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I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
Dogfish-Mary Oliver
The body of Molly Graham is found exactly thirty-five hours after her death cradling her half-dead son in the Graham’s driveway. She is pronounced dead at the scene, her wounds are severe enough that she would’ve barely had the energy to escape the house, and had chosen to spend the last of it trying to protect their son.
Seventy miles away, Will Graham is told by Jack Crawford that his wife is dead.
It’s apparent something is wrong the moment Jack slips out of the lush, safe confines of Alana and Margot’s study, where they’re been settled discussing their next move-ways to trick the dragon into showing himself, mostly. Occasionally, mostly to lessen the deep, dark lines on Jack’s face, Alana slips in a story about their son-a comfort barely afforded by the shroud of Hannibal Lecter that darkens the room.
Will’s general unease only grows when he reappears a minute later, face shadowed with fresh sadness. He doesn’t hesitate, though, doesn't sugarcoat it in the way Will’s seen him do for victim’s families. Instead, he plants his feet, looks him in the eyes, and murmurs Molly’s dead.
It sinks in terribly quickly, in a rush of known, seen consequences. The unease washes away, replaced with harboring waves of grief. His body shudders with it-big wracking things that make him ache down to his bones. Alana’s somewhere to his left, rubbing his back, consoling him with the sort of fire-heavy affection she’s always held for him.
The boy is alive. Jack says, loud enough it breaks through the ringing in his ears. He appears infront of him, all brown leather shoes that dig into the plush rug. He places a hand on his shoulder, still iron gripped, and lends him an empathetic sound.
Will Graham closes his eyes and weeps.
Wally Graham lives another day and a half.
It’s a miserable affair, Will spends it curled in a hospital chair tucked as close to his son as he can be. Touching what little of his arm hasn’t been claimed by medical demands. The rest of him is the same; barely visible beneath the jungle of wires, bandages, and cannisters holding him together. His chances of survival are slim to none, if what the doctors say is to be believed, Will refuses to listen.
He doesn’t sleep-he’s not sure it would be possible even if Molly had lived. There’s too much settling itself in his chest, curling in on itself with terrible ease. It makes his stomach curdle with endless grief, the kind that force him to stay.
He doesn’t sleep and it sticks to the sides of his brain the way it did when the encephalitis had been untreated. It’s not as rough and raw-edged as it had been without treatment, there is no blood and gore, no murders. Still, it smooths itself over him like the current of a cool, smooth creek.
He hallucinates the edge of Abigail by his side, the way she looked when she’d been in that jungle of tubes and cords. She never says anything, which is somehow worse than Florence, when she’d been his endless companion. Instead, she stands on the other side of the bed and watches his son intently, studying the slow, ragged way he breathes. The green-blue of her eyes are wrong somehow, and Will feels another pinch of grief at the thought of her details slipping away. That eventually his wife will meet the same fate.
When Wally flatlines, she looks at Will and smiles.
Jack organizes their funerals.
Their bodies are let go sooner than most from the Tooth Fairy case. Probably because Price and Zeller carry this burden too, heavy on their shoulders with the knowledge that these people are Will’s. Though he suspects that Jack clears Molly and Wally before they’re even set to be autopsied.
It feels more like a professional courtesy than anything else, maybe a final apology. At least, that’s what’s written across his face when he asks Will what their favorite things were, what the FBI can give them.
“White lilies.” He tells him quietly, “Molly loved white lilies.”
He doesn’t attend either of them. They’re closed-casket family affairs in a way that makes his skin crawl.
His presence would be unwelcome anyway, he’d be a burden of bad faith. A flashing signal of the one that made it-the one that got them killed. At least, that’s what he tells himself.
Will says goodbye to Molly and Walter near the iced-over river on the far lines of their property. It had been somewhere he’d taken Wally to dig and forage in the mud, to practice catching little fish and to poke at toads and cradle tadpoles. Molly would tag along sometimes, usually to sit and read on the bank, sometimes to laugh at the both of them when they’d get damp and mucky.
He takes his wedding ring with him, places it in the evidence bag with Molly’s, now broken in half, and weighs it down with smooth, earth-gray stones. Unblinking, he tosses it into the deepest part of the stream.
