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Chapter Text

Will twists his backpack strap in his hand until his palm starts feeling raw. His lips are chapped and dry and he busies himself with chewing off the dry skin, shifting from foot to foot. He can see the plane on the other end of the jet bridge, ready for boarding. It’s a clear, spring day, but his stomach won’t stop flipping nervously.

“You ready, son?” Beau Graham says gruffly, slapping a hand on his shoulder. It makes Will jump a little; his father isn’t the most touchy-feely. He always touches Will when he least expects it. Beau turns Will to face him. He grabs Will’s other shoulder, holding him still. “You’re gonna be the reason us Grahams get anywhere.” His smile is crooked but it’s genuine. Will can see a few of the teeth he’s missing in the back of his mouth, that’s how he knows.

“Okay,” is all Will can muster. He’s never been on a plane before. His father never has, either. And Beau still won’t get on a plane. They didn’t have the money to buy his ticket and Will’s was covered by the science fair committee, or whoever they were. He sees his other classmates with their parents over his dad’s shoulder, everyone dressed up for a day of travel. Will’s jeans are just barely too short on him and his sweatshirt is no better. Being poor in the middle of a growth spurt means none of his clothes fit. It means he stands out more than he already did, as the new kid.

Another mid-school year transfer. He didn’t even try very hard for his science project and got picked for some kind of national competition across the country, with prize money they need, so who was he to say no? Beau wraps him into a rough hug, brief, but still hard enough to press the air out of Will’s lungs. Another shoulder squeeze, and then Will is being led to the gate desk. The flight attendant waiting for him has thick makeup, her hair pinned prettily to the top of her head. She straightens the tiny scarf around her neck and gives Will a wide smile.

“Well look at you!” she says, voice thick with a southern accent. She pulls a lanyard from the desk and much to Will’s humiliation, puts it on for him. The UNACCOMPANIED MINOR emblazoned on the dangling ID card feels like a scarlet letter. Over his shoulder, he hears a few snickers from the other finalists. He keeps his retorts behind his teeth; he could make a point on how his daddy trusts him to travel by himself, and he’s a year younger than everyone. But everyone knows the Grahams are poor and live in the trailer park. He’s not fooling anyone.

The flight attendant pats his hair flat. “I’m Stephanie. I’m gonna make sure you’re safe the whole flight, alright, hon? Is this your daddy?”

Beau grins and shakes Will a little by the shoulders. “He’s goin’ to Seattle for a science competition. Skipped a grade and everythin’. Precious cargo.” Will’s entire face is in flames. The other students definitely heard that and they’re laughing even harder. “He’s not much of a talker, you won’t have to worry ‘bout him.”

If a hole opened up and Will fell in, he would welcome it. “Alright sweetie,” Stephanie says. “I’ll escort you to your seat. You get to sit up front, with me.” Will half expects her to pinch his cheeks. She might as well, it could not possibly get any worse. She watches expectantly for Beau and Will to embrace, but they already did that before they came over and Will does not expect a second hug. He’s proven right when he gets another pat on the back and a quiet knock ‘em dead as if that’s appropriate for a science fair for high schoolers.

He looks back at his dad, waving proudly at him, right before he turns the corner on the jet bridge. He manages a small wave, and then he’s ushered forward. The plane is smaller than he expected, once he gets on. A few early-boards are already sitting down, those who paid for premium seating. All the seats look the same to Will, but what does he know? He’s never traveled before in his life, other than his dad dragging him around the gulf while he looks for work. How they ended up as far north as Baltimore beats him.

Stephanie approaches a man—who looks like no other person Will has ever seen before—sitting alone near the front. “Excuse me, sir, this is Will Graham. He’s an unaccompanied minor,” she starts, half-whispering like she’s telling him a secret. “Do you mind if he sits next to ya? He’s real smart. I gotta keep an eye on him for the flight.”

The man looks the pair of them over. Will, cheeks still hot from embarrassment, and Stephanie, with her plastered-on smile. His hair is slicked back in a stylish coif and he’s wearing a tailored suit. He can probably smell the trailer on Will. Will hunches in on himself self-consciously. “Of course,” he says. Will’s eyes go wide at the thick European accent. Stephanie grins again and nudges Will forward. He tucks his backpack underneath the seat in front of him and sits down heavily. Once Stephanie goes to open the gate for everyone else, Will pulls off the lanyard.

“I’m not a kid,” he clarifies quickly. “I’m almost sixteen. I can take care of myself.” Has his southern accent always sounded that thick? It sounds downright comical in his own ears right now. He might be mirroring Stephanie. He shakes his head a little, as if he could rattle that accent right out of his brain.

“Of course,” the man says again. “I was quite independent at your age.” He pulls a book out of the bag on his lap, and then discards the bag underneath the chair as well. The book is a language that Will doesn’t quite recognize—Polish, maybe? “Lithuanian,” the man says, as if reading Will’s mind. He must have been staring.

“What brings you to Baltimore? And takes you to Seattle?” Will asks curiously. People are starting to file onto the plane again and Will adjusts his glasses to make sure he doesn’t accidentally make eye contact with anyone.

“I am in medical school,” the man says. “It’s currently what the Americans call spring break, I believe. I’m visiting an old friend. He owes me dinner.”

“Awful long way to go for dinner.”

“It’s quite worth it.” The man’s smile makes Will think he’s missing some kind of joke.

“Hey, Graham,” Bobby Johnson sneers as he walks by. “Is that your babysitter?” Bobby flicks his ear and Will flinches away. “Baby Graham, too little to ride by himself.”

“Isn’t your mom with you?” Will snaps back. “Or did she drop you off and pray that you wouldn’t come back?”

“Mr. Graham, watch your mouth,” a woman says from his other side. Bobby Johnson’s mother stands there, a hand on her hip and sneer identical to her shit son. “I know you were raised in trash but that doesn’t mean you have to act like it, too.”

Will starts to stand up but he feels a firm hand on his arm. The man next to him is giving him a searing look. “Do not cause a scene on a plane,” he says firmly. “We will never leave.”

Will huffs and turns forward again. “He’s such an asshole,” Will mutters. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I reckon.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” the man replies mildly, his book still open but he’s no longer paying attention to it. “I’ve only been here for a short while. I’m not aware of all the English phrases.”

Will laughs a little and rubs the back of his neck. “It means like mother, like son.”

The man seems to find amusement in that and then turns to face Will in his seat. He holds out a hand. “Hannibal Lecter.”

“Will Graham. But you knew that already,” he says with a grin, shaking Hannibal’s hand, quick and firm. His hands seem large in comparison to Will. His dad was a late bloomer, too, but being a year younger than everyone as well as shorter than he feels like he should be does not help him blend in. Not that it matters; he’ll be lucky if he makes it to June in the same school.

A few of the other student finalists file in, parents in tow, and Will tries to sink into his seat more to not bring attention to himself. He can feel the judgemental stares. It’s not his fault his clothes don’t fit and that his dad isn’t here with him.

Stephanie finally returns and gets low next to him like he’s a child. “Hon, you gotta keep that lanyard on. Do you want a pin from the pilot? They’re real neat.” Will would really like to be left alone. He wonders if his dad is watching at the window to see him take off or if he’s already gone, off to the dive bar to enjoy the next few days without having any responsibilities. A young father who never wanted a kid but was saddled with one anyway, and loved him the best he could.

Will already misses him.

“I’m alright,” Will says tightly. He’s weirdly emotional at the thought of his dad out there without him. Stephanie ruffles his hair again and Will bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. The lanyard gets put back on and Stephanie is satisfied, so she does the overhead checks and they get ready for takeoff. There’s a lot of instructions for every worst case scenario which makes Will’s stomach start churning again.

As the plane starts taxiing and the flight attendants continue to go through all the safety instructions, Will tries to relax and not think about it. He looked up in the library a book on planes to see how they worked before he left, just to take some of the mystery away. He goes over all the things he read in his head, the wings, the engines, the cockpit. A well-oiled machine. He still can’t help bracing himself when the plane actually leaves the runway, and then they’re in the air.

Baltimore gets smaller and smaller as he leans across Hannibal to look out the window. “Would you like to switch seats?” he asks curiously. Will flushes and sits back down properly in his seat, shaking his head. Hannibal goes back to his book and Will realizes he has several hours to kill and very little to entertain himself.

Great.

Stephanie comes by to see if Will needs anything and Will tries to be less angry with her for treating him like a child. She’s just doing her job and being given water and snacks on his first plane ride isn’t so bad. Even if Bobby and his gang of asshole poindexters make kissy noises every time Stephanie speaks to Will. He’s not sure how he’s the same species as them; maybe it’s because they finally found someone lower on the social ladder and they can exploit the small amount of power they have over him.

Will doesn’t really care. They’ll push him too far, eventually, and end up with a black eye for it. He still smiles when he remembers the time he slammed Cameron Daniels’s face into the dirt in 8th grade, the day before he and his dad moved so the punishment never landed. Beau had pretended to be cross with Will, but let him have ice cream before dinner that night.

An hour into the flight, Will pulls out his entomology book he got from the library. Actually, several libraries ago. The late fees will never catch up with them anyway. He notices Hannibal glance over as he starts reading a random page. Will has most of this memorized, but he’s always hoping he’s missed something.

“Fond of insects?” Hannibal asks with a curious tilt of his head. “I used to raise snails.”

“Snails aren’t insects,” Will says automatically without looking up. “They’re gastropods.”

As if he hadn’t heard Will, Hannibal continues. “They’re quite interesting. They cannibalize each other if they aren’t fed enough. They can also make meat taste better.”

“I think most animals would cannibalize each other if they were hungry enough,” Will mutters. “Not that interesting.”

Hannibal hums an agreement. “You are quite right. Tell me, Will, is there something specific you are studying?”

Will bristles a little at being bothered while he’s reading. “Dermestes maculatus. Hide beetles. People use them to clean bones for taxidermy. But they’re also useful to determine times of death in forensics. I did a whole project on it, which is why I’m going to this science fair.”

“That seems quite advanced.”

“Skipped a grade. Technically gifted. Prefer to see how the other half lives.” He turns the page and then sighs irritably. He’s not going to be able to focus with Hannibal looking at him like that. He can also feel Stephanie’s eyes on him. Every time he manages to look over at her, she’s beaming at him and giving him a thumbs up. She’s moments away from saying good job, tiger! to him.

Hannibal crosses his legs, leaning in a little. “Tell me more about your beetles. I would like to hear about it.”

Will stares for a few moments, at a loss for words. No adult, not even his father, has ever shown interest in what he’s always reading about. He pauses, unsure if Hannibal is just humoring the strange teenager he’s being forced to sit next to. Then he decides he doesn’t care. It’ll help him practice for presenting his project to the judging panel. Hannibal, to his credit, looks genuinely interested as Will launches into excruciating details of the hide beetle’s reproductive cycle. He only interrupts if he has a question, but otherwise drinks in every word.

There was a school assembly a few years ago that had a whole presentation on stranger danger. As if nefarious kidnappers were hiding around corners, waiting to snatch up little girls and boys who walked home alone. Beau was never concerned for Will’s safety. He often didn’t want to see Will during the summer months if the sun was up. He wonders if his dad would stop him from conversing with Hannibal, given his foreign nature. He definitely would find Hannibal off-putting.

“Well doesn’t that sound mighty interesting,” Stephanie interrupts while Will is explaining the beetles’ behavior with carcasses. “Sweetie, would you like more coke?” Will shakes his head. She grins at him and smooths his hair on his head again. Will never knew his mother and this woman is certainly not old enough to be his mom, but he wonders if this is what it would have been like. Maybe he’s not missing much.

He turns to look down the aisle and sees no one is waiting for the bathroom, so he decides to use this lull in conversation to stretch his legs and piss. They’re halfway through the flight now and he’s starting to feel stiff. It’s wobbly when he gets up, not unlike walking around on a boat but somehow more off-kilter. The bathroom is cramped and the flush, embarrassingly, startles Will and he bumps against the door. A soft bing overhead informs him that the plane is experiencing some turbulence and for everyone to return to their seats. Apparently, they’re going to have to fly around some kind of storm.

He’s walked on boats that were rocking with choppy waters before. This is nothing like that. Will likes the water. He’s not afraid of the ocean. Being 30,000 feet in the air is terrifying to think about. He starts making his way back to his seat and then Bobby Johnson sticks his foot out and Will’s already unsteady legs go out right from under him. He hits the ground with a hard thud, hands already smarting from the rug burn. He lifts his head to see eyes on him, full of pity. Any embarrassment he may have felt gives way to anger as he scrambles to his feet again. Bobby is snickering, his mom fast asleep against the window in a neck pillow.

Will leans into him and grabs Bobby’s wrist tightly. “Do that again and I’ll break your fuckin’ arm,” Will grits out. Bobby’s eyes go wide and he tries to take his wrist back.

“You’re crazy, Graham,” Bobby says shakily. Will lets his wrist go and glances down at the red mark already forming.

“Why don’t you tell your mommy about it?” he sneers in response, and then continues to his seat. His hands shake a little with the adrenaline. He could have snapped Bobby’s wrist right then and there if he really wanted to.

“Who is that boy that keeps messing with you?” Hannibal asks, voice low. Stephanie somehow missed the entire exchange but at least someone saw it and cares a little.

“Some idiot I go to school with,” Will mutters. “I guess he’s not an idiot if we’re going to the same science fair.” He lifts his glasses to rub his eyes. “I’m an easy target. It’s fine.”

Hannibal blinks a few times. “When I got picked on as a child I always taught them a lesson. Will you teach him a lesson?”

Will thinks about Cameron Daniels’s face in the dirt, arms pulled behind him while Will kneeled on his back. He kept screaming at Will to stop until a teacher came and pulled him off. Cameron had stolen Will’s shoes while he was changing for PE and threw them in a tree. He still didn’t have them back when his dad came to pick him up from school and he had to wear an old, too-small pair until they could afford a trip to Goodwill.

“Eventually,” Will says. Hannibal smiles.

The pilot announces further diversion from the intended path as they continue to fly around a storm, but still thinks they’ll get to their destination as intended. Will tries to settle himself and watches as Stephanie and her fellow flight attendants get into their own seats to ride out the turbulence. He closes his eyes and leans back, breathing steady and thinking about wading into a calm stream to go fishing. He likes the way smooth rocks feel underneath his bare feet, especially during hot, muggy summers.

His dad joins him, eventually, chastising him for his poor stance in the water. You’ll get swept away like that, boy he says. You’re too thin. What are they feeding ya at school?

“It’s summer, daddy, I don’t have school,” Will says with a frown. “You feed me.”

Maybe I should feed you more.

Maybe.

The water starts rippling around him, sloshing onto his shirt. “Dad?” he calls out. But Beau isn’t there anymore, having got out of the water once it started getting choppy. A storm is blowing in quickly and Will scrambles to get out of the water, feet slipping on the rocks. Another jolt of the ground knocks him off his feet, and then he’s underwater. He tries to push himself above water to get a gulp of air but the water pushes his head under again. It’s like he was put in a cup full of water and some vengeful god is shaking it vigorously.

He wakes up with a gasp as the turbulence in the plane violently jolts him forward. People are screaming and overhead bins are rattling loudly. There’s loud alarms blaring as the lights flicker and Will blinks hard. He’s dreaming. He’s still dreaming. When he opens his eyes, nothing changes. He looks over at Hannibal, who is showing the first emotion he’s seen on him the whole flight.

Fear.

It happens in quick succession. The plane suddenly starts dropping out of the sky, the face masks fall from the ceiling, and something hits Will so hard in the head everything goes black.

***

When Will comes to, his face is pressed against the seat in front of him. In fact, he’s stuck. Something sharp digs into his forehead. His head pounds painfully. His ears are ringing. There’s an oxygen mask on his face that he doesn’t remember putting on. Lights flicker and the smell of gasoline is pungent in his nose. As everything catches up to him, Will realizes what has happened. The plane he was in is now a twisted piece of metal, rammed into the ground.

He manages to find the strength and try to get himself unstuck. He gets the seatbelt off, at least, and uses all the strength he has in his shoulders to push the two seats far enough apart that he can get out. He crumbles to his knees as soon as he’s extricated. His backpack is still on the floor. He grabs it, shrugs it on, and slowly stands on shaky legs. The plane is tilted, oxygen masks and wires dangling, luggage thrown everywhere. And bodies. He turns toward the cockpit and feels his heart stop.

Stephanie is impaled on some piece of equipment, eyes open and vacant. Blood drips from her ears and mouth. He approaches her slowly, hands shaking as he reaches to take her pulse. He wasn’t expecting one, and he doesn’t get one. This is not real. He’s always had a vivid, overactive imagination. He’s dreaming still. He closes her eyes for her and when he tries the door at the front, it’s jammed shut. Clearly people are off the plane, as Hannibal is nowhere to be seen.

He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath, and then he can see what happened. He was knocked unconscious by something he didn’t see. Next to him, Hannibal secured his oxygen mask and then noticed Will wasn’t responding. A quick check of his pulse, lightly tapping his cheeks to see if it would wake him up. Stephanie got up from her secured seat to put Will’s oxygen mask on.

The rough landing, Stephanie going flying. An instant death. He opens his eyes again, staring at Stephanie’s body for a few more moments. He needs to get out of here. The emergency doors have been busted open. Relief flows through him as he notices and starts to make his way over. His entire body hurts. Nothing feels broken, but he can feel an open wound on his forehead. Hopefully it’s superficial.

“Graham,” a voice croaks out. Will starts and sees Bobby in a similar position to him, squished between two seats. “Will. Help.” His mom is lifeless next to him. Will still isn’t convinced this is real. He stares at Bobby; his nose is bleeding. “I can’t breathe. I’m stuck,” he rasps out.

Will takes a step back. “Will,” Bobby pleads. He can see where he’s being compressed. He won’t survive much longer. Will takes another step back. “Will,” Bobby moans. “Graham. You fucking psycho.” He starts coughing and there’s blood coming out of his mouth.

Will keeps moving toward the emergency exit, sliding his back along the rows of seats. Bobby gurgles and then he’s quiet. Will scrambles for the exit and sees the true carnage. Oil sluggishly spreads across the forest floor and smoke unfurls from the plane engines. He coughs as he climbs down, a concussion-slowed brain taking in the information. People—body parts, too—are strewn everywhere, moaning and screaming and sobbing. And then he sees Hannibal, a cut across his nose, suit jacket off as he’s giving people medical attention.

The closest thing they have to a doctor.

There are other people who are ambulatory, trying to help the wounded, comfort the scared, and count the dead. Will’s head hurts too much to process all this. He touches his forehead gingerly and when he looks at his fingers, they’re sticky with blood.

“Hey, kid,” comes a pained voice to his right. Will’s eyes go wide. The man’s leg below the knee is completely mangled. He can see the bone. He swallows hard and takes a few steps closer and drops to his knees. “Help me apply pressure.” His eyes follow the man’s hands and sees him squeezing just above his knee. Will nods, head pounding, and pulls his unaccompanied minor lanyard from around his neck to use as tourniquet. He’s seen it on TV and saw an example in a textbook he found at the library once.

”That’s quite the gash you have on your head,” the man says. “What’s your name, kid?” His voice is strained from pain but Will knows he’s trying to distract from the fact that his leg is mangled. He’ll be lucky if he makes it through the night.

“Will. My name is Will,” he says shakily. “You’re gonna be fine.” His hands and sleeves are now saturated with blood. This has to be some horrible dream. He closes his eyes again, tight, in the hopes that everything will right itself, finally.

“Will, get out of the way,” a sharp, accented voice cuts through. Will’s eyes fly open and his head snaps up to see Hannibal with an axe, looming above him.

“What—what are you doing?” he asks frantically, letting go of the leg and scrambling backwards. Hannibal doesn’t answer and instead swings the axe and slices clean through the man’s leg. The man screams in agony and passes out and Will isn’t far behind. “What did you do?!”

“His leg was unsalvageable. We will cauterize it later,” Hannibal says shortly. He tosses the axe to the side and Will can finally take in his appearance. Disheveled, gelled hair now out of place, lip bleeding. He wipes at it with his sleeve. “You need stitches. Go sit over there with everyone else.”

“I want to help,” Will says, finally getting off the ground and very deliberately trying not to look at the amputated leg next to him. “I can help. I’m fine.”

Hannibal curls a lip in a snarl. “I said go sit over there.”

Will juts his chin out in defiance. “I can help.” He’s learned basic first aid since his dad often hurt himself while working on boat motors and it’s not like they have health insurance. The thought of his dad sends a pang through his chest. Would news of the crash already have spread? Would his dad be drinking with his dock buddies at the dive, their sports interrupted by a breaking news bulletin?

He feels hot tears prick the back of his eyes and he tightly closes his eyes again. He can’t cry, not now. People need help and he has all his limbs and a photographic memory that has filed away every medical book he’s ever rifled through.

“Let me give you stitches and then you can help,” Hannibal concedes. He has a black medical bag in his hand. Will must have been unconscious for a while, for people to already be off the plane and start receiving what rudimentary medical care they can get. Hannibal has Will sit on a fallen tree and starts to clean him up. He is remarkably calm and Will can’t stop shaking. He hadn’t noticed until now but his entire body is vibrating at a low frequency. The first pull through of the needle has Will nearly screaming.

At least an axe isn’t being swung through his leg. That’s the mantra he uses with each pass across his forehead. Hannibal works quickly, probably to get to the more critically injured. He’s selfish, letting Hannibal stitch up his non-life threatening injury before he tends to others.

The sound of Bobby gurgling in his last moments fills his ears and Will’s eyes fly open. “Han—Hannibal,” Will stutters. “There might still be people on the plane. The gasoline. It’ll catch fire.”

“We got every survivor off the plane.”

“You didn’t get me.”

Hannibal freezes, hand still poised with the needle and thread against his forehead. Something flashes behind his eyes. Anger, maybe. Sorrow, definitely. Regret? Will can’t tell. He’s holding something back. There’s a minute tightening of his grip on Will’s jaw that he’s using to keep him still. “I apologize,” he murmurs. “I should have checked.” He tugs on the stitches a few more times and then uses small scissors to cut off the end. “Please forgive me.”

“It’s—it’s fine,” Will says, strangled. He left Bobby Johnson to die and he had every ability to save him. He has no room to talk. Hannibal helps him to his feet and they survey their battlefield. They have limited supplies and numerous injuries to tend to. He just has to hope they’re found before too late.

Chapter Text

He’s running through the trees. Behind him, a large stag gallops. The stag’s breath ghosts along Will’s nape, leading him through the woods. When they come to a stop, the stag bows its head. Will raises his rifle and aims toward a clearing in the trees. The stag snorts, pawing at the ground impatiently. “I know,” Will murmurs. He looks through the scope. A figure comes into view. Will pulls the trigger. The person’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open in shock. He falls to his knees, crumpling forward on himself. When Will approaches, he can reach right into the dead man’s chest and eat his heart.

***

Will wakes up with a gasp, blankets twisted around himself and covered in a cold sweat. Winston whines and puts his head on Will’s chest. He’s not supposed to be on the bed. “Hi, Winston,” Will murmurs, stroking his head until his heart rate returns to normal. The alarm clock mockingly blinks 5:17 in the morning. Winston nudges his hand and Will resumes petting absently and stares at his ceiling. He overdid it last night with the whiskey. His head hurts and his throat feels raw and scratchy. There’s no point going back to bed, really, so he swings his legs over the side of his bed.

He rubs a hand over his face. Twenty years later, and he still compulsively runs his fingers over the slightly raised scar across his forehead. That’s how he knows he’s not dreaming. He’s always unscarred in his dreams. Buster sits at his feet and looks at him expectantly.

“Just because I’m up early doesn’t mean you get fed early,” he tells him sternly. He pulls on his jacket and sweatpants, slipping his feet into untied boots so he can escort the pack outside for a morning jaunt. His cigarette carton in the pocket is crushed but there’s still one more in there. He shakes it out and lights it as he opens the door and lets the dogs file out. It’s a crisp November morning. The first snow is just around the corner, he can feel it. The first one is always hard. He has to remind himself the snow will eventually melt and he has a fireplace and a car and food.

