Work Text:
“I wonder how we should count the years, to better measure the time that has passed between this moment and the turning points of our shared past”.
He does not move more than a slight rotation of one foot, angling his body towards the incoming figure, to better keep track of his expected companion with the corner of his eye.
His right hand continues the slow trajectory down, the careful flicker, the paused arch back up.
“Eleven years as a whole, would you say? Roughly nine, since we found each other in opposite sides? Or five, since we last stood face to face?”
The scent that comes to him is neither tinged with remnants of cheap lotions nor alcohol; and Hannibal finds himself smiling with his distant eyes.
Will had learnt, after all this time. Don’t provide me with your scent, dear friend.
The doctor almost wants to fully turn and face him, he is that pleased to also note that there are no traces of sour sweat. This is not a sudden alcohol deprivation, then. Not a reckless kicking off of the bottles and jumping into a headless chase.
“Eleven years of your lies as a whole, you mean. Nine since you tried to gut me. Five since you sent Dolarhyde after me? All of them are dates I would gladly piss on, doctor. Today could be the exception, though” –and the gun is cocked and raised.
In his periphery, Hannibal watches Will, not betraying his calm. He had been expecting him, after all. He had anticipated that the stance would be firm, that the man would be armed, that the intent was to kill.
Both knew this part quite well.
Hannibal has yet to take a good look at the younger man’s face, though, and his curiosity is on par with his almost forgotten displeasure at Dolarhyde’s resulting marks. It was not the end of the world, certainly, but Hannibal still lamented it. As he lamented many things, far away and without crippling suffering.
“Your phrasing certainly intrigues me, dear Will. I wonder where that thin and sharp shard of doubt stems from. Is your gun not loaded with six bullets? Are not those sufficient a reason to lend your wording the conviction you so desire, for this to be the day?”
And Hannibal continues his silent study, under his comfortable casual clothes his muscles are tense and his stance is ready. He knows his surroundings, his eyes have already mapped the terrain, accounted for irregularities, prepared for rapid fire. It was something of a stretch, but the moment he realized Will had entered the country, he had procured bullet-proof vests for himself.
There was a time where he would have maintained enough pride as to rely on his words alone. But Will was another kind of beast. Now, more than before, Will would not stop to consider his voice.
Or at least that was what Hannibal had imagined in the most probable scenario, once Will came looking for him around the shores of the small solitary lake.
But here they are, at a seemingly ridiculous stand-by. Will has not fired his gun yet. Will has heard his musings, has replied to them.
Hannibal takes another soft drag from the burning cigarette, and decides to move another fraction of an inch towards his pursuer.
His eyes fall on Will’s blue ones, and he sees Will’s instinct to flicker them away quickly shut down with a deepening of his scold.
Will keeps him on target, and opens his mouth.
“Since when do you smoke anyway?”
A visceral, and frankly unexpected, lurch happens inside Hannibal’s chest at the random observation. It is almost endearing, and Hannibal wants to roll metaphorical eyes at himself.
He also wants to scowl Will. Plenty of time you’ve had, ex-Special Agent Graham. Your probabilities of taking me down are dropping lower than 68% now, now that we have stood in each other’s presence without the gun going off.
Hannibal debates for a heartbeat calling on Will’s rudeness through the abrupt question, and he also debates on the sincere answer that he doesn’t, not really. The very seldom cigarette is more an ornament than any need or impulse or want. It came around with some of his personas through the years, and he lights one as a whimsy when the wind picks up and the rivulets of white smoke would seem pleasing to his eyes.
Will takes a step forward of a sudden; though, and Hannibal abandons the line of thought immediately. As much as he’d enjoy long moments of conversation with Will today, the younger man has other plans for them. His death is on the agenda, Hannibal does not forget.
Will steps fully on his sight now, seemingly debating whether to keep the barrel’s sight trained on his chest or his head.
The second of indecision is done for, and he is firmly pointing towards Hannibal’s forehead, getting closer still.
Hannibal lets his eyes rest placidly on Will’s marked face. A jagged and impossible-to-miss scar cuts Will’s left cheek, from the lower mandible up to the corner of his eye. Another scar, less extensive and more surgical in nature, runs down his nose until joining the first one. Both his eyes are undamaged, although the left brow is also crossed in lines and mismatches with his right.
Will blinks rapidly, and Hannibal sees another tiny mark on the left eyelid. It surely was a close call, the survival of Will’s eye.
“You’ll stand there and let me shoot you between the eyes, then. I’d thank you for the small favor, but this is not the first time I’ve had you pinned like this. I am more careful to sing my victories now”.
Hannibal listens to the angry words, the resentment in them, he sees the desire of Will to pull the trigger and finish this already.
But the younger man seems to be expecting something before the end. It seems Will needs for this to be an absolute end, and before blood runs he is looking for some elusive closure.
Hannibal wonders if he can provide Will that. Or more likely, when would be the best moment to provide it. Because Hannibal doesn’t want today to be the day.
