A/N: Thank you so much, guys, for your comments, patience and general loveliness. This is the penultimate chapter of the story, and it's a biggie. The final chapter should be up before Season 2, just 6 short days away...
Enjoy.
Jack and Will chase the sunset back to Virginia. No signs of journalists or onlookers on the highway, but Will slumps in his seat anyway. He stares at the waning thread of orange light across the horizon, but occasionally his eyes flick to the side mirror, where he can see the reflection of the Animal Services van following behind them.
Jack doesn't try to talk to him; they have already said everything there is to say. But when they turn on to the exit for Wolf Trap, Jack can't help himself.
"There's still time, you know, for you to reconsider."
Will says nothing, but the lines of his mouth deepen.
Jack lifts his fingers off the steering wheel, a defensive gesture. "I don't want you to do anything you're unsure about."
"There's no certainty here, Jack. There never will be." Will's voice is quiet, purged of emotion, so distant it might be hailing from some other planet. He may be in this car for a few more minutes, but in spirit he has already left Jack far behind.
Jack's eyelids slip down over his hard eyes. He is unable to express the depth and intensity of his feelings—how responsible he feels for what is happening, how badly he wants Will to change his mind—but Jack doesn't have to express any of this, because Will experiences it along with him. It is so exhausting that as a defense mechanism Will shuts down the part of himself sensitive to Jack's feelings. Instead he devotes the bulk of his attention to watching as the last of the sunlight dissipates, the sky now the thick navy that precedes true night.
Jack rolls up the dirt driveway, fingers tight on the wheel. Beyond the trees there appears a familiar shape, huddled and square. Will's little house. Will has always felt as if his house exists in safe suspension, out of time; and this has remained true even in his absence, for the house looks just the same as when he left it. Even at this distance, it radiates quietude.
Jack stops the car, but keeps the engine running. The headlights are bright on the side of the farmhouse; the paint, slightly peeling, seems to glow. Jack and Will sit in silence, both of them looking at the house and thinking their separate thoughts, as the Animal Services van parks further up the drive.
As Will unbuckles his seatbelt, Jack looks over at him.
"I want to trust you," he says.
Will sighs. "But you don't."
"Do you trust yourself?"
Will can't answer that. He gets out of the car and slams the door. His shoes crunch on the hard earth as he walks towards the van. He nods to the driver and the handler in the front seat, and the handler gets out of the van and follows Will to the back. They open the doors and find the dogs shifting in their carriers, newly awoken and anxious for freedom. Will can understand the impulse.
He helps the handler get the dogs leashed and calm, but despite his efforts they remain a little wild. They sense something in him. Winston rubs his head against Will's leg, a warm probing weight. But once they're out of the van, the familiar smells of Will's property serve to gentle the dogs a little. Will stands in the grass, with the two group leashes gripped loosely in his hands, and he shuts his eyes, letting the familiarity of this place envelop him too, lets it burrow deep inside of him until he's filled to his limits. Home. Home, at last.
He hears Jack's slow footsteps. He stops in front of Will, his shoulders hunched and his hands thrust in his pockets like an old gunslinger.
"So here we are," Jack says.
A tide of powerful emotion rising up from underneath Jack's façade.
"Here we are," Will echoes.
Jack clears his throat. He needs to say his piece. "When I first wanted you back in the field, I promised Alana I'd look out for you. I told her that no matter what happened out there, I'd still cover you."
Both of them pretend not to notice Jack's voice shaking just a little.
"I know I broke that promise. I let her down. I let you down in every way. I threw you in his path, and then I left you there. On your own. With him."
Will says nothing, but his hands tighten on the dogs' leashes. There was a time when he would have welcomed apologies, when he would have been happy to listen to them repeated on a loop. But they are empty sounds to him now. Meaningless. He feels no anger, only the distant echo of something just shy of pity.
But he says, for Jack's sake: "You didn't know. You did what you could."
"I left you on your own. I keep leaving you on your own."
"But I'm not on my own." Will's voice is growing increasingly strange, a private joke thrumming underneath every word.
Jack hears it. The look of worry only intensifies on his strained face. He says: "You're more alone right now than you are ever gonna be."
Will looks right through him. "Goodbye, Jack. Good luck to you."
Jack's face falls. He whispers back: "Good luck to you, Will."
