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Rescuing Will is an accident.
Well, not the dodging of police or the slaying of EMTs or the stealing of an ambulance. Hannibal meticulously plans all of that, using the cover of darkness and the speed he’s spent a lifetime building to his full advantage. Given that most of the attention from law enforcement is focused trying to categorize Hannibal’s life and house – a foolish endeavor, as only one person could ever truly understand all of the pieces inside – and the rest is focused upon a broken Alana and an exsanguinating Jack, it’s comparatively easy for Hannibal to steal away with the ambulance containing Will.
No one even notices that he goes in the opposite direction of the hospital when he pulls onto the road. As soon as they’re out of sight, Hannibal flips off the lights, breaks the radio, and settles in for a long drive to a place where he can swap out the ambulance for something a little less flashy.
It’s not his finest plan, but in his defense, he never intended to do any of it – never intended to return to his house, never intended to scoop up Will, never intended to head for the house upon the cliff. All of those plans were burned to ash the moment he scented red hair upon Will, the escape plan for three reduced abruptly to an escape for one, and he had thought he’d made his peace with that.
But then Bedelia just had to ask – to poke, to prod, to question.
“Did you kill him? Will Graham?”
“No. And I did not kill Dr. Bloom or Agent Crawford either, if that is what makes you worried. We will be pursued for my main showcase, not my grand finale.”
“So sure he’ll live? The report says you gutted him.”
“I am an excellent doctor.”
But the seeds had been sown then, the glass cracked, the damage done. Hannibal had retreated into his memory place to walk the halls of his safe houses, remembering safe combinations and account numbers and forged papers, and yet his floors had been covered in Will’s blood and the halls echoing with the sound of Will’s gasps. He’d sat down at a computer to book tickets and found himself instead at Tattle Crime, quite unintentionally, reading another tasteless article and wondering, wondering, wondering, a deep wriggling in his stomach like a fish caught on the line, tugging him out of the depths he’d retreated into. He had known, of course, had swallowed the hook with his eyes wide open for the barest possibility that he might emerge from the waters to find a true hunter at the other end, but he’d never considered the idea that gutting Will might not have freed him from the hook still latched deep in his own guts.
And so here Hannibal is, with two tickets to Italy burning in his pocket and an unconscious man in a stolen ambulance and a body awaiting his knife in a car.
An accident.
It is not easy to load up the car. Will is heavy, and Hannibal must be careful not to detach the equipment keeping him alive. He is further delayed when he checks the status of the wound and finds particularly shoddy work by the EMTs; it makes him itch to kill them a little slower than he did. So he pauses to make corrections where he can before he moves Will, equipment and all, into the back of the car.
Next is Bedelia, face still frozen in a mask, trying her best to maintain her dignity when Hannibal had wrapped his hands around her neck and snapped it in one clean go. He loads her into the trunk.
The EMTs he drags into the bushes at the side of the road. It won’t shield them forever, but it will buy Hannibal time if they assume the EMTs were taken prisoner alongside Will. It’s much easier to hide when the authorities assume your party is bigger, after all.
Then he gets into the car and drives, and drives, and drives.
The sea greets him before the house does. Hannibal hears the roar of the waves long before he sees the tip of the house, emerging out of the gloom like a specter in the dark. Hannibal almost wishes they would keep on crashing, until they cut straight through the earth and formed a brand new island that Hannibal and Will could share alone – but that is foolishness. Hannibal will have to settle for the yawning distance of land he has put between him and the FBI so that he may nurse Will back to health.
For anyone else, Hannibal would have abandoned them. For Will, well.
He was wrong about so many things about Will, perhaps it should be no surprise that he was wrong about being able to leave Will behind.
Fortunately, the house on the cliff is equipped with medical supplies as well. First, he had stocked only the basics, but more had been transferred there to handle first Miriam Lass and then Abigail. In anticipation of the final curtain drop with Jack, Hannibal had brought even more, and he is grateful for that now, because it will take many long weeks to repair the damage he wrought upon Will. Yet he will do it, because the thought of inferior hands attempting to tend to Will is what drove him onto his path, and he cannot possibly deviate now.
So he brings Will inside, and installs him in a comfortable bedroom with a door that locks, and gets to work.
It is strange to operate upon Will. Will isn’t exactly an uncommon patient – he is neither excessively tall nor excessively short, he responds the same way to anesthesia as most people, and parting his skin with the knife is no different than when Hannibal used to – but the intimacy makes the experience new. Hannibal feels like he did during his first surgery, where every new inch of skin was a revelation, every new tool a miracle, every drop of blood a river. No one will ever know Will Graham as intimately as he does now, both inside and out.
He’d murdered the last doctor who got a look inside Will, after all.