“It certainly isn’t the first time, Will, I remember it well too. At that time, Uncle Jack did us the courtesy of breaking the tableau. I imagine years later, down the road of his reminiscing and his bad dreams, Jack must have spared you a minute of his thoughts. A full minute to regret his negligence and his doubts, his playing of your strings. Nowadays he might be too busy in his retirement as consultant to spare us much energy but perhaps-“
“Spare me the bullshit, Lecter” –and Will won’t lower his eyes yet, fixed on Hannibal’s face as a whole, the minute movement of his shoulders in breathing. The blue of his irises won’t stay more than a second on the tea brown of Hannibal’s though, and Hannibal respects him enough not to force them into a more hateful staring- “You’re a broken record on Jack and his stupidity. I haven’t come here to hear your psychobabble after years of waiting for news of someone fucking finally taking you down”.
“Waiting for me to kick the bucket? Finding the short end of my rope? A trained eye to shoot me down from my sky?” –conversationally, Hannibal adds idioms not entirely English-language in origin, realizing almost too late that the burning of his cigarette was about to touch the skin of his pointer finger. With a grimace, he lets the stick drop beside him, immediately putting a brown leather booted foot on it.
His aesthetics regret that he doesn’t have the luxury to pull out of his pants’ pocket the aluminum-lined ash case, to keep the burned stick in.
By the way Will is trigger-ready to peruse his every move, Hannibal doesn’t doubt that a suspicious movement would be met with finality.
“You must have known that my death would not come so easily, William” –the chiding is soft, and Hannibal very much tries to keep all traces of amusement and endearment from his voice. His right foot is still rubbing down on the loose dirt of the road.
“Pretend all you like, Doctor Lecter” –and Will’s voice is forceful in his contempt of the revoked title- “But we and God and the devil himself knows that you could have ended up dead many times before. Lots of people have gotten some good hits at you, haven’t they? They just don’t get it, that the follow-up is what counts when it comes to you. Never just one turn of the rope, it’s gotta be the whole nine yards and more. Well, doctor, I am not pulling back any punches now”.
Hannibal’s eyes are bright, aware of the luminosity reflected from the nearby waters. He has always enjoyed how people stretch the reality of his person and his details, painting his irises red and his stance macabre.
He’s nothing of the sort. Oh well. He might be a bit of that sort, but it’s mostly to play into the human nature of guises and pretention.
In fact he’s very rarely angered, he is mostly annoyed at best. Internally he is always aware of his surroundings and entertained with his observations, his melodic memory, his olfactory journeys, his construction of forms and shapes and mental interconnections of life.
Right now, Hannibal sees Will, and feels pleased. He is pleased to have kept tabs on the younger man even when inside his imprisonment, after the widely publicized Red Dragon case. He is pleased to have exchanged pleasantries with a few orderlies and thus gotten some precious phone calls, all meant to anonymously pull the strings of surgeons assigned to attempt the reconstruction of Will Graham. He is pleased to have stayed in contact for some years, in the manner of post cards and trinkets through well-layered mail routes. He is very, very pleased to have reached this moment, this moment in his life when he had finally been ready to let go. Let go of Will and their shared empathy and lunacy trip, let go of the wondering and questioning. He had been ready to accept the idea that Will would lose himself in the drink and all his beauty and wilderness would be forsaken, his promise of reckoning be forgotten.
But merely a month ago, Will had pinged his almost-forgotten network of information. Will was coming after him, all on his own. Will wouldn’t let go, in the moment that Hannibal was about to. His brave young man, his martyr of a boy, his seer of murders.
Much too entertaining a road cross for Hannibal not to re-start the chase.
The moment this thought flies through his mind, Hannibal sees Will’s eyes harden and his eyelids flutter and his arms fast in the action of firing his gun.
But Hannibal knew Will was coming here, and had chosen to meet him once again.
Under his boots, sensors pick on his heavy step down, and blasts of noise go off around them.
His mock rubbing of the cigarette tail had also lent him the entrance into a fast crouch and spin, and this was the only reason four bullets did not pierce his side and legs.
Hannibal knows Will was taken aback by the timed explosions, and had gone down in one knee while firing his gun at Hannibal’s general direction. In a matter of seconds he was about to empty the chamber, and this could only mean that Will was carrying more than one weapon.
How very daring, but also not a good auspice for Hannibal himself.
“Son of a-“
It’s the mutter that trickles to Hannibal’s ears as he tumbles Will down in a tackle, but uses only the impact force to do it, not grabbing or letting himself be taken a hold of. Immediately he is on his feet and making his way into the heavy bush of the lake’s surrounding.
Hannibal knows Will is hot on his heels, so he sets into the route clear in technicolor in his mind. There’s something to be said about throughout preparation, and Hannibal is nothing but dedicated and careful. All hunters must be.
Funnily enough, all preys must be, too. Quick on their feet, ready for the chase, clever in survival.
Hannibal is mud and leaves and ringing eardrums for the rest of the nearby blasts, but he is content in his duality of prey and hunter, when it comes to Will Graham.
Will who is shouting something to his far left, trying to orient himself and the direction where Hannibal has faded into.
This won’t be their last time seeing each other, that’s for sure. Hannibal resumes his way.
There are many more turning points in their lives left to count.