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It had been nearly five years since Will and Hannibal’s escape from the law. Almost as soon as they were healed, they found Bedelia. The woman should have known they’d come after her. Will had warned her, after all. But, no. She decided to take the police’s word that the two are dead instead of remembering Will’s warning.
However, now that it was almost the fifth anniversary, Will wanted to do something special. He tried to bring his and Hannibal’s enemies from the FBI for a meal and conversation. This time, instead of Hannibal, Will would be throwing a dinner party.
~*~*~*~
When Hannibal had heard his dear Will’s plan, a grin plastered itself on his face. It was surprising, as evidenced by the look on Will’s face, that he would let his emotions show so vividly. But Hannibal had changed since he had first met Will. At this point, Hannibal was quite enjoying his new life, even though he was still killing and eating the pigs of the world, but he digressed.
Now, Hannibal was taking his portion of the plan into action. Will had allowed him to gather the guests.
Hannibal was going to have fun with this.
~*~*~*~
Jack slowly woke up. As his brain caught up with his surroundings, he became aware that he wasn’t alone. He whipped his head up. Looking around, he saw Alana, Margot, Jimmy, and Brian. All sitting in chairs around a table. None of them was tied to their chairs, but the threat was clear upon Hannibal’s walking into the room carrying a bottle of wine.
“Ah, I see you all have woken up,” Hannibal speaks, placing the bottle of wine at the head of the table. “I will let your host know of this.” And with that, the killer left the room.
Alana was close enough to the door he went through to notice it led to a kitchen, but everyone sitting at the table could hear what sounded like something cooking in a frying pan. The sound alone caused everyone to freeze and tense up. Although the part of that interaction that was the most terrifying was the genuine smile that was gracing Hannibal’s lips. None of them had ever seen such a look on the taller man, even Alana, who thought she had until Hannibal bluntly told her in the barn of Muskrat Farm that she had never truly known him and never would have. But now, he was smiling and showing emotions to the fullest, even though he seemed slightly uncomfortable in doing so.
“What the hell is going on…” Jack whispered in shock. As far as he was concerned, this had to have been a dream, no, a nightmare.
Brian and Jimmy had previously retired after everything that had happened with the Ripper and Will, but had never thought they’d have to see either of them again. And yet, there was Hannibal, and for all they knew, Will was behind that door.
Margot was the only one who wasn’t terrified. Oh, so she was worried and scared, but she also knew that Hannibal didn’t dislike her and that she had not become something vile to him. She wasn’t a pig in his mind, and she wasn’t about to start now.
The small group froze once again when the door to the kitchen opened, a serving cart leaving first, with Hannibal pushing it. On the cart were seven plates of fish and a big serving bowl of salad. Intakes of breath occur when, right behind Hannibal, is Will.
This was when Alana got a good look at both of the men, being too distracted by waking up in an unfamiliar location. Hannibal was wrong, and so was Will, for that matter. Hannibal was supposed to be the pristine, put-together one of the two, but now he had long hair that almost reached his shoulders and was wearing flannel, of all things. There was also a noticeable addition to his neck, a homemade-looking necklace in the style of a fishing hook. If she had been able to get a closer look, she’d have noticed it genuinely was a fishing hook.
Will, on the other hand, was supposed to be the less together one. Even with Molly, the man was mostly wearing whatever was comfortable. Now, he was wearing what Hannibal would have worn, and he seemed to be taking pride in the scar over his forehead and on his right cheek. The man had already been growing confident in himself in comparison to the years before meeting the ex-psychiatrist. It was clear that something had happened between the Great Red Dragon and now, but no one was willing to ask. At least, not now.
While Will sat himself at the head of the table, Hannibal moved around placing the plates of fish in front of the unwilling guests. After everyone had received their plate, Hannibal placed the final two in front of Will and the seat on the right of him.
“I took the liberty of cooking fish for everyone, as I’m sure none of you would appreciate our cooking,” Will stared at Jack from across the table, sending a shiver down his spine.
Jack didn’t know what had happened, but he knew it had something to do with Dolarhyde. The videotape that the man left of his murder showed Jack everything he needed to know, especially when they were able to enhance the audio enough to hear what was being said.
Watching Will being stabbed and violently stabbing Dolarhyde in retaliation, followed by Hannibal jumping on the man’s back, biting into his throat while Will stabbed his stomach and pulled it across, was vile and disturbing. Jack had never thought he’d see Will look so… animalistic. It was expected of Hannibal, but Will?
Jack could still hear the conversation the two killers had after killing Dolarhyde.
“See?” Hannibal had said. “This is all I ever wanted for you, Will.” The man had looked around at the carnage they had caused before facing Will once again. “For both of us.”
“It’s beautiful,” Will breathed, his voice was raspy and unusual due to the hole in his right cheek. He gasped when his statement caught up with him, never expecting to admit such a thing out loud. All they could do was lean on each other. It didn’t take long for both to faint, causing them to fall towards the edge of the bluff.
Upon showing the video to his higher-ups, they determined that no one could have survived such a fall and ruled Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham deceased. And now, Jack had physical proof of their survival, but now there was the concern of whether he’d be alive long enough to prove it. Knowing the two, he wouldn’t count on it.
