Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: Damn it, after all this time, Will's hurt too by the thought that they are on opposite sides of the kitchen door: that they are on opposite sides of the linoleum knife.
Author's Notes: One week for an update! The conclusion is nigh, dear readers, which is good because the new season is nigh! Less than a month for sweet satisfaction!
Readers, I can't thank you enough for joining me on this. You have been so wonderful. I really hope you like this one. Cheers!
Nine
Waking. Waking in a pleasant room. Waking calm.
The voice sounds too real to be coming from inside Will's head, but Hannibal's presence fails to register. Having developed sixth and seventh senses for that kind of thing, Will assumes that must mean he's alone and simply imagining Hannibal's voice. Projecting Miriam Lass's captivity onto his own complicated situation as he too wakes in a pleasant room, wakes calm, wakes rested.
He doesn't remember the drive to this place, wherever it is. Can't remember falling asleep or waking up to leave the vehicle. Can't remember coming inside, removing his shoes and coat, and lying down in this foreign bed. Will fumbles in the dark for a light and nearly knocks the lamp from its table in the process. He blinks from the suddenness of the light. The makings of a migraine collect at the front of his skull. Just where the hell has Hannibal taken them?
The room is not in a hotel: there are pictures, personal décor that give it away as a bedroom in a home. Will is awash with fear for the homeowner's safety, and that's when he remembers the man in the trunk of the car.
His legs shake as he rises, and while the stitches on his back pull, the wound doesn't burn with the same ferocity as it did before. Will takes a moment to run a hand over the dressings. They're clean. He doesn't remember having them changed, but they're fresh as the crime scenes Jack used to bring him. Fresher, even, since this is Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter he's talking about.
The bedroom door opens to a darkened hallway, lit at the far end by light coming from downstairs. Will's mouth waters from the smells wafting up the stairs. He hates himself for the response. He's salivating for people. Hannibal is cooking people.
He wants his gun, a knife, a sharp implement, something heavy – anything that could pass for a weapon. Anything that would give him the slightest advantage in the fight he knows he has to pick the second he gets downstairs. Will can't remember, but all that does is confirm some things for absolute certain: 1) Hannibal drugged him again, and did so because 2) Hannibal wanted to kill and cook a human being. Finally, 3) Hannibal did all this most likely so he could share a cannibalistic feast with Will.
The phone in the bedroom has been disconnected, and Hannibal has taken the liberty of removing any and every object that could be improvised into a weapon – concealed or otherwise. Yet another reason Will's memory has been impaired, no doubt. The good doctor has also seen fit to bed Will in a room with only one available exit. All the windows are sheer drops onto concrete. Beyond that, there is only trees and darkness, potentially not another soul for miles.
Will takes several deep breaths. The memories are there, they have to be. Hannibal wouldn't have…he doesn't even bother to finish that statement. Hannibal could and most assuredly would dose him. He needed Will complacent and incapacitated in order to acclimate to his new surroundings. He wants Will at a disadvantage.
"Wind him up, watch him go," Will mutters. He abandons the futile search for a weapon, phone, and way out for the heady scent of dinner downstairs. "Watch how I go…"
"Will, don't regress."
Hannibal's right: regression isn't helping. The pendulum swings, but there's nowhere for Will to go except back upstairs, which leads right back to the here and now.
"I'm not regressing," except that he is regressing. Will's regressing all the way back to Florence, to the moment he should have not gone with Hannibal. To the moment he should have risked bleeding to death in the street rather than joining the good doctor on the road trip from hell. He has to walk out of the kitchen and back into the dining room before his regression starts to show, only to realize a second too late that leaving the room is a regression in and of itself.
He never could lie to Hannibal.
Hannibal joins him in the dining room a moment later.
Will looks at the well-dressed table. "I don't want to hear whatever you're about to say," he tells the place setting meant for him.
"I wasn't about to say anything," Hannibal replies.
"Dinner's almost ready."
"Almost."
"But you haven't started the main course yet?"
"I was waiting for you. I was hoping we could prepare it together."