The operation is a success, of course. Will’s stomach will bear the mark of Hannibal’s wrath forevermore, now, but he will not die from it. All that is left is to wait, and watch, and rest.
And so, just as survivors built an ark upon which to shelter during the flood, Hannibal now tidies his home to shelter Will, with two of everything to fit the two of them.
Then he sits, and waits, and watches.
Days pass, and then weeks. The wound closes and begins to heal, and Hannibal checks it vigorously to guard against infection or pain. Will stirs, sometimes, but he never wakes, and Hannibal isn’t sure if he’s more relieved or upset about it. He takes to reading to Will, as he once did when Will was weak with encephalitis, and wonders if his voice will be the dove that leads Will to the safe spot of land in which to rest above the flood waters.
Outside, the world churns in a storm of Hannibal’s making, but the tides do not touch Hannibal. They have no idea where he has fled, and he is most certainly not within their search zone. They even declare Will dead, which is amusing, since they assume Bedelia has fled.
As always, they are so blind to him to his utmost advantage.
When Will finally awakens, Hannibal is in the middle of changing his dressing. He grabs Hannibal’s hand, grip weak but insistent, and when Hannibal looks over, he finds Will’s brilliant eyes dull and unfocused. Yet his voice is clear, if low and raspy, and full of resignation.
“Looking for more snacks for dinner?” he asks.
“I have no intention of eating you, Will,” Hannibal replies.
Will laughs, and then coughs, and then seizes as the pain takes his chest. Hannibal pushes him flat against the bed until the cough relents.
“You’ve already eaten me,” Will murmurs. “You’ve gobbled me up, and left nothing but bones and ash.”
“The whale did not swallow Jonah,” Hannibal says. “He emerged triumphant. And so will you.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Hannibal says simply. “Because I will it so.”
He has nothing to say, besides that. Will dying is as anathema to him as pulling out his own heart; it is unthinkable, and for many trivial reasons that combine for a greater whole. But there is no reason to say that here and now. One does not need to tell the fisherman that his bait has been swallowed.
Fortunately, Will passes out before any more can be said.
Will is a model patient, after that. He hardly speaks, does not protest Hannibal’s restrictions, and never tries to flee. He eats when he is given, drinks what he is offered, and sleeps as much as he can get away with. He heals and grows strong and builds up his walls, until Hannibal comes to him one day and finds a great wall where there was once a garden.
“You should not be walking, Will,” Hannibal says.
Will, who is by this point halfway to the bathroom, pauses with both hands on the wall. His tone is full of venom when he speaks. “Forgive me for not trusting my rehabilitation to the man who sent me to it.”
“I stitched your wound, if you recall.”
“Not out of a genuine desire for me. I know you did it because you thought of some – some lesser doctor doing it, and didn’t want to see me marred. You wanted your mark upon me and no one else’s, so that the message would be clear. Isn’t that so?”
Hannibal says, “I did not want you to die.”
He doesn’t intend to say it, just as he didn’t intend to turn around and steal an ambulance, but Will carries on as if he did.
“Next time,” Will says, “just put the knife in my heart and be done with it.”
He slams the bathroom door, and does not emerge for five hours.
“It was Bedelia, wasn’t it?”
Hannibal does not look up; he is changing Will’s dressing again, even though he drugged Will to be able to get close to him again. Will’s words are slurred and slow, but he is no less perceptive in finding the cracks within Hannibal’s armor.
Hannibal plays along. “You needed good meat to restore your strength. I took what was necessary, and no more.”
“Quit beating around the bush, Hannibal. You know what I meant.”
“ . . . I did intend to leave you there.”
“So what made you turn back?”
Hannibal tucks the last part of the dressing in and steps away. Will’s eyes track him, dazedly but with great conviction, and Hannibal privately resolves that he might need more sedative than he originally planned. If Will musters the strength to attack him, it will greatly delay his recovery.
“As you said: I could not have a lesser doctor marring my mark upon you.”
“Or letting me die?”
“Bedelia was not a surgeon. Yet she . . . reminded me. That even the best outcomes are merely probabilities. I found myself wondering which surgeon’s knife you might be under, and what your chances of survival were.”
“You did not want me to die,” Will repeats, but the words sound different in his mouth. Hannibal intended them as an explanation, or perhaps a boon; Will speaks them like a sentence following the banging of a gavel and the clang of prison gates. He sounds more like he has discovered that his spaceship is out of fuel and on track to spin into the sun than anything else.
So, Hannibal just says: “Yes.”
Their meal tradition is this: Will pretends to be asleep, Hannibal pretends he does not know, Hannibal leaves the meal upon the bedside table, and Will eats it – eating around the meat, if he can – and then goes back to sleep. Hannibal has allowed Will his defiance, mostly because he’d rather not resort to a feeding tube, but he cannot deny that it offers him some comfort too.
