck, and with his vision sparking Hannibal closes his eyes and shifts his weight.

I am a monster, Hannibal agrees, even if there is no air left to speak such a damning admission.

Together they fall backward, crashing to the floor in a clutter of limbs and enmity. Before Will can recover, Hannibal is upon him, pinning the man to the floor with a strength he has no right to possess given his years of captivity.

"Go ahead," Will wheezes, his pursed lips shining red with blood and saliva from where he's bitten his lip. "I'm tired of waiting for you, for your drones, for every two-bit psychopath that thinks I'm some goddamn horse whisperer for the deranged-"

Will trails off as Hannibal relaxes his grip and lets his fingers hover over the lines of developing scar tissue that bloom across Will's face like the tendrils of a noxious weed. Thin streaks of shining skin that have healed tight; pulling the healthy dermis taught and exposing slivers of coffee-stained canine where Will is unable to fully close his lips.

It is a picture of defeat, carved into weak flesh by an artist undeserving of such a masterpiece.

"The last vestiges of a broken man," Hannibal says, letting a measure of regret seep into the words. Will doesn't dignify his appearance with a response, he just holds Hannibal's gaze with cold defiance.

Hannibal draws his thumb gently over the worst of the scarring: a half-inch thick gouge to the left of Will's lips that twists the skin of his cheek with all the grace of a snared thread on a loose-knit linen shirt. Will's eyes flutter shut briefly, almost flinching. Whether this is a response to the contact itself or at the lingering threat behind it, Hannibal cannot know.

"I trusted you to take care of yourself," Hannibal says, caressing Will's undamaged lower lip with a careful thumb. "Imagine my surprise at finding you like this. So jaded, so easily roused to anger. I was mistaken in thinking you had gleaned any knowledge from our time together."

Will grimaces and jerks away from Hannibal's touch, throwing out a hand to brace himself against the cabinet, but Hannibal does not lose his hold on Will's body.

"You sent Dolarhyde after me," Will argues, cheek muscles twitching as he speaks through clenched teeth. "What possible reason could you have to justify anything you've done to me?"

Hannibal observes Will. He takes in the man's scarred face, the lingering breathy rot of newfound alcohol abuse and the emotional depression that must come with simply existing as Will Graham. Hannibal does not feel shame. Or remorse. This was Will's failure, not his own, and he will not be made privy to the unnecessary details of a half-life that does not concern him, no matter how badly he desires to claim the opposite.

"I sent Dolarhyde after you because I believed you capable of stopping a man who intended to kill us both. I did not realize you would be so compromised as to let him get the drop on you."

Hannibal lets his thumb linger on the corner of Will's mouth, even as the man sputters with disbelief.

"Are you trying to tell me that was some kind of gift?" The 'g' comes out much harder than it should, and Will swallows reflexively after speaking, clearly negatively self-aware of the impediment. "God, you've taken everything from me," Will admits, voice cracking. "I'm so tired of waiting for you." Cringing, he drops his head hard against the wood floor.

The Will Graham before him now, the man he has so adored for so long, the man asking for death, is not the man Hannibal remembers. Will's surrender is infuriatingly pathetic; Hannibal does not hesitate from telling him as much, firmly gripping Will's jaw between his fingers.

"Is this what has become of you?" Hannibal taunts, watching as Will's skin goes pale white beneath the pressure of his grip. "Begging for death? Do you know what I have done? How many people I have killed? You have no comprehension of what I am, of my legacy. Yet you survived me, and such was my mistake to view you as anything more than diseased meat. I should have let you die, let the infection in your brain drive you to madness before stopping your heart myself."

A red flush creeps from Will's neck to his brow-bone, bypassing the pale skin compressed by Hannibal's undoubtedly painful grasp.

"I lied to you, Will, I bought your trust with the paltry promises of friendship and I used the fibers of your gullibility to destroy everything about you: your career, your personal life, in the end, even your body. I had truly hoped you would rise valiantly from the ashes of your blistering weakness, as emboldened a man as I knew you capable of becoming; yet here you lie before me, feeble as a child and stinking of cheap liquor."

The words are meant to bite, to rouse Will to action, if nothing else.

