Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

<sub>The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.
- Propertius (Roman Poet)</sub>

The house isn't big, or new despite the recent coat of white paint that hangs on the rough wood as enamel-shiny as a runway smile. The branches of the surrounding trees seem to stretch out around the property as if shrouding it even further in solitude—or perhaps shielding it from the clamour of the rest of the world. Or any other number of metaphors and descriptions her mind can spin to conjure. Beside her she can see Rob frowning a little, and she wonders if he is regretting letting himself be talked into taking this old thing instead of the two bedroom high rise city apartment that had been their only other alternative. There are many things she loves about him, and many things she knows he loves about her, yet she doesn't think he'll ever entirely understand the way she views the world. Never see the canvas in her mind that entwines people and places and the smallest of objects in words just waiting to be written.

"So," she says brightly as the purr of the taxi engine melds away from the backdrop of trilling crickets and irregularly tooting birds, "Here's home then, eh?"

He returns her smile, only a little wanly. "Guess so, Kate," replies, checking down at the address still in his hand. "Home sweet home in Wolf Trap."

* * *

They'd already passed one neighbour on the drive there, a slightly larger property pristinely marked with it's own 'For Sale' sign a good few minutes before their own house. It takes a little coaxing to pull Rob away from unpacking to meet the other, politeness finally letting him make the twenty minute walk in the opposite direction to find a friendly retired couple who invites them in for tea.

"Canada," Rob replies when the white-haired lady—Rose—asks where they're from. "Here with my work, don't know how long we'll be staying yet."

"What do you do?" her husband, Albert, asks between bites of cake.

"Oh, just general consulting."

"Isn't this a little far from the city for a company house?"

"Oh, yes maybe a little," Kate answers, accepting a piece of cake for herself. "I'm afraid you can blame me for that one. They only got our place recently as some sort of investment, bought it cheap because it'd been possessed by the state for a while but no one would say why. Just couldn't resist a character like that, you know, call it the writer's curse."

"Ooh, a writer?" Rose takes her seat on the couch opposite as she finishes serving, on hand naturally dropping to Albert's knee. "Anything we might know?"

"Probably not really. Mainly children's books so far, a little bit of poetry. I'm trying to move into more adult fiction at the moment though, actually."

"Well then," Albert says with a kind smile. "We wish you the best of luck."

Kate thanks him before taking another sip of the unusual but pleasantly fruity tea, and feels a small furl of warmth stir in her stomach at the old man's use of 'we'. It stays until he points to her ring and asks when the wedding is, to which she and Rob both can only reply that they're not quite sure yet.

* * *

Rob is cooking dinner while she sets up her study that evening, populating the desk and arranging her novels and notebooks on the bookshelf. The house had come fully equipped, yet apparently as recently stocked at it had been painted judging by the squeaky shine of the colour-matched IKEA furniture. She stands on the chair to reach the highest shelves, then moves it out of the way so she can lay out the favourite rug she'd brought with her across the floor. It's as the legs slide into the corner that she hears them catch, and finds her gaze drawn downwards.

Against the walls, one of the boards has lifted up, knocked loose. She bends down slowly then reaches down to lift it up, the scrap of wood matching the little jump of excitement in her chest.

Beneath the board is a small open space, not a deliberate storage hold but more likely a construction flaw, or perhaps the work of now-retired termites. She thinks she feels the slightest tingle down her spine as she imagines the previous owner happening upon this convenience much the way she had, kneeling in the same place she is now, who knew how many years earlier. And she is sure that she feels her pulse begin to quicken when her eyes fall on the bundle that lies within.

Dusty paper, brittle but holding, garnished with looping ink and peeling stamps. Letters, Kate realises as she gingerly takes and lifts them out, one finger gently twirling at the thin but coarse rope that holds the them together. She turns the stack and breathes in once, deeply, as if trying to catch a scent of the stories she must hold in her hands right now. The past that lies before her through a window of rusted-out nails and splintering wood.

The mailing address on the topmost envelope is a community hospital in Marathon, Florida, the postmark over twenty years earlier. The return address is stamped on, bold and once red but now faded with the soft caresses of time. She brings her face closer as she makes out the blocky letters.

Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane

Chapter Text

Dear Will,

Here we are, you and I, languishing in our hospitals. You have your pain and I am without my books—the learned Dr. Chilton has seen to that.

We live in a primitive time—don't we, Will?—neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won't be very ugly.

I think of you often.

Hannibal Lecter

The paper is plain white, the kind you get in a stack from any stationery shop. Or at least it was for it's begun to yellow now, smudged with touches and creased with marks that look very much like fingers. Someone has held this, held it more than once, traced over the elegant cursive and at some point clutching at it tight enough to crinkle. Kate doesn't understand the words, but they hold the kind of directness that implies that their meaning is anything but direct. Some kind of hidden message could lie behind them, perhaps, or maybe only a past so tightly wound between two people that it cannot help but be buried in every further exchange. Despite the pleasantries, there's something very personal in those delicately penned characters.

The next letter is addressed in scrawling handwriting, dated several weeks later. There's no return address. It's barely a slip of paper.

I would say that I had put you above gloating, and yet I suppose you are entitled to it now if ever. You've taken everything, once again, quite an impressive feat from within an asylum cell they all must admit.

Are you expecting me to lament, Hannibal? To curse you, to break before you? Is that what you want, to see me destitute?

Or just dead?

If I am to be honest, you may well have gotten your wish if it weren't for the fact that, simply, it seems it has almost become commonplace by now. That is your failure then, perhaps. You've ceased to be surprising.

There's also no greeting, no close, yet such a bite in the lines that would have rendered anonymity pointless if it indeed had been attempted. This is intimate, exceedingly so. It feels voyeuristic, but then the human race has never been all too clear about drawing the line between privacy and history.

She has no idea what they speak of, only that it invariably sends a chill down her spine. That doesn't stop her, though, from still feeling that prickling itch of curiosity. Same as Pandora had been cursed with when she'd opened the box on the evils of mankind, but, well, Kate has always thought that a world without evil would be awfully boring. No stories, after all.

My dear Will,

When they informed me this morning that I had correspondence I was expecting another group of those nosy journalist or dreary psychology students. Such a pleasant surprise it was to hear from you, finally, after such time. And here I'd been afraid my last letter may not have even been properly delivered. I do hope you'll forgive my returning your previous reply too in this envelope, should I keep it here it surely will end up being scrutinised by far too many sets of prying eyes. I do know how unwelcome you find psychoanalysis.

However, it was with both elation and some distress that I read your words, Will, for I had not realized how far I'd truly fallen in your eyes. I know that our relations at the moment are far from ideal, and so I do believe I won't insult you with explanations or assurances that have little likelihood of being sincerely considered. But I do hope, still, that you can recall enough of our former intimacy to know at very least I'd never want you dead. And I never have.

Hannibal

It almost wasn't, you know. Jack was the one who got it, apparently did some wrestling with himself as to whether the furnace would make a better recipient. But in the end it didn't—no need to get over-protective now of all times, after all. And for me, well, I've tried staying away, tried hiding, and look where that got me. You always find me, don't you? Managed only now to reply without a return address.

I suppose I've finally come to see that I picked you up somewhere along my life and now you're stuck forever, like one of those insidious parasites. Maybe you're telling the truth then, a parasite never does want to kill its host, but regardless I think I may as well give up trying to decipher your motives. I'm sure everything fits together perfectly in that twisted grey of your mind.

I don't blame you, really. I don't blame Jack either, he was just doing his job and made the judgement he had to. We found the tapes, the next family who would have died, and we stopped that. I stopped that.

But somewhere along the way, you happened. Yes, happened, that's the word. I think it's become a little easier to think of you as a kind of force—now don't take that as a compliment, as I'm sure you're wont to do. Something that just must be accepted, that one must know the risks of before disturbing, because the consequences of which can't be controlled. I don't think you could control yourself, even, seeing the world and judging its population as you do. And so I don't blame you.

If I did, if you could and if what you do is truly a choice, then. Well. That would be ten times worse, wouldn't it.

- Will

Finding you was hardly a challenge, it took barely a glance at the leading story of the blandest of newspapers they allow me to learn that you had moved back into your old house. Is it as comforting to you as it was before? I'm sorry about the divorce, I really am, and losing the boy.

