Full Summary: Everything in life comes at a cost rarely worth paying, costs we do not realise we have paid until it is too late and we are left clutching at the air where it had been. It seemed from the start some vital part of William Graham had been taken away, leaving him too broken (too cracked to his very core) to ever shatter.

Warnings: Mind-games, Cruelty, Power Games, Severe Injury and Hannibal just is... broken. They all need therapy and tea (can you tell I'm British yet?) and a hospital. But mostly therapy. Probably not what Anon wanted but I tried and don't know if I like it.

"If you ever loved me, if only for a moment, you'd stop."

There could be a thousand reasons why it is incorrect to say Will shattered, each one both further and closer to the truth than the previous one yet none of them correct.

Everything in life comes at a cost rarely worth paying, costs we do not realise we have paid until it is too late and we are left clutching at the air where it had been. It seemed from the start some vital part of William Graham had been taken away, leaving him too broken (too cracked to his very core) to ever shatter. He had never been considerable as whole and as such could never fragment much more- he could simply break a little further when a final burst of impact ripped through him.

It would, after all, only take one major swing of a hammer.

Like an abandoned ragdoll it seemed he had been worn away at all his life, stitching having come loose from too rough fingers using him in their games without ever leaving him to be fixed. Without ever taking the time to ensure there wasn't too much stuffing coming out of his quickly tearing body. Like an abandoned ragdoll, when he was forced to his feet again it was never for his own advantage and once he had done his part nobody tried to make his landing a little softer.

(Who cares about a second hand dolly after all?)

It had not been easy to gain his trust, Hannibal's fingers pretending to heal the obvious damage whilst really making the damage just out of sight far worse. When someone's life was so very empty it didn't take all that much to find the loneliness and play with it until the ragdoll was dangling from strings even it didn't know about yet.

Love, after all, was an emotion Hannibal had never been able to feel, regret was something he had also doubted he could feel. Empathy though? He had never been closer to feeling empathy than in that one, hideously still moment. But like with everything else in his life, Will seemed to (almost) be the exception to that rule, barely parted lips showing almost as much utter horror as those widened eyes.

In Hannibal's mind there had never been any pretending that the games he was playing would someday come to an end. William was always one of the brightest people he had ever had the opportunity to meet even if it wasn't in the standard measurements of intelligence. His eyes saw too much, his mind was always bent a little too far –almost to breaking point- and the same eyes that saw showed absolutely everything in such a manner it was hard to read them beyond unless the reader was able to understand certain features that formed him- the features that kept him up at night with a cold sweat soaking his body and bringing his clothing suffocating close.

At first, it had been both a mix of opportunity and logic that had caused Hannibal to decide to bring the young man to his bed rather than his grave, not wanting to kill something so rare so soon. Hannibal was, foremost, a man who appreciated the finer things in life. Things that were hard to come by and all the harder to ever see fully. So killing Will straight away had seemed like some form of blaspheme.

(Blaspheme from the devil on earth, fingers running over the beautifully pale flesh of the final still falling angel, subtly moving William's halo down until it was residing around his neck like the most beautiful chain. Like the most beautiful noose created by God Himself.)

Of all the things it had been, a struggle was never really on that list. Despite his more unique factors Will was still human and he was so dangerously lonely it was almost painful to see. Even Hannibal may not have comprehended the damage always seeing the very worst, always being traded like a freak, could have on someone. He had never really understood what it would be like to see every single aspect of other people and yet look in the mirror and weep because he was still seeing everything through their eyes.

Everything remained tainted by how they saw things and as such Will could never see himself as anything but the plague others saw him as.

When Hannibal had come along, taking his time to lay the traps before finally moving to make the final mark, Will had already not stood a chance.

Hannibal had worked things perfectly, killing Will with an easy kiss and working the defences back so far it was easy to slot himself in. He didn't need to alienate Will because the other could do it himself- he could see why others wanted him around, after all. Believing there was any genuine concern was not something that ever crossed his mind.

Falling in love, after his defences had been damaged so severely, was not difficult for the little lonely empath.

No man or woman who had ever seen Hannibal and Will together would have been able to testify in court that Hannibal would ever hurt the young FBI teacher and at the time Hannibal had been beyond proud of his accomplishment of feigning love. But, looking back, perhaps it was Hannibal's inner alarms that should have begun screaming at their loudest volume when he did not bring a single bit of physical harm to William.

