Archive of Our Own ^beta

The automaton has a face like a sonata played with technical brilliance but absolute boredom. He doesn't move at all as Hannibal runs a curious finger along his cheek, of which the tactile sensation is that of a petrified candle; wax that has lost even the memory of how to melt. When Hannibal presses more firmly, he feels a tiny rhythm too fast to be his own heartbeat.

The shop's manager eyes Hannibal's fingertip with the air of a maid bracing for the dark smudge of dust on the white glove to be wordlessly displayed.

"The tissue is Spanish," Hannibal says. "I recognise the texture."

"You're lying," the automaton says.

Hannibal blinks and withdraws his hand.

"Not about the tissue. Ortega and Sons, made in 1902. But about how you recognised it."

"Tell me," says Hannibal, "why a creation of the pre-eminent tissue house on the Continent bears a price as low as this label would suggest. Especially one that is less than five years old."

"Sir--" says the shop manager.

"I was not addressing you."

The automaton says, with the first hint of inflection, "I am something less than factory fresh."

In the pause that follows, the sounds of the street trickle into the shop: the brisk strike of shod hooves on stone and the rattle of wheels as carriages pass by, the raised voices of flower-sellers and workmen, at least two children shouting a rhyme in poor unison. Hannibal raises his eyebrows and continues to wait. This seems to work just as well on artificial humans as it does on his patients; the automaton actually jerks his eyes to the side, a fascinating tic, before continuing.

"I've been purchased and returned three times."

"For what reasons?" Hannibal asks.

"If sir would allow me--"

"Unsettling was the word used most frequently." The eyes jerk again, this time in the direction of the shop manager. There is something almost complicit about the mannerism. Hannibal wants to lifts his hand again, put his fingers to the perfect shape of the eyelid, feel it flutter with that sly motion like a bird caught in a trap.

"You are not lying," says Hannibal. "But someone has taught you to dissemble."

The automaton says, "I pick things up quickly."

Hannibal asks, "Do you have a name?"

"Will Graham."

The shop manager has finally realised that his mouth had much better remain closed if nothing of value is to emerge from it. He trembles with anticipation of a sale. He sidles into Hannibal's line of sight, apologetic look already arranged on his face. "His first owner gave him the name, and now he answers to it. Of course, you can rename him whatever you wish."

Hannibal nods and steps back, extending a hand in invitation. Will Graham steps forward and his gait is smooth and well balanced. Glimpsed from afar, he would look authentically alive.

"You may send the bill to my house," Hannibal says.

The manager scurries for the shop counter, where he locates the ownership papers and begins to count his way through the heavy ring of keys on his belt.

Tissue from the house of Ortega and Sons has a smell like cool stone steps leading down into catacombs, with top notes of olive oil and linen and something coppery that is almost--but not quite--like blood. It is, indeed, distinctive.

As Will Graham passes within a handsbreadth of Hannibal's face, Hannibal can smell something else there as well: something unfamiliar. The odour is glowing and ashy like a poker left too long in the fire.

"All yours, sir," says the manager. "I recommend a daily winding, but this model can almost make it to three days."

Will Graham's twitching eyes are intent on the iron key as it changes hands.

"You might as well remain dressed as you are, for now," Hannibal says. "I doubt there is anything in my wardrobe which would fit you."

"Your wardrobe," says Will Graham.

"I will send for my tailor tomorrow."

"Your tailor." Again there's that faint nudge of inflection around the words that manages, impressively, to convey either query or disbelief.

Hannibal looks at the plain shirt and ill-fitting trousers, the loose waistcoat of dusty black. Not even a flat cap rests on the unfashionable curl of Will's hair. Here in Hannibal's house of glowing wood and mirrors, of wallpaper glimpsed in costly slices between watercolour paintings and ink sketches, Will Graham looks like a seashell resting on the slope of a volcano. Not an unpleasant sight, but glaringly out of place.

"Did you think I intended to keep you in rags?"

"Why did you buy me, Dr. Lecter?"