The dogs are ready to come in by the time he’s finished his cigarette. He can almost hear Hannibal’s voice telling him what a disgusting habit it is. Cheaper than therapy, Will would reply. Hannibal’s eyes would glitter like a cat’s in response. He starts on the coffee and a piece of toast, sighing when he realizes he’s low on groceries. He only teaches on Tuesdays and Thursdays and today should be his day off to fish and drink and wallow. The wallowing is very important to his routine.

He sits down on his armchair, coffee and toast in hand, and he checks to see if his google alerts have anything new. Hannibal Lecter, 0 new notifications. The Chesapeake Ripper, 0 new notifications. He feels some tension unwind in his shoulders. Last thing is still the killing of Miriam Lass. What Hannibal was doing fucking with the FBI, Will has no idea. Hannibal hasn’t published anything new, either. He almost threw his phone when he saw his paper on the Evolutionary Origins of Social Exclusion. What an asshole.

He glances at his bedside table, where a stack of unopened letters Will gets every year on his birthday is hidden away in a drawer. He doesn’t know why Hannibal still bothers. Probably the same reason Will has a goddamn google alert on his phone for him. The only letter he ever read was the one Hannibal sent him after his dad died in a moment of weakness. He burned it after, but his photographic memory won’t let him forget the contents.

Sighing, Will takes another gulp of his coffee, allowing it to burn his throat. Most days, he doesn’t think about the wilderness. He doesn’t allow himself to. Then one of the survivors—Kirsten Smith—was found dead in her home last month. The press had a field day and Will turned his rifle onto anyone who stepped foot on his property. A suicide was the official story. Will saw the photos and immediately felt a chill down his spine. He knew better.

His phone buzzes. Ah, his third google alert. SEA418, 1 new notification. His mouth goes a little dry as he clicks on it. Tattlecrime, of fucking course, but a necessary evil.

FINAL DESTINATION? SEA418 SURVIVOR FOUND DEAD

“Tasteless,” Will mutters. David Myers, 53, who survived the doomed SEA418 flight, was found dead in his home early this morning. Myers credited himself with being a leading force in the survival of the group. An estimated 36 of the 90 passengers were said to have survived the initial crash, the youngest survivor being 15 at the time. Only 14 were rescued. The cause of death is still under investigation but exclusive reporting from Freddie Lounds tells us that it is considered suspicious. On the heels of Kirsten Smith’s suicide…

Will stops reading and exits out of Tattlecrime. He really wishes he hadn’t already smoked that cigarette. He can’t help but snort at the idea of David Myers being the leader. The people who talked the most after the rescue had the least to say. Myers didn’t know half of what was going on. He voted to kick Will out of the survivor group. Fuck him. It’s his fault only 14 people were left to be rescued. For one insane moment he thinks about calling Hannibal—his office number isn’t exactly hard to find—but he can’t break his twenty year embargo on communication with him. Not for this.

He might as well get groceries now before another media circus starts up again. He should get sprinklers installed so he can turn them on anyone who dares to get close to his front door. He starts fixing the dogs their breakfast, scooping the homemade food into their bowls and unable to stop his smile as they all crowd him in the kitchen to start eating. Upon smelling himself, he decides he could use a shower. Nightmare sweat smells like fear.

He always turns up the water as hot as it can go. The shock to his skin reminds him, yet again, he’s awake. He’s alive. And hot water is a blessing. Most days, he doesn’t think about wow, remember when I had none of this for almost two years? but today it’s especially potent.

After a less-than-relaxing shower, it’s finally a normal time to go to the store. The earlier in the day, the more empty the store. The dogs are back to their beds, bellies full, and ready for a morning nap. The cold kisses Will’s cheeks as he steps back outside, damp hair making him shiver and his skin prickle. His Volvo takes its sweet time to warm up. He knows he can afford a better, nicer car. He has enough money to never work again. Flashy cars means people noticing and people noticing means hey, aren’t you that kid that might have had to eat people in the wilderness? No, thank you. Still referred to as a kid and he’s pushing goddamn forty.

The grocery store, as predicted, is empty. Sleepy store clerks are most of the population. He still self-consciously flattens his bangs over his forehead, a tic he’s developed since the moment he first saw someone’s eyes flit up to it. He wanders the aisles, getting as many nonperishables as possible to once again avoid coming here for as long as he can. As he gets to the checkout counter, he sees the rack of gossip rags and grimaces.

TATTLECRIME 20th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE FOREST

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Will mutters. He flips it around on the rack. His own school photo stares back at him. He barely recognizes the wide-eyed boy with wild hair. He flips the stupid magazine back around. At least his face isn’t on the front. He flattens his bangs down again.

“Hiya, Will!” the cashier says brightly. She always has the early morning shift. Her name is Molly and Will tries to pretend he doesn’t remember her name in the hopes she will stop referring to him by his. “Here for your monthly groceries?”

“Gotta stock up for the winter,” he mumbles, looking down at her hands scanning each item.

“You know, I was thinking,” she chatters happily, clearly not understanding Will’s mood, “Thanksgiving is in a few weeks.”

“Is it?” He hadn’t noticed. Calendars make him nervous and he tries not to think about what day it is. He just needs to know if he has work or not.

“Mhm,” Molly hums. “My sister is coming. I showed her your picture. She thinks you’re handsome.”

Will tries to school his face as neutral as possible. “I’m flattered, but—”

“I know, I know.” She scans the last of Will’s groceries and rings him up. “Think about it. Wally likes you, my husband likes you, just come over for Thanksgiving. No pressure. You don’t deserve to have Thanksgiving by yourself.”

She has no idea what he does and doesn’t deserve. “I’ll think about it,” Will lies. Wally only ever stares at him whenever they cross paths. He’s not sure they’ve ever had a conversation. And he’s certainly never had a conversation with Molly’s husband. Simon, maybe? Or Theodore. A chipmunk, definitely.

Molly is clearly trying not to be too pleased with herself. Will can’t bring himself to rain on her parade, so he just smiles again and then pushes his cart full of groceries out of the store and to his car. When he slides into the driver’s seat, he exhales shakily and presses his forehead against the steering wheel. Twenty years since a rescue team found him and a baker’s dozen of other thin, dirty, hungry plane crash victims in the Canadian wilderness. Twenty years since the press circus around their arrival back in the states and the youngest survivor, now a feral teenager, started screaming as soon as microphones were put in front of him.

It’s still his first reaction when reporters come sniffing around to get him to sell his story. He starts his car for the short drive back, John Denver filling the silence between the cracks in his facade. Sometimes, it feels like everyone knows Will is just pretending to be a normal person and they’re humoring him because they feel sorry for him.

He unloads the groceries once home, scowling at the fact that it’s barely past eight in the morning. He should just go back to bed. The whole day is a wash, between being set up by Molly and Myers’s murder, it’s better if Will just resets. He undresses and crawls back under his covers, staring at his dogs all piled by the space heater. He closes his eyes and all he sees is blood and oil carpeting the forest floor. His scar throbs painfully.

He tosses and turns for a fitful nap, and when he finally decides he should give up, he swears he can feel warm, sticky blood between his fingers. He needs to wash his hands. He dry swallows two aspirin, drinks water straight from his faucet, and decides to brew a second cup of coffee. He can hear some amalgamation of his dad and Hannibal telling him he needs to eat more and he rolls his eyes at himself and gets a granola bar. “Happy?” he asks no one.

The dogs are due for another break outside, which is perfect, because he needs to fucking smoke. He puts his clothes back on and opens the door for all the furry beasts to go scampering off. He takes his usual post on the porch, coffee in one hand and a cigarette in another. Winston trots back after he does his business and lays down at Will’s feet. Will closes his eyes and breathes in deep. If he thinks hard enough, he can still smell gasoline and blood as if it’s permanently stuck to him, not unlike the way his clothes probably smell of nicotine and dogs.

The dogs start barking maniacally and Will snaps out of his reverie. He really needs to start bringing his gun outside with him. A black SUV starts rolling up his driveway. He whistles to call the dogs back to him as he stands on the porch. The SUV stops and a man gets out. Before he even takes another step, Will draws himself up to full height and shouts, “I have a gun!”

The man raises his hands and a badge unfolds from his palm. “Agent Jack Crawford, FBI,” he says. “Can we talk, Mr. Graham?”

“Am I under arrest?”

Agent Crawford chuckles and starts walking forward. “No, no.” He stands at the bottom of the steps to the porch. “I’ve read a few of your papers. And I watched one of your lectures online. You have unique insight.”

Will lets out a breath but doesn’t relax and doesn’t invite Agent Crawford any closer. Sensing Will’s discomfort, Agent Crawford stays where he is. “I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Kirsten.”

“And David.”

“And David,” Crawford agrees. “One was a tragedy. Two is suspicious.”

“You think?” Will knows it’s deeply unwise to raise a gun to an FBI agent but he still wishes he had his rifle. He’d feel a lot better having this conversation with a gun in his hand.

Ignoring Will’s impudence, Crawford soldiers on. “Do you mind if I come in?”

“Yes.”

Crawford sighs. “Mr. Graham—Will—Can I call you Will?” Will nods jerkily. “Will, there is a high likelihood a pattern will emerge from these killings. I’d like to get ahead of them. You have a unique perspective and the best chance we've got to catch this person.”

“Like bait?” Will snaps. “You’re dreaming. Get lost.” Will isn’t going to sit around and wait to be killed. He can only imagine the look on Hannibal’s face if he proposed it to him. Hannibal sees himself as the apex predator; he would never play bait. He would simply hunt.

Crawford shakes his head, chuckling again. “Come down to Quantico with me. I’ll buy you lunch. Take a look at the case files and tell me what you know.”

The idea of going to the FBI offices is making Will uneasy. Everything about this makes his hair stand on end. Someone out there might have a list of everyone who survived, their addresses, their pictures. Will didn’t change his name but maybe he should have. He doesn’t allow his photo on the faculty website at GWU. He flattens his hair on his forehead again unconsciously. He had twenty years to become a guy who wears hats and he failed on all fronts.

“Let me get the dogs settled and I’ll be out in a minute,” Will grunts. Jack tips his hat at Will and starts making his way back to his SUV. He should not agree to this. He’s never even agreed to an interview. He’s never spoken about what happened to anyone. Allowing himself to walk through the halls of the FBI opens a can of worms he has desperately tried to keep sealed for two decades. He’ll go, say he can’t help, and then get a security system installed. If he’s on the list of targets, he’ll be ready.

No one knows what happened in the wilderness besides him, Hannibal, and the dead. And the dead can’t talk.

Chapter Text

As night falls, Will comes to accept that they might be here a while. He'd read about a similar incident in the ’70s, and it took over two months to find them. While preparing for this trip, he’d learned all about the transponders and radios that airplanes use. It should activate and send out a distress signal, and surely the pilots gave air traffic control some estimated location? He should have done more research on air disasters.

They’re able to collect rocks and sticks to start a fire pit. They’ve extracted all the luggage they can, in the hopes of saving themselves from exposure by getting drier, cleaner clothes. Will’s original sweatshirt was covered in blood, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it in the pile of garbage they’ve accumulated and instead shoves it into his backpack. He draws his knees to his chest and stares into the fire. They’ve gone around and done introductions like this is a Boy Scout camp.

I’m Will, I’m 15, my mom killed herself when I was 3 and it still wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to me.

On initial count, there are over thirty people who survived and over fifty dead. He can’t get a good count with everyone moving constantly; Besides, with some people straddling the line between life and death, there’s no point remembering any hard numbers. The number of the dead will climb tomorrow. Twigs break behind him as someone walks over and then sits down. He doesn’t have to look to know who it is.

“Are you hungry?” Hannibal asks, and holds out a small handful of airline cookies. “I snuck a few extra.”

Will can’t help his strangled laugh. A few extra cookies, the line between starving to death and not. “It’s fine,” Will says. “Might as well ration them.”

Hannibal makes a sound that Will can’t interpret. He looks and sees him still insistently holding out the cookies. Will rolls his eyes and takes them. “Thank you,” he grumbles. “Do they camp in Lithuania?”

“I’ve done something similar,” Hannibal says. “I’m no stranger to the elements.”

“You wore a suit on a plane.”

“It’s always important to look your best.”

Will laughs again but without mirth. “And how’d that work out for ya?”

“You are quite a rude child.”

Hannibal has shed the suit but is clearly wearing something else from his own luggage. Will is pretty sure he’s wearing one of his classmates’ pants and a woman’s sweatshirt. Everyone was just grabbing what they could. He puts the cookies in his pouch pocket while Hannibal isn’t looking. A man who introduced himself as David Myers stands up and starts signaling for everyone’s attention.

“Here we go,” Will mutters darkly. He read Lord of the Flies last year. He knows how this will go. Here’s their heroic Ralph, less than twelve hours into their stranding, coming to give them orders. He’s convinced that all the survivors will devolve into chaos and anarchy if they aren’t controlled, like the rules of society even fucking matter when their days are numbered if they aren’t rescued soon.

“I know we’re all scared and tired and hungry,” David begins. “But it’s important that we all stay calm and work together.” Will snorts. “Women and children take priority for food and medicine. We’ve all suffered a great loss today but it’s important to put the needs of those who are weaker in front of us. I don’t want to lose anyone else. Imagine how it would look if all the children and women were dead before rescue came?”

“Weaker?” a woman chirps indignantly. Will can’t see in the dark who it is. “It’s the ’90s, don’t pull that macho bullshit right here, right now.” A manic smile starts spreading across Will’s face and he pulls his sweatshirt over his mouth and chin to hide it. He knew it was only a matter of time before an argument broke out, but he didn’t expect it to be the first night. It’s hard to stop from laughing.

There’s more murmuring and going back and forth whether or not women can really contribute to survival and Will is trying not to fall over in a fit of giggles. They are all going to die because this guy thinks he knows best.

“Are you alright?” Hannibal asks quietly, leaning over.

Will stifles another laugh and pulls his sweatshirt down. “We’re doomed,” he says. His mouth twitches. “We’re gonna kill each other before rescue.”

Hannibal hums thoughtfully and Will finally gets ahold of himself and leans back on his palms. “Maybe it would not be so bad,” Hannibal muses.

“Killing each other?”

“There would be less of a fight for resources.”

“Morbid.”

Bobby Johnson’s bleeding mouth fills Will’s vision. He wouldn’t have survived anyway, even if Will had saved him. He opens his mouth to confess to Hannibal and then thinks better of it. Never give anyone information they can use against you, his daddy told him once. Treat everyone like a cop. He’s pretty sure Hannibal is joking, anyway, if the way his mouth is turned up is any indication. A little gallows humor to lighten the mood never hurt anyone.

David is finally talking again, with more platitudes that sound straight from some kind of self-help book. Will hasn’t heard a single thing about what they’re going to do for food and water. If they’re not rescued within a week, they’ll die of dehydration before anything else. Feeling like he’s in school but not knowing a better option, he raises his hand.

David seems surprised by it. Will tries not to roll his eyes. “Yes, uh… kid,” he says.

“It’s Will,” Will sighs. “We need to find a water source or dehydration will get us before rescue. Shouldn’t we be worrying about that?”

“It’ll only take a few days for them to find us, right?” someone else pipes up.

“We need to stay near the wreck!”

“If we find water, we might find help!”

“That’s enough,” David shouts over the noise. “We should stay near the wreck. We have some water from the plane’s supply.”

Will scoffs. That is not nearly enough water for the amount of survivors there are. “Whatever,” he mutters. He’s just a kid who doesn’t know anything, these people are probably all thinking. He probably wouldn’t listen to someone his age either. He’s tired, still concussed, and stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangers.

“I’m gonna find somewhere to sleep,” he mutters to no one in particular. He gets up and brushes the dirt off his pants, shrugging his backpack on. The moon is bright, at least, so he can avoid stepping on bodies or limbs and find somewhere at least a little quiet and comfortable. The sweatshirt in his backpack gives him some semblance of a pillow.

There’s still a part of him that’s hoping this is all just a horrible nightmare. He’s always had night terrors. Maybe he’s screaming in his sleep in the back of the trailer while his daddy just turns up the TV to drown it out rather than go check on his son.

He dismisses the fantasy so he can accept the reality of the situation. By now, the news has definitely broken. Pictures provided by family members will flash across the TV screen with a ticker at the bottom, listing all their names and ages. Sobbing families at candlelight vigils. He rolls to his back and stares up at the sky, bright with stars.

He spots a few constellations. Orion and his dogs, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major. Will raises a hand and traces the outline with his finger. Sailors used the stars to navigate the ocean for centuries. Why’d they ever stop? Stars are so reliable, unchanging. Even a compass can be faulty. His hand falls limply to his side. At least Orion and his dogs can watch him while he sleeps.

When he wakes, there’s a blanket draped over him. It’s thin and a little scratchy; it’s definitely an airline blanket. Will rubs the sleep from his eyes and looks around. The morning light casts the wreckage from yesterday in an eerie glow. He can now clearly see the bodies that they’ve moved to be together. They’ll never be able to dig a mass grave big enough for all of them with just their hands. Will they just let them rot in the sun like that? Will’s stomach churns at the thought.

Morbidly, he thinks about his hide beetles. They’ll be here soon. It will take years to get through this many corpses, multiple life cycles. They will feed generations of hide beetles. He realizes he’s been staring at the pile of bodies and shakes his head to clear the image of them decayed and eaten. The fire is smoldering and Will starts picking up more sticks and dried leaves to feed it. He’s thirsty and hungry and his head still hurts. It will probably never stop hurting at this point. A scream startles him out of his reverie and sends birds flying.

The few people who are already up all start moving quickly toward the source of the scream. A young woman—Kirsten Smith, he thinks—kneels next to an older woman, supine on the ground. She looks like she could be sleeping, but given Kirsten’s wailing, Will already has an idea of what might be going on.

“Dear, you shouldn’t see this,” another woman says, pulling Will away from the small gathering that has appeared. He recognizes her as one of the moms on the plane. He never figured out which parent was whose. Is her kid still alive? He opens his mouth to say something when Hannibal’s voice cuts through.

“My best guess is a brain bleed—she will not wake up,” he says. “We should end her suffering.”

Kirsten wails again and Will feels it rattle his bones. The grief becomes all-consuming and hot tears prick at the back of Will’s eyes again. He covers his ears to block out the sound of the loud sobs to get control over the emotions that actually belong to him. The woman wildly misinterprets this and wraps Will in her arms and forces his head down against her shoulder. “It’s okay, my dear,” she soothes. Will squirms; he did not ask to be hugged.

“What’s up with Graham?” a voice asks, muffled around Will’s hands. He forces his head up, mortified to see Chris Walsh looking curiously at him. This woman is Mrs. Walsh. He manages to break free of her hold and puts his hands back to his sides, only to be filled with the sound of sobbing again. He looks over his shoulder and sees Hannibal comforting Kirsten.

“Chris, dear, you also shouldn’t see this. Maybe you and Will can go make yourself busy somewhere else?” Her eyes are watery as she witnesses the scene happening just behind them. Chris looks Will up and down and neither of them get a chance to say anything before she’s shooing them both off.

“What was with the earmuffs?” Chris laughs as they walk away. “It wasn’t even that loud.”

“I don’t like the sound of crying,” Will lies. Or, half-trues. Anger, sadness, joy, all infectious emotions that slither around Will’s synapses and hijack his own feelings. People would accuse him of inheriting his mother’s schizophrenia if he explained it. He is very much sane, despite what Bobby had to say about it. He swallows, glancing over at Chris. Bobby was his friend. No one knows about his final moments, looking Will right in the eyes as Will let him die.

And no one will know about it. He coughs to clear his throat as they walk toward the dying fire.

“Is it true your mom killed herself?” Chris asks, apropos of nothing.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Maybe she just didn’t like me.” He smiles sardonically and Chris’s eyes bug out of his head. Kids like Chris, like Bobby, like almost everyone else he goes to school with, they don’t understand that some kids experience true horrors that they’ll never have to deal with.

Well, until now. He and Chris are almost on equal footing for trauma, he supposes. The loss of his mom didn’t really traumatize him, anyway. Nature versus nurture, or whatever. Will doesn’t think he’d be any different with two parents and a steady housing situation. An awkward silence befalls them, which, good. Will doesn’t want to bond with Chris. He doesn’t want to bond with any of these people. He wants to go home and never think about this ever again.

Maybe his dad was onto something with the drinking.

“I’m almost jealous of Bobby,” Pete Fisher says from behind them. Great. He probably thinks this is a deliberate hangout for all the teens. “His death was fast and painless. We’ll all starve to death.”

Will casts his eyes downward and busies himself with chewing on a thumbnail.

“You don’t think we’ll be rescued?” Chris asks. “They can’t just leave us out here. That’s what the black box is for.”

“No, it’s not,” Will mutters.

“What?”

Will shakes his head. “The black box is a flight data recorder. It doesn’t send or receive any information from traffic control. You’re thinking of the transponder. That’s what air traffic control watches on the radar.” Both Chris and Pete are looking at him like he grew two heads. “What?”

“Why do you know what?” Pete asks. “I thought your thing was bugs.”

“Insects.”

Before Pete can say whatever, Will hears his name being called. He whips his head around to see Hannibal, off at the edge of the clearing, beckoning him over. He doesn’t bother saying anything else and just gets up and hurries over. “Do you need something?”

“No,” says Hannibal, hands clasped behind his back. He’s turned to look away from the main clearing. “You did not seem to be enjoying that conversation. Consider this a rescue.”

Will grins, mirroring Hannibal’s stance next to him. It’s an unconscious movement. “Did you kill that woman?”

“An act of mercy is not killing. She did not feel anything.”

“I let Bobby Johnson die slowly and painfully,” Will blurts before he even realizes what he's saying. Hannibal turns to look at him, face inscrutable.

“Good.”

“Seriously?”

“He was quite unkind to you. I’m sure he learned his lesson.”

Will’s heart thuds loudly in his ears. Is he hearing this correctly? Hannibal is glad Will let Bobby die? His last words were calling Will a psycho. Will licks his dry lips. His tongue sticks a little; his mouth is dry and he’s incredibly thirsty. They need to find water, and soon. He shoves his hands in his sweatshirt pocket and realizes he still has cookies from last night. He pulls one out and offers it to Hannibal.

“I won’t tell if you don’t?” he says with a slight smile. Hannibal’s mouth turns up, just barely, and takes it from him. He’s talking about stealing the cookies, but also about his confession. He’ll keep Hannibal’s secret if Hannibal keeps Will’s. They stand like that for a while, covertly sharing the small handful of cookies.

His wheels turn in his brain. There has to be some way to get the attention of any potential rescuers. Setting the forest on fire would risk burning with it. If they can find a river, maybe it will lead them to civilization eventually. They’re surrounded by mountains; they must be at a high elevation. The chances of a suburban neighborhood are slim to none, but there could be a campsite with cabins out there. And with campsites come rangers, who have satellite phones.

“Where have you gone, dear Will?” Hannibal asks curiously.

“Trying to figure out how to get us out of this place,” he murmurs. “We need to find water. Fuck what David says. I’m finding a water source.” He turns on his heel. He needs to get his backpack and maybe a change of clothes. It could be a long walk; he might have to stop to sleep overnight.

Hannibal falls into step with him. “I will join you,” he says. “You shouldn’t walk off by yourself.”

“Not you too,” Will groans. “I’m not a child.”

“It has nothing to do with your age. Wandering off alone leaves you vulnerable to predators and injury. I have utmost faith in you, Will, that you could find a water source by yourself. But there is no reason to be alone when I could be with you.”

Will has never had anyone look out for him. His dad didn’t even hold his hand while they crossed the street. A latchkey kid, he spent more time cooking for himself than his daddy ever did. He can’t figure out why Hannibal cares. Does he just feel bad that he forgot Will on the plane and left him for dead? He’s over it, he’s forgiven Hannibal. By the time they’re ready to leave, Hannibal’s leather satchel is filled with a few more medical supplies apparently from his personal luggage and an empty water bottle.

