INSIDE OF APPLEDORE

The Magnussen brothers sat across from one another once again. Hannibal had just made his way back to Appledore after his retreat to London. But his older brother's spectacled eyes had hardly left him for more than a few hours.

At least back in America Hannibal didn't have to feel that chilling prickle at the back of his neck that told him that Charles was looking down on him once again. Whenever he crossed the Atlantic Ocean, however, he found that he could not the feeling to go away.

It wasn't something Hannibal feared as much as it was something that he found to be excessively irritating. It was very impolite to be staring at one singular person for such a long time to begin with, and the methods that Charles was using were not to his liking. He didn't even attempt to hide the cameras all that much - they were just out of the way.

Hannibal was starting to become weary from staying in the area for so long - but he made a deal with his brother in order to continue living there. But despite this, he had been able to get himself out of Appledore for about a week. It had taken a lot of dealing around with Charles, but in the end it was worth it just to be out of his brother's direct control.

Now, however, he was forced to return to his Charles' home. His older brother always seemed to have the final say, no matter what the situation might've been. This had been the case, even when they were children.

When the brothers were children, however, it would make more sense that an older sibling would be able to excercise greater control over a younger one. Now that the Magnussen brothers proceeded to grow up, it seemed to Hannibal to be a somewhat childish move on Charles' part, if not quite rude.

He didn't invite his brother back into his home, he demanded that he come. It simply was not the polite way to do things. Had it been the other way around, Hannibal would have invited Charles to a proper dinner at his house. Besides, he had fresh meat to serve regardless.

Hannibal remained silent as these thoughts, among others, drifted throughout his mind,.

"I'm surprised you actually came back," Charles said, striking up conversation. "I mean, I shouldn't be. I specifically asked you to do, and you couldn't refuse. Did you have a good time in London, Hannibal? A vacation from your vacation."

"I wouldn't call it that," Hannibal admitted. "But yes, I did have a good time. I could've sworn you already knew of that, however. I mean, you were watching me the whole time, yes?"

"I knew it was rude of me to pry into what you were doing, but I couldn't help myself. In all sincerity, I wasn't sure if you were actually enjoying yourself at all. That dinner party of yours may have began well, but it seemed to go amiss because of...what's her name, again?"

Hannibal nearly rolled his eyes at this - he knew that Charles must know precisely what her name was. He was one of the many people who he liked to blackmail and torment in various ways.

"Mary, yes. Mary Watson, that's her name. Your little friend Mary stopped by my offices the other day. She goes by the name of Mary now, of course, but I remember when she was far different."

"Mary visited me that same day," Hannibal said, deciding to just come clean. Even if Charles hadn't known it already, he would've been bound to find out anyways. "She claimed to have just murdered a man, shot him through the chest. Knowing her, I could not be very surprised by those actions, but..."

"Ah yes, Sherlock Holmes," Charles replied, nodding. "No need to worry, Hannibal. He is still very much alive as far as I'm aware...which means I can get to his brother through it all."

"His brother?"

"Mycroft Holmes. He is the backbone of this nation's government, although he doesn't like to say so. Funny how his pressure point is his family, especially his little brother - frankly, I can't understand the sentiment."

"Hm," Hannibal said, feigning that he was amused by this. In reality, it didn't affect him at all. He didn't feel any deep brotherly affection for his older brother, so he wouldn't expect to have any in return. Of course, Charles would never show much of any preference for Hannibal over any of the other people he would blackmail.

If he had the ability to simply escape from these sorts of situations, he would gladly have done so at that moment. It would be so easy for him to run, to make a break for it - but Hannibal didn't want to face the reprocussions of his actions.

"Back to the subject of Mary," Charles said, sparking up the conversation again. "She came in with a gun, threatening to kill me. Part of me thought that perhaps you might have sent her yourself in an attempt to get me off the planet. I had to admit, it seemed rather cowardly of you to send someone to murder in your place...but then I remembered just how much dirt I had on her. You have it as well, Hannibal."

"I have made a promise with her to keep that 'dirt' as you call it off of her," Hannibal replied.

