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She notices him notice her perfume.
He has tells, Hannibal, even if he may pride himself for disguising them. They’ve eroded in the last two years he’s been under her care, slow but sure as an unyielding cliff softening underneath the tireless ire of the sea. The Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane has a certain way of stripping every last defense from its patients, even ones as apparently impenetrable as Hannibal Lecter.
He watches Alana approach, tilting his head to the side as his eyes cloud faintly with concentration. The lines around his mouth tighten ever so slightly as he inhales the scent of her, undeterred by the bulletproof glass wall that separates them.
“Peonies and pine,” he notes. “Special occasion today, Dr. Bloom?”
She sees no reason to beat around the bush, nor does she want to be unnecessarily cruel. She was always better than that.
“Will Graham is getting married today,” she says.
Hannibal stills then, his smile fading, freezing in place with his arms looped behind his back where he stands in his cell. He watches her carefully—trying to discern whether or not she is lying. She looks back at him and the vulnerable line of his throat moves as he swallows, his only other reaction to the revelation.
“I never took Will for the marrying type,” is all he says, finally. “Do convey my congratulations to his lucky groom, whoever he may be.”
“I’ll be sure to let Molly know, though I doubt she’ll want to hear anything you have to say.”
“A woman,” he says softly, and now there’s a slight smile playing on his mouth. It does a pitiful job of hiding the sting of salt rubbed into a wound that has never closed. “I rather thought that Will’s affections for the gentler sex died with you.”
“His only affection for the rougher sex was for you,” Alana says. “If what he felt for you can be called affection.”
“What would you call it?”
“Codependency,” she says after a pause. “A deep-rooted and unhealthy psychological obsession. What would you call it, Hannibal?”
His eyes never leave hers. “I would call it love.”
“I doubt he would agree.”
“For a man who spends so much time dwelling on distinguishing his emotions from those of others, Will was never fond of directly addressing his feelings.”
“He loves Molly,” she says, but it sounds defensive even to her own ears. She had never even met Molly until a few months ago when she and Will had gotten engaged, and there had been something almost clinical about their intimacy; essential and caring, but ultimately lacking depth. Molly will never understand Will, not entirely. Nobody can, nobody except for the man standing in front of Alana now, triumphant in the same realization, in the knowledge that in the only way that truly matters, Will is and will always be his alone.
“I’m sure he does,” is all Hannibal says, his little smile widening. “Tell me, what is she like?”
“Molly?” Alana is briefly caught off guard by the question. “She’s—kind. Funny. Caring in the way only a mother can be.”
“Will is to be a father as well as a husband then,” Hannibal says. “A daughter, or a son?”
She swallows, her throat tight. “A stepson.”
“A readymade family then, perfect to serve his needs. He can kiss them both goodnight before dreaming of blood and screams when he closes his eyes beside them.”
“Will doesn’t work for the FBI anymore.”
“And yet.” He inclines his head. “The nightmares will never go away.”
“Nor will the thoughts of you.”
“No,” he agrees.
“Isn’t that why you turned yourself in? So that he would always know you were here. Waiting for him.”
He says nothing, and she begins to turn away. “I’ll give the happy couple your regards, Hannibal.”
“Why come here to tell me?” his voice asks as she begins to leave, and she pauses for a moment.
“I thought you should know,” she says. “And I thought he would want you to know, too. Even if he would never say it.”
Without another backwards glance she steps away, turning to leave the cell. Hannibal watches her go, and she doesn’t see the raw half-moons cut into his palms where his hands had been clenched into fists behind his back, the blood running down his palms instead of tears.
In all his two years in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Hannibal has never once contemplated escape.
He has thought about it, of course—mostly as a thought exercise, something to keep boredom and stagnation at bay as he lies in his cell, staring upward at the ceiling. He closes his eyes and imagines it, going step by step through the entire meticulous process of it until he is standing in the moonlight with blood on his hands and ragged bits of flesh caught between his teeth.
He usually opens his eyes then, allowing the fantasy to fall away, but a few times he has allowed himself to go further. Into the wilderness and across the flatlands and fields of the country, into freedom. And yet no matter which direction he walks in after he escapes, his mind always takes him to Wolf Trap.
