#raudrakos

In the end it didn’t matter that he’d fallen into Hannibal’s trap, that it was a game and he knew it was a game and he played it anyway. Closing his hands around Hannibal Lecter’s throat and squeezing--in earnest, not in dreams or in some therapeutic imagining--made it worth it; worth the risk, worth the look of smug satisfaction on Hannibal’s face right now despite the blood trickling from his lip, the angry red marks blooming on his face. 

Since meeting Hannibal Lecter Will has been intrigued in a way he’s never known before, maybe even compromised. He doesn’t have a better word for it than that, can’t very well reach for any sort of distance or deniability or even use the pursuit of justice as a shield when he’s standing in the wreckage of Hannibal Lecter’s kitchen, both of them bleeding and breathing hard but very much alive--

Maybe as alive as he’s ever felt. 

“ it’s no problem, i realize your schedule is probably busy. ” joseph is polite when he smiles, always, as ever, but it is false and instinctive. he isn’t sure what it is, something like instinct perhaps ( or paranoia ) but offices like this never settled well with him. too pleasant, too inviting to linger in when its purpose was to split a man’s psyche open at the seams. what a great and awful ability. 

“The Ripper’s in love.”

Will paces circles around Hannibal’s office, restless. Wired. He has been since he’d first gotten a look at the scene, all nervous energy—he’s still half convinced he’s out of his mind not telling Jack why the moment he’d figured it out, but he’d gotten halfway there before he’d just... stopped.

The missing heart, the incision carefully stitched shut where it had been, like Elise Nichols’ liver, he couldn’t show her he loved her, the eyes, love is blind, the mirror making the scene the goddamn Two of Cups. He’d gotten through that, and Jack had listened, it’s a serenade, like Budge, he’s trying to reach out to someone, he—

He’d attached each of the bright red wires that held the body in place using a fishing lure.

The victim was a fisherman, Will had eyed the mounted fish on the walls on his way in, but not fly fishing. It could be a broader reference, fishing in general—but Will knows it’s not. Of the remains found in the lures that couldn’t be connected to known Ripper victims—five of them had been from the last cycle, including Miriam Lass—the earliest was from a woman who was reported missing the very same day Freddie Lounds had posted the “Takes One to Catch One” article. It was a timeline. A message. A screaming neon sign that he had been in Will’s goddamn house.

And he hadn’t said a word to Jack about it.

Will runs a hand over his face, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears he can hardly hear himself think. He should be horrified. He is, on some level, or at least he’s horrified that the Ripper’s been in his house, but—it’s not fear that’s making him restless, not disgust. He can’t put a name to what he’s feeling.

Or he doesn’t want to put a name to what he’s feeling.

                        chitchat is not what she is known for, she rarely talks friendly with guests. but now, she smiles, a soft upturn at the corner of her mouth as she finishes doing everest's job, making fresh coffee. “don’t get many doctors in here.” she glances up at him now, eyes flickering across his face, she can practically smell the degree coming off him. “don’t mean to be... y’know.” shoulder lifts  in half shrug, a way of saying : i don’t get out much , without actually saying it. “you work long enough, you get an eye for that kinda thing.”

& he thinks for a moment of a time long past / myriad wiped , yet forever held within the maedrvar . forever in atoran’s memories . a warning , folly never to be made again / he wonders , then , if hannibal lecter knows the value of that crimson . of the arcane gift that it truly was .       ❛    but , what is it that comes next ? here , you have spilled the elixir of life . surely , there is something you seek in such an act that others would not . in this future born of your design , what is it that comes next ?     ❜