Will sat on the creaking deck of his boat and watched Hannibal drift in and out of consciousness, and he let the weight of his exhaustion slowly smother him. He didn't even have the energy to wish that he was dead. He had dragged them both onto the deck somehow, had pressed the water from Hannibal's lungs and made sure he was still breathing, had fumblingly cleaned their wounds and wrapped Hannibal in a blanket he'd found. It would do, for now. Somehow, neither one of them seemed to be dying at the moment.
He had been sure he was hallucinating again when he saw the little white sailing yacht, moored just inside a sea cave and bobbing with the waves. But it had really been her – the Nola. His Nola. The boat he'd sailed across the Atlantic, with the ghost of Abigail and the memory of Hannibal haunting him all the way. She had been left behind in a third-rate marina in Italy when Mason had abducted them both. And afterward, Will, desperate to forget as much as he could as quickly as he could, had sold her through a proxy to a young Italian family for less than she was worth.
And Hannibal, it seemed, was that 'young Italian family.'
From behind bars he had bought her, had her provisioned with food and clothing and medical supplies, and arranged for her to be left here – why? Surely not because he had expected Will to throw them off the cliff? No—Will had seen in his eyes, in the moments before they hit the water, that Hannibal had truly not been expecting that. Then was it meant to be a gift, in case Will really did decide to run away with him some day?
Or was it just one more piece of Will for Hannibal to own?
Will felt as if he were still plummeting to his death. He wondered if he would ever stop feeling that way.
It had been a mad, reckless impulse, that bit of murder-suicide, conceived of and executed in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He had seen a way to be with Hannibal and not be with him, to finally give in to him and finally defeat him in the same breath, and he had seized the opportunity.
And then fate had spit in his face by sparing them both.
Oh, it would have been perfect. The perfect way to end this insanity. Everybody would have called him a hero, a tragic hero who gave his life to destroy not one but two evil men. Well, not everybody – not Jack, or Alana, or poor ruined Chilton. But Molly, she would have believed it.
Molly. For her, he knew, he ought to finish what he'd started. He ought to toss Hannibal over the side and let him sink, and then either follow him down or go home to his wife.
It enraged him that he couldn't. He looked across the boat at Hannibal, slumped under his blanket, and wished to god he had smashed his head against a rock on the way down.
Then he went to the galley and made them both some coffee.
As he measured out the grounds, he wondered what Bedelia would say, if she could see him now – infuriating, mocking Bedelia, whose coldness made his skin crawl. He couldn't place himself in her frame of mind at all. She had simply chosen to be with Hannibal and then chosen to leave him; Will could no longer really imagine choosing to do either of those things.
But that was why he had gone to see her, after all. He had needed to know, why him? Why him and not her? Why him with the twin scars on his stomach and his face when Bedelia had betrayed Hannibal too, Bedelia had deserted Hannibal too, and Bedelia had apparently been made to suffer not at all for it?
And as he had studied her in their sham therapy sessions, she had actually helped him to understand why. Will came to realize that Bedelia could never truly betray Hannibal, in Hannibal's mind, because he didn't trust her not to betray him in the first place. Because he expected her to betray him, just as he had expected it of every single other person he had ever met.
Except, he hadn't expected it of Will.
Because he loved him.
It still baffled Will, that Hannibal could feel that way about him – could feel any kind of way about him. He had denied it for as long as he could, because it simply didn't make sense. He had felt Hannibal's… what, his yearning for him, and had been so sure that it meant something else, some strange emotion unique to Hannibal that Will had no other name for. Because how could the man who had manipulated him, drugged him, framed him, gutted him, killed his friends, and tried to saw his skull open possibly be in love with him?
And then Will had stood over Hannibal in the glass house on the cliff and watched him bleed onto the floor, and he had finally understood.
Oh, he had taken so much satisfaction in finally hurting Hannibal, after all the times he had been hurt by him. He had seen Hannibal's blood and been proud that he drew it, he had seen him prone on the floor at his feet and felt as if he had finally conquered his greatest enemy. And yet he hadn't been able to let him die. Even though a part of him sincerely wanted to see Hannibal dead, he had been utterly unable to stand aside and watch it happen.
And that, Will had realized, was precisely how Hannibal felt about him – that dual impulse to ruin and rescue. That was why Hannibal had hurt him and then saved him and then hurt him again, over and over, why Will was still alive when anyone else in his position would have been long dead. Because Hannibal did love Will. He hurt him because he needed him to suffer the way he had made Hannibal suffer; and he saved him because he couldn't imagine a world without his beloved Will Graham in it.
And what, Will asked himself, as he carried the coffee cups over to where Hannibal lay, did he feel?
Ever since Bedelia had posed the question to him, he had wondered. He had turned it over and over in his mind, examined it like an object, and had been chilled to discover that the answer was not as definitive a 'no' as he had thought.
Will had done what he could to clean their wounds and bind them closed, but they both needed real medical attention, and Hannibal was in no position to provide it. Aside from the cuts and bruises, and aside from the shotgun pellets still lingering in his back and side, his femur seemed as if it might be fractured; worse, his skin was hot, and they both feared infection.
And of course, infuriatingly, Hannibal had a plan.
There was a Doctor Keller, he told Will, gasping through the pain - a skilled surgeon he had been acquainted with many years before. He had helped her kill her husband somehow – provided poison, or destroyed evidence, or something along those lines. Will didn't care to pry. The point was, he had asked only that she do him a favor in return someday, when he needed her.
She had thought he was such a good friend.
Three years before, when she had turned on her TV and seen that her long-ago deal had been struck with the Chesapeake Ripper, she had had a nervous breakdown and been briefly hospitalized. She told her friends and family that it was just because of the knowledge of what her old friend had done.
She had moved more than once since then, but he knew where she lived.
