rhymeswithcannibal | After the fall

After the fall

“Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,
seized me so strongly with his charm that,
as you see, it has not left me yet.

Love brought us to one death.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

The path to the cliff's edge has been neither straight nor strait; there have been setbacks, diversions, even moments when one or both of them could have been lost. Jack could have killed Will in Garret Jacob Hobbs' kitchen; Tobias Budge or Randall Tier or Frances Dolarhyde could have killed him. Jack could have killed Hannibal in his own kitchen, or in Florence, or even executed him on his knees in front of Will's house. Tobias Budge, Matthew Brown, or Mason Verger could have ended the story of Hannibal Lecter save for the afterword written as Hannibal's secrets slowly unraveled posthumously.

All of those almost deaths are nothing compared to the endings Hannibal and Will have wrought or nearly wrought upon one another time and again.

In this life, this world, this universe, every missed ending has been another step down the path that has led them to this precipice with the Dragon pouring out the last of his life on one side and the unforgiving Atlantic on the other.

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

He can feel Will's muscles tighten with intent, and in the microseconds between intent and action, he has to make a decision as to which final ending he will accept.

He cannot accept the ending that sends Will back out into the world without him.

The water doesn't wrap them in the warm comfort of the womb, but rather strikes them like a jealous lover's fist, determined to drive them apart and keep them individually for itself. After everything they have been through to reach their "final" tipping point, Hannibal isn't willing to just give Will over to the water.

Even his memory can't parse the chaos of the next minutes? Hours? The chaos and desperate fight cover all considerations of time in favor of survival not just for himself but for Will.

What he knows, without a doubt, is that Will fought just as hard for survival after hitting the water as Hannibal did. He knows as well that they wouldn't have survived without one another, and that is as it should be. They have died together and they are reborn together.

That is the thought in his mind as consciousness flees him and their rocky piece of shoreline. Not even the strobing red and blue lights' approach can keep him present once his hand finds Will's cold hand.

They will either wake or they will not, but in either case, in the end, neither of them simply gave up.

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"My personhood has never been in doubt." He didn't bother denying that he was arrogant. He had come by his arrogance through the simple virtue of being better than everyone he had ever encountered.

With perhaps one exception.

His smile twitched up in a mirror of Will's. "What do you think you are?" Not who. "Before this, you never spoke, only wandered my familiar halls."

He needed to understand. He'd learned his lesson when it came to underestimating Will's influence in his life, even in his absence.

"Hannibal," Will said in that specific tone he reserved for Hannibal's name, notes of fondness and bone deep frustration bleeding into each consonant and vowel. "Look around you, do you remember creating this? No. This is my stream, my refuge, beyond the other shore is a field leading to my house."

He gentled his tone, not knowing what, if any, psychic damage would befall him from dispelling this illusion his own mind had made against his will, "I made this. And for some reason, I've made you, too. Placed you here for a reason that I have not yet discovered. What you are saying are words driven from my own mind, some kind of self soothing to think that you conjure me in your thoughts as I have conjured you in mine."

The strange and un-ordinary were rooted in the mundane.

"Is that so?" Hannibal's posture shifted slightly, a change in his center of gravity that somehow made him stand taller. "Come with me."

He didn't wait to see whether "Will" would follow him. There was no reason to doubt that he would. Will had always been curious; there was no reason to think that Hannibal's subconscious would blunt that.

He retraced the steps that had led him out of the the stream's day and into the moonlight of their night at the bluff. "This place is no proof that you are more real than I, of course. This is a site of transcendence for both of us. How could you ever forget it?" He walked into the house and past a door where a hint of strobing light leaked under a closed door.

Hannibal knew that Miriam Lass was on the other side of that door, but he had no interest in pausing there to reminisce just then. His goal was out of this memory site and on to Palermo, and his enduring memory of the Norman Chapel.

He and Will shared memories there as well, but he was curious to see how this figment of Will would behave in Hannibal's memories of Paris. In another life he'd wanted to show Will and Abigail around Paris. This was no do over; it wasn't even an indulgence of his curiosity. Hannibal had to know how deep the rabbit hole of his imagination went with this deviation from his personal norm.