"How much did you really think you could do before you broke me," Will breathes, shaking off Hannibal's hand roughly. There is a waning hint of challenge in Will's tone that tamps down a bit of the anguish burning in Hannibal's chest.

"Will, I am growing quite tired of your admissions of defeat."

Somehow, watching the fight leave Will makes Hannibal incredibly weary; like witnessing a fire smoldering into ashy nothingness. It's disappointing, having played this game for so long, only for his careful work to culminate into the broken thing that lies before him. Hannibal cannot, however, convince himself he is not ultimately to blame. You cannot break a bird's wings and be forlorn when the creature dies. He leans back, resting his weight briefly on Will's abdomen, over the scar Hannibal knows rests beneath the thin fabric of Will's shirt, before rising to his feet. Will remains on the ground, surprised by the act and unsure of how to proceed. Hannibal holds out a hand, waiting for Will to accept his offer of assistance.

"What is this?" Will asks him, eyeing him warily. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I am not letting the meal I prepared for the two of us to go to waste."

"You think I'm going to eat with you? Now?"

Hannibal affirms with a nod and forces aside the crippling disappointment that threatens to consume him.

"Would you rather I kill you? This was meant to be a pleasant evening before you attacked me, and I am nothing if not a good host."

Will laughs in shock, but doesn't move to get up from the floor, still watching Hannibal cautiously from where he's resting.

"Dare I ask whom will be on the menu tonight?" Will baits, but the words don't hold the fire they might once have. Hannibal allows the sudden fondness he feels to manifest as a smile. At least he can have this; a fleeting moment of nostalgia.

"I don't feel much like eating," Will says softly rubbing a hand over his still-red jaw.

"I am afraid my appetite has left me as well. However, a meal is as much about company as it is what is prepared."

Will watches him, but the distrust in his eyes fades quickly to resignation.

"There will never be a time I am not angry with you." Will says softly, pulling himself to his feet. "We talk, you say your piece, and you will leave. Understand?"

Hannibal wants to argue, to tear Will apart and rebuild the man into something familiar, something that doesn't remind him of his own failures. Instead he holds out a hand, inviting Will to return the gesture and shake in some parody of a truce. Will obliges, like his hands had not, only moments ago, been wrapped around the column of Hannibal's throat with the intention of killing him.

"There are really only three ways this can end." Hannibal tells him when they separate.

"I know." Will replies, and opens the kitchen door to whistle for Hallie to come back inside.

"Do you really want me to leave?" Hannibal asks, watching the way the breeze from the open door ruffles Will's unruly curls.

"You know I spent a year trying to reconcile why I felt so connected to you? In the beginning, before the false accusations and attempted murder. You treated me like I wasn't something dangerous," Will keeps his back to Hannibal as he speaks and breaks to chuckle lamely. No mirth is to be found in the sound. "And I liked it. I felt loved. Like I was worth more than my psychosis. We both know better now, I think. Even if Chilton has convinced you that you're some pining schoolboy with a crush."

Hallie comes bursting through the doorway, a half-chewed stick clenched between her teeth, and runs past them both toward Will's bedroom. Somehow simultaneously breaking and reinforcing the tension between the two of them.

"You know me, Will," Hannibal offers. "Perhaps better than anyone living. Do you really believe that I would go to such great lengths if my affections for you were not genuine?"

"I believe that you believe you love me."

"And I believe that you are projecting your own insecurities onto me. I am not so far gone as to recognize the moral conflict that must accompany the knowledge that you are attracted to an individual who has done irreparable physical and emotional damage to yourself and innumerable others."

Will stays with his back to Hannibal, and Hannibal takes it upon himself to engage the other man; grasping at an opportunity he may never possess again.

"They auctioned off my home, my clothing, my books, my art." Hannibal says softly, moving to stand flush behind Will and resting a hand gently on his shoulder. "My personal drawings are displayed as the sensationalist works of a madman. My storied existence has been reduced to the shock and awe of my crimes. In exchange I gained some level of infamy, but the only true remnant of my former existence, Will, is you."

"I should kill you," Will says quietly, leaning back into the touch. "For everything you've done to me. Everything you're going to do to me."

"What happens next is entirely up to you." Hannibal murmurs into Will's hair, moving his hand from Will's shoulder to his neck, drawing a finger gently along the man's jawline. "Though I would like to possess you once more."