A lump of grief forms low in his throat when the edges of the plastic baggy sink into the brown slurry of dirty, winter water. He swallows it down and holds one wrist tight enough to bruise.
He does not speak, and he does not look back when he leaves.
Jack puts him up in a hotel.
Initially, he’d tried to get Will to stay with him for a while, in the same house that Bella lived and died in. Will had refused, his eyes had already been catching enough glimpses of Molly, of his children, adding the ghost of Bella to the rotation seemed like too much. So, he stays at a hotel instead.
It’s nothing special-a Holiday Inn with dusty sheets and halls that smell of industrial cleaner and old cigarettes. But it’s better than sleeping in the cabin. It’s better than being alone.
Really, Will’s not sure if the FBI’s doing it or Jack’s paying out of pocket. He can’t bring himself to care, though, or to ask. It’s nothing more than a dark space to toss around in for a while.
He still doesn’t sleep, not really. He wakes and drifts in fitful, hour-long spurts that seem to stretch on forever, until the room is too hot to sleep in and his brain is too fried to let him go. The nightmares start up again though, rapid-fire and pulsing through the little sleep he manages to get each night.
There’s one that reoccurs: He’s sitting with Molly and Wally, eating dinner in the seclusion of their cabin. They’re fine, not decayed or gored, not in pain or suffering. Abigail joins them sometimes, more often on the days he swears he can see her mousey hair in the wind. She is whole. They are all whole. And Will is happy.
They always start to fall apart halfway through dessert. When Will thinks it might be safe, when his heart has finally begun to stop aching. Abigail always dies first, cracks and splits at the seams, tearing limb from limb like a doll being torn from the places where it’s been sewn together. Her blood coats the floors slick and heavy, so that Will has to sit and watch. She never pleads for her life, never asks for it to stop, she just cries silently, never once looking away from Will. Then Molly, who often turns to Wally and tells her that she’s alright, she’ll be alright, before her screams are forced out of her, before she begs Will to put her back together. Her blood joins Abigail’s until Will is soaked with it-warm and terrified.
Walter is always last. He cries terribly, tries to cling to himself as it happens. He calls Will Dad when he begs to be saved, which he’d never done when he’d been alive. His fate is the kindest, though, because he passes out quickly, when the blood starts to pour from the tears in his skin.
The first time it happened, Will had woken up so violently he’d fallen out of bed, curling into the floor and sobbing quietly to himself.
This time, when Will wakes up, he throws himself out of bed, stumbles to the bathroom, and empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet.
The cool tile of the bathroom floor serves as a reprieve, something he strips his shirt off to feel pressed against the entirety of his chest. Something wells itself in him, like a dam filling until it bursts. Anger, he decides.
And for the first time in three years, Will Graham thinks about Hannibal Lecter.
It takes a week and a half to convince Alana and Jack to let him see Hannibal. Jack’s the one that holds out the longest, expression grim, eyes dark in the dreary, cement offices of the BSHCI.
“You don’t need this, Will.” He tells him.
Will scoffs, “My wife is dead, my child is dead, I don’t have anything to lose. He can’t take anything from me.”
Alana makes a sound from her place at her desk, something wounded and quiet. He ignores it.
“Last time you saw him, he tried to cut your fucking brains out.” Jack reminds him.
“Let him. I don’t fucking care. I want the Tooth Fairy caught.” Will decides, voice wavering, “I want him dead.”
“I want him caught too, Will, but opening up communication with Hannibal again is dangerous.” Alana tells him, voice soft, “He talks about you often. He hasn’t forgotten what you told him.”
“Let me see him.” Will can’t keep the desperate, raw edge of him from seeping in, “Please.”
He’s allowed into the dank, deep hallways of the BSHCI the next day. Alana leads him to Hannibal’s room, reminds him of the rules; no touching, no blocking the cameras, call for help if you feel unsafe. He hears it, feels it slip under his skin, where it stays, unused and forgotten.
Hannibal looks terribly smug when he walks in, stance board-straight and shoulders high, even in his cream-colored, state-issued jumpsuit. “Will.” He greets.
“My wife is dead.” Will says. He can feel his chest cave with the revelation, with the way that Hannibal’s presence affects him. “My wife is dead.”
