Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Life, pouring out of her.

Life, growing inside of her.

Life, leaving right before her.

The heaving of the stag, its death throes, its death rattle.

Still a beating. A pulse. Something within the stag growing, nurturing.

[Nothing within her was of the nurturing kind.]

A teacup shattered, its shards drenched in blood. Blood of the body, blood of the womb.

It was as if she was floating, face-up. Her face toward the cold night sky, feeling the chill and lunar warmth shining down on her. It was right that it was cold, endless. It was right the water was thick, staining. Like syrup clinging onto her skin, seeping into the first layer of flesh. Climbing over her body and wrapping around her, tempting the idea of pulling her underneath.

Consciousness came as if she was being pulled from the water. It came from her heart’s center and pulled until its base was the last strand of heartstring.

Her eyes opened. Throat dry, parched.

“Thirsty,” was her first word. Unceremonious. Typical. 

The straw touched her lips and she drank with the subhuman intent of satisfying that survival instinct.

“You’re very lucky,” said the doctor. His voice was not clear. Will’s head was still underwater. Eyes half-closed, she turned in the direction. Details on her injuries, her surgery. How her scar would heal but not look as nice. Perhaps a biting comment about the lack of a plastic surgeon. No. An unwilling plastic surgeon. None in their right mind would handle her case.

Good idea. I’ve had too many doctors interested in my case.

Details she didn’t focus on until another doctor came into the room. A woman, tall with silvery hair. For a moment, Will felt her mind flash to a similar shade. Except the eyes weren’t the same; not sad, not filled with heartbreak and unending grief. Not a low voice comforting and murderous at the same time. A practiced, polite and professional voice.

Obstetrics. Gynecology. 

“In your condition, it would have been unwise to cut too closely to the uterus. We will have to monitor you after twelve weeks.”

Dried lips parted. “Why?”

Another set of footsteps entering. A light lift, a slight heel. Another visitor.

Will’s eyes found Abigail, a bandage around her throat and flowers in her arm. Looking ethereal, less-pale. Alive. Impossibly so. Her lips moved.

“Because you’re pregnant.”

Her hand covered the bandage. She could imagine the blood rising out of her skin to meet it. She hadn’t looked at the wound yet; not with her own eyes. It felt like a kiss. It hurt like one.

The phantom pressure against her own mouth, her neck, her throat; sending a sharp and direct shock of nerves down through her stomach and into her womb. Never before had she thought something would reside there. She rejected it; she had rejected all notion, even in the midst of the very act that would lead to a creation being housed in there.

Abigail’s eyes were on her hand. Another set, too; a set she did not want to see in the slightest. She could ignored it in favor of Abigail but her consciousness inclined on humoring it.

“Cut surgically, expertly. Just missing the fallopian tubes and uterus itself,” remarked Frederick Chilton. The bouquet of flowers laid abandoned on the movable tray-table. Will wouldn’t put them in water, nor ask a nurse to. Her eyes avoided Frederick’s as he continued on: “It’s as if Hannibal thought of everything.”

“Not everything,” Will remarked aloud, her voice not caring to ensure it was heard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Abigail hold her hands together, rubbing and pressing at her own translucent knuckles. 

Frederick’s weight shifted. He was relying on his cane. Will’s eyes raised to his face where she could see the two-tone of the concealer and foundation. Liquid. He was hiding his prosthesis quite well. “I’m to take it he didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know until six minutes ago,” Will responded.

“Surely, even you know what snaring Hannibal Lecter can lead to.”

“I don’t think anything in his modus operandi gleams insight into cultivating a legacy garden.” 

Fingers dare to press against the stitches. It was as if she could press through into her womb, feel the presence of a bundle of cells dividing, multiplying. At this early stage, it would be impossible to feel much of anything. Feeling is what Will did best, for better and worse.

Frederick’s eyes caught the attempt. “Probably not wise to do that.” 

He earned a pointed glare from Will. Despite the haze of medication, her mind was clear enough to put Frederick in his place. From her bed and her position, it was a leg up against the man who had seen so much enjoyment out of exploiting her weakness, only to also suffer the consequences of Hannibal’s focus.

Getting Hannibal’s focus had been risky. The depth of his attention—his obsession—had caused a great deal of loss.

Will’s eyes moved to Abigail once more. She sat stoic, still. She could barely see the little rises and falls of her chest as she breathed. A perfect statue.

“You’re quite fortunate that the protection of HIPPA prevents me from releasing this information to the public,” came Frederick’s voice. 

It brought a laugh from Will. It made her body ache. “Since when have you drawn the line at HIPPA, Frederick?”

“Since Freddie Lounds managed to get her paws on a poor first-year and get a photo of your colostomy bag,” responded the psychiatrist. That got Will’s attention. Her eyes opened fully to take him in. Frederick’s head inclined in sympathy. “Fortunately, my predilections don’t incline toward tabloid fodder.”

“No. They incline toward unorthodox methods of capture and detainment.” Her fingers found the button to raise the bed, angling her more in line with Chilton’s eye-line. “As do Jack’s.”

“Jack Crawford isn’t inclined toward much more than ensuring he doesn’t suffer a vocal hemorrhage. And Alana Bloom will be lucky if her spine heals enough to let her use the toilet by herself.”

A pang for Alana, a pang for Jack. Mostly unintended bystanders victimized—brutalized—by Will’s indecision. And Abigail.

And this. Whatever this was.

Chilton was observing her like a specimen on a glass plate underneath a microscope. Irritation itched at the back of her neck, up her spine. “You want to weaponize this against him.”

“It will complicate things,” admitted the psychiatrist, “but complication and Hannibal Lecter go hand-in-hand.”

“If you’re imagining I’ll make a video appeal, then you don’t know me at all,” came Will’s response. 

A slow shake of the head. It reminded Will of somber bells tolling. “We’ve found that Hannibal can be swayed by emotion. I can’t think of a greater emotion than the revelation that your legacy will continue after you are gone.”

Abigail’s shoulders shook with muted laughter. “Legacies don’t seem to be too much of a concern to him,” she said. 

Frederick did not respond. Maybe he chose not to hear her. “You did a good job luring him once. To lure him back—“

“Is not an effective use of any of our time or resources. Some of the latter of which are depleted and as useless as I am right now.” Will’s head leaned up, as did her upper body. It caused a strain through her torso, aching the stitches. Tender, fleshy, worn. Her body felt worn and ineffective. The drugs pumping through her veins caused a bout of drowsiness, leading to Will putting her head back on the pillow. “Go proposition someone else, Frederick. Your offers have always been hollow.”

Chilton remained still before taking the flowers, holding them as one would a baby. It was hard for Will’s brain to not make such an association. “When you’re better—“

“I won’t,” she responded firmly. 

Another nod of Chilton’s head before he stepped from the room. Abigail looked at Will and leaned closer. The chair did not make a sound; not a creak nor a scrape on the floor. Will’s sensitive ears were glad for it. “He’s a real dick.”

A smile drew taut and fleeting across Will’s lips. Her head turned to Abigail. “I guess even he has scruples about medical privacy.”

Abigail matched Will’s smiler, though brighter and more genuine. “Must come from personal experience.”

Brown eyes lingered on Abigail’s hair, her pale cheek, her throat. “How do you feel?” Came Abigail’s voice once again. 

Perhaps the significance of such a discovery should have shifted her entire world. Her world had already changed. One more addition to the pile she stood atop. Will’s eyes closed and her head turned away while her thumb stroked the length of the smile across her stomach.

The rain had been a predictor of the cold front which moved in. Will could smell snow in the air as she stepped out of the taxi which had been generous enough to bring her back to Wolf Trap. Zoe and Ellie were thrilled to see her as they pawed and scratched at the door. Zeller had been caring for them. For the briefest of moments, Will reflected upon his kindness. For all she knew, Alana was still in the ICU and would go to inpatient physical therapy until she could at least use a wheelchair. Jack would be out soon; that much she knew. Her dogs would have starved, or clawed their ways out. At least they would have had an escape.

Except Winston. His head rested on her lap as she sat in the chair that first night. His snout pressed toward her abdomen. Will didn’t have the heart to bat him away. It felt like too much of an effort.

Five weeks. Nearly six, at this point. It did make sense when Will thought over the timeline. In the moments between feeding the dogs and sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee—you shouldn’t drink it, she’d been warned, but she felt she deserved one damned cup—staring into the flat fields before they gave way to woods and nature. Nature which held life, but were barren as they moved closer into the wintertime. She would see more deer, maybe rabbits. If she set her traps, she could probably have a few good rabbits for dinner.

There was no particular drive toward that idea; it was all merely a suggestion of something to interrupt this fog which had settled over her. She didn’t move from the porch. Abigail sat beside her or behind her, on the chair. The dogs ignored her. They preferred to rest where Will rested, go where she walked. Careful, though, not to trip her. Perhaps they knew. She remembered that there were dogs who could sniff out tumors and illness before even a doctor picked up on it. 

Like Hannibal. She wondered if Hannibal could smell the life growing inside of her. Her HcG had peaked and was declining, as was typical. If he could sense her encephalitis, he could have known her hormones had changed. Was that why the tone of their conversations had changed? Is that why he had brought up leaving that place, abandoning their lives in order to go down an unknown road? A peaceful exit; nothing like the carnage left behind.

Her doctors had been relieved and surprised the pregnancy had maintained. Such a trauma, they had said, would likely have caused miscarriage. Her body had been under more stress than many prenatal patients. It was a miracle this pregnancy had remained attached.

Will wondered, offhandedly, if this was another infliction of wrath by Hannibal. Perhaps it made sense why he cut where he did; why the blade twisted inside of her flesh and aimed just close enough but not closer. Certainly, his omniscient sense had picked up on this aberration. The hurt of betrayal was not enough to feel paternal attachment.

She wasn’t sure if what she felt was maternal attachment. If she had any pity to spare for this conscious-lacking division of cells, she would have directed it there.

Her mind wasn’t made up. If anything, it shirked away feelings of connection and responsibility. It was easy to dismiss the feeling for something else. Her mind conjured diagnoses. But when the voice making those appeared, she abandoned the idea and shelved the reason for feeling. It was easier to ensure there was no physical specification linked to this condition.

A container of prenatal vitamins had been on her tray table as she’d been discharged. Will had ignored them.

It wasn’t willful; not entirely. Her mind was elsewhere. Abigail had mentioned it to her but Will had ignored it. Whenever she had looked at Abigail, she saw blood on her face, her throat. She saw the flash of fear and regret in her eyes, much like the night Will had gone into the house with her gun drawn. Her stomach had dropped, as it did when she even lingered on her name; Abigail.

Abigail was preferable company to that of others. Chilton had called on her once, twice. Will couldn’t think of anyone worse to experiencing vomiting around. Was it a by-product of the hormones changing in her body or was it because Chilton’s coiffed and carefully constructed persona was infiltrating her house? Abigail said the quiet thoughts aloud; Will adored her for it.

Adoration was a strong word; the true reflection was something quite mundane, close to baseline. It was something that comforted Will in the quiet, in between the routine nature of caring for her dogs, managing a shower and at least two meals. Her nausea made it difficult to swallow more than a couple of bites at a time; sometimes, eating took the entire day or longer. 

Sleep wasn’t any easier to her. If it had been difficult previously, it was worse now. Restlessness and dreams and aches in her back and stomach. Morning sickness was a misnomer because Will was plagued by it throughout the day. It was fortunate that she didn’t vomit as often; she didn’t have much of an appetite in the first place. Her chest ached, too and exhaustion increased as the hours and days ticked by. When she finally managed to her first prenatal visit, she was content to not return. The doctor’s voice was too calm, too measured. The eeriness of the quiet and the routine calm of the visits unnerved her. At the very moment the doctor had lectured her on the weight lost, Will had grabbed her coat and left the room without so much as a word.

Words were rarely spoken, save for Abigail and the dogs. They were her true company. If anything, she wouldn’t have minded if they were her only company.

Time would pass and she wouldn’t notice or care when she did. Anything that tethered her to her reality and isolated state were the occasional phone calls from unsaved numbers or even a pulled up car. Jack Crawford, alive with his throat bandaged in a manner similar to Abigail’s. Abigail had chosen to reside in the house; Will wouldn’t even let Jack as close as her porch.

Her body had begun to exhibit subtle, visible changes, by that time. It was helpful to wear the large shirt and flannels, as was typically on rotation in this colder weather. It offered heat incubation, layers of protection from the wind. It covered her bloated abdomen and fuller breasts. It drowned her figure as her mind was drowning.

Jack offered barely more than fifteen minutes worth of words. It was a shame to waste all of that gas to drive from Quantico to Wolf Trap, especially when one factored in the pricing of at-home hospice.

On one of his visits, Will had brought Jack a mug of coffee to go. He looked at her, her pale face and drawn features. “You’re not well, Will.”

“Yeah, well, are any of us?”

“You’re sick.”

“At least it isn’t my brain on fire, any longer.” She’d offered barely a smile, wished Bella well, and gone back inside. Abigail had migrated to the porch, but Jack hadn’t noticed her. Not even the dogs did.

Week nine was when she had begun the routine of sitting in her car outside of Hannibal’s house, seeing the tape get taken down and the crowds of reporters gone. Even Freddie Lounds had stayed clear of the area. A grand surprise. Will wondered what she would do if she saw Freddie. In another life, perhaps the idea of breaking her car window and stealing her away to become lean cuts of meat. Hannibal would have enjoyed it, if it had been real.

Fatigue and cramping were her company as she worked up the strength, in the next week, to stand at the door. By the middle of the tenth week, her hand had turned the knob.

It was as if Hannibal had neatly cleaned before he left. There were sheets thrown over some of the shelving and displays. Will didn’t pay as much attention to those. Her mind seemed to gloss over it all until she reached the kitchen. Then, life stood out as starkly as it had that night. 

Her hand found the cool refrigerator handle. The fridge was locked, of course; all of the evidence had been confiscated. She was sure Jimmy Price and Bryan Zeller were having a field day testing and finding DNA matches. Beverly may have felt triumphant, had she been lucky enough to outlast that which fate had wrought. But maybe she was lucky enough to be dead. Death was less exhausting than carrying on.

Her back pressed against the cold metal as she slid down, down, and sat. Knees pulled up and Will loosely locked her arms around them. The pendulum in her mind swung distantly. But there was no erasing. It was as if she was watching it all from a third-person view. There stood Hannibal, then Will herself. Abigail safely to the side. Not bleeding, not covered in anyone’s blood. Lovely. Alive. 