"Your workmanship is of superb quality, for the price I paid."

Will Graham says, "Now who's dissembling?"

After a few seconds, Hannibal's mouth twitches into a small smile. After a few more seconds, Will Graham's mouth does precisely the same thing.

"You could afford three of me, factory-new," says Will.

Again, Hannibal's raised eyebrows suffice as a question.

Will says, "This house isn't large, but everything in it is good. Very good. I can't hear anyone in the kitchens, or elsewhere in the house. You don't have a housekeeper, or maids. You don't even have a valet."

"No," Hannibal agrees.

"Why did you buy me?" Will says again. "What do you need me to be?"

Hannibal takes him to the kitchens instead of answering. They prepare dinner in a surprising, peaceful unison. As promised, Will learns quickly. He only has to ask once for the location of the mixing bowls, and he only has to watch the rocking motion of Hannibal's knife for a moment before matching him, speed for speed.

"Well," Will says, chopping morels with a steady hand. "This explains why you don't have a cook. It's a strange pastime for a doctor. Even stranger for a man of means. Do you frequent the markets as well, with a basket over your arm?"

"I pay handsomely to have ingredients delivered," Hannibal says.

They cook enough for one person. Will does not eat anything. And after dinner, when Hannibal sits in his study and sips cognac, Will sits in the chair facing him and his hands are restless, like he is itching to lift something to his lips regardless. His face is impassive in the candlelight and his posture mirrors Hannibal's exactly. When Hannibal taps one foot idly on the rug, Will's foot taps also.

Hannibal sits back in the armchair, pleased as when a secret falls from a patient's lips.

"What are you?" he murmurs.

Will sits back in his own chair. "What do you need me to be?"

"You have worn full morning dress before."

Will's fingers pause on the buttons. "Yes. I couldn't tell you when."

Hannibal waves that away; of course not. All automata have their more declarative memories wiped before resale. But it's intriguing to see the pieces of knowledge that have been written into Will anyway, pencil marks erased but leaving indentations that can still be read if the page is tilted into the light.

Before Will can tuck the buttoned shirt into trousers, Hannibal reaches beneath it and touches the brass of Will's keyhole, where an umbilicus would be in a human being. It serves as a reminder that Will was made and not born, that he came from no parents, no flesh and no blood. Not that the rest of him could be mistaken for flesh, when touched. He is closer to ivory or marble than candle wax, really, unmarked and unmarkable. Hannibal could dig his fingers into Will, press with all of his considerable strength, and never leave a bruise.

Under Hannibal's touch Will is running hot. The whir of machinery is audible. Unusual. The Spanish tissue houses employ the Swiss for the clockwork, and for automata of Will's sort a daily winding is an elegant sufficiency; more often and the delicate working can be overwound. But that kind of strain has a different song to it, and a different scent.

Now that Hannibal is close enough to feel the marble of Will's shoulders, close enough to turn and inhale against his skin, he realises there's a subtle sweetness to the poker-smell, like caramel spilled on the hearth and left to burn.

"What do you want?" Hannibal asks on instinct.

"Want?" Will echoes, blank.

"Very well. What do you enjoy? Art, music?" Hannibal asks; tilting the page. Can cultural taste be instilled? Where in memory does it sit?

Will meets his eyes. Now there is definitely humour around his mouth. "What do you want me to enjoy?"

The Royal Opera House is staging Tosca for the first time since its English premiere five years ago. Will attracts eyes; he wears monotones like a jewel in a good setting, vibrant and beautiful in the polished black and white of evening dress, and he suits the narrow cut of trouser that is in fashion. The amount Hannibal laid down with his tailor was not wasted.

"It's a nice conceit, Hannibal," says Rosetta Vipond, at intermission. The extravagant bend of her corsetry gives her the air of one who could fall forward at any moment, and she turns her opera glasses in her hand as her clever gaze sweeps over Will. "But a waste of the ticket, surely?"

"One of the second violins is consistently a half-beat late on his entrances," says Will.