Why a parasite, and also a phenomena? I feel in fact that it should take a little effort to take that as a compliment, and yet I cannot forget that this judgement comes from you. You, who sees so much and understands so easily, but offers such a tangle of descriptions for myself. I'm afraid, dear Will, that I can't help but revel in it indeed.

What I find somewhat less complementary, on the other hand, is your suggestion of my control, or at least the way you put it. I can say that control has nothing to do with my actions, far from it. It is a mother's lack of control that leads her to protect her children? An avid reader's lack of control that leads him to appreciate literature? No, it is a matter of nature, not choice, and same as others I do not deny mine.

But there's no need to pass an ultimatum. You are trying hard to write your words, aren't you? Are you lingering over your sentences, Will, deciding each phrase? Trying to find precision where there is none? Because there's no good or bad, better or worse, only what society has grown up to tell us in this age of abolished capital punishment and battles held in courtrooms instead of duelling fields. I don't mean to be arrogant, to think myself above them, but perhaps instead just old. From a simpler time, of need and take, of predators and prey. It mere simplicity truly too much an ask?

Hannibal

The old place is solid, I don't know about comforting. Maybe I always planned to come back one day when I decided to rent it out instead of selling, even if I hadn't known it yet. It's not just the familiarity, but that I do like it here, really. I like the look of the road out front, winding on. I like the atmosphere of the countryside, the air, the waft of background noise. It's solid, like I said, to no longer have to compromise where I stay.

And yes, sorry. That you can be. Of all the things you value or think you do, I do believe that children are one of them. Yet you didn't consider that before when you sent a monster to us, to my wife and her boy and whoever else he may have gone through to get to me. Perhaps you are sorry, truly, that they were driven away, would have been more so if they had been hurt, but only afterwards.

Taking things as they come, making decisions as they are, and regretting later if one must—is it you, again, whom I must thank for this attitude which I've come to pick up? I'll miss Molly very much, but I can't blame her for wanting to get away. She's only let Willy see me once since, you know. I suppose she cared enough to allow me at least a goodbye.

You are correct, I am lingering. The letter is an interesting medium, the way it allows time to freeze in the gaps you take between each word so that it all flows together seamlessly when read. Unless I have actually failed at that, after all? And been too clunky in my words, too formal in my address of an 'old friend'?

I linger while I seek to understand what I attempt to compact into ink and paper, to unravel the small amount that I can of your reasonings. Simplicity, you say, for better your nature. To go back before our time, because you predict things have changed and will continue to change in the next—you say old but really it is also advanced. How curious. And, ah, you are correct there too. I am once more reduced to paradoxes, to dimpled logic in what I still fail to clearly see. In you.

Perhaps I was wrong. You will always continue to surprise me.

- Will

Kate comes back to the present, to the smell of cleaning product in the redone study and the burn of her thighs in her crouch as Rob calls from the kitchen that dinner is ready. It takes her a few moments to react, straightening and wincing at the stiffness of her legs and shouting a quick reply. Then she takes a step, first few letters still in her hand, and pauses.

She isn't really sure why she turns and ducks again to place them back in that little dusty hollow of floorboard, perhaps just absent-mindedness. The same could go for why she doesn't mention them over the meal or later during the first few steps on the arduous journey of unpacking, a mere oversight lost in the excitement of a new home and new country and first night of a new life. She doesn't intend to keep them as some sort of secret, there's no reason for that of course, but also it happens that they aren't going anywhere. And if they've lain in their little pocket of yesterday for these decades already, they can keep their own confidence for another day more.

* * *

Rob leaves for work early the next morning to make the fair drive into town, and Kate isn't far behind him getting up. She wouldn't call herself a morning person, not when she finds still darkness as focusing as sunrise, but she does prefer to get things done instead of lazing around if she's already been nudged awake. She's got an interview this afternoon, she remembers, for a bookshop whose window sign she'd answered during their pre-visit last weekend. The timing was really quite lucky.

She has toast and orange juice for breakfast, in her pyjamas and a soft dressing gown. Her eyes flick offhandedly, repeatedly to the half-open door of the study, but it proves more pressing in her mind as she rinses the crumbs off her plate that she'd like to know the narrative before reading between the lines. And so she sits again after and pulls out her laptop, bringing it out of stand-by and clicking to google.

Hannibal Lecter returns a lot of results. The hints of unease that had been building since she'd seen the criminal hospital stamp twist and solidify as she sees pages on crime.about.com and a mugshot Wikipedia image. He looks like a sophisticated man, well-groomed and middle aged, normal as they always do. But it's another article that catches her eye, a little further down the page. The title reads, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham—Romeo and Juliet in Hell?

Will.

It leads to an old page on a blog called tattlecrime.com. The article begins with an 'In case you haven't been keeping up..." recap that gives a overview of a serial killer named The Tooth Fairy as well as a brief memorial line from the Tattler website for their previous crime blogger, apparently one of the man's victims. Then it goes on.

Not even bars can keep away Will Graham, the rest proposes, the man who befriended, unveiled, then finally succeeded in imprisoning cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Talk about their relationship reaches all the way back to Lecter's first appointment as Graham's unofficial psychiatrist, when Graham's own instability and possible violent tendencies were the concern, and climaxed with serious accusations from both parties at Lecter's trial. With their closeness ever palpable, the two ex-colleagues have been putting their heads together once more.

At least, that is what they claim. From what the FBI have said about their investigation and the steps they undertook to successfully identify the Tooth Fairy killer, no help actually seems to have come from Lecter despite the visit that Graham paid to his cell in the Baltimore State Hosptital for the Criminally Insane. Was it truly a business visit, then, can we say? Or perhaps was the investigation a pretext, an excuse to see an old 'friend'?

In fact, the only thing we have found to be attributed to Lecter was the close to tragic conclusion of the manhunt for the later-named Francis Dolarhyde. Some have deemed that sending the psychopath to Graham's home was an act of anger, of revenge against the man who put him away, but let us not forget that present too was Graham's new family of wife and stepson. May we ask instead, could it have been an act of jealousy? Of some unique version of love, to reaffirm what once was?

Or perhaps the better question is, since Graham has now found himself on the receiving end of divorce papers if not a widower, was it successful?

Kate's hand isn't quite stiff as she exits out of the article, but she does take some time before looking away. Judging by the other titles linked in the sidebar the website is no more than another of those piles of outlandish drivel disguised as news, but she can feel just a little grain of truth accidentally stumbled over in this one. Not the part about the jealousy, she's sure she can see more than that in what she's read. But it's close.

She wonders, now that the exact history of things have revealed themselves to her, if the pull towards the old bundle of thinning paper should remain as it does. For the draw is still as strong, however morbid as it is knowing that the ink is set from blood-stained hands, perhaps even stronger. Because there's nothing she can do, nothing but see things out and react at the close. Just like them.

And there's always such an exquisite seduction to be found in watching broken things continue to quiver.

* * *

The owner of the bookshop is an greying woman, more an avid reader than a business-keeper and looking for a extra pair of hands. She's friendly and passionate, while the sizeable shop itself is cosy with a good number of dedicated customers. Kate's hopes for getting the job increase more than a little as she's properly introduced.

She's always been good with interviews. Answering questions right is almost just a step up from writing snappy dialogue, after all, and the fair amount of practice she's already gotten doesn't hurt either. It's the doom of being a writer, forever finding side-jobs while she scribbles in the evenings, but she's never minded too much. Makes it easier to set a schedule for one, and it helps also to have another, more straight-forward focus. So she smiles and greets and charms as the replies slip out of her mouth with the ease of familiarity.

But meanwhile, somewhere in the background, Will Graham finds way into her mind—just the two words and no more. Repeated in her head as the concentration required for more is devoted elsewhere.

Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter.

Chapter Text

"I think I found something interesting."

She drops it during dinner, the evening after she receives the call telling her that she's gotten the job.

She doesn't really know what she'd expected, or how she'd expected that to be different, really. It's not like her job has ever been a problem between them. But it has been a hint of one.

She makes money, most definitely enough, but a writer's income is never fully steady or guaranteed. Rob has never put down her career, truly, but still there's always been something. Just a hint of an undercurrent the times she's been out of a side job and between publishing deals while filling out invites to fancy dinners with expensive wine and well-dressed colleagues.

Rob hums and looks over at her across his plate, casual, but not uninterested. "Yeah?"

"Letters, old ones, they were stored under a floorboard in my study. Like in the movies, eh?"