"You care for her far too much!" Charles exclaimed. "Surely she must have threatened you into such a deal, and yet you decided to just go along with it?"

"Did you do anything differently?" Hannibal asked. "From what I have gathered, she pointed a gun to your head and you crumbled underneath the pressure. You, who is always boasting about your control over everyone else, finally being challenged."

"But despite the fact that she was challenging me, I'm still here. I still have everything on her. I hope that doesn't bother you all that much though - it seems like you and Mary were practically siblings. She came into your life significantly late, but you two bonded ever so quickly. I've only seen a bond so strong and so quick once before in my life. You have a bad habit of doing such a thing, Hannibal. Every time I looked at the two of you together, I could only ever think how much she was like Mischa - in a way, of course."

Hannibal let out a sigh. "May we change the subject now?" he asked.

"Of course we may not," Charles replied. "I see that you're bothered about me bringing up Mischa. I mean, I didn't mean to bother you, of course, but still...I mean, we might as well talk about her now that she's been brought up?"

"We don't speak of Mischa. You, you most of all, do not speak of Mischa. You do not deserve to speak of her."

"Are you going to stop me?" Charles said, raising his eyebrows above his glassy eyes. "I'd like to see you try."

Hannibal closed his eyes, trying to prevent himself from doing anything particularly rash. Had it been literally any other person on the planet sitting before him, they would've had their necks snapped and their lifeless corpses tossed aside to be butchered later on.

He would gladly have killed his own brother and not cared about it later onwards. So many things rushed through his head about the reprocussions of it all, but he pushed all of those not associated to the blackmail business out of the way. No one would miss Charles if he were dead.

But there had once been another Magnussen, and Charles wouldn't stop speaking of her.

"You and her were always so...sweet. You talked of a better life, where you could be different from who you born as. I remember when she decided she wanted her last name to Lecter - oh, you took it up immediately. How gullible you were, even then."

"Please, Charles," Hannibal said, his voice firm. "Just drop it. Drop it this instant."

"I'm not a dog," Charles replied with a scoff. "It's not as if I'm one of Will Graham's many strays - which, by the way, are all pressure points for him. Just thought you should know, being that...well, you know."

Hannibal found himself gritting his teeth. Charles had passed the line weeks ago. Now he was just trampling over delicate ground without a care in the world. He'd end up regretting it soon, oh yes. He didn't want to speak in fear that the wrong thing would escape from his lips.

"The two of you both became Lecters in the blink of eye. I always thought it was so silly - you were a born a Magnussen, you should've stayed that way. Then you tossed aside your first names as well to make yourself modeled after figures you found in books. No more Ingrid and Peter, oh no. Now you were Mischa and Hannibal. You never gave it up, not for a minute."

"Charles, I would very much appreciate it if we were to change the subject to something else."

"Hannibal, I would very much appreciate it if we stayed on the topic," Charles said, finding a smile stretching across his lips. "After all, it's really only getting interesting."

There was no reply.

"How old was she, again? Remind me, my memory is failing me..." Charles glanced over to Hannibal to see that his younger brother seemed to be in physical pain from these emotions.

"Oh, Hannibal, you're no fun," Charles sighed. "I guess she couldn't have been older than four...maybe she was only three. I can't really remember, it's all so much of a blur."

"Charles," Hannibal said quietly, trying to keep himself in check. He was capable of controlling himself, he knew it. But his finger was twitching. He could feel it, and made him feel even more irritated about his current situation. Charles could most likely see it just as well, and that truly bothered him. He didn't want to have to deal with this, not now.

"Hannibal? Am I making you uncomfortable?" Charles asked, feigning concern about his little brother. Of course, he was actually enjoying this far more than he should've. "To think that there were once three Magnussen children. It seems so strange now, doesn't it? There's just the two of us, after that horrible accident with the third-"

"It was no accident, and I believe you are perfectly aware of that," Hannibal replied. "You watched her being murdered. You know that someone did that on purpose."