"How interesting," says Vipond, pursing her lips around the irony with relish. "I don't suppose you can tell us which one?"

Hannibal flicks a glance at Will, who looks back at Hannibal and pauses like a cook sweeping sauce around his mouth to discover its deficiencies: garlic, sugar, salt? When Will is satisfied with the answer, he lowers his eyes.

"No," Will says, inspecting the glories of the carpet. "It seems I can't."

Ned Gallagher, half a beat late on his entrances, sits in a worn green armchair with the skin laid open along both of his forearms, their fiddly workings exposed to the air. He has been dead for long enough that the tendons have begun to dry and shorten. His fingers curl tightly towards his palms, as though seeking to form a chord on the strings of his instrument.

The violin in question is lovely enough that Hannibal has found himself uncharacteristically tempted to take it away with him. It's at least a comfort to know that it will soon find another owner; hopefully, one less prone to the desecration of the sublime.

"The paper, please," Hannibal says.

Will unfolds waxed butcher's paper on a surface that he's already wiped clean of blood. He wraps Gallagher's kidneys into a neat parcel.

"You don't need me to be here," Will says mildly.

"No," Hannibal says.

"But you wanted me to see this."

Hannibal looks at Will, feeling his mouth form a smile like the faintest caress of charcoal over good paper.

"You wanted someone to see this," Will amends. His eyes narrow. "And aren't I just the ideal audience?"

"It is a natural human desire," Hannibal says. "We all yearn to be recognised for our accomplishments."

"Looking at this, I wouldn't have pegged you as quite that natural," Will says. "But it does explain a few things."

Hannibal sucks blood thoughtfully from the side of his thumb. Gallagher lives in small rooms. He has neighbours, a landlady. Hannibal and Will have been quiet, but they should leave soon.

"Tell me," he says.

"Why you don't keep household staff. You probably could." Will barely moves. His skin glows, eerie and cold, in the lamplight. "But you grew up doing everything for yourself. Fought your way back into good society by digging your claws in, like a beast. Dusting your own piano and cooking your own meals isn't difficult. Hiding the truth of yourself from someone who lived so close to you: that would be difficult."

The pure, hot, righteous pleasure of the kill had begun to congeal in Hannibal's veins. The way Will looks at him now is enough to set it flowing again.

As he often does, Hannibal throws a dinner party for friends and hospital colleagues. The fact that he cooks for them himself is seen as no more than a harmless affectation, and forgiven in the rush of compliments once they put fork to mouth. The main course is steak and kidney pies served in glass ramekins, the meat sauce flavoured with green peppercorns and topped with a swirl of potatoes passed three times through wire mesh.  

Over dessert they find themselves arguing theology: whether a perfect God can create something imperfect.

"I don't think any human on Earth can claim to be perfect," says Alana Bloom. "God created us in His image, but surely we are an imperfect copy."

Chilton scrapes his cake fork along the plate, gathering crumbs with a sound like bone being cleaned with a scalpel. "But, my dear Lady Bloom, if God is omnipotent then He made us exactly as He wished to. We are exactly what He intended us to be and therefore perfect to His intention. Even the killers and the evil-hearted among us."

"Or," says Hannibal, "do we all begin life as a perfect vessel of God's making, and then allow the devil to creep in through the cracks?"

Nobody contradicts him by pointing out that a perfect vessel would have no such cracks in the first place.

When the house is emptied again, Will tidies and banks the fires while Hannibal cleans dishes. Will's skin is nominally as waterproof as a human's, but Hannibal finds himself protective, untrusting--even of Ortega's craftsmanship--and would prefer not to test it with submersion.

"On the other hand," Will says, as Hannibal draws the key out of his pocket, ready to wind. An evening ritual. "If you ever wanted to destroy me, all it would take would be a small wound and a large body of water."

Hannibal smiles and seats himself; Will comes close, already untucking his clothes to bare the keyhole. Hannibal winds with one hand and holds Will steady with the other, but that's an indulgence. Will doesn't need steadying. He stands motionless as a statue and his eyes give little flickers as the potential energy stores itself, tiny coils crouching tight, somewhere inside him.

