#give chiyoh a last name :(

[eldritch-ace]

Uhhh have some of my favorite gay people from Hannibal

[chiyohsfistyourface]

All Chiyoh Scenes in Hannibal

This is mostly a resource for me and my writing but just in case anyone else wants to use it I am posting this here. Exactly what it says at the top, all Chiyoh scenes and dialogue under the cut. 

First Appearance: Secondo 3.03 

We first meets Chiyoh when Will is staring at her through Binoculars like an absolute stalker at Castle Lecter. She’s plucking a pheasant and cooking and it reminds Will of Hannibal. She then ends up leading Will to a basement where he goes in and finds the Prisoner. 

Just cause I haven’t seen one, I will translate what he says here:

CAGED MAN (O.S.): Kas ten? Labas? (Who’s there? Hello? )

Will approaches, illuminating the cage's contents: a CAGED MAN, wan, covered in matted hair. He's tall and thin. Could be 40, could be 70. Hard to tell. He holds a cooked pheasant, mid-meal. The juices dampen his beard.

CAGED MAN (CONT’D): Labas? (Hello?)

Will stays quiet as the man moves to the front of the cage, his face suddenly ghoulish in the flashlight. The bars are decorated with handmade trinkets and dolls made of bird bones, snail shells and twine. A bucket of shit in the corner. This man has been in here for years.

CAGED MAN (CONT’D) (begging): Atsiliepk, kalbek prasau, prasau, prasau. (Answer me, speak, please, please, please)

The man starts to cry. They seem to be tears of relief.

CAGED MAN (CONT’D): Ji su manimi nekalba. Ji niekada su manimi nekalba! Prasau! (She does not talk to me. She never talks to me. I beg you)

He grows frustrated, desperate for something, but Will doesn't know what.

CAGED MAN (CONT’D): Kalbek! Kalbek! Kalbek! (Speak, Speak, Speak)

Suddenly, a HIGH-POWERED BEAM hits Will in the face. Blinding him. His hands come to his face. The caged man rushes to hide in the shadows of his cell.

Chiyoh stands behind the light, holding it against the barrel of her shotgun; a shadow among shadows.

CHIYOH: You're upsetting him.

Then, Chiyoh and Will begin to chat  

HOT WHITE LIGHT

It FLARES THE CAMERA, glancing over tips of its tentacles flex and turn

a snail, the eyes on the away, finally finding...

WILL GRAHAM Eyes shaded from the light piercing INT. CASTLE LECTER - BASEMENT - NIGHT

The shotgun is leveled at Will, his back to the cage. The caged man cowers. Chiyoh's eyes fixed to Will's. Anger and also exhaustion, and maybe even relief. The constant, distant flowing of water provides a surreal HUM.

CHIYOH: You're trespassing.

WILL GRAHAM: I'm a friend of Hannibal's.

The shotgun barrel dips slightly, either in hesitation or relief.

CHIYOH: He sent you?

WILL GRAHAM (shakes his head): I'm looking for him. 

Her barrel rises.

WILL GRAHAM (CONT’D): My name is Will Graham. I'm unarmed. May I lower my arms?

Will begins to lower his arms; she indicates with her barrel to keep them up where he had them.

CHIYOH: This trigger has a three-pound pull. I'm holding two of it. 

Will's arms slowly regain their lost height.

CAGED MAN: Atsiliepk, kalbek prasau. (Answer, speak please.)

WILL GRAHAM: What's he saying?

CHIYOH: He wants you to look at him, speak to him, but you're not going to.

WILL GRAHAM: You've cast aside the social graces normally afforded to human beings.

CHIYOH: He's cast them aside. All he is allowed is the sound of water. It's what the unborn hear, it's their last memory of peace.

She moves around Will with her light and shotgun, and points him back up the stairs. Will doesn't move.

WILL GRAHAM: You're keeping him like an animal.

CHIYOH: I wouldn't do this to an animal. There's room in there for two.

OFF that not-so-veiled threat...

FROM BLACK

CUT TO BLACK.

CAMERA PULLS OUT of the barrel of Chiyoh's shotgun to reveal Chiyoh marching toward CAMERA. CAMERA CONTINUES TO PULL BACK to reveal she is marching Will out the door of:

EXT. LECTER ESTATE - CASTLE LECTER - NIGHT As Will exits the castle, Chiyoh a safe distance behind him:

WILL GRAHAM: What did he do?

The question forces images into Chiyoh's mind she would much rather not think about. Finally:

CHIYOH: He ate her.

WILL GRAHAM: Mischa.

Chiyoh reacts, hearing the name aloud. Will stops marching. 

WILL GRAHAM: How long has he been your prisoner?

CHIYOH: We've been each other's prisoner for a very long time. The weight of that gives Will pause.

WILL GRAHAM: How ever did you find yourself in this situation? Will turns to face Chiyoh and her gun, his arms still raised.

CHIYOH: The question applies to both of us.

WILL GRAHAM: And the answer's probably the same. What's your name?

CHIYOH: Chiyoh. How do you know Hannibal?

WILL GRAHAM: One could argue, intimately.

CHIYOH: Nakama? It's the Japanese word for a very close friend, someone you share with.

Will considers the complexities of friendship with Hannibal.

WILL GRAHAM: Yes, we were nakama. Last time I saw him, he left me with a smile. 

With one hand, he carefully lifts up his shirt, revealing his ABDOMINAL SCAR, its corners upturned in a vague smile.

He slowly lowers his arms; her gun remains pointed.

CHIYOH: All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story. Tell me a story.

Then it cuts away to Hannibal and Bedelia as Will tells the story. When it comes back Will and Chiyoh are still talking

WILL GRAHAM: Our minds can concoct all sorts of scenarios when we don't want to believe something. We construct fairy tales. And we accept them.

CHIYOH: I accept what Hannibal has done. I understand why he's done it.

WILL GRAHAM: Mischa doesn't explain Hannibal. She doesn't quantify what he does.

CHIYOH: He does what was done to her.

WILL GRAHAM: How do you know it was your prisoner who killed Mischa?

CHIYOH: Hannibal told me he did.

As the words leave her mouth, she hears how damning they are.

CHIYOH (CONT’D): Hannibal took someone from you, are you here to take someone from him? 

The thought had crossed Will's mind.

WILL GRAHAM: I've forgiven him his trespasses, as he's forgiven me. 

CHIYOH: You're nakama. Aren't you alike? 

Will chews on that question, then:

WILL GRAHAM: If I were like Hannibal, I would've killed you already. Cooked you, ate you and fed what was left of you to him. It's what he would do.

CHIYOH: You've given that some thought.

WILL GRAHAM: Do you know where he is?

CHIYOH: Why are you looking for him after he left you with a smile?

Will glances down at his abdomen, unconsciously.

WILL GRAHAM: I've never known myself as well as I know myself when I'm with him. She considers that, recognizing the feeling.

CHIYOH: You won't find Hannibal here. There are places on these grounds he cannot safely go. Bad memories.

WILL GRAHAM: Memories lead to more memories. What do these grounds hold for you?

CHIYOH: Hannibal wanted to kill that man for what he did to Mischa. I wouldn't let him take his life, so Hannibal left his life with me. If I turned him in, he'd go free. If I let him go... he would kill me. Wouldn't you?

Will doesn't respond.

CHIYOH (CONT’D): The easiest path was to kill him.

WILL GRAHAM: Why didn't you?

CHIYOH: Because Hannibal wanted me to.

WILL GRAHAM: He was curious if you would kill. I imagine he still is.

Then, of course, Will the Bitch releases the prisoner and I’m just going to cut the two scenes into one and ignore the cutaway

CAMERA PULLS Chiyoh down the stairs. Bag over one arm, shotgun tucked under the other, she descends into --

THE BASEMENT.

CONTINUE PULLING her toward the cage behind us. We assume it's empty, but she doesn't react. As Chiyoh pushes past CAMERA, we REVERSE to reveal --

THE CAGED MAN BACK IN HIS CAGE! She leans her shotgun against the wall.

Moves to the cage and slides the parchment package through a slot in the door, all as though nothing's changed. But it has...

The caged man GRABS HER WRIST.

Chiyoh looks him in the eyes, the first time she's done so in twenty-five years. His rage intensifies. Still holding his gaze, she doesn't notice --

THE LOCK -- undone.

And the man SLAMS the unlocked door into her face with a loud, metallic BAM.

Chiyoh crumples back, scattering bottles of wine, stunned. CHIYOH'S POV

Blurred. Dazed. Bottles of wine hit the ground and SHATTER SPECTACULARLY IN SLOW MOTION as the caged man descends on her. Reaching for her throat.

NORMAL MOTION as Chiyoh sputters and gasps, grabbing at his hands, which tighten around her throat. She scratches at his face, but it's useless; his matted beard may as well be armor.

Chiyoh twists and turns, trying to gain leverage, but he has her well pinned. She gasps for breath.

CHIYOH'S POV

Losing consciousness, she uses her last bit of strength to dig her nails into the caged man's throat.

Her face is bulging and near blue, but still she reaches. Her eyes twisted, looking OUT OF FRAME.

The man senses she's almost finished, bears down.

CAGED MAN (subtitled: "Speak to me.") Atsiliepk, kalbek.

Then a moment of stillness washes over Chiyoh as she stares deep into her killer's eyes -- not as his victim, but as his guilty tormentor. She mutters through an airless whisper:

CHIYOH: I'm sorry.

She lets go of him, giving in. CLOSE ON HER HAND It slides off of the caged man, onto the ground, limp. ON CHIYOH As she appears to be surrendering to her death as we...

ON CHIYOH

She's covered in blood, staring dead-eyed. An eerie, sad moment, then the BLOOD LIFTS off Chiyoh in SLOW REVERSE MOTION, like raindrops returning to the sky.