"I thought your stomach would be stronger than that, Hannibal," Charles said. "I mean, you know, you do commit murder every other day, or so it seems. I could go look in my files and try to find out precisely how many times you've killed."

"The things I have done having nothing to do with what happened to Mischa," Hannibal said, closing his eyes as he said his younger sister's name.

"Yes, I am aware of that, except for that is all false. Think about it, Hannibal. I know you weren't going to murder anyone before the horrible accident with Mischa. I can't help but notice a certain correlation there, and I can't help but think that perhaps there is a cause for you going so foul..."

Hannibal made sure to to continue taking deep breaths. No, there was no one who he loathed as much as he loathed Charles. There was no family connection that helped their relationship along.

"I don't understand how heartless you can be..." Hannibal began.

"That almost sounds like a threat, coming from you," Charles said. "We both know that we don't want to get involved with any more threats and violence. It never ends well, truly."

"No, it doesn't," Hannibal said. "But you're missing the point of what I'm trying to say. You're being heartless, and I would highly appreciate it if you would stop."

"Wait, do you mean Mischa?" Charles asked, letting out a chortle. Clearly, he knew precisely what he was doing to Hannibal.

"We do not speak of Mischa," Hannibal said. "You do not speak of Mischa, at all. You aren't worthy of speaking of her."

"Oh, please, Hannibal, that was so many years ago. Surely you can't be so upset about it at this point at time."

"There are some injuries time cannot heal, and death is one of those injuries," he said.

"Again, it sounds almost as if you're threatening me. Remember that you promised to stay in the area for a good while longer. That was our deal. I told you what you wanted to know, and you gave me a new way to keep my control over you."

"Is that all you care for concerning me?" Hannibal asked. "Just control.

"Hm, maybe. But I'm thinking...Mischa wouldn't have made it to this point anyways," Charles said. "She was far too weak to stay alive through it all. You always spoiled her worst of all, never allowed to gain any strength. She deserved to die, truly."

Hannibal did not make any sort of response to this at first. Sometimes he found that words could not properly express what he wished to say. Besides, words could have multiple interpretations and could be taken incorrectly. He wasn't willing to deal with that at the moment.

Charles attempted to keep back his laughs. Perhaps if one giggle escaped then it would end up turning into a cascade of laughs. He could see the obvious struggle Hannibal was having, but he didn't want to end up letting the whole thing fall apart.

Hannibal took in a deep breath, but this time it wasn't to calm himself down. No, it was to help him prepare for what he was about to do next.

Charles found a pair of strong hands being gripped around his throat. His initial reaction was to reach up his own hands in an attempt to pry them off, but it would all be in vain. No, these were hands that killed dozens of times before, all by themselves. This was a ruthlessness that could only be matched by a select view.

"Hannibal," he choked out. "Don't."

Hannibal considered his options carefully at the moment. Indeed, he could just murder his brother and have the whole thing be over with. There were likely hundreds of people who would be freed if this were to happen - but then again, he knew that his brother had so much information on so many people all stored in his vaults that it might end up backfiring.

"You must tell me everything you have on me," Hannibal said, deciding to make a deal. "Everything you have on me in your vaults. You will explain it to me. If you try to hide anything from me, I will find out. I have my ways, Charles, same as you do."

"Why would I need to explain to you what you've done wrong to give yourself weaknesses?" Charles replied, letting out a slight laugh in his breathlessness. "I mean, think about it, Hannibal! You - you would already know."

"Perhaps there are old wounds that you could reopen by what you know, ones that you've simply kept silent for your nefarious purposes."

"What?" Charles asked, gasping out his words. "You mean...like Mischa?"

"Yes, like Mischa!" Hannibal said, nearly growling. "You don't deserve to speak her name. She was your youngest sister. I don't care if you have no feeling for me, but she was nothing more than a child. She didn't even get a chance to live."

"Fine, fine!" Charles said. He was sick of being forced underneath his younger brother's hands, knowing that he could potentially die at any moment. But despite all of this, the point that he had gone too far didn't come to his mind. It was simply a concept he didn't really understand. Perhaps it had been taught to him, but he had never truly allowed it to set in.