He does smile then, and chuckle. "They lead you to buried treasure?"

"I wish." Kate buries her own huff of a laugh in her next bite of salmon, and allows the warmth of the little moment waft between them. It's been hectic recently, Rob having been putting in extra hours to start off with a good impression on his new colleagues as well as all the bustle of the move. They had never been a couple that needed grand gestures, special date nights or surprise presents, but even the simpler moments had been a little sparse lately. An exchange of anecdotes over a few glasses of wine, idle chatter in front of the television, the comfortable silence of two people used to each other's space.

"Just someone talking," she continues after she swallows. "Not really usual penpals though, I can get them out after dinner."

And the old smell hits her the same as ever when she does, kneeling down to lever up that blank slab of wood after the dishes are drying in the rack. The dust still lingers despite the times the little cache has already been opened—unless it's just her imagination filling in for long-gone dates that she's read but can never really properly picture. It's in places like this where the past comes the closest it can to being something more tangible than a half-pieced dream of a historian or romantic.

Rob does look interested, really, curious with indeed a tinge of awe as she brings the letters over. That doesn't stop his eyebrows from creasing though when he sees the Baltimore Hospital stamp.

"Criminally insane, is that what, an asylum?"

"Yeah, guess so."

Kate watches and she sees hesitation, confusion, turning to apprehension, as Rob's eyes continue down the page to a stop. He lowers the hand of his holding the letter as he finishes, turning his attention back to the envelope and post-mark before he begins.

"Kate," he says, slowly, "I think, I think I know this. I remember hearing about Hannibal Lecter once, the news I think or maybe some documentary.” He trails off and raises his eyes to look into hers. "He was a killer."

Kate looks back and for a moment she doesn't react, face blank and expression open. Rob's tone in twofold, telling and partly asking, not quite able to decide if it had been a revelation or something she'd already found dismissible. She follows it, then, after half a second, with a non-committal kind of shrugging nod.

Rob drops the letter back to the pile, then pushes it all away a little further across the table. "Christ," he mutters, though more bemused than truly bothered, "no one told us this house had a connection to a murderer." And then he stands, and moves to put away the dishes.

Kate gathers the bundle back up into her hands, running a thumb idly over the aging paper before she stands as well to take them back to the study. She supposes she should talk a bit more with Rob about it, especially with the amount of time that the certain singular correspondence has been occupying in her mind. He wouldn't push her though, one way or the other, even as she couldn't really blame him for being a little unsettled. He hadn't been shocked, which was certainly on the bright side, and perhaps had been as far as morbidly curious.

Curious. A curiosity, that's what the letters—the men, the old exchange—were to him. Something small with a hint of monstrosity for an idle draw or passing regard. Not for disapproval, but neither for fascination.

She doesn't really know what she'd expected.

* * *

The job begins and the load is moderate, as retail is, but pleasant. The shop has a large enough popular section to bring in the practical customers, as well as the repeat wanderers who faithfully drop by whenever they're close to do a turn of the shelves. It has a sizeable second hand section as well, of which Kate is designated to spend a good majority of her time sorting, next to the simple but homey pseudo-cafe section which consists really of only a coffee machine and a few couches. It grows on her quickly.

It's the kind of place that she can get absorbed in, and there aren't too many like that. Lost in the rustle of pages and the smiles of patrons and the smell of paper. Thoughts come and she lets them go—she'll have time to focus later, but it's nice sometimes just to ponder without having to work anything out.

It's at home, though, where her mind can linger, grip and not let go. She and Rob have less time now, but she'd expected it as they wait for things to settle. The evenings she curls with him on the couch in front of some programme on the television to relax, unwind, the thread of what lies under their floor slips into her thoughts and stays. And after, the letters pass slowly through her tracing fingers, each word lingered over and studied not actively but with the astuteness of a mind used to seeing life in words.

* * *

Do you still feel no nostalgia for your old life? Your old work? I happened to have just gotten quite a singular reminder myself, in the form of a rather singular young lady. A Miss Starling—Agent Starling, as she introduced herself, but I don't believe she's even too sure of her own status. It could make one wonder if Jack Crawford has any fully qualified colleagues for the big cases at all, really.

Or is this no surprise to you? Did you get a call already, and decide that last time was too dangerous a precedent? I must admit I'm not entirely sure how I should take that, my dear Will. It would have been nice to see a familiar face, especially one so uniquely both more and less recognisable since the last time I was graced with it.

At least Jack has learnt a little, it seems. Sent her in with some unrelated story, as if I would somehow have been able to miss the headlines and fail to make the connection with the last time such a commotion had been raised. I suppose he thought he was being subtle, protecting his new protégé with her own ignorance? Fearing that I should get to know her as I've so well known the last unofficial agent who graced my bars? I dare say he doesn't realize that it's hardly Miss Starling whom I need to know, only Jack himself.

She is quite a girl, though. That I admit I did notice.

- Hannibal

What have you done to her?

No, is the answer to your question. Jack hasn't called, though I’ve been hearing of that Buffalo Bill. Noticed the name on a few newspaper headlines that I've walked past in town. I don't read them anymore.

And no, again, I don't wish it otherwise. I enjoyed my work, I did. I suppose a lot of people will say that I did it because I was good at it, but the truth is that I liked it too. I see a lot, as you know, it was freeing when I had a focus for it all. When I had something worthy of my attention.

But my time has passed. I'm not sure I could focus any more, at least on that. Jack has better agents, newer agents, fresh enough to still be shocked. Still appalled enough for interest. I have known an awful lot of minds, now, studied them and understood them and cast them aside. Even madness has limits.

(except for yours, of course, as always)

 - Will

Ah, so easy to accuse, but I can assure you that there will be no idle buffalo knocking at little Clarice's door. Jack did send a smart one, perhaps even one worthy of a challenge. We shall see soon how she goes.

It's a shame you don't read the papers, Will, regardless of what happens to you or me the world will never cease to be a fascinating place. Why I imagine I even have a picking of articles here which would well interest you, I'd send them along if only it wouldn't draw every doctor in this place into titters over some surely nefarious explanation that one would think up upon finding them missing. You say your time has passed and ah yes, I suppose all things do pass, but I would have liked to hear your take on some of the things the media is so keen to enshroud in horror these days. Even if Jack is no longer in need of it. Just a little reciprocity, perhaps, though I'll admit the sensationals are hardly on par with your immaculate files on that 'Tooth Fairy'.

(and why, dear Will, flattery really does get you everywhere)

 - Hannibal

As it happens, I have just been reading a paper now. Not complete trash, but I wouldn't be citing it in a thesis either. Your name was on the front cover.

So a body, then. That was your breadcrumb for Agent Starling? I do have to say it was rather more original and dramatic than I was expecting. You know something don't you, Hannibal, this time. Have another Randall Tier in your past? Another skeleton-maker in your closet? Yes you may well be right, there are happenings still worth reading about in the world, and it seems for me at least that you’re a lot of them.

(well then, Doctor, likewise)

Oh, those Tooth Fairy murders were random, you know that. You knew that then, you always had a better chance of solving them than I. What you wanted from me was altogether something different.

This one, though, this one is not so random. I can’t be entirely sure if our Miss Starling was sent in knowing there was something to find or if it was mere luck on Jack’s part, but either way they’ve struck now and seem to be milking it to its best.

She’s offered me a deal, you know? A transfer off this slab into somewhere nice, some lovely illusions of freedom. I do believe I’m rather amused, it’s all very creative. And all fiction of course.

At least you had more respect, Will. Or knew me well enough at any rate. Petty bribes are one thing but interest—ahh, something truly of interest in this not even gilded cage is quite another.

So you’re still talking to Agent Starling, are you? Should I be worried? More pertinently, should Jack be worried? Or, as I see even, Senator Martin?

I read that you’ll be seeing her, seems quite an honor. Only, I can’t quite work out if it’s for you or for her. I suppose it would be a futile hope to assume you’ll actually tell her what she wants to hear—no, that’s not right. You’ll tell her what she wants to hear, I’m sure, just not what she needs to hear. I could call Jack about that, probably. But that wouldn’t be what he wants to hear.

And really, Hannibal, interest? I did think you’d be self-aware enough to recognize things without finding prettier words for ‘vanity’.