He never moves. He merely stands cloaked in the shadows of the trees and watches the squat little white house with its lemon-yellow windows spilling golden light into the cold air and the lazy curl of smoke coming from the chimney, knowing that he can never draw any closer.
But now—now, he begins to consider it. Slipping through the five doors between him and the outside, making quick work of the guards and the doctors and the receptionists. Offering his congratulations to the happy couple in person; breaking every single one of Molly Graham’s fingers for touching him, ripping out her lips for kissing him, flaying her open for daring to love him.
And then… then what?
You delight. I tolerate.
And suddenly he is back in Wolf Trap two years ago, with a notebook strewn across his lap whose thin yellowing pages are scrawled all over with equations to turn back time and Will’s voice echoing in his ears, telling him, “The teacup’s broken. It’s never going to gather itself back together again.”
He sits outside in the bitter, bitter cold, and he weeps.
He is eight years old again, tears freezing on his cheeks and the taste of his sister’s flesh souring his tongue. The lost, lonely boy who was abandoned and left to rot, something shriveling and dying inside of him. It remains there, festering, spreading its rot till he’s entirely consumed by it.
But it had not died. It had remained beating, sluggish and slow, but alive. A wounded, dying animal that snapped at whoever came close, retreating to lick wounds that reopened and bled afresh every day. But not Will. Will had stayed, and he had earned its trust as he had with his countless strays; fed it, befriended it, healed it.
And then he put a blade through it. Hannibal had given his wounded heart to Will, and Will had slaughtered it.
There will be nothing for him if he leaves the hospital. If he wants to see Will, then he will have to lure him here. He will have to hook the fisherman himself, bait him and then reel him in slow and careful. But that day is not today, and knows he will be waiting a long, long time for it to come.
And so all he can do on Will Graham’s wedding day is look up at the ceiling far above where he lies in his cell, and hope that even once, he thinks of him.
“Gray,” Hannibal says distastefully, but there’s mirth there too, glimmering in his wine-dark eyes as they rake over his body. “You should have chosen navy.”
Will tugs self-consciously at the hem of his suit, the dark gray of dying coals. “Go away.”
Hannibal raises a brow where Will sees his reflection in the mirror, standing behind him. He knows that if he turns around there will be nobody there, the space where he should be empty and cold.
“Your tie is rather appalling as well,” he goes on, ignoring Will. “It bleeds you of color.” He himself is decked head to toe in black, uncharacteristically so. As if he were attending a funeral and not a wedding. There’s a purple hyacinth tucked into his buttonhole, its downy petals splayed directly over his heart.
Will says nothing, reaching beside him for the glass of whiskey he had set on the table and taking a long, stinging swallow. It burns a line of fire all the way down his throat, settling like a pit of venomous snakes in his stomach.
“Wedding jitters, or perhaps something more?” Hannibal asks, eyeing the diminished liquid in Will’s glass. “You seem nervous, Will. Afraid.”
He shuts his eyes. “I’m not afraid.”
“No?” He doesn’t have to look to see Hannibal is smiling, that little Cheshire cat smile of self-satisfaction and contentment that curls his mouth whenever he knows he has the upper hand. It had enraged him, once. Today, though, he only feels tired, all the way down to his bones.
“Leave me alone,” he says.
“I am not here, Will,” Hannibal reminds him archly. “You have the power to make me disappear whenever you wish to, and yet here I am.”
“It’s not exactly my choice.”
“Is it not?” He looks up, and Hannibal has moved closer in the mirror, hovering just over Will’s shoulder. He can almost feel the warmth of his every breath on the nape of his neck, tickling the sensitive skin there. He could scent him like this, pull in a single breath and learn for himself what Will is trying so desperately to hide, even from himself.
“You took your inner voice back long ago,” Hannibal goes on, his eyes meeting Will’s in the mirror. “I am not in your head anymore, Will.”
“You are.” His fingers tighten on the glass of whiskey, the tips of his fingers blanching with the force of his grip. “Just not the way you were before.”
Hannibal smiles again at the admission, but this time it’s gentler. Genuine, soft, sweet almost. It breaks his fucking heart.
