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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"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."

"I believe they're reconstituted from powder," Will said. "The eggs."

He was... disturbed... at this development. And intrigued. Interested. All in equal measure. It could prove to be useful.

"You do enjoy picking at things until you understand them, or they break in the process," Will said dryly. "I'm interested in the how and the way of it."

"The same can be said of the coffee."

Hannibal acknowledged Will's observation of his predilection for taking things apart to understand how they tick with a bare uptick at the corners of his mouth.

"The how is a mystery; the why somewhat less so." He held a hand out in invitation to Will to come deeper into Hannibal's demesnes. "We have shared something remarkable and it has changed us both."

"Freddie had a little quip in one of her articles about you and coffee," Will said with trace amusement.

"That doesn't explain the why," He shook his head raising a hand as if to wipe away the idea, "What we shared could not have forged a psychic connection. It even sounds ridiculous to say it aloud. That one perfect moment of transcendent understanding forged, what... a joining of our liminal spaces?"

He did, however, go when Hannibal beckoned.

"Freddie was writing with the certainty that she would never meet me without a barrier between us." Hannibal's own amusement had a slightly sharper edge to it; he hadn't given up the happy expectation of showing her his contempt in a more private setting.

He led Will back into the Norman chapel and through a door that opened directly into his Baltimore office. It was familiar territory, and in most ways, less fraught than his kitchen. It seemed like a good setting for this discussion.

"It sounds ridiculous, but you and I have had our confirmations from Jack that we aren't merely indulging in wishful imaginings." He ran his fingers over the surface of his desk on his way to sit.

"Let us leave aside more mystical or mythical explanations and look to physics and quantum entanglement. We are entangled. I cannot say when that entanglement reached the physical plane, but it does provide a hint of an explanation."

"The t-shirts were very popular. 'I like my men like I like my coffee: ground up in the freezer' - accompanied by your mugshot. Which also won in a poll she conducted," Will said. Freddie was a creative soul that he would very much appreciate a chance in rectifying the original mistake of having left alive.

Will was not entirely surprised where Hannibal led him into that very familiar office. It was a sensation not unlike releasing a long held breath or the tension between one's shoulder blades. He began to wander immediately around the room, "Which is why I am not outright denying it- though don't think I've forgotten any of the things you said when you thought you were engaging yourself."

Namely, that there were versions of Will wandering Hannibal's mind palace.

"When we looked across the killing field and our thoughts and intentions aligned as we slayed a dragon," He did not intend to say consummate again quite yet knowing that this was in fact Hannibal and not a figment of his own mind.

Hannibal watched Will with single-minded focus while he settled into his chair and propped an ankle across his knee. It was disconcerting to see Will in the privacy of his mental space, but also reassuring that his deeply held belief that they had something unique was demonstrably true.

"I look forward to expressing my appreciation to her one day."

Someday he wanted to revisit his memories of that night with Will at his side, but not yet. He still preferred to digest its totality with some measure of privacy. "Why would you forget? We both gained unexpected insights from what was said when we thought we were alone with ourselves."

He looked up to the gallery, and for a moment the room was filled with a snow of falling pages, there and gone in the speed of a passing thought. "We owe Francis a debt. He was our final catalyst in a shared becoming."

Will glanced over his shoulder, expression something thoughtful, "No." Then turned back to his examination of the room, "She is for me. I intend to rectify a long-standing mistake."

Someday. When they had spoken through the idea, Will might agree to attend that memory with Hannibal. His own reaction would be something of a wild card. Though he had mentally laid Abigail to rest in the actual Norman Chapel, the psychic wounds, the self recrimination, the obvious blame levied at Hannibal for his dramatic tantrum...

"You have reacted badly in the past to being known," Will said, still looking over shelves and picking things up, then putting them down just to see if he could touch.

"Debt paid," He said, "We witnessed his becoming, that's what he wanted most."

Will may has well have given him a bouquet and a bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet for the way his face lit with approval. "That resolution between the two of you is long overdue; I won't take it from you. In turn, I hope that you won't take a milder resolution with her from me."

Just a few words, spoken at the right time, to demoralize her and bolster Will's resolve (and hopefully his cruelty.)

Hannibal could almost feel Will's explorations, like a thought of itching rather than the reality of it. As he had more than once, he considered how he allowed Will freedoms that no one else could have survived even once.

"The most perfect moment of my life came in the bloody instant in which we saw each other with complete clarity and acceptance. If I were to doubt, the proof of our profound connection is currently disarranging my office." And that could only come of being known.

Would he always be sanguine about it? He wasn't entirely sanguine now, but he was very good at finding the good in circumstances.

"That very much depends on what you consider mild," And if his tone came across as chiding, that's because it was. He'd caught that expression on Hannibal's face and tucked it away, along with the things it raised in him, for later consideration.

If Hannibal's only insertion into Will's dealings with Freddie were words, then Will would allow that.

"I'm putting everything back where I found it," Will replied. It was a bit of a lie. He did leave a few things just slightly askew from how he found them. He wanted to see what Hannibal would do.

"There may never be an explanation for this," He speculated aloud. He turned to look at Hannibal, then, watching him. "And that's fine."

"A word or two." Carefully chosen and carefully timed. "Nothing more." He hadn't lost his good humor, if anything Will's tone just added a dash of salt to keep the sweetness of his mood from growing cloying.

What Hannibal would do in response to Will's testing was nothing. This was his space, held in his mind and memory, and once Will was no longer actively asserting his agency in Hannibal's space, it would return to its proper order.

As such, he could meet Will's lie with a bare tilt of his head that said that he saw it and felt no need to overtly call it out.

"That is the sound of acceptance." He hadn't lost his good humor, but it was leavened with a hint of the wariness that Will had taught him. "How far does your acceptance extend?"

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