I believe I like her, Will, I do. One could be comforted in the knowledge that such bright rising stars like Clarice are stepping up into the next generation of law enforcement. Yes, we are still talking, in fact she is talking quite a lot. And in such a way even that I’ll hazard a guess Jack warned her against. She has an interesting history, that one, I think I shall have to ask for more. It’s really rather intimate, if I dare say.

Not that such layers of her mind coaxed and prodded out could compare to the way you laid your own open before me, of course. Ah, vanity, such a sin so they say, and very well I may concede. But you must realize, the one who holds up the mirror can be as much at blame as the one who looks into it.

You address a topic that’s so been on my mind, also. I have been doing much thinking over my impending illustrious meeting and I really, do believe I must leave some surprises for their own. I won’t quite say yet that I have some planned but, well, that might depend.

Do you like surprises, Will?

* * *

The last few Kate reads by the light of the lamp, one night when Rob is working late. Not that she couldn’t have gotten up to turn the ceiling light on, but she’d settled herself down on the firmly padded stool before sundown and hadn’t shifted even as the background dimmed through orange and into grey. She’s used to looking into words, searching for what could only possibly be there, but here she’s certain she has felt a change. A twist in the tone, a new edge to the play of the exchange.

It’s in the way the addresses have been dropped, the remarks turning more personal and pointedly provocative. The layered threat is still there, wrapped in the silvery flash of a sharpened blade, but somehow it’s become almost playful, casual. That old article flips up behind her eyes but no, surely not. Even so, dark as it is, there’s a little something which seems almost—dare she think it— flirtatious .

A second later she picks up the next letter and any revelation which may or may not have occurred is swept in a blank from her mind as her breath jumps in her throat. Because the address is again to that same, well known Wolf Trap number, but the patchy hospital stamp is gone. And replaced by a very different postmark.

Firenze
Italia

Chapter Text

‘Buffalo Bill’ into google brings up numerous reports on the singular consult of one serial killer on the case of another, and more on the brutally elegant escape of Hannibal Lecter the night after his meeting with Ruth Martin. Kate ponders idly how Senator Martin would have felt, knowing she was the one who’d brought the man to the cage that had failed to hold him. Would she have considered it fair exchange for the successful return of her daughter? One killer released for another ended, any number of anonymous victims for the one that mattered to her.

Kate opens up skype the next day before her afternoon shift next day and dials up the best friend she’d left in Canada. It’s just two minutes after the time they’d agreed and the warbling computer’s call rings twice before Carla picks up.

The two of them had met at Kate’s first job after high school, an internship at a small editing company while she’d wavered between degrees in creative writing and journalism before finally dropping both. Carla was one of the admin staff who’d since moved into a strong business career and last time Kate had checked, the company was going bankrupt. The video screen of questionable quality reveals Carla’s face slightly tired but bright as she always was, hair cut slightly shorter than it had been when Kate had said goodbye.

They chat for about an hour about everything, the weather, the house, Carla’s new boyfriend. The kind of words passing back and forth that you can never quite pinpoint when you try to remember them later. The one hitch that snags is when she brings up Rob’s work and Carla inclines her head, just a little. It doesn’t mean anything, yet Kate knows exactly what it means.

None of her friends had ever really loved Rob. They hadn’t actually disliked him, but he and Kate had always had separate her friends and his friends. And neither group had disliked them together exactly either, but even in the four years they’d been together and seven months since Rob had proposed they’d never been the kind of couple that others fawned over and hoped to be like for themselves.

“Still surprised I moved all the way?” Kate says, and it’s still light.

Carla makes a small chuckle that crackles over the connection. “Nah, you always did say you wanted to do your wandering.” Then she pauses, and her jaw twitches. “Was a little surprised though that you did it by following him.”

A few minutes later they say their goodbyes and log off.

* * *

She lies beside Rob that night and doesn’t sleep, the room dark but her eyes clear. She wouldn’t call herself a night owl, not really, but the bouts of alertness do happen to come sometimes in the late hours. She can hear his breath near her ear. She can feel her own.

She doesn’t start work until the afternoon again. She usually likes to be awake to see Rob before he goes to work, but she will have the time to sleep in if she wants. She turns one more time, stretches, tries to get comfortable on her other side, then finally slips out of the bed. The weather has been warming and she feels no need to don a dressing gown.

The letters are firm and familiar in her hands when she gets to them, bare feet only slightly chilly on the bare wood floor. The words are familiar as ever too, even as the correspondence turns into something a little different going on from the previous shift in circumstance. The first two are the briefest of exchanges.

Hello again, Will.

Just on a single scrap, in a plain envelope return-addressed to a PO box. And then sent there,

Hannibal. What could I even have to say.

 
It goes on, though. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so they wax. I find it can be rather true for the simplest things. But no, I will endeavour not to be too cliché, let me not just sing the well-known praises of that many-defined word ‘freedom’. There is more than one thing that I have been kept from these years, after all. Dear Will.

I ask that you do not find offense in my returning of your letters once again, merely a precaution. Should the worst happen, well. It is perhaps better I do not carry your name in my pocket.

I hope the fallout has not been too vicious on your end? Not too many calls from those vultures clamouring for interviews and reactions, I will apologise for subjecting you to that.

The weather is quite lovely this time of year. It’s been some years since I’ve had a chance to practice my European languages, though I did go through many in my youth. I’m rather looking forward to stretching those parts of my mind once more.

Actually it hasn’t been too bad. A few calls, but more from various departments in the FBI in fact. Apparently I’ve come back into popularity with them, at least on the subject of you. Yet simultaneously I seem to have fallen out of favour in the press. Old news now is all I’ve come to be.

You’ve lived in many countries in Europe, then? I know you’re Lithuanian by birth but I always thought your accent sounded like a bit of a mix. I can’t say that I’ve much of a flair for languages myself, though I might still remember a few words of Creole that I’d picked up. I grew up in Louisiana, as you probably know.

Ah the fickleness of media, yes. It does seem to move on or alternatively refuse to move on in whatever indeterminate and surely inconvenient pattern. Enjoy the peace then, won’t you, Will. Perhaps I ought to check up on Miss Starling and inquire as to how she is faring in all this.

And yes, indeed. I spent many school-years with my aunt and uncle in Paris, and we travelled very much too. Spain, Germany, Italy, I’ve always found it quite a romanticism in learning a language. It’s more than just mere communication, the words we use to interact, to think, to describe ourselves, shape our lives. Learning a new one is like donning a cloak of another line of history. As dear Bedelia pointed out once, long ago now, I do like my cloaks.

The letters aren’t close, months apart at times. The postmarks and return address change too for some time, not always matching up. The trail of a man running, and trying to throw the scent. Austria over to Belgium, the Netherlands, up into Sweden then down again into Romania.

Then newspaper articles start coming too, as promised. Little things from economic developments in northern America to the latest Olympic Games included in the letters. Kate wonders if acquiring the English articles had been risky for Lecter’s cover, especially as his addresses finally settled and he seemed to have come to a rest in the south of Greece.

And things continue in that vein, surprisingly enough. The talk becoming general, leading into, even, friendly conversation. They don’t talk about the articles, but they accompany every letter or second letter like the little bonus that comes in a candy bag. Nothing important, just things of interest that Kate is sure were read and appreciated. Graham kept them too, after all.

She stops for the night when her eyelids become too heavy to keep up with her intrigue. But she doesn’t stop.

* * *

Forgive me for jumping to the cliché again, but there is an intense liberation in a fresh start. The opportunity, the possibility, the anonymity. Do you, of all people, envy anonymity?

It’s not a thing people enjoying thinking about, but I am getting on in my years as even I must eventually do. Retirement had to come sometime, and this is rather a pleasant one. Some would call it as exile and yes, if you must be pessimistic. But things only have as much meaning as the words we select for them. I rather think of it as a final extended vacation, Europe is where I started and it shall be where I end.

Anonymity. It’s rather a comely word, isn’t it? I think I may remember something like it long ago. But I also remember being called into the school counsellor’s office when I was eight years-old and told that I was different. Different. Then when my father worried, Different became Gifted. And in the FBI, Gifted became Special. I won’t be overly modest. Who doesn’t enjoy being special, after all, at least on some level? But uniqueness fades eventually, and Special becomes Curious.

I try not to give too much thought to being left as such, a mere curiosity. Perhaps I’m afraid that if I did, I would envy you indeed.

