Been A Son

BEEN A SON
chapter eighteen--epilogue

---three years later---

Will sat across from Hannibal in a comfortable, leather chair, a glass containing two fingers of whiskey over ice in his grip. The quiet between them was temporary, and Will contemplated the expensively put together Omega across from him, Will's empathy placing an imaginary throne of white antlers looming high behind him. They gleamed in the dim light, and Will chuckled lightly at how deftly they shut out everything else that was around them. Hannibal was always good at creating spaces that were overly close.

"Is something amusing, Will?"

"You." Will put his drink down on the low table beside him, his concentration on Hannibal never wavering. "I can't believe you're really here and actually sitting down and having a beer for once. You look so out of place, you're like the Mona Lisa in a boot sale."

Hannibal was annoyed at this and he pursed his lips in pique. "I made a promise to you, and I always keep my promises. Besides, my being here is of great significance for Chloe, and provides me with an insight into her that I had only gained from her descriptions." Hannibal tapped at the armchair of his leather seat with a measure of impatience. "Have you heard from Jack?"

Will groaned at this. "You need to stop pestering them." He sat back in his seat and, seeing Hannibal's tense posture and overall sense of unease, he finally relented and took out his cell phone, tossing it to Hannibal who caught it in cupped hands. "Just so we're clear, we're talking about two federal agents, here."

Hannibal ignored him and dialled Jack Crawford, the phone pressed tight against his ear. It was answered on the third ring, and it was Bella, Jack's Beta wife, who answered, and Hannibal put her on speaker so Will could hear her as well. "Dr. Lecter! What a pleasure! Jack was just saying it's been a whole hour since you last called and he was getting worried."

Her voice was pleasantly sarcastic and Will cut in, "I've been trying to distract him."

The sound of children screaming in laughter cut through the speaker and Will gave Hannibal a raised brow and a knowing look. "I take it nothing is on fire?" Will asked.

"Just my nerves," Bella said, laughing, "Hold on, I'll get Jack. Jack! It's Will..."

There was a good natured scuffling in the background accompanied by childish giggling that dissipated as a screen door slammed shut. "Don't go digging up my flowers!" A grumbling Jack Crawford got onto the phone. "No one is starving to death, no one has exploded. I can't be answering my phone on the hour, what is wrong with you? Does this have to happen every time he goes into heat? Every single time, Graham, tell him to take a pill or deep throat you or something. You'd think after three years he'd figure out Bella and I are more than capable of babysitting your kid!"

Will took the phone from Hannibal, who was now stewing in anger, and turned off the speaker, making the call a personal one. "He's in heat, Jack, it's biology, it's got nothing to do with you."

"Yeah, whatever, just fuck the paranoia out of him, then." He heard a sharp admonishment from Bella in the background and Jack turned to another, higher pitched voice who was with her. "It was duck, sweetie! Bella, tell Judith I said *duck*!"

Will grinned into the phone as a tiny voice was collected into it. "Daddy! I think Uncle Jack said a bad word!"

"Are you having fun, Fishie?"

"I got in the pool and then Gregory ate a piece of grass and that was gross. He's not a cow, Daddy. Daddy! There's a dragonfly! And it's big, like a bird! People can't eat grass, Daddy. Gregory is gross."

Hannibal gestured for the phone and after some more intense tiny banter with their daughter, Will handed it to him. Hannibal practically melted in his seat at the sound of their daughter's voice, his conversation dipping into Lithuanian endearments as his little fish eagerly told him about her day. Hannibal was still grinning when he said goodbye and hung up the cell, after a brief 'thank-you' to a rather harried Bella. He put the cell phone in his side jacket pocket.

"See? Nothing to worry about."

"I have decided I am glad that Margot and Alana insisted Judith have a relationship with their son. Gregory is her sibling, after all, and Dr. Bloom was absolutely correct in ensuring that a connection between them remain." Hannibal primly placed clasped hands over his stomach, an uneasiness still hovering around his person. "I hope I can last through the performance, I'm not feeling very well."