“Where exactly do you two think you’re going?” David says when he notices them both. He says it loud enough that anyone who isn’t in his immediate vicinity starts to turn and look at what’s going on.

Will feels his hackles raise. He’s about to start chewing David out but Hannibal puts a hand on his shoulder to press him back ever so slightly. “We are going in search of water while the sun is out. Will is right; we will be dead before rescue if we become dehydrated. It can cause delirium, hypotension, and among other things, eventually lead to death. Much quicker than hunger will get us.” He smooths down his clothes, prim and proper. What a pair they make; the boy in mismatched, ill-fitting clothes and the young man standing tall in tailored slacks and shirt.

“I thought we agreed to stay near the crash site, in case of rescue.”

“You agreed. Surely if they come while we are away you will tell them where we are?”

Will needs to ask Hannibal how he’s able to stay so calm in the face of such dickishness. Will solves conflicts with his fists or a sharp tongue. Hannibal is intimidating: he’s tall and broad and his eyes seem to glint red if the sunlight catches them just right. David gives Hannibal an irritated look. He clearly does not like having his authority questioned—authority he bestowed upon himself.

In the end, a small group of them are the ones to go in search of water: the least injured and most athletic, although noticeably the other teenagers stay seated. Will is relieved. He’d rather not be lumped in with them. Being similar ages doesn’t mean they automatically have the same interests or get along, as it’s become increasingly obvious.

Will crawls back into the wreckage to tear the compass out of the instrument panel in the cockpit. Triumphant, he rejoins the small expedition group and they begin their journey. For the first time since they crashed, Will feels something very similar to hope.

Chapter Text

Lunch ends up being greasy diner food. Agent Crawford watches Will eat with interest, like he’s observing some creature in the wild. Will ignores it. A mother and daughter a table over are having some kind of disagreement and Will can feel himself getting agitated. A flush is spreading up his neck and ears.

“Is something wrong?” asks Crawford. Will shakes his head jerkily and adjusts his glasses before looking up at him. They haven’t said much since they sat down, and once Will smelled food, he was ravenous. Crawford probably thinks Will acts like food is precious due to his background. He would be wrong; he’s over it. Will almost finds a certain comfort in hunger, now. It makes him sharper.

“What exactly do you think I can do that another profiler can’t?” Will asks, leaning forward. Raised voices from the next table over have Will rolling his shoulders in discomfort. The pair needs to leave–or he needs to–before he accidentally starts shouting at Crawford for no reason.

“You make jumps you can’t explain. Your profiling, despite never having set foot in the crime scene, has helped catch a few killers in the past. You have no law enforcement training. Just advanced degrees and a sharp eye.”

“I interpret the evidence,” Will corrects. “Anyone can do that.”

Crawford reaches forward and pushes Will’s glasses up his nose to force eye contact. “You have a specific way of thinking, so I’m told.”

“Told?”

Crawford doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he waves the waitress down so he can pay the bill. Will all but jumps out of his seat in his desperation to distance himself from the increasingly intense argument. Parental arguments really get to him. When the cool outside air hits his face, he takes a deep breath and rubs his palms over his face. Crawford exits and Will pulls himself together to follow him to the SUV.

The car ride is silent. He knows Crawford must be bursting at the seams, keeping any questions and thoughts to himself. People who know his past always have questions, and he’s sure an FBI agent has even more. Will didn’t speak for a year after getting rescued. The horrors that were poised right behind his teeth were threatening to spill out if he opened his mouth. The doctors thought it was trauma. Maybe it was. For Will, it was self-preservation.

Will is outfitted with a visitor's badge once they arrive at Quantico. He tries not to look around too much like he’s in awe as they walk down the halls to the Behavior Analysis Unit offices. Crawford stops at the entrance to the morgue. “I’m going out on a limb here for you, Will. Kade Prurnell will have my head if you go rogue. You’re expected to wear gloves at all times handling anything and nothing can go home with you. Got it?”

“Loud and clear,” Will replies. He takes the blue nitrile gloves from Crawford and slides them on. The glass doors swing open and the temperature immediately drops and the sterile scents of bleach and formaldehyde fill Will’s nostrils. It reminds him of hospitals, in a way: both the hospital he spent nearly a month in getting every vitamin he’d missed in the 18 months of wilderness, and then the hospital he was committed to. He suppresses a shudder.

“Will, this is the team. Jimmy Price, Beverly Katz, and Brian Zeller. Team, this is Will Graham. I brought him on as a consultant.”

Beverly has a curious smile on her face, looks him up and down. “You wrote the standard monograph on determining time of death by insect activity,” she says.

Will blinks, caught off-guard. Of course, FBI agents would have read his published work. He also expected to get called out for being a famous plane crash survivor. He adjusts his glasses and nods jerkily. He hasn’t socialized this much in years. “Yeah, uh, that was me,” he says awkwardly.

“Did you bring him on as a consultant because he also is a SEA418 passenger or because of the standard monograph?” Zeller asks Crawford. Will peers at some of the files they have spread out on the desk, still keeping his hands to himself.

Crawford chuckles and shakes his head. He puts a paternal hand on Will’s shoulder. Will very subtly shrugs it off. “I’m hoping Will can use his unique skillset and proximity to the case to help us solve it before anyone else gets hurt,” he clarifies. “He can have access to any and all case files and autopsy reports. Get to work.”

Will gingerly picks up one of the crime scene photos. Kirsten Smith’s vacant, open eyes stare back at him. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Will hears the wail she let out when her mother didn’t wake up the morning after the crash. He swallows hard and shakes his head a little, hopefully imperceptible. He’s seen worse gore but his stomach still flips as he stares at it. “You don’t believe it’s a suicide.”

“Kirsten Smith didn’t own a gun. Fibers were found under her nails, as if she was fighting someone off,” Beverly explains, handing over the autopsy report. “We ran the serial number and the gun was reported stolen five years ago. No way of tracking whose hands it’s been in since then. No fingerprints on bullets or the gun.”

Why would someone stage her suicide? And just have a stolen gun waiting around to be used? He can only think of one person who might be this meticulous in planning a murder. “Any organs missing?” Will asks.

“All accounted for,” Beverly replies. “It looked like things had been rifled through in her house but nothing taken, as far as we can tell.”

“Did you know her?” Zeller asks.

“Of course he knew her, Brian,” Price snaps.

Zeller sighs. “Let me rephrase. Did you know her well?”

Will picks up another photo, bringing it closer. “What’s this on the carpet?” he asks. “It looks like some kind of scorch mark.”

Zeller takes the photo from him and picks up a magnifying glass. “Maybe our killer tried to set the house on fire and forgot the gasoline,” he posits.

“Not a very good killer,” Will mutters. He can’t get Kirsten’s scream out of his ears. He closes his eyes. “I had maybe a handful of conversations with her,” he says. “Her mom died on the flight.” Her hand had risen shakily when David called for a vote for whether or not Will should continue to live with everyone else or be exiled to the forest. Tears rolled down her face; she hadn’t wanted to do it but didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the vote.

He opens his eyes again and sees everyone looking at him. “What?” he snaps irritably. They all avert their gazes again and Will keeps looking at the photos. He’d rather be alone for this but given that he’s not an FBI agent–not even a special investigator, just a consultant–he highly doubts he will be allowed to be alone with any of the evidence. He arranges the photos to make more sense and get a fuller picture of the crime scene.

“Where’s the crime scene report?” Price hands it to him from across the desk and Will starts rifling through it. Her security alarm didn’t go off, so it’s possible she opened the door for the killer. His pulse rabbits a little; it could be someone she recognizes. He knew Hannibal had talked about punishment, but getting revenge on Will’s behalf twenty years later? Unlikely. And the narcissist would be unable to help himself and take one of his little trophies, as the FBI assumes.

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes as he builds Kirsten’s house in his mind. She shouldn’t be alive. It’s unfair that she’s alive. There’s order and chaos and the natural order of things has been disrupted. He is putting it right by killing her. A glitch in the system, now eliminated.

“It’s revenge,” Will murmurs when he opens his eyes again. The room is so quiet, he could hear a pin drop. “He—he thinks she doesn’t deserve to live. It’s not right.”

“So she knows the killer?” Beverly asks. “How does that connect to David Myers? Other than being on the same flight.”

Will shakes his head. “No, no. You have it backwards. He knows her—of her. Our identities weren’t exactly a secret. Where’s David’s case file?”

How was that only this morning when his body was found? Will rubs his eyes. Another folder gets handed to him and he follows Price and Zeller to the morgue. They slide David’s corpse out from his drawer. He has a Y autopsy stitch but otherwise Will doesn’t see any physical wounds. His brow furrows and he starts looking through the files. “Different MO?”

“At first glance,” Zeller explains. “The only thing different is the manner of death. Kirsten was shot. David was poisoned.”

Will’s head hurts. A potential serial killer who is learning on the job. Pinning down their pattern might prove difficult, which means predicting them will be next to impossible. “What poison?”

“Deathcap mushroom,” Price pipes up. “Most common form of toxic mushroom. It resembles a few edible types so people often accidentally ingest it. Not always fatal but it can do pretty nasty work to internal organs.”

Will keeps looking through the case files. This is not adding up. They’re connected, but don’t look anything alike. “Says here his wife found him unresponsive in bed this morning. She’s not a suspect?”

Beverly sighs. “She was on a business trip and came home around 11 PM that night. Deathcap toxicity takes about six to twelve hours. She couldn’t have done it. And we searched that entire house. There was no food with deathcap in it. Whoever gave it to him took whatever was left with them.”

“Or there were no leftovers,” Will guesses. “Who takes food from a stranger?” He takes off his glasses so he can pinch the bridge of his nose. A fresh crime scene would be preferable but he’s not about to push his luck. He has a feeling he’s not even supposed to be seeing this much. Crawford made it clear that someone was making an exception for him.

“Did you actually eat anyone in the forest?” Zeller blurts. “No judgement!” he adds hastily.

“Cannibalism for survival is actually very common amongst many species,” Price adds helpfully. Will already knows that is not true. Many species just eat each other because they can. He doesn’t need to be coddled or told how understandable it would be, and how everyone would totally do the same. They would not.

Will folds his arms across his chest and digs his fingers into his forearms. “What do you think?” he asks, feeling petty.

Price and Zeller exchange looks and Beverly rolls her eyes. “I’m not gonna hold what you did to survive as a teenager against you,” she says. She hands Will a photo from the crime scene. “Another burned marking on the floor in David’s home, like a crosshatch, similar to the first one. A hot tool, like a cauterizing pen. No marks on either vic.”

Will takes the photo and stares at it for a long time. Both deaths could be chalked up as accidental or self-inflicted. But enough things aren’t adding up that clearly point to targeted attacks. He hands the photo back and stares at David’s lifeless form. Will swallows hard. His death rights a wrong, but it’s not enough. The balance is still off.

“I need some air,” Will says suddenly. It feels like the walls are closing in on him and everyone staring at him is making him sweat. Like they know. They can’t know, it’s impossible. And yet Will feels guilty, like he put the gun to Kirsten’s head and fed David poison mushrooms. Fleetingly, he regrets not doing it sooner. He shakes his head again and takes off without another word.

There’s a kiosk for coffee that he stops at on his way out. Kirsten’s cries and David’s shouting creates a cacophony in his head that makes him want to cover his ears and scream, scream, scream until it stops. Instead, he finds a bench and shakes out a cigarette. An oil slick of guilt covers his skin. Why does he feel like he killed them? He knows he didn’t. He wanted to, maybe, at one time. But he’d also thought about killing Hannibal a few times over the last two decades. Kill him and call it tying up loose ends. He’s sure the feeling has been mutual.

He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and presses a palm into his eye. His head is pounding. Shiny shoes blur into vision and when he looks up, Agent Crawford is standing there, hands in his pockets. “The team said you ran out, looking like you’d seen a ghost,” he explains.

“I just needed some air,” Will mumbles. He sits up straight and takes a sip of coffee to show Crawford just how fine he is. He’s taking a coffee and smoke break, like a normal person.

“Do I need to worry about letting you in on this?” he asks bluntly.

”It’s fine.” Will waves his hand dismissively. “I can handle it.”

“I’m worried I just allowed a traumatized child look at the dead bodies of people who took care of him.”

Will feels his lip curl. “I’m not a child. And I’m not traumatized.” And those people didn’t take care of me, he doesn’t say.

Crawford sighs and sits on the bench next to Will. “I broke the rules for my own benefit and got a trainee killed. I’m breaking the rules and letting a civilian in on a murder investigation and I don’t want to see your body on that metal slab.”

Will shrugs. “I told you, I can handle it.”

Crawford doesn’t look like he buys what Will is selling. Maybe he shouldn’t. “I need to get some sleep at night knowing I made the right call.” He holds out a business card. “Dr. Alana Bloom is a respected therapist. I just want her to evaluate you and tell me that you aren’t a liability.”

“I’m not seeing a shrink,” Will automatically replies. He does not have a good track record with psychologists. As soon as he was eighteen and they released him out in the world with nothing, he never looked back. There’s only one psychiatrist who actually knows what’s going on in Will’s brain and there isn’t a chance in hell Will would see him.

“I need my beauty sleep, Will. I already talked to her. She’s willing to take you on as a patient.”

Will takes the business card. Dr. Alana Bloom. Trauma therapist. Fucking great.

Chapter Text

The smell of decomposing bodies as the weather warms up drives their group away from the wreckage. The airplane has essentially been stripped for parts, using paneling as shelter and ripped-out seats for cushioning. With nothing else to do, ramshackle huts made of branches and plane parts start being built. They haven’t seen so much as a plane flying above them, looking for the wreckage. The lake they discovered stretches for miles with no sign of civilization.

At least the lake makes Will less homesick. It’s where he spends most of his time. Shoes off, jeans rolled up, sitting on a fallen tree that almost resembles a dock on the serene water. He stole a pocketknife out of someone’s luggage that he uses to carve wood, because he might as well learn a new skill while he’s out here. Maybe eventually he’ll carve a bow and some arrows and learn to hunt. He only knows how to fish and he’d have to catch a lot of fish to feed the group.

As it is, the rabbit traps they’ve made aren’t as fruitful as they could be, especially with a group as large as theirs. Everyone is lucky to get a single bite. He knows the question is hanging above them in the air, everyone thinking it but no one is saying it. It’s not like it matters, anyway, since the bodies of those who died have long since begun their decomposition process. They’d have to wait for another one of them to drop.

Or take matters into their own hands.

He shakes the thought from his head. He’s hungry and tired. Sleeping has been fitful since David thought it would be helpful to put Pete, Will, and Chris in the same ‘bunk’ like they're at camp. Will often just sleeps outside by himself, and it’s a poor sleep at that. His already short fuse is even shorter most days, so staying away is for everyone’s benefit.

Twigs behind him break and he doesn’t have to turn around to see who it is. Hannibal is the only person who doesn’t treat Will like a little kid. He grunts a hello as he digs some notches into the wolf’s tail to make it look fluffier.

“Thought I might find you here,” Hannibal says mildly. “The others are convinced you are hiding.”

“I am.”

“Yes, I surmised as much.” Hannibal sits down. “‘I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.’”

“You did not just quote Thoreau at me.”

“I thought you might find it relatable.” Hannibal smiles and looks at what Will is carving. He holds it out in his palm for Hannibal to pick up and inspect. “The detail is quite nice on this, Will.”

Will grunts again. “Keep it. It’s like the fourth one I’ve tried.” He stands up and stretches, muscles permanently aching at this point. He slides on the tennis shoes he got from The Pile: too big, but they were better than the ones he had. “What are we gonna do when it gets colder? We barely catch any rabbits as it is. There are too many of us and too little resources.”

Hannibal follows behind him as they make the hike back to their weird little village. “You said it yourself. Most animals would cannibalize each other if they got hungry enough.”

And there it is. Hannibal is the first one to mention the big C, at least while Will can hear it. “All we have is a pile of rotting meat, then,” Will mutters. “That rugby team in the ’70s, they ate their dead since they were frozen in the snow. They lied about it when they were rescued but someone noticed the corpses had been partially eaten.”

“Then we will have to finish, won’t we?”

Will starts laughing because it’s an absurd thing to say. Make sure we don’t leave any leftovers of human for people to find so no one will know we ate each other. Christ. He changes the subject before they’re too casually joking about cannibalism. “It’ll snow in the winter. I’ve barely experienced snow.”

“I’ve experienced very cold winters. I am sure we will manage.”

“Is it cold in Lithuania?”

“The coldest.”

Hannibal has a solemn look on his face. There’s a memory there that he’s keeping at bay. Will knows better than to meddle in adult business, but Hannibal is barely older than him. He’s just legal to drink in America. “Do you miss it?”

“No.” His expression shutters. He’s closed off, lost in whatever memory he has of his home country. Will decides not to prod any further. The sun is starting to go down by the time they reach the clearing. No rabbit slowly roasting over the fire which means another night of going hungry. The hunger has become a constant ache that Will is used to at this point. Everyone’s on edge between hunger and lack of rescue. How are they still out here? It has yet to be two months but judging by the longer, warmer days, it must be close to summer.

Nights by the fire are filled with people trying to stay hopeful, keep spirits up by telling stories from their childhoods or for some reason, talking about all the things they miss about home. Will can’t stand it. He can’t sit around and feel sorry for himself—his dad would be so disappointed in him. The Grahams never wallow, he would say. They pull themselves up by the bootstraps and deal with the hand they were dealt.

Will was dealt a very, very shitty hand. It’s almost comical, how wrong his life has gone in his fifteen years. Sixteen? His birthday has to be soon. He regrets he didn’t start ticking off days when they landed, but the first few days were full of chaos and confusion. It’s been at least a month. He’s seen two full moons, with one early on. He supposes he’s glad he’s a late bloomer and still can’t grow facial hair to save his life. Most of the others are starting to look extremely scruffy.

Somehow, Hannibal manages to look put together despite the facial hair. Will finds himself watching Hannibal curiously from a distance. He often looks lost in thought and in an attempt to not act like an imprinted duckling, Will doesn’t follow him around even though he is desperate to know what Hannibal is even doing all day. There’s trap checking and something resembling laundry for chores. Maybe in another circumstance—where Will liked the company of the people he was stranded with—he would find this almost enjoyable.

Instead, Will carves his little wolves and dips his toes in the lake. He tries not to think about his dad, drowning his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. Without Will there to throw a blanket on him when he’s fallen asleep on the couch or make an extra peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the morning, he’s probably cold and starving. At least they finally have something in common.

In a situation like this, Will thinks, the playing field would level out. There is no class, no divides. Everyone is equally up shit creek without a paddle. Even with David and his faux leadership, they are equally dirty and hungry. And yet, somehow Will feels like he still might be on the bottom. All he can do is carve his wolves, just to dig his knife into something.

He’s made a few that he thinks are decent. He could use a different type of wood, maybe, and try to carve something a little more complicated. A deer with antlers might be challenging enough to help pass the time. He stomps around in the wooded area looking for pieces of wood that are suitable for carving. Hannibal told him that he was going out and looking deeper into the woods for food by himself and Will would only slow him down, which sounded like a lie but Will couldn’t bring himself to care.

He probably wants peace and quiet too. Who wants a highly empathetic fifteen year old who is snappish due to hunger and fatigue following them around? No one. Which is why he ends up alone in the forest with a stick to poke at rocks and see what crawls out from underneath in between finding a good piece of wood.

Will can hear shouting from some distance off—Pete and Chris have taken to entertaining themselves with some of the others and playing some version of football or keep-away with a pillow from the plane. They’ve come out farther than they usually do, much to Will’s disappointment. He came out here to be alone.

“Hey, Graham!” Chris shouts. “Stop being a loser and join us, we need one more!”

Will rolls his eyes and ignores him, turning over another rock. A millipede scurries away. Maybe Will should stop bothering the insects that live in the dark, damp soil underneath rocks. He often feels like his proverbial stone is being rolled over so people can witness his discomfort. He's had to put up walls to avoid other’s emotions taking battering rams to his psyche, but he’s been too exhausted as of late.

The mistake Chris makes is that instead of just lifting the rock and yelling at Will to join them, and then letting him scurry away, is that he tries to pick Will up and observe him closer. He doesn’t know when Chris got so close but suddenly a hand is grabbing his sleeve.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport. God, Graham, were you raised by an alien? What kind of boy doesn’t want to play ball?”

“It’s a pillow,” Will says blandly, yanking his arm back. “And I have better things to do than chase someone with a pillow around.” He really doesn’t, but he’d rather do almost anything else than expend precious energy running through the forest. He’s honestly surprised Chris is participating because it’s not like he was an athlete in the real world. None of them were. But he supposes when in Rome, and all that.

“Oh yeah?” Chris taunts. He pulls at the backpack strap Will has hanging off his shoulder and Will immediately makes a grab for it but Chris holds it out of reach. “What’s so important in here that you carry it around?”

Will doesn’t bother whining to give it back. He just keeps making swipes at it, only to be dodged. Chris digs around in his backpack and finds one of his wolf carvings. “Is this what you’ve been doing?” He throws the backpack on the ground and Will scrambles to get it. How is he still in high school out here?

“Maybe you’ll play if this is the ball?” Chris says with a smirk. Will makes another grab for the wolf and Chris jumps out of reach. “Catch me if you can.” He then takes off.

Will knows he’s being baited. If he just stays here, Chris will give up and he’ll find his wolf carving on the ground somewhere, probably still whole.

But he’s been stewing for weeks now.

He’s sick of this forest, he’s sick of everyone’s emotions, he’s sick of being hungry and dirty. He’s angry that this just had to happen to him. Will Graham, fate’s perpetual laughingstock. Look at how bad things keep happening to him. No happiness allowed.

He takes off running after Chris, his stupid too-big shoes making him stumble but he manages to get his footing and keep up the pursuit. He could rip Chris limb from limb and the discussion on what they would eat would be over. He surprises himself a little at this line of thought; he chalks it up to hunger making him hate everyone and everything around him.

He manages to close the gap between them after several minutes of sprinting. They’re at the edge of the clearing, and Chris hesitates for a moment as he figures out which direction to go. Will takes that brief moment to tackle Chris with all he’s got. He doesn’t even hesitate to start hitting and scratching.

Blood rushes in his ears and he knows he’s shouting as he takes out his pent up frustration and anger on the person who just fucked with Will at the wrong time. Chris gets a swing in, fist still closed around the carved wolf and Will grunts but doesn’t let up. There’s a commotion around them as people finally realize that it’s not just boys roughhousing but a fist fight breaking out. “Get off me, gaywad!” Chris yells.

Will just wants his wolf back. He bites Chris’s arm, hard, feeling the skin break and the coppery tang of blood fill his mouth.

Chris howls in pain but his palm opens and the little wolf tumbles out. Will grabs it, victorious, and then feels an arm around his waist drag him off Chris.

Chris scrambles backwards, pressing a hand down on his wound. Blood seeps through his fingers. All Will can see is red. His chest heaves and he spits blood out on the ground. Everything is blissfully silent in his head as everyone watches in horror.

“He bit me!” Chris shouts in disbelief. “I was just messing around, you fucking psycho!”

Will licks his teeth and tastes blood. He finally realizes he’s still being held back, gentle and firm. Hannibal. He wriggles to get out of his grasp and Hannibal lets him go easily. Will wipes his mouth on his arm. That bite wound will probably get infected; the human mouth is disgusting. Will can’t bring himself to even feel a little bit sorry.

“Did you get your wolf back?” Hannibal asks curiously. He doesn’t sound upset. He sounds proud, almost. Will opens his palm and shows Hannibal his wolf. Hannibal smiles, eyes crinkling a little. “Good.”

David, oblivious as always, joins the commotion when Chris has already been helped off the ground, dramatically hobbling as if Will broke his shins. Everyone keeps looking back at Will as if he’s some kind of cornered animal, ready to bite again. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s been a cornered, rabid fox this whole time. David approaches with caution but most of Will’s adrenaline has drained and he’s beginning to wilt, exhaustion taking over. He would also like to bite David if he had the chance.

“What the hell was that about?” David demands.

“It seems the boys were roughhousing and got carried away,” Hannibal cuts in. “Tensions are high. Perhaps it would be best if we separated them.”