He turns around with Will still watching him, and slowly, as if every step pains him, Jack walks back to his car. Even though the dogs are trying to pull away, Will stays where he is, his eyes on Jack's profile as he drops into the front seat. He catches Jack giving him one final look, and Will raises a hand in farewell. Jack merely nods. He drives back into the night, the Animal Services van following behind him.
Now it is just Will, the dogs, the darkness, and the house. He takes a moment, gathering himself for his homecoming, as the night insects chitter out their symphony all around him. Then he leads the dogs up the porch steps, the old wood creaking as they go. The front door is sealed shut with a Virginia Police sticker. With his pocketknife Will slices through it. He thinks of a local town mayor, cutting a ribbon on a new building with a giant pair of scissors. It's official now. Open for business. He unlocks the door and leads the pack across the threshold of his little house.
The comfortable air washes over them. Will can see the sleepy shadows of the furniture in the dark. So achingly familiar it wrenches a sigh out of him. He turns on his desk lamp so he can get a better look at the living room.
And that is when he sees Hannibal in the corner near the fireplace. Hannibal Lecter. Sitting in Will's house. In Will's chair. Watching Will with hooded eyes. Waiting for him.
Everything inside of Will stops so suddenly that even his sense of self stutters out.
Hannibal doesn't speak, doesn't move. He could be another projection. But this Hannibal is neither the attentive psychiatrist nor the blood-encrusted specter. His hair is slicked back, his bite mark neatly bandaged, and he is wearing dark simple clothing, casual and nondescript.
He is also tapping the curved blade of what looks like a linoleum knife against his knee.
Of all the things that seem strange about this moment, the linoleum knife is what puzzles Will the most. An incongruous weapon. Where did it come from? Hannibal couldn't have found it in Will's house.
The dogs—their leashes now gripped tightly in Will's fists—look at Hannibal with bright, unthreatened curiosity. It doesn't seem odd to them that he should be here, sitting and waiting with a knife on his knee. An old friend, come to visit.
"You're inside my house," says Will.
Hannibal says nothing.
Will flexes the muscles in his mind experimentally, but this Hannibal does not disappear. Apparently Will doesn't have the power to erase him.
"You're inside my house," Will repeats, and this time he hears heartbreak in his own voice. His only sanctuary, the one bright spot in this terrible day, and Hannibal is there.
Hannibal remains silent.
"Why are you inside my house?" Will moans.
"I like your house," says Hannibal. His voice is hushed, almost meek.
And he has to be real, because even Will's imagination isn't this perverse.
Hannibal begins tapping the knife at a faster pace. "I often came here when you were institutionalized. On the days when I couldn't see you. This was the next best thing." He looks around with wondering eyes. "So much of yourself imbued into these shabby objects. They have a quiet eloquence now, these remnants. You have given them the power to speak."
Now Will is really staring. Hannibal's manner is more openly strange than he has ever seen it. No longer is he making the effort to appear even remotely human. Instead he bleeds out melancholy in great blue gouts. He obviously has not moved for hours; from this chair in Will's living room Hannibal has watched the sunset, and when the light failed, he sat in the dark, caressing his linoleum knife to anchor himself within his body, within this place.
Will looks at him and feels furious. Furious with Hannibal. Furious with the linoleum knife. Furious with the forces of creation that have given birth to this abomination of a moment in time.
He gesticulates wildly at his own front door: "I want you out of my house!"
Hannibal just blinks at him. "I didn't think you'd mind."
Which causes Will to almost scream with laughter, as the dogs huff and mill tighter around him. "You didn't think I'd mind!"
"It's not as if you were using it."
Will makes a loud noise: half incomprehension, half fury.
The side of the linoleum knife goes click click click against the sharp bone of Hannibal's kneecap. "You are startling the dogs," he says.
Will doesn't need a warning any stronger than that. He pulls himself together.
"I—I have to tie them up."
"I'll help you."
Hannibal gets up and Will recognizes the shirt he's wearing as one of Will's own. Sure. Why not. Hannibal keeps the linoleum knife in his left hand, gestures with his right for Will to follow him through to the back of the house. Will lets himself be beckoned, trailing Hannibal without a word. A few of the dogs pull ahead to sniff at him, and Hannibal greets them with the distant friendliness of an apex animal acknowledging lesser beasts.
Through the back door they step into the beautiful evening—Wolf Trap silent and still and stretching uninhabited all around them—and a twisted sense of domesticity falls over Will as he and Hannibal fasten the two group leashes to the latticework along the back porch. They calm the dogs as if they have done this together a hundred times before. Then Hannibal holds up a finger and goes back inside the house.