CAMERA follows the blood into the caged man's neck as the GEYSER IS STOPPED by Chiyoh's hand -- holding a JAGGED PHEASANT BONE, she REVERSE JAMS it into the caged man's neck.

He rears back; Chiyoh rolls on top of him.

She watches as he clutches his throat, blood pooling between his fingers around the bone.

ON CHIYOH

Caged man's hands grasp the bone to remove it and, making a decision, Chiyoh covers his hands with her own. Holds the bone in place.

Panic fills his eyes and his hands struggle against hers.

Now resolute to what needs to be done, Chiyoh puts her weight to the bone. And slowly, despite the caged man's efforts, she forces it ever deeper.

BLOOD GURGLES in his throat. Blood spurts from the hollow end of the broken bone.

In one last burst of strength, the caged man rolls on top of Chiyoh, using his weight to squeeze the life out of her, until she pulls the jagged pheasant bone out of his neck, which spews a GEYSER OF BLOOD.

ON CHIYOH

She does what she has always resisted and deliberately kills the caged man. He slumps and falls off her.

She lies still for a moment, then lets out a SCREAM. 

CAMERA finds Will reacting as Chiyoh's SCREAM rings.

Chiyoh sits on the floor opposite. Staring at his body.

Will Graham comes down the stairs and stops as he sees the scene within -- SHOCKED.

CHIYOH: You did this. You set him free.

WILL GRAHAM: You were who I wanted to set free.

CHIYOH: You said Hannibal was curious if I would kill. You were curious, too. He was, if he is honest with himself.

WILL GRAHAM: I didn't want this.

CHIYOH: Yes, you did. You were doing what he does. He'd be proud of you. His nakama.

WILL GRAHAM: Did you know? Some part of you? At some level... you knew.

She studies him -- is he asking from experience?

CHIYOH: I traded feeling frightened for feeling righteous.

Will picks up an unbroken bottle of wine, stabs a knife in the cork and pulls it out, offering the bottle to Chiyoh. She takes it and takes a tentative sip.

WILL GRAHAM: He created a story out of events that only he experienced. "All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story."

She hands the bottle back to Will who takes a swig.

CHIYOH: I never knew Mischa. I only knew what Hannibal told me about her. What he told me was done to her. He wasn't lying about that, was he? 

WILL GRAHAM: No. 

CHIYOH: We swore promises on objects, pledges at the altar and a blood oath, pricking our fingers. For Mischa. "M" is for Mischa.

Will watches her reel from the impact of what she's done.

She moves across the room and takes up her shotgun. A tense moment as she might turn it on Will. Then:

CHIYOH (CONT’D): I'll help you find him.

WILL GRAHAM: Why would you help me?

CHIYOH: I have no reason to stay here. Not anymore. You saw to that.

The next time we see Chiyoh is in 3.05 Cotorno when she’s in the train with Will on the way to Italy 

They sit opposite one another in a sleeper cabin -- two chairs beside the window with a table, bunk beds and a small bathroom. Old wood. A taste of a Europe from days gone by. The train's RATTLE and CLACK is a constant background.

CHIYOH (V.O.): On still evenings, when the air wasdamp after a rain, we played a game. Hannibal would burn all kinds of barks and incense for me to identify by scent alone. He was charming the way a cub is charming, a small cub that grows up to be like one of the big cats.

WILL GRAHAM: One you can't play with later.

CHIYOH: The day I met Hannibal, he was an orphan. I was meant to meet him with his sister, but he was alone.

WILL GRAHAM: How did you meet him?

CHIYOH: I was his aunt's attendant. My parents sent me to learn from Lady Murasaki when I was just a girl. I learned from Hannibal, too. He had all the wisdom in miniature.

WILL GRAHAM: He comes in the guise of a mentor, but it's distress that excites him.

CHIYOH: I'm not in distress.

WILL GRAHAM: Not anymore. You had a strict rule about taking life and you broke it. Is it on your mind? Do you see killing him over and over?

CHIYOH: No. I see you.How do you know Hannibal's in Florence?

WILL GRAHAM: Botticelli.

Will hands her an Uffizi Gallery POSTCARD of the Primavera.

CHIYOH: When we find him, I will have steady hands and a slow heart. Will you?

Will offers a faint smile, glances out the window. She stares at him a moment, then glances outside herself.

CHIYOH: I've never been to Italy. I never expected to. Birds eat thousands of snails every day. Some of those snails survive digestion and emerge to find they've traveled the world.

WILL GRAHAM: In the belly of the beast.

Then, later at night while Will is in bed Chiyoh and him have another conversation

WILL GRAHAM: Do you want me to talk so you don't have to? Or would you rather I not talk at all? Can talk or not talk.

CHIYOH: Are we obligated to talk?

WILL GRAHAM: No

CHIYOH: Strange to talk so much. Not used to hearing voices outside my head.

WILL GRAHAM: I hear voices from all directions.

CHIYOH: I become aware of words no one is saying. Words that spoke to me in the gnawing sameness of my days.

WILL GRAHAM: In the gnawing sameness of your days, did you look at the shape of things? At what you were becoming?

CHIYOH: I wasn't becoming anything. I was standing still. Exactly where he left me standing. Like taxidermy.

WILL GRAHAM: Hollowed out and filled with something else.

CHIYOH: Not something else. I'm not as malleable as you are. You have a taste for it now.

WILL GRAHAM: A taste for what?

CHIYOH: Harm. 

WILL GRAHAM: Do you?

CHIYOH: I was violent when it was the right thing to do, when I was obliged to do it. But I think you like it.

WILL GRAHAM: Violence can be a powerful means to regulate someone's behavior.

CHIYOH: Are you regulating Hannibal's behavior or is he regulating yours?

WILL GRAHAM: We afforded each other an experience we may not otherwise have had.

CHIYOH: You've afforded me an experience I would not otherwise have had. If you don't kill him, you're afraid you're going to become him.

WILL GRAHAM: Yes. 

CHIYOH: There are means of influence other than violence.

Then we have the famous “yeet Will from the train scene

Chiyoh stands alone, braced against the railing, staring out into the darkness unfurling behind the train. Will watches Chiyoh from inside the caboose a moment, then joins her.

The wind whips at them both.

CHIYOH: I like the night. It's more than a period of time; it's another place. It's different from where we are during the day.

WILL GRAHAM: We're different from who we are during the day. Little more hidden, little less seen.

CHIYOH: When life is most like a dream.

Will stares at her a moment, studying her.

WILL GRAHAM: Why are you searching for him? What are you hoping to find?

CHIYOH: I'm not searching for Hannibal. I know exactly where he is.

WILL GRAHAM: Is he in Florence?

CHIYOH: Yes.

WILL GRAHAM: Why didn't you tell me you knew?

CHIYOH: I told you there are means of influence other than violence.

She kisses Will tenderly on the lips, taking his breath away.

CHIYOH: But violence is what you understand.

And with that, Chiyoh shoves Will violently over the railing, sending him ass over teakettle into the night.

Chiyoh takes a deep breath and lets it go and she begins to RECEDE AWAY FROM CAMERA as the train pulls her into darkness.

This is the last time we see Chiyoh in Cotorno, but we see her again in 3.06 Dolce! This is a good one because she meets Bedelia, shoots Will and briefly meets Jack.

First up: Meeting Bedelia

Bedelia, seated in front of the unrolled leather bag and its contents, wraps surgical tubing around her forearm, pulling it taught to create a bulging vein.

With one end of the surgical tubing in her teeth, she picks up her needle and ampoule, but when she looks up, she starts.

CHIYOH -- Stands in the apartment, regarding Bedelia with curiosity, her rifle resting on her hip.

ON BEDELIA

Without pulling the plunger to draw fluid from the ampoule, she carefully removes the needle and sets it down.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You must be looking for Hannibal Lecter. One of his patients?

CHIYOH: No, not a patient. Where is he?

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Gone. Seeing how you let yourself in, I hope it's not too forward to ask, who the hell are you?

CHIYOH: Family.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Ah. You've come all the way from home.

CHIYOH: Who are you?

BEDELIA DU MAURIER I'm his psychiatrist.

Chiyoh glances at the ampoule and needle.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Medicinal purposes.

Chiyoh studies Bedelia, eyes narrowing.

CHIYOH:You're like his bird. I'm his bird, too. He puts us in cages to see what we'll do.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: Fly away or dash ourselves dead against the bars.

CHIYOH: You haven't flown away.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You're flying right toward him. How does he inspire such devotion?

CHIYOH: You're his psychiatrist.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You could add to what I've learned in my experience with him, and from the mute postures of the dead. Were you there? Did you watch as the beast within him turned from the teat and entered the world?

CHIYOH: I met the beast and I saw him grow. Someone wants to kill him.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: More than one someone, I'd say.What do you want?

CHIYOH: I want to cage him.

That makes Bedelia smile.

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: I thought Will Graham was Hannibal's biggest mistake. But I have to wonder if it isn't you. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to take my medicine.

I have a lot of thoughts about this scene, but that is for another post and another analysis. For now, onto shooting Will 

Will and Hannibal emerge from the museum, out into the bustling courtyard.

A TELESCOPIC RIFLE SIGHT FROM THE ROOF Finding Hannibal in its crosshairs...

CUT TO: EXT. UFFIZI GALLERY - ROOF - DAY

CLOSE-UP -- the rifle's silenced barrel, its opening resembling the entrance to a dark tunnel pregnant with danger.

CLOSE-UP -- a gloved finger twitching on the trigger. Reveal it belongs to Chiyoh. HER POV THROUGH THE TELESCOPIC SIGHT Deliberately moving from Hannibal to Will.

BACK TO CHIYOH As she pulls the trigger and FIRES. Causing a FLOCK OF PIGEONS to burst into frightened flight...

CUT TO:

EXT. UFFIZI GALLERY - COURTYARD - DAY As WILL IS HIT IN THE SHOULDER.