Will won’t complain about that. “Yeah, sorry,” he lies. “We were just messing around.”

David shakes his head. “Will, I think you should find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”

Will shrugs. Another thing he won’t complain about. “I will take Will out for a walk and cool down,” Hannibal suggests. “Give him some time away to think about his actions.”

Will glances up at Hannibal with a skeptical look but Hannibal’s face is unreadable as always. David looks behind himself to see the main living area full of activity as they treat Chris’s injury. He’ll probably need stitches—will Hannibal be the one to give them? They don’t exactly have many supplies anymore. They could always cauterize it, he supposes. It would hurt a lot more than the bite, but less than the ensuing infection from an open wound caused by a filthy weapon.

“Look, kid, I dunno what your deal is but people are talking, you know? You’re antisocial and don’t talk, it freaks people out,” David sighs, gesturing vaguely.

Not the first time Will has heard that. He shrugs, uncaring, again. He’s had many school counselors ask him if things are fine at home, which they were. His daddy never laid a hand on him. He just taught Will how to end a fight before it begins. Other people’s perceptions of him are not his problem.

“A night away will do us some good,” Hannibal insists. “I will keep him safe. Be sure to clean Chris’s wound and maybe boil some fabric to sanitize it before wrapping his arm.” He doesn’t wait for David to respond and instead starts steering Will away.

“I don’t need to cool down,” Will snaps. “I need to get out of this godforsaken forest.”

Hannibal hums thoughtfully, unbothered by Will’s mood. “Yes, I know. I thought you behaved quite admirably.”

Will snorts. Hannibal always finds ways to catch him off-guard but maybe Will should stop being surprised. He seems to enjoy chaos and disorder as an observer; with the way Hannibal has tried to keep up grooming habits the best he can, he clearly does not enjoy it for himself. His quips about hurting the others were laughed off as a joke but Hannibal truly looked proud of Will when his mouth was covered in Chris’s blood.

“Why’d you pull me off if you thought I was behaving admirably?”

“I believed Chris had learned his lesson. He had been suitably punished. You would have been upset with yourself had you continued.” Hannibal keeps walking like he knows exactly where he’s going. Will’s legs are sore from sprinting without any time for stretching, body exhausted from running on so few calories each day. Hannibal’s long legs take one step for every two of Will’s.

Will has more questions poised on the back of his tongue but Hannibal is never forthcoming about information, as he’s found out. He never gives Will more information than exactly what he asks for, especially if he asks about Lithuania. He does remember, briefly, when they were on the plane and just sitting next to each other—not yet conjoined by a traumatic incident—and Hannibal mentioned teaching the boys who picked on him a lesson.

Will mulls the question over in his mind. He has to phrase it in a way that Hannibal has no choice but to give him the answer or choose not to answer—which is an answer in itself. Are Lithuanian children just as cruel as Americans? What was Hannibal’s cardinal sin that made him a target?

“How did you teach the other boys, the ones who picked on you, a lesson?” Will finally asks.

Hannibal stops for a moment and glances at Will behind him. “I stabbed one of them in the hand with a pencil,” he says with a slight smile. “The other one, I left a dead rat in his bed.”

Will almost asks if Hannibal killed the rat or found one, but decides he’s better off not knowing. He reflects almost no emotion from Hannibal and it’s blissfully quiet, but Will does wonder if Hannibal feels any empathy at all. Maybe a sociopath and a hyper-empath make an unlikely duo when stranded in a forest.

They keep walking in silence; Will hates small talk and Hannibal seems perfectly content to stay quiet. The only sounds come from the crunch of leaves and twigs on the forest floor and birds chirping in the canopy of trees above him. It reminds him of the backwoods of Georgia, not so much in flora and fauna, but the way he and his daddy would tromp through the trees after fishing during what was technically a vacation. They lived in their car but Beau somehow could make it seem like they were camping to a young Will, who took it in stride and thought grilling on a hot plate was a fun challenge.

This is not nearly as fun. He never felt homeless even when he was living in a car. His dad made everything feel like an adventure, and he was employed so he could promise Will that they’d be out of the car soon and have somewhere to stay. Will believed him and he was always telling the truth, eventually. The Grahams weren’t liars, they were bullshitters. They could obfuscate and dodge and come out mostly unscathed. Beau never understood Will’s too-knowing eyes, but he could ask Will who in a room might be the easiest to sweet talk into babysitting or day labor.

They come to another small clearing and Will stops in his tracks. There is a tiny cabin, wooden and unassuming, sitting in the middle of it. After a certain point of fatigue and hunger, people could start hallucinating. In the desert, the way light refracts off sand could make it seem like there’s water nearby. And in the forest, maybe his brain is showing him a cabin when in reality it’s just some hut that Hannibal has built for some reason.

He keeps standing and staring at it. Hannibal turns around. “Are you coming?” he asks evenly. Like this is just some mildly interesting expedition.

“Where the fuck did this cabin come from?” Will says. He hasn’t moved. He’s waiting for Hannibal and the cabin to disappear in a wisp of smoke and reveal he’s been babbling to himself for the last few hours and is now hopelessly lost in the forest. Hannibal stares at him, then looks back at the cabin, and then back to Will.

“It must have belonged to a hunter,” he explains. “I found it quite some time ago. It is very small and we could not have fit everyone in here, so I did not think it was helpful.”

“You didn’t think a roof over our heads was helpful?” Will sneers, finally getting closer now that both Hannibal and the cabin are still solid. Hannibal pushes the door open and they walk through the threshold. If Will thought it was small on the outside, it’s even smaller inside. It’s all one room. A double bed shoved in a corner, an area that must be for eating, and a fireplace. Will finds his feet already moving toward the bed before he does anything else. A mattress, blankets, pillows. No matter how cheap or hard they are, it’s better than the floor.

“There is no electricity, gas, or plumbing,” Hannibal points out. “And I already checked for any kind of satellite phone. Whoever lived here did not want to be bothered.”

Will is already flopped over on the bed. He could sleep right now. “And you’ve been staying here on your long outings that you wouldn’t let me join,” he says, muffled in the pillow.

“Correct. I wanted to make sure it was unoccupied. Or if it was occupied, if they could help us. I was afraid too many people might make someone who lives like this upset.”

Will thinks about his daddy and the rifle he kept. They didn’t hunt with it; hell, they didn’t even have bullets for it. He would just turn it on whoever he thought was trespassing and tell them to get lost. Even if someone needed help. You can never be too careful, son, he’d say. Someone who lived out here, off-the-grid, would not take kindly to a bunch of raggedy strangers who suddenly need something from them.

Will can’t hold it against Hannibal. He wouldn’t want to draw sticks for who gets the bed either. He’d want to be selfish and keep it to himself. He sees Hannibal start building a fire in the fireplace, blurry, and then his eyes close as he falls into a deep sleep.

Since Will was a child, before he even knew what horrors lie ahead of him, he has suffered from night terrors. He can’t remember what his first one was, probably before he reached consciousness. Without health insurance or a steady address it’s not like he could receive therapy for it, other than the occasional school counselor who was concerned about his dark under-eye circles and sometimes falling asleep in class.

Exhaustion is so bone-deep that Will doesn’t recall dreaming when he falls asleep in the cabin. When he wakes up, it’s a little darker—there are now candles or oil lamps that have been lit—and the smell of food hits his nose. He moans because he can’t help it. His stomach cramps from hunger. He realizes someone—Hannibal—has taken off his shoes and pulled the blanket over him while he slept. The fire is warm and crackling. For a microsecond Will forgets everything that led to this moment.

“Am I dreaming?” he slurs sleepily. He pushes himself up, muscles aching in protest, and rubs his eyes. His glasses are off too. He plucks them from the bedside table and slides them on. “God, that smells good. Did you hunt?”

Hannibal has a cast iron skillet over the fire with bits of sizzling meat inside. Will’s mouth waters. “The previous occupant has a closet full of hunting supplies, however, I found this in an icebox outside. It seems to have been cured with salt, since there was no ice. Whoever lived here left in a hurry or did not come back from their hunt.”

Will doesn’t know the range of mountain lions but he’s fairly certain bears live out here. Someone who lived out here alone could be eaten by a bear and no one would ever know. Will shuffles over to the fireplace and takes a seat and Hannibal pulls the skillet off the fire and sets it on the floor. Will doesn’t even care if it burns his fingers, he takes a little piece of meat and tears into it. It’s greasy and fatty and obviously salty but it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten, he’s pretty sure.

Hannibal watches with mild interest while Will eats in silence. He looks pleased that Will likes it. He’s already wolfed down half of it before he’s even realized that Hannibal hasn’t taken a single bite. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly. “You should eat.”

“You have your fill and I will eat later. There is some more where that came from.” Will feels slightly guilty anyway and slows down his eating. Hannibal takes a pot that is near the fireplace and gets up. He leaves the cabin and comes back with the pot full of meat and he starts putting another batch on the fire. Will is still unsure if he’s dreaming or not. The meat tastes so real. He stares at the fire, watching the meat sizzle and render.

“We should really share with the others,” Will mutters as he chews on another piece. It’s not like everyone else did anything bad to him. But Will is hopelessly selfish; he doesn’t want to share food or shelter or beds. “Maybe not the cabin. But take some of this food back.”

Now that Will has slowed down his eating, Hannibal has started eating his own portion. “They will not be grateful,” he says. “They will be suspicious. They will think we are hiding something.”

“We are hiding something.”

Hannibal shakes his head. “As I said, this is too small to house everyone. We would have to rotate and take turns on who gets to sleep inside. When winter comes, that will be a matter of life and death. I don’t care about their lives. I care about mine and yours.”

“Why?” Will means why me but it’s a why to everything. Why bring him here, why care if anyone is suspicious, why keep it from everyone. Will is a selfish teenager and he knows that’s why he doesn’t want anyone to know about the cabin. Hannibal is a medical student. Their whole thing is ‘do no harm.’

“My compassion for you is inconvenient, Will,” Hannibal says quietly. “You remind me a great deal of myself at your age.”

Suddenly, the food isn’t sitting as well in Will’s stomach. A mixture of guilt and embarrassment at his behavior in the last few months. What does it mean if the boy who left dead rats in his peers’ beds sees himself in Will? Will isn’t perfect, rough around the edges due to his upbringing, but a compassion for animals and a desire to be seen as good. The kids he’s hurt—they deserved it.

The kids Hannibal hurt had deserved it, too.

“We—we don’t have to tell people,” Will finally says. “You’re right. They wouldn’t be grateful.”

David would take credit for it. He’d somehow get to sleep in the bed every night. Will would always end up sleeping outside. He gets up and rifles through his backpack to get his little wolf carvings and sets them up on the fireplace mantle. Just like his little porcelain dog figurines he has at home.

Hannibal doesn’t comment on Will’s decorations. Instead, he cleans up and carries around the oil lamp for light. Will takes his jeans off this time to crawl back into the bed, eyes already heavy again. The bed is big enough for the two of them but Hannibal hovers at the edge of the bed, unsure. “Just get in,” Will mumbles. “I’ve shared beds with my dad my whole life.”

Hannibal nods, slips his shoes off, but keeps his pants on to get in bed and puts out the lamp. They both try to stay on their respective sides of the bed, Will nearly hanging off the edge. “We will go back tomorrow,” Hannibal says into the darkness. “Perhaps rest and a meal will make it easier on you.”

Will kind of resents being labeled as the problem here, but Hannibal hasn’t gotten into fist fights. He hasn’t raised his voice once since being here but it’s easy when he’s been hiding away in this cabin during the day—taking naps or just enjoying being inside and out of the sun. He knows he should be mad, if Hannibal’s inconvenient compassion for him is real, but with a full belly and a pillow under his head, it’s hard to be.

Chapter Text

Despite not being allowed to take any of the evidence or case files home, that doesn’t mean Will can’t recreate it on his own paper and pore over it in his own home. He has all the information he needs and he ends up buying a map to pin on his wall, along with photos of all the newly-deceased and current survivors. Against his better judgement, he even looks up their seats on the flight. Just looking at the diagram where everyone was sitting makes his skin crawl.

He sees where Bobby Johnson and his mother sat, just a few rows back from Will and Hannibal. He didn’t kill Bobby, but at that moment, he didn’t even want to save him. He wanted him to die. And he watched. He had enjoyed the way Bobby gurgled and the light left his eyes. Will shakes the memory out of his head and pins the diagram on his wall.

Knowing he’s probably on the list, whether Hannibal is the killer or not, is oddly comforting. There’s no mystery there. If this killer gets through everyone else before Will, he will know it’s coming and prepare accordingly. He realizes his wall now looks like the wall of a crazy person, but he knows Hannibal would find it amusing and probably assure Will that he is very much sane. We are just alike, he would say. Will shudders.

It’s obvious this person is targeting the survivors. The killer wants revenge—but for what? If it’s Hannibal, it’s for Will. If it’s not—it could be another survivor. Someone who wasn’t quite right when they came back from the wilderness. People were delirious with hunger and lack of sleep when they were rescued. All relatives of survivors and the deceased could be on the table as well, and there were nearly 100 people on the flight.

Will has a lot of work to do. He doesn’t even know why he’s helping. Maybe he’s hoping it’s Hannibal, and he can catch him before Agent Crawford and tell him to knock it off. Go back to being the Chesapeake Ripper and stop acting as Will’s avenging death angel. A laugh bubbles up in Will’s chest at the idea of chastising Hannibal at all. He might be incapable of feeling shame.

Dr. Alana Bloom’s business card burns a hole in his jacket pocket and before Will gives his body permission, his hand is putting it on the fridge with a magnet. He has to go to a session if he wants to keep having access to the files, and he doubts they’ll be able to narrow down a suspect before the next body drops. Will wants access to those files when it does. He doesn’t call Dr. Bloom; instead, he gets his fishing gear and puts on his waders so he can clear his mind of screams and blood.

The river is Will’s only solace. His only place for peace. The last vestige of Will’s mind that hadn’t been poisoned by Hannibal. The dogs trot happily behind him as he makes the walk to the stream. Most of them prefer not to get in the water, so he has the stream to himself as they run off to chase squirrels and each other. He casts his line and watches the arc of his lure until it falls into the water with a gentle splash. The water is already very cold, not yet frozen over, but the shock of it even through Will’s waders is a good jolt to the system.

Every so often, Will could use a defibrillator to restart his heart. If muscles atrophy after lack of use, maybe his heart could, too. The fish that bite aren’t particularly big but the smaller ones can become dog food and whichever one is biggest can be Will’s dinner. The sun is going down by the time he gets back home, dogs heading to their respective beds for a quick nap before dinner. When he goes to put the fish in his freezer, his eyes catch Dr. Bloom’s business card. He’s not sure how many days he can go without contacting her before she stops expecting a call and fills the appointment time she set aside with someone else.

He puts it off for another day. He makes dinner for himself and his pack, goes easier on the whiskey this time, and falls asleep while looking at the wall and his red string.

***

Class ends and Will packs up his bag and resolutely ignores his students who hover annoyingly to ask questions. Professor Graham is known for not answering a single question after class. Better luck with emailing him and prepare to get a scathing email back. He strides out of his classroom and hears a familiar sound of footsteps right behind him. Without bothering to turn around, Will responds with his usual. “You can email me or go to office hours with the TA.”

“You’re a hard man to track down, Mr. Graham,” a woman’s slick voice says. Will tries not to trip over his own feet and come to a complete halt, but he does slow down. Since there might be a killer with his name on their list on the loose, Will instinctively feels his hair rise on end. He did not think the killer could be a woman, but it’s not impossible. “Freddie Lounds, TattleCrime.com.”

Will turns at that. “Emails and schedules are for students, Miss Lounds. Now get out of here before I call campus security.”

“We have two dead SEA418 survivors and one who works in forensic psychology. I was wondering if you had a statement for our readers.”

Miss Lounds holds out a small recorder in her gloved hand. Her heels almost make her Will’s height, but Will could easily break her neck and make sure no one ever finds the body. He swallows, blinks that image away, and then scowls at her. “No comment,” he says.

“The FBI came knocking, didn’t they?” she prods. “Bringing in a mentally unstable, traumatized survivor seems like poor form to me. You were in a mental hospital, weren’t you? After eating all those people?”

He could kill her in his office. No one would see it there, but then he would have to get her body somehow out of the building and off campus, and that might prove difficult. “Is it wise, Miss Lounds, to antagonize the man you think ate people?” he finds himself saying before he fully comprehends what he’s saying.

Her smile is wide and knowing, and she puts her recorder away. “Thank you, Mr. Graham. I’ll be in touch.”

Fucking hell. Will stands there for a few moments, wondering if he should stalk her back to her car and drive her off the road. But a busy campus is hard to go unnoticed when stalking prey. He shakes his head again to clear the image of what Freddie might look like as he chokes the life out of her.

Maybe he should call Dr. Bloom. He can barely remember what he just said to Freddie because the blood was roaring in his ears so loudly, but he’s pretty sure it was a threat. Crawford is going to lose his mind if he sees that Freddie knows he’s consulting on the case and implied that he would eat her.

It’s not the worst idea. Hannibal, at least, would find it amusing.

Knowing Hannibal will smile when he reads that quote makes Will grimace. His stupid, knowing smile, the cat that got the cream. All I ever wanted was for you to be yourself, he’d said. What a load of shit that had been. He wanted Will to be his shadow. A mirror. They were conjoined due to circumstance and Hannibal had wanted to keep it that way after rescue.

He drives home and chain smokes even though he tries not to make a habit of smoking in the car, but he thinks this situation might call for it. He doesn’t think Dr. Bloom will do him any good, considering he can’t actually talk about the wilderness or Hannibal or what his nightmares are made of, but he could talk around it. Enough to please Crawford and get his rubber stamp of sanity.

Why is he even doing this? Is he that desperate to get access to the case files and crime scenes? He’d always wanted to be a detective in some capacity, even at one point thinking he could be a cop. Then he ate a few people and did time in a mental hospital, so there went dreams of working for law enforcement. And those who can’t do, teach. He could have chosen not to work at all, really, since the payout from the airline was enough to bankrupt them and ensure the survivors never had to work again.

It tasted bad then and tastes bad now. Will still lives as if money is scarce. It’s easier this way. When he gets home, he lets the dogs out for a good run and plucks the business card off the fridge. God, he should just turn his back on the FBI and everyone else. Why does he care if someone is coming to kill him? He can defend himself.

Save yourself. Kill them all.

He rolls his eyes at himself and dials Dr. Bloom’s number. Yes, he is that desperate for access to case files and to pretend his life went the direction he wanted it to. She picks up on the third ring with a warm hello, gentle and soft. A therapist's voice.

“It’s, ah, it’s Will Graham,” he says. When was the last time he talked to this many new people in a short span of time? Freshman orientation during undergrad? It hadn’t been very long since he and thirteen others’ faces were plastered on magazines about their miracle rescue and it was generally accepted that they probably did have to eat the dead to survive that long. Twenty years later, it’s reached mythical levels with whispers behind hands for those who recognize him in public.

He nervously brushes his bangs down on his head even though he’s alone. “Will, I’m glad you called,” Dr. Bloom says cheerfully. “Jack said he’d left my card with you. I didn’t think you’d reach out.”

“Wasn’t planning on it if I’m being honest,” he admits.

“Well, honesty is good. How does next week sound?”

He should say no. He should say this was a mistake and hang up. He doesn’t need therapy; he’s gotten this far without it. He did fantasize about killing Freddie Lounds and threatened to eat her but it was an empty threat. And he’s sure he is not the first to think about killing Miss Lounds. Victims of the crimes she callously covers are probably top of the list.

“Will?”

Dr. Bloom’s voice snaps him out of his train of thought. Will jumps and realizes several very long seconds have gone by without an answer. “That sounds fine,” he says, rubbing his jaw. He’s really doing this. He’s only ever been consulted over the phone or at his campus office for profiling work. And maybe that oil slick of guilt that seems to cover his body will be scrubbed away if he tries to actually help his fellow survivors.

They make an appointment and hang up, and Will thinks about drinking himself into a stupor. It would give him something to talk about in therapy next week. Instead, he steps outside to watch the dogs romp and shakes out another cigarette. Hannibal would tut disapprovingly at him for being so wishy-washy. He would accuse Will of lying to himself. He could always read him too well, get past all his bullshit, and see him for what he truly was.

That doesn’t mean he has to do what Hannibal wants, or thinks he should do.

He takes the dogs inside after he finishes smoking and eats a meager meal before pouring two fingers of whiskey to get started on grading papers. His classes are always full of students who think they’ve cracked the code on criminal profiling and forensics. They are often wrong. Maybe if they spent a year and a half in the wilderness with a serial killer as a mentor they’d be better at it. He supposes he can’t fault the students for that, but he can still grade them poorly for a terrible grasp on interpreting physical versus testimonial evidence.

***

Will stands outside Dr. Alana Bloom’s office, parka zipped up tightly around his scarf and beanie pulled over his head. It hasn’t yet snowed but the temperatures have now dipped to uncomfortably cold levels during the day. The cold doesn’t bother him, not since he survived an entire Canadian winter with nothing, but he still can complain a little. He could just get back in his car and drive home, tell Dr. Bloom he’s not feeling well or this was all a huge mistake and he’s sorry for wasting her time.

He curses himself for being so indecisive. Always straddling the line of morality: the siren call of death and destruction always so loud and hypnotizing. Will closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and makes his way to the building. He just needs the rubber stamp of approval and he can never step foot in a therapist’s office again; he’s good at lying. Too good, probably. Perfected over the years of dodging journalists and hard questions. Being able to look his dad in the eye, knowing he was dying, and say no, daddy, of course I didn’t cannibalize anyone just so his father could die peacefully thinking he didn’t completely fail Will. That he didn’t raise a monster.

Freddie’s article dropped over the weekend. She didn’t rush home to post Will’s ill-conceived quote and clearly did more digging and requests for comment from the FBI. It was mostly just a lot of speculation since she doesn’t actually know anything, but Will ended up still looking over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t stalking him on his drive to Dr. Bloom’s office. He got a call from Crawford, which he promptly ignored and Crawford didn’t try again.

Maybe this therapy session comes at a good time. Freddie is already accusing him of being unsuited for this investigation.

He knocks on the door once he’s in the waiting area and takes a look around. Abstract paintings, the kind you’d find when researching things to make someone who is freaking out feel calm, except that person has never met Will Graham because all they do is make him uneasy. They remind him of Rorschach tests. He’s seen enough of those to last a lifetime.

“Will, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you,” Dr. Bloom says kindly when she opens the door. “Please, come in.”

Dr. Alana Bloom is all of five foot nothing, in a pretty wrap dress that hugs her figure with long brown hair she’s pulled over her shoulder. She’s probably around Will’s age, maybe younger. He always pictured psychiatrists as old and white-haired, even though that wasn’t even his experience when he was a teenager. He figured they’d always be older than him. Wiser. She gestures for him to sit down on a plush blue couch and she takes the seat opposite him.

They both don’t speak. Will doesn’t make eye contact as usual and instead busies himself with looking around as if he’s curious about the decor. He’s not. It’s more of the same as the waiting room. Her degrees hang behind her desk.

Dr. Bloom breaks the silence. “Jack Crawford wants me to evaluate you and assuage his fears that you’re unstable,” she says matter-of-factly. “I told Jack I would, but I won’t tell him anything you don’t want me to. We’re bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, even though Jack would much rather this be informal.”

Will shifts a little, uncomfortable. He unwinds his scarf and plucks off his beanie. He sees Dr. Bloom’s eyes quickly move up to his forehead and then back to him. He flattens his bangs down and adjusts his glasses. “He wants to know what I’m saying during our session.”

“He wants to know if there’s anything he should worry about. Is there?”

He knows who the Chesapeake Ripper is and will never tell the FBI. They’ve let a fox into the henhouse. He won’t sabotage any investigations but he’s the last person they should trust with this information. The only reason he has a gun is because it was his dad’s; he would have never gotten past the screening stage otherwise. Will has done things he’s not proud of but also doesn’t feel bad about.

“No,” Will lies. “I told him I can handle it.”