Never once in all the times that Will lay in deep slumber cocooned in-between Hannibal's silk sheets and the other man had Hannibal gone through with ending things, with eliminating the risk. When he reached for one of the pillows it had been to adjust them and when he had paused to consider the man curled against him he simply pressed a light kiss to the curly hair rather than taking the extra moment to snap his neck in half.

But pausing to consider it may have been more than even Hannibal's self-control could cope with. He lived by a firm set of rules regarding how he dealt with things and admitting that there was even the slightest bit of affection would have meant dealing with it.

He didn't truly wish to deal with Will anymore.

Perhaps it had been a novice's error to make. His hoping that Will would be too blinded by everything to see the clear truth was no more intense than a beaten child's prayers in the night. Just as he had expected it had happened.

Just like predicted, when Will turned up to Hannibal's door, soaked from standing in the rain a little too long and flinching away from any offered touch it became clear that finally the penny had dropped, rolling with the truth facing painfully up.

He had, in the end, worked it out and as the door shut with a painfully loud click behind him Will's eyes remained on Hannibal's shoulder, unable to look at the eyes of the man who had deceived him with so much ease. Unable to look at the one betrayal that destroyed him so much more than anyone else had ever been capable of doing.

The curls Hannibal so often ran his fingers through were stuck to Will's painfully pale face, features looking as though he was trapped in a painfully realistic nightmare he couldn't awake from. When Hannibal's mannerisms shifted to their cold, predatorily sharp natural poses there was a moment even the blue eyes on him had to move away to keep himself from showing how there might as well have been a dagger cutting through him for all intents and purposes.

He was being gutted like a prize catch of a fish without Hannibal ever having to raise a hand to him.

(In all likelihood it would have been easier if Hannibal was hurting him because in that moment all Will was thinking was 'fool, fool, fool '. Someone seeming to love him should have been clue enough that was something was wrong yet he'd overlooked it in favour of being wanted. For being, just for once, someone's first choice.)

"It was you." Will's voice was rough, as though he'd spent hours muttering to himself as to what he should do, standing next to his car as he willed himself to drive away, to do the logical thing. His voice was rough, throat sounding as though he'd swallowed gravel and hands shaking as they hung aimlessly by his side. "You're…" He couldn't quite manage to form the words, lips faltering as no noise left them. "You killed them."

"Indeed." Hannibal took a slight step closer, showing absolutely no reaction when Will moved back almost instantly, as though letting Hannibal too near really would cause him to break completely. His badly kept mask was already too damaged to make any difference to how much pain his face was showing the killer he'd trusted so much over the past few months. "And yet you are here and not telling the correct authorities. Why is that?"

In truth, there were plenty of options as to why Will was there, many of which far more likely than the one Hannibal seemed to settle on. In all fairness it may have been anything from the uncharacteristic hoping he was wrong to Will not thinking the others would ever believe him, all of them having grown to trust Hannibal as well.

Yet, from how Will faltered under his gaze, Doctor Lecter genuinely doubted he had made a mistake in his presumption. Instead he sighed as he stepped forwards this time, easily catching the other's wrist before he could move away. The grip, unlike how it usually was, was hard and difficult to break, tight to the point of almost bruising as he pulled Will a little closer, using his other hand to tug Will's phone from his pocket. "Unarmed too despite now knowing what I am more than capable of doing. Oh, William, you don't have much self-preservation do you?"

Will had been his from the start, so utterly lost in his need to not only be a manner to get into the minds of others but also to be given a chance to remember who he was. It was all too easy to be lost under the waves of cruelty, blood caused by other's hands, hands he was forced to emphasise with daily as Jack's personal sniffer dog.

Hannibal dropped the phone onto the ground, letting it slide several metres away from them before he moved his hand to lightly grip Will's chin, tilting his head back so if only for a fleeting moment he had no choice but to make eye contact. William had still come to him despite working out what Hannibal had done, despite seeing the extent of his manipulation. He had still come as though hoping that despite all he knew Hannibal was capable of some form of affection.

When Will swallowed his Adam's apple shifted, nervous that the lies he was trying to make convincing would not be believed. "They trust you. They trust you too much to simply believe my word without evidence." They had been given so much material, so many blinding light shows, that without some form of evidence they would never believe Will instantly.

The web of lies and games had been so cleverly spun that they didn't stand a chance to see things as they truly were in time to avoid some form of a tragedy.

"You've never been an especially good liar, William."