Her body trembled now as it had that night; the relief at seeing Abigail alive, her lungs breathing and expanding beneath layers of flesh and skin. Then the falling of her own heart as Hannibal’s face came into view. Heartbroken, betrayed.

“You were supposed…to leave .”

“We couldn’t leave without you.”

Hand against her skin; soft, despite its brutality. Cupping her skin and soothing her as it had done time and time before. Despite the number of times his skin had touched hers, it was as if Will had never been touched before that moment. Never as intimately, chastely. Cradling her. If there was any moment to put an end to this, it would be now. It would be now with the gun in her hand. 

But she surrendered.

The knife plunging deep within her. Spilling blood. Cutting into flesh and muscle. Penetrating her in a deeper, more betraying manner. Far from satisfying or creating meaning to existence and to pleasure. They were experiencing the farthest thing from pleasure. Will understood; she accepted it.

Her mind paused the scene as she returned to her current reality. An undulation of nausea spirited her to her feet, to the kitchen sink. The contents of her stomach—nothing more than bread, water, perhaps a spoonful of some yogurt—emptied down the drain. Will half-expected to retract and see Abigail’s ear. It would have been funny if the being inside of her didn’t cause the vomiting to resume. 

It burned her esophagus, left a horrid film in her mouth. She wanted to slice into the flesh of her mouth and peel it away until a new layer was reborn underneath. If Will could flay her skin and start with something new underneath, already formed, she wouldn’t mind so much. It would be easier than the skin she inhabited now. She recalled every touch as if it happened recently; every press of the hand, lips. The colliding and connection of touch that had made her feel more alive than any touch before. Touch that had also cut deep and would remain with her forever.

As the days and weeks reached the twelfth and thirteenth, the smile—it was the most bitter and easy way to classify it—raised and widened. If it had been easy to ignore the physical sight of her condition, it was difficult when her stomach protruded from her pelvis and the lightest of movements could be felt within her.

Stable, it was classified. Still a risk, based on her injuries and her age—something Will had internally balked at. But more stable than even eleven weeks.

It haunted her more than her constant visits to the kitchen. A voice of velvet tickled at her ear when it was too quiet. A discussion had in Hannibal’s office, when Margot had confirmed her pregnancy to Will; something she had wondered over time and time again. 

“Why do you think she came to you?”

“To prove something to herself. That…in trying to survive, it didn’t change who she was.”

“—Becoming a mother?”

“I don’t think Margot fancies herself a mother.”

“Do you?”

“—Maybe. I could be a good mother.”

“Interesting how she does not disclose her condition to her partner, but to you instead.”

“Not sure it’s something you would understand. And partner is a…weak term for what he is.”

“A sperm donor?”

“Bingo.”

“Do you think she intends to raise this child with you?”

“Why else would she sleep with me and then bring me into your session?”

He’d smiled; she’d remembered he’d smiled there.

“Is it easy to put yourself in her shoes?”

“I think…the reality of the situation is that she wants safety. And she feels safe with me. I can protect her. And the baby.”

But she couldn’t. She didn’t. Mason had gotten in her way. And Hannibal, before him. And now, Margot was without a uterus and without a baby. Their baby, to use Margot’s words. It had been a pretty idea that, in hindsight, would never have worked. 

As Will remained on the floor, Abigail’s presence grew warmer beside her. In a blink, Will saw the red on her face and the fleshy gape in her throat. Her eyelashes fanned it all away. 

“You can’t let yourself waste away.”

“I couldn’t think of anything better. Actually…maybe I could.” 

Her mind had conjured a grotesque scene; blood spilling from between her legs, pain rippling through her. Her hands clutching and grasping at her womb until they impossibly sunk in. Her body expelling this being from her womb, letting it follow the blood out of her. Its shape was not defined nor pronounced; it didn’t look like anything in Will’s head. It wasn’t anything. She did know one thing—it was Hannibal’s. He had been content to leave behind scorched earth—why not give him exactly that?

She imagined Hannibal’s immovable face contorting into something akin to horror. Had Hannibal ever been horrified in his life? Perhaps now he would be, seeing the life bleed from Will’s body and become nothing before it had the potential to be something at all.

Vengeful, horrific thoughts. Will kept them to herself. But Abigail could see them written in her eyes, across her face. She said nothing. It made her the perfect company.

Will’s head turned, watching the rain fall outside the kitchen window. Maybe it was dusk already. Or maybe it was just the clouds. Her hand pressed against her stomach, straining to feel something. Did she want to feel it?

No. No, she didn’t.

Her eyes closed as her head leaned against the metal of the silent refrigerator. Inside her mind, blood pooled across the floor. Across from her, the stag.

Dying. Bleeding. With life within it.

Growing, nurturing. Wanting it to end. A teacup, shattered. Unable to be put back together again.

Chapter Text

“True satiety cannot ever be met. At its very essence, man is a creature with an insatiable hunger.”

One plate, then another set before her. Garnishes of herbs, streaks of sauces a deep red. On the table, flowers arranged in quite the elaborate display; like a presentation, a framing device. It framed her own periphery, setting Hannibal in a loose cell; one he would freely walk in and out of at his own pleasure.

The rim of the wine glass touched her lips, tipping and tilting to allow the liquid to breach her lips and settle on her palate. A fine red. It would accompany the meat, certainly. Hannibal’s wine pairings tied each meal together splendidly.

Offhandedly, Will wondered if he typed the notes of the wine to the personality of the meat. 

Across from her, her host observed her for a response. There was always hunger in Hannibal’s look.

[‘Yond Cassius has a mean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’]

Will set the glass down and matched Hannibal’s gaze with a pointed one of her own. “In saying that, man is an unstoppable creature prone to any and all fancy. Including its own overindulgence and gluttony.” 

She was finding that she greatly enjoyed the smile that picked up at the corners of Hannibal’s lips. “Do you find it sinful?”

“Sin has no place at a table where God has seen to ritualistic, justified suffering over thousands of years of existence,” responded Will. “Is the wolf sinful for taking the life of a sheep?”

“Or a child,” Hannibal posed, “if there are no sheep on which to feed?”

“We would find that sinful. A moral failure of a morality-starved creature.” Will allowed herself a moment to cut into the meat and chew. It became easier, in the moment, to dismiss the source. Behind closed lips and teeth, she swallowed it down. It didn’t trap itself in her esophagus. Her mind had cleared that path. Attention returned to Hannibal. “Hypocrisy, when it can also be another human who takes the life of a child upon viewing their own life as threatened and having more value, in comparison.”

It delighted Hannibal; she knew it did. It should have enraged something within her. There was nothing but calculated calm.

[‘Be like the delicate flower, but be the serpent under’t’]

Her lips graced the rim of the glass once again. A faint, red stain imprinted on the glass. Hannibal was looking; of course he was. 

“God sins,” Will continued, “and we are created in His image. Aren’t we?” 

Her words brought echoes of his own from a not-too-distant past. Lines digested, rehearsed, and practiced until they came out so learned and natural that it would cause the desired effect on the audience receiving it. 

The smile widened across Hannibal’s face. Pride. And something else, certainly. 

“That we are.”

Practiced fingers tended to the motor. Metal once cold turned warm the more she attended to them. Each tool selected with the knowledge and foresight that it would serve a purpose and would not fail her.

She didn’t know why exactly the need to fix the motor had woken her up that morning. Fighting the urge to take medicine for her back, Will had watched the sun rise from the porch with Abigail lingering in the doorway. As her eyes settled over the blood-red horizon, her thoughts turned to seeing a remarkable sunrise near Biloxi when she had been a teenager. She recalled how the water of the Mississippi had felt under her reclining body, how sweat had caked and frizzed her hair against her head. That had been days before she’d shorn off the length until it had resulted in uneven and choppy layers, but at least the base of her neck was bare and cool. 

Her mind had fixated on how the motor had died and it had taken her too long to recall how her father had utilized his Swiss Army to repair it. Since then, Will had kept spare tools with her either in her car or her work shed. 

That is how she had found herself in said work shed for hours at a time, tinkering at the motor and scrounging for spare parts until she had the old thing set on a path of repair. It had been a while since she’d sailed at all; she’d sold her center console years ago after buying the house and initially renovating the property. That, as well as more convenient fishing locations within Wolf Trap kept her rooted to her spot. 

She calculated the timeline as she worked through hunger, nausea and dizziness; all of which was more settled as her second trimester progressed. Still, a ball of something sickly welled at the back of her throat and bobbed when she swallowed. Her mind was direct and rolled over the origin of such a problem.

It was easy to disconnect her mind from the present situation; easy now, but she knew it wouldn’t be in the weeks that followed. Will had not bothered to return her obstetrician’s calls and, more often than not, deleted the voicemail as soon as it had been left. Easy to think of it as a spam call.

Denial, depression, dissociation. She could hear a familiar tone and cadence saying those words to her. They sounded smug, bitter. 

Did he know?

Now Chilton’s voice from weeks ago. Will had wondered that and she sometimes did when there was a lull in her repair process, when she felt her abdomen press unexpected against the table in a manner it wouldn’t have even days prior. When her fingers surprisingly swelled or her lower back ached in ways it never would have, even due to her age. 

Did Hannibal know?

If he did, it made the mark he left even crueler. In her weaker moments, when exhaustion and pain was at its worst or when she simply couldn’t think of food, the thought plagued her as scenes replayed across her mind.

The tender caress of her face, the embrace that plunged the knife deeper within her. The way blood cascaded from her as he stood over like an executioner.

The way Abigail’s pale, beautiful face looked utterly afraid as the knife came to her throat—

Her hand pressed against her chest, as if it could crack through her collarbone and clench her lungs within her fist. That fist trembled against her skin. Her collarbone felt leaner, easier to access. Easier to break.

Will wet her lips and brought her hand to holding the wrench, curling her fingers around it and getting back to work.

The warm fireplace offered reprieve from the cold of the winter. Will was never surprised by how well-suited and crafted each room in Hannibal’s house appeared. She wondered during which phases of life each item had been collected. Hannibal’s past was as shrouded as his present, with all of the intrigue and dark unknown that trailed him and wrapped him in tendrils.

An untethered hand provided a glass of red wine, which Will took in her own hand. Her eyes matched Hannibal’s as he took a drink and she followed. She was reminded, briefly, of old Shakespearean cliches of poisoned cups of wine. It would never work with Hannibal; he was the type to micro dose the most fatal poisons over time to build up immunity. It wouldn’t surprise her if it was the truth.

Thoughts of poison and betrayal were more ironic musings than active desires. Though her dreams often held violent imagery, it was more difficult to fully believe in the concept standing before Hannibal now. They oftentimes mixed with curious lingerings, moments of lost focus that veered somewhere else entirely. 

“The path that leads into the savage garden is lined with obstacles,” Hannibal said. “Life itself brings us obstacles in an attempt to keep us off our true purpose’s path.”

“Obstacles in the form of people,” Will responded, bringing the glass to her lips again. The richness and fullness of the wine pleasantly burned her blood. Her tolerance was plentiful. “You’re an obstacle placed squarely in my path.”

Hannibal always looked pleased when she responded like that. Will had learned his cadence well. A match of equals, in a sense. That was not lost on her.

Even still, Hannibal’s smile warmed her blood more than the wine would by far. If she concentrated enough, she would feel a smile ghost across her own lips.

“Like the Sphinx in the path of Oedipus,” remarked Hannibal. At Will’s small choked laugh, he acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “Riddles and prophecy. Mythos oftentimes reflects reality.”

“Providing riddles and metaphors,” Will listed, “tearing apart those who never had a chance to solve them in the first place. Did the Sphinx also see those men as things to be destroyed?”

“The Sphinx provided all who approached a chance,” responded Hannibal. “It was only one who was fated to solve the riddle and achieve greatness.”

“Before the greatest of falls,” Will pointed out. 

Another acknowledgement by Hannibal. He watched as Will stepped to the fire, examining the flames more closely. The outline of the Sphinx appeared in the logs and danced with the flames. She saw herself before it, small in stature before a great force. Her vision blurred as the Sphinx morphed in color and shape. Will’s eyes closed and she breathed in the scent of wine, blood, and fire. It burned her lungs as she felt her veins rush with blood and life and feeling.

Her eyes opened as she turned her head behind her, seeing Hannibal in the shadows barely illuminated. She wondered how she looked from his point of view. 

Placing her glass on the mantle above, Will remained staring at the fire. “We’ve been riddles to each other. Constantly trying to figure it out and constantly wondering how many chances we have until we fall.” 

“Are you still intent on seeing me fall, Will?” Hannibal did not move from where he stood. The firelight danced against him, casting deep shadows and cuts in his face, illuminating his features. Like illustrations of the Devil. Of Lucifer Morningstar. 

Beautiful.

Will’s eyes remained on Hannibal as she turned, facing him fully this time as she considered his words and where he stood. Close, but not too close. Always near, never entirely gone, but not too close. Something must have softened in her gaze as Hannibal stepped closer toward her and she did not react coldly. The warmth at her back, Will’s arms rested by her sides and opened her body toward Hannibal.

“When I’m finished falling,” she finally said, “do you intend to leave me strewn across the Earth?”

This type of closeness had been exhibited before. Nothing unprecedented save intention.

Hannibal’s hand had touched her face before. It had contained praise, pride. Now, something tonally different. Will noticed it in the way his fingers moved across her cheek and how the whole of his palm cradled her cheek. Her own reaction changed, too; Will dared to lean her cheek in Hannibal’s hold and give him just an inch, but nothing more. 

Hannibal was not a visually obvious person to surprise. But Will could feel it. His hand went rigid for nearly twenty-two seconds and his thumb pressed against her cheekbone. It must have left a slight indent or, at least, a red mark where he applied pressure. Will’s eyes did not soften nor did she make a secondary move.

There was Hannibal, too, not moving. Looking at her. Curious as to what would happen.

Wanting something to happen. Wanting, wanting. Waiting, waiting. 

Her eyes remained unblinking as she, too, waited. Pulling in whatever it was that drew them together. Whatever ineffable thing it was, she couldn’t break it. Neither could he. Neither did she want it broken. It was a sickening realization that she swallowed down, letting it burn the lining of her stomach and become something much darker and destructive.

If they collided, what destruction would be wrought?

On the other hand—what beauty would be created?

“I would gather you up,” replied Hannibal, “bone by bone. Sinew by sinew.”

A slight movement of thumb across cheek. Another press. Another indentation.

Will still did not move. She waited. 

Hannibal still did not move. He, too, waited. 

Will wondered how long he would wait. She wondered if he would wait until the Sun burned the Earth, until waters raged over the shores and swallowed everything down. If she took him to within an inch of his death, would he stave off Death itself to see what she would do?

