"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring-it was peace."
― Milan Kundera
He understands broken things.
He understands the searing ache, the tear, the gut deep wrench of being alone. He understands isolation, abuse. He's an empath. He understands. He accepts. He feels.
In all honesty, he's not sure when he started with dogs.
The first he found wondering the woods with a chain attached to a spiked collar. The dog had looked up at him, cuts, bite wounds, and infected scratches dripping red blood and puss down his face in jagged bright lines. Will had looked at him, locked eyes, and understood.
I'm alone, was the unspoken message in the animal's eyes, and when Will reached out a hand, he answered with body language, I am too.
The second he found six months after the first. He'd been walking throw a city street on the job with the FBI, and had slipped into a back alley to find the creature cowering among the trash cans and scattered litter. They'd locked eyes.
I'm homeless, the dog's emotions whispered to him.
Will offered his hand for the animal to sniff, not anymore, his scent said.
The third Alana had showed him, while in the shelter. The dog was lying with her head on her paws, watching, not moving. Will had looked down at her, and whispered, "You feeling lost, girl?"
She'd wagged her tail.
The fourth he'd picked up from a breeder-the runt, small and pushed around by the bigger dogs. Will could relate.
The fifth he'd found in a garbage dump, rummaging for scraps. They'd shared a meal together in the back of Will's car, chicken and salad, and Will had told the dog about getting to close and needing a break, and the animal and had looked up at him. Will had felt his love and his understanding and his utter brokenness, and taken him home that night.
The sixth he found running away from it's master. The animal had crouched and growled behind Will when the man confronted them. Will had endured the screaming and the terrible, uncomfortable eye contact because he could feel the dog pressed against his legs, and they held on to each other through that physical contact, and Will called the authorities. The dog had looked up at him, and his eyes had said, thank you.
Finding Winston is different.
In some ways, WInston is a lot like the other strays that he's picked up over the years. He's dirty, he's wary, he's running from something. But there is a strength that Will senses in this one. When Winston runs to him, tail wagging, head down, ears bent back in a gesture of submission, Will is gentle. He speaks in a soothing voice, and when they lock eyes, he is surprised by the level of emotion in the dog's.
Winston stares at him intently for a long time, with those huge, dark eyes that speak of street life and long nights and love long-lost. They watch each other, evaluate each other, understand each other.
Will opens the back of his truck, and Winston jumps in.
He understands these lost, desperate souls wandering the earth in fur coats and rough-padded paws. He understands the pain they feel and the losses they endure. He saves them because he wonders if he will ever be able to save himself. He saves them because he can't save other people. He saves them because they look at him, and they know him, and they never judge him.
And he saves them because they show him that there is still good in him, underneath all the layers of crime scenes and the shattered minds of killers.
They are the ones who reassure him that it's okay, that it's okay to be alive.
Sometimes, at night, he looks at them, all seven, curled up in piles of sleeping fur around his bed, and he whispers, "thanks."
Winston looks up at him. Will can hear the steady thump, thump of the dog's tail on the floor.
You're welcome, the gesture says.
Will reads it like he reads everything, like he understands everything, and he thinks of Jack Crawford saying, "Can I borrow your imagination?" and he thinks of Hannibal's, "You're not very fond of eye contact, are you?" And he wonders why those people who are supposed to know him don't understand him like these seven do.
Maybe those people aren't really trying to understand him. They're borrowing him, throwing him out into dark places, as Hannibal calls them, and letting the toy do it's tricks. Watching him dance and lose his mind and enter the thoughts of killers without understand how much it can hurt.
Winston gets up from the floor and jumps up onto the bed with him, Will curls his fingers into the soft fur of the dog's head, methodically stroking. A cold nose presses to his cheek.
Will holds his dog until they both fall asleep again, and tonight no memories of dead girls or stags haunt him.