Will stands on the porch, waiting for Hannibal, as docile as the dogs. He doesn't consider plans of violence or escape. He doesn't send a message with his phone. He knows only too well what would happen to him if he pursued any of these avenues. Hannibal needs no better threat than what Will's own imagination can provide.
Hannibal returns to the porch with water for the dogs and they congregate enthusiastically around him to lap it up. Will and Hannibal watch them for a moment in companionable silence; then Hannibal motions with the linoleum knife for Will to lead him back into the kitchen.
Once inside, Will sits down at the kitchen table, which is set for two. Hannibal stands by the counter, looking at him. Hannibal's manner remains gentle, almost reticent, but then there is the linoleum knife, omnipresent in his left hand as if fused to his bones like a talon.
He asks, "When did you last eat?"
"No," says Will, voice suddenly firm.
"It was through a tube, wasn't it?"
"I won't eat anything you give me."
Hannibal smiles, very faintly. "You think I'm intending to poison you?"
Will gives him a look. "It's not poison I'm worried about."
"You needn't worry at all. I'm making eggs."
Hannibal opens the fridge and Will sees that he has stocked it with the bare necessities. He has been in Will's house all day, avoiding the airports, the roadblocks, the concentrated frenzy of his own manhunt, biding his time in peaceful little Wolf Trap, waiting for Will to be released from the hospital and return home.
Hannibal lines up eggs, vegetables, cream and herbs on the countertop.
"It was eggs the first time, wasn't it?" he asks—unnecessarily, as they both already recognize the connection.
"Eggs and sausage," Will mutters, weighing the word 'sausage' with irony.
"No sausage this time," says Hannibal. "We will have to make do."
"I still won't eat it."
"You will."
"Eat or be eaten?"
"If you like."
Hannibal's voice is indifferent, without inflection. Only now does he surrender the linoleum knife to the counter. He trades it for a chopping knife and gets to work on the vegetables.
"Who was it," Will asks, "the first time?"
"You already know the answer to that."
"Cassie Boyle."
Hannibal nods.
"Why feed her to me?"
Hannibal shrugs as he chops. "I found it funny."
Will lets this sink in. "But that wasn't the only reason."
"What was my reason, then?" Hannibal asks, honestly curious.
"She was the first of yours I'd ever seen. My first real taste of you."
Hannibal acknowledges this with a nod, still chopping away. "Did I make an impression?"
Will thinks of the stag prowling through his waking dreams. "More than you'll ever know."
"She was special to me for that reason." Now Hannibal is breaking eggs. "I wanted to share her with you. A token of friendship."
Will snorts, very gently, but doesn't contradict. "So what's this?" he asks, indicating what Hannibal is doing. "You're feeling nostalgic?" A note of cruelty in his voice he doesn't bother to disguise.
"I am in mourning," says Hannibal, gently. "Same as you."
"Not exactly the same."
Hannibal doesn't deign to respond to that, so Will keeps going.
"Maybe you are in mourning. But what you mourn is the loss of your possessions, your comfortable life of lavishness and luxury."
The sizzle of eggs in the pan, the only sign of Hannibal's patience fraying.
He says, "I haven't the slightest feeling about the life I left behind. It was a dream I enjoyed the dreaming of. Now I am awake."
Will remains dubious. "You won't miss it?"
Hannibal looks up from his cooking and stares at Will with eyes slightly unfocused. "I will miss…the pretense, I suppose. The opportunity to live among them, to enjoy their company. Their trust."
"Them…" says Will, with horrified amusement, as the hearty smell of the scramble fills the room.
"Them," Hannibal affirms. He uses the pronoun with affection, not condescension.
He plates the eggs, carries both of them with one hand so that he can hold the linoleum knife with the other. He puts one plate in front of Will before sitting down across the table from him. They look at each other for a long moment, their meals steaming between them.
"Please eat," says Hannibal, quietly.
Will shakes his head.
"Indulge me in this one thing."
"Why should I indulge you in anything? I'm not sick. I'm not in prison. I have no incentive to play along." Now Will eyes the linoleum knife openly. "Just get it over with. Stick that thing in me."
Something tightens in Hannibal's face. "I'd rather not do that."
Will's voice is grim. "Don't pretend you didn't come here to kill me."
