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Hannibal looked up from his sketch when he heard “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”. Hannibal wasn’t sure if being the director of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane required a petulant sense of humor, or if Alana still hadn’t gotten over the defenestration, but either way, a plastic-talking Santa had appeared just outside of his cell on December 1st. The lurid red creature had a motion detector that, when tripped, caused the thing to wish a Merry Christmas to all and pat his bloated belly.
Tasteless.
Hannibal had refused to react to the thing but did find it useful as it alerted him any time the door opened. Today, it brought tidings of Dr. Bloom herself, walking up to his cell with a wry smile twisting her bright red lips.
“Good morning, Alana. I see we’re still trying to find a shade of red that suits you.”
Alana’s eyes narrowed, but only for a moment. Hannibal stilled. She thought she had the upper hand. How interesting. “Merry Christmas, Hannibal.”
Hannibal smiled. Ah, so she’d brought another little Christmas trinket in hopes of annoying him. “There are 18 days until Christmas, Alana. Are you giving me my present early?”
“It’s really a present to me.” That smile had grown smug on her lips. She held up a piece of cardstock. “You got a Christmas card and I thought I should pass it along.”
Hannibal raised a brow. “I was under the impression that you and Jack Crawford carefully monitored and censored my correspondence.”
“We do.” Alana waved the card slightly in her hand. “But you’ve been reasonably good for three years…and we both thought you deserved this.”
Hannibal put his charcoal down, careful not to smudge his latest drawing — a perfect copy of Caravaggio’s Christ at the Column, save for one of the torturers replaced by a plastic Santa Claus. “Did Bedelia send me a card?”
“I’m afraid not.” Alana’s heels clicked neatly on the floor. She rarely approached the glass of Hannibal’s cage, but she must have been feeling especially self-satisfied with her little jape. She pressed the card to the glass at Hannibal’s eye level, securing it firmly with two pieces of tape — a five-by-seven blot in the middle of his view.
She stepped back, but stayed still, watching Hannibal intently. Clearly, he was expected to inspect the card and react. Hannibal stood, walking around the table to get a closer look at the card. It was remarkably banal — a postcard-style holiday greeting with four family photos and some trite wish on it — hardly anything to get upset by.
His step faltered when the smiling faces in the four pictures became discernable. Will Graham and his family grinned at him from cheap cardstock. Alana had of course told Hannibal of Will’s marriage, but seeing him grinning with a wife and child was somehow more offensive. The card held four images, each one seemingly designed to be as unoriginal and blandly normal as possible. In the first, the Grahams were decorating for the holidays, the boy and wife were tangled in lights coming from a box while Will affixed an advent calendar to the wall. The second image was the family trimming the tree, each holding ornaments aloft and grinning aggressively. The third picture was a snowy scene with both wife and son hugging Will. Hannibal had always imagined Will would settle somewhere cold, as his hermit tendencies seemed to suit a cabin in the woods. The final image was the family by the fireplace in matching Christmas pajamas, no doubt the type with flaps in the back, all sipping from holiday mugs. The words looping around the photos read Season’s Greetings from the Graham Family!
Hannibal curled his fingers into a fist behind him, digging his nails into his palm. The Graham Family. How lovely. How perfectly banal and sad for Will, to playact this happy life. It was pathetic really. After three years of waiting, Will had chosen this. Hannibal would eat his heart while that common little wife of his wept into her polyblend turtleneck.
“Was there anything written on the card for me?”
Alana’s smile was luminous. “No. I think he just sent them to all his acquaintances.”
Hannibal could feel a muscle in his mouth tick at that word, but schooled his expression. “Well, I must remember the Grahams in my Christmas correspondence, then.”
Alana laughed. “So should I. This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten.”
She twirled on her heel.
“I’ll just leave that for you, shall I? Merry Christmas again!” she said brightly as she left the room. The plastic Santa Ho Ho Ho-ed her departure.
As much as Hannibal was loathe to let Alana Bloom believe she’d wounded him, he spent much of the following day studying his season’s greeting from Will Graham. It wasn’t that he was seething at the image, he was just…examining it.
Every detail was being stored in his Memory Palace, where the card was shaping up to be a mural in the room he visited when he needed to remember why he’d gutted Will Graham and attempted to eat his brain. First, Hannibal looked at the boy — another child Will eagerly adopted. The boy hugged Will tightly, but his smile looked strained. He seemed happier in the fourth picture when he was playing with the dogs, cocoa in hand. Could it be that Will’s dreams of fatherhood were not quite as rosy as the empath had pictured?