Will did follow him, out of curiosity and - even if this was a stand in for Hannibal, crafted from his own mind and his own knowledge of the man, Will found that he desired it's company. Craved the words and the presence that were now denied to him after only just finding where they fit together.

"Transcendence," Will repeated, agreeing. Then added, "Consummation," to see how this conjured Hannibal would reply. And Will did think of it as a consummation, an act more intimate than any other; eyes meeting in unspoken understanding, bodies moving together, blooding each other.

There were things about the house that- Will frowned at the strobing light that leaked from under a door. Was that one of his memories? He didn't pause to open the door, not yet, but followed Hannibal into the Norman Chapel. "Why here?" He said aloud. But the Norman Chapel wasn't just Hannibal's own. The broken heart remained on display, and a flash of red hair disappeared around a corner. Will was as much home here as Hannibal. He looked back at Hannibal.

Hannibal glanced back at Will, the curl of his lips answer enough. It had absolutely been a consummation of their slow-burning courtship. Was that the purpose of this simulacrum of Will in his mind? To help him digest?

It was a plausible explanation, but lacking nuance. It was part of the answer, but not its entirety.

"From this foyer we can visit the other halls of my memory palace." He indicated a door behind the altar. "I'm in the mood for warm and airy. The Musée Rodin on a June afternoon should do nicely."

Will this figment hold up to a foreign setting or will it lose that interesting spark that has made it both interesting and troubling?

He took Hannibal's expression for what it was worth, is this what he wanted? For Hannibal to be thinking of that night in the same terms Will was? Or was it confirmation his mind had pieced together from having been there, from knowing Hannibal as much as he did, as much as he could be known.

"And what are we trying to prove, Hannibal?" Will headed for the indicated door, hand on the knob. He glanced back, then turned the knob and opened the door. "Or disprove?" He stepped through the door and out into the very detailed relief of a place he had never been personally, but had seen pictures of. The reflections in the pond, the grand stair leading up to the former manor house, now a museum, he frowned slightly, walking to the steps leading up and up to the entrance.

This was certainly a place Hannibal would have attended, would have memorized in detail enough to reproduce it with pencil and paper. Is that where Will's mind had conjured this place from? An unintentional detail gleaned from the clear front of a cell? And his mind simply filled in the rest. It would become obvious at some point, Will knew, as he had only a passing familiarity with the sculptor's work.

"If I am a figment of your imagination, you already know the answer." And in his certainty that "Will" was the fiction, he felt no need to offer an explanation to a product of his imagination.

He led Will through the museum following his favorite path among timeless works of art, letting the lure of The Gates of Hell draw him onward.

"Entertain for a moment that you aren't the master of this reality." His steps slowed as they approached the monumental sculpture that had consumed thirty years of Rodin's life. "What message would you be here to convey?"

Aside from The Thinker, Will would have named The Gates of Hell as one of Rodin's works, but little else. He approached the looming sculpture, taking in the details from a distance far more close than one could get in the actual museum. Will's gaze fell over the carved reliefs for a long minute, he was only passingly familiar with the the sculpture, but the details were fully formed, vivid.

He glanced across his shoulder at Hannibal when the man came to stand beside him, "That you are in a deeper circle of hell than I am. If we're continuing with your more than passing fixation on Dante."

Will looked back at the sculpture, "I am not a figment and yet, the clarity of these sculptures that I have never seen here, the details of this sculpture, of which I have only a passing familiarity with... are more than I could possibly know." Had it been only the Gates, Will would have considered the details drawn from his subconscious, that, for some reason, held onto those details without conscious thought.

He frowned slightly and turned away from Hannibal, moving through this particular gallery to try every door along the path that they ahd passed.

Anyone who knew anything about Hannibal Lecter would be unsurprised to find that this particular sculpture was enshrined in memory in such loving detail that even scratches in its patina are captured there.

He gazed up at the sculpture and afforded a corner of his attention to once again admiring Rodin's vision, but he still had his interloper to understand.

"Why are you not in the lowest circle with me if that is so? What spares you the fate of the betrayer?" Turning on the last word, he breathed a soft sound of amusement to see Will once again trying to go where he wasn't invited. It would be rude from anyone but Will. From Will it was merely inevitable.

"My personal exhibits are through some of those doors. Be my guest." Other doors were entries into other rooms of the museum, and others still opened into other halls to extend the fractal branches of his vast mental construction.