And is thrown off balance against Hannibal who catches him. Holds him up as if Will is drunk or faint. Will's blade falls from his hand and Hannibal picks it up.

Hannibal looks around quickly and then throws an arm around Will, dazed and bleeding, and quickly hustles him though the courtyard toward the riverfront.

EXT. UFFIZI GALLERY - ROOF - DAY Chiyoh takes a moment to consider what she has done.

Then Chiyoh meets Jack going up to Sogliato’s 

Jack enters through the front door.

Checking a directory displayed on the wall, he finds the name "SOGLIATO -- 7B."

Then he gets into an elevator.

INT. SOGLIATO'S APARTMENT BUILDING - ELEVATOR - NIGHT

Jack presses the button marked "7."

As the door begins to slide shut, a hand suddenly reaches in to stop it.

CHIYOH

Steps into the elevator with her rifle case, standing right beside Jack, both of them looking straight ahead.

The door closes again. Chiyoh reaches to press "7," realizing it's already pushed. She glances surreptitiously at Jack.

The elevator LURCHES upward. Jack looks at her.

Chiyoh looks at Jack. Sees the gun under his coat. AN OVERHEAD SHOT Looking straight down at Jack and Chiyoh.

CUT TO: INT. SOGLIATO'S APARTMENT BUILDING - HALLWAY/ELEVATOR - NIGHT

A cheerful DING heralds its arrival.

The door opens. Jack holds it open for Chiyoh who reluctantly walks out. Jack watches her go. He allows the elevator door to close and follows Chiyoh.

She moves down the hall and, as she approaches the stairway landing, she pauses. She glances back at Jack.

CHIYOH: Wrong floor.

Chiyoh casually descends the stairs, aware that Jack is watching her suspiciously. He considers a moment, then continues down the hall.

The final time we see Chiyoh is in 3.07 Digestivo 

The first scene she’s in she helps Jack when Mason’s people come to kidnap Will and kill Jack:

JACK CRAWFORD: Arrivederci.

The two remaining cops move toward Jack. The lead cop picks

up the bone saw. It WHINES in his hand.

ON JACK -- immobile -- at their mercy. The other cop holds his head.

Through the window -- a GLINT OF LIGHT makes Jack squint. CRACK!

A hole appears in the window, and the cop holding Jack takes a bullet in the head and drops.

CRACK, CRACK!

The lead cop takes one in the shoulder and, as it spins him, another one in the head.

The bone saw drops, WHINING and VIBRATING onto the table, now right in front of Jack.

ON JACK, two dead cops on the floor -- their blood splashed on his face. His eyes on the bone saw BUZZING ever closer to the table's edge and his lap...

CLOSE ON the starred bullet holes in the window. CAMERA pushes through a hole to find:

EXT. ROOFTOP - NIGHT

CHIYOH stands to steady her

Chiyoh lowers

with her foot on the ledge, bracing her elbow aim. Her eye huge in the end of the scope.

CHIYOH'S BACK

CAMERA follows her into: the rifle.

TIME CUT TO:

CAMERA moves around Chiyoh to find Jack Crawford, head bowed. The floor CREAKS and he glances up over his brow.

JACK CRAWFORD Wrong floor.

Chiyoh switches off the bone saw.

JACK CRAWFORD (CONT’D) Would you come over here and pull this needle out of my arm?

CHIYOH: Where did they take them?

JACK CRAWFORD: Did you do this?

CHIYOH: Of course.

JACK CRAWFORD: Appreciate it. May I ask why?

CHIYOH: Why wouldn't I? I ought to. I should. Therefore, I must. (then) You're sitting at Hannibal's table. You know him. You know Will.

JACK CRAWFORD: I know them. They are identically different, Hannibal and Will.

CHIYOH :Where did they take them?

Jack studies her a moment, then:

JACK CRAWFORD: They are most likely taking them to the U.S. To Maryland. I can even give you an address... once you pull this needle out of my arm.

He indicates where the drugs are still flowing into his body. Chiyoh does not move.

CHIYOH: Once I pull this needle out of your arm... then what?

JACK CRAWFORD: My "then what" consists of getting out of Florence alive now that I'm supposed to be dead. That leaves me in no position to stop whatever it is you're intending to start.

Chiyoh holds Jack's gaze and then pulls out his IV.

CHIYOH: Where?

JACK CRAWFORD: Muskrat Farm. The Verger estate near the Susquehanna River in northern Maryland.

Chiyoh stoops and frisks the dead Italian police officer on the ground until she finds his gun. She places it on the table in front of Jack Crawford and exits.

Then Chiyoh goes to Virginia to do some truly fantastic shooting

Out of the shadows behind Hannibal, two Verger bodyguards appear. Moving swiftly upon him, raising their RIFLES to fire --

ON HANNIBAL -- the two bodyguards looming on either shoulder. PFFT! PFFT!

Both of their heads fly backward as a red mist EXPLODES from them and they crumple to the ground.

REVERSE AT SPEED to find -- CHIYOH

In the bough of a large tree, looking down the sights of her hunting rifle.

Hannibal Lecter now fixed firmly in her sights...

Then there is the conversation between Chiyoh and Hannibal and even though it’s short, I absolutely love this conversation. 

Chiyoh stands on the porch alone, her rifle resting in the crook of her arm. After a contemplative moment, Hannibal emerges through the front door.

HANNIBAL: Will you go home? Can you go home?

CHIYOH: No more than you can.

HANNIBAL: We all form frameworks from our early experiences through which later perceptions are understood.

CHIYOH: Perceptions are understood when you look harder. I've looked into you. I thought you should be caged.

HANNIBAL: Would you watch over me?

CHIYOH: I will watch over you. Not in a cage. Some beasts shouldn't be caged.

HANNIBAL: Your obsessive and successful hunt, whose plight was it driven by? Mine? Will Graham's? Yours?

CHIYOH: Mischa's. Did you eat her?

HANNIBAL: Yes, but I did not kill her.

Chiyoh breathes a sigh of relief.

HANNIBAL (CONT’D) One quality in a person doesn't rule out any other quality. They can exist side by side, good and terrible. Socrates said it better.

CHIYOH: I see the best of you and the worst with steady hands and a slow heart.

HANNIBAL: The most stable elements, Chiyoh, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

OFF Chiyoh studying Hannibal, not taking her guard down.

Then the final time we see Chiyoh she has her Rifle on Hannibal as he is captured by the FBI. 

Might do some analysis of these scenes later but for now I am just dumping these scenes so I have them. 

[meteora-writes]