“See,” Jack flinched at the sound of Will’s voice saying the same word Hannibal had in the video. “It has been five years since that fateful day, you know the one I’m talking about.” Will didn’t give them a chance to respond. “Now, I decided to throw this lovely dinner party for all of you to remind you that we’re still here, and we can still come after you.”
Brian, always the one to challenge Will, decided to speak up in defiance. “And what makes you think that we wouldn’t tell anyone about this? You kidnapped us from our homes, and yet you expect that we won’t have proof?”
That got Jack’s attention. Brian was right, so why did Will’s eyes fill with amusement and Hannibal’s face twist into a mocking grin?
Will let out a mirthless chuckle. “Brian, Brian, Brian.” He tuts. The sound was so disturbing coming from Will’s mouth. “Did you really think we wouldn’t take into account any security systems? No, we made certain Hannibal wouldn’t be caught on camera.” A cruel smile twisted on his face. “At least, not as himself.”
Hannibal brought a tablet up when Will made a motion, turning it to face those at the table. On the screen, in Jack’s house, a woman appears and sneaks up on the man. Jack was watching in shock; he was so sure that it had been a man, that it had been Hannibal who kidnapped him. What was going on?
Seeing the confusion on Jack’s face, Hannibal answered the unasked question. “Despite my height, I’ve found it isn’t that hard to pretend I was a woman.” The grin on the cannibal’s face brought fear to Jack’s mind.
Will inhaled deeply, eyes closing and a satisfied smile stretching his face. “Fear might not taste good, but it certainly smells incredible.”
Everyone froze as Hannibal took a whiff as well. “What…?” Alana had finally gotten her voice and wits about her. Unfortunately, that only brought the killer’s attention to her.
“Hannibal has taught me how to enhance my senses after we got married, not that it’s any of your business.” The way Will spoke to her only frightened her more.
“Married?” Margot tilted her head to the side. This time, Will and Hannibal smiled at her.
“Yes,” Hannibal took over the conversation. “We would have liked for you to come, Margot, but unfortunately, many things got in the way.”
The shock of that short conversation was enough to shake Jimmy out of his trance. “Wait, I thought you were still legally married to Molly?” To him, it didn’t seem like he was asking something wrong. He usually wouldn’t limit what he was saying.
Will only smiled. “No, actually.” He leans his elbows on the edge of the table, interlacing his fingers together. “I had told her before taking the Tooth Fairy case that if I took it, I would come back different. I gave her an out, and the divorce went through the very day we killed Dolarhyde.” He cuts off a piece of fish and eats it; his biting into the flesh was uncomfortable. “I was so glad that she was willing to take my dogs in. Walter loved them too much for me to separate them.”
Margot was the first and only one to begin eating her fish, as well. Alana gave her a concerned and terrified look. She couldn’t understand why her wife would do something like this. What she didn’t understand was that Margot had been desensitized to these things from a young age. One had to be after witnessing her father and later her brother committing such atrocious acts. Alana had been sheltered in comparison to her, and that was the one thing they agreed upon: that they would make certain their son never had to suffer. However, if they didn’t play this right, Alana would die, leaving Margot to take care of him alone.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” Will began. “We’re going to let you go, and you’re never going to come after us again. Otherwise, well,” the savage gleam that entered both Will and Hannibal’s eyes made it feel like the temperature of the room went down several notches. “I think you can guess what we’d do. After all, Hannibal has just proven that he can make himself look as if he wasn’t the one committing a crime.”
“Are we clear?” Hannibal asked.
Even though Jack wanted to disagree, he knew that it would risk himself and others if he didn’t. It wasn’t like they would be able to know he went to the FBI with his findings. Though now that he thought about it, if he did go to the FBI, would they even believe him? His security cameras would show a woman, and the only thing he’d have was his memories, and those weren’t very useful. It would be his word against the official statement, and none of the higher-ups wanted to believe the two were alive. There was nothing he could do.
There was no way that any of them could come after the Murder Husbands, and it was literal now. Jimmy and Brian were no longer working in forensics, Alana was only working at Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and Margot wasn’t even involved in law enforcement. And Jack? Jack had been forced to retire. He was still officially working for the FBI, but was going to be retired in a week.
Nothing they said would do them any good. And Will knew that that was why he had done this, now of all times he could have.
Will grinned. “Good. Hannibal?”
And with that, Jack realized that the hulking figure was behind him, but it was too late. Hannibal had already injected him with something, knocking him out. Jack could only assume that he went to the others afterwards. Before he fully passed out, he was certain he heard Brian, Jimmy and Alana running in an attempt to leave.
Unfortunately, he knew that none of them were going to make it out of here conscious.
~*~*~*~
A week after being kidnapped, Jack found himself reading a newspaper article accompanied by two photos. The photos? Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. The article was saying that the bodies had finally been found.
The bodies of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter had been found washed up on the shore, not that far away from the bluff they had originally fallen from. Fish ate a decent amount of the bodies, and DNA proved who they were.
So then why did Jack still remember being kidnapped by the two? Was it just a nightmare? Did it never happen?
Jack took a deep breath, set the newspaper down on the table, and ignored it for the rest of the day. He was not going to think about it again.
After all, the FBI hadn’t closed the case due to there being no bodies; they just said it was highly doubtful the two survived. Now that they have the bodies, there was truly nothing Jack could do or say to change that.