She wondered what would happen if she drove a broken wine glass into his throat, or if she had poisoned him after all. While blood gurgled in his throat, would he look at her with those waiting eyes? If she squeezed life from him, would his eyes ever stop staring?

When his hand moved from her face, Will watched the change in those eyes. Not nearly a resignation nor disappointment. Not even anger.

Resolve. There was always resolve. The ball remained in the air. Opportunity lurked at every corner and would be there to envelope them until there was no choice but to embrace it. 

Winston at her heels, Will stepped into the cool midnight air. Her sore back pressed against the wooden chair and her weight gave way to the rocking. One foot pulled up onto the base of the chair so she could properly examine how swollen it was. Her fingers, not equally swollen but certainly aching, pressed into the sore soles.

“A doctor would probably tell you how to reduce that.”

Will's eyes rolled. “I think I’ve spoken to enough doctors in my life.” Her head turned toward Abigail. “You should be asleep.”

“So should you.” Abigail leaned against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest. She was nonplussed by the cold. It was nearing the end of spring but the nights still dipped in the forties. Will was a warm sleeper. Now, with her hormones, her body tended to heat up even more. She’d changed her shirt before stepping outside.

Her aching back against the chair, Will shrugged and placed her arms on the arms of the chair. “Never been a good sleeper.”

“My mom always said she didn’t get any sleep when she was pregnant with me.” Abigail’s eyes lowered in silent consideration of those words. Will’s head tilted. Abigail continued: “But that’s not why you can’t sleep.”

Unbothered, Will shrugged once more. “Just something I’ve dealt with, and I’ll keep dealing with it.”

“You’re not even going to talk about it out loud.”

“About what?” She asked. Her arms remained heavy on the arms of the chair. Sore feet pushed herself so the chair rocked, barely making a creaking sound. Winston remained half-asleep at her feet. Abigail’s speaking hadn’t even roused him a bit.

Abigail’s arms unfolded. “You can’t ignore it forever.”

Will’s eyes avoided hers. “Nature takes its course.”

“Nature’s only going one way, and it’s not the way you want it to.”

The laugh which bubbled up was unintended, but still bitter and pointed. “Who said anything about wanting?”

“It would be easy that way, wouldn’t it?” Abigail’s weight was more centered now as she stood angled from where Will sat. “Just like you’ve dreamed and wondered. Because then you wouldn’t have to deal with him, or it, or anything else. But you’re still looking for him.”

“I’m not looking for him,” Will countered.

“Why are you fixing the motor?” Abigail questioned.

Sometimes, Abigail knew her thoughts as well as Will knew them herself. A breath collected itself in the spare space in Will’s lungs. It was mildly harder to expand with an inhale.

“What’s the reason for it?” Abigail, again. “What’s the reason for sitting on the floor for hours? What will you find?”

“Maybe he left a trail of breadcrumbs,” muttered Will. Winston picked up his head, stared, and sighed against as he put it down. Will extended her swollen foot to rub at one of his paws, effectively slouching her posture. The curve of her stomach caught her eye as her shirt rode up slightly. She straightened almost immediately. 

Abigail knelt beside the chair. Will looked at her with a stricken expression. Abigail’s head tilted, her hair tilting like water down a waterfall. Her bandage, bared. Will willed herself not to focus on it too heavily. Her head lightly turned side to side. 

“Why not?” It was as if Abigail’s lips did not move. Will could hear those words in her mind.

“—Why should I?” Will asked. Her question was verbal. “Hasn’t he left us with enough?”

“—It’s not about me. You know this.”

“Isn’t it?”

Abigail’s smile was sad. “Yes. And no.”

Again, Will’s head turned side to side. “I was the reason—“

“He made a choice, too. And so did I.”

“A choice that got you—“

Her hand tightened on the wooden arm. Abigail noticed. Her fingers were cold as they curled around Will’s wrist, pressing into her wrist with a slight, cold pressure.

A finger pressing into her cheekbone.

Fingers pressing her jaw, urging her face toward his.

Will retracted her hand placing it in her lap. “What good does it do to let all of it go and go to him?”

‘You know what good it does because you see it as an inherent good,” replied Abigail.

A bitter sound came from her chest. “Inherent good and Hannibal Lecter.” Will’s fingers curled against her bare thigh, pushing into her skin absently. The thought to drive her nail into her flesh and leave a reddened, wet indent flashed to her briefly. “Any ‘inherent good’ in him went away long ago.”

Abigail’s eyes remained steadfast. “Motivations don’t have to be morally good to be considered good intentions.”

“He’s rubbed off on you,” Will observed.

“He’s rubbed off on all of us,” replied Abigail.

Will’s head nodded minimally. “Some of us more than others.” Her hand rested on her thigh again. The flesh rose up to meet her touch, bristling at the late night chill. 

Abigail did not move. She remained in her perch, steadfast and constant as Winston by Will’s feet. In her eyes, Will saw something certain and resolved. Grounded. “God isn’t good, either. God is cruel. God is…merciless.”

“Sinful,” Will finished. “God delights in elegance. Poetry.” Her eyes found grounding in Abigail’s gaze. “—Abraham and Isaac. Iphigenia and Agamemnon.”

“You could play a good Clytemnestra,” Abigail voiced, her words a bit quieter.

That got Will to utter a laugh. She brought her hand up to her mouth, pressing her knuckles against her lips. It was a relief to laugh. The heaviness dissipated, if only for a moment. Winston picked his head up and watch her, startled and ready. 

Her hand settled in her lap again, mere inches from her abdomen. She consciously willed herself not to touch it, address was was underneath layers of flesh and carried with unintentional care. 

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to tear Agamemnon apart,” Will admitted softly. Her thumb pressed at the loose waistband of her boxers. They’d always been much more comfortable to sleep in than any sort of “proper” night clothes. “But waiting and planning isn’t exactly my forte.”

“You have a plan,” Abigail confirmed. “You know what you want to do. You’ve already started acting on it.”

Her lips parted but not response came out. “Unconscious beginnings to an unconscious choice.” 

“It was conscious all along,” Abigail confirmed. 

A slow draw-in of air through her nose. Will’s head leaned back, bringing her eyes to the sky above where the roof concealed the sitting area of the porch. It was easy to see the stars tonight. Orion, above the horizon. Jupiter was likely close by. In seeing them, her thoughts strayed somewhere beyond Wolf Trap, beyond America.

Orion. Son of Neptune and Diana. Gods of the sea and the hunt. Known for his exceptional hunting skills.

Her eyes slipped closed. She pictured the stream, a few miles from where she was now. She allowed it to render her weightless and tilted her head back, letting her hair pool behind her in her mind’s eye. Her mind went slack and blank. Abigail’s presence faded into a soft hum in the background.

The NOLA; thirty-six feet, suitable for long distance sailing. Operated by a motor as well as sails. A suitable living quarters downstairs and easy enough to take a small refrigerator. 

Will was used to sleeping in cramped, minimal spaces. It would be suitable for the trip. Three weeks, probably, depending on what course she charted exactly, as well as the weather. This time of year, the weather would be fine and mostly fair. Even still, she spent her late evening hours looking at meteorological charts and listening to weather reports to find trends.

April into May was wet. When Jack Crawford came to her, she was shielded from the rain in her work shed. The yipping and barking of dogs alerted her but did not pull her from her work. 

“I’d hoped you’d come find me, this time.”

Will had been checking and rechecking the engine over the course of the day. A dead engine was one way to ensure a longer painful voyage. She could chart by the skies and stars, but engines were essential in this day and age. Never hurt to check twice, or three times.

“You know what they say about hope,” Will responded, wiping an oily hand on her pants before going back to the gasket cap. “What can I do for you, Jack?”

“There’s an inquest following up. I wanted to make sure your narrative is consistent with mine. And Alana’s.”

Will didn’t pause in her work. “How is Alana?”

“Back home. Outpatient rehab.” A pause. “She’ll walk, eventually.”

The sight of Alana, battered and broken on the walkway. Will removing her own coat to cover her shivering body. A direct flash of Mrs. Hobbs had plagued Will before she’d drawn her gun and entered. Now, she shook off the mental image and moved toward assembling the motor again. A direct repetition of an increasingly maddening task with self assurance as the goal.

Jack was clearly waiting for a response. Will wouldn’t give it to him. “We’re officers of the FBI, wounded in the course of heroic duty.”

Something in her stomach fluttered and twisted simultaneously. “That’s not true for either of us. It’s something you tell yourself to sleep easier at night.”

“When I do sleep,” remarked Jack. He didn’t encroach on her space. To that, Will could give some credit. Then disappointment marked his tone. “We were supposed to go together. That’s on me. My foul, Will.”

“I don’t think it would have made any difference.” Again, Will wiped her hands on her work clothes. The dark grease flickered in her view. She saw brief flashes of red. It was enough of a pause to grant a distracted reprieve. “Might have resulted in…irrational actions.”

It was as if she could see Jack’s reaction despite not looking at him; a level and measured look, a brief shift of weight. “We assign a moment to decision,” he began, “to dignify the timely result of rational and conscious thought.”

“Bringing rationality into a situation with him is—irrational itself.” An ache in her back. Will straightened her posture and pressed a thumb into her lumbar spine. Her center of balance seemed to be shifting day-by-day. Her eyes remained on her task in front of her. “Decisions are made of…kneaded feelings.. They’re more often a lump than a sum, Jack.”

“What feelings led you to calling Hannibal?” 

A question they had danced around for weeks. In Jack’s prior visits, it had been cagey conversations. There was something between them that had grown larger and larger. Will’s shortness had dissuaded him long enough. Jack Crawford always got the word in when Will was at her weakest. He had a knack for it, she had to hand it to him. Hannibal had always been right about that.

“—Feelings of conflicted loyalty.” Her shoulders rolled back as the desire for deeper breath became present. Her hips pressed forward as her hands came to her lower back, giving a slight stretch to alleviate the mounting physical pressure. She swallowed a tight sickness in her throat. “I wasn’t decided when I called him. I thought about it, when the phone was ringing. Seemed like…phone lines ring much too long.” Her focus blurred. She felt a warm, phantom murmur soothe her ear. “I decided when I heard his voice.”

There was a detached fondness she was sure Jack wouldn’t like hearing. Jack’s perspective didn’t seem to matter so much right now. He confirmed, “You told him we knew.”

Will wet her lips. “I told him to go.” Another swallow. “I wanted him to run.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed. Will’s focus shifted.

“We could leave this place. Tonight. Leave your dogs. Write a note to Alana. Bring your things and leave tonight. Escape this life and world for one entirely new.”

“Then this would be our Last Supper.”

“—Of this life.”

“—He was my friend.” 

Something hard in her chest slipped down, down into the depths of her stomach. It settled lower, still, and pooled where something was growing, beating with life. “—Because I wanted to run away with him.”

The feeling of life was gone. Easy as a switch turned off. Her hands dropped by her sides and head turned slightly over her should so Jack was just in her peripheral but not in her direct line of sight. “I won’t do anything if you don’t.”

“You expect me to let you go.”

“You’ll follow.” This time, her head and body turned so she was more angled toward him. “You always do.”

“—How soon will you go?”

Will’s eyes looked just beyond Jack, where the dogs were congregating many feet away. They looked like blurs to her. “When I decide to.”

Jack nodded his head silently, taking it all in. “Bella is—“

“He left us all with time. Intentionally or not.” Will’s focus redirected back to Jack. “He’ll always be there. Not all of us will be. It’s up to you how much time you’re willing to spend or waste.”

“—You sound exactly like him,” Jack said after a moment. 

Will nodded. Her eyes, again, went unfocused. “He left his mark on all of us. A festering, growing mark. It’s only a matter of time how that shows itself on all of us.” 

Another shared dinner, shared conversations that led to the fireplace in the study. 

Her fingers graced the desk where sketches laid. Beautiful recreations and adaptions of Grecco-Roman figures. Channeled inspirations of Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo. More, still, that Will probably could not think of.

Mother Mary and Child. She noted the turn of features crafted by Hannibal’s hand. 

Her head turned to Hannibal as she stood before the fire. Parallels from visits prior were not lost on her. Echoes and reprises of stances and moments and anticipations had gone on as if in a waltz, drawing them closer and closer to a cliff’s edge.

Her glass of wine had safely been placed on the mantle. Hannibal’s was on the desk, away from his drawings.

“There’s something to be said about the concept of Fate,” continued Hannibal. “How it orders events and keeps repeating cycles until the desired outcome is reached.”

“And those who try to defy it are burned and suffer until they fall in line,” Will finished. “Seems Romantic in ideal.”

“Romanticism often credits Fate,” Hannibal confirmed. “I think there’s weight to it.”

Will’s lips pressed together. Liquid courage wasn’t what motivated the knowing subliminal messaging of it. “I think it takes autonomy out of the mix. How does free will play into it?”

When Hannibal smiled in the way he did now, there were lines that etched into his skin. Will’s eyes lingered on it the closer he drew. She placed one hand on the top of the desk, giving her brief support, and lifted the other to his arm. “Is this the workings of Fate?”

Her forwardness brought Hannibal curious pause. She watched as he was tracking her movements and motivations in real time. He observed her not entirely unlike a predator, but one curious enough to debate submission. “Perhaps.”

The warmth in her own blood motivated her hand to move to his shoulder. Her thumb pressed into the clothed clavicle. “And this?”

“—Are you surrendering to the fall, Will?”

“A fall from what?” She posited. 

The air was warm and thick between them. Underneath her hand, she felt the uptick in Hannibal’s breathing. He looked, otherwise, composed. 

Will’s eyes studied his reactions. She studied the dilation of his pupils. “—You’re surrendering,” she confirmed. 

“Surrender is not entirely acquiescence to a fall,” Hannibal responded. 

Lips stained with light red pulled into a smile. “Is that what you are telling yourself?” Her other fingers pressed into Hannibal’s shoulder, willing him closer. “Are you surrendering to Fate?”

“No,” Hannibal responded, “to you.”

“Is there a difference between us?” Will asked.

Hannibal’s hand moved to her back. It was momentarily remarkable the way his hand lingered before pressing fully to her back. His eyes lowered as their faces drew nearer. Will’s senses were filled with the scent of Hannibal’s cologne, his wine, the rich scents of the herbs he had used in cooking. It enveloped her as he encroached her space consensually and with all the welcome want that she held within her. 

Their lips met in a shuddering kiss. Will found herself breathing Hannibal in as he breathed her, tasted her. Her hand moved to his shoulder then crossed to the center of his chest.