“Oh, Will,” he says, impossibly fond. He sets a hand on his back, fingers curling gently over the curve of Will’s shoulder. For one wretched, desperate moment Will wishes he could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his suit, wishes he could turn around and actually see him there, feel him there—
“Will?”
He spins around, Hannibal vanishing behind him as he does. Alana is pushing the door open and stepping inside, striking as always in a scarlet pantsuit and jet-black heels. She smiles at him, but it feels strained somehow.
“Hi,” she says.
He forces his heartbeat to slow. “Hi.”
“I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time,” she says, shutting the door behind her. “You look a little pale.”
“Just wedding jitters.” He almost winces at the sound of Hannibal’s words coming out of his mouth—but they hadn’t been Hannibal’s words, not really. “What are you doing here?”
She looks down and away, her fingers lacing tightly together. Trepidation, nervousness, maybe even a little fear. It colors the air between them, snaking towards him with tendrils of it going into his lungs when he breathes.
“Alana,” he says, and his voice is sharp. “What is it?”
She sighs. “I told Hannibal you were getting married today,” she says.
He feels himself go still, an almost involuntary muscle response to hearing anyone say his name. His whole body seems to seize up, stiffening and growing cold, as though he were freezing slowly into a statue made of ice.
“Why?”
“I felt like he should know. And I know you feel the same, but you would never go and tell him. Someone had to.”
“I’m sure he took the news well.” He scoffs, turning away. “I didn’t want him to know, Alana.”
“Yes, you did.”
“How did he take the news?”
She pauses for a moment. “Not well,” she says finally. “He asked me to offer Molly his congratulations, though at first he assumed you were marrying a man.”
He barks out a laugh at that, acerbic and bitter and entirely devoid of humor. “Of course he did.”
“He wasn’t particularly pleased that you have a son now, either.” She smiles a little, ruefully, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I imagine it’s… difficult for him, to come to terms with the fact that you have a child with somebody else.”
“Alana.” He looks away sharply, clenching his jaw. “Don’t.”
“It’s the truth,” she says. She’s grown so much colder, Alana. Developed an exoskeleton over those long months of recovery in the hospital after her spine and her spirit had been broken. She had adapted, just as he had. And yet he feels a strange kind of grief, for the woman she had been. Just one more among the countless lives Hannibal had taken.
“What you had,” she goes on, ruthless, “what you shared, it was not healthy, Will.”
“I know that.” He still isn’t looking at her. “You think I don’t know that?”
“It was also an incredibly intimate connection with someone based on pure understanding and acceptance that you may never find again.”
At that he turns, meeting her gaze. She looks back steadily, and when he sees her—really sees her, instead of just looking at her—he sees no judgement, no condemnation. He sees only a strange kind of understanding, a deep-rooted recognition and acceptance. Having Hannibal under her care would mean she has privileged access to his mind, or at least whatever pitiful semblance of it that he offers her. But Alana has always been more perspicacious than people give her credit for, and not even Hannibal could take her sympathy away.
“I was under the impression you thought Hannibal wasn’t good for me,” he ventures. “That our relationship was destructive.”
“It was,” she concedes. “And it still is, Will. And he isn’t good for you, I was right. But what I didn’t see then was that you weren’t exactly good for him either. But in your own way, you were perfect for each other.”
She tilts her head with a smile, and amends, “Well. Maybe it would be better to say you deserve each other.”
“Don’t you mean ‘deserved’?”
“No.”
“It’s been two years, Alana.” He glances away again, taking in another burning mouthful of whiskey. “Whatever happened, whatever came of it… it’s done now.”
“You know that’s not true,” Alana says softly. “As long as you know where he is, as long as he knows you know, it’s not done. You never could stay away. And neither could he.”
There’s something quiet and almost pensive in her voice, and when he looks back at her something stirs, faintly, behind her eyes. He zeroes in on it, turning fully towards her and taking a step forward.
“Alana,” he says. “What else did he say?”
She hesitates. “Will…”
“Tell me.”
“No.” She draws herself up, crossing her arms. “It would be better for him and you—and Molly, too, if you didn’t know.”
“What would be better for me?”