The woman peering through the crack in the chained cabin door had clearly been expecting someone, but that someone was not Will Graham.
"Sorry, please – I can't help you. I can see you need medical attention, I can give you directions to a hospital in the next town over, but I'm really not in a position to—"
"We have a mutual friend."
That was all he needed to say. The color left her face and she looked, briefly, as though she might pass out. Then she steeled herself and said, "Where is he?"
"In the car. You'll have to help me get him out. Do you have a wheelchair?"
She did. In fact, he saw as she unchained the door to let him in, her isolated cabin had a clinic's worth of medical supplies neatly arranged in the living room.
The moment Hannibal's escape had been announced, she had known he would come for her. Or at least, she had feared it. He had never struck her as a man to forget an agreement, even before she had known what he was. And she knew what he would want from her – why he had taken the trouble to cultivate her in the first place. So she had quietly gotten her hands on all the medical supplies she could, and she had waited.
"I thought… I thought, maybe if I hide out up here, he won't find me," she said. "But I also thought, if he does find me, well, I suppose I have to keep my word."
"Or he'll eat you."
Her eyes flashed with panic. "I… I was going to say, or he'll turn me in." She took a steadying breath. "Is he… is he going to kill me?"
"You'll have to save his life first," Will said, and he couldn't help admiring her a bit for replying, "...Right. OK. So let's go get him."
Hannibal wasn't much worse off than he had been when Will pulled him out of the water, but he wasn't much better either. He was conscious and aware of his surroundings, enough to deliver a suave "good evening, Doctor Keller" to the poor terrified woman and to hold onto the glass of water that she offered, but the pain was beginning to break through the walls of his composure. The jolt when they'd rolled him over the door jamb had almost made him black out, and he was clearly trying very hard not to whimper or scream. His face was pale and sweaty, and his eyes were glazed.
"Ok," said Keller, "he's in worse shape than you are, so let's start with him. First I've got to give him something for the pain. I've got some ketamine, it would knock him out for a while, let me work on him without him thrashing around—"
"No," breathed Hannibal, gripping the rail of his chair, "no, I don't want it—"
"Take it," said Will.
It was as transparent a power play as Will had ever made. He knew perfectly well that Hannibal would be able to endure without anesthesia, and he knew, too, exactly why he didn't want it: because, despite the fact that Will had brought him here, Hannibal had very good reason to want to avoid being unconscious in Will's presence. After all, Will had just tried to kill him. He'd been struggling to stay alert for over 30 hours, ever since he'd come to on the boat, clearly unwilling to sleep while Will was awake.
Will stood above Hannibal like he'd stood in the glass house by the cliff, looking into his eyes, and they both knew that Will simply wanted to see what Hannibal would do if Will asked him to bare his neck for the knife.
Surrender, he was saying. You want me to stop fighting you? Stop fighting me.
Another moment, and then: "All right."
And Hannibal let the doctor move him to a cot and give him an injection, and she and Will watched him until he was unconscious.
Will exhaled deeply. He suddenly felt as if he'd been holding his breath for hours.
And the doctor, who had seemed increasingly puzzled by Will's presence, looked at him, visibly unsure if she should just keep her mouth shut, and said "But… aren't you… aren't you the one who caught him? Aren't you a cop?"
He just looked at her silently for a long time, long enough to make her uncomfortable. He'd perfected that technique when he was in the BSHCI; it had been one of the few tools he'd had for gaining the upper hand when he was being interrogated or psychoanalyzed.
"You don't need to worry about who I am," he said. He took a step toward her, a technique picked up from Hannibal, and was sickeningly gratified when she took a step back. "You don't need to worry about who I am because I'm not here right now." Another step. "I know you said you'd never betray Hannibal. But if you DO betray him?" "I won't –"
He grabbed her arm and looked straight into her eyes. "Shut up. If the police come and talk to you, go ahead and lie. But if you break? Tell them Hannibal came here alone."
"I'll never tell anyone anything! He'll tell everyone what I did, or, you said it yourself, he'll kill me if I say anything, so I won't, I swear I won't—"
"Oh, he'll kill you?" He pushed her back gently, took another step, her back was almost to the wall now. This was so easy. "Did you see what happened back there?" Step. "Did you see the famous Hannibal the Cannibal agree to be knocked unconscious, just because I asked him to?" Step. "I could slit his throat right now, and he knows I have every reason in the world to do it, and he rolled over for me like a dog anyway." They were at the wall now, and he leaned against it with his arm, his face too close to hers.
She was so afraid of him.
"You don't need to be afraid of Hannibal Lecter anymore," he said. "You need to be afraid of the guy who's got him on a leash."
He moved away from her then, and gestured toward the piles of medical supplies. "Now sew us up. Start with me."
She trembled and looked anywhere but at his face as she cleaned and stitched his wounds, and he wondered if maybe he had gone too far with her. He'd tried to channel a few old friends to play the part of the Bride of Hannibal – Dolarhyde's purring menace, Gideon's sheer glee at being who he was, and of course Hannibal's trademark invasion of personal space. It had worked for him, almost too well. It was important that the doctor be afraid of him as well as of Hannibal, of course, but had all that really been necessary?
But he'd enjoyed it. He knew that was why he had done it – not just to protect their cover by reinforcing her fear, not to cover his ass if she really did confess, but because he could.
And because he had wanted to hear those words coming out of his mouth, wanted to see if they sounded true. He was shocked that they did.
He did have Hannibal on a leash.
He could do anything now.
He could even kill her.
He wasn't sure if Hannibal had really intended to let her go free after he used her. He made much of the value of his promises, but Will could think of an unkept promise or two between them. But now the matter was out of Hannibal's hands.
Hannibal's voice in his head told him that it would be far safer to kill her.
So Will decided to let her live.