"I came here because I wanted to see you."
"And you brought that with you because you thought you'd redo my floors while you were at it?"
Hannibal sighs. He puts the linoleum knife down next to his plate. "Eating before one's guest is a cardinal sin according to the rules of etiquette. I hope you can forgive my lapse."
With that, he picks up his fork and begins to eat. Will watches him in silence, not moving, hardly breathing so as to avoid the smell of the eggs. He lets thirty seconds go by. Then, without a word, Will picks up his plate and chucks it at the wall. It breaks with a crash; the eggs leave a smear on the wallpaper.
A few barks and whines from the dogs, startled by the noise.
But Hannibal doesn't recoil; the only evidence of his startlement is the heaviness of his swallow. He looks up at Will questioningly.
"Well, I don't forgive you," says Will, shaking hands now clutching the edge of the table. "What do you say to that?"
Hannibal's voice is so soft Will can hardly hear it. "Will, you're being rude."
"Oh, no," he drawls. "Am I?" And in a single motion, he stands, comes around the table, grabs Hannibal's plate out from under his raised fork, and hurls it at the wall too. "How about that? Was that rude?"
He stands there, staring down at Hannibal, panting with fury. Hannibal meanwhile sits there placidly, looking at the empty place where his meal was sitting a moment before. The linoleum knife is still lying on the table right in front of him.
"Well?" Will growls. "What are you waiting for?"
Slowly Hannibal rotates his head until he is looking at Will. "I miss her, too," he says, simply.
Will makes a high noise in his throat. In an instant he swoops down on Hannibal, grabs the linoleum knife with one hand and the back of Hannibal's hair with the other, and holds the blade up to the side of Hannibal's face, the point just touching the bandage over the bite mark.
Hannibal just keeps looking up at him, no change of expression.
"You killed her," Will hisses, pulling on Hannibal's hair so that his head tilts back.
Hannibal doesn't even blink. "Yes," he says. "But you killed her, too."
The knife trembles in Will's hand. He smiles a terrible smile. "No—no—you don't get to do that. You don't get to pass the blame."
"You're the one passing blame. We killed her together."
Will shakes his head over and over. "You want to share responsibility for what you are, for what you did. You love to share; you're so generous. You think you can feed your guilt to me the same way you fed me your crimes, but you can't, Hannibal. I won't let you. I am not responsible for you. I have never been responsible. You had a choice. I didn't. You chose to kill her. That was all you. You can't put this on me. I won't take it."
"You already have," Hannibal whispers.
Will can't speak, can't deny it. He would like to carve off Hannibal's face right now. He would like to carve it all the way off, see what's under there.
Hannibal's eyes are larger than normal, full of peculiar understanding. "It hurts," he says. "When death swings out of our control. Death should be on our terms, and on our terms only. Neither of us was in control at that moment, and poor Alana paid the price. But these are your terms now, Will. What are you going to do?"
"You're just going to sit there and let me kill you?"
"You would be within your rights to try." It's not exactly an answer.
Hannibal waits patiently as Will keeps the linoleum knife poised at the ridge of his cheekbone. And then, very gingerly, as if dealing with an animal liable to spook, Hannibal reaches up towards the knife. And as Will watches him do this, he makes a promise to himself that if Hannibal tries to take the knife from him, he will kill Hannibal without a second thought, he will pull the curved blade across his throat, opening him up from carotid to carotid, showering himself with Hannibal's blood, he can see it so clearly inside his mind that it may as well have already happened…
But Hannibal doesn't reach for the knife. Instead his fingers fix around the edge of his bandage, and with smooth and casual control he pulls it off, forcing the point of the knife away from his face as he does it, so that by the time the bite mark is fully exposed, the linoleum knife is three spare inches away from Hannibal's skin.
Then Hannibal drops his hands back down, folds them politely in his lap. "I prefer us face to face," he says, by way of explanation.
Will just stares. He doesn't bring the blade back up to Hannibal's face. He looks at the bite mark, a testament to his own loss of control, the livid evidence of the wild beast Will and Hannibal both know he can be, and before he can rationalize or even contemplate his actions, he has released Hannibal's hair. He drops his other hand until the knife is by his side.
"I'm not you, Hannibal," he says. "However much you might like me to be."
And he returns to his seat on the other side of the table, though he still clutches the linoleum knife in his right hand.