For the second time that day Will finds himself turning to see the door opening, Molly’s face insinuating between the frame and the wall. A moment later she pulls it open fully and steps through, beautiful in her simple but pretty white dress with her hair down. She’s smiling, her cheeks glowing pink. The picture of a radiant bride on her wedding day.
Alana’s face closes immediately, a subtle but conspicuous shutter going down over her eyes. She smiles a moment later, turning towards Molly, and it’s as if the last few minutes never happened at all.
“Just dropped by to say hi,” she says, stepping towards the door. “Congratulations, you two.”
Then she’s gone, the door swinging shut behind her. A moment later Molly is there, eyes bright and pink lips quirked up into that coy smile he’s come to love over the last year and a half.
“Hey, stranger,” she says, stepping forward and pulling gently on his tie. He goes willingly, allowing her to reel him in for a kiss. He melts into the soft, familiar touch, warm and comforting and good. This is good, what they have. Healthy and normal, steady and reliable.
Because he does love Molly, loves her how he’s supposed to. Gentle touches and smiling hands, fingers reaching out to tuck wayward locks of hair behind ears and laughter in the kitchen on buttery Sunday mornings. There’s no blood, no feathered stag that walks through his dreams and leaves him haunted, no burn of destructive desire in the back of his throat like gasoline waiting to go up at a moment’s notice and burn him away to nothing.
They break apart slowly, and Will blinks out at her with a smile. “Hey.”
She laughs, wiping a careful thumb across his lower lip where her lipstick rubbed off. “What were you doing in here all by yourself?”
“Just thinking.” Over Molly’s shoulder Hannibal’s bloodstained face flickers, his grinning teeth stained scarlet. “It’s a big day.”
“Cold feet, bridegroom mine?” She gently tweaks his nose with a finger. “You gonna abscond and leave me at the altar?”
“Never.” He loops his arms around her waist, pulling her close. “You know, you’re not even supposed to be in here. Bad luck and all that.”
“Because I believe that one look at you before the wedding will take away a year and a half of wanting to marry you.” She tilts her head back to smile at him and he feels a sudden, sick rush of something cold and vicelike grip his heart, crushing it slowly.
“I love you,” he tells her, shoving it away. “And Wally, too. I love both of you. And I promise—I swear—that I won’t let anything happen to you, either of you.”
“Will.” She places a hand on his cheek, her touch soft and impossibly tender. “I know. And I love you, too.”
She draws back, stepping away. “I’ll see you out there,” she says, and he nods. With one last small kiss to his cheek she turns and leaves, the door locking behind her with a soft click. He feels that same cold, crushing fist close around his heart again, squeezing it between its frigid iron fingers as he watches her go.
“It is shame,” Hannibal says from behind him, the words murmured like sweet nothings into his ear with all the surety of damnation, crushing him beneath the weight of inevitability and the futility of everything he had done to try and forget. “Because even as you pledge yourself to her, you know that in your heart, you will only ever love me.”
One year later
They call him “The Tooth Fairy”. Hannibal wrinkles his nose at the name; it’s unimaginative and crass, shallow as only law enforcement and journalists can be. The newspaper’s loose sheets rustle gently as he opens it, laying it out onto the table.
The photos are grainy at best, showing him a mere shadow of the crime scene, but it’s enough. The latest of two family murders, the perfect concoction of gruesome and horrific and enthralling. The public will be in a clamor, and he knows that soon, Jack Crawford will be making a very important phone call.
Perhaps it’s time Hannibal went fishing.
Carefully he reaches into the shelf beneath his desk, drawing out a sheet of paper and a pen. He constructs the fly meticulously, considering each and every word carefully before tying it all together with a neat, microscopic knot. Designed to seduce, disguised as something you think you can trust.
Tucking the folded sheet into an envelope and swiping his tongue across the lip he quickly crosses the length of his cell in two strides, sliding the letter into the metal box. Soon it will be sent, his fly sailing across the still water and landing directly in front of his quarry. He is optimistic, that he will bite.
But until then, he can wait. Smiling to himself he takes his place in the cell once more, intent anchoring itself into his bones and anticipation unfurling its wings in his heart. Then he leans his head back, closes his eyes and wades into the quiet of the stream.