I can’t say I am too much for vacationing, though. I have been to a lot of places, I suppose, but there’s always been a reason. A good reason. The last place I went without one, well, was probably a holiday house a colleague on the force offered me in Arizona. I spent most of the week napping.

I’m afraid Special isn’t something I can change for you, Will, you’ve always been extraordinary in my eyes. You know that. But in this wide world, is there no place you could find where this would not be a chore? No place I could show you? I see you are not a worldly person, no, rather a homey one. You like your own space, the bed you make and the clothes you’ve bought and the roads you’ve walked a thousand times.

But everyone has dreams, do they not? Dreams that they’re not sure they really want, dreams that may even frighten them on some side. As much as any man loves his home, there’s always somewhere else, even if it comes second for now. Somewhere else he could be.

Oslo

Yes, very well.

It’s not even real.

I don’t remember my mother, as you know. But I’ve heard a lot, my father used to tell me stories. Really, just stories.

I think he had many, in fact, but the one to stick was when he told me she was a Scandinavian princess, a beauty from the north. Once I got old enough to start hearing the grand old tales of kings and queens and castles, the tale became that she’d loved him, loved me, but had been forced to leave us for the good of her country. Once my teachers had noticed my behavior enough times to get a proper psychological assessment, the tale became that she’d been like me, that I’d gotten my ‘abilities’ from her. He was quite the wordsmith, I’ll never forget.

It always sounded nice, a home at the top of the world. But forgive a child’s fancy and don’t look too deep now, mister psychiatrist. I looked her up after my father passed away too, when I joined the force. She was a real-estate agent from New York who’d died of pancreatic cancer.

I prefer his story.

Ah, Will.

Never dismiss the imagination of a child towards the future, is all I suppose I can say. Even not to delve further than the surface of the complexities, psychology is an interesting and very strange thing. The brain is not one lump of thought, it is many pieces crafted by instinct, history, intelligence. For an American in the self-professed land of the free, you’re no longer sure you know what freedom is. Yet there does remain some part of your mind—yes, let it be called the child—which still imagines a place you could be as free as I.

You already know how I feel about psychoanalysis, doctor.

Let us not talk about my old self. Let’s talk about you. You still say freedom, but are you not forgetting something? One last tie snagging you?

Me. You send me your address, Hannibal, you tell me your name. I know. And even more than those details on paper, I know who you are. Can you truly live the rest of your life without being yourself? Without leaving a breadcrumb trail of bodies, leading directions in blood? Will there ever really be nothing for you to run from?

Forgetting. You? You must not really think that.

You have become the blot of ink that’s dripped onto my book, seeping through every page to leave a stain forever. There is nothing I have left to hide from you. There is nothing I will not give you. And whatever you choose to do with what you have, whether you direct your own attentions once more or turn me in like the righteous man I know you are, I can always trust you’ll tell a good story.

And, of course, I have given my considerations to this. I always expected that one day my hunts would become infeasible. I’d pondered during my confinement on making a final display, of my final thorn. But I have come to think that if the good Doctor Chilton continues to cling onto his pretty box of psychopaths after everything, he may well be in his own twisted hell already. Let that be its own revenge.

Still, I always knew that when the day would come to make the decision between practicality and expression, I would make the choice of survival. Forgive me though if ever, even with no effort of searching, I may find myself in some backward alley where any evil can be blamed on the darkness. As you have said, there is a point where I can only be myself.

I am not entirely sure if it makes it better or worse that you make a conscious choice. If the world should be grateful that you can cease now—or disgusted that you could have ceased all those victims ago. I can see you as the addict who finds a way to function sustainably—but no, forgive me, I would not truly compare those deadly beautiful shards of your fissured reality to something so pedestrian.

Practicality, yes, that’s how you’d think. No morality, no remorse, of course I’d expect more from you than that. You’d never stoop so low to value preservation of life, not of others, not when you can elevate yours. That is your faith, your god. Your own existence.

And yet there is still the romantic poet in you who says there is nothing you would not give me. How far can I trust beautiful sentiments, Hannibal? What would you do, what would you risk, for me?

Chapter Text

Things turn busy. Rob has a series of important social events, at least he says they’re important, and Kate goes and enjoys herself mildly. Some of his colleagues are nice enough people who make interesting enough conversation. She notices driving home one day that the ‘For Sale’ sign has been taken off the house next door, and thinks she looks forward to meeting some new neighbours. In this whole vast space, it would be nice to have some closer company. It’s over a week before she has her own attention to solidly give again.

It’s a wide spectrum of articles that the man in the envelopes has been sending to the other who lived where Kate lives, but soon comes the first of relevance. Not in English, this time, but a clipping from what looks to be a local paper in a language she guesses to be Arabic. She doesn’t have to understand the flowing script to pick up the nature of the story from the bold headlines, the name, and of course the picture. Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal the Cannibal, sighted once more.

There is no note accompanying this offering, the scrappy paper speaking for itself in its neatly-pressed folds. There is, however, a reply.

Am I expected to believe that this is a risk for you? You, who have spent your career flaunting everything in your tableaus of death and beauty, who courted the FBI and flirted with prison? I’m sure that as you let yourself be caught that final time, you had a dozen destinations in mind for when you left and a dozen hidden bank accounts ready to go.

You forget I know you now. I see, this is how you’ve built your veil to the world. With actions that ought to hold meaning, that ought to speak of emotion, goodness, humanity—but for you are really something else. To merely dangle out for your own means and amuse yourself at their interpretation.

So thank you, but no.

At risk of sounding like an adolescent might I say… ouch.

That was quite a scorn, dear Will, and yes, you know me. You know me very, very well. Which is why I wonder if your vision is merely having trouble focusing at the lessened distance as the two of us blur together once more, or if it is something inside yourself that is pushing you to misread.

I always knew I’d have to make the transition, American socialite to criminal, respected doctor to fugitive. I tried to run once but you, indeed you, didn’t let me run far. So yes, I let myself be caught. To be studied, to become the old looming horror instead of the fresh blood for the tabloids to roll in. That wasn’t captivity, it was the crucial step in between that I knew I’d have to take.

But I never intended to remind the world of my existence once it had moved on, once they grew tired and I was allowed my true freedom. I never expected you.
I’ll admit to always having had some myopia with you, Will. I’d long had plans, plans that stretched far, but more than once I’ve found merely myself acting in your present, with you, for you. Sometimes they fit well onto my path, but others?

It has taken me perhaps this long to see that you have too strong a path of your own.

The next paper isn’t a letter again but an article, two of them in fact. Not cut out of foreign newspapers and folded neatly into their envelopes, instead cut out unevenly and weaved in among the correspondence. And English. Not Lecter’s, Kate realises, but Graham’s. Collected like daisies to be pressed into that pile of memories.

Foreign Manhunt for Escaped Killer?

After several days of hesitation following the sighting of convicted serial killer Hannibal Lecter, referred to as Hannibal the Cannibal for the horrific culinary twist to his crimes, Egyptian officials have confirmed that they are open to action regarding his investigation and recapture.

Hannibal Lecter was first captured seven years previous in Virginia by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, successfully pleaded insanity at his trial and was sentenced to containment in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Less than five years into his sentence, he escaped during a relocation and has been on America’s Most Wanted list ever since. It has long been assumed that he has fled the country, especially given his known family roots and history in Europe, but as his arrest and confirmed crimes have been in the US on our system it is unclear what exactly his legal status is on foreign soil.

There have been no details released to the press regarding the nature of the extradition talks that are being conducted. Some are speculating that private forces, even money, are involved in pushing the decision. Former, now retired agent Jack Crawford is one name that’s been heard around, who lead the last manhunt for Lecter that lead to his imprisonment. Another is Alana Bloom-Verger, former associate and attempted victim of Lecter, now heir to the wealthy Verger farming enterprise. But whether or not these specific players are, indeed, at play, much of America waits for baited breath on news on the killer, trial, and escape of the century.

FBI Agent to Lead Foreign Manhunt

Following seemingly difficult negotiations with American legal forces, Egyptian officials remained reluctant to act on the recent sighting of the escaped serial killer dubbed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal.’ It seems that while they are opening channels for investigation, they are unconvinced of the necessity of mobilising a large force for a fugitive not of interest to their own country and who, given his previous record of eluding police and evident resources, is likely to have already moved on.