Will makes a noise low in his throat and turns to face Hannibal, any semblance of reluctance slipping quickly away. Hannibal leans in, pressing his lips to Will's temple and breathing in the acrid tang of sweat, musk and cheap conditioner.

"I don't have a choice in this. Not really." Will murmurs, hooded eyes hinting at a cunning mind Hannibal is only too pleased to engage.

"My dear Will," Hannibal answers, pressing his lips to the hollow of Will's throat, warming the smooth skin with his breath before sliding his hand beneath Will's untucked shirt to palm at the scar the symbolizes so much of the history between them. "You never had a choice. You've always been mine."

"You know, it took a while," Will starts, inching a hand low to tug Hannibal's shirt from his jeans; he shivers slightly at the unintended contact, Will's nails drawing teasingly across the skin of his abdomen. "For me to understand. I had to crawl out of the Ripper's mind and into yours,"

"Was there ever a difference?" Hannibal says breathily, leaning into Will and ghosting his lips over the man's neck.

"The Ripper was a persona in a game you played with the world, at least until you sussed out what you really wanted."

"Is that so?"

Hannibal drops a kiss to the snared flesh hidden beneath Will's jawbone, mouthing the skin gently as Will's fingers rise to lace through his greying hair. Despite the intimacy of the action, Hannibal can sense how dangerously close to violence they both are; Will still determining if Hannibal is deserving of the recompense he wants so desperately to mete out, and he himself acknowledging that the fantasy he has entertained for so long may be nothing more than just that.

"Once you found me, you were obsessed. Weren't you, Doctor Lecter?" Will asks, voice husky.

"You were unique."

"You'd never seen anything like me before, had you? Someone who was as intelligent as they were damaged; 'malleable' you said? Someone who could understand your motivations without obscuring the meaning behind your work. You were obsessed." Will punctuates the statement by palming Hannibal through his jeans and he responds by digging his teeth firmly into the meat of the juncture between Will's neck and shoulder. Not hard enough to break skin, but with enough pressure to remind his partner just who is in control.

"This is what you wanted, right? In the end?" Will whispers, voice tight and breathy as Hannibal runs a tongue over the quickly reddening indentations his teeth have left behind. "To have me like this, in your arms, beneath you," Will slides open Hannibal's zipper and works a hand beneath the waistband of his briefs, gripping his growing arousal in hand tightly, stroking a thumb slowly along the shaft. "To fuck me. Claim me."

Will takes one of Hannibal's hands in his own, the one not intently working to bring him to orgasm, and presses it to his bare abdomen, over the pale line of scar tissue that remains the only evidence that Hannibal had ever truly cared for him.

"That night," Will says, voice hot, not relinquishing Hannibal from his hold. "You would have killed me as soon as taken me to bed." Will's hand begins to move more quickly, fingertips stroking over the moist head of Hannibal's erection. "You were courting me. If I hadn't figured it out, you would have fucked me, and you would have told me yourself. About all the things you've done," Hannibal feels the first tight hints of orgasm coiling through his lower abdomen. "All the people you've killed."

It's too much, too pleasurable a sensation to be wasted on petty accusations and fully-clothed fumbling. He pulls his hand from Will's grip and clasps the man's jaw firmly. Will stills immediately.

"I still plan on taking you, dear Will. Fucking you until you cannot move, ripping your release from you as violently as I tore open your flesh."

"I'm looking forward to it," Will breathes, releasing his grip on Hannibal's member. "But there's something I have to do first."

"Of course," Hannibal agrees, ducking his head into the hollow of Will's neck. "What do you need from me?"

The air between them is hot when Will pulls back, eyes bright with a life Hannibal has not seen in a very long time.

"You are stunning," Hannibal breathes, gladly meeting Will's unobstructed gaze. "I do care for you, Will."

Hannibal leans in once more, pressing his lips to Will's softly, attempting to express the adoration and affection he knows himself incapable of healthily conveying. "I love you," Hannibal whispers, and for a moment he is whole once more. After years of captivity, he can safely say that in this moment he wants for nothing.