Mutual heat, mutual touch. It all pulled them together; clothed body against clothed body. It might be unseemly and impolite for Will to sit on the edge of Hannibal’s desk, but it was not a present slight. Legs parted so a body could stand between them. Slightly stooped height so masculine lips could touch feminine ones. Hands that roamed and claimed and captured and touched. So much touch. So much fire, electricity. 

Surrender. So much surrender to a small death. A little death was all they needed.

It was just mid-June and the rain was falling hard. There was a warm rain that intensified the humidity. It made it difficult to breathe; but perhaps that was the lack of lung capacity. 

Her skin was itchy in both the physical and metaphorical sense of the word. Perhaps those prenatal vitamins would have been useful after all. 

Her feet carried her to the porch. A firm certain movement brought Will to a complete stop. Eyes stared at the third step. A hand clung onto the railing, leaving a stain of grease. Tendrils of wavy hair masked the shock on her face at the proof of life. 

Her mind had done a fantastic job filing it away, putting all of this off and wondering if the forces of nature and fate would take the reins and dissolve this being inside of her before she had to give thought to the weeks and months forward. 

Sixteen weeks; weeks of a clouded existence, moving through the fog and the muck and mire. Weeks of sorting through catastrophic scenarios that may have alleviated all of this pain. It would have focused the pain to something else she knew. Will knew pain; she understood it so keenly. 

Another movement. Certain, strong. Alive.

Abigail was not there when she melted to the steps, hand cradling the swell of her stomach and head bent over. The hot wet that fell and stained her jeans was not blood. It might as well have been; the burning pain in her eyes reminded her of the burning pain in her stomach. That curved knife tearing into her flesh, missing the area that held this moving, living thing. 

Alive. You’re alive. 

Within her mind, a chill swept through the riverbank. Her head lifted from her meditative act, reeling in the empty lure. From the side of the stream, safely amongst waving reeds, was the distant visage of Abigail. Perhaps. It was Will’s first thought, first initial want. But what she needed and wanted had been blurred for a long time. 

Like water in a jar, darkness seemed injected into light. It cascaded like flowing blood throughout the vessel, swarming invisible borders until it had taken away every pigment that was not darkness. Darkness, like the Ravenstag. Like the Wendigo which lurked and looked and watched so keenly. Omniscient, though never to make its presence known. It hadn’t been seen in weeks, not even as Will willed it within her dreams. Only the agonal respiration of the stag.

The rising tides brought down the figure inch by inch, making is grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller still. A sudden drive forced Will’s wading through the river, casting her rod to the current which quickened moment by moment. Steadier and quicker and faster until she was fighting against it to reach the shore. A clambering, desperate need she hadn’t felt before. Feeling; the was new after these past months.

Her blunt nails pressed into the earth, eroding the edges of the riverbank as she climbed out of the tide just as the encircling black fluid brought the figure down, down, down.

Nestled in reeds, a helpless dark figure. Cold, nude. Helpless. Alive. Foreign, but not quite. Some familiarity. 

Know you. See you. Feel you. You, Stranger. Unknown. But You, within me. With me. Always.

Will’s arms encircled her abdomen, holding onto the swell. Her eyes lifted and blinked away the sight to see Abigail in front of her. The bandage on her neck moistened with a growing red stain. She would have to change it. Will’s eyes moved from the bandage to Abigail’s face, observing the forlorn smile which formed across her face. 

“Not yet,” Will said. She felt a phantom wetness on her hand growing stickier and slicker. It wasn’t hers. Her wound was scarring over, less of a risk of bursting open spontaneously. Her eyes traced the growing waterfall at Abigail’s neck. “Not yet.”

Abigail’s head tilted. Sadness remained on her face. “It can’t be forever.”

“A little longer,” responded Will. “A little longer.”

One drip, then another. It would cascade into an overflow son enough. Twice, before, Will had reached out her hands to stop the bleeding. Her own hands had stained red with Abigail’s blood, pressing her pulse in a hope that may be what plugged the fatal wound.

Underneath her hand now, life made itself known regardless if she wanted to know or not. Whether she actively desired to sustain this life, it would work to sustain itself within the confines of her body.

“It’s with you,” Abigail responded. “It’s alive.”

“You can stay,” Will said. It was almost a pleading. 

Abigail’s bandage seemed to dissipate in the flow of the blood. Like in the stream, Will reached her hand toward her. Blood dripped onto her fingers, rolled up her wrist to her forearm. She retracted her hand, angling so the blood flowed back up to her wrist and fingers as if being erased from existence. 

“You know I can’t. I never could,” Abigail responded. 

And, like within the reeds, she was gone.

Will’s eyes searched the clear air.

Silence. Nothingness. Nothing but the early summer rain and the life that moved within her. Beating, shifting, growing. Life.

I can. I will. 

Her palm flattened against her stomach. Slowly, her fingertips moved in a caress of the firmness and certainty of life. Her head leaned against the cabinet. It didn’t feel cold today. 

The staleness of silence was gently ushered away by the door opening. A sound of metal, wheels, construction for functional mobility.

“—Hi, Alana.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noted a slight flinching. Minuscule; something Hannibal would pick up on. He knew them all so well. Too well. 

“Hello, Will.”

Her tone was neither pleasant nor disappointed. Flat. She didn’t expect any less or more. The silence between them was 

“What are you doing here, Alana?” She asked. Her thumb moved over the scar, tracing the raised tissue. A fluttering was the response. She knew it was likely phantom; reactive moments were not likely this early. But, then again, she hadn’t done too much reading. She hadn’t concerned herself with it as much as now, if one could call an early curiosity concern. 

“I was looking for you.” Alana remained where she was; the wheel break certainly on. “You weren’t at your house.”

“You called Jack,” Will responded, her eyes still forward. A briefest flash of Abigail standing before her. And Hannibal, behind her. A flicker is all it was, truly. “You shouldn’t have done that. Time is precious for him.”

“He’s aware of what you are thinking,” Alana said. “—After everything he’s done?”

A sniff and shift of her posture. Her knees, drawn up already, stretched out a bit more. If Alana saw how Will’s hand cradled her womb, she didn’t immediately say a thing. 

“A mutually unspoken pact to ignore the worst in one another in favor of the best,” Will said fluidly. “Hard to go back on a deal made in blood. Complications tend to arise.”

Alana’s eyes lowered, taking in the sight of Will. “We’ve all lost enough blood in our ‘friendship’ with Hannibal Lecter.”

“Gallons of it,” agreed Will. “They removed all of it from this room. I think I might keep some of it in mine.”

“In your what?”

“My rooms. I’m building rooms in my memory palace for all my friends.”

Her eyes lowered as a presence made itself aware. “I came here to be alone, Alana. If you don’t mind.”

“—When will you go to him?”

That seemed to be the question on everyone’s mind. Slowly, her head turned toward Alana. 

“When I decide.” Will replied. 

Chapter Text

Despite the knowledge that Jack wouldn’t be too far behind, no matter how much of a jumpstart she had, Will continued on readying herself for the journey ahead. Food, for three to four weeks, would be essential. Water, too. Luckily, The NOLA was outfitted for such an odyssey. 

Sleep would be hard to come by, but Will preferred that as much as she could. Her body had been exerting more energy by existing, lately.  Had this been any other period in her life, coffee could have sustained her. 

Her mind was opening, creating space for that which was showing more physical signs of life. It was difficult, mentally, to acknowledge it in specific language. She preferred to keep it disconnected, cloaked, known but not give it importance. Yet that was the whole idea of such a thing; a new life was a paradigm shift. When Will had been leaving the police academy, and in her early years as an officer, women her age were already married with a baby on the way. While her mind wrapped around homicides and created connections, her colleagues had children running and crawling about.

The idea hadn’t been so important to her. Her skin had crawled, once or twice, as the wives talked about their pregnancy symptoms and the seeming incompetence of their husbands. They’d turned their noses as Will had remarked rather crassly about the meanings behind such behaviors, shutting her out from that world. It hadn’t destroyed her in the slightest.

Now, anecdotes of the “joy of feeling life move” were coming back to her the more she created space. Will wouldn’t have described what she was feeling, necessarily, as “joyous”; more like a combination of developmental processes the fetus was experiencing. It was clean, clinical.

Hannibal would have like that.

As much as her mind did not wish to turn to him, it did. Where the stag had disappeared, images of his face came to her on occasion. Phantom faces and phantom hands touching her, caressing her skin. Sometimes, fingers pressed into the scar and reopened the delicate tissue, spilling out lengths of intestines and viscera. Organs sliding across the floor, skidding to waiting hands to be seared, eviscerated. She wondered what tartare Hannibal would create, what she would be paired with.

Sour thoughts often turned to something more delicate, bordering on candlelight and silken sheets. Hands caressing the curve of her face, her breasts, her body from the least to most delicate. Her skin, which was not entirely as soft as Hannibal might have romanticized and waxed on about. He often had.

Such thoughts were dangerous to dwell on; it might soften her.

She had the boat docked about a week and a half after she’d met with Alana. Sleepless nights had her keeping an eye on the path she would sail. Ideal skies, mild to good weather. In the silence, where she’d once found Abigail, she found the fluttering within her sufficient company.

Sometimes, in her mind, she found movement out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes she turned to find herself within Hannibal’s office, seeing an endless rain of papers from above. She searched each one, looking for discernible writings. Clocks with illegible hands, fevered outlines and numbers far from the borders. Eyes looked upward for the man on the walk above, leaning over the railing with a fond smile as he watched her catch books and papers. The floor was lush with patient notes, drawings, plans; plans Hannibal had made for the three of them. Plans Will had rejected so immediately, without thought as to what a gift it could have been.

In her mind, it could have been beautiful; Abigail could have thrived there. Will had seen her smile as they’d fished in the stream, as they’d sat on the porch and watched the sun rise. She’d heard her call her “Mom”. She hadn’t considered what it would be like to be called that, before. It had warmed her in a manner she’d always rejected. 

She could have gone to school, educated herself with access and finery. Perhaps Will could have done something more, too. But she didn’t focus on that. In her mind, she saw herself accepted the offer over dinner. Then, perhaps, a door would open and she would see Abigail. A reunion, an embrace. An escape from Baltimore, Wolf Trap, all of it on a flight. And then, perhaps, in the same timeline, knowledge of this—

All of it was too good, too perfect. Hindsight was indeed 20/20 and fantasies were just that—fantastical.

As her provisions were made, Will was able to exchange a small amount of money for Euros. She knew where Hannibal would be; she’d listened closely enough, saw enough to connect. She understood where he would go to feel safe. 

Humans often sought safety in mythos and religion. Even the Devil would find sanctuary there. He would thrive, in effect and actuality.

Below her feet, once papers were wiped and cleared, the mosaic of the skull nearly gleamed. And when she looked upward, above the showering, she saw moonlight and stars. Orion. Jupiter. Constellations that led a straightforward path.

“My palace is vast, even by medieval standards. The foyer is the Norman chapel in Palermo. Severe, and beautiful, and timeless…”

His words had always held truth, direction. She would use them to light her way to him.

The week Bella Crawford died, Will decided to make her move.

Luckily enough, she still fit in her trousers and dress shirt. It was a tight fit, but the length of the shirt and placement of her blazer concealed the obvious. It was the least she could do, for Jack, before she made his life even more difficult.

The peacefulness certainly masked the pain Jack had certainly been suffering. Will had not spoken to him since his visit to her shed. Adjusting her glasses, she moved into the pew behind him. A small bouquet of flowers rested upon her lap for a moment before she moved them aside. “I’m sorry about Bella, Jack,” she offered.

Jack did not respond to that point. “He gave me time to say goodbye.”

Will did not respond. Her fingers drew along the inseam of her trousers. 

“I won’t thank him for it. He would gloat over it. Gladly so.” Jack’s shoulders rose and fell. Will could not see Jack’s face but she was certain he was drawn, resigned over this ending, but determined and targeted toward the next. It was his hubris, to use Hannibal’s wording. Even here, he haunted them both. 

“I opened my eyes this morning,” Jack said, “and I didn’t think about Bella dying. I didn’t think about her body.” A pause. “The last thing she said to me: ‘What’s going on in the yard?’. I didn’t check.” His head bowed slightly. “I think that was her way of telling me to leave the room, so she could die alone. But I didn’t listen.”

Will looked at the flower arrangements. One, distinctive and ornate, stuck out to her. She didn’t have to ask.

Jack’s head turned slightly over his shoulder. “I was there when her heart stopped, Will. And then I held her, until her brain died.” 

Will’s eyes closed a moment, briefly feeling the mirrored feeling she had experienced months prior. She hadn’t gone to Abigail’s funeral; she hadn’t even know when it was or where it had been. Abigail had been with her; that is all that had mattered. Even now, she didn’t appear. 

“I hope that she’s somewhere comfortable, Jack,” Will responded on behalf of them both. “I hope she’s at peace there.” Anywhere was better than here. Maybe Bella was one of the lucky ones; untouched, escaped. She envied her. 

Jack slowly stood. “I knew it was coming. I know what is coming.” He stepped out of the pew and held out an envelope. On it, in ornate script, was Jack’s name. Will didn’t have to ask.

“I know what’s coming for you, Will. You don’t have to die, too.” 

Will took the envelope and watched Jack slowly leave the chapel. Her fingers opened the envelope and took out the letter. In curved script was a quote and a statement of bereavement. Then, Hannibal’s name. 

Some of the ink was stained where something—perhaps water or, Will dared to think, a tear—had fallen. Still, the letters were legible. Her thumb soothed over the words and she quietly folded the letter before lapsing into a period of silent reflection. Her eyes went unfocused on the candlelight that surrounded the flower displays and Bella’s resting body. The luckiest of us. Most merciful and blessed.

Will stood and placed the letter on the ornate display. Her fingers considered the edge of the coffin, feeling where wood met plush lining. A comfortable bed, the reasoning mind wanted to believe. A place to rest, to sleep, perchance, to dream.

She gave Bella a final look before turning and walking out of the chapel. She did not see Jack on her way out.

For the rest of that day, and the days that followed, she finalized her preparations and brought the ship to the dock. Maps and courses had been charted and marked appropriately. An experienced sailor, Will knew this would be a trek to test her stamina. She was more than prepared.

Once, not too long ago, Hannibal had told Will to leave a note for Alana to look after the dogs. It was high-time she took that advice. 

It was morning, right before dawn, when Will grabbed the rest of her things and left. Winston whined and pushed his nose against her legs, whereas the other dogs looked after her with concern that muted once she’d fed them one final time. It would tide them over until Alana would get there. Will had timed it almost perfectly. 