"Jack, the avenging angel," Will replied, releasing his grip on one of the doorknobs. He turned, too, looking at Hannibal, "Now you humor me," Will took a step towards him, then another, "If you aren't yourself, and are a conjuring from the depths of my mind, what lesson are you here to impart? Subconscious self reward for not snitching?"

Will moved to another door, then another, trying them until he was satisfied that he'd found one leading out of the museum portion of this guided tour. "He always regrets what happens to me after the fact, but never does he actually regret involving me in the first place."

Will pushed the door open, "I don't think he wants to acknowledge that this time there's no going back."

"Jack's wings have been clipped." Authorizing using Hannibal as bait for the Dragon at the behest of his favorite hunting hound hadn't bought Jack good will with the establishment. Too many dead policemen for that, not to mention his hound's fate.

He turned toward Will when he approached, and even with his certainty that his mind was presenting him with this representation of... of what? Longing?

This representation still had a pull, and Hannibal silently chewed on its words. "Do I believe that you would see my presence as a reward?"

He had to chuckle, just a little in the privacy of his mind. "You should. We fought through too much to have our moment of consummation for my presence to be a punishment now."

Now that his imagined Will had managed to pull his attention away from Rodin, he followed Will to the door that he'd opened. "What do you hope to find with your explorations?"

What was his subconscious telling him to share with Will when (not if) the opportunity arose?

"I don't know if you would. Certainly you would like the novelty my presence provided," Will stepped out into a hall that was unfamiliar, and turned, waiting for Hannibal to follow. "His wings are clipped, but not broken. He's already approached me with offers. He's desperate to pick you further apart. I'm not even sure it's about ... rehabilitating ... me."

Will snorted, "Are you admitting that you're not real? I certainly wouldn't see that coming." He began to walk down the hall, whether or not Hannibal kept pace with him.

"What I want to find, is clarity. Something that I could have no possible way of knowing." If it didn't exist, then Will's mind was in a more chaotic state than he thought. He would admit to being consciously out of control of his own ordered thoughts.

"I am enjoying the novelty, but I must maintain my awareness that your presence and interactivity cannot be taken lightly."

Hannibal kept pace with Will, curious to see which door he would choose next. This hall held no associations that Hannibal would rather avoid, which meant that the message his subconscious-in-lamb's-clothing had for him was unlikely to involve trauma.

Will might select the door into Hannibal's dormitory room in Paris, littered as it was with subtle mnemonics of that period of his life. Or perhaps he would be drawn to the kitchen in his uncle's home where Murasaki taught him the subtleties of Japanese cuisine while a young Chiyoh watched or offered her help. This was a hall of those liminal memories between the screams of childhood and the far different screams of Hannibal's adulthood.

His choices were mostly painless, other than the pain of fond yearning for gentler memories he had enshrined away from the ones that bore sharp edges. They were only ever one door away from darker halls with doors that concealed sharp edges enough for all.

"It's an exercise in self awareness," Will said, opening the door to the kitchen in Hannibal's uncle's home, not stepping in, but lingering in the doorway. "Something in me is refusing to let you admit that you're not you." No. This was too easy. His mind had the outline of it all and was simply filling in details. A younger Chiyoh with soft eyes, standing at the edge of a counter where young Hannibal took instruction from a woman who held a knife and used it with the same deftness that Will had grown accustomed to seeing in Hannibal.

He closed the door.

"The deeper we go down the rabbit hole of my subconscious, the more it will just fill in the details around what I have gleaned from you about your life," Will replied. "I think we're at a stalemate."

Hannibal paused, looking over Will's shoulder to watch shadows of the past playing out a scene that he held in the fondest of memory and regard. Better this scene than the last times he had seen either of them.

"There is one independently obtainable piece of information that the real Will has now that I have been unable to obtain on my own." Yet.

"Where is your cell?"

He was entirely certain that if he caught Jack at just the right moment, he could read his response well enough to know whether the information was accurate or not.

Will frowned, a crease forming between his eyebrows, "Why should I have to prove myself to you? You're the one in my mind. " He stepped up to Hannibal, "And you already know what cell I'm in. If I say it now, then I'll open my eyes to the waking world and next time I close them and find myself here, you'll regurgitate the numbers to me as though you've independently fact-checked them"

He took another step until he was toe to toe with Hannibal, "I am not interested in placating myself, Hannibal."