Dr. Bloom writes something down. She looks back up at him, calculating. She bites her lip, crosses her legs at the ankle, touches her hair. The thing about studying profiling is even when it’s not criminal in nature, Will can see nervous tics. He can tell when someone is chewing on a thought and debating whether to say it or not. “In the interest of being totally transparent, I do want to mention that I did look up your case.”

That comes as a surprise. Will stares dumbly for a few moments, maybe even gaping like a fish. “You googled me?” He supposes it’s only fair. He’d probably do the same, if he found out the person he was about to spend an hour alone with had been the victim of a freak traumatic accident and maybe had to do one of the most taboo things in the world. “Is that ethical?”

Dr. Bloom is already shaking her head. “No, no, I just looked up some basic information. The year, how old you were, how long it took for rescue. That must have been scary.” Sympathy radiates off her in waves.

He shrugs, looks away. He’s not going to get right into this with a stranger. He already told himself he wasn’t going to talk about this. The crash was scary. He hasn’t gotten on a plane since; he'd had enough, thanks. Everything that happened after was something else entirely.

“Also, in the interest of transparency,” Dr. Bloom continues, “I do want to say I was mentored during my residency by Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I know he was also one of the victims.”

Will’s head snaps up to her so quickly he’s surprised he doesn’t give himself whiplash. He’s dizzy, suddenly, terrified that it doesn’t even matter that he isn’t going to say anything. Has he told Dr. Bloom about his other mentee? Who ended up in a mental institution with a taste for human flesh? His tongue sticks to his dry mouth. He needs to know. He has a pathological need to know. “Did he talk about me?” he asks hoarsely.

Dr. Bloom blinks, surprised. “Will, I didn’t even know he was on the flight,” she says. “I was just a teenager when it happened. Same age as you. I didn’t follow it. He’s never mentioned it and he’s never mentioned you.”

Will is almost angry about that. Hannibal got to live his life, continue on as normal, while Will tried to pick up the pieces of his shattered life when he came back into society. He didn’t get to go back to his dad and when he did, he’d fallen into a caretaker role. He never got to be his dad’s kid ever again. He knows it wasn’t entirely Hannibal’s fault—he didn’t make the plane go down—but he can’t help his resentment for everything that happened after.

“Were you close?”

Yes. More than anyone could imagine.

“We were friends. We didn’t keep in touch.”

Dr. Bloom sighs and puts her notebook to the side. “I understand if you’re uncomfortable but doctor-patient confidentiality extends to my friends as well. I will not tell Hannibal that I’ve seen you, nor do I want to.”

Will’s stomach churns. Not unlike the first time he realized Hannibal was feeding him people. And then realizing he didn’t care. “Do you see him often?” Will finds himself asking.

“We have the occasional dinner. We’re colleagues more than friends. But he’s not my patient, you are, and I do feel it’s inappropriate to talk about him like this. If you would like to tell me about your experience and he’s part of that, then go ahead, but I won’t be giving you more information from my personal experiences with him.”

Damn psychiatrists and their ethics. It’s not like he wanted to know exactly what Hannibal is up to, especially if he’s never told anyone about him. He knows Hannibal does not get close to people. He has acquaintances that he entertains and keeps in his back pocket for favors, but Hannibal Lecter does not have friends. Except for Will, and he lost the right to call Will his friend.

“So, do I pass the sanity check to keep working with Jack Crawford?” Will asks wryly.

Dr. Bloom laughs and picks up her notebook again. “I don’t think you’re insane, Will. I think Jack is being careless with you because he’s myopic when it comes to his cases. If you believe you can handle it, then I believe you, but I don’t think you should do it without something to lean on. You spent a year and a half with these people in a very traumatic setting. It must be hard to see them die.”

Will has seen worse. He shrugs again. “I can stop other people from dying, if I help. I want to help. I might be the only person who can.” He sounds like Agent Crawford now. Dr. Bloom must see this as well, as she raises an eyebrow and jots something down. “If you’re worried about me seeing too much, remember that I saw much worse at fifteen years old when I regained consciousness after the crash.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Just thought you should know, I’m no stranger to dead bodies.”

Maybe Dr. Bloom saw the photos of the crash, the bodies inside telling some of the sordid tale—but not all of it. The pieces of plane missing as survivors tore it apart for shelter and supplies. No one wrote any books or went on any talk shows; it was easier that way because everyone knew that the big question was why there were so few of them alive and not enough bodies to add up to the amount of passengers.

She looks at Will like he’s a very interesting beetle under a microscope. And maybe he is. Between the empathy and surviving a plane crash and allegations of cannibalism, he understands why people stare. He understands why psychiatrists have emailed him, begging for just ten minutes of his time. He has dissected many things in science classes and understands the innate desire of wanting to know how something works.

“Maybe we should talk about something else. Freddie Lounds wrote an article and quoted you.”

Will grimaces. “Freddie Lounds is a sensationalist. She stalked me, and I responded accordingly.”

Dr. Bloom tilts her head, wrinkles her nose. She isn’t buying what Will is selling, either. Psychiatrists and FBI agents, the ones who can see through Graham Bullshit a mile away. “There’s been a lot of speculation about your survival for that long. Seems strange to make light of it, almost confirm it, to Freddie Lounds in a heated moment.”

Will lets out a mirthless laugh. “It doesn’t matter what I say or do. No one would believe me anyway.” He doesn’t want to be known for being a cannibal; being known as the youngest plane crash survivor from that flight is bad enough. Baby Jessica, if Jessica was an emotionally disturbed teenager and the well was the Canadian Rockies.

“Do you have trouble with people believing you?”

He hates psychiatrists. He can feel himself shutting down, the mutism that took over after the rescue threatening to make itself known again. Pleading the fifth. He was so angry. He was ready to burn it all down, himself included, and he would have never been let out of the hospital. Dogs get put down for eating their dead, rotten owners. So he stayed quiet to avoid hard questions until he aged out of the hospital and made a run for it.

Sensing that Will is becoming agitated and uncooperative, Dr. Bloom shifts focus again. “What about before? What was growing up like for you?”

The only thing worse than talking around what happened in the wilderness is talking about his childhood. Psychiatrists would have a field day. He must have a sour look on his face because he can feel discomfort roll off Dr. Bloom. She’s poked at another sore spot, she’s discovered, and not really for the reason she thinks. He had no reference for what was a normal, happy childhood, and he wasn’t unhappy. Everyone thinks he should have been miserable and sad.

“My dad did his best. Never knew my mom,” he says tightly. More scribbling in her notebook. “Don’t you have access to my patient files from the hospital?”

“I didn’t want to request them. I wanted to see you with a fresh mind,” Dr. Bloom says kindly. “Those are twenty year old files, Will, and I’m sure you’re very different than you were at seventeen.” She smiles at him. A genuine warm smile. She sees a goodness in Will that she shouldn’t. He knows it’s because he projects that vision for everyone else but he’s somehow still surprised when people eat it up.

“What do you know about me, Dr. Bloom?”

She’s seen the Freddie Lounds article. She knows about Hannibal—she said she wouldn’t say anything, and he believes her, but it must kill her to not get to pry—and she’s read whatever archived articles there are on the crash. He’s glad information was not as easily available when he touched back down in the US; by the time he had internet, he’d grown past the childish desire to see what pictures they used and what they said about him.

“I promise, Will, I’m not hiding anything from you. I’ve read a couple of your papers, mostly the ones about criminal profiling. Not into bugs.”

“Insects.”

“Insects,” she corrects patiently. “I’ve heard your name come up in psychiatric circles a few times. I didn’t think it was appropriate to sit around and talk about a child.”

Will begins to correct I’m not a child but that’s what everyone would base their assumptions on, wouldn’t they? What they knew about him as a child? That wild-haired boy with round eyes, who didn’t get to go home and everyone felt sorry for. Yanked from the general public, only to resurface after his eighteenth birthday, somehow looking worse than he did when he got off the plane at Dulles and was greeted by social workers and ambulances.

“That makes one of you,” he settles on saying.

Dr. Bloom frowns and checks the time. “I do believe that’s all the time we have,” she says regretfully. “I’d like it if you’d return. I’ll set up a meeting with Jack, and we can discuss a standing appointment time. I’m sorry you were failed by other psychiatrists.”

It’s not really true; Will was unwilling to play ball and no amount of medication or group therapy was going to make him. But he appreciates Dr. Bloom, at least, for buying some of the bullshit he’s selling.

Chapter Text

The cabin largely goes unused, only because Will and Hannibal can’t disappear for hours or days at a time without a search party going out for them. Hannibal, mostly. Everyone gives Will a wide berth after the biting incident. Good.

They’ve gotten better at weaving and building with the supplies they have and everyone’s shelters are starting to look more like the kinds of things Will would see in history books about Indigenous people.

He wonders where they are. It’s definitely more north than the US; it’s already getting cold at night. Summer is at its end, if not over entirely. He missed his birthday. Sixteen now, able to get his license, might be able to passably get into an R rated movie. He’s taller than he was when they crashed. He’s had to trade in his clothes for someone else’s and he swears the too-big shoes are fitting a little better now.

Will watches as some of the trees turn from a glossy green to a buttery yellow, bright torches of fire amongst all the evergreens. He supposes it’s a good thing; this way they can get a general idea of the season they’re in. If they are in Canada, he worries about winter in a few weeks’ to months’ time. Baltimore is the furthest north he’s lived and they weren’t planning on staying through summer. His winters are often spent where it’s still warm and there’s dock work to do. Will has never even touched snow.

Beau moved to wherever work was. Without Will, he has one less mouth to feed, so maybe he stayed in Baltimore. It’s not like staying there will make it any easier for Will to find his way back home. Assumed dead, Beau would carry his grief for Will from one job to the next. It’s the closest Will ever gets to crying, when he thinks about his daddy in a too-quiet trailer, realizing that his quiet son still made enough noise to make every place they lived feel like a home.

There’s less game now, too. The group got better at making traps and ate at least somewhat regularly, but they haven’t caught anything in days. Will can still taste the meat that Hannibal gave him. He would have felt bad about coming back from their night away having eaten more than everyone combined since they crashed, but everyone acted like he had rabies when they returned.

He mostly just sticks around Hannibal. They understand each other in a way that Will has never been understood. Inconvenient compassion aside, Will feels seen for the first time in his life. His daddy, bless his heart, tried his best. Will outpaced his reading and math level early on. They could both fix boat motors and fish but when it came to conversation, they were two ships passing in the night. Hey, son, good catch today, he’d say. “Thanks, daddy, I saw some lovebugs mating on a reed, did you know they mate for two to three days?” Will would reply.

That must be mighty tirin’ for the boy. Then the conversation would be over. Will always understood when the conversation was over. His daddy would grab a newspaper or turn on the tube TV they had, or crack open a beer and Will knew that was his cue to get lost. He didn’t mind. Will always preferred his alone time. But with Hannibal, he can keep up with Will with ease. He listens when Will describes an interesting beetle he found, and then he’ll tell Will some detailed story about ancient Egypt and scarab beetles.

Hannibal is always watching Will, he’s noticed. If they’re not gathering firewood or edible plants together—Hannibal has an absurd array of knowledge about foraging—he seems to always have an eye on what Will is doing. He’s hard to read, but not impossible, and Will can tell there’s some underlying anxiety about letting Will out of his sight for too long. It’s a foreign feeling. He wants to ask what happened to make Hannibal like this but any time Will approaches the subject, Hannibal finds a way to deflect or make some obscure poetry reference. Will is too hungry to use the brain power needed to decode him.

Everyone is hungry. Everyone is tired. It only takes a few days for hallucinations to set in from lack of sleep and Will’s sanity feels like it’s fraying. Minimal sleep for months on end has him on edge. Hannibal barely seems affected by it or is much better at hiding it. Everyone else is starting to show cracks, but Will only notices one other person who seems to be struggling as much, if not more. John Welch has been slowly deteriorating since the crash, but he hasn’t bitten anyone, so Will is the village freak.

Will struggles to differentiate the sounds that are in his head versus the ones that are real. He’s gotten tricked more than once thinking he’s heard an animal in distress only for there to be nothing in the traps. He almost wishes he was John Welch, having conversations with nobody but unbothered by stares and whispers behind his back.

Hannibal would probably have something to say about Will’s auditory hallucinations but for now, he’s keeping it to himself. He’s already being perceived as crazy. He’s used to whispers behind hands: the strange kid who rolled into school halfway through the year. Rumors about his dad being a drifter, Will being into satan worship, and where Will’s mom really went somehow managed to find him in every new city. Kids aren’t very creative, he supposes.

He’s not even sure how the kids in his current school—if he could call it that, since he definitely did not return for the next school year—found out about his mom or if it was just a lucky guess. He would have been starting his senior year, maybe even applying to colleges. He had nebulous dreams of joining the police academy or studying forensics. He didn’t have high hopes for affording college and he could get decent pay and benefits as a cop.

“You should aim higher,” Hannibal tells him.

Will rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say, Dr. Lecter,” he mutters.

Hannibal chuckles. They’re standing beside the lake since it’s become too cold to dip their toes in. Will has been skipping rocks but he’s pretty sure he’s found every flat rock on the beach at this point. It’s the only place Will feels at peace. “I got a scholarship to Johns Hopkins, if you must know,” Hannibal says. “My uncle thought I would be spoiled if he paid for my schooling.”

It’s the most Will has heard about Hannibal’s family. Does he have a mom? A dad? To move across the ocean like that is so daunting to Will. Even with a father like his own, he can’t imagine being this far from him. He can’t imagine being this far from home, even though he and his dad are barely more than drifters. “Do you think he’s worried about you?”

Hannibal turns away and for a moment, Will thinks he’s been shut out again. That he’s asked another question Hannibal is not interested in answering. But instead, Hannibal starts walking along the lake’s edge. “I’m sure he is upset. My aunt doubly so. But they also know I am quite resilient, so they have hope.”

He’s not sure how anyone can have hope that they’ll find anyone from the flight alive. Will barely even has hope that they’ll see the other side of winter. The cabin still lurks in the back of his mind, but what good is it if they have no food? And still no signs of rescue? They start to walk back to the little campsite, a chill already setting in. Everyone just puts clothes on top of their own and even Hannibal is wearing someone else’s jeans and a zip-up hoodie. He looks incredibly out of place, somehow.

There’s a heated discussion by the fire when they approach. Will had been hoping to warm himself up and try to ignore the ache in his stomach and chest. David and a man named Thomas Baker are having a disagreement about something that Will is trying not to hear. He can feel his neck and ears becoming flushed from the tension radiating off of them. A broad hand on the back of his neck grounds him. Hannibal has been curious about Will’s behavior, but Will barely understands it himself.

Thomas Baker is older than David and reminds Will of a teacher he had several schools ago. He stands up and gestures to the general clearing. “What a great leader you’ve been,” Thomas says sarcastically. “We have no food. The kids are biting each other. We’re delirious. And we’re no closer to rescue than we were several months ago.”

“Only one kid bit another kid,” David snarls, as if Will currently isn’t even there. Maybe he’s not. Maybe this is all a hallucination. “I can’t make rabbits go into traps and if you’d like to be in a footchase with a deer, be my guest. Our only other option is to eat each other.”

A sweeping silence befalls everyone by the fire. Even Will feels himself go stiff. He’d been thinking it for some time now, but rabbits and other small game were plentiful enough when it was warmer that it was never a serious thought. It had certainly crossed his mind when he bit Chris and almost tore his skin off. They would not be the first group stranded in the wilderness to resort to cannibalism, but the idea of it being a real option makes Will’s stomach flip uncomfortably.

He’s already considered a freak. Does he need to add cannibalism to it?

Only if they ever get rescued, he supposes. Otherwise, no one will ever know. Journals people are keeping will be lost to time and weather. They’ll all slowly starve to death, their families’ memories unsullied by cannibalism, the families who will never know how long they lived out here and awaited rescue. How long will Hannibal’s uncle have hope? How long until Will’s dad drinks himself into an early grave?

Will doesn’t want to die out here. A thumb sweeps across his nape where his hair is long and curled. Hannibal is soothing him like he would a spooked animal.

“We’re not the Donner party,” Thomas says incredulously. “It doesn’t need to come to that.”

“Animals will go into hibernation for the winter. It will certainly be difficult to find anything to eat,” Hannibal says next to Will. His hand drops and he folds them in front of himself. “Perhaps it is something we should consider.”

“I don’t know how they do it in the Soviet Union but we don’t eat our fellow Americans,” another person—Mark Lynch, Will thinks—chimes in.

Hannibal raises two pale eyebrows. “Were the Donners not Americans?” Will bites his lip to keep from laughing. Hannibal’s irritation pulses off of him and Will tries not to let it get to him. It’s not often that Hannibal’s emotions—or lack thereof—can get past Will’s forts. He doesn’t broadcast them strongly. He’s annoyed enough that Will is picking up on it, despite the calm look on his face.

“It’s not like we’re gonna kill anyone,” David cuts in. “Just. If—if—someone dies of natural causes, we could discuss it. Just keep our options open.”

“Perhaps we could go around and ask if anyone would consent to it?” Hannibal adds. “We will not make it through winter on our own.” Will, darkly, thinks that they don’t even need someone’s permission if they’re dead. They could just eat them. The ground will freeze so it’s not like they can bury any of their dead in the winter. His stomach cramps with hunger and he winces slightly.

“No one is going to agree to that,” Thomas says. “That’s insane. We’ll figure something out.”

“I do hope you figure out something quick,” Hannibal says coolly, “otherwise we will all be dead in a few months.” His eyes flash with something dangerous that makes Will shiver. It feels more like a threat than an omen.

With that, Hannibal stalks off and Will decides he’s not needed at the fire anymore. He and Hannibal have been sharing a bunk with two others: an older woman named Mary Flynn and a middle-aged man named Ron Bauer. They didn’t seem bothered by Will and he could no longer sleep outside safely due to the temperature, and he needed to sleep somewhere. As he settles down, he hears the howl of coyotes carried by the wind. His stomach growls in response.

***

The first snow happens another moon cycle later. The days are getting shorter. They’ve used insulation from rabbit fur and the plane to make their shelters weather-proof. It’s bitterly cold; everyone just wears layers upon layers, no matter how silly it might look to be wearing two pairs of pants. Hunger has set in, gnawing at Will’s stomach daily. It doesn’t matter how much water he drinks or little edible plants he finds, nothing is enough.

He and his dad never had the money to keep a pantry full of snacks, but he was always fed. He’d do anything for grits and eggs. His dad wasn’t much of a cook, but it’s not like Will knew anything different. His auditory hallucinations are getting worse because he knows animals aren’t out right now. He hears his name being called in the middle of the night.

The group eventually came to an agreement—or most of the group, at least—that if someone dies, they will revisit the discussion on if they should eat a corpse. Will is so hungry he could kill someone himself, but he shakes that thought from his head. If he humors it too much, he’s afraid he might actually do something to someone. It was too easy to hurt Chris, too easy to walk away from Bobby. Will is frightened of his own thoughts and urges sometimes.

The debate about eating their dead comes up sooner than expected. Everyone had seemed fairly stable, health-wise. After the gravely injured people died from their afflictions, the group stabilized. They haven’t had a new death since the first week of their stranding. So when Mark Lynch is found frozen to death one morning, they’re all dumbfounded.

When hypothermia hits, people can often be confused. They might strip off their clothes and become delirious. Mark Lynch is fully clothed, eyes closed as if he had just fallen asleep in the snow. Will can’t look away from his blue skin and lips. When he closes his eyes, he can see himself—choking Mark Lynch into unconsciousness and then laying him down in the snow, letting the cold do the rest of the work. He’s so hungry and he’s tired of waiting.

Will blinks and stumbles backwards, falling into the snow. Why did he see that so clearly? He stayed in the shelter last night, all night. He’s sure. If he was sleepwalking, everyone he shared the shelter with would notice. Hannibal would definitely notice. But he’d been thinking so much about how hungry he was and how he wished someone would finally die so they could eat. Could he have done this?

He scrambles up and brushes the snow off his pants to leave the scene quickly. No one seems to notice him hurrying away. They can all figure out what to do with the body by themselves. With his arms wrapped around himself and eyes cast down, he almost completely misses Hannibal and slams right into him.

“Will, what’s the hurry?” Hannibal asks, as if there isn’t a dead body twenty feet away.

“Nothing,” Will says quickly, too quickly. “Mark Lynch is dead. Froze to death. Guess we should prepare for a feast.” He sidesteps Hannibal and continues putting distance between himself and the body. He can feel Hannibal’s eyes on him as he walks away, but he’s not being followed.

Normally, when Will’s thoughts or dreams scared him, he would go splash his face with water and stare at himself in the mirror to remind himself he’s awake. He doesn't have that luxury now. His thoughts race with the possibilities. Could he have sleepwalked? He’s only done it a few times before, and his dad turned him right back around and sent him back to bed. But the memory was so vivid and Will had felt like he killed Mark Lynch. There are no autopsies out here; everyone would assume he froze to death.

When he feels like he’s put enough distance between himself and everyone else, he leans his back against a tree and smacks the back of his head against it a few times. Not hard enough to do damage, but at least hard enough to feel it in the base of his skull. He didn’t kill Mark. He would remember something like that. Will presses the heel of his palm into his eye. His head pounds from hunger and fatigue. He’s gotten used to the constant throb behind his eyes at this point.

“Will?” Hannibal’s voice cuts through the snow-blanketed silence. How does he manage to move so quietly, Will wonders. Maybe he was just so lost in his own head he didn’t hear Hannibal approach. “You were distressed when I saw you.”

“I’m fine.”

Hannibal circles the tree so he can face Will. His eyes are scrutinizing and Will averts his own. His usual rules about eye contact have been broken with Hannibal, but now he feels much too vulnerable. “I checked on Mr. Lynch. He must have fallen in the night and was not able to get back up, thus freezing to death. We will be preparing the body soon.”

“Great,” Will bites. “I came here to be alone.”

“Is something bothering you?”

“Hannibal, sometimes I just want to be alone. Can’t you understand that?” He can’t think about Mark being carved up like it’s Christmas dinner; his stomach clenches painfully. He’s so hungry. He could have been desperate enough for his subconscious to take matters into its own hands and kill Mark in his sleep. Hannibal continues to watch him with an inscrutable look on his face. “Why are you still here?”

“I don’t think it’s wise to leave you alone in this state,” Hannibal says simply. “It’s cold and we don’t want to have a repeat of Mr. Lynch.”

Will shakes his head, face twisted in frustration. “I don’t think Mark Lynch died on accident,” he says. His stomach tightens again. Hunger, guilt, fear, he doesn’t know.

Hannibal raises his eyebrows, intrigued. “You think he did this on purpose? A sacrifice?”

Will’s head throbs when he shakes his head again. “No,” he replies, voice strangled. “When I saw his body, I had this… this memory. Of strangling him and then putting him in the snow.” Hannibal’s mouth opens in a soft o of realization. “But I don’t remember doing anything to him. Have I been sleepwalking?”

Hannibal’s head tilts to the side, curious. “I don’t recall,” he says. “Perhaps it was a dream.”

“No, no, it wasn’t a dream,” corrects Will. “I was awake. I saw his body and I could see clearly in my mind how I killed him. But I don’t remember it. Can you kill someone and not remember it?”

Hannibal steps closer to him, inspecting. He puts a hand on Will’s forehead to take his temperature. “You seem well,” he asserts. “I’m sure it was nothing.”

Will puts his hands in his hair and tugs, hard. His scalp stings. “I’ve been hearing things,” he whispers. “Animals in distress. My name being called when no one is calling me. What if I hallucinated and killed him?” Saying it out loud makes a stone settle in Will’s stomach. His skin feels hot and feverish. He’s finally cracked. He always knew he was just like his mom.

“Will,” Hannibal says firmly, grabbing his jaw to force Will to look at him. “You needn’t worry about this. What’s done is done. We will get to eat today.” He tightens his grip ever so slightly, bright points of pain sparking from Hannibal’s fingertips. Will feels his heart rate begin to go back to a normal rhythm.