Winston’s snout pressed against her stomach, causing a flutter within her. Will knelt and scratched the dog’s ears, letting his nose press against hers as she lingered in their silent farewell. Winston licked her face and nosed into her neck, initiating a longer embrace. Will’s head leaned against the dog’s and she allowed herself a few more silent moments before pulling back and grabbing her last bag; a couple changes of clothes, money, and a notebook and pens.

She hadn’t known why she’d taken the notebook. It seemed like the right thing to do.

When she had driven off the property lines, she sent the text to Alana. It was not descriptive nor detailed, it was simple:

Please feed the dogs.

It took until right after sunrise to get to the marina. Will threw her bag in and began the process of getting ready to sail. She loosened the sails and checked the motor one more time, then once again. She checked the weather reports one final time as well as her food and water stores. 

It was going to be warm until she got farther into the Atlantic. Even still, she preferred to layer up at the get-go. It was practical in case the weather turned on a dime. Her boots were heavy and waterproofed, her trousers a size larger with a belt secured comfortably enough. Her hair was tied messily up and out of her face, for now, and a thermal vest was worn over a long shirt and under another jacket. 

Calm excitement motivated her to ready to sail and it seemed to burst as she got the motor going, bringing the ship away from the dock slowly but surely. This was the important part. Will was locked in a focus as she navigated out of the bay and into more open water.

Once settled on the water, cruising steadily and sustainably, Will went below deck to lay out what she needed; navigation maps, compass, radio. She didn’t turn it on yet; no use in being picked up so soon. She had somewhat of a head start on Jack and the others; the countless others who would use her motivation to make their own moves. 

Were this weeks prior, perhaps Abigail would have sat beside her and spoken about her musings. But that hadn’t been Abigail; Abigail was dead and buried. Maybe burned. Will didn’t know if there was any family left to claim her body. To think of poor Abigail being sent into a crematorium, alone as she was the day she was born, could have been devastating. 

Fluttering within her took Will out of her lapse. She pressed her hand against the spot and settled on the cushioned bench, allowing herself a moment of ease and rest. Eighteen, this week. The waistband of her trousers and outline of the belt pressed against her stomach uncomfortably. Will noticed, as she exhaled, there was less capacity in her lungs. She noticed it more when she tried to take in a typical breath, but actively worked at swallowing in more air. It was as if she was yawning.

She was tired; that was very true. Her fatigue was typical at this point, from what briefly she’d allowed herself to read, but she’d blamed it on the restlessness she’d felt in getting here. All of that build up and anticipation and, now, she was on a trek of no-return.

Returning to that house, to the routines of nothingness, was resigning herself as Sisyphus did; rolling her thoughts and wishes up the hill until it rolled back to her and she would try to overcome it all again in the morning. Her head leaned back against the neck of the bench and her eyes closed. She couldn’t rest yet. She would have to estimate the weather and the wind before she could permit the motor to do all of the work for a couple of hours.

Her fingers moved over the scar, feeling it beneath the layers of clothing. Will’s head tilted to the side as her mind, for the first time in a while, focused on the physical presence. It had been easy to dismiss the movements within her as well as excuse the physical symptoms. She’d experienced ones similar; when anxiety wracked her body, when she’d been suffering her encephalitis under Hannibal’s curious eye. Her body had felt ill and wrapped up within it. Then clarity had struck and she’d felt powerful, capable. She’d wielded her body and felt burned through and free of all which had ailed her. She’d never felt more aligned than when she’d thought he was dead, when Randall Tier had been beneath her and her fists beat the life from him. She’d seen Hannibal’s face beneath her; smiling with bloodied teeth.

She’d felt alive in other ways, when Hannibal had been beneath her; when her hips had trapped his, her hands pressing his wrists into bedding. When her wet sex had pressed against his mouth and his hands had scoured her body, moving up her abdomen to cup her breasts as if they were something holy while his mouth had sent waves of undulating pleasure through her. When she’d made the decision that Hannibal was “worthy”—her words to him that night which had his eyes dilating—of being inside of her without even a notion of a barrier between them. When they had consummated this strange relationship that had been born out of one-sided hatred and dual-sided fascination.

She’d told herself it was for the greater good. Whose good?

It could have been any of those nights which had created this moving being within her. Gestational age was something she could have discovered months ago, if she’d cared enough. Care was a strong word to what she felt now. Curious was too cliche.

Will’s eyes opened and she gazed off to the side, letting her palm rest at the under curve of her stomach. Something was compelling her, bringing thoughts to the edge of spoken word.

“—He wanted us to live. To find him.”

She half-expected some response. Nothing. Abigail had been better company.

She thumbed the scar three times. “Not you. I don’t think you were a thought to him. Weren’t a thought to me at all.” Will breathed softly in through her nose and out the same way. “I don’t know if you are, still.”

It felt silly to speak aloud to nothingness. There was a shift inside of her again. This time, it startled Will just enough. 

“Alright, alright.” She shifted, laying horizontally on the bench with her head elevated by a pillow and cushioned arm. Fingers paused before unzipping the vest and lifting the shirt just enough to bare her stomach. The scar was less angry as it was revealed; it was healing well. Her stomach was more raised and curved, pushing up like a mound or a small hill. Out of morbid curiosity, her hand smoothed over in an attempt to flatten it. It was hard, like a smaller inflated ball. It didn’t press down evenly and flatly. It was strange to the point that Will gave up the effort and absently smoothed her hand over, as if soothing the life within. 

A sigh came out on sound. “I wonder if you would have fit into his world,” she mused aloud, fingertips grazing over her skin. “If there was a spare space for another.”

As if in response, Will saw her stomach move. Rather, the life move within it. The scar stretched and pushed then relaxed. Her heart stopped in her chest at the disconnection between her brain and body. Once the movement settled, Will slid upright and covered the spot that had moved. The weight settled, pressing against her bladder. That moment of softness was gone. She swallowed back bitterness and rose, pulling her shirt over her stomach again and going to use the toilet. 

She spent the time that followed focused on the sails and conserving the motor. Will pulled her coat closer around herself as the day passed and wind blew, pushing the boat further and further onto its course. Only acts of God seemed as if it would stop her. 

And yet, perhaps it was a curious God that pushed the wind in the sails and further toward the land where Hannibal was. Maybe God was as curious as to what would happen as He was when He dropped a roof on the heads of believers, crushing them like meaningless ants. 

Sleep was something she rationed but food was starting to become something she simply couldn’t. It was as if the nausea had cleared and hunger was a new, undiscovered feeling. It was more noticeable after the first week. By the beginning of the third, her discipline kicked back in to ensure she didn’t starve. That would be counterintuitive indeed.

It was more of a feeling akin to comfort rather than distress that the life within made itself known in more ways than simply sickness and dread. When her days were spent with her eyes on the horizon and maps, wind whipping through her hair and thoughts anchoring her to dwelling on the past, the shifting and expansion brought her back to the present. There were occasions she found herself sparing a marveled, curious thought on the concept of the being within her as a person. She’d been in awe of it once before; when Margot Verger had told her of her pregnancy and her intent that Will simply offer protection rather than other support. It had filled her with discomfort and betrayal at being used; Will had even wondered if the “sperm donor” had felt as used. Then again, in her experience, some men didn’t care about such things. It was more for sexual satisfaction and a moment to feel as if they had conquered femininity.

Will had never felt like that nor let herself experience too many men who had those thoughts. Those types of men disgusted her. They were rude, as Hannibal might have phrased it. “Unspeakably ugly” was another turn of phrase she had liked.

Did he consider it ugly that Will had “used” him? It wouldn’t be abnormal to think he would have thought that; their intimacy, their conversations, all for the purpose of luring the predators closer to the nest. 

At night, she often sat with a hot water bottle against her aching back. Her eyes remained on the sky, tracing the constellations when they were at all visible. She found constancy and stability within them when they were visible and still trusted and relied in their existence when the sky was cloudy enough. Normally, she would have warmed her bones with a fifth of whiskey and some hot coffee. Now it was only warm water. Tea nauseated her.

When words were silly to be spoken aloud, Will wrote. Her hand moved across pages and pages to fill with what felt like meaningless thoughts; complaints of how her feet ached, the heartburn, lack of appetite one moment and roaring appetite the next. The discomfort of being able to sleep and be lulled by waves which had cradled her in her youth but which brought her closer to seasickness than anything ever had before in her three and a half decades of existence. 

There was secret, unconscious fondness. She chose to ignore it. She wouldn't look at those pages. Perhaps the notebook was a companion to speak to since she had none physically. None in front of her, at least.

It was silly to speak to something that barely existed; the concept of existence was contained within her rather than within someone else. With Margot, it had all been possibilities and easy to distance herself from. But, with it within her own body and her own flesh, Will found her thoughts daring to cross the line between reality and disconnect. The inclination to give credence and credit to the life that would come into the living world rather than remain somewhere more untenable and doubtful. Perhaps the writing was a way to create a partition. Perhaps it was a way to keep from drowning in the sea of her own thoughts.

Time zones and miles of open water were crossed. Still, the stars remained the same. Everything else in the world felt inherently changed, but the waves remained the same. The constant rising, falling. Even the breaking of the boat through them, moving forth and carrying on.

The shores of Sicily were a welcome sight. A shower and change of clothes were more than welcome. It was the first time in weeks that Will had seen herself in a full length mirror and her eyes had not torn themselves away immediately to shield her mind from the ever-growing consequences of her decisions. Her trousers would likely not give as much grace in the next couple of weeks as they did now; she could just barely manage it.

While it was not entirely humid, it was warm. Still, she felt cold. Glasses adorned her face and her lighter coat adorned her body as her feet carried her toward the Capella Normani.

Will Graham had not been outside of America in her thirty-four years of life. She had experienced no desire nor drive to escape the borders as, perhaps, some in her town or her academy classes did. Italy had held no ancestral pull nor inspiration or enlightenment. She had never seen it as a place where her life would change in any surmountable way.

The grandiosity of the marble and intricacies of the carvings had her understanding why Hannibal had hidden it away in his mind. It was too glorious for words. It simply had to be filled with art and ornate depictions of Christ, his Mother, the saints; paying homage in the way only humans could to something too fantastic for them to understand.

She imagined a crack running straight through the vaulted ceiling, going across Christ’s face. Hannibal would enjoy it; he would enjoy the dust falling onto the heads and hands of surprised onlookers, feel joy at the terror on their faces and the shrieks and exalted hands up to the heavens which would crash down upon them. Will felt the urge to smile at it all despite it not belonging to her.

Tourists and the faithful alike had gathered. Some took pictures on phones or cameras while others lit candles and made signs of the Cross, baring their souls and burdens to an omniscient yet silent God. 

God can’t answer any of us, nor can He save us from our suffering.

As if in response to her silent reflection, there was a quickening within her. Will took a breath in response. 

Because elegance is greater than suffering. That is His Plan. It’s always been His Plan.

Perhaps it would learn soon enough, if not now.

Her footsteps carried her across the floor, closer to the altar. Feet stepped across a mosaic. The mosaic of the skeleton; as pristine and clear as it had been when she’d seen it in Hannibal’s drawings, in her mind. In his mind, though his eyes, in his spirit. 

What had drawn him to that place Will had only started to hazard a guess. The beauty and antiquity is what drew everyone there. He’d spoken fondly of the Italy of his youth; how he admired Dante and scoured mythos for echoes and reasoning and something akin to philosophy. He had his own well-developed; that Will would never deny. 

The tourists and faithful around her genuflected or made a sign of the cross when they approached the altar. Will did no such thing. She turned and made the round of the pews and seats, walking by men and women of faith alike. Her eyes locked, momentarily, with a priest. His eyes lowered. Will ignored it.

The smells of the street vendors neither appetized nor nauseated her. It was a secret third thing which led her to buying a rather bland pasta dish that she was certain the vendor would have judged her for if she had cared enough to linger. 

Retreated to her room, she only bared herself there as she laid on the bed and stared at the partly concealed windows. It was easy to see the moon above the tension rod and nearly translucent curtains. Will’s feet were propped on one pillow while her back was elevated by another. Perhaps not recommended by a chiropractor but Will had always balked proper medical advice.

Fingertips lazily stroked across the bare skin of her abdomen then trailed up the center of her chest to her sternum, then through her hair. Her chest rose and fell with a quiet, almost silent sigh. Fingers spread out then pulled in, raking nails across the delicate skin of her scalp. It elicited a feeling of relaxation, albeit temporary. It reminded her of fingers which had performed that same gesture and more.

Will’s head turned to the side, catching the minor light pollution in the sky. It didn’t dull the stars, that was certain. Perhaps somewhere more remote, abandoned by society, they would be more clear. She wondered how clear they had been thousands of years ago when people long dead and buried had looked up. Had they seen the very same?

Her other hand touched the swell of her stomach, receiving movement in response. “You’ll see it, too,” Will said quietly. Her response was a nudge against where her hand pressed. Her thumb stroked the spot as if she were stroking the head of one of her dogs. She thought fondly on Winston and how he liked it when she stroked her thumb in the little indent between his eyes. 

Turning on her side, she turned off the lamp which likely had not changed in the past twenty years. The pillow elevating her swollen feet went between her legs and the one for her back went behind her head as she turned and closed her eyes. Images of the chapel swirled in her head, decorating her dreams. 

Drip

Drip

Drip

Stakes through bone, ligaments. In life, through cartilage and marrow

Making something broken and foul beautiful.

Beautiful.

More beautiful in his purpose here than in life.

Than he ever could have been in life.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Blood.

The covenant of the womb.

That which nourished and provided life,

And a quick death.

A bigger death.

Blades through the heart could take, take, take.

And took.

And here, now, they serve a purpose.

A design.

A broken Valentine.

She had a feeling, when she woke. Like a sense, a recognition. She would know his presence and his mark as certainly as she knew her own footsteps, her own breath and life. 

The movement within her was more pronounced as she entered the Capella Normani, seeing the swarm of Italian police and crime scene detectives. Cast in shadow on the large drape that surrounded it was the figure of a heart. A heart with two swords driven through.

Hannibal.

Chapter Text

The sheet shrouding the display was a poor excuse for hiding all that was horrifically beautiful. Will was the exception to the rule of only clergy and investigators. None of them had made the slightest effort to remove her from the premises. She couldn’t blame them for being distracted by the gothic horror standing concealed from prying eyes. Though the painted and sculpted eyes of the holiest looked down upon the horrors of mortal sin. 