In an unorthodox move, reports state that an agent of the FBI with previous dealings with Lecter has been sent out to Egypt. What her role will be among local officials is unclear, as is the official decision behind this. Many have noted a reminiscence to the way former agent Jack Crawford went rogue to track Lecter down in Europe after his first attempt to flee, acting without authority in a foreign country though the final arrest was made back on American soil thanks to external forces.

The agent in question, Clarice Starling, has not made a statement.

Starling. Starling again, and Crawford, familiar names. But new ones too, Verger-Bloom. Pieces from an old canvas slowly knitting together bit by bit in her mind. Kate opens the next letter and another article falls out, another from Lecter now she knows. Irish post. Long out of the country, they were right. But a note accompanies it too.

Hostage Situation of American Agent

In a potential deadly twist to an already peculiar set of events, the situation among American and Egyptian authorities regarding fugitive Hannibal Lecter has escalated once more. In the early hours of this morning, a series of garbled and not entirely clear communications reached the FBI containing something to the effect of a ransom demand. One seemingly for the American liaison on the operation—their own agent Clarice Starling.

An emergency-formed FBI team is currently attempting to ascertain what exactly has transpired, made difficult by the fact that the threats and messages themselves appear to be contradictory. The poor organisation so far appears to indicate that the hostage situation, if that is indeed what it is, is the un-premeditated work of a small group only. The official theory is that part of the Egyptian hesitation to act resulted from a lack of resources due to corruption among high authority levels of law enforcement, and the international pressure of Starling’s irregular arrival was perceived as threat.

An inside source, however, reports an entirely different series of events. That the ransom was in fact not for Starling, but for Lecter. Lecter who, despite attempts at concealment, has been caught. And under pressure from Starling who represented the American push for extradition, local police found other motives in play. There was already a private bounty offered in competition once for Lecter, after all, for which a policeman lost his life in the last hunt.

In a press release several hours ago, the head of the FBI has reported that the situation so far is not being taken as government-backed act of aggression against the United States of America. However, diplomatic officials will be mobilised to work through the inter-country ramifications and political fallout.

Will,

I’m going to help her.

The stamp is Dublin Airport—so much for an inside source indeed, though it did look like a good story on paper Kate thinks. And the reply seems confused too, even the address crossed out and rewritten before settling on Lecter’s previous PO box prior to that curt last message which she feels conveys more than she’s able to see. Graham’s letter back is short too but taking far more space with half-written lines that lie scribbled out under heavy shaky scratches. Kate can still make out the words, though, if she squints. She wonders if that might have been deliberate.

There’s still some things that surprise me which I suppose should not

Hannibal, I need

You go for her? Why

Just

Come back to read this.

* * *

Rob takes her out to dinner, just the two of them, to make up for the recent hectic nights. Kate wouldn’t have said she’d been worried exactly, but she still feels a warm flicker of relief when he walks in that evening to say he’s sorry and want to make more time for her. They go to Italian, which she likes a fair amount. His favourite, she knows. He orders a steak and she gets a vegetarian pasta.

They chat idly, and it’s good. She likes that about them. Rob talks a bit about the job, makes her laugh with a story about a funny entanglement on a case at work. She shares a few tales of nice customers, and amusingly clueless ones, a couple of good books she’s picked up and gotten on discount as an employee bonus. Writing has never been a sensitive topic with her as it seems to be with some, she goes through on and off phases but none she’s not content with, so it’s casual when he brings it up.

“Want to tell me about your new project?”

Kate shrugs, and shakes her head. “Haven’t got anything yet. Still gathering ideas, I guess.”

Rob frowns, knife squeaking as it cuts down through the meat to reach the plate. “You’ve been in your study a lot, you’re not writing?”

“No, I—Just reading.”

The knife stills. “It’s not still those old letters, is it?”

They haven’t talked about this. Kate pauses. “Yeah,” she replies, shrugging again, words light. “They’re interesting.”

“I—“ Rob coughs, and he’s frowning as he looks over at her now, “I don’t know if you should keep reading them.”

“Why not?”

“I mean, they’re other people’s letters, and one of them is a damn murderer.”

That’s not wrong, actually. Kate knows it’s true but, just, it’s not the way she sees it now. “It’s history.”

“It’s creepy.”

“Rob—“

“It’s just weird, Kate!”

He cuts in a little too forcefully, more forcefully than he’d intended to Kate might wager. His fork clinks loudly as it hits the plate and she jumps, starting, eyes widening before stilling.

There’s a few moments of silence then Rob sighs, and grimaces. “Sorry,” he says softly. “Guess I’m still a bit stressed with everything.”

Kate takes a breath, and softens her expression. “It’s okay.”

They’re almost finished. They don’t get dessert.

* * *

She barely waits for Rob to fall asleep that night before slipping out of the bed, already restless in the cold tangle of blankets they’d lain down either side in without speaking. The study and that little hollow with its memory of dust and breath-dried ink have become her old haunt.

It can’t be over, she knows. The pile isn’t done, but it’s beginning to thin and takes with it that familiar feeling of reading a good book—not wanting it to end, but needing to know how it ends. And in that same way she feels the phantom pounding of a quickening pulse for men she knows only on a page yet feel as real as any other in her mind, pulling out the next from the pile.

Not a reply, not yet, another article. Another one, slipped and pressed in between. One Will Graham had needed to keep.

American Agent Recovered after Dramatic Struggle

Four days after the disappearance of FBI agent Clarice Starling among corrupt Egyptian officials during the hunt for American killer Hannibal Lecter, the situation has explosively resolved itself. In the late afternoon two days previous, emergency services received a strange, garbled phone call from a female voice speaking English summoning them to a property later identified as a hidden police safe house. Ambulance arrived to find Agent Starling lying on the front lawn, unconscious from heavy tranquilisers, and promptly called in the police who discovered three bodies within the house.

The causes of death were two vicious stabbings from a kitchen knife and a bludgeoning from a metal stool in the foyer. Evidence was found to indicate the property as the location of Starling’s holding and the three men were identified, tentatively due to significant mangling of the bodies, by the police as their own officers marked responsible for the kidnapping. The identification was later verified by Starling, who recovered from the sedation and regained consciousness without complication in an undisclosed local hospital.

Further analysis of the emergency call traced it to the landline within the house and confirmed the voice as being Starling’s, seemingly under drug influence. She herself has only intermittent recollection of her entire time in the safe house due to repeated sedation, and no memory of making the call or of the incident that lead to her captor’s deaths aside from a vague idea of a possible disturbance.

She did state, however, that she alone was taken, that Hannibal Lecter had not been captured or anything close to it despite previous media speculation. The motives of her kidnappers remain unclear, whether monetary or personal. Neither Starling nor any medical professionals have commented on the nature, or existence, any physical abuse, sexual or otherwise. It is unknown as yet whether she will be returned to the United States once she is fit for travel, or if she must remain for further investigation.

Theories at this point vary. One possibility being put forward is that Starling had a violent adverse reaction to the most recent batch of drugs, breaking free and fighting her way out herself before collapsing on the lawn. Others suggest that the last particularly high dosage specifically preceded a quarrel between the captors among themselves, not expecting Starling to escape in her state and ending badly for all.

But others still, taking in the brutal manner of the killings, wonder if the infamous Hannibal the Cannibal was perhaps somehow involved after all.

And there it is. Not over. Somehow, the old newsprint on thinning paper relieves her more than any earlier sweet word of Rob’s.

Kate turns it over, and keeps reading.

Chapter Text

Aachen, Germany

Hello once more, dear Will, I say as I am whole. Please forgive the delay on this reply, I have no real fears of pursuit after the agent Starling ordeal but for erring on the side of caution I am saying on the move.

Did you worry? Did you miss me?

I read the paper.

Yes, the news, I’ve been following. Are you glad for inspiring me to go back to staring in front of the zoo cage? Or perhaps just glad for putting on a good show inside. I don’t miss being out of your performance.

Why did you do it, Hannibal? Why was she worth it?

Seville, Spain

Ah but Clarice Starling wasn’t a part of what I do, she never will be. I don’t plan to call on her again. I do believe this world is more interesting with her in it, but that’s all. This world, not my world. She was worth saving, yes, but not bringing with me. Not worth knowing any further.

Not like you, Will.

The worst part there is that I know that was a compliment, coming from you. Worth saving and worth knowing being two mutually exclusive things, of course.

But no, maybe that’s not the worst part after all. Maybe the worst part is that you succeeded. You did come to know me. So much better than Jack, and Alana. Better than Molly.

