Title: How He Was Made
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.
***
"You cannot change me, Will. This is how I was made."Will stared at Hannibal through the glass wall of the other man's prison; he knew that it was more than glass, knew that it was unbreakable. He was safe.
But was he? Would he ever be completely safe from Hannibal's machinations? This man had an obsession with him, and that made him dangerous.
It didn't matter that Hannibal was locked away in a prison where he would spend the rest of his life. It didn't matter that he would never regain his freedom. What mattered was that somehow, this man still had the ability to get under his skin, to make him feel uncomfortable.
Will hated that. He hated knowing that Hannibal could still make him squirm, still make him feel as though he didn't truly know himself.
Hannibal had always made him feel that way, especially when their "therapy sessions" had first started. This man had awakened things within him that he would rather not see.
He'd had to face his own dark side, and he hadn't like it.
He had always known that there was a dark side to his nature, of course. Everyone had them, and he was no exception. Dark and light, two sides of the same coin.
But he had always managed to keep his dark side suppressed, because he had been horrified to realize just what he was capable of doing if he had abandoned his morals and given that darkness free rein. He didn't want to dive into the kind of evil that Hannibal represented.
He'd come so close to doing just that, Will thought with a shudder. And that was exactly what Hannibal had wanted from him, to destroy his moral center.
Hannibal had wanted nothing more than a carbon copy of himself.
Well, that might be how Hannibal was made, but it wasn't how he was fashioned. He was of a different cut entirely. He wasn't that conscienceless, that evil.
He could never be like Hannibal -- and he never wanted to be. He never wanted to lose his compassion for the victims that he saw at the crime scenes he went to; he never wanted to look at them and see that as simply dead bodies, or worse, as Hannibal did. As meat.
That thought made him shudder all the way to his very soul. If he ever started seeing human beings in that light, then he might as well be dead.
He never wanted to become that cold and cruel, that dispassionate. That would signal that his moral center was breaking down, and that he was a danger to others.
He'd end himself before he reached that point.
Will shook his head, trying to keep his mind focused on why he was here. "I know it's how you're made," he said, trying to keep the impatience, the annoyance, out of his voice. "But I thought that you might have at least a little bit of common decency left in you."
Hannibal raised his brows, a small smile quirking the corners of his thin lips. "Decency? Will, I don't believe you think that I have such a quality in me."
He didn't. Not really. But he had been grasping at straws, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Hannibal might be willing to help them solve this case.
"She's still alive." Will swallowed hard, not wanting to think about the girl who he knew was probably terrified at this very moment, perhaps suffering under the aegis of some horrific tortures. "You could help us save her. You could redeem yourself, at least a little bit."
Hannibal smiled again; the expression was infuriating.
"And why would I want to do that?" he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled by the idea. "The world has already tried and convicted me, and decided just what I am."
"You're a murderer." Will's voice was flat, uncompromising. "You were tried and convicted for crimes that you've committed against humanity. You're right where you belong, and you know it."
Hannibal crossed his arms over his chest, regarding the young man without saying a word. Will had to force himself to sit still under the brightness of that glare, knowing that Hannibal would miss nothing with those eagle eyes of his. He couldn't let himself show any discomfort.
But Hannibal made him uncomfortable. Being here to ask for help from this killer, this blight on humanity, made him feel somehow diminished.
It made him feel as though he couldn't do his job on his own.
"Yes, I am a killer, Will," Hannibal told him, his voice very soft. "And how many others would be the same if they would simply cast the mores of society aside?"
"Those morals exist for a reason," Will said, his voice sharp. "Not everybody loves killing as much as you do, Hannibal. Decent human beings don't get pleasure out of ending the lives of others. You're an abomination. You belong here, not out in the world."
"Yet that is the way I was made, Will, and you are aware of that fact," Hannibal told him, his brows raising again. "In a way, you've always known it."
That was true. He'd always known that there was something wrong with Hannibal.
But he'd hesitated when it came to pointing the finger of blame at the other man, and that hesitation had almost cost him his own freedom. And very nearly his life, as well.
Those days were over. He would never trust Hannibal again, never give him the benefit of the doubt. He knew this man too well now, knew what Hannibal was capable of.
And he also knew that Hannibal wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice him. This man had tried to kill him more than once; he was not to be trusted, not for any reason. Will was just glad that the unbreakable shield was between the two of them; he didn't want Hannibal too close to him.