She couldn’t find it within herself to entirely call it sinful. It felt too easy, too naive. All of it was simply too easy. 

There was an old impulse to step forward, clear the scene, take it all in for herself. She wished nothing more than to fall back into an old dance. She’d been out of practice. Clearly Hannibal hadn’t. 

“Signora.”

Her head turned as an office seemed to notice her presence, noting that she simply didn’t belong in this crowd of investigators and officers. Rushed Italian went in one ear and out the other.

“I don’t speak—“

“He says you don’t belong here. This is a crime scene, Signora.”

Not that it could be misconstrued as anything else. Certainly not a children’s fair. Will held her jacket closed and turned to walk, locking eyes with the priest, who was conversing with an officer. The man seemed to straighten and nod whilst saying something she could not hear to the officer. Her spine straightened as the officer who had spoken to her came by her side.

“LaManna,” said the other officer, “non lasciarlo uscire. Voglio parlare con lui.”

Will looked at the man she presumed was LaManna. “What did he say?”

“He said,” LaManna replied, “that he wants to talk to you.”

Will looked at the officer then at the concealed crime scene. “Alright.”

The chairs were not quite comfortable. Not that comfort had mattered until now, when her joints were aching and it felt as if her back had a constant weight against it. Deep, silent breaths seemed to soothe most of the swirling and movement, as well as the slight press of her own hand against her lower abdomen. She hadn’t been offered anything yet; not water nor anything to eat. She didn’t exactly think the Italian police were the type to butter up a witness. 

Likely it would be questions as to what she had been doing there, why she was so impeding on an investigation, so on and so forth. Something Will could easily talk herself out of. 

Her free arm crossed over the other, shielding her body as she watched the bodies move from one spot to another, like ants scurrying toward their tasks. 

“Signora Graham,” came a voice beside her.

Will’s head turned to see a man perhaps Jack’s age sitting beside her. Short salt and pepper hair, a beard. He looked quite comfortable in the chair. He certainly wasn’t there to be questioned. It took barely a second for Will to recognize that he was a part of the force. It took barely another second for him to introduce himself.

“Chef Investigator Rinaldo Pazzi,” said the man, “Questura di Firenze.” 

Her brows raised. “You’re quite the ways away from Florence, Inspector,” she replied coolly There was another shift inside of her. She didn’t respond to it.

The man inclined his head. “You’re quite a ways away from Baltimore, Signora.” His body shifted to shield them both from view. Will’s reaction as well as Pazzi’s own intent were in one viewing field. Their own. 

Will breathed in once more and looked straight ahead at a unremarkable carved clock. The wood was quite fine, polished. Hannibal might have enjoyed it. She could see it in his home in Baltimore. A finger tapped, then another. Pazzi was taking the four to seven seconds of silence to see who would fill it. Will wouldn’t give him that satisfaction at all.

A breath. Ha. She won.

“I read your case file. Everything I could find about your time at the FBI. And your incarceration.”

A bitterly amused laugh barely left her lips. “I was acquitted. You’d know that if you really read it.” 

“Quite clear,” said Pazzi. “I also read about what happened in Baltimore, when you and several others were injured. One killed.”

Her jaw was set quite tightly. She breathed through the tension and finally looked at him, though did not respond verbally. Pazzi resumed, “You come to Palermo. You are staying in a hostel, yes?”

“You read up on me, you know my movements. What else do you know?”

“I know that you arrive and a body is discovered in a fashion quite grotesque.” Pazzi watched her. “You have been spending much time in the Capella dei Normani. Father Franciello said you spend more time than most tourists.”

“I’ve been praying,” Will responded, “as most tourists, I’d assume.”

“What does Will Graham pray for?” Asked Pazzi. 

Another bitterly amused sound. “What does anyone pray for?”

“Depends on what the desire is.”

Will’s eyes shifted slightly over Pazzi’s shoulder to the officers at the desk, looking over files and speaking. On a good day, Will barely understood English let alone Italian. She’d grown up with French Creole speakers and those with accents thick enough to make a Northerner’s head spin. Language barrier aside, she understood that police proceedings were broadly universal. 

“I think God lost interest in any concept of prayers from me a long time ago,” she responded coldly.

“And yet you keep trying,” came Pazzi’s quick response. “Even for atheists, there is some comfort in the notion of prayer. It leaves you with the distinct feeling you’re not alone.”

Will’s eyes moved back to Pazzi’s and she held his gaze until one of the officers came over. “Signora,” he said, “vieni con me.”

Pulling her coat across herself, Will stood. Pazzi’s head leaned back and he nodded. “Ciao.”

The questioning was classic and predictable, almost boring. She’d heard tell of how the Italian police could be a bit less regulated than American police, especially in cases of American tourists and grisly homicides. Will answered their questions as blandly as she could, which was not that much of an effort. It was a detached, easy intention. Her arms loosely crossed in front of her and her crossed legs certainly gave off the impression that she was guarded. Then again, par for the course for Will Graham.

An hour of Italian to English and back to Italian translations led her to being released. Certainly they would be keeping an eye on her. It would be naive to think they would not. Many eyes were on her here and she knew it was not only the carved marble faces. There were not many places in this world she could disappear; not truly, not as one would wish to. 

Her stomach churned, acid burning and hormones sending signals to find something to eat. A general tiredness was her baseline. Something more hearty than a few bites of a meal would have to be in order before she returned to the chapel. 

Her feet made a soft sound as she descended the stairs and a figure briefly obscured her path. Inspector Pazzi held a manilla envelope under his arm, secured by a grip. Will stopped on the landing, adjusting her glasses. “Unsatisfied by our previous conversation, Inspector?”

“Our conversation requires more specifications,” responded Pazzi. “I find us kindred souls, Signora Graham. We share a gift of imagination.”

A bitter sound of amusement. “To say the least,” she said. “Though I think we differ on what else we share.”

“And what is that?”

“I have more scars than you,” replied Will. “Scars of a woman who grabbed her gift by the blade instead of the handle.”

Pazzi transitioned the envelope to his hands, almost presentationally. “You grabbed the wrong end.”

“Silly me,” Will said without an ounce of humor.

Pazzi’s fingers opened the envelope slowly. “You know who murdered the man in the Cappella Palatina.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And so do you.”

There was a nod of acknowledgement “Indeed. We met, two decades ago, under similar circumstances to this. His work has…improved since then. Il Mostro, we called him. The Monster of Florence.” 

He paused, seeming to wait for a beat of recognition at the name. Only muted curiosity as the connections waited with baited breath to be made. Pazzi’s weathered fingers undid the small clasps sealing the envelope and began to pull out old photographs. “His work has stayed in my mind these twenty years. Tableaux’s which haunt my waking hours as well as my resting ones.”

Something inside Will prickled at attention. Her eyes moved down to the photographs; black and white images of crime scenes. Ghastly images, to the common eye. To others, more taboo, perhaps something of a different ilk rippling across the surface. The photograph which first captured her attention was placed in her hands. A man and a woman lying in the back of a pickup truck. The man’s body was blue, bloated. Perhaps his death had been earlier than the woman’s. A tree with what seemed to be oranges almost spooning him from behind. There were flowers in the woman’s mouth and a sheer cloth barely concealing her form. Her left breast revealed, though simultaneously concealed with flowers. A rather artistic, Renaissance touch. Utterly Italian. It smelled like Hannibal.

Pazzi’s attention was rapt on the photograph in Will’s hands. He seemed transfixed. “Do you recognize it?”

Memories of books in Hannibal’s library, sketches and marked pages. Fond recollections and references to art. Of all the artists, one stuck out most prominently. 

“Botticelli,” Will replied. “Primavera.”

“Exactly Primavera.” Pazzi held another photograph. This time, it was of the actual painting with the label “Galleria degli Uffizi” under it. “Match. Match. Esattamente.”

Will handed the photograph back. “You went to the Uffizi Gallery to investigate him. Il Mostro.”

“Investigate,” confirmed Pazzi, “observe. I thought I would find a monster there, at the Uffizi. But I did not find a monster. I found a man.” He produced another, black-and-white photograph from the envelope. “The Monster of Florence.”

Will took the photograph. It was the photograph of a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. A smoother face but that same look in his eyes. A suit, not as fine or designed as the ones he would wear twenty years later. Hair a bit shorter than present-day but in that same, contained style. Those same cheekbones. That same look in his eyes. Young, still handsome. 

Her lips parted in recognition. Pazzi leaned his head back as he saw its confirmation. “He is the young man I would see, day after day, sitting in front of the painting in the Uffizi as if he were in prayer. As transfixed as I imagined. Obsessed.”

“Seems a fitting word,” Will replied. She could see it vividly; a young Hannibal with his back turned. She imagined herself there, too. She would have been younger than him, at the time; much younger. As she stepped toward him, in her mind, she was as she was now in the present. His profile could be seen the closer she stepped; focus as he looked from painting to sketchbook. Graphite staining his fingers as he wiped away the rare imperfections. Practiced hands. Wonderful hands and fingers caressing the outlines and creating shading as he went about recreating the painting on his own canvas. 

A practice canvas. 

Her eyes tore herself from the image of the man to return to the present. She went to hand the photograph back but Pazzi shook his head, handing her the folder. Surprised, she tucked the photographs back inside and sealed it once more with the metal clasps. “Your investigation wasn’t successful.”

“I was certain of it. It was a moment of recognition. At last, we would capture him. A moment that should have been my triumph.” Pazzi seemed nearly haunted. “I could not let him get away too quickly. The Questura entered his home, nearly destroying it in order to find evidence.”

Will shook her head. “But Hannibal Lecter never leaves evidence. He eats it.”

If that statement made the FBI tremble, it did not seem to entirely shake Pazzi off his stance. Admirable. Maybe foolishly so. Will saw the weathered look of a man who had been haunted for two decades. Will, herself, could only think to relate. Twenty- years of Hannibal Lecter haunting one’s dreams seemed a fitting torture for the ninth circle of Hell. Dante Alighieri could only dream of such torment. 

“Another man innocent of those crimes was convicted.” Pazzi looked rather disgusted. “Not innocent of others, but a fitting way for the Questura to close the case.”

“Except it has never been closed,” Will responded, “because Hannibal Lecter always escapes trial and punishment. It has a habit of slipping off him.”

“And sticking to others. Namely you.” Pazzi straightened. “You came to Italy to find him.”

Will nodded. “Amongst other things.” She felt something twisting unnaturally and uncomfortably within her. Reflexively, her hands crossed over her front. The envelope felt like a poor attempt at a shield for her body. She held it firmly. “I have a request, Inspector.”

Pazzi gave a cautious nod. “Name it.”

“Access to the crime scene in the chapel,” she negotiated. “I know it’s Hannibal Lecter. I need to see it clearly.”

“Your clarity,” confirmed Pazzi. “It is your gift.”

“Some might call it a curse.” The notion of it as a gift was disconcerting. It reminded her too much of Hannibal’s words; words which swirled around and wrapped her in embraces which had felt easier to live with in the past. Now it felt hollow, aching. “Regardless, I need some time with the scene. And I know they won’t necessarily be pleased to see a tourist there.”

“A tourist with quite the tie to the FBI.” Pazzi nodded. “This evening. I can convince them to give access. Meet me there. We will see Il Mostro’s return display in the light of the moon.”

Will’s shoulders eased and she nodded. She made to hand back the envelope, earning a shake of the head from Pazzi. “Please. Acquaint yourself with this version of Hannibal Lecter.”

She held the folder to herself again, nodded, and made an informal exit from the police building. The air was warm, certainly warming up, but she kept her coat loosely buttoned around her. Her feet carried her through the streets, away from the police department, toward a small shop where the smell of food lifted her tired, aching spirit. All of the hunger she had repressed for months was returning to her, bidding her to regain an essence of strength. 

Sitting in her room, takeaway container on the bed, Will looked over the photographs of the crime. Bodies cast in tableaus so similar to works of Botticelli. Most in the style of Primavera. Some with inspiration from The Birth of Venus or other paintings attributed to the great master’s work. All grotesquely artistic, belonging in a gallery somewhere. All Hannibal’s handiwork.

Even for something so primitive in his years, it had notes of promise; the way the bodies were posed, the attention to each cut. Will’s eyes poured through autopsy notes, though she admittedly had to translate more than a few lines to string together a complete picture of what was being said. Even without common language, visuals shared all that was important. It was a window into Hannibal’s youth. Into his beginning. 

Will closed her eyes, palm down on the photograph. Those eyes peered out between the slits of her fingers, painting themselves onto her eyelids. The years, decades, those eyes held; the lights they’d seen leave this plane of existence and the cuts those hands had made. Thousands, perhaps millions, of repetitive lacerations, breaking of bones and sinews, catching how many buckets of blood and viscera?

But, also, how much beauty had those eyes and hands found in it all? How had he treated those whose flesh he manipulated, contorted, created into something of use? Where others saw horror, those hands had crafted something in honor of the artists who had walked these streets, breathed this recycled air. She thought of how artists and doctors—cut from the same cloth as Hannibal himself—had created everlasting art by looking at the soulless eyes of the dead and seeing such beauty in them. They had purpose despite their rot, and not to be used as food for the worms.

She walked to the truck bed, seeing the still corpses. Flowers scattered, highlighting the colored changes in the skin that death so often brought with it. Even rigor mortis had done its part in cultivating this living dead love letter to Botticelli and to the city that had cultivated his works. Will almost wanted to brush strands of hair away but dared not mar this beauty. The outlines, the margins, the space all were used so effectively and wonderfully. Will was no great connoisseur of art, but even she felt touched by the effort and obsession. An artist’s obsession, after all, resulted in some of the greatest masterpieces.

Turning, she heard the scratching of a pencil. Or, perhaps a sketching tool of another sort gliding across a pad. Almost in a spotlight was a figure with his back turned. A bit leaner of a figure but she still recognized that outline from sight alone. She didn’t need to see his face. The face from the photograph etched into her memory as she walked closer. It barely turned toward her. Only slightly so she could see how the shadow of the light clouded his eyes, his expression. Primavera was exalted before them, bathed and basked in spotlight. 

That profile; the way the eyes caught the light. Those eyes never aged, never changed.

The image shifted, dissolving as if 

paint were melting down the canvas. Will felt it on her skin, pulling her down, melting her down. Her eyes opened to see those sharp, ageless ones before her. Except they were glistening. Glistening, terribly sad. Filled with hurt, pain, betrayal. Something so deep that neither could dare speak its name.

