Hannibal doesn't begrudge Will his anger, his desire for revenge, for what he had done, but he has no regrets and will make no apologies. He had experimented on Will, this man who he knew was able to take on the mindset of others so well, and sought to bring out in him this powerful being Hannibal knew laid in wait. Indeed, Hannibal finds Will's backlash to be intriguing, invigorating, and evidence that the glorious creature that Hannibal was seeking to bring to birth was emerging into the light. His issue is with the methods Will had used, taking advantage of Hannibal's increasing emotional vulnerability, his increasing willingness to allow Will behind the veil, to see him without his person-suit. That is why it affects him when Will says he saw himself in Hannibal. At the words he draws a breath, a minimal reaction that might go unnoticed by a casual observer, but not here, now, so close to Will, the man who truly knows him in a way that no on else alive does.

Indeed, in the dark Hannibal's mind smooths and shapes the parts of Will that are indistinct, creating a being not Will and not Hannibal, but both, more than both, a whole far more than the sum of its parts. Together the two of them are a force to be reckoned with, a dark god of destruction. Paris, perhaps all of Europe, will tremble before them.

"Our paths can be unclear," he answers, his own voice almost a whisper. "What we truly desire might not be apparent even to ourselves until time and circumstance make them so. My motivations have been to see you, truly see the being at the heart of you, and to have you truly see yourself as well. To allow the whole world that glimpse of your soul. But when my path became clear, I found that I wanted to be seen by you as well. That we are meant to know one another. That our fates are now and ever shall be inextricably linked."