We Could Be Perfect One Last Night ch.9

Fandom: Hannibal Pairing: Hannibal Lecter x Will Graham Warnings: Angst, Talk of Mental Illness, Talk of Hallucinations, Confessions, Extreme Fluff, First Kiss Chapter: 9. Never Be Afraid (Again) Description:  While driving with Hannibal and Chiyoh, Will admits to something he never shared with anyone. Once they reach the house in New York, something changes between Will and Hannibal.  Authors Notes: So I posted this days ago on ao3 and didn’t get a chance to set it up on here until just now. I apologize. I’m working on creating a twitch channel so once or twice a week people can watch me write, and this will likely be one of the things I work on there, so I promise delays in posting are worth it in the end. Read On AO3

~~~~~ Read Ch.1.Ch.2.Ch.3.Ch.4.Ch.5.Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8~~~~~

Will doesn’t know what to feel when he climbs into the backseat of the SUV Chiyoh brought to spirit them away. He’s grateful to be leaving for someplace less damp and confined. But a part of him feels like he’s leaving some part of himself behind as he watches the cabin shrink in the distance through the rear-view mirror.

It doesn’t help that he’s feeling mixed emotions from Chiyoh that he has to separate from his own. He can tell she’s happy to see Hannibal again. But there’s something else churning beneath the surface. An unease that he suspects has to do with old worries he might ask her to go back to a life of solitude somewhere for his own amusement. Given the life Hannibal has had for the past three years, he doesn’t see the man being so cruel as to ask her to seclude herself again.

And then there’s Hannibal, who masks so much of what he’s feeling. What he does give off is usually faint and easy to navigate. It’s nice, not having to sort out if he’s feeling his own emotions or someone else’s when it comes to being with Hannibal. Yes, Hannibal has a presence that draws out Will’s darker nature. Which he initially mistook as belonging to Hannibal and Hannibal alone. He knows better now. It’s not that Will was mirroring Hannibal when he wanted to kill or hurt him or others, it was Hannibal drawing his own suppressed feelings to the surface.

“Are there going to be any stops along the way?” Chiyoh asks once they’re on the highway. She’s behind the wheel, Hannibal riding in the front passenger seat beside her and Will in the seat behind him. It’s the first time she’s spoken in the ten minutes she’s been with them, aside from greeting them both upon her arrival. She believes Hannibal would have informed her in advance if they were picking up any… guests… But it doesn’t hurt to ask.

“Not today, no,” Hannibal says simply as he watches the trees pass by. “I believe Will and I both would benefit from a few more days to recover before we should attempt anything strenuous. And I would like to take some time to get the house ready for guests first.”

“Will you be needing my assistance then? Or am I free to go once you and Will are settled?” she asks carefully. She’ll help if asked, but she doesn’t want to kill anyone if she doesn’t have to. And she doesn’t want to bear witness to the things he intends to do to his enemies. She accepts Hannibal, loves him in her own way, but she won’t be a part of the things he does to those he deems to be less.

“Depending on how things go after we’ve dealt with Bedelia, having back up when we go after Jack might be a good idea,” Will suggests, earning a questioning glance back from the woman. “Hannibal filled me in on your aptitude with a sniper rifle. Thank you, by the way, for not aiming anywhere vital when you shot me back in Palermo.”

“Thank you for not giving me a reason to,” she counters with the faintest hint of a smile. Will can see it when he looks in the rear-view mirror. “I promised Hannibal once before that I would watch over him. If he needs me to, I will be there to keep watch while the two of you do what needs to be done to Agent Crawford.”

“Thank you, Chiyoh.” The warmth in Hannibal’s voice is as evident and clear as the smile on his face.

Will catches sight of it when he looks to the mirror on their side of the vehicle. It’s nice seeing Hannibal so open with his feelings towards others. It’s a stark contrast to how he acts when those he doesn’t consider to be family are present.

“I was able to locate and purchase a ship similar to the one you described,” Chiyoh notes with another glance in the rear-view mirror to Will. “It has sails, as well as a diesel engine. It was well cared for by the previous owner and should meet your needs. I was told it would be ready to sail by next week. I paid an additional sum to have them upgrade the navigational equipment and install a new engine.”

“That’s great.” Will can’t help being a little surprised that she found a boat like the one he wanted so quickly, given how specific he was about what it needed to have. Hannibal insisted on Will giving her exact details for what he would feel most comfortable sailing since he would be the one captaining and maintaining the vessel. He really needs to stop underestimating her. “Did you ask them to order spare engine parts?”

“I did. They said you would be more than prepared should anything happen while at sea,” Chiyoh assures. She sat with the people at the marina for several hours working out every aspect of the transaction and the services they would provide to get the ship seaworthy in a timely manner.

“That’s wonderful news. I look forward to seeing the ship when the time comes. What is the name of the vessel?” Hannibal asks, tone of voice never wavering from the openly pleased tone it caries. He never doubts in Chiyoh and her abilities to carry out a task with exceptional results.

“The Black Stag.” She’s about to explain that she already placed an order for most of the other supplies they would need now that the ship is taken care of, but she’s cut off abruptly by the sound of sudden, near-hysterical sounding laughing from the back seat.

Hannibal actually turns in his seat and peers over the back to get a look at Will. He’s doubled over, arms wrapped around himself as if his sides hurt from the action, laughing so hard it sounds like he’s on the verge of hyperventilating. “I take it there is something you find amusing about that name?”

“It’s…” Will manages to say in a wheeze before another loud laugh escapes him beyond his control. “It’s just that… When I… When I had encephalitis… That was what I saw… that made me realize something was wrong with me… A massive black stag.” His laughter starts to calm down as he explains, and he gasps in great lungfuls of air as he tries to calm himself from the manic reaction to hearing the name of the ship Chiyoh found them. It’s impossible. He doesn’t believe in God in any form of the traditional sense, but that name has him wondering if this is some kind of a sign from above.

Hannibal thinks back, remembering Will talking about antlers after killing Garret Jacob Hobbs, and then later mumbling about a stag when he would use the phototherapy lights to help him get inside Will’s mind and nurture the seeds of change sprouting inside of him. “God has quite a sense of humor. Tell me, Will, when you saw this stag, what was it the creature would do?”

“Usually? It would follow me. Or just stand off to the side watching. I saw it at the hospital, work, home,” Will explains as his breathing starts to go back to normal at last. “The real irony is that it still appears in my daydreams and nightmares sometimes. But its shape changes depending on where I am and who I’m with. It becomes humanoid. Takes your face but remains a monstrous black being with antlers and the twisted body of a man.” Will scrubs his face with both hands, trying to calm himself down just a bit more. He still feels the urge to laugh despite himself. It’s just too crazy.

“Like a wendigo?” Chiyoh asks out of the blue, surprising both Will and Hannibal.

“Yes, exactly like a wendigo!” Will exclaims as he finally sits up straight in his seat once again and runs a hand through his hair, brushing his bangs back from his forehead in the process. He blinks in confusion a moment later when he notices Hannibal still staring at him from over the edge of his seat with a look that Will can’t read. It takes a second for him to realize what Hannibal is looking at. He now has a clear view of the scar on Will’s forehead. He’s been letting his hair fall over his forehead for the past two weeks, unintentionally keeping the mark covered.

Will runs his hand over his forehead, fingertips skimming over the raised line of tissues as he averts his eyes from the other man’s. He can still remember the feeling of the saw despite the haze of the drugs Hannibal had given him. The way it sent vibrations throughout his skull and down into the rest of his body as it ripped its way into him. The horrible sound of it beginning to cut bone that still echos through his skull in his nightmares. “That actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it…”

Hannibal hums at that, understanding what Will means. It started appearing to him when he had to hunt down a cannibal. The fact that it stuck around after clearly shows how that case affected Will. And then for it to take on the appearance of Hannibal? He’s not sure how he feels about that exactly, knowing the legends of the wendigo and their association with madness as well as cannibalism. Hannibal is far from mad. And he imagines if one were ever to become such a creature, he surely would have long ago.

The conversation is dropped there. None of them feels the desire to continue on or change the subject.

Will is grateful for the quiet after everything he just shared. He never even told Molly about the stag. She knew about his nightmares. How they would creep into his mind even when daydreaming or spacing out and leave him shaken at times. But he could never bring himself to try and explain it to her and she didn’t push.

He feels oddly hollow now. Not in a bad way. It’s more like the feeling of relief one gets from finally being able to tell the whole truth about something. He always felt he couldn’t talk about the stag. Like it was a sign of how deeply messed up he really is. And he was certain that he would be sent back to the mental hospital if he told anyone about it. Put on medications and told he’s crazy.

But Chiyoh and Hannibal aren’t like the other people he’s known in his life. They don’t seem to think he’s crazy. And they don’t look at him like he’s lost his mind for admitting to seeing this imaginary creature. Hannibal knows and understands how Will’s mind works. Almost better than Will does at times. He gets that he has the imagination of an overactive child but the dark impulses of a man.

It shouldn’t surprise Will that the other man would be accepting of this quirk as well as all of his others.

But it does surprise him. Leaves him feeling strange. In the end, he decides not to think too hard on it or the feeling, and ends up turning his head to watch the scenery go by through the dark tinted windows of the SUV. He falls asleep less than an hour later.

~~~~~

The house is about what Will had expected for one owned by Hannibal. It had the exterior aesthetic of a log cabin, with the modern interior of a luxurious modern house. All dark woods and sleek designs opposed to the softer outside. There are two floors and a basement, obviously. As well as a garage and a fenced area out behind that looks like it might be for a garden of sorts.

Hannibal walks into the house ahead of Will. He immediately hung his coat in the small closet next to the entrance before taking a few steps to enter the living room. It’s a bit dark. Some light filtering in around the curtains that weren’t closed properly the last time someone had been there. He doesn’t seem to notice though, as he immediately goes to the closest armchair and pulls a dusty sheet off of it, which he begins to fold meticulously.

“What can I do to help?” Will asks, standing in the doorway still. He’s looking around slowly. Taking in the few pieces of art he sees on the walls and the comfortable-looking furniture that Hannibal is beginning to uncover in the living room area.

Hannibal pauses in his folding to look across the room at Will. He seems to consider the question a moment before glancing towards the windows behind him. “Opening the windows would be a great help. It’s been quite some time since this place got a bit of fresh air.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Will agrees as he shrugs off his coat and hangs it in the closet beside Hannibal’s. The air does smell fairly stale. Musty almost. Full of dust. It makes his nose itch with the urge to sneeze that isn’t quite strong enough to actually come forth on it’s own.

Pulling the curtains open floods the room with light, making the dust motes floating in the air strikingly obvious. The fresh gust of cool air that comes in when Will opens the window only adds to the effect, making them swirl and dance in the open space.

Once all the windows in the living room are open, Will looks around and notices the doorway that leads to what he assumes is the dining area or kitchen. With a glance to Hannibal, who is still uncovering furniture, he heads that way to open more windows.

The kitchen is so strikingly similar to the one in Hannibal’s old house that Will actually freezes in the doorway upon seeing it. The only real differences that Will can see are that the fridge is on the opposite wall, and the counters are a different color of marble. It’s like stepping into an alternate reality for a moment. And he has flashes of himself and Hannibal there. Chatting over coffee. Watching him cook the two of them dinner… And then it shifts and twists back to the kitchen in Baltimore, to blood and Abigail and ungodly pain. And then finally to a bloody Hannibal walking away from the two of them...

Hannibal sees the way Will’s body locks up momentarily upon seeing the kitchen before he clearly forces himself to walk into the room in an unusually stiff manner. It makes a pang of something that feels dangerously like guilt hit him. He can imagine the things that have to be going through Will’s mind in that moment, and they’re far from pleasant he’s sure. He can only imagine what kinds of things might trigger Will to relive the more horrible moments of his past. Moments that Hannibal caused...

It takes about an hour to get things in order. They get all of the furniture uncovered, windows open, electricity and water turned back on. Chiyoh shows up with groceries just after they finish getting things in working order, and she helps them clean things up a bit before bidding them goodbye for now and heading off to wherever it is that she intends to stay, since she declined to stay with the two of them. She lets Hannibal know there is an SUV in the garage now that they should be travel in without issues. He thanks her, and with that, she’s gone.

They don’t talk much that evening, Will and Hannibal. It’s been a long day and they’re both tired. It isn’t until late that evening when Hannibal comments on going to sleep that it strikes them both that the house has multiple bedrooms. They don’t -have- to sleep together. But one look shared between them makes it clear that isn’t what either man wants.

So, Will sets aside the now empty glass of whiskey he had been sipping as they sat by the fire, and walks over to where Hannibal stands beside the stairs that lead up to the second floor. He reaches out slowly, as if afraid of being rebuked for the action, and gently takes Hannibal’s hand in his own, lacing their fingers together.

His eyes are downcast, looking at their hands and pointedly not at Hannibal’s face. A mix of anxiety, embarrassment, and whiskey coloring and warming his cheeks. He feels ridiculous. Like a schoolboy with a crush. But he just doesn’t know how the hell to feel about the other man in that moment or what to make of Hannibal’s feelings towards him. He just knows he doesn’t want to be away from him if he doesn’t have to be...