"You don't like Frederick Chilton," Will says suddenly.

"No," Hannibal agrees. "He is a tedious, small-minded man. He cares only for the advancement of his career, and mistakes infamy for respect."

"Lady Bloom doesn't like him either," says Will, "and she hides it more poorly. Why invite him?"

"Sometimes you have to endure a minor unpleasantness, in order to gain something else."

"Gain what?" says Will. "Money? You have more than he does. Social standing? You can't expect me to believe you care."

Hannibal waits.

"Disguise," Will says, like the movement of a chess piece.

Hannibal smooths the shirt back down over Will's skin, and stands. "Very good," he says.

Will catches his wrists, takes a single unfussy step forward, and stops close enough to kiss.

Hannibal pauses. He is surprised. He knows that neither his breathing nor his heartbeat will betray that surprise; he also knows that the placement of Will's ivory-smooth fingers precisely over Hannibal's radial pulses is unlikely to be an accident.

After a moment, Hannibal pulls away--his hands slip more easily from Will's grasp than he was expecting--but decides that this is worth considering further. After all, Will isn't seeing anything, reflecting anything, that was not in Hannibal already, even if it was--tucked away. Of course he wants Will. Will is the most perfect companion he could ask for, and he is of Hannibal's own shaping.

"Why," Will says, dryly amused, "am I seized with the conviction that you're comparing yourself to God?"

Two months before buying an automaton named Will Graham, Hannibal hired Joseph Thornton to restore a staircase in his house. The man was ungracious in taking suggestion, overcharged for materials, and left an entire banister unevenly stained.

Thornton is a man prone to cutting corners in all aspects of his life, Hannibal has learned. Instead of sticking to the dubious safety of the city streets, he detours through a small and unlit park to shorten his walk home at the end of the day. A large man, with solid knuckles and a decade of street-gang service to his name before he married into the carpentry business, he walks with his head confidently high, figuring himself the most dangerous beast in the wilderness.

Will has a stone-sure grip over his mouth in one second and slits his throat in the next.

Thornton kicks, weakly, as Will lowers him to the ground. The smell of blood rises like smoke. It has all been very quiet, very contained. On the edge of Hannibal's hearing, night-birds warm their creaky voices, and small creatures scurry in the safe darkness of bushes. Nothing has occurred here that they find out of the natural order of things.

Hannibal stands with his hands in his pockets. This was a whim, of sorts; he hadn't planned on Will being an active participant quite this soon. But watching him kill is intoxicating.

The moonlight is not strong. It makes near-black ink out of Thornton's blood as it pours out of him and stains the grass. There is a balance in this that settles between Hannibal's ribs and calms him. And soon they will take their pound of flesh, too, to be made part of something more useful and more elegant than the man ever was in life.

"So this is what you wanted me to enjoy," Will says.

Hannibal smiles and say nothing. That is not true, but it is becoming so, which amounts to the same thing. Why did he buy Will? Why was he shopping for automata in the first place?

The answer, with no dissembling, is this: because Hannibal is not afraid to know himself. He had come to recognise a weakness in the glass of his makeup: a place where spidery cracks could form, if tapped just so, through which something more dangerous than the devil might creep. He knew that in a few more months his desire for a truly appreciative audience, for something more than the bland outrage in the newspapers, would have put him at risk. He might have started to tease the police in earnest, half-hoping to find someone worthy on his trail.

This was safer.

And this is, impossibly, better.

When he conceived this plan he was searching for a blank slate, for clay to be formed in whatever image he wanted. Appreciative passivity was the most he hoped for. The strange invisible markings on Will, which lie much deeper than his unmarkable tissue, are more than Hannibal was expecting, and the novelty exhilarates him.

Hannibal takes a deep breath and tilts his head back for a moment, letting the night air bathe the skin of his cheeks, picking out constellations through the clouds that limply veil the heavens like death veils a human eye.