Despite the fact that Hannibal never once reacted to having a knife in his face, there is something incrementally more relaxed about him now that Will has sat back down.
"I never wanted you to be me, Will."
Will tsks dismissively.
Hannibal continues undeterred: "I never did. All I wanted was for you to be yourself."
Will's hand tightens on the knife handle. "I was always myself."
Hannibal shakes his head. "You were who you thought you had to be. Who your father taught you to be, and who men like Jack Crawford told you you had to continue being. You were only half alive when I met you. Shut down. Afraid to look at eyes. Afraid to look at anything. Mortally afraid to look at yourself."
"You think I'm not afraid any more?" Will asks, trying for a sneer and failing.
"You understand your fear better now. Which is why you rejected the FBI and sent Jack Crawford on his way."
Will's expression becomes instantly impassive. "What makes you think I rejected Jack?"
"You came home early, without your gun. And I was watching you when you talked with Jack in your driveway. He had the look of a man struggling under the weight of disappointment."
Will shrugs. "It doesn't really matter now, what I chose to do. You being here renders that decision pointless."
Hannibal leans forward, elbows on the table. "Your decision matters. It matters to me. It pleases me that you refused Jack. If you had returned to the FBI, you would have consigned yourself to a life of exploitation and soulless labor. I have had plenty of opportunities to observe Uncle Jack and his band of loyal helpers; I can say with confidence that the FBI is a corrupt institution. Of course all human institutions tend towards corruption, but the FBI, in its grand ambitions, is particularly objectionable as institutions go. It reduces the complicated into a binary system of guilt and innocence. It reduces the vast spectrum of human behavior into the strict confines of a one-page profile that can be slipped into a folder and filed away in some forgotten drawer. 'Behavioral science'—an oxymoron if ever I heard one. There is no science that can explain human behavior."
"Says the psychiatrist," Will mutters, a little feebly. He is overwhelmed.
Hannibal shrugs. "I worked with people. With minds. Not with files and forensics and algorithms. Certainly not within the law. It was my goal to help people understand themselves. To better themselves. Which brings me to my primary objection against the FBI. It reduces people. Good people. It mines their talents until they are bled dry, used up, destroyed. I never wanted that life for you, Will."
Will favors him with a twisted smile. "Some things never change. You were always trying to convince me what I did was bad for me."
"It was bad for you."
"Not as bad as it was for you."
"It was inconvenient, nothing more. It would have been inconvenient for me now, had you chosen to join my manhunt. I am gratified you decided against it. You have grown, Will. You perceive now what you were unwilling to perceive before you met me. The FBI is no place for you. If you go back there, you will never be free."
"Free…" Will swallows hard.
"What will you do now?" Hannibal asks him, gently.
Will clamps his eyes shut. He becomes aware of how he is tapping the linoleum knife hard against his knee. "I don't know," he says. "Who cares? It'll never happen now."
"Retreat back to the crumbling wharves of Biloxi or Greenville? Tinker with your boat motors, just like in the good old days with dad?"
And Will is up again. He comes around the table, slams the linoleum knife down in front of Hannibal, and keeps going, stalking through the hallway back to the living room. "I don't need this," he shouts. "I don't fucking need this. Do what you came here to do. I'm through talking to you."
He walks blindly into the living room, the space half empty because so many of his things are still bagged for evidence. His breath is coming in injured gasps. His hands shake so badly that when he tries to turn on the floor lamp, it goes on and off and on again before he can make his hand release the chain. He throws himself down in the chair Hannibal was sitting in and buries his face in his hands.
He is aware of Hannibal coming into the living room after him, even though Hannibal is walking with soundless footsteps.
"You will die if you attempt to live that life," Hannibal says, quietly.
Will says nothing. He doesn't look up.
"It's someone else's life, Will. It always was. You cannot get by, living the life of the dead. The best parts of you will wither away from disuse and boredom. Any remaining shreds of spirit you possess you will have to anesthetize with whatever narcotic you have on hand. You can't go back to that. There is no freedom for you there."
Now Will looks up. Hannibal is standing in front of him, shoulders bowed like a supplicant, the effect only somewhat dampened by the linoleum knife in his hand.
"Freedom," Will spits, his mouth twisted. "Hilarious, how much you love talking about my freedom. You, of all people, have no interest in me being free."
"That's all I've ever wanted for you," says Hannibal.
Will laughs, high-pitched, hysterical. "You put me in a cell!"