Because of course Will was not considering the possibility that they were two separate minds joined in this shared space, free to come and go in the memories of one another.

"Regardless, I am willing to play the game with myself. You have presented as such a convincing representation of Will Graham that I intend to banish my doubts in order to allow myself to move toward better understanding of the real reason for your presence."

It had been a while since he'd thought that he would appreciate having Bedelia to talk to, but she had more context to understanding Hannibal than anyone but Will. She would take pleasure in taking a scalpel to this scene to help him see inside.

"I'm even willing to placate myself by offering you a comparable piece of information."

Will considered, "Ask Jack what he waters his poison tree with. He's going to see you first, tomorrow." Will would echo the question and read Jack's reaction to it, whether confusion or that bulldog stubbornness that saw conspiracy everywhere.

"I'm on the second floor. Cell 203," He took one step back. Then another. "I don't know what will happen when the illusion of you here breaks." He almost didn't think he wanted to know.

But Will was not mad. He saw things very clearly now.

"I'll still be here." Will's leaving gave him time to ponder the significance of what he'd experienced since his curiosity had drawn him into an uncharted part of his mind.

"You offer me my own words in Will Graham's voice. I'm curious whether you'll return once I've spoken to Jack."

"It's my mind, Hannibal, I've always been here," Will said, then opened his eyes in the waking world. It took a long minute for him to adjust to the dim lack of light in his cell, to the hushed noise in the corridor, the faint drone of the television coming from the guard station. He half turned and lay flat on his back in the narrow bed of his cell.

There was time to dissect what his mind had thrown at him, every nuance of 'Hannibal's' mannerisms, every word he spoke. Will closed hsi eyes again, but did not return to that place. Not yet.

He had gone in circles with himself long enough; Hannibal made no motion on his bunk, but spent the hours before dawn methodically walking the shores of the stream.

Dawn brought the subtle sounds of the facility waking that penetrated even down to Hannibal's cell, and full morning brought a visit from Jack, as he'd anticipated. Jack was so easy to nettle; all he had to do was see Hannibal's smiling face and Hannibal could smell the rage pouring off of him

Hannibal had long had the habit of enjoying his little jokes, as when he made sure to link the question of what Jack watered his poison tree with to Hannibal's solicitous suggestion that Will should be moved from Cell 203 to Hannibal's recently vacated cell. After all, Jack owed Will that small comfort for pulling him back into this world.

He wasn't sure what to make of the confirmation from Jack's response that Hannibal had hit the nail on the head when it came to where Will was housed.

Jack was a bull by the time he got to Will, not even subtle in his insinuations that Hannibal somehow knew where Will was located. That he intended to make a move against Will. To keep him silent. This was Will's chance to bury this and Hannibal once and for all. Will hardly needed confirmation at this point, but asked anyway, what Jack watered his poison tree with. The things that moved behind Jack's eyes, surprise, suspicion, the look of a man thrown entirely off balance...

Will closed his eyes and when he opened them, he was once more at the stream, this time, on the bank, already pointed in the direction of the cliff house that was no longer on a cliff. He moved purposefully towards it, no caution in his steps.

One way or another, he had something of an answer and even more questions.

Hannibal stood at the border between his space and Will's standing patiently in a perfectly fitted navy plaid suit. He displayed only pleasant welcoming when his eyes fell on Will.

"I trust your audience with Jack was enlightening."

Will had said it himself back in Baltimore - the lines between them were blurring.

Will was in the usual plaid and jeans, no waders on since he hadn't intended to fish today. He stopped just in front of Hannibal, toes of his muddied boots just a short step away from touching Hannibal's own footwear.

"As much as your own was," He replied.

"This can't be real," Will said plainly.

"My meeting with Jack was a more pleasant start to my day than institutional scrambled eggs and bitter black coffee."

He was delighted, perplexed, and troubled in near equal measures, but his fondness for Will swung him closer to delight for now at least.

"We have quite the puzzle to unravel here, but the one thing of which I am reasonably certain is that some element of what we are experiencing is real. Not physically, but psychically or spiritually."

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