"And?" he says. "How does it compare to the opera?"

Will has blood on his chin and his lower lip, remnants of arterial spray, as though he has bitten down on the nib of a pen and had it burst between his teeth. His mouth is parted. After a moment it forms itself into a smile that is almost Hannibal's; but only almost. There's a flaw in the glass, an almost shy edge of savagery that is entirely new. Hannibal feels this realisation run through him like the tremors of the earth in the wake of a great machine. And then Will's face flickers as though someone has thumped an impatient hand between his shoulderblades, jolting a frozen cog back into alignment, and his face goes factory blank.

Hannibal exhales, and wonders if he had been holding his breath.

This time, the smile is perfect in every particular.

"I'm still deciding," Will says.

"Will?" Hannibal calls.

The house gives him back a tense silence, a silence that isn't hollow but is instead, somehow, inhabited. Hannibal closes his eyes, one hand on the banister that has been re-stained by a better craftsman since Thornton's attempts. He listens.

After a little while, he walks up the stairs.

Will Graham is in Hannibal's bedroom, standing in front of the only full-length mirror in the house, down to shirtsleeves and vest. His cuffs are unbuttoned and he has a hand pressed to his forehead. From the doorway he looks like an anxious girl preparing for party, or a poet on the verge of melodrama.

When Hannibal walks across the room, it becomes obvious that Will is shivering all over, finely, like a tuning fork struck against the heel of one's hand. He looks so much like he should be taking deep gulps of air that Hannibal's chest feels tight when it fails to happen.

An instinct wrenched up from childhood makes Hannibal pause without touching Will. His senses are sharpened. He limbers up his fingers, unobtrusively.

"Will," he says.

Will's hand drops to his side. Beneath his synthetic skin his cheekbones are prominent. Hannibal reaches out slowly, signalling his intent, and rests a hand on Will's shoulder. Even through the fabric, the feel is that of a stone wall on a midsummer evening, radiating heat after having drunk its fill of the sun. Hannibal leans closer and inhales. Burned caramel is pouring off Will in solid waves of scent, too bitter for sweetness, with chemical and charcoal at the heart of it.

"Please don't, please--" Will starts, and closes his teeth like a mousetrap on whatever would have come next.

This is very interesting.

"Will," Hannibal says, deliberate. "What do you want?"

Will meets his gaze in the mirror; his smile is half desperate and half knowing. "What do you want...me to...want?"

A convulsion shakes Will violently. It's somewhere between the uncontrollable chatter of cold exposure and the kinds of fits that Hannibal has seen in drunks separated too long from the bottle. With Hannibal's steadying hand, Will manages to stay on his feet, and his eyes remain open throughout, though he stares at the floor rather than watch his reflection spasm. Eventually his body settles, humming at a coarse frequency under Hannibal's palm.

”What do you want?” Hannibal repeats.

"I want to kill anyone who thinks they can own me." Will lifts his head. Now when he meets Hannibal's eyes, his own have the fearful savagery of a creature flipping wildly between predator and prey. "I want to wind myself up with my own hands, while my key is still wet with their blood."

Hannibal does not touch his own breast pocket, where the key lies. His chest is tight again, but this time with something hotter than sympathy. He wants this ruined and ruinous version of Will in a way that is much harder to resist than the calm, calculated offer that Will previously made, and the sudden danger in the room makes it all the more compelling. He turn's Will's head with a hand in his hair, tipping it back until Will's throat is a perfect replica of human vulnerability. Hannibal's hand itches for a knife.

Instead he catches Will's mouth with his own and Will makes a noise that's very close to human.

If someone else left this etching in Will's experience, if someone else has been here first, then Hannibal would like to slice off their fingers and set them aflame. It's not a practical emotion. But he allows it to surge within him, in the violence of the kiss and in the tightness of his grip on Will's hair. Most of Will's weight settles against him, Will's head dropping against his shoulder as he allows Hannibal to--take advantage. Yes; that's the way to describe it. And Hannibal has always had an eye for advantage.