"Yes."
"And you don't see a contradiction there?"
"No."
They look at each other.
When Hannibal speaks next, his voice is shaking. "You needed to be removed from the world that was infecting you, oppressing you. You needed a safe place where you might see yourself anew. I gave you that."
"Well," says Will, voice is shaking too, "I'm very grateful."
"You should be. That place transformed you, Will. Under its relentless heat and terrible pressure you became something more than what you were; you went from plain graphite to purest diamond. Something hard and shining. You were at the mercy of your gifts before that hospital—now they are at your command, and how you use them. You are magnificent in ways I can never be. I am in awe. I have been in awe of you, Will, for many months now."
As Hannibal speaks, he moves forward imperceptibly, slowly approaching Will in his chair.
"I never put you in prison. I set you free."
Will looks at him, tries to speak past the hard lump in his throat. "I… don't… feel… free."
Hannibal, all sympathy, nods in understanding. "You still feel the call of the person you used to be. You perceive the distance between who you are now and who you were then and that distance terrifies you. The terror will fade, Will. I can help you."
Will shakes his head.
"You can't escape this," Hannibal says. Now he is crouching right in front of Will, leveling the plane between them. "You can't reverse a chemical reaction that is already underway. I have already established there is nowhere for you to go, nothing you can do. No life for you to return to. You can't go home again, isn't that the phrase? You must go on, Will. Don't squander the gift I've given you."
"It's not a gift," Will says, tears in his eyes. "The only reason—the only reason I can't go back to the FBI—can't go back to boat motors—is because you've ruined me. You've ruined me for doing anything else."
Hannibal looks pained. "I haven't ruined you."
"You have. You have."
"Will—" Hannibal reaches for his arm.
"Don't touch me!" He draws back. Pushes himself out of the chair and veers away from Hannibal, who slowly rises to his feet.
"You killed her," Will says. "You ruined me. Paint it up in whatever beautiful images you want, but that's what you've done. That's what you always do. You don't make people better. You destroy them. You are a monster. A. Monster."
The words seem to echo in the little room. Hannibal looks very solemn.
"I'm not a monster, Will."
And Will sobs out a laugh at the ceiling.
"'Monster' is a word people use for something they cannot understand. But you understand me."
"Well…" Will gives a bereft and helpless shrug. "I guess I'm a monster too."
Hannibal is overcome; his lips pull downward, his eyes turn very bright. "You are not a monster."
Tears are rolling down Will's face. "From you that means less than nothing."
"You could never be a monster. You have a purity that cannot be touched. Your imagination, your empathy, your bravery. More human than human. I admire that in you, Will. I admire you."
"I don't want your admiration." Will laces this word with acid.
"Just as you do not want to admire me. But that doesn't change the fact that you do."
This is too much. "Why can't you just get out of my house!?" Will sobs. "Either kill me or get out. I can't listen any more. I can't listen to this."
"I didn't come here to kill you," says Hannibal.
And to illustrate, he tosses the linoleum knife away; it lands heavily on the hallway floor.
"I came here to take you with me."
Will stares at him, dumbfounded, for what feels like hours. Then he says: "You. Are. Crazy."
"And so are you," says Hannibal, with dignity. "Please consider my offer. It is the only path available to you that doesn't end in your destruction."
Will's eyes are wide, uncomprehending. "You murdered Alana. You murdered Abigail. You've done nothing but torment me since we met. And now you think I'm just gonna say, 'what the hell!' and go off on the lam with you?"
"Yes," says Hannibal.
"You've got it bad."
The faintest smile. "I don't deny it."
"I won't go."
"You want to," says Hannibal. "It's the only way you can be free. Free of Jack, free of your ghosts. Stay behind and you will rot away. I am giving you life, Will. Don't choose death just to spite me."
"I like spiting you," says Will. Then, "Where would we go?"
"Anywhere. Everywhere. I prefer a place with opera, where Châteauneuf-du-Pape is plentiful, but I am amenable if you have other ideas."
Will's eyes have narrowed. "Would you make me kill?"
"I wouldn't make you do anything you didn't already want to do."
"Yeah," says Will, with a twisted smile, "that's what you always say."
Hannibal twitches his shoulders, a minute shrug. "Come with me."
Will is watching him closely. "You have been so lonely," he says, "for so long."
"So have you."
"And you think this will help?"
"Yes," says Hannibal, firmly.
