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Title: Seeing the Truth
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: writers_choice
Prompt: #180, Truth
Author's Note: Sequel to "Under His Spell."
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.

***

Why had it taken him so long to see the truth?

He should have realized what Hannibal was from the start, Will berated himself. He had always known that there was something off about the man, something that wasn't quite right. But he would never have guessed just what it was on his own.

Why had his empathy not told him that there was something seriously wrong with this man? How could he not have realized what kind of evil lurked behind those eyes?

He sighed softly, closing his eyes and resting his head on his hand. Because he had been too blinded by his own feelings for Hannibal, that was why. He hadn't wanted to believe the sense he had gotten that there was something not quite right about their relationship.

Could he turn Hannibal in? Could he turn on the man who had been his lover, letting all that he'd felt for him turn from love into repulsion?

He wasn't sure. He knew that he should go to the police immediately, but he couldn't bring himself to do that right now. It was the right thing to do, but at the moment, his heart didn't want him to do the right thing. It wanted him to hide.

Of course, he couldn't do that for very long.

If he didn't tell the authorities the truth about Hannibal, then the man would keep killing. Will was sure that fact was irrevocable.

Serial killers didn't stop killing, no matter how much they might say they would, or even how much they might want to. It was a part of their psychological makeup that they had to kill. Something in them thrived on it. They couldn't stop.

He didn't doubt that Hannibal wanted to stop. For him. For the possible future of their relationship. But he knew that it wouldn't happen.

Whatever was left of their relationship would never be the same. He could never let Hannibal make love to him again; he could never touch the other man again without thinking of what Hannibal was, of the things he had done. They were over, finished forever.

Will knew that wasn't what Hannibal wanted, and it wasn't really what he wanted, either. But it was inevitable. He couldn't love a killer.

He could never feel the same way about Hannibal as he had before.

The thought made him want to cry. If only they could go back and erase what Hannibal had told him. If only he didn't know.

But he did know, and there was no going back. There was no delete button, no redo. He had to live with what he knew, and he had to make some tough decisions about where his life was going from here. Nothing from here on out was going to be easy.

He was going back to the lonely life that he'd led before Hannibal. And he didn't think that he could ever trust his own judgement about people again.

But he'd rather be alone than be involved with a killer. Now that he knew the truth about Hannibal, he could never trust his former lover again.

He was already thinking of Hannibal in the "former" sense, Will realized. He was divorcing himself from the fact that they'd been a couple for a while, distancing himself from the relationship. He knew that he could never go back to it.

Things could never be as they had before. Hannibal's revelation had changed everything. The truth had come out, and Will knew that he couldn't live with it.

Yes, he loved Hannibal. But love wasn't enough. Not in this case.

He couldn't be involved with a killer. He would always be afraid that he'd make a wrong move, say one wrong thing, and he would be Hannibal's next victim.

He'd never be able to feel comfortable with his lover again. He was shocked to realize how many times his lover could have murdered him already; he had given Hannibal such complete control in their sex life that he could have already been a corpse several times over.

Why hadn't Hannibal killed him already? Maybe he had just been working up to that; maybe he'd intended for Will to be the icing on the cake of his murders.

Will sighed softly, closing his eyes. Or maybe Hannibal loved him too much to kill him. Maybe he was the one exception to the rule. But that didn't matter now; love wasn't a factor that could be allowed to play int the decision he had to make.

Should he go to the police, now that he knew the truth about Hannibal? Should he turn his lover over to the authorities, and turn his back on all they'd shared?

He really didn't have a choice, did he?

He had to go to the authorities. He was a detective, an employee of the FBI. He couldn't let a killer go free; it would be wrong, and it would weigh on his conscience for the rest of his life. He'd never be able to get what he'd done out of his mind.

It would eventually drive him insane. He couldn't just ignore what Hannibal had told him; it would affect the rest of his life if he did.

Now that he knew the truth, he couldn't turn his back on it and ignore it. He couldn't simply pretend that he didn't know, no matter what Hannibal might want him to do. Hannibal was a murderer, and he didn't owe the man anything simply because they'd had a relationship.

That relationship was dead now; Will knew that. It caused him pain to admit it, but there was no way he could make himself be with Hannibal again.

The past was over, dead and gone. There was no way to get it back, no matter how badly he might want to. And maybe that was a good thing, he told himself with a soft sigh. If it hadn't ended this way, it would more than likely have ended with his own death.

He wasn't going to wait around for that to happen.

Hannibal was a killer. And with Will knowing his deepest secret, that would mean that Will's days would be numbered as long as Hannibal was a free man.

Will sighed softly, reaching for his cell phone. He'd made his decision; really, it had been made before he'd sat down and started pondering all of this. He had to turn Hannibal in. He had no choice, not if he wanted to preserve his own life.

A killer would always be a killer, no matter what else they were. And now that he'd seen the truth, he wasn't going to risk being one of that killer's victims.

He took a deep breath, ready to tell Jack everything and set the wheels in motion.

***