Will tastes nothing like a human being. Though, running this abnormally hot, he is the same temperature as one. The sensation is startlingly intimate. Hannibal is reminded of the first time he operated on an anaesthetised person, the shocking heat of living guts and flesh after so long dissecting cadavers. At the time he paused with his hands up to the wrist in the gaping breach in another person's skin, and felt the nudge of their heart and soft tides of their lungs as they continued to live. It was like a baptism.

Hannibal pulls away when the shivering increases again. Will's eyes are not glazed, per se, but they are unusual. He is clumsy, swaying.

"This feels strange," Will murmurs.

"You can't release sweat to lower your core temperature by evaporation," Hannibal says. "Wait here. Sit on the bed. And remove your vest, perhaps."

He fetches a basin and cloth, and carefully wets down Will's sleeves. Then Will's face. He presses a rag firmly in the white hollow of Will's throat until water trickles down Will's chest.

"Careful," Will says, one hand to his stomach, covering the keyhole. With his face creased and his shirt soaked, he could be an illustration from a medical text: man in the grips of fever following suppurative gut wound.

After a while Will takes the rag from his hand. Hannibal nods and goes to the windows, which he opens, letting the cool smell of night fly in.

"Your bedside manner is good," Will says. He sounds closer to normal.

"You sound surprised."

"I'm not."

"I'm afraid my medical expertise doesn't extend to your kind of mechanics. Should I be sending for a different kind of specialist?"

Will turns his head and looks at Hannibal. "Are you asking my opinion, or my permission?"

"Why not both?"

"Neither is relevant," Will says. "There are papers in your desk that say so."

Hannibal smiles. "We've been doing well at maintaining the pantomime, nonetheless."

Will says nothing. Hannibal watches his mouth, hearing again the slow inflectionless threat. Anyone who thinks they can own me.

"We have," Will says, finally. "Alright. No. I don't need attention."

"You are functioning normally?"

"But how do we define that word, Dr. Lecter?" Will says.

It's such a good impression of Frederick Chilton that this time Hannibal's smile is involuntary.

"We haven't seen you in the operating theatre for some time, Hannibal."

"That is true," Hannibal says. "Will, this is Professor Walter Brown. Walt--Will Graham."

Brown's eyebrows are even wilder and whiter than they were two decades ago, but the blue eyes beneath them are just as quick. It takes him less than five seconds to realise what Will is, and only another five to read Hannibal's manner and give Will the same courteous nod he'd give to any new acquaintance.

"A famous deserter of the surgical ranks, this one," Brown says. "I thought we'd lost you to the asylums and all that mumbo-jumbo."

"I am here conducting an experiment."

"Capital! Are we to see the results appear in the Lancet?"

Hannibal says, "Their editors may not care for it, I'm afraid. My hypothesis is that an automaton can be trained up as a surgical assistant, or even as an independent surgeon."

Brown's smile becomes uncomfortable. "You'd have us butchers out of a job, eh? I'm not saying they haven't the capacity, Hannibal, but creativity still counts for something. Flexibility, you know. Not everything can be learned by a machine."

"What is your opinion on the matter, Will?" Hannibal asks.

Suddenly the focus of attention, Will blinks, twice, with deliberation. It has the spirit of a hand being raised delicately to cover a yawn, and Hannibal feels the corner of his mouth tighten with amusement.

"I didn't come prepared for a debate on the metaphysics of the mind," Will says. There is the mildest hint of Brown's cadence to his voice. "I thought this was going to be an anatomy lesson."

"And so it shall be," Hannibal says. "Nothing too complicated, Walt. A simple inguinal hernia repair. I won't pretend that my skills are what they were."

They rinse their gloved hands with carbolic acid while a nurse sets out the instruments, and Hannibal feels his way through an odd moment of dissonance. It's bizarre, almost luxurious, to see the scalpels and retractors set out with such calmness and in such a brightly lit room. The chloroformed patient breathes insensibly in the middle of the theatre floor, the lower half of his body exposed. The hernia is a lump the size of a lemon under the skin of his groin.