Judging by the hitch in Hannibal’s breath, it must be new information. “Dead?”
“Murdered.” Will clarifies gruffly, hands digging deep into the pockets of his trousers, “By the Tooth Fairy.”
“My condolences.” Hannibal replies smoothly, blinking as slow and serenely as a lion in its den.
A funny laugh works its way out of Will’s throat, something doused in grief, twisted in anger and bad humor. He studies Hannibal then, in his grayed, lonely stance. “I never thought I’d hear you apologize for a murder you caused.”
Hannibal shrugs, “I didn’t cause this one.”
“My wife is dead, Hannibal. The least you can do is be honest.”
Something in Hannibal’s expression glazes, “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
“I don’t. But my wife was gutted in front of our house. She was cut clean through the abdomen and left to bleed out. Almost exactly where you cut me when you-“ his voice falters then, cracking with emotion. “When Abigail died.”
Hannibal’s face softens almost imperceptibly, “I can assure you, I had no involvement in the murder of your wife. I am sorry for your suffering.”
“No, you’re not.” Will snaps, “You kept me on a wires edge for months. You let my brain stew in it’s own juices without telling me what was happening, you killed our daughter in your kitchen and didn’t even have the fucking decency to let me die too. Don’t fucking lie.”
“Why are you here, Will?”
“I’m here because I want to know why you can’t let me be.” He can feel tears now, hot and heavy against his cheeks. “You fucking asshole.”
Hannibal considers him for a second, watches him with dark shark-eyes. “I’ve often imagined what it would be like when you came back to me. I do wish it had been under better circumstances.”
“Just tell me you fucking did it, Hannibal. Tell me you did it. Let me go.” He begs, feeling his knees give out under him.
“I have had no contact with him.” Hannibal says, crouching to his level on the other side of the plexiglass.
“Will,” he whispers, “I did not kill your wife.”
“Fuck you.” Will says, and he feels like he’s being gutted all over again.
“I regret the way that night went.” Hannibal says heavily, “I would never repeat it to provoke a response out of you, let alone to make a mockery of it.”
Will makes a wounded noise, buries his head in his hands, “I keep dreaming of it. Of the way Abigail died.”
“I am sorry for that.” Hannibal says, and suddenly he can hear Hannibal shuffling, standing before he speaks again; “Alana.”
Will feels her hands on his shoulders before he hears her, “Hannibal.” She says curtly, and promptly busies herself lifting Will from the concrete floor.
“He didn’t do it.” Will tells her through thick, salted tears. “He didn’t do it.”
“Alright,” she murmurs. “Come on.”
Hannibal does not speak as she ushers him out the door.
The nightmares get worse after his visit.
They choke him, send him spiraling and drowning in cries and half-forgotten details. He dies in them now too, usually by Hannibal’s cruel, soft hand. He still watches them all die, but Hannibal sits with him. He touches his cheek tenderly, the way he had in his kitchen three years ago, comforts him through the worst of the gore, and then kills him quickly.
He works up the courage to ask him why one night, when Hannibal’s holding his face like clay in his hands. It's a whispered thing, propped against the gentle edge of Hannibal’s thumb against his stubble.
“Mercy.” Hannibal tells him, and then he stabs him through the stomach.
He wakes up screaming.
Fortunately enough, it’s six am, a half-reasonable time to be awake. He goes to shower, scrubbing the memory of Hannibal’s fingers pressed against his skin, and dresses quickly.
He drives to Jack’s house before he can really reason with himself, rings the doorbell before he has a chance to second-guess it.
Jack answers, which is surprising. He’s dressed in a deep maroon robe thrown over striped pajamas and worn, brown slippers. He eyes Will through the set of glasses perched low on his nose for five seconds before he speaks; “You look like shit.”
“Hannibal’s in love with me.” Will tells him.
His eyebrows jump, “Come in.”
His house is nice-sized, well-furnished with loved, old things. He tips his head at Will’s feet when he closes the door behind him, and Will toes off his shoes.
He leads him to the kitchen in a slow, calm shuffle, pointing wearily at a barstool before he turns to start making coffee in an ancient, glass Mr Coffee. Will, because he’d prefer not to be lectured, sits in it without a fight.