Will’s wife’s smile, however, didn’t look strained. She was pleased with herself as she clung to Will in a way that made Hannibal’s nose itch. Hannibal memorized the blunt bangs that fell over the laughing eyes of Mrs. Graham. The roots were a bit long for his taste, but Will probably appreciated a woman who didn’t have a standing salon appointment every 5 weeks. Her taste in matching family sweaters was also delightfully Mall of America, something Will would no doubt cling to as a sign of normalcy. If he wanted to spend the rest of his life festooned in red polyblend sweaters with Christmas trees and reindeer on them, well, Hannibal supposed we all chose our own prisons. Hannibal would sit in his cell, and Will in his ugly sweater for all eternity it seemed.
It was cruel, and very like his Will, to directly provoke him. As a rule, Hannibal rarely bothered with families, but this seemed to be a dare. And that stopped Hannibal for a moment. Why would Will do something that would endanger innocents when he clung so desperately to the tatters of his moral fiber?
That question kept Hannibal up at night, staring through the darkness of his cell to the black five-by-seven rectangle floating on his clear wall.
In the morning, Hannibal returned to the image. He was sure Alana was in the security room watching him with a delighted smile, but that couldn’t be helped. There was something he was missing, he was sure of it. Hannibal had let the family distract him yesterday. Today it was time to turn his gaze to Will.
Superficially, he looked happy. His smile was in place in all the photographs, and yet…
Hannibal stepped closer, wishing that he could harness the empathy that Will so often reviled. Will’s eyes burned into the camera, into Hannibal. He was looking directly at the lens in each photo as if his intense blue gaze was trying to send a message. Hannibal leaned forward, breath fogging the glass. He huffed, wiping at the condensation. Why was Will so intently looking at the person who would receive this message? Why after three years would this be the first bit of communication Hannibal would receive?
Hannibal closed his eyes, traveling into his mind palace to find the room where the four images had been blown up to wall-sized murals. He studied the first. Dismissing the lesser Grahams and their tangle of Christmas lights, Hannibal looked at Will. The empath was staring directly into the camera, smile sure and smug as he hung the advent calendar. Hannibal glanced at the calendar. Will’s right finger was pointing at the 22nd of December. None of Will’s other fingers neared any of the numbers.
Hannibal walked over to the second image, erasing the wife and son from the tree-trimming scene. Will was again smiling at the camera, that knowing expression in his stare. In his hands, he had an ornament of a jogging man in a jumpsuit. Odd. Will was a fisherman. Why would he have chosen such an ornament for the photo?
It was harder to erase the lesser Grahams from the third image in his mind. They flanked Will, cloying little paws wrapped around him as they grinned. But Will wasn’t hugging his family back. His hands were clasped in front of him, that index finger again pointing. This time the finger was tapping a watch face, Will’s digital wristwatch illuminated 1400. Hannibal pursed his lips — 2 pm. He felt something flutter in his chest. Hope, long dormant and thought dead was stretching her wings. He hurriedly stepped to the fourth image.
The fireplace crackled warmly in the photo. The wife and boy were clearly sipping hot chocolate from festive mugs, but Hannibal had been hasty when he’d dismissed all three as drinking the same thing. In Will’s hands was not a festive mug but a beautifully ornate teacup, one that was whole and gleaming in the low light. Will was smiling over the rim, his gaze less intense and more tender.
Hannibal’s breath caught. Could it be? Frankly, after three years of silence, this sort of declaration was likely too much to hope for. It was obviously just another cruel component of the card, targeted precisely at Hannibal’s weak spots. Will would know exactly how to strike, how to wound. It would be just like his cruel boy to do something so rude.
And yet, the light flutter in Hannibal’s chest grew in ferocity with every second. When he closed his eyes, he saw that tender smile, Will’s lips soft and curved above the teacup. Hannibal laid in bed and found himself smiling.
“I’m not taking the card down.” Alana’s arrival was announced by the plastic Santa and the click-clack of her cane.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to, it’s a lovely card and a kind gesture from a friend.”
This made Alana pause. She narrowed her eyes to study Hannibal, who feigned ambivalence as he leafed through a volume of Gray’s Anatomy. “I was told by your day guard that you wanted to see me.”
“I did.” Hannibal looked up and smiled. “Hello.”
“You have thirty seconds, Hannibal.”
Putting the book aside on his bunk, Hannibal sat up, hands primly folded onto his lap. “I believe I have an hour of recreation coming up. I was hoping we could schedule it, give me something to look forward to during the holidays.”
“The SWAT team is available Thursdays and Mondays, you may choose between the 12th, the 15th, the 19th, or the 22nd.” Alana pressed her lips together. “I could also offer you the 29th, but I refuse to make someone watch you the day after Christmas.”
The wings in Hannibal’s chest fluttered softly. “I think the 22nd will do well, close to Christmas without inconveniencing anyone.”
