Gaining Innocence

Tongue Twister (CH:32)

CHAPTER 32:

A wave of movements greeted Hannibal as soon as he had stepped into the house. It came in the form of a highly agitated Will Graham with wild, wild eyes. A progression of expressions fell on her face in rapid succession, like a series of billowing veils, rapidly transforming her moment of relief into a miserable look of helplessness and tremulous despair.

Pure panic, insurmountable, raw in its form and all-consuming.

"Will?" Hannibal's tone was urgent, concerned but demanding. "What happened?"

"Don't let Jack ask anything about the kidnapping, Herkus," Will hissed. "You can not ".

"It will-"

"Language." His voice had a tinge of hysteria, laced with disbelieving and horrified understanding. "Chris gave him the tongue. He ate it. Herkus. Herkus — he — ate the tongue, Hannibal."

Hannibal carefully, very carefully, stopped. That information shouldn't have been known to Will. The man himself had taken an oath, with unsurpassed certainty, not to question Herkus. Hannibal knew well how the profiler treated his son, his fierce protection and affection that rivaled that of a mother's cub. It was inconceivable for him to bother Herkus for answers.

Dismay briefly flared within Hannibal, feeling mounting exasperation toward his own little cannibal as the answer became apparent. Although it could be too severe on Herkus. Will had always been perceptive, even more so when helped by his unique gift.

Hannibal could handle this in many ways. A variety of possibilities: redirection, wrong address, wrong information; Relieving empathic concerns, alleviating white lies, or playing the role where Will's brain couldn't establish a coherent relationship from the stream. But he chose none of that. Alarmed as he was, Hannibal wanted to see.

He needed to determine something.

In a way, this fact was a positive side. Hannibal had already planned to slowly introduce Will to the dark side of his mind, embracing the concept that so terrified him of empathy. But these abrupt circumstances pushed his plan faster than expected, and although it caught him off guard, Hannibal was adept at writing new patterns as if he were composing melodies.

His son was family territory, there would be no better opportunities than this. And then he took on a wary, wary look and said:

"Did Herkus tell you?"

Blue eyes fixed hers with abrupt precision, and for a moment, Hannibal saw Will Graham. Not Will Graham who hid behind the frames and picked up strays to land for a moment of clarity, not Will Graham who required paddles to travel across the sea of ​​the living, but Will Graham who hunted criminals, Will Graham who was intimately familiar with the mind of murderers.

The Will Graham who shot Garret Jacob Hobbs nine times in the chest and would have shot more if it weren't for the empty cartridge.

"Did you know."

"I had my suspicions," Hannibal said, measured, testing, and watching. "He didn't tell me directly."

The styler groaned, caging messy curls between two hands, deft fingers tugging slightly at her frustration, and produced a sound that was a mix between a grunt and a groan of pain. "I don't think Herkus knows what, what he had been eating."

Ah, Hannibal thought as he mollified the slight disappointment that arose, of course.

Will, despite his cunning and ability to make leaps and bounds deductions with so little evidence, had always seen his son wearing pink glasses. A harmless being, incapable of hurting a soul, even if that was the furthest thing from the truth. He wondered what it would take the younger man who actually sees Herkus to actually see him. Although that line of thinking was too dangerous. Tempting, but dangerous. For now.