This is why when he shoulders open the door to find Will sitting calmly upright, eyes locked upon him, he is surprised enough to come to a stop.
“Will,” he says blankly. “You’re awake.”
The corners of Will’s lip twitch. “You’re getting lazy, Dr. Lecter. You forgot to drug me last night.”
“My apologies. Was your sleep restful?”
“As anyone can be when they’re being held hostage by a cannibalistic serial killer.”
“You are not a hostage,” Hannibal corrects. “I will make no demands upon the FBI for your safe return.”
“I doubt they’d pay them. But still. You lock my door.”
“To discourage adventures beyond your fitness capabilities. Once you have recovered, you may leave. I will not stop you.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Will says, a whimsical tone to his voice. He tilts his head. “You can’t let me go now. If you could, you would have left already, because the one thing you can’t stand is weakness in yourself. Yet here I am. Alive.”
“Here you are,” Hannibal agrees. “Alive.”
Will’s eyes go sharp. His nose flares, ever so slightly, and although Hannibal knows he has not the sense of smell that Hannibal has, it still makes him nervous. This is how a predator assesses a prey, and Will has already proven he can hurt Hannibal far more effectively than anyone else without even needing to lift a finger.
“You didn’t plan taking me,” Will says.
“No.”
“But you did plan on gutting me.”
“Yes.”
Will lowers himself back to the bed, grunting softly under his breath. “The great Dr. Lecter, deviating from his plans and acting according to whimsy. Whatever shall I do with you.”
“You shall eat your food. All of it.”
Will closes his eyes. “I’m tired. I’ll eat it later.”
Hannibal would push, but no predator is more dangerous than a cornered one. He puts the tray down quietly and leaves, making sure to lock the door behind him.
Will picks the lock, because of course he does. Hannibal is halfway through dinner preparations when he hears the soft shuffling of footsteps and turns around to find Will at his kitchen table, a blanket draped haphazardly over his shoulders and the apple from lunch clutched in one hand, dripping juice from the bite in its side.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Will drawls. “You can multitask, can’t you?”
“I learned from the best.”
“Then keep going, since you’re insistent on fattening me up.”
Hannibal hesitates. “Will, please sit down.”
“Don’t test me, Hannibal.”
Hannibal turns back around. The fish is mostly done, anyways, and the room is perfectly proportioned so that echoes carry very well. He can hear every little swish of cloth and grunt from Will’s teeth as Will moves, but he releases his breath when the chair squeaks as Will deposits himself in it.
“So,” Will says, after a moment, “I think we need to talk.”
“Do we?”
“Well, not talking got us here, so yeah, I’d say we need to talk. You killed Abigail.”
“I gave you a gift, and you did not want it. So I took it back.”
“A human being is not a gift, Hannibal. She is – was a person. A chess piece, perhaps, but a person.” Will pauses. “There will be no more Abigails. If you take any other child from me, I will kill you.”
“I make no promises.”
“Yes, you will. They’ll be your child too, after all.”
Hannibal has to stop at that. He would of course be curious to see any child of Will – to see Will’s eyes in another human being, never mind his mind, would be a revelation – but that desire does not outweigh the possessiveness that runs deep in his core. Will is his, and therefore, so are any children of Will.
“It would be hard,” Hannibal begins, “to raise a child from prison.”
Will takes a bite of his apple. The crunch in loud in the kitchen, and his chewing is even louder. “I’m not going to turn you in, Hannibal. I’m going to kidnap you. Just as you kidnapped me. Even Steven.”
Despite himself, Hannibal has to smile. His Will, ferocious to the last. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“Well,” Will says, “you did mention Florence. And my recovery isn’t completed yet. If I go, it would be recommended for my doctor to monitor my health, wouldn’t it?”
When Hannibal turns around, Will’s eyes are fixed upon him, even as he steadily devours his apple. There is a warmth to them now, the fire of his anger and rage transmuted into a steadily flickering flame, meant to illuminate rather than consume. It takes Hannibal’s breath away, to see Will finally shed of the cocoon and spreading his wings, fluttering them to gain the strength needed to fly.
“It would be recommended,” Hannibal says cautiously, not quite daring to breathe.
Will smiles. “Turns out we were both wrong,” Will says. “You can’t let go of me, and I can’t let go of you. Despite our best efforts. Might as well give up now, although I am curious if we’d survive separation. But you’ve already proven you can’t help yourself. So I imagine . . . that I can’t help myself either. We are not so different, are we?”
“Are we?”
“There’s a fine line between hatred and love, Hannibal. Or so the saying goes. To Florence?”
“To Florence,” Hannibal agrees, and goes to book the tickets.
FINIS