He forces himself to nod. Hannibal is right. What’s done is done, whether Will killed him or not. They will get to eat. His stomach growls, and Hannibal lets him go so they can walk back to everyone else. It’s a solemn affair when they get back. The juxtaposition between finally getting to eat and mourning the loss of one of their own. Winter was always a daunting idea; that could have been any of them.

Hannibal gets volunteered to oversee the preparation of the body. He has extensive knowledge of anatomy, even as a first year medical student, but David is forced to be the one who actually does the preparation. Punishment, for being the one to suggest eating the dead first.

No one says anything as Hannibal and David go where they can’t be seen desecrating a corpse. Some people pray, others cry, while a few look like they might be sick. Will wonders what he looks like. Does he look sad? Scared? He tries to school his face as neutral as possible. Chris and Pete have barely looked at him since the biting incident but he can feel their eyes on him. He wonders if they can tell he feels guilty. Hopefully it just seems like he’s guilty about eating a person.

He wishes he felt worse about it, but the hunger is so great that Will can already feel his mouth watering at the idea of getting to eat. When David and Hannibal return, it’s with pieces of unrecognizable meat on sticks that they distribute. Someone retches. Another person starts sobbing. Will tries not to let it get to him. Nausea roils—he’s so hungry he’s not even sure if his body will accept food after so long without it.

It’s the world’s most fucked up marshmallow roasting, Will realizes as people hold their little skewers over the fire. The smell of cooking meat immediately fills the air and Will could moan. Barbecue pits were always a little out of his dad’s price range but the smell of them always reminded Will of cartoons that would float along to follow the scent. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to smell it again without thinking of the scent of burning human meat.

Without meat thermometers, Will errs on the side of caution to make sure it’s fully cooked through. He doesn’t actually know what the safe temperature is for most meats, but he’s fairly certain eating human meat is probably pretty dangerous. Once it’s sufficiently cooked, Will looks around to see if anyone has started eating, or if they’re waiting for anyone to take the first bite.

Will decides he has nothing else to lose. He might as well eat his spoils; there’s no point waffling on it now, regardless of if he murdered someone in the middle of the night while sleepwalking. It’s certainly not as much food as Hannibal and Will got to share what feels like years ago, but Will’s not even sure if his stomach could handle it at this point anyway. He closes his eyes, telling himself it’s just meat. It’s food. He needs it to survive.

He tears into it, meat falling off the skewer easily. Even without seasoning, it’s still flavorful from the fire. It’s greasier than he expected. Avoiding eye contact with everyone, Will just slowly chews. He pictures himself sitting on the floor with Hannibal by the fireplace in the cabin, cube after cube of meat being cooked and consumed while Hannibal watched.

He nearly spits out the food in his mouth, but manages to keep it down. His stomach turns to lead. Hannibal was feeding him a person. He can’t lose his appetite, not now. He hazards looking up, trying to avoid seeing anyone specifically. His heart hammers against his ribs as he finally finds Hannibal, eating casually like he didn’t just have to oversee the carving of another human being. Hannibal’s eyes lock with his. A small smile twitches at the corner of Hannibal’s mouth, pleased.

Chapter Text

The meeting with Dr. Bloom and Agent Crawford goes about as well as Will expects. Dr. Bloom, as kind and understanding as she is, seems to also think Will never aged past seventeen and treats him with kid gloves. She signs off on Will’s psych evaluation with the strong, strong caveat that Crawford doesn’t let him get too close.

What “too close” is to her, Will isn’t sure. Is it too close to see the bodies? To pore over the autopsy reports? Crawford is unhappy with Dr. Bloom’s insistence that Will only be called on an as-absolutely-needed basis, and Will is unhappy with his weekly standing appointment with Dr. Bloom. Nobody leaves that meeting having gotten what they wanted. Will wanted to be left the fuck alone, and Crawford wanted unfettered access to Will’s psyche. Dr. Bloom wanted Will to be eager for his therapy.

At least Will has comfort in that.

There haven’t been any developments after David Myers’s death. Beverly catches up with him while he’s at Quantico for his parent-teacher meeting and buys him a cup of coffee, and sitting with him outside while he smokes. They’re silent for a long time before she finally speaks up.

“Are you worried about this person coming after you?” she asks. “Freddie Lounds practically advertised where you work.”

Will shrugs. “No,” he admits. “I’m probably more equipped to defend myself than the others.”

“All that cannibalism made you strong?” Her tone is light. Playful. It shocks a laugh out of Will.

“I was thinking more along the lines of: I have a gun, and inside knowledge of what’s going on. I can see it coming.” Maybe it’s hubris or the fact that there’s a part of Will that would welcome death, but he’s not afraid of a potential serial killer that’s targeting him. He shared a cabin with a young Chesapeake Ripper for nearly a year and lived to tell the tale. Not much can spook him.

“Zeller wanted to ask if you wanted any organs before we sewed David up. I told him you wouldn’t find it funny.”

Will flicks ash off his cigarette and shakes his head. “Yeah, probably,” he replies.

“I thought we should have given you some of his teeth as a Newton’s cradle.”

“Now that would have been funny.”

Beverly smiles at him and Will feels at ease. She doesn’t look at him like he’s broken or a circus freak. She gets called back in for a case Will isn’t privy to and then he’s left alone again. To think, Quantico used to be the dream. Just being a police officer felt like a big leap from his upbringing and the FBI was a faraway fantasy that he would be lucky to be a part of.

First things first, he needs to figure out where the rest of the survivors are. Tracking them down won’t be easy—legal name changes to avoid scrutiny, moving far away, and simply fading into obscurity are all obstacles he has to work past.

Hannibal was obviously able to find every address he’s ever had, considering the letters, so Will did not do as good of a job as he thought, becoming anonymous. He also published several scientific papers like an idiot. He should have gone back to fixing boat motors in Louisiana. His dad hadn’t wanted that for him. He wanted the Grahams to go somewhere, do something. He probably expected Will to have a wife and kids, and—well, it’s hard to date when the first question everyone asks is if it’s true he’s a cannibal.

A cannibal, engaged in cannibalism, it’s no different, is it? You do it once and you’re a cannibal. It doesn’t matter if it was for survival, or if you didn’t know, you’re now branded for life. Will supposes it was a good thing he was pulled from public view when the state took custody of him; he didn’t see what the magazines were saying. Other teens in the hospital weren’t privy to outside information. How pathetic, that the last time his dating life was healthy was with other institutionalized teens.

Will doesn’t reminisce about it. He’s worked hard the last twenty years to be as normal as possible, so he doesn’t end up at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His fear of asylums far outweighs his fear of a serial killer coming for him. What little information he got from his dad about his mom, she’d been in and out of the hospital all her life. Even when he was young, he knew he didn’t want to live like that.

Only a few survivors live relatively close by now. Kirsten Smith lived in Delaware. David Myers still lived in Baltimore. Scattered across the United States, returning to their day jobs as real estate agents and accountants, or deciding to take the settlement money and retire anonymously to somewhere quiet. Will went somewhere quiet, but he had been so young; he couldn’t make the decision to never work again when he’d never even had a chance to experience life to begin with.

Could this be anyone other than Hannibal? He’s not a gun user. He would enjoy poison, Will thinks, but he wouldn’t do that to the food. He doesn’t know Hannibal anymore. Hannibal’s appetite predated Will. Everything Hannibal did in the wilderness was informed by what had happened to him, but Will couldn’t—can’t—forgive. Isolation, manipulation, the lying. Twenty years later and it still makes a knife twist in his gut to think about how naive and trusting he’d been. He knew Hannibal was dangerous and still aligned himself with him.

Maybe part of it is still self-hate for his part in everything that happened. Maybe Hannibal was right, in the end: Will lied just as much, only to himself. The thought of Hannibal being right about anything makes Will roll his eyes to himself so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t pull something. His dogs look up at him mournfully, upset at being ignored, and he decides to take them out.

He doesn’t go on traditional walks with them; there are simply too many. Instead, he lets them run on his sprawling property. Normally, they don’t go terribly far. Buster was a bit of a runner, but less so in his old age. Winston usually trots close to Will once he’s done his business. Dogs have always been easier than people. More easily pleased, easy to trust. They don’t know what the word cannibalism is. He throws an endless supply of sticks and watches as the dogs go bounding off to go find a completely different one to bring back.

Winston starts barking at something behind him and Will tuts at him before realizing he should probably listen to whatever his dog is warning him about. When he turns around, he’s surprised to see Molly, stepping through the dead grass and leaves as she approaches. Her hair is up in a messy bun and her coat is a bright yellow that reminds Will of ginkgo trees. He lobs another stick to get the dogs to run off for a moment instead of crowd her.

“Hey, Will,” she says, sounding a little nervous. “Sorry to barge in like this.” Molly lives up the road, but with the farmhouses on the outskirts of Wolf Trap, each property has at least a few acres of land between each house. She would have had to drive here.

He scratches Winston’s ears. He sits, looking up at Will with his tongue lolling out happily. “What can I do for you?” he asks. Occasionally, she and her husband will need him to look at their car, but Will has a feeling Molly is just doing wellness checks on him if she doesn’t see him at the grocery store for a prolonged period. He went only a couple of weeks ago, so it’s not nearly enough time for her to get worried.

“I just wanted to check in with Thanksgiving,” she says. “You said you’d think about it. I don’t have your number, but I know where you live.” She grins, playful. Will thinks that Molly, like Dr. Bloom, is one of those women who sees him as a bird with a broken wing and is desperate to nurse it back to health. Of course, Will would rather be seen as something harmless—not fragile, he hates being seen as fragile—than as how dangerous he really is. He’ll turn his gun on intruders but no one has ever called the cops on him because that’s just Will: he’s harmless, something bad just happened to him as a kid.

“Oh,” Will says. He rubs the back of his neck. His hair tickles his fingers. He’s due for a trim. “Sorry. I don’t think I can make it. I’ve been pretty busy.” He needs to spend at least three hours a day mulling over this killer and tracking down all the survivors to figure out if there’s a pattern. He simply does not have time to spare. Plus, he doesn’t want to meet Molly’s sister. He can only imagine what she’s been told.

Molly frowns and steps a little closer. Winston sniffs her hand and then allows a pat. “Will, we’ve been neighbors for a few years. I want you to be our friend. Simon needs some more guy time that’s not with an eight year old.” Surely there are other neighbors Molly could get to be friends with her husband. He doesn’t know why she’s pushing this. Hasn’t she seen everything that’s been said about him?

He puts a little distance between them and turns back to his pack. How can he get out of this? He feels the pity roll off her in waves. “I’m sorry,” he tries again, doing his best to sound sincere. “It’s just not a good time.”

“Surely you get the week off for Thanksgiving. You can’t be that much of a workaholic.”

She’s getting irritated with him, which is fine, because it’s mutual. He scrubs his face with his hand. “I said I couldn’t, okay?” he snaps. Rapidly trying to raise the forts in his mind again to avoid her indignation feeding his own, Will throws another stick with as much force as he can. “Just drop it. Tell your sister not to expect me. It’s for her own good.”

“You can be really rude sometimes, you know that?” Molly says. Her voice trembles. Will seriously can’t believe she might cry over this. “I was just trying to be nice. You don’t get to treat people like this just because something really terrible happened to you.”

“Don’t I?” His smile is cruel. Molly’s face is flushed from embarrassment and anger. After she turns on a heel and stalks away, Will lets his shoulders slump. Well, that’s one way to get her to leave him alone. He didn’t mean to be cruel. At his core, Will thinks, maybe he’s just rotten. No matter how many consults he does on serial killers, or dogs he adopts, there is something fundamentally wrong with him that started way before he ever crash landed in the wilderness.

***

Will wakes up to the sound of his phone ringing. Whoever is calling him when it’s still dark outside is going to find themselves on the business end of his rifle. His dogs snuffle a little in their sleep and he can feel the warm body of Winston next to him. He’s honestly not sure which of the two of them needs the other more. His phone continues to ring insistently, so Will has to assume this is important.

“It’s Jack Crawford,” the man himself barks on the other line when Will picks up.

“Good morning,” Will croaks.

“I’m on my way. Another body dropped and I want you at the crime scene.” Will is pretty sure this is the dictionary definition of too close that Dr. Bloom was afraid of. He sighs and gets out of bed, peeling off his sweaty pajamas and just splashing water on his face instead of taking a real shower. He doesn’t have time to make a breakfast for the dogs so he uses the emergency supply of canned and bagged dog food to fill their bowls after they’ve been let out.

Right on time, Crawford pulls in. It’s still dark outside, the sky a bruised purple above them with pinprick stars scattered across. Orion and his dogs loom over him. Will shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. Crawford steps out to greet Will, much like he did two weeks ago. He holds a cup of coffee out for Will. “Sorry for the early call,” Crawford says.

Will takes the coffee. “Murderers can’t wait for regular working hours,” he says with a humorless smile. The SUV is the same one Will was in when Crawford took him to Quantico. He wonders if he can get a few more moments of sleep on the drive to the scene. “Do we have an ID?”

For a moment, Will thinks the worst: Hannibal is not actually the killer and he’s now the victim. His vision goes white for a second, afraid he might pass out. But Crawford is saying a name that isn’t Hannibal and Will comes back to earth. Everything comes back to color and normal speed. “Are you listening, Will?” Crawford barks.

Will shakes himself out of it. “Sorry, it’s early, I zoned out,” he mumbles. “Did you say Harry Pearson?”

“I did. Were you close?”

“Agent Crawford, you should expect that I will always answer that question with no.” Will sips his coffee. “I was fifteen. Sixteen, I guess, for most of it. Not exactly a fun age to be around.” Doesn’t help that Will was ostracized from the group early on.

“Please, call me Jack. You’re telling me you weren’t close with any of the survivors?”

Will should have just lied. He sighs and lifts his glasses to press his palm against his eye. “We were all put together by circumstance. It wasn’t summer camp. Everyone just wanted to survive.”

Jack looks over at him with his lips pressed in a thin line. “Alana Bloom said you probably have PTSD.”

“Yeah, probably.” Will leans his forehead against the window. Harry Pearson also had been another person to agree that Will shouldn’t be in the group anymore. Hannibal is being terribly obvious, now, and it’s pissing Will off. Not only is he gambling with himself getting caught, he’s gambling with Will staying quiet. Eventually they’re going to think someone else from the flight might be involved, and now they’re down to eleven potential suspects.

He can’t say for sure it’s Hannibal, really. When he looked at the crime scene photos for Kirsten and David, it didn’t exactly scream Hannibal. But that’s the thing, isn’t it—Hannibal defies all expectations. He’s impossible to profile. He was impossible to get a good read on twenty years ago; he can’t imagine how much harder it is now that he’s had time to perfect his mask.

What a psychiatrist he must be, Will thinks. What was he like as a mentor for Dr. Bloom? He tries to imagine the older Hannibal he’s only ever seen photos of, handsome as ever, mentoring the pretty Alana Bloom. He must have been so different with her. The image of Hannibal leaning down to whisper in her ear makes something twist in Will’s stomach. Possessive. Jealous. He hates Hannibal and he aches so much without him sometimes it feels like a phantom limb.

He’s not looking forward to the next appointment with Dr. Bloom, if he manages to show up. He doesn’t want Hannibal Lecter’s other protege in his head. They should compare notes. What kind of things did Dr. Bloom do because she was convinced she had no other choice? Cheat on a test? Certainly there was no way to murder classmates in medical school. He’s sure Hannibal found a way. Will chews on his thumbnail, annoyed. Relieved that it’s not Hannibal’s body they’re seeing. Annoyed that Hannibal still exists to torment him.

By the time they pull up to the crime scene, the sun has started to begin its ascent on the horizon. They’re deeper into Virginia, on a rural road with an unassuming house at the end of a winding dirt driveway. Harry Pearson retired to the countryside after rescue, no longer needing his blue collar job after the payout. He lost his wife in the crash. He never remarried and died without children. Jack tells him this as they walk through the police tape.

“I want to warn you, Will,” Jack says when they’re at the front door. “It’s soup in there.”

Will sips on his now-cold cup of coffee. “Soup isn’t good for the soul?” he replies wryly.

Jack doesn’t laugh. “Not this kind.”

The first thing that Will notices when the door opens is the stench. He remembers the stench of all the bodies they’d dragged out of the plane and piled together for lack of a better idea, slowly rotting in the sun. That was one thousand times worse than this smell, but Will still gags on it. He pulls his shirt over his mouth and nose. Even outside the carnage of the wreckage, Will has seen many terrible crime scene photos. He’s seen gore. He watched a man get his leg chopped off right in front of him.

That really should have been his first clue about Hannibal’s nature.

Harry Pearson has been dead for a while. Long enough, in fact, that his dog had nothing else to eat but his owner. Blood and viscera has been tracked by paws into the house. Will looks at the bloated, partially eaten corpse of Harry. No immediate signs of injury. Jack is watching him which makes Will feel a little twitchy. “Can I have a moment alone?” he asks quietly, voice muffled in his shirt.

“Clear the area!” Jack bellows, and then gives Will a stern look. Don’t fuck this up, it tells him.

He kneels next to the body, pulling out the tiny flashlight he swiped from Jack’s SUV. At first glance, this looks like an old man who died alone—coincidentally at the same time people from the same flight also died. But Will can’t shake the nagging feeling that something is off. Judging by the state of decay, he died before David did. The neck shows no signs of strangulation. No bullet or knife wounds. He’s not sure how far they’ve gone in the investigation, if the police have collected evidence they need off the body.

Even if this one was accidental, dead SEA418 passengers are now a beacon for the FBI. That’s the only reason they’re here. Will notices some discoloration around Pearson’s mouth and tilts his head curiously. He’s lucky he’s not squeamish. Will sticks a gloved finger in the mouth and notices a swollen tongue—or what’s left of it, anyway. And then he finds it: a singular peanut.

There had been an announcement over the loudspeaker at their gate—a peanut-free flight due to a passenger with an allergy. A memory he hasn’t had to revisit in twenty years. Taking stock of the dead and wounded and Harry Pearson saying he had a peanut allergy, so some of the food they had taken off the plane was inedible to him.

Pearson wouldn’t accidentally eat a peanut at his age. He lived alone; there was no way for peanuts to unknowingly get into his food. Will takes the flashlight and looks deeper into his mouth and realizes his throat is full of peanuts. As if a whole handful had been shoved in his mouth. Either Harry Pearson had a death wish, or he was force fed peanuts.

Will stands up and shakes his limbs to loosen them up. He’s only ever looked at crime scene photos. He’s only ever profiled over emails and phone calls. Stepping into the mind of a killer risks turning him back into one, Will fears. Fear is how he operates: it informs his own wants and needs, his imagination and dreams. But he closes his eyes anyway and takes a grounding breath.

Harry Pearson is lounging in his recliner when Will enters quietly. The dog starts barking at the intruder, startling Harry from his sleep. He doesn’t have a chance to get his shotgun from the mantle before Will is taking the peanuts from his pocket and forcing them into Harry’s mouth. He splutters and gasps, anaphylaxis setting in quickly. His eyes are wide in shock. Will lies him down on his back on the floor, watching as he convulses and chokes. A rash forms around his mouth.

Another wrong has been righted. Harry Pearson should have never made it this long.

Will opens his eyes and the dim house comes back into focus. Hannibal would definitely remember that Pearson was allergic to peanuts, but the motive just doesn’t add up. He can’t figure out why Hannibal would start killing other survivors now. He already has the Chesapeake Ripper to let off steam. Will knows Hannibal is not compulsive—he could refrain from killing if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to.

Will quit Hannibal cold turkey. Like a drug addict, Hannibal is always on Will’s mind, invading his thoughts. There’s no point making forts against Hannibal’s intrusion. He just lives on the inside and Will just has to chase him out of the room if he wants peace. Will wonders again what Hannibal must be like as a psychiatrist; if he turns his patients’ internal monologue into his voice as well, or if Will is just a special case.

Will glances around with his flashlight again. He’s not a forensic investigator and this is not his job, but he can’t help himself. In an alternate universe, maybe he’s actually a homicide detective or an FBI agent and making a difference in the world. He had always wanted to be better than he actually was.

The light illuminates a mark on the hardwood floor that gives Will pause. When he kneels, he sees it: another scorch mark on the floor. He peels off his gloves so he can pull his phone out and quickly take a photo. Jack was foolish to not confiscate it before allowing a civilian on the crime scene. He’ll look closer later, but for now, he’s wasted enough investigation time.

As he exits, he pats around his jacket to find his carton of cigarettes. Jack is waiting for him outside. “Well?” he asks. “You got anything for me?”

“Harry Pearson had a peanut allergy,” Will says, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he gets his lighter. “Mouth full of peanuts. Either he had amnesia and forgot about his allergy or someone shoved a bunch of them in his mouth.” How long can he obfuscate before he has no other option but to see Hannibal? Part of Will wants to see how this shakes out. If Hannibal will stop once he feels he’s gotten his revenge, or if he’ll keep escalating until he gets what he wants.

Will has an idea of what he might want. He inhales deeply.

Jack continues to give him a scrutinizing look. “Any ideas?”

“What happened to the dog?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said there was a dog. Where is it?”

There’s silence as Jack stares at him. “Surrendered to the county shelter. Will, I need you to focus. Who is this guy?”

“I don’t know, Jack.” Will is trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I said he wants revenge—but no, that’s not right.” He taps ash off his cigarette and closes his eyes. There’s a throb beginning behind his eyes. “It’s balance. He wants balance.” Will is believing his Hannibal theory less and less, but since when has Hannibal ever been predictable? “An eye for an eye.”

“Religious psychosis?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well, think harder.”

Will scowls. “You’re the head of the Behavioral Science Unit,” he snaps. “Come up with your own answers if you don’t like mine.”

Jack’s eyebrows practically disappear into his hairline. Will never had a stern father; Beau often let Will do what he wanted as long as he was quiet about it. He can count the times on one hand that Beau actually raised his voice at him. He shouted at other people, but rarely ever Will. This must be what it feels like to have a father that has the capability of being disappointed in him.

He’ll unpack that later.

“I didn’t hear that,” says Jack with a cold stare. Heat burns Will’s cheeks. He doesn’t know Jack well enough to talk to him like that, but Jack was the one who drove up his driveway and didn’t leave at the threat of a rifle.

“Sorry,” he mutters. Beverly, Price, and Zeller descend upon the scene as Will shuffles away, shoulders hunched. He tries to avoid their curious gazes. What does Will see, they wonder. What inexplicable leaps has he made? Is he scared? Will leaves the cordoned off area to lean against Jack’s SUV, continuing to chain-smoke. He should have insisted on taking his own car.

He studies the photo on his phone. It looks like another crosshatch. It’s small and hard to make out. Someone could mistake it for scratches on the floor. Three similar marks at three different crime scenes. That’s a calling card if Will has ever seen one. When Jack joins him again, he hastily puts his phone away. “I’ll drive you home,” Jack says gruffly. Will can’t complain about that.

“What county are we in?” he asks as he slides into the passenger side.

Jack stares at him, unimpressed.

***

What feels like several days later but in reality is only a few hours, Will is driving his Volvo back from the Cumberland County animal shelter with a spaniel that is named Bella, but he might rename her Hazel; he’s more creative than Harry Pearson. Bella’s (Hazel’s) coat is grimy from being on her own for so long, as well as being forced to eat her owner. Of course, a dog wouldn’t know what’s going on and for that, Will envies her.

He leaves her in the car while he gathers the plastic play pool, the dog shampoo, towels, hairdryer, and treats. The rest of the pack gathers at the windows, snuffling and barking at the strange dog on their turf. Hazel is well trained enough and doesn’t seem to mind water (which is always a challenge), so getting her into the plastic pool is easy. She looks up at him, tongue lolling and tail wagging, and Will can’t help his smile.

He kneels, scooping water into a cup to wet her coat. “You know,” he says conversationally, “I don’t think it’s fair that you would have been put down.” Her fur is sticky with old blood and bits of skin and organs. “I understand the hunger you must’ve felt.” Hazel gets a treat for not taking off while still covered in soap. She eats it greedily and Will thinks maybe she wasn’t fed even when they took her to the shelter. He supposes it’s not important to feed something that’s on death row.