Even better than me. At least back then.

Iasi, Romania

Of course I know you best, Will, everyone else has tried to do something. Medical professionals tried to quantify you, the FBI tried to use you, your wife at least only did what you yourself wanted—tried to give you a normal life.

I did like her, you know. Not permanently, but it wasn’t a bad thing that someone was there while I couldn’t be. That’s why I sent the dragon, you know, or did you think that was mere jealousy? Perhaps some of both, truthfully. I needed to see if she could protect you, which she did, and I can only respect that. And I also needed to see if she would turn away upon seeing every side of what you do, and she did.

But as I was saying, of course I know you like they didn’t. All I ever wanted to do was to find out what you’d do.

Yes, that you did. Find out, and make me find out, what I’d do in situations I’d prayed I’d never have to be in. And I fell apart well enough for your liking, didn’t I? Still am falling. You were a child who could only fully appreciate his favourite toy by breaking it into its pieces.

And you’ve been doing that, step by step, all this time.

Bern, Switzerland

Do you really think that? That I do anything with you step by step with you?

You ruin all my plans, Will. You always have. I tried to lock you away, then I tried to make you like me. And then I tried to escape you, and tried to kill you, and tried to wait for you. Nothing lasted, because you don’t follow me.

That’s what I should have seen from the beginning. I made the mistake of thinking that your potential to see me meant your potential to be me. And I wanted to let you see me, but my first failure was that I couldn’t control how. I’ve always had a veil and you were the first to truly penetrate it, even when it was not convenient to me.

But even the time you stood the closest beside me you didn’t waver from yourself. You held onto things I never understand, regret, righteousness, and of course empathy. And I realise now that I don’t want you beside me. I want you opposite me. Seeing me from your own side, as my only equal in this world.

I can’t guide you down a path, you are far too swift, too strong for that. I can only open the gate before you, and hope you come to me. Let me take off my veil.

Europe is truly beautiful, you know. I never did get to show you.

The last letter is long, almost a ramble, and it reads differently. Not a carefully controlled correspondence like the previous exchanges, no, something has changed. Kate feels it before she consciously analyses it and suddenly she knows that this is it, what everything contained in the words swapped before has been building to. This is the breaking of the dam.

Her pulse races as she sees another piece of paper entwined with the letter, and plucks it up to smooth out the folds. It’s a printable plane ticket, from Washington to Bern. She’s not sure how to categorise the swooping feeling in her stomach when she realises that its presence in her hand must mean that it was left unused. Perhaps because she doesn’t wants to accept it being disappointment.

She’s not reading by lamplight this time, instead it’s late afternoon and she’d had the day off. Today is the exception though, from the greater many recent times she’s spent devouring the old words with Rob asleep in the next room. He was always a heavy sleeper but he’s tired a lot nowadays too, if she’d thought that he’d lower his workload after their apology dinner she’d have been wrong. It’s become a habit, and she doesn’t even spend all her time reading anymore, sometimes just staring at the paper as if she can imagine the men writing over them. She’s a writer, she should be able to imagine things. But truth is stranger than fiction, so they say. Possibly because fiction follows a structure, a solid storyline, and has expectations of character development and resolution. But truth just happens, to hell with the readers.

But she can’t imagine Hannibal Lecter, not really. Can’t even fathom a person like him, if he can even be called a person, let alone being adored by him. Because yes, that’s what it is. Enough to be sent those hopeful plane tickets—tickets plural, because they keep coming. Enclosed with each following letter, from Washington to the postmarked city. All kept here, unscanned.

After all these years, all the media speculation, and all our denial, are you truly asking me to run away with you? Why now, and how can you suddenly mean it?

I’m tired of games, Hannibal. I’m not playing anymore. Don’t make me play again.

Washington to Lyon, France

I’m tired of games too, Will. Yes, even I grow weary. It’s been a quenching dance with you these years, but even the hungriest of fires will one day burn itself out, and fall into equilibrium.

Will you be my equilibrium? If you were truly happy where you are I needn’t ask, but I know you cannot be. Because you’ve stepped too close to the edge of the other side to turn back and walk away, and so have I. I’ll never be content with a life apart from you, joined only by these rare trickles through the fog.

Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, Will, not with you. It makes it grow famished. Far too much to be satisfied by one meal, by anything other than every day for as long as we may travel together in this world.

I wish I knew what that meant.

I was never so simplistic as to think you didn’t have a heart, or at least didn’t have what you considered to be a heart. It’s easy to dismiss psychopaths but of course there’s so much more to you than mere insanity.

But therein lies the flaw in my understanding. This empathy, as they put it, only lets me see the world as others select for themselves. I have no doubt that you feel very deeply, that you elate and despair and most of all that you want. But your want is not inspired by what inspires the rest. Your desires are not responses to affection. And your acts of expression, lord knows what they show but it’s not that either.

I’ve spent a long time knowing you want me. I don’t know if I’ll ever know exactly all the things that means, but I have the scars to prove some of them.

Washington to Budapest, Hungary

You are right, Will. I won’t deny it, I feel profoundly differently to the others that comprise this species of ours. But then again, how can anyone ever know if what feeling they give to whatever term of a human tongue is the same as that given by another?

Let me try to tell you, then, the best I can describe in this medium. I have always projected my life as a sharp one, well defined. I see the world clearly. The people around me are clear, some necessary for interaction, some not unpleasant company, some interesting enough to explore for my curiosity. I see objects clearly, substances to be taken and enjoyed, physical pleasure to be had when appropriate. Oftentimes those two overlap.

But you are not either. You are no object to be had, no matter how people try to collect you. And you are no company to be explored, because you take my path of exploration and bend it to the very darkest and greatest regions of the universe. You once called me a force of nature, and perhaps in this world where I can live as predator among prey I am.

You, however. You’re my force. Not to all the world, but to my world. You take everything I’ve ever known, ever catalogued about the creatures I live amongst and you make me see something too beautiful to contain. More than a natural force even, a cosmic force. I can’t see you, define you clearly, because you too brilliant, too vast. A supernova black hole which bends the very fabric of everything I’ve known, warps my sharp world to your own.

And this, this is what moves me. This is what drives me to my emotion, however it might be for others. I don’t know if a word can encompass it, but if I have to pick one it is simple to choose.

I want you, Will Graham, because I love you. Make what you’d like of it. It will never be false.

You do have a way with words. Such pretty ways of stringing them together, you’ve always shown such talent.

I applaud your skill.

Washington to Salzburg, Austria

Then let me prove them.

It's not until she turns it over that she realises that this letter, finally, was the last. Bottom of the pile, only the blank floor of this little niche of another time beneath. And with it, that one last plane ticket.

Kate stares, it’s all she does for some time, at the final unused invitation. She shouldn’t be sad. She shouldn’t be anything, everything here is far too complicated for her to decide how to feel. She doesn’t know either if it’s merely the melancholy of reaching the end of a saga with nothing more to satisfy her longing for more, or some true sadness for those two people whose lives wove and twisted all that time ago. Star-crossed lovers if she ever saw, if only the stars were kept apart by a very universe which couldn’t contain them both without explosive collision.

Belatedly, the intellectual part of her processes the logic of this ending. Remembers that any last letter of Graham’s could not, of course, be returned to be added to this pile. She can’t know.

She can only wonder. Had there been a last letter, sent into the ether and now lost to history? Had something happened to Graham, something that could have left Lecter too waiting in vain at the airport or postbox before a mention made it into the news? How long would he have kept up the habit if that had been so, held onto hope?

Or Graham could have simply made his decision, and not in the positive. Cut ties, ended the dance forever—but surely not. Surely after all this time, all she’d read between them. Surely?

She’s still staring when the click of the study door opening startles her out of it. She jumps harder than she should have and twists in her seat. She'd missed the front door opening.

“Hey,” Rob says with a grin. “Enjoy your day off?”

Kate clears her throat, makes her lips lift. She puts down the papers she’s holding, sees Rob’s eyes flicker to them and his brows twitch slightly together. He doesn’t comment, at least. They’ve gone over it enough, and never ending nicely.

“Yeah, was nice. You’re home early.”

“Yep, got a surprise for you.” Rob pulls the grin onto this face again, only looking a little tighter than before, and holds up two movie tickets. “I know things, us, haven’t been great lately. So I thought I’d take an afternoon off, take you out to something. Got tickets to that new spy movie you said you wanted to see?”