"And if I say no, what happens then?"
Hannibal's eyes twitch to the floor of the hallway. "It doesn't bear thinking about."
Will nods to himself, but says nothing. Hannibal inches closer to him.
"Please, Will. Come away with me. Let me save you."
"You think I need saving?" Will whispers, holding his ground even as Hannibal encroaches on his space.
"For now you do," says Hannibal. "But not for long."
They are very close together now. The sense of unreality descends on Will more powerfully than ever. But whether this is a dream or a nightmare he no longer has the perspective to tell. He feels what Hannibal feels, so powerful, too powerful, it is devouring him. Hannibal leans in with total confidence and captures Will's lips in his. And Will, for reasons he will never fully comprehend, returns the kiss in kind.
That's when the dogs start barking.
Hannibal draws away. And what he sees on Will's face stops him cold.
All of the emotion and confusion in his expression is gone. The tears have stopped. He is looking at Hannibal with a cold, evaluating gaze worthy of the man himself. He says:
"Sorry, Hannibal. But I'm afraid that you are going to be the one who's coming with me."
Hannibal's eyes slowly narrow. He looks over Will's shoulder, sees the gleam of flashlights moving through the long grass of Wolf Trap. The distant whirr of a helicopter circling the house. He looks back at Will in barely disguised horror. He understands in an instant the terrible trap Will has set for him. He understands just how completely Will has predicted him. He knew Hannibal would be here, knew what Hannibal would want in coming here. Will was so far ahead of Hannibal he was looking back at him from the opposite shores, laughing at him.
"I'm not a sworn law enforcement official at the moment," says Will, heart positively soaring in his chest at the look on Hannibal's face, "so let's just call this a citizen's arrest."
"You were lying to me," whispers Hannibal.
"Role-playing," says Will.
Then: "Hannibal Lecter, I am arresting you on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…"
Speaking these old familiar words, Will feels as though he is performing an exorcism, though whether on Hannibal or on himself he couldn't say.
"…You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot—"
That's as far as he gets before Hannibal is on him.
Will has forgotten that no amount of understanding can help him in a fight. He might have a bone-deep knowledge of Hannibal's every move, but that doesn't mean he has the reflexes or the strength to counter them. In a spare second Hannibal has knocked him to the floor—and when Will tries to punch Hannibal right in his bitten cheek, Hannibal grabs his wrist and gives it a single businesslike wrench. It snaps. Will howls. Hannibal immediately—with the studied motion of a man operating on automatic—slams his elbow into Will's windpipe, so that Will's scream is arrested in his throat.
Hannibal's expression is stern. Pitiless. Denying his own woundedness. He pins Will with his knees. Pressing down on him with all his weight Hannibal begins throttling Will into the floorboards, his thumbs like screws tightening deeper and deeper into Will's throat. Will coughs—sparks of red confetti in his vision—but despite his broken wrists he pounds at Hannibal's arms and back, tries to claw at his face, but there is no shifting Hannibal, no touching Hannibal, Hannibal is a monolith out of Will's reach and the world is fading fast, fading away—Jack isn't going to get here in time…
The dogs are still barking, barking.
And even though there is no oxygen to feed Will's rattling brain, a stray thought still manages to surface: strangulation is not Hannibal's design….
He looks at Hannibal and sees quid pro quo in his eyes. And just as Hannibal lowers himself down, teeth bared to take a bite out of Will's face, Will takes advantage of Hannibal's reduced leverage to head butt him. Will's forehead connects with Hannibal's teeth and they both cry out. Hannibal releases Will's throat and Will is scrabbling to his feet, unbalanced, blood dripping in his eyes, choking raggedly as he staggers away, looking for a weapon before Hannibal recovers. He sees the linoleum knife on the hallway floor and hobbles after it. He can hear Hannibal behind him—Hannibal is coming for him—Will isn't going to make it. Hannibal yanks his ankle out from under him and Will goes flying into a side table, which in an instant is reduced to scrap wood under his flailing weight. Will smashes his head on the floor and the world goes gray.
This might be it—but no, no, Will won't let it happen. With a strength he didn't know he had, he pushes himself with his throbbing wrist back into a crawling position and reaches, stretching painfully from his shoulders to his fingertips, every fiber focused on grabbing that linoleum knife, mere feet away. He can feel Hannibal's sharp fingers on his ankle again, yanking on it like it's a leash, increasing the distance between Will and the knife. Will claws at the floor but Hannibal keeps dragging him back and back and back. This accomplished, Hannibal steps over Will and goes after the knife himself.