Hannibal turns towards Will, making the other man’s breath hitch audibly as he draws closer. He raises the hand not currently being held, and uses a finger under Will’s chin to make him look up, worried blue meeting warm brown. “Stay with me, Will?”

Will seems to relax at the question, shoulders sagging just a little as he looks Hannibal in the eye and nods. Hannibal’s finger stays under his chin. Keeping his head tilted and eyes locked with the older man’s. He can see the longing in them. Feel it. It mixes with his own... And before he can overthink it, he leans in, tilts his head ever so slightly, and brings their lips together.

It’s soft. Brief. And Hannibal returns it readily. His every nerve singing with the pleasant shock of it. When they part Will has a questioning look in his eyes. Wanting to know if he read the moment wrong. If he’s just made a huge mistake. All Hannibal can bring himself to do in answer is gently slip his hand around to the back of Will’s neck and pull him into another soft kiss.

They stand there a long moment, Will hedging closer into Hannibal’s space as they give in to the desire that’s been building between them for some time. They finally part when Hannibal needs a breath, and he opens his eyes to find a small smile on Will’s lips. “Let’s go to bed?”

The question is innocent. No implication of wanting any more than what Will just shared with him. It’s late, and they’re both still healing. In more ways than one. He has no intention of rushing this. And Will seems to feel the same.

“Lead the way,” Will utters before stealing one last, quick kiss. Because he can. Because it feels like he is allowed to do that. And because it lets him know that what just happened was real and not some imagined moment in his overactive mind.

Hannibal does lead the way. And they take their time changing into nightclothes before slipping under the covers of the king-sized bed of the master bedroom. Even with the much larger sleeping space, the moment they are in it together Will gravitates towards him. Seeks him out and moves in close enough to feel Hannibal’s warmth and solid presence.

They fall asleep curled together much like they would back in the cabin. Only now, Will leans in and gives Hannibal one last kiss goodnight before they both drift off.

[somebodyhelpthenotdeadfreds]

Abigail was a ghost in the room of Will's conversation with Hannibal.

Abigail did not use Will’s shower, or sit on his furniture, or pour herself a glass of water from the faucet from the sink where her ear had once laid. She wondered where that ear was now, after it had been vomited back up. Did the FBI still have it in a drawer or was it incinerated like medical waste?

She simply stayed standing, watching in the doorway. She watched Hannibal adjust the pillow under Will’s head, watched him leave a glass of water by his bedside, watched him pull up a chair to watch him as he slept like it was what felt like a century ago and she drifted into semi-consciousness to see them asleep by her bedside.

She looked Hannibal in the eyes and spoke the awesome, the almighty words. “They know.”

Hannibal nodded, a thank you for the courtesy and the knowledge, and continued to sit in the chair. She watched him draw equations, make circles in a notebook found in a junk drawer.

He looked like a man.

"Are you intending to stay by him?” Hannibal asked her, his pen still swirling in-between the equations into shapes she couldn’t name. She shook her head. Will has no claim to her. Hannibal no longer has claim to her.

“Where is home for you now, Abigail?”

Abigail decides that she can give him one last bone before he goes into the kennel. She answers as honestly as she can, “In my heart. It’s nowhere physical. Not anymore.”

“Where do you plan to go?”

“Everywhere,” she tells him, and it’s a pledge to herself. Stained places be damned. She could not be held in a basement or a hunting lodge ever again.

Hannibal looks like he wants to press her for more information, wants to know more, wants to sniff out her hunting grounds underneath the pig blood and gunpowder. He almost does, and Will shifts on the mattress, bringing a hand up to wipe sleep out of his eyes like a fairytale princess whose prince has always been a wolf. He’s only kept it hidden for so long.

Hannibal’s eyes instantly leave Abigail’s and turn to Will’s, diving into his deep eyes that can see into the soul. Abigail is no longer a part of this conversation.

She prefers it this way. She takes a few careful steps back, no sound coming from the floorboards. Will’s house was in disrepair, but nothing creaked. Everything was as it should be, except for the broken tenants.

Hannibal talks about teacups, and time, and a desire for them to come together. To get another start. Abigail knows if he thinks of her, she is an afterthought. Abigail was already jettisoned from the voyage, and extra cargo will not make escape easier.

Will is calm like the sea after a storm, but there’s a dreadful undercurrent. His boat has sank, the pieces float about in the gentle saltwater, the bottom of the sea is nowhere in sight, but he is calm. The hard part has passed. The worst part is yet to come.

Time.

Abigail listens to his words, each one an arrow fletched with tackle feathers of pain, of loss.

“I’m not going to find you.”

“I’m not going to look for you.”

“I don’t want to know where you are or what you do.”

“I don’t want to think about you, anymore.”

When Hannibal looks up to catch a glimpse of Abigail one last time, she is gone.

Abigail is already outside, in the snow. The blood is dry, every time she moves it cracks and flecks off, but it does not keep her warm as the snow falls into her hair, onto her ear, onto her red, red hands.

But she smiles.

Hannibal Lecter is not dead. He wishes he was. He is not god, not the father, not the head of the household, he is a man. A man with nothing, and no one.

Abigail does not expect him to last long in prison. He will die there or he will escape to prove a point, but the Hannibal Lecter that saved her life and then ended it is dead, and he cannot come back, the same way Abigail Hobbs cannot come back.

She’s still smiling as she curls up on the frozen ground, the soft snow kissing her cheeks. Her legs will not hold her up anymore. She cannot uncurl her hands. Her ear might fall off and join the other one lost to the wind.

She’s laying there when a gloved hand abruptly reaches down, yanks her to her feet. Abigail sways, a stupid smile still on her face and she doesn’t know if she’s  too cold to think or she’s finally gone insane.

“Take a few more steps. I will help you.”

Abigail listens to the voice for no other reason than her frostbitten brain’s need to cling to something productive to get her blood pumping again. She takes thirty three more steps, counts every single one, and ends up in a passenger seat of a car.

She manages to turn her head to the person in the driver’s seat, and her neck cracks. “Who are you?” she rasps with a voice that’s done talking.

The woman smiles, but it only reflects in her eyes. “My name is Chiyoh. Where do you need to go?”

Heaven. Hell. Nirvana.

“Baltimore,” Abigail murmurs, her hands slowly uncurling in the heat of the car, and she flexes them out to see fresh blood run down her fingers. “I need to go t’ - t’ Baltimore.”

[morganbritton132]

Abigail met Chiyoh one last time.

It was anticlimactic, really.

Abigail was leaving the library after her shift, band-aids on her fingers from not one, but two papercuts. She had her keys in her hand, her knife in her sleeve, because old habits had faded slow deaths.

There were barely footsteps behind her, but was a shadow in the corner of her eye, and Abigail was the type of girl that struck first and struck hard. She turned and she pulled her knife in one go, raising it.

It was a surprise when the knife was knocked out of her hand.

The blade skidded across the concrete in the parking lot and Abigail’s blue eyes met cold brown ones, and she squinted. She tried to place a name to the face and found only snow, only blood in the snow, “You’re…”

“You were there that night,” Abigail said, whispering like heat from the vents in her car, like the rocky thumping of her forehead against the cold windshield. She had been ready to lay down and give up, and someone picked her up. “You gave me a ride home.”

“Yes,” Chiyoh said. “You were laying in the snow like a fool.”

“The police were coming. They would’ve picked me up.”

“And taken you to jail, you were covered in blood from a crime scene,” She said reasonably. She was very reasonably, very aloof, but welcoming. There’s a familiarity there, like what Abigail thought having an older sister was like. “You’re still here, in this city.”

“Yes,” Abigail said. “My friends are here. Hannibal breaking out wasn’t going to change that. Is that why you’re here? Are you going to hunt him down?”

“No,” Chiyoh said like she didn’t even entertain the option, not the way that Abigail has entertained it. “I am checking on you.”

She stopped, “For him?”

“I do not owe Hannibal anything else and he does not ask anything of me.”

The implication was there.

She was in connect with him. She did not talk about him in the past tense like everybody else did. There was no illusion that the big bad wolf had fled their enchanted forest, it was almost refreshing.

“If he did ask something of you?” Abigail asked, eyes flickering to her knife on the ground. “If he asked for you to take me to him, would you do it?”

Chiyoh’s eyes followed her, but they lingered on the knife longer and she gave Abigail as warn of a smile as she ever would, “He has everything he wants already.”  

[victorineb]

This is my contribution to the amazing Radiance anthology, produced by @lovecrimebooks​. I want to thank everybody involved for the amazing opportunity and the beautiful book that emerged, and to give an especial shout out to @allionne​ and @lovecrimecat​ for their vision, determination and commitment in leading the whole project.

I’d also like to say thank you to my betas @hotmolasses​ and @desperatelyseekingcannibals​ for their invaluable help and patience. And to @hotsauce418​ @slashyrogue​ and @tcbook​ for putting up with all my whining while writing this. I love you all more than words could say.

The title and epigraph are taken from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Also on AO3.

A Feasting Presence Full of Light

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.

-- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene ii

One.

In his mind’s eye, Hannibal has often seen Will as a pillar of light, surrounded by the flames of his fever or a glowing aura of righteous violence. His imagination has painted Will in the soft flicker of candle flame and shafts of afternoon light, slanted and speckled with motes of dust. Yet the first time he notices the sparkle in Will’s eyes after their fall together, he believes it merely the return of health to his body after so many long months of healing. Not merely physical well-being but, perhaps for the first time in his life, something approaching psychological balance too. Will seems – and Hannibal spends much of his time scrutinising the younger man in order to confirm this – content, and so it follows that his smile is blindingly bright, his skin glowing with life.

Perhaps it is selfish blindness on Hannibal’s part. He has rarely desired anything so greatly as he does Will’s acceptance of himself and a life with Hannibal. And so he takes delight in what should be warning signs, allowing himself to believe that he is seeing Will the way he has always wanted to, gleaming with life and vitality, like the edge of a blade perfectly honed to fatal sharpness.