No final meals at the municipal animal shelter, he supposes. Once he gets all the gore out of her fur, he brushes out the tangles, then her fur is silky and shiny again. The water in the baby pool is a murky brown and it reminds Will of the first shower he got after rescue. They did attempt to wash themselves, but with no soap or running water it was cumbersome and barely worth it.

Hazel shakes, spraying water everywhere and thoroughly soaking Will. A rite of passage. She’ll fit right in. After toweling her off and using the outlet on his porch to blow dry her fur, he drags out the crate so she can be secured while he tends to the rest of the pack and finally feeds himself and everyone else. She goes in easily and Will tosses a few more treats at her.

Lunch for himself ends up being what he can throw together with deli meat and bread, while the dogs get their usual homemade meal—although now he’ll need to make more with another mouth to feed. With everyone happily chowing down, he can slip outside and give Hazel her portion. She sniffs it suspiciously. “Don’t worry,” Will tells her, “it’s not people.”

She woofs in response and then starts eating with gusto. Pleased, Will sits on his porch next to the crate to watch. She’s a little thin from not getting regular meals for a few weeks but not emaciated. She did what she had to do to survive. Will can relate to that. She was not going to be allowed back into society if he hadn’t stepped in; he couldn’t let that happen. She’s done far less than Will has and he was eventually able to ease back into polite society.

He gets up so he can introduce the rest of the pack and start easing her into his own society. They spill out when he opens the door, sniffing curiously and whining.

“Hazel, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Hazel,” he says. There’s low growls and barks from a few of them. “Tsst!” They settle, scolded into silence, and Will smiles as he sits in his porch chair. “That’s right.”

They all laze on the porch in the weak November afternoon sun, Will letting his mind finally stray from dead bodies and mysterious symbols. Instead, he thinks about the quiet woods: just himself, the dogs, and a taste for blood.

***

Will adds Harry Pearson to his wall. He’s able to print the photo of the weird symbol-looking thing and pin it up, too. He wishes he could inspect the other marks a little more closely. He didn’t absorb them like he should have when he was at Quantico; he was too overwhelmed with everything being thrown at him. He’ll have to go off what he remembers.

He had the option of going back with Jack to Quantico, but the pull of rescuing Hazel from being put down was too strong. He knows Jack is deeply unimpressed with him so far, and to be honest, Will hasn’t exactly been helpful. He doesn’t know if it’s Hannibal, but he doesn’t want to draw too much suspicion to him before he’s absolutely sure.

He doesn’t want to catch Hannibal. He just wants him to stop bringing attention to the crash again—if it is him. Despite his anger at Hannibal’s betrayal, he still feels like he owes Hannibal something. Out of everyone, he kept Will safe. He made sure he had food in his belly and a bed to sleep on. The methods in which he went about securing those things are where Will had a problem. He had let Will think the worst of himself.

If he thinks about it too much, it puts him right back in the cabin, so Will refocuses. The downside of having such a good memory is that he can replay moments in his life with crystal clarity. His mind palace, Hannibal would call it. He wonders how many rooms Hannibal has dedicated just to Will, or if he locked them all away in a closet. Hannibal roams mindlessly in Will’s, shooed from room to room like an unruly cat.

Will shakes the thoughts out of his head and grabs his notebook to see if he can draw the marks he saw in the other crime scenes from memory. Kirsten’s just looked like a black mark of some kind, blotchy on the carpet and looked more like she had an accident with a candle or something. David’s is a little more detailed, lines crisscrossing over each other. Maybe, maybe, the two marks are the same but one is worse than the other.

It’s not like a serial killer to have radically different skill levels between kills. The Zodiac Killer’s cipher remained consistent. And to make them on the floor rather than on the victims seems like an odd choice. Harry Pearson’s is the most clear but his was also the only one on hardwood flooring. He draws it to the best of his ability—not that it’s difficult, he just wants it to be completely accurate—and then tears out the notebook page to pin to his wall. The scribblings of a madman.

Will’s head throbs. Instead of doing what he probably should and taking aspirin, Will pours two fingers of whiskey and goes to stand and ruminate at his wall. Hannibal would not be this sloppy. Unless he’s doing it on purpose. Hannibal is always two steps ahead, which means he has something else planned. Will groans out loud to himself. Then he swears for good measure.

Fuck. Shitting goddamn fuck. There is no avoiding seeing Hannibal at this point; his smug smile when Will shows up will be unbearable. Twenty years clean and this is how he falls off the wagon. He can practically hear the soft timbre of Hannibal’s voice around his name and it makes another ache twist in his gut. He grabs his jacket off the back of the chair, furious, and stalks outside to his car.

What is he even doing? He’ll drive an hour to Baltimore and what, accost Hannibal at his psychiatric practice? It’s been a few days since Pearson was found; Hannibal knows that Will knows. Freddie somehow had it posted before Will even got home with Hazel. Luckily no one recognized him at animal control, so he didn't have to see stupid headlines like CANNIBAL COMPANIONS? on TattleCrime.

He mulls over how he wants to approach this on the drive. He’s no longer a teenager; he can talk to Hannibal like an adult and not immediately revert to petulance. Hannibal is also no longer a twenty-two year old med student whose arrogance knew no bounds. Will knew how to deal with that Hannibal. Now he’s an MD, an established serial killer, and a patron of the arts. Instead of shying away to avoid scrutiny, Hannibal has become known for being a renowned psychiatrist and large donor to the opera and art museums, instead of a potential cannibal that survived a plane crash.

Nobody talks about that. And apparently, neither does Hannibal.

His practice is a nice-looking brick building that, as the sun disappears on the horizon, is starting to look vaguely sinister. Will parks in the small lot, where a shiny Bentley glints at him. It looks like Hannibal’s knowing wink, somehow. The other car, a Jaguar, tells Will just what type of clientele Hannibal attracts. He leans against his Volvo and shakes out a cigarette. The light is still on in the building, and that Bentley screams Hannibal, so he must still be taking clients. Will figures they pay an exorbitant fee for his services, so he might as well let them get their money’s worth.

Shadows move around in the office but the curtains don’t move. He hasn’t been noticed yet, at least. A car pulls into the parking lot and Will grimaces. Another client. He’s not sure if he can stand waiting out here for another hour. The man who gets out is roundfaced and wide-eyed when he sees Will, who just looks away and takes another deep drag on his cigarette.

“There’s no soliciting,” the man says nervously. “This is a private lot.”

“Good thing I’m not a solicitor,” Will sneers. “I’m here early for my appointment.”

“I didn’t know Dr. Lecter was taking on new patients.”

Who the fuck is this guy? Jesus. Will gives a half-shrug and flicks his cigarette on the ground to stomp it out. “Are you his secretary or something?”

The man chuckles. “No, I wish. I’d love to be friends with him. He’s very cultured. I’m Franklyn.”

Will wants to start laughing hysterically and never stop. Instead, he shakes out another cigarette. Franklyn gives him a look of distaste. “Well, don’t let me keep you,” he says and makes a sweeping gesture to Franklyn.

Sensing he’s been dismissed, Franklyn walks to the back of the building. That must be the patient entrance. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a woman appears and Will hears the clack, clack, clack of her heels before she actually comes into focus. She pauses when she sees him, hunched over against the hood of his car, and Will can see her fingers twitch toward her purse.

“I’m a friend of Dr. Lecter’s,” Will calls out before she can reach her pepper spray.

Heels click closer. Will finally can see the woman in the dim street lights. Margot Verger of the Verger meat dynasty stands in front of him and now Will wonders if the Bentley belongs to her. If he has fuck-you money, she has fuck-everybody money. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

Will flattens his bangs on his forehead and her head tilts, taking him in. He feels very self-conscious now. “You’re Will Graham,” she says slowly. “You were in that plane crash. My brother was obsessed with that case when we were kids.”

Will raises an eyebrow. Mason Verger was just cleared of all wrongdoing in a very public spectacle. Margot Verger, his twin, was alleged to have tried to kill him. It makes sense Hannibal, of all people, is her therapist. “Him and everybody else, Margot.”

Her smile falters a little, but she raises her hands in surrender. “You caught me,” she says wryly. “He chose Dr. Lecter on purpose, since he was also in the same crash.”

What a disappointment it must have been when Hannibal refused to speak about it. Will sighs and takes another long drag. Many people have probably tried to book sessions with Hannibal, hoping for insight into all the unknowns. There have been unofficial tell-alls by random people who interviewed first responders and family members. Everyone who actually spent the year and a half in the wilderness kept quiet, besides David Myers, who just gave the sanitized, superhero version of it.

“My brother was always fascinated by the rumors of having to eat each other,” Margot continues. “He figured you just had to draw straws on who got eaten.”

Will lets out a soft laugh, mirthless. In a way, that is sort of what ended up happening. It’s just that the others didn’t realize what they were drawing for. “I hope Han—Dr. Lecter is helping,” he says sincerely. If there’s truth to the allegations, Mason Verger is a pig.

“He’s an unconventional therapist for unconventional problems,” is all Margot responds with. Unconventional is code for controversial, he’s sure. She readjusts her purse on her shoulder and looks over at the building. “It makes me wonder what he was like in the wilderness.”

Hannibal probably considers Will his first patient. The kid on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and Will, his all too-willing ant. Realizing what methods worked and what didn’t. How could he get Will to give in to his basest instincts? How could he get Margot to give in to hers? Will sighs and flicks his cigarette butt on the ground before scrubbing his hand across his face. “Hungry, tired, desperate. Same as everyone else,” he says.

She doesn’t look entirely satisfied with the answer. Will isn’t sure what else to tell her. He doesn’t know Margot, doesn’t know if she’s the type to rat someone else out to TattleCrime so they don’t focus on her so much. She’s rich enough to make problems go away but Freddie Lounds is nothing if not persistent. The Final Destination Killer has been taking up most of her front page, which is good news for the Verger meatpacking dynasty.

For now, at least. It’s not great for Will. He’s lucky he managed to dodge Freddie at the last crime scene, but she’s still adding speculation about what exactly his role is in the investigation and his mental state for it. Margot bids him goodnight and gets into her car—the Jaguar, it turns out—and the sound of her car fades into the night as she drives away.

He makes it through half his pack of cigarettes before he sees Franklyn again. Another patient hasn’t shown up so this is his chance to catch Hannibal, hopefully. Otherwise he has to wait at the Bentley like some lovesick fool. Franklyn gives him a bug-eyed look and quickly looks away as Will stalks past him. The backdoor is unlocked and after going up the stairs, Will finds himself in a waiting room with warm-toned seating and artwork on the wall.

Before he loses his nerve, Will raps his knuckles on the door. He can hear shuffling on the other side and he imagines Hannibal getting up from his desk, curious about an unscheduled call at his office. However, when Hannibal actually opens the door, he looks utterly unsurprised.

“Hello, Will. I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”

Chapter Text

Hannibal’s shoes echo in the hallway as he walks down the long corridor to Will’s room. After nearly a month in the hospital and then another one of back and forth with the staff, he’s finally been approved to visit Will. He didn’t get a chance when they were in the ICU, receiving every vitamin and nutrient they missed for the last year and a half. Then Will was transferred to a psychiatric facility and Hannibal had to track down Beau Graham for information.

On one hand, Hannibal is grateful Will is shielded from the more persistent tabloid journalists. He had seen a few waiting in the parking lot as he went inside. No one wants to speak to the journalists, not when the main story is if they had to eat the dead to survive. Of course, everyone is ashamed of what they had to do, even though Hannibal thinks it’s the most natural thing in the world. He knows Will would not appreciate it if Hannibal was candid about it, and he wants to protect Lady Murasaki from extra scrutiny.

This time, at least, it was not his fault. She sent him to America to avoid suspicion. He sent her a letter from the hospital, telling her he was on the mend and to not worry about him. He didn’t expect her to fly from Paris to Baltimore, but Chiyoh did visit him under the guise of researching foreign universities. With her, she had a Parisian newspaper with the rescue as front page news. Her message from Lady Murasaki was to stay out of the international papers from now on. She didn’t do all that work only for Hannibal to bring attention to himself again.

Johns Hopkins told him he’s welcome back whenever he’s ready. He won’t be ready for spring semester. He is still too physically weak for a demanding schedule, and his preoccupation with Will takes precedence. If he can get Will to agree—not even to forgive him, Hannibal can wait for that—then once he’s off to college Hannibal will have time for medical school again.

He has a bag with a homemade lunch and a belated Christmas gift for Will. He knows it’s not welcome. Hannibal supposes it’s lucky Will is not considered old enough to make his own medical decisions so he didn’t need Will’s permission to see him. He just needed his guardian’s. Which, apparently, isn’t even Beau Graham anymore as of a few weeks ago.

Having fallen into a deep alcoholism after the loss of his only son, Beau Graham was in no condition to take Will into his custody after they returned. When Hannibal arrived at the trailer in Baltimore, he had to wade through trash and empty bottles on the lawn and indoors. The condition Mr. Graham was keeping his home in was abhorrent. He could find no traces of a boy who lived there not two years ago, who was now locked in an institution and on the threshold of manhood.

Hannibal had just wanted to talk to Beau and work together to bring Will home. If it meant cleaning the trailer himself, he would hire cleaners to come, and send Beau somewhere to be wrung out to dry. He wasn’t even sure if Will had gotten to see his father for more than a few moments before being admitted to hospital and then transferred to Port Haven. Beau was belligerent and barely cooperative and it took everything in Hannibal to not snap his neck, only because Will would never forgive him.

Will being out of his life is not something Hannibal entertains. They are entwined. Even with all the bloodshed and the cruel words Will spat, Hannibal can and will move on. He has spent a long time on this planet alone and misunderstood. Mischa never got old enough to understand, and Lady Murasaki rejected him after she understood. Will saw him and understood him. They understood each other. Will’s rejection came from a place of fear. Fear that his darkness made him a monster. Hannibal does not consider himself a monster, despite nicknames the press gave him in Italy.

He’s not here to convince Will of his humanity. As he’s been told, Will has been rendered mute since the rescue. The last sound he made that Hannibal knows of is the fierce scream he let out as journalists surrounded them on the tarmac. Hannibal had tried not to swell with pride as Will showed his teeth. There were too many cameras watching them.

The nurse escorting him knocks on Will’s door once they get to it. “Will? You have a visitor,” she says. She turns to Hannibal with an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry. You’re just going to have to go in. He doesn’t speak.”

“No need to apologize,” Hannibal says amiably. “I do believe he’s expecting me.”

The nurse smiles and unlocks the door for Hannibal. The room is barren, with a small table for meals, a private bathroom, and a bed in the center. Will is sitting on the bed with his legs drawn to his chest. His skin is a little less pale than it was when Hannibal snuck a look at him in the ICU, asleep with all the IVs hooked up to him. The hospital must have thought his hair was unsalvageable or simply couldn’t be bothered, and Will’s hair is chopped short. Hannibal tuts in disapproval. He certainly had no problem detangling and brushing Will’s hair a few times and he had much fewer resources.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal says. He puts the cooler full of lunch items on the table and pulls out a small box, wrapped in Christmas paper from his coat pocket. “I’m sorry I missed Christmas.”

Will looks over at him. He looks terribly young now that he’s cleaner and he has a little more color in his cheeks. Hannibal holds out the small box and Will sighs dramatically. Sometimes, Will is so wise beyond his years, that Hannibal forgets he’s a teenager. Other times, he reminds Hannibal just how much of a teenager he is. But Will takes the gift, and then sets it aside.

“You don’t want to open it?”

He gets a headshake in response. He supposes it’s good that Will isn’t immediately reacting with violence—the last time they were alone together had been fraught—but seeing Will this subdued doesn’t sit right with Hannibal. “I brought some homemade food for lunch if you would like. I’m not here to make you speak.” Will eyes him suspiciously but slides off the bed. He had been hoping Will wouldn’t turn down food; he’s still in the stage where every meal is precious.

He sets out the plates and napkins he brought along, with sparkling water and some very carefully constructed sandwiches. Nothing too fatty or rich; Will’s stomach probably isn’t ready for that. He sits down at the table and gestures for Will to sit as well. Will barely even looks at him before he starts eating. Hannibal’s chest aches. He had been so careful to nurture Will and help him know himself, and Will resents him for it.

Will was his charge. Is still his charge. Hannibal is not a complete failure; Will is alive. He eats in silence along with Will, remembering how the headmaster and other boys at his orphanage would punish him for being mute. This is no orphanage but it can’t be much better. They haven’t even given Will anything to decorate with. They probably have him on a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications and he must sleep all day.

He had promised Will honesty—they had promised each other honesty. Hannibal did not lie to Will; he merely allowed Will to believe things for his own benefit. That is not how Will saw it, and for that, Hannibal regrets his last interaction with him. He wants to make it right. He can start with doing what he wanted to happen after everything that happened with Mischa: avoiding being in a home for unwanted children. An orphanage, a psychiatric facility. Hannibal finds them both to be akin to prison.

“I hope you are adjusting well,” Hannibal says conversationally. “The front desk told me you are getting your GED in the spring. I hope you will reconsider what you said about university. You are very bright.”

Will doesn’t respond and Hannibal isn’t expecting him to. Selective mutism can be a sign of great trauma or fear. He didn’t speak for years after he was found on the Lecter Castle grounds, and Will knows this. This could be Will mirroring again, he supposes, but it’s odd that he would choose to do it with a memory. His medical school education had only scratched the surface of psychology but Hannibal has a copy of the DSM he’s been rifling through.

He told Will once that he reminded him of himself when he was young. Seeing him now, with his uneven short haircut, mouth clamped shut, locked away for his own safety, makes anger boil in Hannibal’s guts. He waited so long for Uncle Robertus to come find him. Hannibal cannot let that happen to Will. He knows this is only while he’s still a minor in the eyes of the government, but any amount of time is too long. Will thrived in the forest. He is not a wild animal who needs rehabilitation. He needs to be released.

Hannibal leans forward and steeples his fingers in front of him. “I spoke with your father,” he says. Will’s head snaps up suddenly, suspicious. He realizes he’s given Will no reason to believe he wouldn’t do anything to his father, but it still irks Hannibal. He would be doing Will a favor by taking that sorry excuse for a parent out of his life; how could someone just allow the state to take their child away? Parents who do not treasure their children bother him.

“As discourteous as your father was, I did not harm him,” he assures Will. He can see the way Will’s fingers curl around a pencil. His taste for violence has not been subdued by medications, then. Hannibal smiles and nods at Will’s fist. “They will not let you have pencils anymore if you do that,” he warns. “Please let me finish.”

Will lets go of the pencil and leans back in his chair, jaw set. He looks terribly vulnerable like this, in hospital-issued pajamas, still too thin, and shorn hair. Hannibal should have bought some new clothes for Will. His father certainly can’t afford new clothes. A victim fund is stretched thin among all of them. Maybe Will would be amenable to Hannibal giving access to an account just for him eventually. He doesn’t think it’s so irreparable with Will that they will never speak again.

“I told him I would cover your expenses and give you a place to live if he would assign me as your guardian,” he says carefully. Will raises an eyebrow, mouth twisted in skepticism. “He told me to ask you. We could walk out of here tomorrow if you want, Will.”

Will shakes his head, a jerky movement, like he’s fighting himself. Hannibal sighs irritably. “You don’t belong here. You are not ill.” Will shakes his head again, eyes screwed shut and mouth pinched. A stubborn, awful boy. Yet the fondness he feels for Will is so overwhelming sometimes that Hannibal is unsure where Will ends and he begins. He is a part of Hannibal, whether Will likes it or not.

“I regret how you interpreted my compassion for you,” Hannibal tries, to which Will scoffs. The first sound he’s made the whole time. “My goal was to keep you alive. I wanted to nurture your instincts.” Will looks away from him. “Why don’t you open your Christmas gift, Will?” He’s hoping it’s an olive branch. Very few people have burrowed themselves into Hannibal’s mind palace like Will has. Mischa is locked away, only to be looked at for the briefest of intervals. Lady Murasaki requested that Hannibal no longer contact her once he was in America, and other than the letter, he’s been true to his word.

Will, bloodied teeth and wild eyes, runs feral through the halls of his mind palace. The cabin in which they survived has its own wing, a room for every season. The spring meadows where Will would study butterflies and beetles is where he has been going to the most. He belongs outside, in the fresh air, even when covered in snow. Being in a sterile hospital is nowhere to keep someone like Will.

With a roll of his eyes, Will gets up and goes to get the gift from his bed. Hannibal had wanted to actually visit Will on Christmas but the amount of red tape he had to go through to get clearance made it impossible. The social worker thought Hannibal had no business visiting Will, but he was able to appeal to Beau before his parental rights were terminated by the state.

The present is small and wrapped in decorative paper that Hannibal very meticulously tied a ribbon around. He has not celebrated Christmas in the traditional sense for many years, not since he was a small child, but Will had mentioned liking the holidays. He decorated the small flat he owns in Baltimore in anticipation of Will coming back with him. He hadn’t felt the dull ache of loneliness like he had as he strung up tinsel since the orphanage.

He has never gotten anyone a gift. Too young as a child to shop for a gift for Mischa on his own, he would often just gift her a toy she already owned or one that he didn’t want anymore. She was too young to know the difference. But Will is much older than Mischa ever got to be. He understands meanings behind gifts and Hannibal didn’t want to give him something ostentatious or useless; Will is practical. Anticipation has Hannibal tapping his foot somewhat impatiently as Will pulls the ribbon off and gingerly unwraps the paper.

“I saw those on the window frame at your home,” Hannibal explains as Will’s brow furrows in confusion. “I remembered your little wolves. Your father did not seem to notice I took them.” In Will’s hands are a few porcelain dog figurines. He had mentioned a few times that he had always wanted a pet dog. Hannibal figured he wouldn’t have anything from his home at the hospital, and even if he agrees to come with him, he should have his personal belongings.

“I do hope you’ll consider it. I will write to the courts and make the argument that you need a permanent home, not a hospital, to recover. I can hire a lawyer. I will make sure your father is taken care of. You mean a great deal to me, Will.”

Will’s eyes are still cast down, looking at the dog figurines. His hands delicately trace the tails of the dogs. Hannibal doesn’t wish to force Will to speak, but he does wish Will would look at him. He became used to eye contact from him, even when Will avoided it with everyone else. Hannibal’s patience would be thin if it wasn’t Will.

A different approach might be necessary. “Do you remember our conversation about teacups and time?” Will shrugs, noncommittal. He must, as their memories often rivaled each other. They passed time playing memory games; he knows Will remembers every second they spent in the forest and then the cabin. “I believe our teacup could come together, with time. It is not so unfixable, you and I.”

Will tears his eyes away from the figurines and finally looks at Hannibal. His eyes are glassy with tears threatening to spill. A flush creeps up Will’s neck, tips of his ears turning red. He’s angry. Will’s anger is only second to his fear. Hannibal can bear the brunt of Will’s anger again; he doesn’t have weapons this time. He shakes his head, fist clenched. “No? Not even in your mind?”

Hannibal spent much of his time in the wilderness building rooms in his memory palace. Instead of the snow-covered forest floor, he and Will would be in Italy or Paris, lazing around in parks. He would teach Will Italian as they walked through the Uffizi Gallery, instead of the hard floor of the cabin. At length they talked about their own memories, significant places they revisit in their minds. “Your own memory palace is building. Filled with new things. It shares rooms with my own,” he continues, wistful. “I’ve discovered you there. Victorious.”

Will keeps shaking his head, sliding his fingers into his short hair and digging them into his scalp. Now that they are no longer in constant survival mode, Will is trying to compartmentalize what they had to do. Hannibal had no access to any medical textbooks other than what he brought while they were stranded, but as he’s been home recovering and thinking about Will, he’s been able to confirm that Will most likely has an empathy disorder. Still too many mirror neurons at his age.

He leans forward, brings his voice low. Soft. Understanding. “Your values and decency are present but you are shocked at your associations, appalled by your dreams. You delight in wickedness and then berate yourself for that delight.”