White, hot lightning shot across her stomach.The paint dribbled and pooled together, swirling and cramping terribly as the lightning shot deeper and sharper into her core. Her hands came up, bracing against those shoulders connected to that neck, that head, those eyes. Those eyes which were wet, glistening with a convoluted mixture of pain, sadness, hurt, betrayal. Over and over and over. She’d seen those eyes, that hurt, too much.

Her bones ached as she clutched his shoulder. His hand came to the back of her head to force her into that embrace. Their bodies flat against one another; nothing between them. No life, no potential. There was no space, after all.There never had been and there never would be.

With a sharp gasp, Will pulled herself out of that image and grasped her chest. She felt her collarbone sharp beneath as her fingers pressed against the space so hard it might have hurt. Her heart was thudding as wildly as the shifting within her womb. Her hand moved there as some unconscious instinct instructed her to ensure it was alright. It was similar to how a rabbit sprinted after narrowly missing a bullet to the brain. Will’s eyes closed and she felt her lungs fill with air then gently relax as air was expelled out. She couldn’t gasp and gulp as she normally could; there seemed to be less and less space in her body nowadays. 

Sitting back against the headboard, Will allowed herself to slump and collect herself. Eyes stared unfocused at the wall as she willed the silhouette of Primavera from her mind’s eye. Eventually she looked at the window, barely concealed with old curtains. The day would be long before she met Pazzi again. She could be content to sit for hours, to lose herself to her thoughts or to the stream.

A swift kick against her bladder, an uncomfortable twinge. No, time to get up.

The food she’d taken away was in the trash and Will walked the streets, watching the life continue around her. Holy persons, tourists, normal people, children, vendors; all bustling with joy, fears, dreams as she walked amongst them feeling as foreign as another species. She wondered how many of them knew of the horrors int he Cappella Palatina. Who amongst them knew that Il Mostro walked amongst them?

Will stopped before a store and looked inside, seeing fine silk. Certainly a place Hannibal might enjoy. How ironic if she stepped inside and saw him there, checking out a silk scarf. Even in the summer warmth, she was certain he would find a reason for it. His taste was fine. She’d balked when he’d made mention of fabrics she would look “quite elegant” in. Will had laughed at him:

“Elegance and me are like oil and water.”

“And what of us?”

“Depends on who is doing the comparing and contrasting.”

Hannibal had smiled, setting down the cup of coffee and placing the bottle of whiskey in a cabinet, away from Will’s reach. She’d eyed him through a squint as she had taken up her non-alcoholic cup of coffee between cold hands. Hannibal’s fine sleep shirt was not too big on her, but the way she had raised her shoulders against the silk had drawn out the topic of clothing fabric. Hannibal had questioned if she was uncomfortable.

There’d been irony in that.

Will had leaned against the refrigerator, head against the cool metal, and watched Hannibal as he continued slow cooking the eggs. Hannibal, who was shirtless underneath his robe due to Will wearing said shirt. Truly an honorable sacrifice.

“True, oil and water do not mix. Yet they are so closely entwined in phrase and element that one is hardly without the other.”

Will’s eyes rolled with muted fondness and faux-annoyance. “You’re working harder than necessary to be right. It’s okay to be wrong.”

There’s been a twitch of a smile that widened when Hannibal had looked at her. Will had smiled behind her cup, raising her brows. “I call victory this time.”

“This time,” Hannibal had acquiesced. 

Her lashes fluttered at the memory as she returned to the present, eyes making momentary contact with the store clerk. Will averted and continued a few more paces, seeing clothing shops, toys, and quite a few other places. The warmth caused her to seek refuge in one such shop. A mixture of Italian and some choppy English greeted her. A few stammered “No thank you” and “Not right now” was enough for Will to live up to an American stereotype or two as she stepped deeper into the store, trying to lose herself in the facade of browsing so she could kill a few minutes. Sometimes, she really did long for a men’s section. Maybe she’d go there, find a few looser items of clothing. Her trousers were feeling quite uncomfortable and the width of a men’s shoe would relieve the swelling.

The looks she received were not altogether annoying. Will’s brain made the comparison between the men’s size and her own size—at least, pre-pregnancy—and purchased what would be most comfortable. Two pairs, just to be sure. Shoes, as well, which were immediately swapped out on the street and brought at least some relief to her swollen feet and ankles.

The solitude of her room was treasured until the sun started to go down. Photographs stored in the envelope, Will made her way back to the Cappella, meeting Inspector Pazzi at the steps. In professional Italian, he talked his way in, affording not even a bat of the eye Will’s way. She’d tried to make sense of his words in relation to her. Perhaps some half-assed explanation of her work with the FBI and how it could be relevant. It didn’t matter. As they entered, Inspector Pazzi handed her the photograph of the crime scene. Of course, the police had removed the large grotesque display. There was no sign the church had been soiled with such barbarity. Standing, now, in the quiet chapel without shrouds or curtains, Pazzi faltered in step, allowing Will to walk ahead until she stopped some feet away. 

“Quite the sight, no?” Asked the inspector, watching as Will looked at the photograph. 

Will couldn’t hide behind her glasses nor any veneer of indifference.“You see one, you see them all,” she attempted. 

“Not entirely true,” said Pazzi. “There is always something different in what he leaves. Each time, something more.”

Red, contorted flesh stood stark against the marvel and aged murals and mosaics. Something modern yet not at the same time. Perhaps something the great artists would have studied. They did, after all, learn anatomy from corpses. Illegal autopsies, going against church doctrine and morals of the time. Morals never seemed to stay consistent. Taboos shifted and evolved to survive or die with the times. Will’s eyes lingered as there was a knocking at the door. She didn’t turn her head as Pazzi did. 

She didn’t hear him leave. Her attention was fixated on the photograph, taking in the shape, its creation. Lashes fluttering, Will felt a wave of something akin to calm come over her. There was a cool, familiar settling in his chest opening up the vast space within. Her eyes closed. The pendulum of light swung.

Forward. Back. Forward. Back.

Forward.

Back.

Her eyes opened. No longer was the display a photograph but it was stark and real before her, staked into the ground. Like an artist leaving their masterpiece on a canvas. Quite the museum display it was. 

Stepping toward it, there was a dull thumping in her ears. It didn’t just remain there; it seemed to echo through the chapel, bouncing off the high ceilings and corners. Even the candlelights flickered in time with the thumping, moving the shadows against the faces of carved saints, virgins, and cherubs. 

Her lips parted as she studied the sculpture from each angle, taking in the formations. 

“I splintered every bone, fracture them dynamically.”

Those hands, working with expertise and knowledge gained over years of both fulfilling a Hippocratic oath and mocking it. She saw them, bending, breaking, twisting. 

“Made you…malleable.” Will’s eyes traced the contortions, feeling them mirrored on her own body. Invisible hands moving across her skin, twisting her bones but not breaking them. They would break others; not hers. There was a limit, it seemed, to the cruelty they would inflict on her themselves.

“I skinned you,” she continued, feeling the presence move into her own hands. Her fingers felt the aftershocks of the work. “Bent you, twisted you…trimmed you.” 

 It wasn’t foreign; it was personal to the nth degree. As if Will, herself, had done the work. Her own knives, her own knowledge. She was probably capable of all of it, in truth. She was capable of many things she hadn’t entirely been conscious of, it seemed. 

She walked to the front of the sculpture, taking in the anatomy. “A valentine. Written on a broken heart.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

 Her lashes fluttered again. A soft intake of breath. “This is my design.”

The sculpture throbbed. Will felt the life within her quicken, pulling her into a new, shocking sense of reality as the sculpture shuddered and began to crack. Cords which kept sections in place began to twist and crack free, moving at painful and awkward angles as it unraveled from its shape. 

Will stepped back, watching as the unraveled figure crumpled to the ground and twitched. Where its head had been separated from its neck, something black sprouted and bloomed, extending like branches out and curved up. Four long, bone thin legs emerged and hooves planted themselves on the mosaic until the body was supported. No eyes nor head were born but it didn’t seem to need it as it moved toward her, almost stalking. Deer stalking was something she’d seen a couple of times; it hardly ended well to those unprepared. 

Stepping back, Will felt her back hit the altar and herself find the floor, hands bracing to prevent any injuries from the fall. The scent of viscera, meat, and something much worse overtook her senses as it loomed over.

Another quickening inside of her before there was a sharp, fluid kick.

Gasping, Will tore herself from the sight and grasped at her head. Her face was flush, hair and head wet with sweat. The front of her chest was damp and her back was wet with sweat as well. The figure was gone, of course. The crime scene photograph was somewhere not within her hand. Will’s eyes found the flickering lights of candles and the doors at the end of the aisle. Luckily for her, Pazzi was not present. 

Somehow, she found the instinct to laugh. Her hand pressed against her chest, feeling it heave as her lungs struggled to get enough air inside. It was harder and harder to do now, vision aside. 

Will brought her legs up, leaning her back against the altar. The shielding of her legs created a barrier between any omniscient observer and her body, allowing her free hand to press against her abdomen. “Look at that,” she remarked aloud, “see what he left us. His broken heart.”

There was a fluttering in response. Will closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing and rather erratic heartbeat. The air felt almost as good as water; something fresh, revitalizing. Her thumb moved in a near comforting motion over the path where the fluttering had been. “He knew I’d come,” she said, finding the desire to voice her thoughts rather than keep them bottled inside. “He knew I’d find him here. That we would find him.”

No, only her. Hannibal wouldn’t know of anyone else. Save Jack, perhaps. But certainly Will first. 

Her tongue wet her dried lips as she stared where she’d seen the broken heart in her vision. Something within her ached at seeing it. A residual pain, much as her hands and fingers had felt as if they, themselves, had done the sculpting. She looked down, giving herself a brief reprieve. “How strange,” she murmured, “that I feel closer to him here.”

As if in response, another movement. This time, she felt it firmly under her hand. Will lifted her head, closing her eyes as she felt something strange burn behind them. A tight ball in her throat, a wave of something so remarkably like mourning. Taking in a slow, shuddering breath, Will wrapped both of her arms around herself and leaned her head against the tops of her knees. It was like her own heart was breaking. She felt bereaved, bereft. Tears wouldn’t fall; her tear ducts felt dry even though she willed them to work those tears so something, anything, would come of this built up pain in her chest. 

"God only knows where we would be without him," she whispered.

Chapter Text

“Are you praying, Signora?”

Will lifted her head at the sound of voice and footsteps. Her eyes blinked, clearing some phantom wetness away. A hand came up to rub the dried spot, scraping away dryness from her ducts. Her body shifted toward a sitting position, the concaving of her body giving protectiveness to her person while also looking a bit childish. It was, at that, to sit like a kindergartener in class while one was on the stone floor of a religious sanctuary. “I’m all prayed out.”

The inspector’s head tilted aside. “Taking it all in?”

“The magnificence,” came Will’s dry reply. Her features twitched as she shifted to try and stand, finding it much more difficult due to the change in the center of her gravity. One hand went to the floor, giving herself some sort of brace, while she attempted to figure this motion. A hand reached itself to her, offering in the space between them. Where she would have once rejected it, Will placed her hand in Pazzi’s and accepted him pulling her to her feet. Her free hand pressed to the curve of her stomach, which Pazzi’s eye immediately went to despite it being shielded by her clothing. 

Will held his gaze even as her hand dropped by her side. “Magnificence, irony, and the Monster of Florence,” she finally said. “Thematically, dramaturgically, it all goes together, doesn't it?”

“Certainly so,” Pazzi responded. He looked beyond her, to a statue of the Virgin Mary. He stepped toward it, making the sign of the cross on himself. “Over the years, I have come here time and time again. Praying to the Blessed Mother and all the Saints to bring Il Mostro back to Florence, so I may finish what was started.”

“Does the Blessed Virgin respond to prayers?” Asked Will. Her head turned as she took in the candles lit by parishioners and pilgrims, the brass offering slots. Footsteps quietly echoed like ripples in a pond as she crossed. It was as if she could see them through the vibrations of light bouncing as the flames danced. 

Pazzi’s eyes remained on the effigy. “It seems she has, this time,” responded the inspector. “Her bringing you here has brought Il Mostro out of the shadows again. And this time, perhaps, God has deemed it time to bring him into the light.”

“God or you?” Will’s feet carried her beside Pazzi. “What makes you think I want to catch him?”

Slowly, Pazzi’s eyes caused his head to turn and look at Will. Through her peripheral vision, she indeed saw him. But she did not laud a look at him. Her own eyes were boring into those of the Blessed Virgin; those pupil less eyes. It was a slow slide down to see the babe in the crook of her arms, his index and middle finger up.

Peace.

My peace I give to you.

My peace be with you.

‘Peace? Peace. I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montague’s, and thee.’

Her lashes fluttered and a breath was pulled into her lungs. Harder to do, harder to fill. Will tried again, quieter. Her hand pressed at her sternum. It felt a bit bonier now. She felt her throat slick as she swallowed, mindful of the meal she had consumed before she’d arrived here. 

It was acidic, nauseating. Her stomach turned and twisted, acid burning into the organ it was contained within. It spread across her chest, her lungs, her heart. It made her want to raise the flames of each candle toward the statues, illuminate their all-seeing eyes, and consume the building around them. Destruction would make God laugh. Would it have made the Virgin laugh? Or collapse into sobs at the destruction of something so beautiful, praising the mission of her Son? 

Her thumbnail scraped into her sternum. She wondered how hard she could press until she felt bone. Could she slit open the delicate layers of flesh until she felt something inside? 

What was that something? Was it the need to end this aching within her? Was it to truly find the peace she’d once felt within the waters of the stream? The peace and satisfaction she had felt before Hannibal Lecter had come into her life?

Had that truly been peace, after all?

Was it truly what she deserved?

“Signora Graham—“

Returning to the here and now, Will blinked herself into a grounded state. Pazzi’s face came into view as Will lowered her hand down to her side. He had been watching her; she knew by how his eyes seemed to settle at her face. It wasn’t an unnerved expression on the inspector’s face. Rather, the face of a man digesting his observation.

Her joints were aching slightly. She moved her fingers in a manner that caused them to pop. More small ripples in the chapel. Pazzi’s head inclined as Will’s hand pressed to her hip, just shy of her stomach. She arched her hand, causing it to pop from the excess stretching of the joints. A bad habit. “I suggest, Inspector,” she finally said, “you let il Mostro go. Let those prayers go unanswered.”

“I can’t do that anymore than you can,” replied the man. “Quite difficult for you, no?”

Her eyes flitted away, looking just past the inspector. Pazzi continued: “Especially when one gives you their heart. The heart that calls.”

“He will kill you,” Will responded, her voice not a whisper but not too loud either. “He will. I’m usually right about these things. As well as most things.” 

