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He’s been tracking her for five months, seven if he counts the two he spent recuperating and relying on hearsay.
The good thing about being on the run with Hannibal Lecter is that he has seemingly endless resources at his disposal, including a high-end private investigator he keeps on indefinite retainer. Will chooses not to ask how many of his nights alone in Wolf Trap were monitored, he knows the answer, doesn’t need to see the photographs.
He watches her declare him dead, sign paperwork, clear their house, scrub her life clean of him. She gives away his clothes, sells the boat, moves to Florida, buys a small two-bedroom bungalow in the suburbs.
Molly Graham dies a quiet death, and Molly Foster lives.
She gives away most of the dogs, but she keeps Winston, and Will is content with that to be placeholder for his memory.
He imagines that she will slough away the hardened shell of sadness eventually, will learn how to be happy without looking over her shoulder, but he knows there’s only one way to ensure her peace of mind.
Hannibal doesn’t like it, but Will knew he wouldn’t. Hannibal lets him get away with an awful lot these days.
When she books a vacation for her and Walter, Will examines her itinerary and notes that she has a two-day stopover in Paris. It’s a two-hour drive from the Loire Valley, and Will convinces Hannibal to let him use the Aston Martin. It’s ostentatious, but she wouldn’t look at it twice, never imagining her twitchy dead husband would be behind the wheel.
It’s easy to find her hotel, and he waits until she puts Walter to bed and leaves the George V to explore the arrondissement. He watches the city lights play over her face, glad that she’s relaxed enough to leave Walter unsupervised and make some time for herself.
He’s never stopped finding her beautiful, but he appreciates her with clinical distance now. He notes the pleasant swell of her cheeks, the soft smile that plays over her lips, the sparkle in her eyes, sadly dimmed. All attractive things, but Will’s heart and attentions lie decidedly elsewhere these days.
He steadies his breath as he waits for a quiet moment, a break in the crowd to approach her. When he does, it is with caution, he has no wish to frighten her. It’s enough of a liability that he is abroad in a city that has more than a modicum of surveillance, but he trusts Hannibal to monitor him and erase his presence if necessary.
He crosses a street, plants himself against a lamp post that is barely ten feet from her, and waits for her to turn. He finds his heart beating hard in his chest despite himself.
She doesn’t turn at first, but she stills suddenly. Her head tilts, perhaps in questioning, perhaps in fear, and slowly, cautiously, she looks over her shoulder.
Molly had hoped never to see Will Graham again. She’d also hoped that she would, but who she sees standing so casually before her now is not Will Graham. She barely recognizes him.
He had told her he would be different, she hadn’t envisioned how much.
It isn’t just his outward appearance, which has been styled and groomed to the point of overindulgence. His beard has grown out but is kept trimmed close to his face, his hair artfully styled back into soft waves. He wears a bespoke suit underneath a thick winter coat that she imagines cost more than her plane ticket.
None of that matters. The difference is in his eyes.
They are still blue, that fine, soft blue that she had fallen for so easily (foolishly, she thinks now), but they run dark. Threads of ichor that chase across his irises and vanish. It’s almost inhuman. He seems impossibly taller too, perhaps because he has shrugged off the weight of the person he once was.
It is unfair, she thinks, how handsome he is now.
He smiles, and it’s a decent enough replica of Will Graham that she doesn’t run screaming.
“Hello, Molly,” he says gently. He doesn’t move. He leans casually, hands in his pockets, everything in his posture a gesture of submission.
She takes a step towards him, falters, and curls her hand into a fist. He notes it with impassiveness.
“You can if you like,” he offers, turning his cheek just slightly, and her hand uncurls.
“No,” she replies, and it’s as much a decline of his offer as it is a denial of his very presence.
He watches tears spring to her eyes and finds himself caught off guard by the need to wipe them away.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. Her voice has grown brittle, she sounds tired.
Guilt spirals through him like smoke, but dissipates just as quickly. Hannibal has taught him the uselessness of guilt.