“The first week after Bella died I didn’t sleep a wink.” Jack tells him, diligently scooping coffee grounds into the filter chamber. “I remember thinking that if I went to sleep, I’d have to wake up and lose her all over again.”
Will swallows, “It’s not like that for me. I know they’re dead when I’m asleep and I know they’re dead when I’m awake. I keep having nightmares.”
“Nightmares?”
He shrugs, “They’re not as vivid as they were before I got treatment. But I watch them die every night.”
Jack sniffs, turns to face him, leaning back against the solid granite counter, “Molly and Walter?”
“And Abigail Hobbes.”
Something in Jack’s expression falters, “Is Hannibal the one killing them?”
“No.” He tries to ignore the lump forming in his throat, “They die…supernaturally. He kills me, though.”
Jack turns to pour the coffee into two worn, sunflower-yellow mugs, “I’m sorry.”
“He’s in love with me, Jack.”
Jack’s jaw tightens as he hands over a mug, shuffling to the fridge to pull out a carton of milk, “I know.” he says softly, “Alana told me two weeks after the trial ended.”
Will laughs, low and angry, “And no one thought to tell me?”
“Would it have done anything but make you more miserable?” He asks, “You’d already suffered enough. Besides, there was enough damning evidence against him to lock him up for a million years. We thought it would be better for everyone the fewer compelling reasons you had to see him.”
It spears Will between the ribs, “I would’ve liked the choice.”
Jack clicks his tongue, “You deserved some peace.”
“And now my wife is dead.”
“He’s had no contact with the Tooth Fairy, his calls are monitored end-to-end and encrypted entirely, his mail is opened and read before he even gets it, his guards are hired through a specialized program that weeds out anyone that’s the least bit susceptible to baseline manipulation. We would know if they’d been talking.”
Will takes a sip of his coffee, “Are the records publicly available?”
“Of the case?” Jack asks, “Yes. The specifics of his attempt on our lives? No.”
“Could those have been leaked?”
Jack shrugs, “Of course. But it would’ve taken some effort, and if they had been leaked, they would’ve ended up on Tattlecrime within a day.”
“How did he know where to stab Molly then? Because that spot was pretty damn specific and it was pretty fuckin’ clear what he was trying to recreate.” Will flares.
“He didn’t cut Walter’s throat,” Jack reasons, “it could’ve been a coincidence.”
That makes Will’s stomach knot, “I know.”
“But you don’t think it was.”
Will shakes his head, “The Tooth Fairy doesn’t target children the same way he targets parents. They’re a secondary thought. It's why-” he takes a shaky breath, “it’s why Wally was shot. He didn’t matter. He wasn’t the target, he was an afterthought.”
“You think he did it to taunt you?”
“Who? Hannibal?” Will takes a sip, “I don’t think it was that. I don’t-he wouldn’t. His kills are artful, even the ones he orchestrates but doesn’t execute. If it had been a recreation it would’ve been in the kitchen, and Wally would’ve…”
Jack nods, “So, the Tooth Fairy had a source.”
“Probably just Tattlecrime, those pictures of me in the hospital stayed up for two days before you managed to get them taken down.”
“We’ll have the website seized.” The hard edge of Jack’s tone harbors no argument.
“Lounds won’t be happy about that.”
“Lounds can go fuck herself.”
Will looks at him then, “I want him dead, Jack. I don’t care if he’s brought to justice. I want him dead.”
“For what it’s worth, Will,” Jack murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
He visits Hannibal again after that, despite Alana’s pleas for him to stay away.
“Go,” she tells him, “just go somewhere. Get away from this before it swallows you whole.”
He shakes his head, and walks past her, into Hannibal’s room.
He’s sketching this time, hand moving slowly, gently against the paper. He doesn’t look up, instead greeting Will with a; “You’re back.”
“Well, you’re such a lovely host I really couldn’t resist.” Will says, letting it fall from his mouth acrid and flat.
Hannibal smiles, “What do you need, Will?”
“I believe you.” He starts, “I know you didn’t-” The words burn in his throat, and he holds them in.