Will raised a knowing brow. "We can always just go upstairs to our room and, you know, take care of things..."

"No, I told Chloe I would listen to her father play, and that is what we are doing."

The white antlers behind him faded into the background of Will's imagination and the entirety of the blues bar came into view. It was a dark and clean space, with scattered furnishings littering it rather than formal tables and chairs like one would find in a Coastline restaurant. Here, everything was made for homey comfort and donated couches, leather armchairs and glassware were scattered haphazardly between mismatched wooden dining chairs and tables. The place had been in business since long before Will had been born and it was one of Ezra Graham's favourite haunts.

It was beginning to get threadbare, however, and Will looked around, taking in the broken boards in the floor and the servings of food that were just a tad too small. The war was pinching everyone in the Mainland, but that didn't mean you left hospitality and friendship behind. The walls were lined with propped shotguns, every one of them loaded and ready for an unexpected invasion. The Coastline GSF had burned down two Louisiana schoolhouses last week, and the region was at the ready for another attack.

Still, this freedom was a far cry from what they'd had during the last months of their stay in Baltimore. The birth of Judith had been fraught with worry, as the Coastline began cracking down on Omega activities and their home was put into armed lock down, making both Will and Hannibal prisoners during the final eighth month of her gestation. They'd taken away all of Will's dogs, much against his fervent protests, and two of them were shot on sight when they tried to protect their home. He had no idea what had happend to Winston, and his cell phone wallpaper was all that he had left of his old friend. The sore point of that history was a foreshadowing of what came later. Due to the sentries at their door, Hannibal hadn't been able to hunt for her usual sustenance, and his own donated blood had reached its limit. She was malnourished in that last month, and when she started showing distress and the GSF officers posted outside their home wouldn't allow Dr. Sutcliffe in, Hannibal was prepared to assassinate every one of them, using a bow and arrow he'd secreted away in the floorboards of the attic of his stately home. He was ready to deliver a bloodbath as Judith's birthright. Luckily, it had been unnecessary. Will had taken off the lid of the jar and pulled their baby out of her murky pond, frantically breathing life into her when it seemed her tiny lungs couldn't comprehend the shock of a world outside of glass. But her whimpering protest into their lives fell them both in relief and that four pound, six ounce miracle was now a healthy, precocious three year old with enough energy to run a small city.

The GSF guards at their home in Baltimore had been unnecessary, for Hannibal had no intention of leaving it when he had Judith to tend to, and the months following her birth had been an obsession of matronly care and connection, one that Will himself was pulled into. He discovered he loved her little hands as they gripped onto his finger, the little mews that quieted the second he held her close. If there was Verger in her, he summarily destroyed it with his love for her. The imprint was made the second he'd placed his lips over her tiny, blue mouth and forced air in, his soul swallowed hungrily into her little, round belly.

Hannibal didn't want her in a damp cellar, and an upstairs room had been prepared, with heavy curtains to block out overly bright sunlight, their marital bed not far from her cradle. It was fascinating to Will, the chemical ties that wound between them, Hannibal's scent the same as Judith's, only slightly less sweet, the anticipation he had for her needs before she even had a chance to cry. They were hardly months of imprisonment, the guards outside their home kept the chaos overwhelming the streets of Baltimore at bay, and they slept easy under their careful armed watch, even if it was directed at the occupants.

But life cannot thrive under locks and when Judith was eight months old and still easily portable, they made the decision to make their escape. The Coastline was increasingly becoming a dangerous place for Omegas and their families, and it wasn't unheard of for GSF guards to suddenly raid a home and toss the occupants onto the streets, innocent Omegas hauled into custody because of a neighbour's complaint of 'revolutionary talk'. Such accusations could come about simply due to an Omega stepping past the confines of their front porch, to peek out at the world beyond the walls of their home. Such leniencies were no longer tolerated.