She does smile more genuinely this time. He is trying, she knows. She had mentioned the film the previous week, in passing, while wracking her brain for some conversation to make.

“Sure. Let me get ready.”

* * *

She barely sees the film.

It looks vaguely pretty, well shot images flying across the screen of the darkened cinema. High octane action scenes flickering as fast as the thoughts through her head, because she can’t stop thinking. Honestly, how could she have expected she could.

She excuses herself some way through, she’s not even sure how far in, mutters something about the toilet as she steps over Rob’s legs. She doesn’t make it as far as the bathroom, sitting down on the first couch in the corridor outside and pulling out her phone.

She’d been sparse on her research so far. She’d told herself it was so she could get a view of her unique personal source unbiased by the jumping conclusions of the media, but part of her knew it was really because she’d been afraid knowing the details would ruin the magic. Would remind her this is a crime story, with bad people and victims, instead of the darkly beautiful world that Lecter and his love resided in.

But she can’t not know now. She can’t leave it like this. The first words she puts into the search are ‘Will Graham’ and she taps into the top result on the list.

It’s a profile on a crime history site, and it’s very detailed. She gets caught for a moment, and then more than a moment, as she reads up on Graham’s background, family history. Little things she’s seen hints of in the letters, now given in exposition instead of in media res. There’s a fair amount about his empathy disorder too, and it’s fascinating in an odd way. Because it truly is interesting, but also because she can’t forget what Lecter had said, about people trying too hard to define Graham’s mind.

And then there’s footsteps. And a pair of legs in front of her. And Rob.

“Kate? What are you doing?”

She looks up. “Hey?” she says vaguely. His face darkens.

“You didn’t go to the toilet.”

“Well—”

“Are you talking to someone you don’t want me to know about?”

“What?” That genuinely startles her. “No.”

“Are you reading about, uh, things?”

He stumbles across the words, and Kate finds her expression drawing up in annoyance. She looks defiantly back at her fiancé, daring him to mention it. Rob runs a hand through his hair, and sighs heavily.

“You’ve been so distracted lately. It’s like I don’t know how to connect with you anymore.”

“Well it’s not like you’ve been around.” There, she said it. Funny, because if you’d asked her straight up how much this had been bothering her she probably would have brushed it off. Though, maybe that’s because it actually doesn’t bother her. Because she doesn’t really care.

“I’m busy, you knew how it would be! It’s you I don’t get, still going on about your whatever reading stuff.”

“I’m a writer, Rob! Reading stuff, stories, people, is what I do. Have you really never gotten that?”

He scoffs so hard the sound is ugly. One part of Kate tells herself that he’s just frustrated, he doesn’t mean it. The other part doesn’t listen. “Well it’s not like you’ve ever taken an interest in what I do!”

“What is there to be interested in? You go to a place where some manager doesn’t have the balls to take responsibility for his own decisions and invent a conclusion for a paycheck!”

Rob stares. Kate takes a breath, shaky, knuckles going white with how tightly she’s clutching her phone. Rob doesn’t seem to breathe at all.

“Well,” he says finally, “I guess you’ve never gotten me either.”

And there it is.

Four years, one engagement ring.

This is it.

Chapter Text

When it comes, finally, it comes flatly. Only one week after Kate had moved into the guest room of the house, and six days after she’d taken off her ring to wash her hands and hadn’t put it back on. Rob simply walks in and says it.

“They told me I can get transferred back if I like. I said I’d take it.”

Kate nods. “Do we still have the house?”

Rob is probably surprised. He’s also deliberately trying to hide it. “We—you’d have to buy out the company’s share.”

“I like it here.”

“Okay.”

* * *

The day Rob leaves, Kate doesn’t come to the airport. She leaves him at the door with a kiss, on the lips, but soft and brief. She doesn’t dislike him, after everything. 

“I’ll call you, maybe, if you ever come back?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “Maybe.”

She sits in the study as she hears the rumble of the taxi pulling away and cries, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s not hard to make her cry, a touching book, a sad ending. When she’s done she cooks dinner, eats in the kitchen, pours a cup of juice, then sits down and thinks. Because she’s still thinking. She’ll be thinking for a long time.

She’d finally gone back to her research, after she’d gotten home from the incident with Rob and tried her best to sort out the remnants of their life. Clicked on when she could no longer stand the weight of the things they were trying not to say pressing down on the lashing thoughts within her mind, fantasies that refused to be silenced by the heaviness of reality. Made her way onto another Tattlecrime article that had caught her eye, and then jump in her chest.

It was on the disappearance of former Special Agent Will Graham, dated one week after the last letter under her floor. Discovered during an investigation from the man’s bank when his credit card had quickly and abruptly maxed out, later discovered to have been due to the details being posted on a public internet forum and taken advantage of my many viewers. There were a number of possible explanations, one the police were favouring being that he had killed himself and decided to do an unusual charity as his last act. Tattlecrime, however, speculated it was done to cover some single telling purchase. They even had a list of the last charges made on his card, no doubt illegally leaked evidence.

The website is trash, Kate truly thinks so, but one thing does catch her eye from the last theory, and the list. There’s a wide spread of online purchases and payments, mostly high priced, multiple big transport tickets included. And among them, two specific ones.

One plane ticket from Washington, and another from Salzburg. Both to Oslo.

It could be a coincidence. Or it could not. But either way, she thinks about them, sitting in the kitchen of the house—her house. And his old house. But not his home, not where he wanted to be and not where he stayed.

She can’t actually imagine how their story continued, so she makes it up. It wasn’t that long ago, they could well still be alive, she can’t be sure if they’re out there nor if she wants them to be. Together at last, in a life they’d finally carved out and taken for themselves, in their own place where stories can be real.

Should she speak of them in past tense or present tense when she tells the story? Because she will, surely, it’s what she does. She’d read a quote once, that the seamen tells stories of winds and the ploughman of bulls and the soldier of wounds and the shepherd of sheep. Well then she, as a writer, tells stories about stories themselves.

And that’s what they are. Lecter and Graham, a story. That’s how life is, because you can’t change a story. Only view it, read it, accept it and let it open your mind to what can be possible. She’s looked up more details on the Chesapeake Ripper’s crimes as well, and certainly there’s no doubt in her mind that he deserves to burn in hell. But it’s not her place to judge a story, or its characters.

Maybe after all this, she’ll start writing again. Perhaps she’ll write a character with Will Graham’s strength, born as something that couldn’t help be tugged around by those around him. Who changed, compromised, but still didn’t let his ending be written in anything but his own terms. Or perhaps she’ll write someone like Hannibal Lecter, a creature that looks human but is actually less than—but also in some ways, more than.

Or, a couple. Like the two of them, who looked into each other’s eyes and saw something that latched on and didn’t let go. Whose lives were so inevitably intertwined, even in destruction, until the whole landscape lay in such ruins that it had become a new one.

* * * 

Kate’s driving home from work when she sees the moving van in front of the house that had been sold a few weeks back, and her spirits lift. She stops the car before she can get nervous, she was never the most outgoing of people, but she steps out gracefully when she spots the figure making the next run from the front door.

“Hi!” she greets brightly, calling out to her new neighbour. The figure, a man, turns.

“Hey,” he says warmly in reply, and begins to walk towards her. They meet in the middle.

“I’m Kate,” she says, and gives him her hand. “I live a bit down the road.”

“Peter.” He takes it, and his grip is firm. “Just moving in.”

They chat for a while. The movers with the van continue working in the background, behind Peter where he stands under the gentle sunlight. He’s easy to speak to, and he’s also delighted when he finds out she’s an author.

“That’s pretty great, coming up with the stories. I’m a big reader.”

“Well, sometimes when they’re nice they just come. I haven’t actually been writing that much recently though, got caught up in some reading myself.”

“Have to say I know that feels.” He laughs, and she laughs with him. “You’ll have to come over when I’m set up then, soon?”

He’s fairly handsome, if Kate were to put a word to it, it’s been some time since she’s looked at a man like that. His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and he has nice eyes. For a moment Kate finds she can almost see something in them, a possibility. Anticipation and hope mixed with the tinge of fear of uncertainly. And she feels something, just a little thing, flutter in her stomach.

“Sure.”

She wonders if that's how Will Graham feels every time he sees Hannibal Lecter's teeth.

fin.