Still, there are limits to what he can ignore, even for Will’s sake.

They are walking back to the apartment Hannibal has acquired for them, Will having finally been persuaded that it is safe for them to be out in public. The streetlights are few and far between in this tucked away little lane, such that their sodium glow does not carry far enough to cover Will’s own subtle light. 

Hannibal hangs back to observe this strange phenomenon, watching as the faint halo surrounding Will causes the air around him to shimmer, as if a heat haze has gathered around him in the midst of frost-bound Geneva.

“Aren’t you coming? I’m freezing out here, Hannibal, this coat you got for me has no practical value, you know.” Will stomps his feet and adds, “And these boots are useless. I don’t care how much they cost, they’re letting in so much water I might as well be barefoot.”

Hannibal barely listens, entranced to find that when Will lifts his feet it gives the effect of two small spotlights blinking on and off. Apparently whatever is causing the strange effect is strong enough to make it through a thick layer of Italian leather, as well as Will’s socks.

“Hannibal?”

It is as if Will has begun to manufacture his own bioluminescence, like the fireflies Mischa was so fond of. As if he has become his own living tribute, a rebirth of the beautiful death he gave Chiyoh’s prisoner, the gift he left for Hannibal.

“Hannibal?” Will is close now, taking the last few steps towards Hannibal, concern in his tone at the other man’s enraptured gaze.

“Do you see?” Hannibal asks, and Will visibly balks at the question. His reaction finally pulls Hannibal from his reverie and he reaches a hand out as if to soothe him, though he does not touch, in the end. They don’t touch anymore. “What happened just then, Will?”

Will runs a hand over his face and then gives Hannibal one of his tight, fleeting smiles. “Christ, you just… he used to say that to me. Hobbs. When he was in my head, he would ask that, over and over. See? Do you see?” Will sounds haunted, though it has been years since Hobbs’ residence in his mind.

The explanation catches Hannibal’s attention and worry suddenly pricks at him. Will has given no sign that he has noticed the glow emanating from him, and Hannibal is suddenly aware that this is perhaps because there is no glow at all. Perhaps he has finally succumbed to the madness that so many have accused him of, that he was indeed convicted of, though more as a means of preserving a fascinating specimen than a result of actual evidence. This is, and Hannibal sees no reason in lying to himself about it, more worrying than the idea that something strange but as yet seemingly innocuous is happening to Will. Hannibal is confident in his ability to treat, or at least manage, any physical ailment either one of them may suffer from. But for his mind to be compromised holds the threat of losing not just himself but Will too, of being separated into two planes of consciousness where neither can reach the other.

“Hannibal?” Will calls his name a third time and peers into his face. He sees worry there but clearly mistakes its origins for concern for his own state of mind. “It’s ok, Hannibal. You didn’t intend to remind me. Forget about it.” Unusual for him to misread, but understandable. Hannibal allows it to slide, murmuring his acquiescence. Will looks at him strangely for a moment but then turns towards home, Hannibal’s very own beacon in the dark. He follows; where else would he go?

Two.

Hannibal cannot discern Will’s personal luminescence from the early morning light that floods their kitchen, the silvery moonlight that surrounds him burnished gold by the rising sun. In these moments, Hannibal can almost forget this strange occurrence for which he can find no explanation or cure. He can allow himself to simply enjoy the beauty of Will’s sleep-softened face, the way he sags into his chair at the counter and wraps his hands around the cup of coffee Hannibal pushes towards him. The way he smiles with easy gratitude and murmurs, “Mornin’” with a trace of a past life in his accent.

But then Hannibal’s eyes adjust and Will’s silvery edges reassert themselves, along with the anxiety that has become Hannibal’s constant companion. He has pored over learned texts and speculative articles, research from every relevant field he can think of, in an attempt to find some explanation for this phenomenon, with no success. Nothing can explain what is happening to Will and therefore Hannibal must consider the possibility that in fact nothing is happening to him at all.

He has entertained thoughts of keeping silent on the subject. It would not be the first time he has let Will burn without informing him and it is impossible to ignore how beautiful Will is like this. He could observe in silence, as he did once before, cataloguing the quirks and nuances of Will’s new condition: the way laughter seems to cause the air to sparkle around him, or a warm meal sets the light around him pulsating in gentle waves.

Or the way it dims whenever Hannibal stands close to him.

It is this, above anything else, that pushes Hannibal to finally bring it up to Will. There is an ache in his chest when it happens, a flare of rejection when the light dies in Will’s eyes at his touch. He feels… possessive, as if this light is something that will rob Will from him and that will not do after Hannibal has put so much effort into claiming him from everything and everyone else. So he asks. And Will, as ever, gives the least predictable response.

“So you see it too, huh?”

Hannibal takes a breath. And then another. Will looks at him, unruffled, and takes another bite of the eggs Hannibal had persuaded him to accept for breakfast, rather than black coffee and muttered threats to return to bed. Eventually, when it becomes clear that Will has achieved the rare feat of causing Hannibal to lose his words, he takes pity on him.

“Thought I was maybe hallucinating again.”

Another breath and then, “As did I,” Hannibal admits, slow and cautious.

Will glances up at him and Hannibal sees the light around him flare, as if Will is putting up defences. His tone is wry when he speaks, though, spiked only with the smallest remnant of bitterness.

“Not pleasant, is it? Thinking you can’t trust your own eyes, the integrity of your thoughts.”

Hannibal only shakes his head in response. If he is capable of looking shamefaced, he suspects he is now.

“How long were you going to wait before bringing it up?” Will seeks out his eyes and Hannibal lets him see, reluctant to ever deny Will the opportunity. “You… thought about not saying anything. You think it’s beautiful, this thing. You thought it was beautiful the last time I was lit up too, you wanted to watch what happened. What’s the matter this time? Your favourite toy not so much fun anymore? Not enjoying the game, Hannibal?” He smirks, and perhaps it is meant to be cruel, but it shows only amusement at Hannibal’s predictability, like he is a dog yet to be broken of a bad habit.

Hannibal can’t find the words, pinned under that gleaming blue gaze, and so he simply comes to stand next to Will and lets him watch as the light around him dims. Then, telegraphing his movements, Hannibal raises his hand and moves it to hover above Will’s arm. This will be the first time they have touched since Will healed enough to no longer need medical care and Hannibal doesn’t want to spook him. He lets his hand just graze against Will’s skin at first, and Will is less skittish than he used to be, it seems, because he doesn’t flinch at all, just watches as the silvery glow darkens to a faint outline.

“Huh. Hadn’t noticed that before. Wonder what it means.” Will quirks a brow at Hannibal and smirks. “Are you my cure, doctor?”

“Perhaps I am the darkness that extinguishes your light.”

Will brings up a hand to cup Hannibal’s cheek, a perfect echo of the way Hannibal had touched him so many times before. Was it so many? Those instances are replicated so often in the chambers of his mind palace he can’t be sure anymore.

“I got here on my own, eventually,” Will says, his smirk softening into something fond, “but I do appreciate your company. Have you been worrying about this, Hannibal?”

Hannibal ducks his head, realising a second too late that they have reversed roles, Will a steady and confident foil to his own sudden avoidance. “Merely observing the effect of different stimuli on your condition, Will.”

Will snorts, but his face does not take on that snarling edge that so often accompanies his humour. “Once a doctor, always a doctor, huh?”

“You don’t seem perturbed by this development. It would behove us that someone takes your health seriously.” It’s petty and unfair, and Hannibal knows it. Regret takes hold of him instantly but like so many of his rash actions when it comes to Will, there is no way to finesse his way out of it.

Will’s face shutters, and he leans away from Hannibal, shaking off his arm in the process. The glowing field reasserts itself around him and Will looks down at it with one of those grimacing smiles that mean he is truly angry. “Well look at that, maybe my body is trying to tell me something after all. I do feel a hell of a lot lighter when I’m nowhere near you.”

Will pushes himself up from his chair and spins on his heel, marching out of the kitchen and up to his room. Hannibal hears the door slam and winces. That was not well done of him. He is not used to anyone pressing on his nerves and Will plays them so expertly, the effect is breathtaking, a white hot shock to the centre of Hannibal’s being. It causes him to lash out ungracefully and so undo any progress he has made with Will. Love is a strange and delicate thing, and while Hannibal can cut with a scalpel so finely that the incision is barely visible, with this he is crude and ungainly. He does not enjoy it.

Hannibal will make it up to Will, somehow. He cannot procure a dog just yet, which would likely be the easiest means by which to buy Will’s favour, but there will be other ways. He will give Will space for a few hours and then approach him gently, offering apologies and concessions. Likely Will won’t accept them, but perhaps the effort will be appreciated nonetheless. Eventually he will come round. What other choice does he have? In the meantime, Hannibal has got what he wanted from the exchange, confirmation that he has not lost his grip on his mind, that whatever is happening to Will is real, and tangible.

Folie a deux. A whisper brushes his mind, Bedelia’s voice, a tinge of disdain colouring the professional detachment of her tone. Like a drop of ink in water, it blackens the whole until it is all he can hear, but he cares little about it. If he is to go mad, at least he can share it with Will; he will be content to lose himself so long as Will is lost with him. And in the meantime, he had indeed once watched Will burn from the inside with endlessly beautiful results. He can only hope that this light will match it in beauty and not in pain. Will’s pain is no longer so compelling to him as it once was.

Part Three.

[elfnerdherder]

The Fault in My Code: Ch. 20

You can read Chapter 20 on Ao3 Here

Chapter 20: One Eye Blue, the Other Maroon

           The town their farmhouse was adjacent to had mostly elderly soulmates and a few young couples taking over the deeds to their families’ homes. Will and Hannibal fit right in with their mismatched eyes and their marriage certificate.

           Will made him change their names to something a little less obviously fake.