Nirvana lasts only a breath. before white-hot pain blossoms across Hannibal's face, stinging his eyes and the cry that is pulled from his throat is wholly involuntary. Through a haze of red he can barely focus, tears clouding his vision; but when he can see again there is only Will, an almost serene smile adorning the man's shattered lips.

The hand that only moments before had teased Hannibal to the brink of ecstasy now tightly grasps a short, crimson-stained paring knife.

"You've claimed me," Hannibal says, wincing as the movement pulls at the torn flesh of his cheek. Will doesn't respond, and Hannibal knows without question that the other man understands implicitly the meaning behind his words.

"I know," Will says, his voice neither kind nor mocking, as he motions to Hannibal's face with the blade. "That's why I did it."

"You broke me," Will repeats, the words an echo of their earlier conversation, dropping the blade on the counter with a thunk. "And I think it's only fair I get the chance to return the favor. "

End

Epilogue

The early-morning light dances across Will's naked chest and Hannibal follows the slowly shifting patterns with deft fingertips.

"I think it's time," Will murmurs keeping his eyes shut against the dawn and arching into Hannibal's touch. "You should kill me. Make it grisly."

"Should I devour you? Filet you?" He punctuates each question with a kiss, trailing down Will's chest before reaching the silver-white line of scar tissue that stretches from Will's pelvis to his ribcage and laving his tongue over the skin possessively.

"Grill you? Stuff you?" Will hisses at the sensation and rolls to the side, the thin sheet pulling away as he scrambles for the nightstand.

"Personally, I quite like the idea of being stuffed." Will mumbles before muffling his laughter in his pillow. "Stuffed or masticated."

"Masticated," Hannibal echoes, nuzzling the exposed small of Will's back before nipping softly at the flesh. "Give me your phone."

Hannibal dials quickly and waits, propping himself up on an elbow and mentally accounting for the difference in time zones. When the drolling automated ring stops abruptly, with a growled 'Crawford' Hannibal smiles down at Will, who has turned to watch the ensuing conversation.

"Jack. It's been so long since we've had a nice chat-"

"Put Will on the phone."

"I am quite afraid that Will won't be doing much speaking in the near future. He was not as cooperative as I had hoped he would be. Certain measures had to be taken."

Hannibal runs the knuckles of his free hand across Will's unscarred cheek, and the younger man reaches up to mirror the gesture, fingertips lingering on the pale-pink scar that stretches from the bridge of Hannibal's nose to the edge of his hair line, offering a displeased frown in return before mouthing 'don't bait him'.

"Where is the fun in that?" Hannibal counters, a palm pressed over the receiver and barely catching Jack's biting demand of, "What have you done?"

"Do you remember that evening several years ago where you and your lovely wife joined me for dinner, and we indulged in a superb veal cutlet? Well, it has come to my attention that the creature was not euthanized as humanely as I was led to believe, but I am planning on employing a more reliable butcher and attempting the dish again."

Hannibal casts a glance to Will, who in return is regarding him with an indignant stare.

"What have you done with Graham?"

"Now, Jack, I am graciously offering to supply the meal for our little reunion, and all you can think about is poor Will. I have about sixteen hours before I make the state line, so, shall we say seven tomorrow evening for dinner?"

"What have you done to Will?"

"Your persistence is quite unnecessary. Dear Will is going to be our guest of honor. In fact, he's so angry I ruined the surprise I had to leave him to, how should I put this, 'stew in his own juices' for a short while. Don't worry, I'm sure he'll have softened up quite nicely by the time we next meet."

Will makes a face and Hannibal can't keep a smile from edging into his tone as he draws his hand lightly across Will's chest, tangling his fingers playfully in the light dusting of hair he finds there.

"Seven, Jack. If your dear wife is still breathing, she is welcome to attend."

Hannibal hangs up and Will watches him with no small amount of levity.

"'Stew in my own juices'?" Will asks, resting his cheek on his forearm. "Years of planning and that was the best you could do?"

Hannibal tosses the phone aside and pins Will beneath him, pressing a thigh firmly against the other man's growing arousal.

Through the open window, the bells of St. Mark's Campanile ring, grounding and certain.

"Now," Hannibal chides playfully, voice low and taunting as the ringing subsides. "I believe there was some discussion of stuffing?"