“I came to make you a promise,” Will says, and shifts from his lean so he is standing tall, the intention not to threaten but to show his earnestness.
She doesn’t speak, but she swallows thickly and nods for him to proceed.
“I’ve been watching you,” he admits, “you’ve been living your life in fear. I want to take that away from you.”
Her eyes widen and a single tear breaks free. The terror she had kept tamped down starts to unfold.
“Please,” she whispers, voice breaking on the words, “Walter is sleeping. He can’t wake up without a mother.”
Will’s face crumbles for an instant, stricken. He looks ill.
“Molly, no,” he says, “I would never…”
He takes a step towards her but she flinches. He raises his hands in submission.
“Sorry.” She can tell he means it.
“I came to promise you that I will never hurt you.” He looks at her meaningfully. “We will never hurt you.”
She shakes her head, trembling. “How can I believe you?”
Will knows that you means him.
“Because,” he sighs with the knowledge that these words will hurt the most, “he loves me.”
She steps forward and slaps him then. He turns his head to allow it.
“I loved you,” she hisses.
“I know,” he says softly, eyes to the ground. He doesn’t say that she didn’t, she only loved the parts of him he let her see. It would be a cold and cruel thing to say, and she tried so hard, she did try. It’s not her fault that she fell in love with a man with a monster on his back.
She is crying now, real and pained, each tear that falls looks like it stings.
“Do you promise,” she chokes out, “you’ll stop watching us too?”
“I promise, Molly,” he replies softly, “you will never see or hear from me again.”
She doesn’t respond, but her brow arches in question and Will amends.
“From us,” he says, “both of us.”
“Do you love him?” she asks before she can stop the words. Her voice trembles as she presses further.
“Do you love him like you loved me?”
Will sighs, exhaling a world of confusion and pain.
“Yes,” he replies honestly, “and no.”
He doesn’t say that he loves Hannibal more deeply than he ever loved her, loves him so furiously it consumes him. Doesn’t tell her how he had to pin Hannibal forcefully to the floor before he left for Paris, had to kiss him over and over and promise him that he would return, swear that he didn’t love Molly any longer but he had to see this through. Hannibal had almost cried as he clung to him, had vowed to kill him if he didn’t return, and his desperate possessiveness had only made Will love him the more.
What good would the truth do now, Will thinks, so he opts for the half of it.
“I could never love him like I loved you, Molly,” he says, and it’s enough of a compromise to satisfy them both.
She moves to embrace him, surprising them both with the touch. She presses a cheek into his cashmere scarf and lets herself weep a little longer.
He strokes her hair, resists the urge to kiss the top of her head, knowing that enough of her scent is on him already that he’ll have to do some undignified begging when he gets home.
She clings to him for another brief moment, breathing in the strangeness of the dead man who holds her. After allowing herself the tiniest sliver of regret, she breaks herself free.
They stare at each other in silence, sadness stretched between them, her tears enough for them both.
“I can’t turn away from you,” she admits, “it hurts.”
She clears her throat softly, “So I’m going to close my eyes. When I open them, you’ll be gone. Forever.”
Her voice cracks on the last word and she sniffs quietly.
“Molly,” he says, but her eyes have already slipped closed.
“Goodbye, Will,” she whispers, and she breathes.
She shakes with the cold, keeps her eyes squeezed shut so tightly that color starts to burst behind her eyelids. She finds herself afraid to open them, not for what she will see, but for what she knows she won’t.
When she does open her eyes, the street is clear and the stars are bright, and Will Graham has died a second time.
She walks back to the hotel, wondering if she is being watched, but she knows he is already so far away he may as well have never been there at all.
And maybe, she thinks, he wasn’t.
Driving home, Will thinks of her closed eyes, and hopes when she opened them that some of the light had returned.
Then he thinks of Hannibal’s eyes, of the light that burns so bright it blinds, but only him, only ever for him.
He smiles with a full heart and drives a little faster.