Brown's small flock of medical students murmur to one another in the viewing stalls, and ignore their notepads in favour of staring at Will with the frank, entitled curiosity that medical training instils. Word of Hannibal's experiment has reached them, it seems.

"I am ready to begin," Hannibal says.

He works slowly, explaining each step as he goes. The sound of his own voice as he slices flesh is almost as strange as the illuminated surgical field, dragging back into the open something that he has taught himself to think of as clandestine. He can feel the eyes of the students like a fine thrill across his skin, and something hotter and closer as well. When he pauses and looks across the body--the patient--Will's eyes are focused on Hannibal's hands, where blood coats the rubber of Hannibal's gloves.

"Tell me the steps so far."

"Incision and opening of subcutaneous fat along a line parallel and just superior to the inguinal ligament," Will says at once. "Ligation of superficial epigastric vessels to achieve haemostasis. Division of Scarpa's fascia to visualise the inguinal ring."

"Very good," Hannibal says, and continues.

The praise is meaningless. There is no effort involved for automata to store memories, and just how much they can store has been poorly studied. Standing there with his fingers lightly touching the bare flesh at the edge of the wound, Will could be a magical bag from a fable; a bucket that can have endless amounts of water poured into it, but never fill. A vast palace of many rooms and soaring ceilings. An external sort of memory, absolutely reliable.

Or perhaps not, Hannibal thinks, watching Will watching the pooling of fresh blood from a nicked vein. Will's unmoving fingertips, poised where skin gives way to fat. Will's emotionless face like a child's hands at the piano, note-perfect scales and arpeggios drifting through the chilly halls of a large house.

What happens when the palace stands up and walks away, taking your life with it?

The procedure goes smoothly. On the way back up again, from floor of wound to surface skin, Hannibal closes layer after layer and asks Will for the names of every stitch, every instrument and every muscle as he pulls the thread tight.

Will gets none of them wrong.

"Did you kill your previous owners?"

"No," Will says.

This is is true. Hannibal has checked the record on Will's ownership papers and has gone so far as to enquire after the health of the three people in question; all of them are quite alive and, one assumes, quite content with their subsequent and less unsettling purchases.

But the point of asking that question was in order to ask the next question.

"Did you want to?"

"No," Will says again. "Why would you ask?"

Hannibal weighs this conversation like a captured chess piece tossed thoughtfully in the hand, but sees no point in wasting time.

"You told me that you wanted to kill anyone who would own you. That you wanted to wind yourself up with your own hands."

Will is blank. "When did I say that?"

Hannibal looks at him closely. "The evening when you were running hot. I almost sent to have you repaired. Do you remember?"

Silence. Hannibal pours himself another glass of wine and Will's hands jerk before he clasps them firmly together, as he often does when the mirroring becomes too obvious. His mouth parts, a thirsty motion, as Hannibal sips and swallows.

"I remember I couldn't stop shaking," Will says finally. "I remember you opened the window. That's all."

Hannibal wonders if this is a lie, or if something about that faux-feverish state actually did interfere with Will's memory. If the walls of that particular palace room have been sponged clean.

Every evening Hannibal puts the key in Will's lock and winds him up. Every evening Will stands perfectly still and Hannibal thinks about how the iron and brass might slip against one another, if bloodied.

If he took a knife to Will's abdomen, ripped out the keyhole and the mechanism behind it...there would be no blood at all. Just the small screeches of cog-teeth against the edge of the blade. And something almost---but not quite--like death.

"I've got something to show you. You should leave that on, it's outside."

Hannibal pauses in the act of shrugging off his overcoat. There is no smell of food in the house, which by now is unusual. He still enjoys preparing his evening meal, but Will often begins without him.

"Is this related to dinner?" Hannibal asks.