"Unlike you, you mean? You should get an Oscar for how you've pulled everything off." An Oscar for how well he had made Will believe that his feelings were genuine. An Oscar for pretending that every little touch did not disgust him. Blue eyes showed his thoughts in a way he could never truly do verbally. There was a pause before it seemed as though part of Will's brain faltered and forced him to ask the next question, "Did I ever mean anything to you?"

And there it was, the question Hannibal had no intention of considering. The question that scared him far more than it ever should have.

Shifting them he dragged Will further into the room, mind calmly moving over the options. The cabinet Will's back would soon be flattened against had a knife in one of the drawers- an especially sharp night Hannibal kept in case he needed subtle access to one. It would be easy to just pull it out and do what he should have done months earlier.

(Then why hadn't he done it yet?)

It had been foolish to go to Hannibal after working everything out yet perhaps he had half hoped Hannibal would slip up, give him some form of evidence for him to use. Or maybe it was even simpler than that- maybe he'd simply wanted to be proven wrong.

"If you ever loved me, if only for a moment, you'd stop." Will's voice seemed to contain even less hope than his eyes, still not even faking struggling against Hannibal's grip. What little hope he had left was likely no more than a fading flame. "For me." There was barely a moment of frantic silence where Will's eyes just couldn't look away from Hannibal, the desperation clouding them absolutely nothing in comparison to the pure pain suddenly running through him. A chocked laugh left his lips as he shook his head as though trying with every bit of his body to pretend the man in front of him wasn't the same one tenderly tugging him to bed at night. "No… of course not. You're not capable of love, your crimes show that much."

The nightmares Hannibal had caused simply so he could be there to manipulate Will further had also shown that much.

Hannibal also paused, still keeping Will trapped between himself on the wall, every panicked breath the other let out causing their chests to touch. It would be easy, too easy, to just slam the knife forwards (into William's stomach) and be done with it. It would be easy to watch the life leave the other's eyes because of him, to feel the warmth of his blood as his skin would all too quickly get so much colder…

It should have been easy.

Will was tired and not thinking right, easy to control with a single arm as the other moved intentionally slowly, fingers briefly caressing Will's cheek (stubble rough on his fingers) before moving it to the drawer he had so intentionally placed them next to. There was no attempt to deny that he indeed did not feel anything for the empath because he simply couldn't rather than the fact he didn't because he had never felt anything but revulsion for him. The need to destroy was matched by the need to run- the need that he had not had to face since he had been a child, watching his sister's blood run smoothly as though no more than water from a stream running from once smooth skin.

"Don't you see it, dear Will?" His voice was almost mockingly soft as he refused to break eye contact, refusing to show the battle going on inside his head. His lips were barely millimetres away from Will's as though preparing to kiss him whilst his arm prepared to making the killing blow. If it had been anyone else, the urge to move his arm would have been one he wouldn't be fighting in the slightest. "I could never love you. I've never been able to."

And yet, part of his mind, wanted to point out that whilst he had never been able to feel love he had gotten dangerously close to feeling something akin it. Pressing a kiss to William's lips after such words also seemed crueller than actual torture may have been.

If the fact Will's struggles weakened hurt him or affected him in any way, Hannibal didn't show it. He showed nothing as he watched tragically certain realisation move over the features he had gotten to know so intimately over the last few months.

Hannibal's lips curved as coldly as he could manage as he wondered why it had to be this one time that the instinct to kill had faltered so strongly.

In the end William did not shatter because shattering suggests that there were little shards remaining, something of the old simply residing in a new, smaller remnant of the past. Yet as Will breaks, the knife roughly slipping into his gut as his cries are swallowed by lips he adored so much, he does not shatter because there will be nothing left of him. A shell of a person will never truly be the same person and if you take someone's very heart, every little hope and promise they believed in only to twist them into a beautiful noose you are killing them all the same.

Surprisingly, there was little pleasure in how easily the knife made itself at home barely shy of anything vital, sinking deeper than Will seemed formed of. If he were to try hard the young man should be able to reach a phone before he bleed out too much... If he dragged himself tooth and nail he should be able to call for help before losing out to the darkness...

He should have just killed him, Hannibal had no doubt of that. He should have dragged the knife a little to the left and then up, he should have just finished Will before he can tell anyone what has happened… Yet he didn't.

(Hannibal will never admit if it is out of some uncharacteristic hesitation or out of the respect he does feel for Will. Thinking over such a matter may make it terrifyingly obvious that those who will say he was never human will be wrong. It takes a soul to love and yet it shows the absence of one what he has done to such pure beauty.)