Was Hannibal to blame for all of this? The media, save for the now blacklisted, underground Freddie Lounds seemed to think so, with calls for the arrest of the elusive Chesapeake Ripper, a monster of talons and teeth that ripped Alpha children from their beds at night. Despite the facts that Governor Jeb McBain was a vicious murderer of Omegas and was set to start a war with the Mainland anyway, it was the Ripper who earned that distinction in Coastline politics. McBain still got what he wanted. His slaughter and that of his supporters was for naught.

The world outside of the United Main was, thankfully, not on the Coastline's side, and the long list of abuses of personal freedoms had finally caught up in international law. The Mainland received ample support, mostly from Romania and other more progressive countries, and it was due to their influence that both Virginia and Florida had been wrenched from the Coast and were now under a now far more organized Mainland power. Heroes were starting to arise from the dusty depths of the United Main's dead heart. A homesteader named John Grey from Arizona was responsible for a daring coup against a Coastline attack that would have left a large Mainland settlement in ruins. Chloe's father even composed a song about his bravery, and Hannibal was looking forward to hearing him sing it.

The bar was slowly filling up, most of them regulars who knew Hannibal and Will well. When they made their bloody escape to Louisiana in a stolen armoured GSF van, it had felt like an exodus to another world and in many ways it was. The 'shack' Will had referred to as belonging to his grandmother was in actuality a massive white mansion that rivalled Hannibal's stately home, with at least ten formal bedrooms and a myriad of rooms that had long fallen into disuse. The estate was one of old inheritance from the first years of settlement, and there were quite a few scattered throughout the Mainland, and they were far too big for single families to use. Being fairly nomadic, it wasn't uncommon for random Mainlanders to temporarily move in for weeks at a time and then disappear as suddenly as they had arrived. The massive houses were abandoned projects that rarely held roots for the people who used them, Will's grandmother being more the exception than the rule. She mostly had used what had originally been a guest house that was a small, single roomed dwelling bordering the swamp and even this earned the occasional couch crasher. Ownership was a nebulous concept here.

Hannibal was often teased for insisting on wearing his old fashioned silken bonding collar, a tradition that had never been taken seriously in the Mainland. Regardless of whether he wore it or not, Hannibal still earned polite Alpha attention, even if Will was present. It was shocking to Hannibal at first, and he was highly guarded, only to soften as the years went by and it was clear the attention was easy to dismiss. Mainlander Alphas had codes of their own, and one of them was hands off uninterested Omegas. It angered Will when one was especially flirtatious, but challenging Alphas always quickly backed down. It was a certain chivalrous form of behaviour, Hannibal noted, both a compliment to Will's choice in mate as well as an acknowledgement of the Omega's power.

Chloe's father approached the stage and Will and Hannibal turned in their seats near the bar's fireplace to watch him. Chloe was onstage as well, the song was a duet, and from the anticipatory way she held the microphone the night was set to erupt into a firestorm of large notes and mournful, throaty intonations that would echo deep into the mossy land that surrounded them. The guitar strings were plucked and the crowd in the bar began to cheer as Chloe and her father instantly tore into song, a riveting, danceable crescendo of a tune that had everyone singing along by the time the chorus rolled around a second time. Chloe's tattoos were outlined warm against the soft light of the bar, her skin an essay of suffering much as the lamentations in her father's songs were.

Will watched Hannibal carefully, and it was clear he was beginning to suffer, the clasped hands over his stomach easing the pains beginning there. When Will leaned forward and placed his warm palm against Hannibal's cheek, the Omega melted into his touch like lava. "We should go upstairs," Will whispered to him. "The room's been soundproofed, there's plenty of privacy there."

Hannibal wordlessly nodded, the tiniest shadow of an expectant smile edging across his pouting lips. The steps of a doe followed a wolf as they left their seats and ascended the stairs reserved for the 'troubled times' suites, a subtle Mainland phrase for heat season, the rooms specially designed to preserve intimacy.

The door closed behind them, in the softest of clicks, as it has done twice a year for the past three years. If someone is rude enough to press their ear against the door, they will hear nothing. A heart that beats is something felt. It's shared solely by choice.