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If Will had a dime for every time she had told him his plan would not work out the way he was expecting it to, he would've been able to afford to fix the glass on his car a particularly big hailstone had nicked the week before.
“Will, please.”
Even then, while he was getting ready to leave, car keys in hand and fingers on the doorknob, her voice sounded as firm and convinced as the first time he had told her what the FBI's – his – plan to put an end to Dolarhyde's actions was.
“Please.” Worried, this time, softer, her warm hand resting on his shoulder. “It's suicide.”
“Only if he catches me first.” Liar.
With that, Will opened the front door and headed for the Volvo parked in the driveway. As he got closer to the car, he heard Molly's fast footsteps on the concrete reach him. He sighed, for the first time truly wishing he had told Jack to go kill the Dragon himself, and turned around. Molly's gaze traveled from his grey eyes to what she was holding in her delicate hands. A picture.
“Take it.” Her voice was sweet, she was clearly trying to be supportive of him, reassuring, and yet she couldn't hide a faint note of forced resignation in her tone. Desperate, but not hopeless. At least one of them had to be.
Will obliged. Molly grinned, this time from the Polaroid, she and Walter, standing in the field in front of their house in Wolf Trap on the edge of the forest, surrounded by their seven dogs.
“You took this picture the day we moved in with you.”
Will smiled. “I remember. Winston wouldn't stop licking Walt's face.”
“And someone else could barely stop licking mine.”
Will chuckled, his cheeks a slightly deeper pink now.
Molly stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the forehead, then gently took the Polaroid from his hands and slid it inside the left pocket of his black trousers.
“When you're away, I will remember that moment. I will remember you as happy as you've ever been,” And we'll be there with you. And tomorrow you'll be back again, and we'll take another picture. “Save yourself, baby. Kill them all.”
Molly didn't know.
“I will,” he said, fighting back the urge to tell her that he was well beyond the point of saving, and to give her the farewell she deserved. He had everything planned out, the direction every single drop of blood would take right after he had shot Dolarhyde in the chest, which perfectly white wall it would stain, everything down to the tiniest of details; everything, that is, except his return. He never thought he'd outlive that night, nor did he intend to. Want to. The force of the stream would overcome, and he'd finally be free to let go. The last selfish act of a man who spent his life saving everyone but himself.
He looked adoringly into his wife's eyes for the last time, her beautiful, beautiful light blue eyes, and delicately cupped her cheek. Somewhere in the field behind them, he could hear a stag's slow, heavy footsteps crush the autumn leaves beneath its hooves, the ghost of Hannibal's touch on his face before he attacked him in his antechamber over three years before still warm on his skin. Become the beast.
Will smiled again.
Molly didn't have to know.
“Wait for me to come home.”