Will vaults himself upright even though his whole body sings with pain and then he hurls himself after Hannibal, pulling him back, grappling without elegance, just two predators trying to paint each other red. Both of them—as one—reach desperately for the linoleum knife.
Will gets spun around so that his back slams against the hallway wall. Hannibal stands right in front of him, cornering him, one hand braced against the wall behind Will. Face to face for the final time.
The door to Will's house bursts open. The SWAT team fills the room and Jack is ahead of them, shotgun at the ready. He sees Will and Hannibal, slumped against each other as they stand in the hallway, blood pouring down from the gap between their bodies.
Jack's eyes go wide. "STEP AWAY FROM HIM. LECTER, DROP YOUR WEAPON AND STEP AWAY."
Hannibal doesn't obey. Will is wheezing into his shoulder. Hannibal's face is buried in Will's neck. Will can feel his lips moving against his skin.
"There now…" Hannibal whispers. "There now… it's over. It's all right. Nothing to fear any more."
"STEP BACK." Jack screams. "THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING."
"Will," asks Hannibal, and he draws his head back so he can look at his face, "how does it taste?"
As if in answer, Will pulls the linoleum knife out of Hannibal's midsection. And Hannibal falls, his intestines spilling out from the massive wound.
Jack momentarily stunned, having got this the wrong way around. And then, looking down at Hannibal, he shouts almost against his will: "We need medical in here!"
He looks over at Will, still half standing against the wall, covered in blood, linoleum knife still clutched in his hand, the blade weeping black gobs of Hannibal's insides.
"Will," says Jack, voice suddenly gentle. "Come on now. Put the knife down."
Will doesn't react. He just watches, with large but expressionless eyes, as Hannibal bleeds out on the floor. Hannibal is still conscious, still looking up at Will, a question in his eyes. He appears to be smiling.
"Will," a note of threat now in Jack's voice, "drop it."
But Will's fingers only tighten around the knife. He is still staring at Hannibal. The EMTs are coming for him now. Blue and red lights flashing everywhere, painting the world a hectic blaze.
And finally, but so interminably slow, Hannibal's lids slide shut. Only then does Will come back to himself, as much of himself as he can ever come back to.
Slowly he revolves his neck, until he is looking at Jack with nowhere eyes.
"Jack," he says, voice colorless, polite, "consider this my two week's notice."
He drops the linoleum knife on the floor and walks away. Simple as that.
Jack doesn't stop him. The medics don't stop him. The SWAT team swarms around him but they don't stop him either. He projects an untouchable air, soaked as he is head to toe in Hannibal Lecter's blood, and his own. He is some otherworldly creature carving his path through their midst, and they recoil from him as he goes. He keeps walking, straight out of the house and into the night. Past the ambulances, the unmarked vans, the squad cars, he just keeps walking. He doesn't know where he is going. Nowhere to go. All avenues closed to him. All futures lost.
He makes it halfway to the woods before his legs give out. He topples down on to the sparse grass. His chest is heaving.
He hears running footsteps behind him. "Will? Will!"
He looks over at her with sightless eyes. Her face twists in horror when she gets a look at him, but she recovers very quickly. Good old Bev.
"Come on back to the house," she says, gesturing faintly towards the flashing lights. "You're injured. Let the EMTs take a look at you."
"The EMTs are busy," Will says, noticing now how completely ruined his voice is from when Hannibal struck his throat. More a death rattle than a human sound.
"They're saving his life, Bev," he continues. "They're gonna take him in that helicopter to the best hospital in the country so the doctors can sew him back together again."
"Will, please…" says Beverly, eyes bright. She walks up to where he's kneeling in the grass and puts her hand on his arm.
"All the king's horses and all the king's men…" sighs Will. "Christ, he's going to live, isn't he? I know he's going to live."
"He might," says Beverly, tightly. "It's not for you to decide."
Will shakes his bloody head. "He's taken everything from me. Wiped his poison over everything. I used to look out at my house in the dark and know that I was safe. But look at it now."
They both look. They see the house with its lights on, like a boat rising up on a tossing ocean. Police and sirens and blinding lights surround it, swarm it, defile it. Will's peaceful place, gone forever.
Beverly's hand tightens on his shoulder as Will begins to cry.