All Hannibal has ever wanted for Will is for him to embrace his nature. The more time they spent in the wilderness, the wilder Will got, and the more incandescent he became. His becoming had been glorious to witness, but Hannibal admittedly lost control of the situation. He had never been entirely able to predict Will, and that worked against him.

“You delight. I tolerate.” WIll’s voice cracks around the words from disuse. Hannibal blinks in surprise; once again he could not predict Will. The words sting more than Hannibal is willing to admit. His immediate reaction is to hurt Will right back, to hide his own pain of rejection. Will had not wholly rejected him when they last spoke before rescue; he had been angry, yes, but Will is often impulsive. He’s hot-headed. He speaks and acts in anger and fear before anything else, and he was angry and afraid when he discovered Hannibal’s manipulations.

“Tolerance is a fig leaf to hide your ravenous self from the world,” Hannibal says acidly.

“I don’t have your appetite.”

Will’s voice is cold and distant. It’s unlike anything Hannibal has ever heard from his mouth. That wicked tongue and those sharp teeth always had so much emotion behind them. Will looks away, eyes unfocused. He’s gone somewhere else, away from here. “Will,” Hannibal tries. “Let me take you home.”

“I miss my dad. I’m not going to miss you. I don’t want to know where you are or what you’re doing. I don’t want to think about you anymore.” A tear rolls down Will’s cheek and he furiously wipes it away, still avoiding looking at Hannibal.

A lump forms in Hannibal’s throat and he finds it hard to swallow, not unlike when he said goodbye to Mischa. He cannot bring that teacup back together but Will is in front of him, in the flesh, warm skin and heart beating. Perhaps this is the teacup gathering itself back together: Will is alive, and relatively safe. Something he could not do for Mischa. Hannibal stands and smooths his coat of wrinkles from sitting in the plastic chair.

“So be it,” he says, schooling his face and voice neutral. He will not give Will the satisfaction of knowing that he burrowed under Hannibal’s skin, much like he did to Will. What Will interpreted as manipulation to make him into something he’s not, Hannibal believed he was only doing what’s best for them and what gave them the highest chance of survival. Basic Darwinism.

Their eyes finally meet when Will forces himself to look at Hannibal. He steps forward, reaching to cup the side of Will’s face. Will doesn’t recoil—doesn’t lean in to the touch, either, just allows it stiffly. Hannibal memorizes his face as it is now; if they never see each other again, this is the oldest Hannibal will ever see him. Like Mischa, forever arrested in his memory. He does hope it will not be forever.

Still, he presses his lips gently to the top of Will’s head, smoothing down his now-short curls, then steps away and bows his head. “You will always know where to find me, if you need me,” he murmurs. Will does not respond, jaw set and mouth clamped shut again. Hannibal does not believe he will speak again until he’s released. When the heavy door shuts behind him, he hears the sound of a plate being thrown at it.

Chapter Text

Hannibal Lecter stands in front of Will with a straight spine and his shoulders back. He wears a deep red plaid three-piece suit, pocket square and all, and his hair is slicked back neatly. He looks almost identical to how he looked the first time Will saw him, now with flecks of gray in his hair and more pronounced crow’s feet as he smiles at him. His entire being takes up the doorway, almost looming, and Will finds himself standing a little straighter.

“Come in.” He stands aside and Will walks by with as much dignity as he can muster, and not like a dog with a tail between its legs returning to its master. He hears the door’s lock click closed behind him to ensure they won’t be interrupted, but he still doesn’t turn to look at Hannibal. He needs a few more moments. He shoves his hands in his pockets instead, looking around at Dr. Lecter’s office. A desk with perfectly aligned notebooks, pens, pencils, and paperweights. An unfinished drawing of a building sits atop it. There’s a chaise over by the curtained windows. Two chairs across from each other in the center of the room, presumably where he talks to patients.

“Please, Will, take a seat,” Hannibal says, unbuttoning his jacket as he sits down in one of the leather chairs. Will does not. He’s practiced what he’d say to Hannibal the next time he saw him a million times over the years, and for the hour drive over here. His first instinct, of course, is to be angry that Hannibal couldn’t leave well enough alone. He is incapable of letting anything go, even for Will’s sake. He wants to do what he didn’t have the balls to do twenty years ago and wrap his hands around Hannibal’s throat.

He wants to throw his arms around his neck at the same time and cling to the back of his suit jacket like a little kid, relieved that nothing happened to him in these twenty years. If thoughts could kill, Hannibal would be dead a thousand times over and Will is glad that fate was never on his side anyway. He chews on his bottom lip, trying to look everywhere but Hannibal as he turns what he wants to say in his brain over and over.

“How’d you know it was me?” is what he finds himself asking instead, hands on hips and turning to look over his shoulder.

He can see Hannibal shift in his seat, cross his legs, fold his hands together on top of his knee. “A patient of mine said she could see a dark figure by her car in the parking lot from that window. And another patient complained of a sketchy man chainsmoking in the parking lot, who claimed he was my patient. You smell dreadful, by the way.” Hannibal leans back and looks over at Will, catching his eye. Will turns his head again and looks away. “That atrocious aftershave does nothing to cover the stink of cigarettes. You should quit.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Will mutters. He pinches the bridge of his nose. His fingers can feel the break that never healed quite straight, even though Hannibal did his best. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m sorry? Was it not you who knocked on my office door?”

The anger Will had been suppressing starts bubbling up and he has to take a deep breath as he turns to finally face Hannibal straight-on. He looks utterly relaxed in his chair, watching Will with expectant eyes. He’s baiting him and he knows it, and it makes Will fucking furious. “David. Kirsten. Harry. You wanted my attention, and now you have it. What the fuck do you want?”

Hannibal continues to look at him placidly. Fondness still sparkles in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Will could scream. He could tackle Hannibal to the floor and beat the everloving shit out of him. It wouldn’t be the first time. There are probably less lethal weapons in this office than there were in the cabin but Will thinks he could do it with his bare hands. He’s not rail-thin from starvation anymore. Then again, neither is Hannibal. Hauling bodies around will do that to a guy, Will supposes.

“You know damn well what I mean. The Chesapeake Ripper wasn’t enough?” He knows he’s throwing wild accusations around, but Hannibal brings it out in him. He loses all rational thought around him. Social cues and rules of order don’t exist between them; they were born in the wild. “The FBI is involving me. I can’t lead them on a wild goose chase or I’m gonna start looking real fuckin’ guilty.”

“Are you not?” is Hannibal’s light reply.

Will actually stops in his tracks. He’s not easily surprised or rendered speechless; he’s seen so many crime scene photos and stepped into so many murderers’ heads that very little fazes him. His mouth hangs open, unable to form a coherent thought at the moment. “You think I did this? Are you insane?”

Hannibal picks off an invisible piece of lint and turns in his chair to face Will fully. “I’m not insane,” he says, as if it wasn’t a rhetorical question. He is insufferable. Will scrubs a hand over his face and gives in, dragging his feet over to the chair and sitting down with a heavy sigh. He puts his face in his hands. “I’m going to be honest, Will,” Hannibal continues, “I was quite proud you finally got your revenge.”

“Of course you are,” Will says dryly. “Except it’s not me. Are you seriously telling me it’s not you?”

Hannibal unfolds his hands and shows his palms, as if showing just how clean of blood they are. Even though they both know it’s not true. Hannibal has more blood on his hands than Will does. “You don’t truly believe I would be as pedestrian as to stage deaths to look like suicides?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Staging deaths to look like a wild animal killed someone is very different than suicide, Will. And I believe you were the mastermind for that one.”

Will’s fingers dig into the armrest of the chair. It was a mistake coming here. He knew, deep down, Hannibal had nothing to do with this. He wanted an excuse to see him and now that he’s here, he pleads temporary insanity. The iron doors he’d kept all his memories and feelings locked behind are turning to flimsy plywood before his eyes. Hannibal’s head tilts ever so slightly, eyes glittering. Just a simple look and Will is flayed alive.

Hannibal flashes him a feline smile and then gets up. “Wine or beer? I brew the beer myself,” he asks as he crosses the room to an armoire. “I do believe two old friends catching up requires some drinks.”

He should leave. He should get up and leave and delete his fucking google alerts and finally burn those letters. He cannot hold onto Hannibal Lecter like an old stuffed animal past its prime. “Wine,” Will says instead. He doesn’t want anything Hannibal makes himself. He already knows what Hannibal’s appetite is like.

“Excellent choice,” Hannibal says jovially. Glasses clink together behind him and there’s a soft glug glug of a wine bottle. Will won’t give Hannibal the satisfaction of watching his every move. A hand comes into his field of vision with a glass of blush wine. Will takes it, at the very least grateful to do something with his hands. He’s itching for a smoke.

Hannibal sits across from him again. He sniffs his wine and takes a delicate sip and Will finds himself unconsciously mirroring, throat bobbing as Hannibal swallows. If Hannibal notices, which he most certainly does, he doesn’t say anything. Will’s clothes are too tight, too restricting, suddenly. He wants to put his glasses back on. He wants to sit on the floor between Hannibal’s legs and let him detangle his hair even though it hurts and takes forever.

He closes his eyes tightly, locking that memory away again.

“Do you find yourself back in the cabin often, Will?” Hannibal asks curiously. His posture is relaxed, like he does this all the time, like he sees and talks to Will regularly. He’s always been infuriatingly calm about everything.

“No,” Will says truthfully. He prefers imagining a stream, above all things. Sometimes he finds himself at the lake near their original campsite, but he doesn’t revisit the cabin often. It was small and safe until it wasn’t. It’s tainted. He takes a sip of his wine. “What was your plan? Just watch me kill off the other survivors from afar? Not even try to stop me?”

“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you, Will,” Hannibal says and his voice sounds—wistful, almost. The past twenty years flash through Will’s head, college and post-grad and getting a doctorate, fleeting, meaningless relationships, Hannibal, Hannibal, Hannibal. Every birthday, getting a letter. Every birthday, refusing to open it but being pleased he got one. Piss drunk and crying on the floor of his dad’s trailer, holding the only letter he ever read. How did Hannibal even know his dad died? Or where he was living? Then he soaked the letter in alcohol and burned it in the sink.

Despite Will saying he didn’t want to know where he was, or what he was doing, Hannibal was still there, tracking every accomplishment, filing it away. As he sits in front of him now, he sees in Hannibal’s eyes, glinting almost red in the firelight, the swell of pride and fondness. “It wasn’t me,” Will says again, just to reiterate. Hannibal looks much too proud of him.

“Of course not.”

“I’m serious. We agreed not to lie to each other, remember?”

“I didn’t know that our agreement still held after twenty years. Tell me, Will, how did you get involved with the FBI?”

“They approached me. I’ve consulted for the local police before to catch other murderers. But you knew that.” He sips his wine, looking pointedly at Hannibal. There’s no way Hannibal hasn’t kept tabs on Will in the same way Will has for Hannibal. He leans back in the chair. He wants to get up and pace, but he settles for bouncing his knee and taking a larger sip of wine than is strictly necessary. “Why didn’t you kill everyone who tried their hardest to let me die out there?”

“I wasn’t aware you wanted me to.” Hannibal’s feline smile returns. “All you had to do was ask. It does seem our friend is taking care of it.”

“I don’t think this person is our friend,” Will mutters. He rubs at his face with his free hand. He hadn’t seriously considered that it’s potentially another survivor, but Hannibal bringing it up gives him pause. Everyone came back home a little wrong. Eating human flesh will do that to someone. He’s not sure who out of the survivors might be most likely to start killing people, besides himself and Hannibal. He stands up, needing to walk around a little to get his thoughts in order.

He goes to Hannibal’s desk. Everything on it is meticulously organized. Will glances up, looking at Hannibal and catching his gaze. He’s watching him with rapt attention, unblinking, and Will feels a flush on the back of his neck. He quickly looks back down and focuses on the unfinished sketch that Hannibal has out. The wine settles sourly in his stomach when he recognizes the outside of the cabin. Will quickly looks away and his eyes catch a drawing table with another stack of sketches.

He knew Hannibal could draw; he would sketch on days it was too cold to go outside. Pencils and paper were limited. Hannibal would spend days on one sketch to avoid using up his entire notebook that long winter. He’d never actually looked at Hannibal’s drawings before. He’d seen them over Hannibal’s shoulder occasionally but Will was respectful of Hannibal’s boundaries, even when his own were stomped all over.

A drawing that looks vaguely familiar sticks out from the stack. Will slides the paper out, huffing out a laugh through his nose when he sees the Wound Man drawing. “Is this how Miriam Lass found you?” he asks.

Hannibal appears at Will’s side near-silently. Will remembers this drawing from one of the anatomy books Hannibal had in his luggage. They didn’t exactly have a lot to read between the two of them. The trip wasn’t supposed to be very long. Hannibal had a novel in Lithuanian and a few medical textbooks and Will had his insect encyclopedia. The hunter whose cabin they lived in had a few novels—that not only had Will read before, but read several more times over the course of their stay.

So he read the medical textbooks, too. He knows this picture. It’s obscure. It’s also how one of the last Ripper victims died, before Miriam Lass.

“It’s unfortunate what had to happen to Miriam Lass,” Hannibal says. He traces his fingers over the sketch. “She was quite clever. Not more clever than you, of course.” He smiles at Will, who just rolls his eyes in response. Hannibal can’t appeal to Will’s ego like that, because he’s not self-obsessed like Hannibal is.

“Is your plan to leave clues in plain sight and kill whoever finds them?” Will asks. He starts his walk-about again, curious about the books on the upper level now. Hannibal stays by the drawing table. “Eventually that’s what’s going to get you caught, you know.”

Hannibal hums thoughtfully, rifling through some more of his sketches. “And yet here I am, uncaught,” he says. He looks over at Will, who is now scaling the ladder. “What are you going to do about our killer? Since we have now ruled each other out as suspects, I can only assume we are on the slaughter list.”

Most of the books in the loft area are textbooks, it seems. Philosophy books. There are books in several different languages. Hannibal has probably never searched for anything online in his life. He just memorizes every book he’s ever read. There are more framed anatomy drawings. Of course the cannibal would love anatomy, and who would suspect the psychiatrist of such darkness? “Jack Crawford has me building a profile.” Will slides his fingers across the book spines and plucks one at random. “Alana Bloom is keeping a dutiful eye on me.”

Hannibal crosses the room so he’s standing below Will, looking up at him with barely-concealed curiosity. Will wonders if he’s jealous that someone else gets to look inside Will’s mind. “She is your therapist?”

The book Will chose is A History of Western Architecture. Hannibal was always telling Will about places in Florence that he wanted to take him while passing time in the wilderness. He could describe the architecture in such detail that Will could very easily build it from scratch in his mind. They could walk the halls of the Uffizi Gallery while walking through thick trees, the rifle strapped across Will’s back as they looked for prey.

“I needed to be psychologically cleared for field work. Crawford pulled strings for me to be involved and those strings came attached to therapy.”

“Most psychology departments are filled with ham radio enthusiasts and other personality deficients. Dr. Bloom would be the exception.”

“She mentioned she had no idea you were even a passenger on SEA418,” Will says, snapping the book shut and putting it back on the shelf. “You’d never mentioned it, and you’d never mentioned me. How did you get to go back to your life and blossom into a renowned psychiatrist, a socialite, and the Chesapeake Ripper, and I get to be known for being a kid who probably ate people?” Bitterness seeps through Will’s tone despite his best efforts.

“I tried to give you a new life, if you recall. You rejected it.”

“Oh, yeah, that was definitely for me and not in your own self-interest,” Will sneers. “Were you hoping to, what, make me the Chesapeake Ripper junior?” He stalks over to the ladder and climbs down. “What was your goal?”

“My goal was to get you out of that wretched place. I saw their treatment plan for you, it was appalling. All I ever wanted for you, Will, was for you to be yourself. For both of us.”

Will could punch Hannibal in the jaw. He should. Will was a shadow of whoever he was that spring day he boarded that fateful flight by the time they got rescued. He had no sense of self. Hannibal saw to that. He stripped away all of Will’s anxieties and darkest thoughts and brought them to the surface, convinced him they were real, and then used it to his advantage. Will had put so much trust in Hannibal, the only person who ever saw him so wholly, only to feel a betrayal so gutting he’s still not over it twenty years later.

“That wasn’t—isn’t—me,” Will insists. “That’s not who I am.”

Hannibal sighs and puts his hands in the pockets of his slacks, prim and proper. “What happened to being honest?”

Will scowls and puts more distance between them. He stares out the window. The orange glow of the parking lot illuminates their cars. Soft footsteps on the rug follow him. There is truly no escaping Hannibal now that they’re back in each other’s gravitational pulls. They’re satellites for each other. “I don’t forgive you,” Will says quietly.

“I surmised as much,” Hannibal replies easily. He puts a hand on Will’s shoulder, gently squeezes, and then pulls it away before Will can snarl an insult. “Surely you can put that aside, since it’s in our best interest to work together.”

Will huffs out a breathy laugh and scrubs a hand across his face. “Working together,” he repeats. “I’m sure you’d like that.” Letting the Chesapeake Ripper anywhere near an FBI investigation is asking for trouble. Not that Jack would ever figure it out; Hannibal is undoubtedly charming and easy to like. Will isn’t sure he’s ever known a person as well as he knows Hannibal and he can still feel himself letting his guard down.

That’s Hannibal’s whole deal. He’s good looking, smart, and well-dressed, with an air of mystery around him that makes people want to get to know him. His walls are made of wrought-iron fences whose decorative finials are sharp as knives. People can’t climb over them, covered in bramble and overgrown weeds, but they’ll try. Will got over those walls. There was nowhere else for him to go, really, in all those months they were lost.

“Of course, we could go our separate ways and continue to never speak, but you’re already here, Will,” Hannibal says. He sounds too pleased with himself. “You sought me out for a reason. You’ve opened the door and now you will be unable to close it.”

Will sighs, exasperated. A headache is building behind his eyes again. He grabs his crumpled box of cigarettes from his pocket to shake one out, only for Hannibal’s hand to shoot out and tear the cigarette from between his lips. “You will not smoke that in my office,” he scolds. “I’ll never be able to get the smell out.”

Will rolls his eyes but puts the pack in his pocket again. “Fine,” he says. Hannibal always had the compulsive need to control everything, including Will. He always wanted to know where Will was going or what he was planning. Protective. Like Will would slip away in the forest if Hannibal didn’t keep an eye on him. Hannibal looks pleased again and Will can’t help the warm feeling in his belly. He shakes it off and pulls out his phone. Might as well make Hannibal useful while he’s here.

“There have been markings at each crime scene,” he says. He pulls up the photo and hands it to Hannibal. “They look the same… sort of. Different skill levels. Not sure if that means our killer is learning to draw on the job or if it’s just situational. Carpet versus hard flooring.”

Hannibal takes his phone curiously. He commits it to memory, then hands Will’s phone back. “Have you heard of the Eight Auspicious Symbols?” he asks. Will shakes his head. Hannibal heads to the ladder and Will can’t help but think how ridiculous he looks climbing up in his three piece suit. “It’s also called Ashtamangala. They are featured in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism.”

“This ought to be interesting,” Will mutters to himself. “Please, go on.” Theology with Hannibal was an oft visited conversation. He was always talking about God, and in retrospect Will knows it was because that’s what Hannibal liked to play. He felt powerful being able to choose who lives and dies, since that choice was taken away from him as a child.

Hannibal pulls a book off the shelf and starts flipping through it. “These symbols are yidam, a meditational deity. They are meant to help you reach enlightenment. The symbols are a fish, conch, parasol, lotus flower, vase, victory banner, the wheel of teaching, and of course, the endless knot.”

“I’m not interested in a theology lesson, Dr. Lecter,” Will says. “Spit it out.”

Hannibal looks up from the book. He looks over the railing at Will, face inscrutable. He’s displeased that Will interrupted his explanation. Will doesn’t give a shit. He knows he doesn’t need the back story. “The endless knot means many things across many cultures. Unity, wisdom, compassion.” He walks to the railing and hangs the book over the ledge, open to a page. Will steps forward and looks up at it. There it is, clear as day, the same symbol that was crudely drawn onto the floor.

“Not very wise or compassionate to kill innocent people,” Will points out.

“They’re hardly innocent, aren’t they? They were hoping you would die out there,” Hannibal says mildly. He brings the book back and tucks it under his arm to climb back down.

“If that’s their damnation, then there’s definitely a special place in hell for both of us,” Will says. “And you aren’t exactly off the hook for how that all went down. You wanted me out of the group.”

“I wanted us to have the best chance of survival.” He beckons Will to follow him to his desk, where he sits in the chair and opens the book again where he marked it. “You said you were profiling this killer. What have you discovered?”

Will sits down on the edge of Hannibal’s desk and leans back against his palms. “He desires balance,” he says after a moment. He closes his eyes to build the crime scene in his head again. “Each kill is a step closer to achieving balance. Our survival was a glitch in the matrix. Killing us is putting it right.”

He hears a slight intake of breath from Hannibal. “You really are a remarkable boy,” Hannibal says. That warm feeling returns to Will’s belly. “You’ve done the work to understand your empathy disorder.”

“Hard not to,” Will says quietly. “It takes a high degree of empathy for great acts of cruelty.” He doesn’t look at Hannibal but he can feel his eyes burning a hole into his back.

“Have you been cruel since we parted ways, Will?”

He thinks about yelling at Molly. His students. His college peers. The therapists at Port Haven.

“Not as cruel as you.”

Hannibal hums thoughtfully. “That may be true,” he says after a moment. There’s the sound of a page turning. Will turns and sees that Hannibal is still looking through the book. “Ah, here we are.” He turns the book around and pushes it toward Will. “The endless knot also represents balance and harmony. Cause and effect. Cyclicality.”

“Karma,” Will breathes. “What goes around comes around, but it never came around for us. We lived.”

“And we are the glitch in the matrix, as you said.”

Will slides off the desk and rubs his chin. “Maybe Jack was onto something. Religious delusion. They want to play God.”

“And yet, they do not know they’re playing with gods themselves.”

“More like demons,” mutters Will.

Hannibal smiles and steeples his fingers under his chin. “Do you think yourself a demon, Will?”

Will snorts and shakes his head. “No, you’re the demon. I’m the idiot who sold his soul.” Hannibal tuts in response and Will looks over at him. Silence falls but it’s not uncomfortable—it’s familiar. “I should go,” Will finally says. “Feed my dogs. Get some rest.”

“Of course,” Hannibal says with another smile. It’s not warm, Hannibal isn’t capable of that, but it’s his version. It’s genuine. His sharp teeth gleam. He gets up and walks to the door, opening it. “My next client will be arriving any moment now. If you would like, I will keep this hour open for you.”

It’s almost insulting. He’s treating Will like a patient instead of his equal. All those times he told Will that they were the same, that he saw and understood Will like no one else, they were all just words. He was just trying to keep Will agreeable, playing to a teenager’s ego and loneliness. Will is older now. Wiser.

Will just scowls and crosses the threshold. He pulls his jacket tighter around himself to prepare for the biting cold outside.

“Was it good to see me, Will?” Hannibal asks when Will is just about to leave through the patient exit.

Will turns to look at Hannibal from where his hand is on the exit door. Twenty years of only seeing photos in the society section of the newspaper. Twenty years of memories that haunt him. During the day, at night, when the first snow arrives. He still has the ghost of the fear that he might starve to death every winter, and every person he sees is potential prey. Twenty years and he still can’t smell barbecue without a sinking feeling in his stomach. Twenty years of gnawing at his own limbs to escape the tether that ties him to Hannibal Lecter, only for it to grow strong and taut the minute they were in the same room.

“Good? No.” Will closes the door behind him. He takes a moment, once a door is separating them, to take a few deep breaths. The painful ache of longing and the dormant anger battle inside him like stomach acid.

He leaves the building on autopilot, barely even registering how he got home until he’s standing in the threshold of his door with wet noses and wagging tails around him. His barely-touched whiskey sits on the counter still. It’s been sitting out for hours at this point but Will still drinks it and goes back to staring at his wall. The endless knot. An endless cycle of suffering and rebirth. If that’s not too on the nose, he doesn’t know what is.