Will descends the rest of the stairs and stands with him in the entranceway, looking comfortable in his expensive cloak and hat. He twists the end of Hannibal's scarf around his hand, eyes darting to the pattern of the wool, and then steps away almost at once to open the front door. It has snowed today, but now the sky is clear. The evening air reaches in to glide icily around them, and Will's cheek is rounded with gibbous moonlight, like something by Bernini.

"That's up to you," he says. "Bring a lamp."

They walk only half a mile, veering off the main streets to smaller and smaller ones, ending up in an alley that barely deserves the name: only two paces wide, running behind a factory that was half gutted by fire and now stands awaiting demolition, its windows boarded up. They are closer to the river, and downwind of it. There is a faint smell of wet salt.

Which becomes, gradually, a stronger and more familiar kind of wet salt. As they reach the midpoint of the alley a dark blur resolves itself into the prone body of a man.

"What was his crime?" Hannibal asks.

"Do you care?" Will says. "Crimes against automata are not crimes in the eyes of the law."

"Neither is failing to keep time in an orchestra," says Hannibal mildly.

Will's teeth flash white. "I know."

"It was dangerous, leaving him here."

"I calculated the risk," Will says.

"I'm sure you did."

"He didn't have an inguinal hernia, if you were wondering," Will says. "But I carried out most of the steps without any problems."

"You...I beg your pardon?"

"For the experiment to be carried out in full, surely you need me to actually perform the procedure. As proof of education."

Hannibal glances at the corpse.

"Don't worry," Will says. "The incision won't be recognisable by the time we're done here. But I thought you'd like to see this first, even if you can't write about your success in the Lancet."

Hannibal spends most of his days in conversation with people whose minds move along chaotic paths, meandering in and out of rational thought and chasing down side alleys of symbolism and fear. He enjoys the challenge of trying to follow these paths, and sometimes he is even able to predict them; to lean forward, soothing, and walk side-by-side along twists of reasoning with people who have long since given up trying to make themselves understood.

At these times, there is a particular smile that his patients get. Cracked open, and tender, and above all grateful that they have been seen, maybe even accepted, after so long in obscurity.

Part of Hannibal notes: so this is what that feels like.

Another part notes: if this is a trap, it has been baited exceptionally well.

He moves the lamp so that golden light spills across the body, crouches down, and inspects Will's handiwork.

"I can't fault the anatomical planes," Hannibal says. "Of course, it is more difficult in a live patient."

"What makes you think he wasn't alive?"

Hannibal's gratitude gives a little shiver, exultant and almost feral, in the lining of his stomach. He stands, reaches out and puts a hand to the side of Will's neck. Will's eyes twitch to the side before meeting his. It was harder to smell, over the blood, but now he has it; that sugary chemical burn is simmering away at the edge of Hannibal's senses, matching the thrum of clockwork under Will's skin.

"Are you going to remember this, I wonder," Hannibal says softly.

"I'm getting used to it, I think," says Will. "It feels less--less like I might explode."

When Will is in this state, the illusion of life is dramatic. It seems that Hannibal might almost be able to leave a bruise, or something deeper. Something indelible. All he has to do is tighten his grip.

Will's eyes are too bright for the shadows in which they stand. "Are you going to send for that specialist after all? Have me mended?"

"No."

Will shrugs. "It might not be good for me, to run so hot for so long."

"And yet, to try to fix it now might change everything that you are."

"And how much of that is me, whatever I am," Will says, in his slow and indifferent voice, "and how much of it is what I am showing you of yourself? You aren't curious, Dr. Lecter?"

"I am curious," Hannibal allows. "But I see no need to test it."

There is a delicate machinery to their existence. If Hannibal offers freedom too quickly, Will might take the key and vanish. If he waits too long to bind Will to his side--showing Will everything they could be, together--he risks awakening to a knife in his heart. This will be a gamble: do not overwind, and do not let the clock run down.

"Why are you smiling?" Will asks.

"Life was becoming boring," Hannibal says, "before I found you."

Hannibal's smile on Will's face is imperfect, fragmented and lovely like the moon reflected in dark water.

When Hannibal leans close to kiss him, Will leans in as well.