“Fine.” Alana straightened her suit jacket. “I won’t give you more than your usual hour of jogging Hannibal, but it is Christmas, so you can choose your time.”
Hannibal counted to twenty, pretending to consider. It wouldn’t do to be too eager. “Two pm, please. I think it would be nice to take in a bit of sun after lunch.”
“Done. Anything else?”
“No, just trying to get my schedule in order, the holidays are such a busy time.”
Alana turned to leave, but paused, regarding Hannibal with a narrowed stare. “This is all contingent on you behaving yourself.”
“Don’t worry yourself, Alana.” Hannibal grinned. “With the proper motivation, I can be a very good boy indeed.”
Hannibal was a model prisoner the rest of December. When the new hire made the usually fatal mistake of entering Hannibal's cell without securing his hands, Hannibal helpfully stayed still, only moving to pick up the key card the poor man dropped in shock when he saw Hannibal’s untethered wrists.
Alana stayed true to her word, and now Hannibal squinted into the white December light as he was led into the recreation yard and freed from his shackles. He swept his gaze around the yard, seeing nothing in the woods that surrounded it. With a sigh, he began to jog. The SWAT sniper was on the East tower, which meant the light from the sun was catching in his eyes whenever Hannibal passed, interesting. The two men on the ground stood in shadows, however, with their guns aimed at Hannibal’s head.
It didn’t matter. Hannibal continued to jog, body alight with anticipation.
He took four laps before the first shot rang out, the second and third following quickly. Hannibal slowed his steps to a walk, heading towards a familiar figure who was cutting a gap in the fencing.
When blue eyes finally met his, Hannibal smiled, the wings in his chest threatening to burst through his ribcage.
“Hello Will, Merry Christmas.”
Jack Crawford grimaced at the crime scene. It’d been almost a month with no word of Hannibal or Will and now this. It looked like they were starting the New Year with a bang.
He walked toward the leg laid out on the table, eyes catching on a holiday card resting on the remnants of the thigh. His breath caught when he brought the card closer. “WHY DIDN’T WE CATCH THIS?”
“Catch what?” Jimmy’s head popped up from under the table. He looked at the card. “That? That’s the same card Will sent everyone.”
“NO, IT’S NOT!” Jack bellowed. “LOOK AT THE PICTURES!”
He flipped the card and held it up to Jimmy’s face. Superficially the pictures looked the same, but Jimmy blinked when he noticed the first difference. Instead of an advent calendar in the first image, Will was holding a January calendar, finger on the 14th — yesterday. In the second image, Will was holding up a different ornament — the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. In the third photo, Will’s watch blinked 20:00. And in the final image, Will’s teacup wasn’t ornate porcelain, but mother of pearl.
“Shit.” Jimmy looked up at Jack. “He called his shot and we didn’t see it.”
Jack turned away from the limp body of Bedelia DuMaurier, sprawled beside her half-eaten leg in the dining room. “Call Alana Bloom, tell her to up her security and check her fucking Christmas cards!”
Will huffed, the spear sagging in his hand. He pulled on his toga. “Why am I naked with a weapon again?”
Hannibal’s head appeared from behind a large studio light he rented. “Because Mars was the god of war.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And his name inspired the month of March.”
“You know when I did this we had an iPhone with a timer.”
Hannibal adjusted a red gel in front of the light. “I just thought I’d take your concept and elevate it.”
Will dropped the spear. “You know what? We’re done.”
“Will-”
“Nope, you have two choices now: We surprise Jack in March or we send him one of my Christmas cards.”
Hannibal glared at Will. Stepping around the light, Hannibal approached him. “What if there was a third option?”
With nimble fingers, Hannibal plucked at the pin holding the shoulder of Will’s toga together. The cloth pooled at his feet. Will smiled as Hannibal’s hands snaked around his waist.
Jack stomped into Zeller’s lab, flinging a five-by-seven card toward the man at the microscope. “Analyze this.”
“Analyze…what the hell is this?” Zeller squinted at the card. “Season’s Greetings from the Graham-Lecters? What is this picture of?”
“Well that-” Jimmy popped up over Zeller’s shoulder, finger tapping the card. “is a penis. Decent sized one…girthy.”
“JESUS!” Zeller dropped the card. “They sent this to you?”
Jack rubbed his eyes. “I wish they’d just sent me the day they were coming to kill me. It would have been more festive.”
“I don’t know, this is sort of festive in a Saturnalia kind of way…” Jimmy picked up the card. “Can I keep this?”
Jack and Zeller turned to stare at him.
“FOR ANALYSIS!”
Jack glared at Jimmy for a long moment before he sighed. “I hope they come soon.”
He left the lab as Jimmy tucked the card into his lab coat.