Will's mouth opens into a fine line. He inhales through his teeth, confounded as to why this is a decision. Why this is the one thing he takes the time to think about. Maybe it's that the rest of this experience has been a blur, one big catastrophe, and it's only now that the dust starts to settle that he's finally able to take stock of what's been lost.
"I thought we were being honest with each other."
"We are."
"Then why did you drug me?"
Hannibal considers his own place at the table. "I wanted to decontextualize this moment for you."
"You wanted to disorient me."
"I wanted to disconnect you. Had I left you conscious, you would be preoccupied with your allegiances to Jack Crawford and the FBI, to our last encounter, to Abigail. I'm asking you to be your own man, Will."
"You're asking me to be your man," Will finally risks looking at Hannibal. His train of thought completely derails. "What are you wearing?"
Hannibal inspects himself, "A plastic suit."
"You have a plastic suit?" Will is about to call it tasteless, but then he realizes the purpose of Hannibal's attire and is too shocked by the implications to say more. "You have a plastic murder suit?"
"There's a lot of blood in human bodies, Will."
"Yes, but you…" he can't say more. What else is there to say? Of course, Hannibal's right. Will holds up his hands in defeat. "This is fitting. You're prepared for this."
"So are you."
Will hisses: his laugh deflates. "What is happening?" he demands. "You're making dinner. We're traveling across Europe together. Jack Crawford is trailing us from Florence. I've killed people, you've killed people. Where is this heading, Hannibal?"
"I make a habit of never knowing where anything's headed."
"Liar. You make a habit of knowing how everyone will react."
"That's different."
"So how am I going to react? Did you really think that if you staged this, I would join you in there?"
Something crosses Hannibal's face, something Will hasn't seen since that last night in Baltimore. Something that disappears but lingers in Will's mirror receptors. Something akin to genuine hurt. Yes, Hannibal thought he knew exactly where tonight was headed, and all of a sudden, he doesn't anymore. He's stuck at the same crossroad as Will, the difference being that he knows where he wants to go and can't just force Will to come along this time.
"I thought you were at least willing to try."
That's not quite the truth, but it's not quite a lie either.
Out of respect to their past friendship, to whatever –ship they have sailing now, Will finds a gentler way of telling Hannibal what needs to be said at the moment. "I can't be my own man and go back into that kitchen with you."
Hurt, again, registers on Hannibal's face, then vanishes, but Will holds onto it in his mind. He feels it to. Damn it, after all this time, he's hurt too by the thought that they are on opposite sides of the kitchen door: that they are on opposite sides of the linoleum knife.
"Why did you come with me, Will?" Hannibal wonders aloud. "You accuse me of knowing our journey, but you had to have known this was eventually going to be our destination."
"I didn't think about this."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't want to think about this. I didn't want to think that we haven't changed. That you are still the Ripper and I am still…not."
"You still have the chance."
"I don't want it! I don't want that!" he points to the kitchen. "I understand you, Hannibal, but that doesn't mean that I want to be you."
"You are so much more than what you are, Will."
"Well, I don't want to be that either, not if it means what you're suggesting. I do what I do to save lives. You do what you do to end them in the most horrific ways possible."
"You really think the world will miss one man? Any man?"
"No, but I never much cared about what the world wants. I know that he doesn't want to die, that he is afraid of both of us, and that he does not deserve whatever terror you have planned for him."
"Would you trade your life for his, Will?" Hannibal's voice takes on that promising quality that once shook Will to the core. Now, Will faces it with a kind of certainty, not that Hannibal's bluffing but that the good doctor can't deliver.
"You wouldn't," he replies. "You wouldn't trade me for just any life. You couldn't even trade me for Abigail's."
Hannibal doesn't try to argue that point. He looks at the table he's laid, quiet with thought.
Will is impatient. "Where does this end, Hannibal?"
The good doctor fixes the clear plastic cuffs of his sleeves. "The same way all good days end, Will," he replies, "with a hearty meal." He turns and holds the swinging door to the kitchen open, giving Will full view of the abducted man, bloodied and bound to the table. The man's eyes are wide with fear.
"I won't let you kill him," Will promises.
Hannibal gives the smallest of shrugs, "Then I'm afraid you'll be joining me in the kitchen after all."
On the same side of the knife, for once.
Happy reading!