           “If I was looking for us, these names stand out like a god damn beacon,” he said, jabbing a finger down. “We’re not hiding away in Germany, Christ’s sake.”

           When his stitches were finally removed under the expert hand of Dr. Lecter, Will said thank you by grabbing him by the face and kissing him with a ravenous sort of hunger bordering on animalistic.

           That was when they discovered that organic olive oil made an excellent lubricant when one was in a pinch and overcome with a myriad of emotions in a kitchen.

           The next day was when Chiyoh decided that she was going to leave them to their own devices and found her way back to the Lecter estate in Lithuania where there was peace and a genuine level of absolute quiet.

-

           “I’m not sure, Dr. Falau, I just…what if the only reason we connected is because we’re both here and it’s convenient?”

           “Do you suppose that it makes it any less important?”

           “What if that’s the only reason?”

           “What if the only reason you went on a date with someone in a larger city is because they complimented the bow in your hair. Does that invalidate it?”

           The girl shifted in her chair, hand reaching up to brush against the bow Will mentioned. “It’d be more of a coincidence than-”

           “Soulmates aren’t fate,” Will assured her. “They are a chemical connection that your brain causes when it comes across something that it finds kinship with. Think of it as your subconscious noticing something about them that resonates within yourself. Your subconscious knows you far better than you do, yes?”

           “So then…I should give it a try?”

           “You can’t say whether or not it will work out simply because the two of you are soulmates, but it does build a foundation. It’s a choice to be with a soulmate, Greta. The difference between that and any other person is the body’s conscious decision beforehand to give you the advantage of being able to sense them.”

           “How long have you been with your soulmate, Dr. Falau?”

           A pause as he thought, fingers brushing against the scar still very much visible on his cheek. For anxious clients, it made them curious enough to break the ice. He hated the staring, though. “About ten months now.”

           “Was it easy?” she asked.

He looked at the space just below her eyes, where it’d appear like he was meeting her mismatched, one-blue-one-brown-gaze. “Oh, no,” he said without hesitation. “Not in the least.”

           “You’d say…it’s worth it, though?”

           “There is no definitive answer to that,” he replied, but as her expression fell, he continued, “however; I will say that there is no one in this world that understands me better than he does. In turn, I understand him. There have been studies to conclude that part of why soulmates even first began was mankind’s desire and need to connect. We fostered that connection through experiences together and decided to continue building that relationship through new experiences.”

           “She’s…what if we get to know one another, and in the end it’s not enough?”

           “Then you’re no worse off than before, aren’t you?” At her realization, he nodded knowingly. “Except, you’d have someone that would, at the very least, be a friend to you. There is nothing in the world that says a soulmate has to be a romantic relationship.”

           “Why did you leave the states to come here and work, Dr. Falau? Was it because of your soulmate?”

           Will smiled wryly, made a note at the bottom of his notepad. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

           As she left and he closed down his small office, his hand passed along the back of the chair where she’d dug her shoulders in. She was scared of abandonment. She was scared to trust, to put herself in a position where all would be lost if she wasn’t enough. He felt her fears like a bad heat rash, and he left work, locking his office door behind him.

           He wandered through town, picked up a paper, made a call. Outside of a café, he idly bit his thumb and nodded in appreciation as it went to voicemail; it always went to voicemail. Once, he’d have thought that it was a sign he wasn’t welcome to call at all, until he got a voicemail back that asked if he was alright two weeks after he’d stopped making his calls.

           “Hey, Molly,” he murmured. “I was happy to see you dating someone. Two brown eyes like coffee beans. Diego, right? Diego. Yours are still two blues, and they look great.

           “I’m still working, getting a small established clientele. Same work, but it’s…better. I feel better about it. I don’t feel so…afraid.” He nodded to the barista that left him with a cup of straight black coffee, and he smiled a little. “Everything’s…fine here. Quiet. My head is quiet, and you used to tell me how loud it always got when I thought too much.

           “I’m happy you’re in California now, far away from everyone and everything. I hope things are quiet for you, too, and the shop you’re selling soaps in is doing okay. If you get orders from Beverly, let me know and I’ll toss in something, my treat. If Jack comes knocking, just close the door in his face.” He stirred cream into the coffee, sipped it. “You always wanted to slam a door in his face.

           “My kidney is fine, but I did get checked out at a real hospital to make sure everything was in order. Don’t worry about me; I’ve got a doctor on call.

           “Anyway, just…saying hello. Saying I’m sorry, like always. Saying I’m alive, and no one’s eaten me.” A beat. “Yet.” Bad humor. He tried again. “Saying, I think even though it hurt a lot, this was better for you in the long run, and maybe it was better for me, too. I think so, at least. You deserved more than what I could give.

           “Hope to hear from you soon.”

           He sat out in the late afternoon sun and enjoyed his cup of coffee and a bagel, fingers tapping lazily on the glass table. Usually it was about a week before he’d get a voicemail back, assuring him of her success and her life. Nothing slowed Molly down, least of all someone like Will. For that he was grateful, that no amount of his actions had ruined her –merely detained. Merely redirected.

           He checked his e-mail, found one from another familiar name.

Dr. Falau,

           Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I’m interested in studying abroad, at your recommendation for my first year of graduate school, but I’m having a difficult time deciding exactly where I’d like to spend my semester. There is a lot of opportunity in France, although I’ve heard great things about Italy, too. What do you recommend, in your line of work? Soulmate studies have been my primary focus, although there are a lot of credits towards criminal psychology and forensics. I’ve been trying to keep my options open, but after your last post in the psychiatric journals, I thought you’d be the best to speak with and see the best options for me in the line of work that I want after school.

                                                                                      Thank you for your time,

                                                                                               -Abigail Hobbs

           It was a bit of a drive from the city to the farmhouse, but when he arrived he felt the familiar hum in his stomach that told him Hannibal was home from the hospital where he worked. There was another equally familiar tingling at the base of his spine that said he’d done something particularly exciting. Exciting. He marinated over the word, tossed it aside after a thought. Naughty. There, that was better.

           Hands massaged and worked over a set of lungs in the kitchen, and Will set his briefcase down at the small breakfast bar, eyeing them with extreme prejudice.

           “A good day at work?” Hannibal asked, intent on pressing and massaging the meat. Shirtsleeves were rolled up, exposing forearms and lending him the intense impression of a person deep in the throes of hard, manual work.

           “Was it in the city?”

           “Évreux,” he said genially. “Nowhere close to us.”

           Will hmm’d low in his throat and tossed his keys on the briefcase. “The crime?”

           “Does there have to be a crime?” Hannibal wondered. “Or will you enjoy a fine cooked meal, regardless?”

           “You said, ‘one must always strive to eat the rude, dear Will.’”

           “I didn’t say they were the only ones to eat,” Hannibal replied.

           “Hannibal-”

           “It was a rather rude pig,” Hannibal assured him. “Ran out into my car, squealed and promptly died where he stood.”

           “Fuck,” Will muttered, and he crossed over to the fridge, grabbing one of the bottles in the back. Hannibal made a beer crafted in wine barrels down in the basement. Will was more than content to let him have free reign of the basement, where all of his other hobbies lay. “Promptly died where he stood, you say.”

           “We may have stepped aside to discuss the ramifications of faking injuries for the sake of insurance claims.”

           “And you’re so prolific in speaking pig,” Will agreed. He walked behind him so that he could brush against his shoulder, the contact warming, reassuring. Grounding.

           “You could join me next time, you know,” Hannibal said. “I have a need for someone that knows how to knot fishing line.”

           Will toed the aged stone flooring with his shoe, shook his head. It was a topic of conversation that sometimes arose, when his darker thoughts took hold and the only person there to keep his head afloat was Hannibal. He’d held back though, refrained. Hannibal was his paddle out of dark places, not because Hannibal didn’t want him there, but because Will asked him to be. Truth be told, he had a mild weakness for Will saying ‘please’.

“The social worker that was abusing one of his cases got off due to mishandled evidence,” he said instead. “He walked free.”

           “The one hurting your friend, Peter Bernardone?”

           “Yes.”

           “What does that make you dwell on?” Hannibal asked. He lifted a knife and began cutting in swift, smooth strokes. “Nothing tasty, I’d imagine.”

           “Nothing tasty,” Will agreed.

           “A rather rude little pig, wouldn’t you say?”

           “…I’d say, ‘Let the law deal with him.’”

           “The law did deal with him, Will. The experience left you wanting, a breath not-quite taken in full.”

           “It’s fine,” Will said. “I think the people down the road at the church left a pamphlet on the door that said ‘Let God Handle It.’ If not the law, then God, I figure.”

           “God recently dropped an airplane with 124 people on it out of the sky just two days ago; I’m sure he’d let you have Clark Ingram.”

           Of course Hannibal remembered his name, although Will had only mentioned it once. “Clark Ingram is a pig,” Will said slowly, “but I don’t know if he’s the kind of pig I want.”

           A quiet hum of assent. “Let me know if you change your mind, dear Will.” At Will’s short, curt nod, he smiled slightly, a flash of incisors. “Freddie Lounds spotted us in Scotland today.”

           “That lousy-” Will’s voice broke off, and he gripped his pint tightly. “Is she still calling us…that…”

           “Murder husbands?”

           “Lousy, lying shit,” he swore. Raked hands through his hair, scrubbed the back of his neck.

           “I was riveted by her use of prose in our murderous entanglements,” Hannibal said, watching him move about agitatedly. He tossed the cubed lungs into the pan and began searing them, the hissing and spitting of the meat drowning out most of Will’s curses.

           “Out of anyone in the world, I’d-”

           “Yes?” Hannibal prompted serenely, tilting the pan.

           “…Across the god damn world and she’s still running her piece of shit articles,” he finished. Redirected. “I can’t be drugged and dragged through Canada and across the ocean in peace, not while she’s alive.”