Hannibal sets his pencil down and looks at him, “Good.” He says, like he knew it would happen.
“I want the Tooth Fairy dead.” Will admits quietly, “I want him to suffer.”
“Dear Will,” Hannibal purrs, “I’d do anything you asked me to.”
“But you can’t.” Will reminds him, “At least, not while Alana’s holding your leash.”
Hannibal hums, “She can be dealt with.”
“Don’t kill her.” Will says, “I can’t-not her.”
“Still fond of her? After everything?”
Will shrugs, “I refuse to let her wife raise a child alone. There have been enough families lost to this.”
“And what of our family Will?” Hannibal’s mouth is so startlingly red when he says it that for a moment Will is afraid he’s dreaming.
“It died in your kitchen.” He tells him. “You gutted me to make sure of it.”
He turns on his heel and leaves before Hannibal can respond.
The trap they’ve set is a tedious one; one that relies on Hannibal remaining (or at least, appearing) completely clueless.
It’s easy enough to move him around, with Alana’s promise of restored privacy to his mail, he agrees to move facilities in an hour. Easier still to plant the idea of killing the Tooth Fairy-Hannibal seems fairly eager to kill anything, but he’s particularly interested in doing it to earn Will’s favor. Drawing the Tooth Fairy out is harder-they spend hours painstakingly recreating the way Lounds types, the types of pictures she includes in her articles, even the title of the piece before they post it.
Still, they lie in wait for almost a week. Until they’re sure the Tooth Fairy has had enough time to read the article.
The day comes when it’s time to move Hannibal-when Will volunteers to sit in the back of the caravan with him, unspeaking and statuesque. He spends the afternoon blending in with the taskforce; in their black, bulletproof vests and heavy military boots. Briefly, he wonders if it’s worth it.
Hannibal escapes, as planned, and they end up in a house on the edge of a cliff. He lets himself be cleaned up and served fruit-heavy wine in the angled living room, lets the feeling of loss run its course through his veins when Hannibal sits across from him.
“I thought about bringing you here.” Hannibal tells him, “I thought you both might like the bluff.”
“Did you bring her here?” He asks, though the thought of it makes his lungs burn.
Hannibal shakes his head, “I meant to.”
There’s something in his eyes when he says it, clouded and quiet. “I loved her too, Will.”
“Not like I did.” He spits. “Not like you should’ve.”
“Should I have tightened myself around her the way you did? I wanted her to grow. I wanted to show both of you many things.”
He means to tell Hannibal off with a cutting, angry comment, but all that comes out is a soft: “How could you?”
“The path to redemption is a difficult one. I fear I’ll never make my way to its end in your eyes, no matter what justification I give you.”
“You loved me then.” Will tells him.
His eyes soften, “I love you now.”
It makes Will’s stomach twist, adrenaline spiking. He wants to kill him, to kiss him, to leave him alone.
He doesn’t get a chance to do any of that, because a shot pierces through one of the house’s windows and into Hannibal.
The fight with the Tooth Fairy is brutal. There is loss in the scarlet that covers the stone patio, in the way the curling of his chest releases. In the feeling of stabbing and brutalizing the man that killed Molly. In the sharp pain of the blade to his shoulder and then, to his cheek. He fights harder than he ever has, and relishes in the biting, clawing instinct to kill with Hannibal by his side.
The Tooth Fairy dies in the early hours of the morning, spread out on the stone patio with wings made from blood and bone. Will lets him be, the howling, angry thing in his chest seizing slowly. The dizziness that hits him is slow, wandering.
He realizes he’s going to die when he looks at Hannibal, equally bloodied and beaten. The hole in his stomach sits uncovered, though he winces when he stands and offers his hand to Will. When he clutches at his shoulders and the back of his neck.
“I love you.” He says. “I love you.”
Will cries, but no tears come. “It’s beautiful.” He says instead.
Hannibal smiles at him, toothy and gritted, and kisses him.
He hauls himself closer to Hannibal’s chest, tucked against the palpitating of his heart, to the warm trickle of his wound, to the spark of his affection.
The hand that makes it to the side of his face is an accident, as is the one that clutches at his gray sweater. Still, he grips hard and leans, smiling.
And then they fall.