(He has improved so many and yet somehow killing Will seems like defacing art rather than cultivating it.)

Slowly, he pulled out of the one sided kiss, his tongue tasting of Will's cries and blood, eyes as cold as the metal making it so difficult for Will to even breathe. "If you make it I'll make certain to visit you in hospital. Take you flowers." It sounded cruelly mocking and it only made the damp lines tracing from Will's so beautifully pained eyes seem much more fitting. It is the pain Hannibal wished he had a chance to explore more and yet it was the same pain that made him want to walk away.

It seemed that it was simply the knife and the hand Hannibal had under Will's chin keeping the other up- making Hannibal's knowledge that he would soon have to leave if he wanted to get away and let Will have enough time to call an ambulance. "Ironic, isn't? The person who has been holding you at night is the same one who caused the nightmares haunting you so viciously."

The monster to blame for the dark lines under Will's eyes had also been the one to tenderly ease him back into sleep, the monster who was slowly bleeding him out was the same monster that still wanted to be able to not hurt Will. Part of him, the part being ignored and beaten, was the part that would have given anything to get away from this situation.

Sighing he moved the hand from Will's chin to the other's cheek, giving an almost sad smile when Will tried to pull away. "I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish you hadn't of worked it out." He paused.

"You're a killer." Will gasped out, the situation staining the memories of how once Hannibal being so close would have made him feel safe. "I hate you."

"You don't." Hannibal shook his head with no hesitation. "You hate yourself for still loving me. You hate yourself because right now, despite it being me who did this to you, you still wish I were holding you and telling you it will stop hurting soon."

Will's eyes had always been too expressive, showing all the emotions that spilled over so clearly Hannibal had been amazed nobody else could read him as well as he could. It was almost tragic how Will's shaking hands were resting on Hannibal's arms almost gently rather than trying to move away. Still gently rather compared to how many others would have still been desperately shrugging.

With his betrayal, Hannibal had killed the last bit of Will that kept him looking alive.

"You said if I loved you I'd stop." Hannibal added, managing to hate himself for the softness in his tone. "I can't do that. But I can, however, minimalize the damage. You'll be able to make the call before you pass out and the rest is up to dear old Uncle Jack. We do know how much he needs your little head after all."

Stepping back, at last, he lets Will slip to the floor, a pained gasp leaving his all too red lips.

Will, however, still makes no attempt to move.

He should kill him, minimalize the thread of discovery.

Eradicate the problem.

And yet it is Hannibal who wonders to the disregarded phone, picking it up as though it is something to consider. "You said that if I loved you I'd stop. Did you think I would?" Lingering would do him no good, yet his curiosity was there, evident.

"I thought you loved me back for months on end." His tone was cold and pain filled, weak already from everything that was going on. "I was deluded."

So, whilst Will completely believed everything on Hannibal's end was acting he still managed to look at him with heartbroken adoration. It would probably have been considered mercy is he had just walked away and yet nothing concerning Will seemed that simple.

If Hannibal left, Will was unlikely to make it to the phone because he wasn't even trying, fingers trying to put pressure on the wound, knowing better than pulling the knife out yet.

Still deciding what he was going to do Hannibal moved to kneel next to Will the other's eyes widened slightly, trying to flinch away from how the killer's fingers moved over the red slipping between Will's long fingers. It wouldn't be difficult to linger on how when Hannibal increased pressure Will's reaction was not a gasp of pain but to shut his eyes, trying to shut out reality as though such a technique had ever worked before.

When darkness did come to get him, it was funny how the only thing Will could focus on was how he was still glad that the touch was Hannibal's and not someone else's. That at least if he was going to die he could pretend that something between them had been true.

All Hannibal could wonder was why it didn't feel as good as he'd imagined it would.

...

Irony, at its worse, may not be summarised as dying at the hand of someone you love despite their betrayal. It is not simply slipping into darkness by the same hands that you are grateful are there (the hands killing you being the same you wish to cling to for comfort).

Irony at its very worse may be slowly awakening to an all too bright room, numb and feeling more tired than alive. It is waking up to white only interrupted by a red rose meticulously placed in the middle of white ones and instantly knowing that it's only a matter of time before everything will come crashing back down.

And what better way to die, than to live through hell after falling for the flames themselves?

...

"Whoever could love such a monster but another creature beyond recognition?"