           “A shame the Great Red Dragon didn’t go after her instead of Chilton,” Hannibal drawled. “Then again, you put your hand on his shoulder, not hers.”

           That stopped Will. Made him look around at Hannibal with an expression twisted between disgruntled fury and a flicker of something mildly resembling shame. Not his proudest moment, although one of his most calculating. He’d woken many nights with the sensation of fire just underneath his skin, Chilton’s lipless curses hot in his ears. It’d taken a lot of whispered reassurances, promises that he was Will Graham and not Frederick Chilton before the embers had faded off of his charred skin, before blackened skin faded to red, faded to a tan found only on those that wore suits to work for a living.

            Mornings after nights like that, Hannibal always played music in the small, antique parlor towards the back of the house while Will lay on the rug, hands pressed over his eyes. Hannibal never pitied him, though. He said the most beautiful thing that Will had that Hannibal didn’t was his ability to both be the sculptor and the beaten stone. Will would press his hands harder to his eyes and begrudgingly agree. There was something beautiful in the broken, something delicious in the damned.

           “Dr. Chilton’s skin grafts came along nicely,” Hannibal told him, a peace offering.

           “…Good,” he managed.

           Lung and loin bourguignonne for dinner, and a pint of beer aged in a chardonnay barrel. Will savored it, savored the sensation that only one glass was enough. He also savored that his plate contained lung from a cow, not from a pig.

           He tinkered in the living room, spread out along the floor beside a boat motor and his tools. Hannibal read a book nearby, a pretentious copy of Les Trois Mousquetaires in one hand and a glass of Malbec in the other. Anytime Will let out a particularly curt grunt or curse, he’d glance up from his book, take a sip of his drink.

           “Mr. Petit will be thankful you’re putting so much work into his engine,” Hannibal noted after a particularly loud curse.

           “He’s going to let me fish in the lake.”

           “Your true motives revealed.”

           “I think we should get a dog,” said Will, setting down a wrench and scratching his cheek. He felt the oil smear, knew that the longer it sat there the more agitated Hannibal would become before he’d find some excuse or other to pass by and wipe it off with the spare rag Will kept somewhere nearby. “Petit said he saw a stray roaming around, no tags.”

           “I was thinking of Florence,” Hannibal replied. He set his glass down on the end table.

           “So soon?”

           “I promised you Florence.”

           “They allow dogs in Florence,” Will pointed out. He grabbed a washer and ducked back down to fumble with a screw. “Molly and I were going to get a dog a year ago, before Jack turned up.”

           “I’m flattered that what took years for you to want with Molly merely took months with me,” Hannibal said with a smile. “How is she?”

           Will didn’t miss the flicker of mild distaste at his own question. While he didn’t condemn Will for calling, he didn’t approve, either. He was of the assumption that sooner or later she was going to take all of his voicemails and deliver them to Jack with a hand-written note on just how to find them based off of context clues. Will figured he knew Molly better than Hannibal did, and that was that.

           “Good.”

           “And Abigail?”

           “She’s…going to study abroad. She was debating which country to look at, where to stay, which school she’d attend.” Will gave Hannibal a meaningful look, peeking up from the engine. “She asked my opinion on France or some other place.”

           “…You’d overrun my house with strays,” Hannibal murmured.

           “Our house,” Will corrected.

           “Our home.”

           They considered one another, small, bare hints of smiles at the edges of their lips. Will broke eye contact and glanced to the motor, twisting a screw into place.

           “They’d be house broken,” he commented.

           “If it’s within the next Fall semester, tell her Florence,” Hannibal decided.

           “Is that a suggestion to look into referrals for my clients?”

           “You don’t have to go with me,” Hannibal reminded him.

           Will busied himself with wiping small traces of grease off of his fingers with the rag nearby. “You’re not abandoning me in France. I hardly speak French.”

            Among other things, like how he’d probably have to quit Hannibal from his system like a drug if he left and Will didn’t follow, the shaking and the aches enough to bruise muscle and break bone. Like how he’d grown so accustomed to being able to have in-depth conversations with the most minimal of words and gestures, someone that saw without having to see, someone that knew without having to know. Like how he was most entirely sure that he was in love with the bastard, and there wasn’t enough time in the world for him to be able to articulate that in just the right way. He’d tried, but most of the time it was during moments where words weren’t enough, where no matter what he could have said, waxing eloquent or simplistically stated, it didn’t quite cover just how much he felt.

           That, and he was abysmal at speaking French.

           “What words you do say sound wonderful, though,” Hannibal praised. There was just enough of a dry note to make Will grimace, tossing the rag down.

           “I think I’d speak Italian better.”

           “With the way you shape your vowels in conjugations, I’d certainly agree.”

           It was settled. Abigail would visit them in Florence in the fall.

           After, as he changed into pajamas, he watched Hannibal watching him through the mirror in the master bedroom. One eye blue, the other maroon.

           “Are you just going to look?” he taunted quietly.

           “My eyes naturally seek you out in a room, despite my attentions to my reading or my work. Is that normal, Dr. Graham?” Hannibal walked over and slid his hands around his waist, tugging him flush against his chest.

           “A side-effect of being soulmates,” Will managed. Hannibal dipped his head down, nose gliding along the line of his neck, lips pausing at the artery where his pulse beat steadily.

           “Looking would be enough, you know,” Hannibal murmured against his skin conversationally. He pressed a deliberate, gentle kiss to the hollow of his throat. Will once tried to call him out on that, but he’d come to learn that Hannibal practically drowned in aesthetics, and Will was his favorite tableau.

           “Maybe for you.”

           He kissed him with a hunger, and Hannibal responded in kind. They made their way back towards the bed, and when Hannibal fell backwards onto it, Will followed, poised over him with a wicked gleam in his eyes. He wanted to touch; he wanted to touch.

           “This is purely chemical, you know,” he said casually, tugging Hannibal’s shirt over his head. It was tossed, forgotten somewhere on the floor. They’d retrieve it later –maybe not. Maybe much, much later, after the sun had risen and Hannibal roused him from bed with a cup of coffee.

           “So is love; so is anger, so is pain, dear Will,” Hannibal murmured against his lips. Will’s top was removed with far better finesse, fingers dancing down his spine to rest at the small of his back where hips were guided down to wanting flesh. Hannibal rolled over with him, pinning him down with his weight as a dexterous hand glided along the waistband of his bottoms, plucking teasingly. “It doesn’t lessen its importance.”

           And as he got drunk off of his kisses, the way their hearts beat in time as everything was made to feel right, Will figured that no, it very well didn’t.

           He chose Hannibal, and Hannibal chose him. Somehow, it was more romantic that way.

[lostxinxblue]

Headcanon: Her full name. It’s long and kind of rambly, I’m sorry.

  First, I'm no expert on the Japanese language but I wanted to say that the H at the end of Chiyoh's name doesn't really make sense unless it's a choice for phonetic or even aesthetic purposes for English-speakers (which isn't my native language either lol). It should be Chiyo with no H but since that's the way the show chose to spell it for whatever reason and so everyone uses that spelling I've been doing it like that. I've been thinking a lot if I should keep using it or not and I guess I should keep it Chiyoh. 

  Anyway... In the japanese alphabeth there are different ways of spelling it (they are all pronounced the same) but I've chosen 千世 because written that way it means something like 'thousand worlds' and I liked that meaning for her. The last name I chose for her is Hanazawa (華沢) means "flower swamp", you know "even the most beautiful flowers grow from dirt". However, there were other last names for Chiyoh that I liked and here’s the little list:

One of the most common surnames in Japan is Sato ( 佐藤 ), I don’t particularly like how Sato Chiyoh sounds but  佐 (sa) means help, aid and I thought it’s kind of appropriate for her role. She's Satan's little helper, she’s always there to assist and protect Hannibal, Will tried to get her help.

Nakano ( 中野 )  中 (naka) meaning "middle" and 野 (no) meaning "field, wilderness". That’s where she is, the middle of the wilderness, both literally and metaphorically.

I'm not sure how true this one may be. Furuse 古 (furu) "old" and 瀬 (se) "riffle." This is a funny one because you know how much she likes her riffles.

  I’ve decided these are names she’ll use instead of giving out her real name, Hanazawa Chiyo.

[ironxandxsilver-blog]

Headcanon: Her full name. It’s long and kind of rambly, I’m sorry.

 First, I’m no expert on the Japanese language but I wanted to say that the H at the end of Chiyoh’s name doesn’t really make sense unless it’s a choice for phonetic or even aesthetic purposes for English-speakers (which isn’t my native language either lol). It should be Chiyo with no H but since that’s the way the show chose to spell it for whatever reason and so everyone uses that spelling I’ve been doing it like that. I’ve been thinking a lot if I should keep using it or not and I guess I should keep it Chiyoh.

 Anyway… In the japanese alphabeth there are different ways of spelling it (they are all pronounced the same) but I’ve chosen 千世 because written that way it means something like ‘thousand worlds’ and I liked that meaning for her. The last name I chose for her is Hanazawa (華沢) means “flower swamp”, you know “even the most beautiful flowers grow from dirt”. However, there were other last names for Chiyoh that I liked and here’s the little list:

One of the most common surnames in Japan is Sato ( 佐藤 ), I don’t particularly like how Sato Chiyoh sounds but  佐 (sa) means help, aid and I thought it’s kind of appropriate for her role. She’s Satan’s little helper, she’s always there to assist and protect Hannibal, Will tried to get her help.

Nakano ( 中野 )  中 (naka) meaning “middle” and 野 (no) meaning “field, wilderness”. That’s where she is, the middle of the wilderness, both literally and metaphorically.

I’m not sure how true this one may be. Furuse 古 (furu) “old” and 瀬 (se) “riffle.” This is a funny one because you know how much she likes her riffles.

I’ve decided these are names she’ll use instead of giving out her real name, Hanazawa Chiyo.