Palm flat against her hip, her thumb gently nudged at the underside of her stomach. There was a small nudge in response just a heartbeat later. 

Unfazed, Pazzi responded, “You know his heart as he has known yours in return. Where is he now, Signora Graham?”

Eyes searched beyond Pazzi, beyond the confines of her own mind. The scent of incense, of cleaned blood, of candles and antiquity. They were familiar. They were home.

They were him.

“—He’s still here,” Will responded. Her lips parted as a shadow flashed across her vision. Something small, almost innocuous. But certain, even if it wasn’t true and wasn’t existing in this realm. A flicker of firelight, something creeping both towards and away from her. It was impossible for her to not walk toward, stepping across the floor until she reached a set of stone stairs. Pazzi’s footsteps were not too far at all, only a few paces behind her.

The shadow moved out and in, like waves of blood lapping the shore. 

The air was heavy and thick. Will had not been to catacombs before, but it did remind her of a raid in her early days as a homicide detective in Louisiana, when entering low-lying areas in the swamp or even thick, humid basements. Once she had gone into a basement where a man had been dead and practically mummified. Perhaps it was not as different as now, except there had not been a thick layer of incense nor as much candlelight guiding her way.

The skulls of the dead flanked both herself and Inspector Pazzi as they made their way through arched, dark tunnels. It was a maze, almost. No, it was. The ground was solid stone and dirt and the high ceilings created more soft echoes in all directions. It could be disorienting for some. Will certainly felt more at home here, amongst the dead. 

Pazzi had offered a hand to her as they’d gone down the stairs, noticing her slow and hesitating steps. She’d refused except for the last step when she’d slipped very slightly. Her hand had pressed into his, allowing herself to take that moment of support before recentering her gravity and setting off on her own. After about eight paces and two turns, she was alone with the dead.

It was impulse and heightened senses guiding her decision making. Her eyes marked the identical lamps, seeing minute differences in the curvature of the arches or the indentations on the skulls. Faces once unique, now indiscernible from one to the next.

Caution should have been something she walked with. No; she walked with intent, purpose. 

“Hannibal.”

Were he here, did she expect a response? Did she expect him to appear amongst the dead, the exception to all of it? Expectation escaped and eluded her at each turn, each shift of weight. Her ears listened. Her heart waited as each ricochet and echo bounced from corner to corner, filling her eardrums. It could have been disorientating.

Her head turned as her body did. Choices were made without much conscious thought until she heard the weighted, contemplative steps. A bit heavier than Hannibal’s. More nervous. 

Her feet brought her toward them, lightening as she found Inspector Pazzi with his gun drawn and pointing at her. It was almost amusing. It was amusing. There was no resisting the smile that crossed her face as the barrel line up with her chest. The inspector lowered the weapon. “You should not be down here alone, Signora.”

“I’m hardly alone,” Will replied with a tinge of irony. Invisible wind whistled through the catacombs. She turned her head, angling toward the right to let it fill her senses. It was not cold nor warm. The air hung and curved around them, almost akin to a comforter blowing on a clothesline in the August afternoon air. Almost like how her shirt clung to her after a night of dreams, how sweat melded fabric to skin. How the heat of a fire settled over her body in Hannibal’s bedroom, creating a second layer of skin with the silk sheets. All tempting images to wrap herself up in. All relating and tracing back to the man she could sense within the walls of the dead.

“You’re the one who shouldn’t be alone,” Will finally said, her eyes guiding her back to the flickering image of Inspector Pazzi. 

“I would be remiss not to offer my assistance to a lady,” Pazzi said. Quickly followed up by, “Though your pace shows you are more capable alone than with others.”

A breathy exhale of amusement was Will’s response. “Careful, commendatore,” she warned. “Courtesy can kill just as easily as curiosity can.”

The gun remained in Pazzi’s hand. “What will you do when you find him?”

“Curious about that, myself.” 

A twinge of something pulsed across Pazzi’s brow. Will recognized it but was not unnerved nor ashamed. His presence here, amongst the dead and silent, seemed premature. His quest would bring him here one day. It all depended whether it was sooner or later. But, with Hannibal Lecter, anything was possible. 

“The two of us, Signora Graham, must unburden.” An empty hand lifted, palm up and offering toward Will. Pazzi’s gaze remained uncertain on her face, unsure of what exactly the expression was. Will, herself, was not sure either. Her shoulders felt a pull away from the man before her. Towards what, however, she had not the faintest idea. There was more comfort in joining the dead and venturing into the labyrinth than in returning to the certainty of the living world above them.

Her head moved toward the left in the very beginnings of a shake but remained where it was, leveling a grim look at the man before her. “Some burdens are meant to be carried by those strong enough,” Will said. “Carry yours back to the chapel, Inspector Pazzi, before you count yourself amongst the dead.”

One step back, then another. The shadows crept across her shoulders, her chest, her torso. Pazzi balanced his weight between his feet as he observed the dark claiming Will. “You’re already amongst them,” he replied.

“Buonanotte,” Will said, “commendatore.”

Pazzi’s image was gone as she turned her body to walk another way, further opposite from the entrance and deeper into the heart of the chambers. The flickering lights were the only sight she sought certainty in. Her hearing grew keener, listening for even the movement of a rat or the shifting of bones. Something would disturb this stale peace. 

The more she ventured, the more her mind floated down and down. It was a smooth descent, one which floated buoyantly on a river. As if she had waded back into that stream and let the current carry her. Something carried her footsteps, some motivation she did not permit herself to be conscious of in this moment. Her steps felt quicker, lighter than perhaps they had been when she had first descended into this city of the dead. Mummified remains stared unseeing at her, guiding her way through the turns until they all became uniform.

What was her expectation? Had she truly had any? 

It was a nice, romantic image in her mind’s eye; turning a corner and seeing that familiar silhouette before her. Moving toward it, like moving toward the light of day after this indiscernible time in the dark. Perhaps accepting, waiting arms. It was a nice idea to think of; to be welcomed back, accepted. Forgiven.

Should she be forgiven? Would he forgive her?

Would she forgive him?

The pit in her stomach sunk down but did not weigh down Will’s steps. There was an aching along with it. That, itself, was heavier than any pit of indiscernible emotion. She could not differentiate the different emotions. As her pace quickened, Will felt the emotions flash by her and grip her chest. It was unlike being stabbed; it was something entirely worse than that. She would take the stabbing, tearing, ripping of flesh over a millennium in lieu of this pain. It nearly took the breath from her lungs. The dead would have no use of it; she would count herself truthfully amongst them in that case.

A hand pressed once against a stone arch then slid down, gliding against the rough stone. Turning over her shoulder, she stared into the dark. Perhaps the shadow would make itself known and present. Perhaps it would see her. Perhaps he would see her.

“Hannibal.”

The tone was not quite desperate, though Will felt the eking of it underneath. Like something deep below the surface of the water, though unseen and unsure if it would make itself seen until the opportune moment.

That which was unseen, ironically enough, fluttered in her womb. Hyperextended fingers flinched and her hand lightly ghosted over the curve of her stomach, seeking to quell the movement. Did it feel her desperation? Did it feel that dread, that ache? Did it ache as she did? The life—the child—could hear the beating of her heart, feel the quickened steps toward something it did not know of. It didn’t know her thoughts, but it could feel the rushing of blood and the thudding of her heart. 

Could it feel her grief? All this time, could it sense this unrelenting grief and overwhelming conflict of emotion toward the man who had also led to its creation? 

Hannibal, the Creator. Hannibal, the Destroyer.

And yet.

And yet.

“—I forgive you.”

Her palm flattened against her stomach. The storm which had been quelling within her fell silent as quickly as it had bubbled up. The tempest was released; it rung down the dark halls of this city of the dead. But the dead didn’t answer. Neither would the other who walked amongst them.

Even still, she waited for it. An answer. A sign. A sight. To feast her eyes upon him would satiate a hunger and a longing she had been waiting months for. 

What would she do once her hunger was satisfied?

Another movement within her. Will’s eyes closed, cutting herself off from external darkness to that which existed within her. Her thumb moved in an involuntarily soothing manner. The first of many disappointments, it seemed.

She had only slept a couple of hours since returning from her odyssey. Considering the sleeper train would be 32 hours, she didn’t exactly want to spend too much time awake and mulling over already mulled-over thoughts. Will had stripped down to her undershirt and underwear upon returning and curled on the top of the bed with only the quilt covering her body. Her legs had drawn up, protecting her torso as much as she was physically able to at this point. It was getting harder and harder to recall how her body had been only about twenty-weeks ago. It was not something she agonized over; Will wasn’t a woman who entirely focused on such things. Yet, she had never experienced a monumental shift in her body like this over the course of her life. 

Rest was fitful but enough. It was some time between midnight and dawn that she decided she’d had enough and it was time to rouse. Drawing herself into a seated position, Will’s fingers moved the sleep from the corners of her eyes. There was a stale, acidic taste in her throat and mouth. Stale bread could not entirely remove it from her flavor profile. Water only added to the staleness. 

Tying her hair off the back of her neck, she looked over the semi-unpacked bag in the corner of the room. She would have enough clean clothes for this next trip. She had the money, certainly. She knew where to go.

A shower removed the heaviness of the incense and the stale air of the catacombs. Clean, loose clothes clad her dried body. Will left a small cash tip for the staff as she gathered her bag and went to drop off her key at the front. It was rude of her not to thank the staff for their service during her stay, but her mind was already onto the next destination.

The ticket was paid for, the cabin booked for one. Will knew she would be restless and uncomfortable; that, itself, was a nonstarter. As the train pulled from the station, she made her space on the bed and looked at the dawn starting to break across the skies. In a way, it was beautiful. It was like paint across a dark canvas. Tired eyes blinked slowly and she felt against the inside pocket of her jacket. Here, she didn’t have to conceal herself. In the early morning chill, it had been comfortable. Now, Will removed the coat and set it aside. Her shoes off and underneath the cot, she moved her aching toes and feet until they cracked and creaked. 

Her fingers removed the folded photograph from the pocket, opening it to reveal the face of a Hannibal Lecter twenty-years younger. Adjusting her glasses, Will gazed at those eyes which stared blankly at the lens. It was as impossible to discern what the captured image was thinking as it was to discern what the living man thought. She’d had glimpses and gleams over the months. In more intimate moments, it had been easy to see what his feelings had been at the very surface. Now, though, she wondered how many of those had been manufactured.

No; there had to have been truth to them. She’d seen the truth of Hannibal. She’d seen his heart. Hell, he’d left it for her and the whole world to see. To see how he had ached for her, how she’d broken his heart but how it was still offered for her. There was forgiveness between them, after all, even if he hadn’t made himself known after she had offered her own to him.

Will’s head leaned back against the wall. The gentle thudding of the train caused it to bump but it was inconsequential. In fact, it was soothing enough to lull her into a light doze.

Her body managed to get her laying down on the bed, the photograph by her side. One arm wrapped around herself and the other under her head, Will closed her eyes and breathed in the newness of the sheets, the bedding. Her doze turned into a restful sleep, making some of the hours go by quicker. 

In her dreams, she walked those catacombs again. Her steps in the dream were an exact replica of the ones taken in life, the turns and corners the same. Yet, when she spoke the name and uttered her forgiveness, the imago appeared. An idealized imago; one that certainly did not exist in life but one that resided in the weakness of her dreams and her emotions. Something her heart cried out for and desired in a state Will could briefly surrender herself to.

Hands reaching through the dark, wrapping in an embrace. Regardless if it was a knife that greeted her or the untold feelings that were experienced and shared between them both, Will accepted them. Perhaps it was the former she deserved more. But, for the sake of that which they shared and nurtured together, she hoped it was the latter.

Some dreams resulted in the dreamer waking, dazed and disoriented, before succumbing again and again. That is what greeted Will in intermittent periods until, finally, her body had enough. The final waking occurred when they were in Poland and very close indeed to the Lithuanian border. It didn’t matter to her how many hours had passed; all that mattered was the proximity to the destination.

The dialect here was not something Will was familiar with by a mile, but she managed to communicate enough to rent the car and drive a few hours toward her destination. The quiet was her company. Her senses took in the vast greenery, the wooded areas. It reminded her, in certain ways, of Wolf Trap. Yet here, there was an antiquated grandiosity. In its heyday, perhaps, the nobles had grand hunting expeditions and parties where events would unfold and secrets would be buried. The woods and the earth would certainly hide any evidence. 

During the Soviet occupation, rouge bands of deserters and drafted criminals would make their way away from the eyes of their commanders. Whether for leave or for more nefarious reasons, it didn’t matter. The families of old nobility didn’t have as much influence as they had before the wars; their rule was nominal only and had no bearing on those who had cheered on the executions and lynchings of the czar decades prior. Though Hannibal had been born half a century later, the aftershocks remained and rippled until they became waves.

The car slowed as it came to the outskirts of the gate. The Lecter family grounds began here. Will parked off the road and grabbed her bag, closing the door and locking the car. She’d bought a longer coat in town, owing thanks to the talk of how damp the weather would be out here. Her high boots protected her from the damp chill, too, and would be a godsend from the overgrown woodlands. Nature would always reclaim that which humans had once lauded over.

In the distance, she saw the castle peaking over the hills. It was a far distance. Closer, on her right, Will saw a stone home. In her reading, she’d seen there were several houses on the vast grounds of the estate. Likely they had been for servants or groundskeepers. There were centuries of lives that had existed within the walls; perhaps even their bones were buried here. If they were loyal enough, whether by tradition or their own genuine desire to serve, it didn’t matter. 

Will’s hand grasped the iron of the gates. Locked, of course. It surprised her that the lock was so sturdy. Then again, it didn’t seem as if this was an area where boisterous youths would be ransacking old estates. The elderly kept to their routines and traditions; they wouldn’t go searching for that which Will was intent on searching for. Perhaps they were afraid of disturbing the old ghosts. 

She threw her bag over the gate and tested the weight of the gate. Climbing up, she threw her leg over the side and lowered herself until she could jump to the ground. The grass was wet, as was unsurprising due to the heavy fog and dampness of the air. Damp, but clear and clean. Heavy, but unlike the contained catacombs. Taking her bag, Will started in the direction of the main castle of the estate. Her legs carried her through the grass toward those stone monuments she recognized so clearly. Her eyes moved over each one, recognizing and digesting names. The grass was overgrown on many of them, almost covering those whose lives were contained in stone carvings and etchings along with the dates that symbolized the time they had existed.

Most, save for one.

Mischa Lecter

MYLIMA