"Choose not to play the game next time," Hannibal advised. "You may find yourself gambling far more than you anticipated."

"Oh, brother, I will not," nodding as he tried to massage his neck in a vain attempt to ease the pain of having hands being clamped around it. "For once, I think you've ended up giving me some good advice here."

"I'm glad I have had such an effect on you," Hannibal said. The value of sheer shock and how it could help turn the tables on everything that was going was completely underrated, at least in his mind.

But with his mentions of Mischa, Charles ended up planting a seed of sorts within Hannibal's brain. One of his younger brother's biggest weaknesses, a scab that turned into a scar that he attempted to hide, had not only been exposed but completely shredded apart.

Images of Mischa flew through Hannibal's head. While many would be upset about these and find them to be disturbing, he found them more irritating than anything else. No, no, no. They only existed there in order to make him angry.

Hannibal shouldn't have expected anything less, of course. Mischa's death sparked him to begin killing to begin with. He never wanted to stoop to the level of those men who took her fragile childhood away and then consumed it, treating her like a piece of meat instead of a girl.

No, there was a definite reason why Hannibal turned out so differently from Charles, and it all stemmed from Mischa Lecter, known once as Ingrid Magnussen. Hannibal decided that he would too kill, that he would too consume his victims - but he would at least be polite about it all.

He wouldn't choose random victims because they were weak, because they couldn't fight back. Instead, he would choose those who acted in rude ways to the rest of the world. They were less than him by the way they acted. This way he was doing the entire world a favor - at least, in a way.

Then, when he had his victims killed, he would make them into a fine meal. Hannibal would never stoop so low as to eat charred meat right off of the bone, something hastily thrown into a fire out of hunger. No, he would use his excellent taste to get him through.

Charles never understood this simply because he never felt the connection to Mischa that Hannibal did. From the moment Mischa was born, it was clear which of her older brothers she was more drawn to.

Hannibal's mind now filled with Mischa once again, making him even more dangerous than he had been before. If he ever felt something akin to love for his older brother, it dissipated in these moments. All of his brotherly devotion turned towards his little departed sister.

He would kill again as soon as he could escape from Appledore for just a moment. No killing of his would ever be meaningless, of course, but he could easily start thinking up a list of potential victims. In the time it would take him to travel back to London, he would have compiled a thorough list of who he could rid himself of and how he could pull off their deaths.

It would be so easy, almost laughably easy. He'd be godlike and it wouldn't even require much of any effort. He never inteded this to be his goal, but his trip to London certainly ended up falling apart more than he thought.

Charles felt somewhat disappointed in himself for allowing Hannibal to get the better of him. He avoided it well for years, but in just a matter of moments it all fell apart. His fatal error was bringing up the youngest of the Magnussens - he truly should've known better. Mischa's final fate had truly been terrible, and he knew it. But it simply didn't affect him the way it affected his younger brother.

It must've been something in their very cores that made them so different, just one gene that might've ended up sparking them in completely different directions. One had loved Mischa, the other couldn't care less - but that made them change immensely.

Because of their divergence, it became far more difficult to tell that Charles and Hannibal had ever stemmed from the same roots to begin with. There became so much (typically unspoken) hatred between the two that you'd think they were actually meant to be enemies. Each one was lucky to not have been completely mauled by the other in one way or another.

For Hannibal, the mauling would've been far more literal. Charles tended to maul people's relationships, statuses, and overall lives. But if there was only a single thing that proved that they had a second degree of consagunity rather than something much father away, it was how the brothers were able to use their "special talents" in order to control others.

Then again, no one was close enough to them to see the similarities.

A/N Something about writing the Magnussen brothers just gets me so excited! Well, yes, I brought up the topic of Mischa - she isn't often mentioned in Hannibal canon (hanon am I right?) but I decided she fit in very well. She's pretty much the reason Hannibal began killing to begin with. Which is clear...right? But everything is connected. After all, the devil is in the details. Sorry.