Yes, Hannibal was made to be a killer. Some people were just born that way, and it was his job to catch those people and put them behind bars.
He'd done that with Hannibal, after a long and bloody chase that had left far too many people dead, too many lives destroyed in the process.
Some people might say that one of those lives was his own.
But he didn't want to think in that way. He was free of Hannibal's influence, if he'd ever been under it in the first place. He didn't want to think that he had been.
Yes, there had been a time when the darkness within him had seemed like a siren's call, when it would have felt as though it was so easy to throw away his morals, to throw off the restrictions that his job and his beliefs and society put on him, and destroy his conscience.
Still, he could never have done that. He would have felt too guilty afterwards. He couldn't have lived with what he might have done in the heat of the moment.
He didn't want to become like Hannibal. He never had.
He wouldn't be like that, Will vowed to himself. He would never put himself before others. That might be the way that Hannibal was made, but it wasn't who he was.
He was better than that. He always had been. That was why he had been able to withstands the blandishments, the temptations, that Hannibal had tried to set before him.
That had been his own personal trial by fire, and he had come through it. He'd had the strength to be able to turn his back on that seductive siren's call, and he'd been able to push back the darkness and turn towards the light. He was proud of himself for doing so.
But he had been a huge disappointment to Hannibal, and he knew it. But he didn't care. He didn't want to please someone who was, at his core, evil incarnate.
He couldn't even find it in himself to feel sorry for Hannibal. This man had caused too much misery, taken far too many innocent lives, just because he enjoyed killing.
The thought sickened Will. Killing was for defense, not for pleasure.
He would never understand what made Hannibal tick, no matter how much he tried to delve into the other man's mind. It would always be foreign to him.
He understood the power that killing could make someone feel. He'd been there himself. But the thought of taking a life simply to feel that power, for the momentary flash of pleasure it might give, was repugnant to him. He was too intrinsically moral to live like that.
He wasn't made that way. Which was why he and Hannibal would always be, at heart, enemies. They would never agree on this one sticking point.
It was what made him different. What made him better.
He would never sink to Hannibal's level. He would never refuse to help someone in need. That was made the two of them intrinsically different.
Yes, he had killed, but he had done it out of self-preservation. He could never kill just for the sake of killing; it wasn't in his nature. It wasn't how he was made.
"I know how you're made, Hannibal," Will said, shaking his head as he turned away from the other man. "I don't even want to call you a human being. It's an insult to the rest of us who draw breath. You're an abomination, and the world will be a better place once you're out of it for good."
With those parting words, he turned his back and walked down the corridor, hardly realizing it when he came out into the bright sunshine of the daylight outside.
He meant what he had said. He was better than Hannibal Lecter. He wasn't a killer. Yes, he had the seeds of darkness in him, but he refused to let them take root.
He should have known that he would get no help from Hannibal.
He'd have to figure this case out on his own, find the woman who had been kidnapped and was probably, even now, either dead or wishing that she was.
For a moment, he felt small, helpless, thwarted. Then he straightened his shoulders, his eyes narrowing as he strode across the parking lot towards his car. He was the man who had put the Chesapeake Ripper behind bars. He had solved that case, and he could solve this one.
He wasn't going to give up. He wouldn't give Hannibal that satisfaction. It would be too easy to just give in, to admit that he was beaten.
He didn't need Hannibal's help. He'd solve this case without him.
Will slammed the door as he got into his car, his thoughts turning away from the conversation he'd just had. It was more than obvious that no help was coming from that direction.
He didn't need help. He could get this done by himself. He didn't need Hannibal, and he wasn't going to him with hope in his heart again.
He'd mistakenly thought that Hannibal might have some small scrap of humanity within himself, that he might want to try to redeem some of what he'd done in the past by helping someone in the present. But he should have known better than to let himself hope.
Hannibal wasn't going to change. He was a killer, and he always would be. Just as leopards couldn't change their spots, Hannibal couldn't change how he was made.
Will shook his head, wishing that things could be different. But they weren't, and there was no need to be sad about it. Life was what it was, and he couldn't change the past.
Nor could he change the present, and make Hannibal a different man.
He started the car, backing out of the parking space and easing into traffic, deliberately pushing all thoughts of Hannibal and their shared past from his mind.
He wasn't made in the same way that Hannibal was, and he was glad of it. He had faced that darkness within himself and rejected it. He'd successfully pushed it away.
He wasn't going to let that darkness rise again. Not ever.
No matter how hard it might be to turn away from it in the future.
***
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